Ask Your 8-Year-Old and 80-Year-Old Self (Make Better Leadership Decisions With These Two Perspectives)

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: Ask Your 8-Year-Old and 80-Year-Old Self (Make Better Leadership Decisions With These Two Perspectives) , published on 21st September 2026.

Today, and in this series in general, we are looking for the tiniest tweaks that can refresh your perspective - and I think today is a perfect example of this.

As an executive coach, one of the things that is really helpful when I'm working with leaders is helping them flex perspective when they're making decisions. Today I'm going to give you one of my favourite ways of doing that.

I want you to look at your life and your leadership through the eyes of the eight-year-old version of you and the 80-year-old version of you.

The eight-year-old version of you can remind you what mattered before you accumulated all the noise, all the norms, and lost that childlike abandon and playfulness. The 80-year-old version of you can help you see what might still matter when most of the noise has fallen away and very little is left.

The 80-year-old perspective

This summer I attended a funeral for somebody in my extended family who died at the age of 82. I think funerals can give you an extraordinary lens on life. Because you can have had this huge life - all these decisions, achievements, work, things you've worried about, things that have felt really important - and then at the end, it's just really interesting to see what actually speaks.

What struck me so much was that it was the relationships. It was the people, the stories, how he made other people feel, the quality of the relationships he'd built up and invested in over his lifetime. I'm not saying relationships are the only thing that matter in a lifetime, but when you see life from that end, you do notice what's left standing.

So I'd love us to do that thought experiment right now and imagine yourself at the age of 80.

In those shoes, what would you be really pleased that you invested time in? Who are you going to be so glad you spent time with? And what are you going to wish that you worried about less?

I love that last question. One of the things I identified in my half-year review is that I'd spent some time ruminating. Some rumination is very important - we need to process things. But once it reaches the point of just going around and worrying in our heads, it stops being useful. I currently journal what made today special, but I might also add, during phases where I feel like I'm worrying more: what might 80-year-old me wish I had worried about less?

Another question I think is interesting: what feels absolutely enormous to you today that 80-year-old you may barely remember?

I'd like to think that 80-year-old me will be pleased that I strength trained, that I'm mobile, and that I invested in my health. That would be cool, wouldn't it - to be glad you'd done that for your future self.

On the flip side, what are things that feel quite small and mundane today that could turn out to be really important to 80-year-old you?

There's so much we can take for granted. If we're lucky enough to have our parents around, the time we have with them. Aspects of our health that we don't think about. Things we can do now without thinking twice - popping out for a run, going to a dance class. We may be really grateful that we were able to do those things when we were younger, even if we don't appreciate them much right now.

So there are things that feel huge today that might not matter at all later, and that's worth noticing.

And on the reverse, there might be things that feel small today that are actually really important.

The eight-year-old perspective

Now let's move towards the eight-year-old perspective.

Some of us will have great access to this because we have kids around us and we see the world through their eyes. I notice how big my kids' appetite is for play. They think nothing of a two-hour Monopoly game. Once my son got hold of a javelin to play with in the garden, he occupied himself for hours throwing that thing. That is one of the wonderful parts of being a kid, and one I hope they preserve for as long as possible.

We also had a three-year-old over recently, and my kids were showing off some of their flips on the trampoline. After watching them do something a bit fancy, that three-year-old just charged in because she wanted a go. There was no thought of "they're better than me, I'll sit this one out." She saw that it was fun and she wanted to join in. I love that complete lack of inhibition. She wasn't there to perform or compare. She was just in it.

Sometimes we can go even further than the eight-year-old and think about that childlike lack of inhibition - the focus on living and experiencing and playing. That's something I do try to build into my life. I want to be in it, participating, doing the activities alongside the kids.

When do we start hesitating? When do we start worrying about how we look? I have seen situations where that overrides the activity itself. My daughter went to a pool party where one girl had her hair straightened and then didn't get into the swimming pool - and it was her own pool party. Worrying about how we look can actually impact how much we get stuck in.

Questions to try

When you were eight years old, what did you naturally move towards? What did you just do, without thinking too much about it? What did you love to do?

If that eight-year-old you looked at your life now, what would they think is amazing? What would they be proud of you for? And what would they be completely baffled that you worry about?

I think that last one is a good one. For example, I was thinking about doing a party next year, and I know that when I was young, a party was just something that happened and was really fun. You didn't worry about all the details around it. Eight-year-old you would just see it for the fun that it is.

And here's another one worth sitting with: if there's something you absolutely loved when you were young, why don't you do that anymore?

For those big decisions - and we are going to be looking at different areas of our lives in the next few episodes - this is where this exercise is going to be most useful. If you're having a dilemma, if you're feeling stuck somewhere, take one live area of your life. It could be in leadership, in your career, in relationships - anything where you feel a little bit stuck.

Ask what eight-year-old you notices. Ask what 80-year-old you notices. Ask what they can see that you can't. Then come back to yourself with that current information.

That's the refresh for this week. Really simple - no huge extra work, just a perspective shift.

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About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.