The Dramatic Mindset Shift for Introverts Who Finally Ask "What Do I Actually Want?"
Bridget Munch · Episode 35
Get Promoted Without Becoming Someone Else
Bridget Munch is a high-performance coach based in Zurich with a career spanning classical music, IT law, corporate executive leadership across Europe, and solo entrepreneurship — plus a side career as an alpinist and ski instructor. She helps leaders drop their corporate conditioning and lead themselves like their own CEO. The pivotal question she asks every client — "What do you actually want?" — turns out to be one most people have never genuinely been asked, producing a shock of self-discovery that reorients everything: career trajectory, schedule design, business model, and identity.
No one had ever asked me what I wanted. And the day that coach asked me — I went home, I sat down, I cried. I thought: this is so horrible. I don't know what I want.
We build a business that serves our lives. Not the other way around.
The mountain is always stronger than I am. Turning around is not fear, it's not weakness — that's smart in the mountains.
Key Stories
- The rainy afternoon in Stockholm: While working in corporate and being asked to relocate again, Bridget worked with a coach who pushed back: “But what do YOU want?” She couldn’t answer. She went home and cried — not from sadness, but from the realization that no one had ever asked, and she didn’t know. That moment began a long transformation.
- The hiking boots falling apart mid-climb: On a recent hike in the Alps, Bridget’s boots disintegrated on the way up the mountain. She improvised, tied them together, eventually switched to sneakers, and kept going. She uses this as a live illustration of adaptability, plan B thinking, and accepting that the mountain is always stronger than you are.
- Bringing corporate conditioning into solopreneurship: After escaping corporate life for freedom, Bridget discovered she’d built a new hamster wheel with the same rules — reacting to everything, letting others dictate her schedule, assuming she had to scale and grow constantly. Recognizing the conditioning was the first step to dropping it.
Techniques & Frameworks
- The Alpinist Method: A goal-setting and strategy framework using mountain metaphors. The vision is what’s behind the summit (you can’t see it yet). The current summit is your next big objective. Your valley position determines your route. Huts and signposts are short-term milestones. Plan for weather changes. Know when to turn back.
- Personal calendar first: When building a business plan or leadership schedule, block personal life first (family, health, elderly parents, recovery), then allocate remaining time to business. This reverses the corporate habit and creates sustainable structure for introverts.
- Selling as serving/inviting: Same reframe as ep34 — selling means “offering people access to a solution.” Introverts who lead with listening and questions are better natural sellers than they believe.
- “Become your own CEO”: Lead yourself with intentionality — where do you want to go? What are your values? What is the business (or career) doing for your life, not the other way around? Strip out corporate conditioning assumptions about what growth must look like.