You might want to keep trying to rise, using a path that builds on your natural strengths: sales, analysis, managing people, whatever, and keep asking for honest feedback. When you reach the point at which it feels clear you've topped out, revise your job description or take a step back. Up is not the only way.

Senescence is an inevitability. All we can do is try to strike the balance between graceful acceptance and raging against the dying light.

Sometimes, low-level jobs are challenging even to someone with CEO potential.

Some parents let kids "learn on their own skin" and many of those kids end up, as adults, languishing on their parents' sofas.

A half-hour before bedtime, I remind myself that I now deserve to prepare myself for a good night's sleep. You can't focus on your work if you're sleep-deprived even if you have a fascinating job.

Entrepreneurship may be the most under-taught subject.

I think people's feeling the need to be more dependent on others is caused more by the lack of good-paying jobs and by today's zeitgeist that insists it takes a village. That's disempowering although possibly true for many people.