BooksTwo books. One continuing enquiry.

Is This All There Is? by David Edmonds — book cover

Is This All There Is?
From Surviving Life to Actually Living It

Available now — Kindle and paperback

Who this book is for

For capable, responsible people whose lives look successful from the outside but no longer feel entirely their own from the inside. You may not be in crisis; you may simply have become very good at managing a life that no longer feels fully alive.

The central problem

We learn roles, rules and protective patterns long before we are able to question them. They help us belong, succeed and stay safe. Over time, they can harden into an identity that quietly determines what we choose, tolerate and avoid.

What you may understand differently

  • Why achievement can coexist with a persistent sense that something is missing
  • How inherited roles and protective patterns shape the life you are living
  • How to recognise what is genuinely yours and begin choosing more consciously

“What I’ve found, again and again, is that the question isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s a door.”
From the introduction

Kindle editionPaperback editionRead the opening chapters

You Are the Ceiling by David Edmonds — book cover

You Are the Ceiling
Why Doing More Stops Working

Forthcoming — a separate book for senior leaders and organisations

Where Is This All There Is? speaks to the life that no longer feels fully your own, You Are the Ceiling examines how the identity behind a leader’s success can begin to restrict the people and system around them.

This book begins with a question that most leadership development never thinks to ask: not what should you do differently, but what is it that you cannot see, and why?

The pattern is consistent across sectors, cultures and levels of seniority. A leader builds a career on behaviours that are reliable and rewarded. At some point, those same behaviours stop producing the results they once did. Applying them more forcefully only strengthens the ceiling.

Drawing on nearly two decades of coaching senior leaders and more than 250 in-depth conversations, the book explores how strength becomes identity, how identity becomes constraint and what the next stage of leadership asks you to outgrow.