There’s a strange tension that settles in the body when you find yourself in a position of authority without the corresponding power, a tension that feels like sitting in the front seat of a moving car where everyone assumes you’re steering, because you have the title, the visibility, the responsibility, yet your hands never actually touch the wheel… and you know it.

The world reads the optics and assigns you the role of the driver, but you can feel, deep in the architecture of your being, that someone or something else is determining the direction, speed, and ultimate destination.

Authority gives you the seat.
Power gives you the steering.

And far too many leaders are handed only one of the two.

In organizations this looks almost ordinary, so ordinary that people stop questioning it. The assistant manager who is expected to deliver outcomes without control over budgets or hiring. The project lead accountable for a timeline while relying entirely on other departments for the work. The non-executive director who can see the road more clearly than management yet has no direct influence over the daily steering. It’s a front-seat vantage point with back-seat power… and it creates a quiet state of inner conflict that compounds over time.

When the Driver Isn’t a Person

But there’s another version of this dynamic that doesn’t appear in leadership textbooks or competency models, and it’s the one that strikes closest to home… the version where the Driver is not a human being but a pattern, a very old pattern, formed long before we ever stepped into the coaching room, the boardroom, or the alignment conversation.

Most people believe they are making adult decisions, acting from adult clarity, but much of our behavior is shaped by emotional coding established in childhood that quietly takes the wheel whenever we hit a familiar bump in the road.

These patterns are subtle until they aren’t… predictable until they destabilize… invisible until they begin shaping every major decision we make.

And unless we intervene—unless we consciously reclaim the wheel—they will continue to set the course for our relationships, our leadership, our financial choices, our boundaries, and the way we show up in rooms where we technically have authority but internally feel powerless.

The Body Knows Before the Mind Admits

The most haunting truth is this: unexamined patterns rarely sit politely in the backseat. They drive. They steer. They whisper. They tighten the chest before the mind can articulate what’s wrong. And when the gap between who we are and who we were conditioned to be grows too wide, the body begins to issue warnings long before the mind considers change.

Emotional weight becomes physical weight… sustained pressure becomes anxiety… unresolved fear becomes tremors or insomnia… stored grief becomes illness… and cognitive overload becomes brain fog or early cognitive decline that feels too early to make sense.

• It isn’t punishment.
• It isn’t failure.
• It is a shutdown sequence.

A full-body refusal to continue down a road paved by outdated conditioning. The body chooses clarity when the mind won’t.

Stepping Into Power Before the Pattern Takes the Wheel

The uncomfortable but liberating truth is this: if you do not step fully into your power, your patterns will. If you do not claim the wheel with the force of your own clarity, something older—something borrowed, inherited, rehearsed, or absorbed—will drive your life on autopilot.

And this is why alignment work is not merely about optimizing performance or fixing organizational issues… it is fundamentally about reclaiming agency over the narrative that has been driving your life without your explicit consent.

When you finally reach for the wheel, not just symbolically but somatically, the entire road shifts. Options appear that weren’t visible before. Boundaries strengthen, energy returns, and leadership feels less like performance and more like truth.

The car doesn’t just move. It begins to respond to your directives and guidance.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Where in your life or leadership are you seated in the front but not steering? What old pattern, belief, or inherited emotional script might still have its hands on the wheel, and what would reclaiming that wheel feel like in your body today?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, MCODE® Legacy Coach, writer and musician. I help leaders and independent professionals close the gap between strategy and execution by making invisible friction visible, so direction can finally translate into results.

If execution isn’t matching intent and you can’t quite see why, message me on WhatsApp. We’ll start with a brief Clarity Conversation to understand what you’re facing and decide together whether a focused Sensemaking Session is the right next step.