About Lianne
I changed my life once. Now I'm redesigning it again.
I'm Lianne Byrne. Writer, coach, systems thinker, and case study #1 for everything on this site.
The first redesign
A corporate escapee who actually escaped.
I spent 25 years in digital, strategy and marketing. Boardrooms, big clients, constant delivery. I was good at it. From the outside, everything looked fine.
In 2021 it stopped looking fine. Burnout and perimenopause arrived at the same time, and because I didn't understand what was happening hormonally, I spent a long time trying to push through something that couldn't be pushed through.
Then came the ADHD diagnosis at 43. Suddenly, 43 years of pattern made sense.
In 2023 I sold most of what I owned, left Cape Town and started travelling and worldschooling with my kids. No return ticket.
And it worked. It gave me freedom, adventure, a lot of perspective, and proof that you can question the default and choose differently.
Designs expire
A life can work beautifully for one season and stop working in another.
That doesn't mean you chose badly.
Sometimes nothing went wrong.
You just have new information.
The annoying thing about finally designing the life you wanted is that eventually you become a different person.
It worked. Then I changed.
For a while I told that story as if it had a neat ending. Escaped the cage, built the new life, here's how you can too. That isn't how lives work.
Life changed. I changed. And now, approaching 52, I'm asking some of the same questions again. Where am I going? What have I actually got in the tank? What do I want the next bit to look like?
That doesn't mean the last design failed. It means it expired.
Oh, and it turns out unresolved problems also have passports. You can change the country. You still bring yourself.
I have a framework. I also have no idea which country I'm living in next. Both things can be true.
Who am I now?
Midlife can be both becoming and remembering.
Most midlife advice is about who you're becoming. That's half of it.
The other half is remembering. Who was I before the world had so many opinions about who I should be? Who am I without all the expectations and roles I play? What went quiet under work, motherhood and simply getting on with things?
I don't think there's one hidden "real you" waiting to be found. I think there's a lot worth questioning, some things worth picking back up, and a next version of you that you actually get a say in.
Why I look at life this way
Why do we keep trying to get better at coping with lives that might need to change?
Twenty-five years of strategy work trains you to ask one question over and over: why isn't this working? Not "who's to blame", but what about the way this is set up is making it so hard?
I started asking the same question about my own life, and then about the lives of the women I coach. Very often the answer wasn't another morning routine or a better attitude. It was the shape of the life itself.
You can't meditate your way out of a badly designed life. So Designed to Flow helps women in midlife work out what no longer fits, what they actually want, and redesign the bits that need to change.
A little more
What you'd know if we'd met for a glass of wine.
Three kids, eleven countries, no plan B
Sold everything. Left Cape Town. Flew to the Philippines. Kept moving. Worldschooling, a lot of airports and more than one "what the hell am I doing?" moment. Not the influencer version. The real one.
My first love was always people
Obsessed with what makes people tick. Started a Psychology degree (thanks, ADHD), found coaching instead. The work is never generic. It's always about this woman, this life, this season.
I think in systems
Most of my career was spent working out why things weren't working. These days I use the same brain, plus a fair bit of AI and automation, to take the pointless admin out of my own life.
Where next?
I'm not standing at a destination telling you it's beautiful.
I'm in the middle of the same redesign you might be considering.
If you want to see where your own life still fits, start with the Free Flow Life Audit. If you'd rather just follow along for a while, I write about all of this on Substack.