In this thought-provoking episode of Epic Begins With 1 Step Forward, Zander is joined by Dorota Kosiorek, a go-to-market leader in AI, certified neuroscience-based coach, and writer from Poland. Dorota shares her journey from high-pressure consulting to a more intentional life built around rest, boundaries, and sustainable performance. Together, they explore why hustle culture misunderstands how the brain actually works, how rest fuels clarity and creativity, and why working smarter—not longer—leads to better outcomes. Dorota also opens up about her long-term vision of building a family-owned resort and how neuroscience, visualization, and mental training help turn big dreams into actionable steps. This episode challenges the belief that burnout equals success and offers a refreshing, science-backed perspective on leadership, growth, and living well—one intentional step forward at a time.
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Rest Is Not Laziness: Dorota Kosiorek On Neuroscience, Leadership, And Balance
I am so honored to be joined by all the way from Poland. Dorota, tell us who you are and what you do.
Thank you so much for having me. A bit about me. I am a go-to-market leader for the EMEA region at an AI startup company. This is my day job. I also have a lot of passions and things I am exploring. One of them is coaching, neuroscience-based coaching. I am a certified coach, and I work a little bit on-site with people, helping them improve their lives, but also the way they have a relationship at work. I have been doing a lot of writing and content creation as well.
It is a very interesting year for me because I moved this year to be a year of experiments that is going to help me get to my long-term plan of having a family-owned resort or inn. I am fulfilling my passion through that, and everything is also connected with sports and mental training around sports, tennis, and football. Football is soccer for US-based people. These are the things that I am passionate about, and I am trying to connect them with my leadership role, with my coaching, and my personal interest in neuroscience and mental training.
Could you be a little busier?
Redefining Rest As A High Achiever
Probably I could. I also love resting. I am trying my best to shift from a person who is a high achiever and always treated rest like laziness. I have been doing a lot of personal work to shift from that perception and try to incorporate rest in my field. It is all connected because I think that the best way for me to rest is through different kinds of activities, like playing sports, but then traveling as well. I am happy to say that I am able to connect the dots all together and make it work for me in the right way.
It is interesting that the mental aspect of “If I am resting, I am lazy, I am not achieving.” However, I found that as I am getting older, I appreciate how rest is actually a key component to success because when you are rested, you are able to do better work. Ultimately, if you could do six hours of really good quality work, it is much better than working fifteen hours of doing so-so work because you are so tired. There is that sort of thing. You talked about working with people in sports. I have been an athlete most of my life, and I certainly know from road cycling and running that if I push myself too hard, I hurt myself, and the performance is not there. Yes, you have to work hard, but there is working smart.
The Neuroscience Of “Working Smart”
I love that. Recovery is part of the business, and anything we do in life to improve. You mentioned a really good point that many people are trying to work hard and just do hours. Often, with rest, you can do things in fewer hours. If you are super tired, it just takes time because you cannot focus. There are neuroscience-based limitations in our brains that actually prevent that. For me personally, why I have changed a lot the way I work and think is because my background is from consulting. I spent almost ten years in this crazy, fast-paced environment, where, unfortunately, there is the stereotype of people who are sitting long hours.
They are doing great, and they are the ones who are being appreciated and performing super well, but then they are being given more work. The smart work is not recognized. It is actually a little bit abused because they are being given more difficult projects and longer hours. It is that mentality for people who want to be the best that it is hard to say no, because then someone will think that you’re not good enough to do that, or they cannot do that. That was my rationale for why I decided to leave this business.
I worked in the corporate world for 22 years in Fortune 100 companies. The one thing I heard all the time from the companies was, “We believe in a work-life balance.” What I discovered was that it was lip service from the companies. I was the one who had to create that work-life balance. I was the one who had to put some guardrails in to say, “Here is where I am working.”
I worked for a large worldwide technology firm, and I worked with a team around the world. If I did not put some guardrails in, people in other parts of the world would be like, “Let us have a meeting at 10:00 at night.” I discovered that it really was not working so well for me. I was done with work, I would go home, I was with my family, and then at 10:00 at night, I would do an hour-long meeting.
Now I have to go to bed. I am thinking about the meeting, and by the way, I have to be up at 6:00 AM for more meetings. I was like, “No, there is a time when I am working, and I am happy to do meetings, but there is a time when it is not.” If you want that time, pay me a lot more money because my own personal life and my family time are important. I do not want to be just the person who saw dad come in and out, but never knew him.
Did that affect my career? Perhaps a little, but I was okay with that. There is something to be said, and I’m sure you deal with this with the neuroscience base and stuff. Some happiness. We all deserve to be happy. In your consulting thing, you could work really hard, get bigger projects, work longer hours, and maybe you would get paid more. You are like, “Now what?” I do not see my friends, or I go to dinner and say, “Sorry, I have to go because I have to do three more hours of work.” That stinks.
You end up not being able to use the money you earn, and you are just stuck at work all the time, not really enjoying anything, because we were constantly chasing something. When I was in consulting, I was looking at the people above. I knew I did not want that because they were still 24/7 available for any call and any client. No one was saying no.
If you are looking at that and you know you do not want that, then it is time to change something. It is a little bit hard. You can try to fight the system, but then you have to accept how much it is going to cost you. That wasn’t my thinking because I did not want to waste my energy and my life on trying to change the system. It is better to try something different. It works differently for different people. That was my choice.
I am super happy with it because after I left, it has been almost five years, and I have been working in the startup environment. It has different positive and negative sides, but I think they are more aligned for me with the things I am able to accept. Different challenges, but the positive side is that I am much more in charge of my time and of my mornings. You mentioned calls in different time zones. I used to work with both EMEA and US clients and teams. I have to set my own boundaries and my availability. When you do it from the beginning, it is easier. If you do not do that, then it is much harder to change what you let people get used to.
Creating Personal Guardrails
I learned early on that when I work with these global organizations, you’re right. If at the beginning I simply said, “I am not available.” I actually put on my work calendar, it literally said from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, “Not available, not a work time.” I had it on Outlook, purpled out like I was out of the office.
If there was some very urgent thing, I would take meetings, but in general, people could not schedule meetings. I am interested in talking a little about those who were working in neuroscience. Neuroscience is such a fascinating field. Although we go, “I understand neuroscience,” Lots of people do not really know what it is. For you, what is your work in neuroscience? How did you get interested in it?
Understanding Mental Models & Filters
It has been a few years since I started reading and exploring. As a very analytical person with a financial background, I like to understand the things behind what is happening. You keep hearing a lot about manifestations, and that you can just keep creating your reality. I wasn’t really convinced of the idea, but then I started reading about neuroscience.
When I started understanding a little bit behind why, for example, it is important to set goals, write them down, or keep thinking about them, what is happening in your brain and how you’re actually setting up filters for things to spot in life, then it got my attention. I’ve been reading a lot of books and joining a lot of webinars to educate myself. Last year, I did the brain coaching certification. It is strictly based on neuroscience models and understanding how our brain functions.
Set your boundaries and your availability from the beginning—it’s easier that way. If you don’t, it becomes much harder to change what you’ve allowed people to get used to.
How can you understand a little bit better the way you think and the way you create thoughts and your reality? That has been very helpful for me in my personal life, at work, and in my coaching work with people. Coming back to your question, for me, neuroscience is to understand how your mental model works and then be able to use it to your advantage, versus treating your thinking as something running on its own.
In a lot of the work I do, I talk about Epic begins with one step forward. A lot of that, we all want to do epic things. One of the things you mentioned in your introduction was starting a resort. Obviously, that is something that is important to you. You might have said, “Someday I would like to do this.” We all say this, “Someday I would like to write a book. I would like to travel to this place.”
We keep saying that, and we do nothing about it. When we do decide to do something, there is your epic journey. That ties into the neuroscience of “If we say it out loud, if we write it down, if we make something in our brain like a little space to go, this is important to me.” We all think about doing stuff, and then sometimes it is not as important as other things in our lives.
Creating Your Own “Luck” Through Intentionality
It is also a lot about energy attraction. You are thinking about something, and then it is not that those things magically appear around you, but you just start spotting them. There is so much information bombarding us every day, and we are filtering it automatically. It is all about being very conscious and building that consciousness so that I am spotting things that are going to be helpful for me. I set that ten-year journey where I want to go with this, but I am starting now.
I am starting by exploring the business. I want to get connected with people who are doing the same thing, just to understand how it works, and then attract connections. I had a very random situation a couple of weeks ago when I put that idea in writing. The same day or the day after, I was having a coffee chat with someone I met recently. I shared that idea, and then she suddenly mentioned, “I was lately talking to those ex-founders of a big company who actually sold the business and bought that old resort, renovated it, and they’re running it.”
Neuroscience helps you understand how your mental model works and enables you to use it to your advantage, rather than treating your thinking as something that runs on its own.
This is a coincidence, and then you get inspired by those stories and ideas. You want to explore more. It is just like creating your happiness very intentionally because we can do that. We can create our own luck. I do not really believe in random luck, but I believe that if we are thinking about what we want and then taking small steps in that area, then we are going to find our luck. It is impossible to win the lottery if you do not even play it.
None of us is going to achieve these things that we say we want to do if we do not actually embark on the journey to try and make this happen. Oftentimes, these epic dreams that we have take a long time. You’re saying you might want to open a resort. That is not like you go, “Let me go down to the resort store, and I would like that one, please.” Next week, your resort will be open. There is all the planning and all the stuff that you need to learn to even begin. What do you need to know about running a resort? How do you find one? How do you do your due diligence? There is nothing wrong with that. Here is a question for you.
Oftentimes, people say, “I want to do something big, maybe write a book or open a business, but I do not have all the answers. I need all the answers. I need to know how to do it.” That is not actually how any of that works. You can get some information to start that will help you, but you do have to actually start. For you, the resort, you have to just start exploring it, studying it, and understanding what is involved. What kind of a resort do you want to open?
It is not super specified yet. I do not know if, for those who know, there is a TV series called Gilmore Girls. The idea is inspired by the Dragonfly from that show. It is more like a smaller guesthouse, not a big hotel. A smaller guesthouse on a big piece of land. I want to have a tennis court there. We want to have a stable with some horses for my niece. A place around the water, lake, or river, with access to that. There are a couple of smaller things related to that. That is a big project. It is going to happen step by step.
I don’t really believe in random luck. I believe that when we focus on what we want and take small steps in that direction, we create our own luck.
I am working towards it and planning it. This might evolve. With the big plans, you can have a big goal, but then you start working towards it, and it might evolve into something different. It might shift or change the order. I am fine with that because that is part of the fun. At least I have something to aim for. By taking small steps daily and monthly, I explore whether it is going to end up in exactly what I imagined at the beginning, or maybe the idea will convert into something bigger, smaller, or a little bit different.
You’re right. That is part of the fun, which is to say it can and likely will shift in some ways about what you think of. When you do open up your guesthouse, if you take a moment and reflect and say, “How did I envision this at the beginning, and how is it now? How did that change? What did I learn where I said, that initial idea is not going to work the way I think it is, but this will work.”
Being a mental health provider, I love psychology, and I love to ponder how and why people do things and think about things the way they do. When I am working with people, and they have some big thing that they want to do, I am like, “Just start doing it because you’ll figure it out.” That is the way every day is. You do not wake up with all the answers to all the questions that you’ll get, yet you still get up and still go through your day. Some days, you have no idea that it is going to be a fantastic day.
The Power Of “One Step Forward”
Plus, when you start acting, you are starting to ask the right questions. You’re finding answers. You are learning, evolving, exploring. It is not going to happen from just thinking about the big idea. It is just too static. That is not the point. A lot of people are either afraid of big goals or actually succeeding or even taking that first step. They just get stuck.
When you start acting, you begin asking the right questions. You find answers. You learn, evolve, and explore. It’s not going to happen just by thinking about the big idea.
They get the paralysis of thinking about all the things that you have to do for your guesthouse. You are like, “I have got to locate a property, and it has got to have enough land, and I have to build a barn. I have to figure out what my barn looks like. What do the tennis courts look like?” You can absolutely get paralyzed around thinking about all of that.
An interesting thing that I’ve discovered in my own life is that oftentimes, that first step is not nearly as difficult as I imagined it would be. In fact, oftentimes it is really simple because it is something that is not outside of your ability. Maybe you do a Google search to learn about guesthouses. Maybe you go to YouTube and say, “How to start a guesthouse.” You use AI to gather information for you. You read and go, “That first step wasn’t all that hard. In fact, it was quite easy.”
The first step is the hardest, but then once we take it, I think we’re often just laughing at ourselves about why it was so hard to do it.
What took so long? That wasn’t that hard. For you, how are you using your knowledge of neuroscience in your own daily life to help you better understand your own brain and your own way of doing that?
Emotional Regulation & The “Control” Mindset
A couple of things have changed for me a lot. It is a little bit of a combination of experiences and neuroscience knowledge. One aspect is about the control we have. Because I know a lot about the brain aspect, for me realizing that I can only control myself and my reaction to whatever is happening to other people and me. External circumstances are not controllable. That is helping a lot because you are starting to understand that frustration or getting upset with people or being upset about getting stuck in a traffic jam just does not make sense. There is nothing you can do about it.
It is more about trying to react in a way that is going to make you feel better or process it in a faster way. It is also connected to thinking about the challenge or situation that is happening to us. It happens. It is bad, but how can I accept it and let it go? How can I convert it into something beneficial? You can call it converting it into a gift. That is all I’ve been using on a daily basis. It is helping me either in life or at work to not really get stressed or upset.
Working in consulting, it is a very fast-paced and stressful environment. I learned right now that there is no need to be stressed at work. I am not a doctor. I am not saving people’s lives, and I haven’t been doing that in consulting or doing that in a startup. It is not the point. It would be a different situation if I were actually responsible for people’s lives. I would get that stress and everything.
People are letting themselves just go crazy about work, and that is killing them. All the stuff that I’ve been learning, I am super happy to say and proud of myself that it helped me process things mentally, and also start spotting my thinking and my mental loops, or those patterns of thinking. When you start realizing that, that is the moment when you can actually change something. I am taking different areas step by step, changing them and applying different tools.
The first step is the hardest, but once we take it, we often end up laughing at ourselves, wondering why it was so hard to begin with.
I really love visualization and mental training, and that is my key focus right now and for this year. I signed up for a visualization training later this year to keep exploring that. This is just amazing, especially when you watch tennis players. This is to me mind-blowing how the mental part is important in that game and how it can change everything for everyone.
This has been a fascinating conversation. If people are interested in getting a hold of you, how can they find you?
I am on my website by my name, DorotaKosiorek.com. My name is displayed under my video. Check that.
I’ll make sure to have a link to it in the description for you.
I am also on LinkedIn, with the same name. I am on Instagram. I go by Mind by Dorota. My latest baby and the most exciting place for me to be right now is Substack. I started a Substack called The Strategic Off-Season. It is a lot about how to use rest towards your success, both in life and business. That is when I am going to post a lot of stuff from my experiments this year about the resort planning and everything.
Thank you so much for coming and having this epic conversation with me. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
If you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, remember that epic choices make epic lives. Have a great day.
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About Dorota Kosiorek
Why do elite athletes have an off-season, but business leaders don’t? I’m Dorota Kosiorek—AI Startup Leader, Brain-Based Coach, and former management consultant (PwC, BCG). My work sits at the intersection of Neuroscience, Sport Psychology, and Hospitality.
While most coaches focus purely on “grinding harder,” I focus on Environment Design. I help leaders curate a high-performance lifestyle that includes a “Strategic Off-Season”—the intentional recovery required to sustain elite decision-making over the long term.
I am currently living a dual reality: By day, I lead international teams at a tech scale-up. By night, I am building a portfolio career and “scouting” the world to launch a future hospitality brand