Hi, I’m Laura.
Welcome!
Flow Ahead was born as a space to help founders, leaders, creatives and other curious overthinkers to build a successful life that actually feels sustainable. To turn self-awareness into self-design, and overwhelm into momentum — and, dare I say, joy!
When you are constantly wired to analyze and overthink and everything around you is running at an uncomfortable pace, burnout has a way of disguising itself as success. As I see it, most smart, creative and driven people already have plenty of willpower. What we actually need are practical structures that fit our own natural rhythms.
Therefore, this is for any human who is tired of running on empty. I deeply believe that our daily lives shouldn’t require constant recovery from how we live them.
This is your invitation to create a life for yourself
that feels spacious, aligned and inspired.
My story from burnout to balance
For most of my life, I worked HARD.
I spent 6 years recruiting and scaling teams in the fast-paced tech startup world, working directly with founders, executives and high-performing talent. When things went well, it was glorious: maximum agency and high energy. And when things got overwhelming, my default response was to try something different and just work harder. I was consistently sprinting… but never quite catching up fully.
Eventually, I watched some of the most dedicated, hard-working people quietly burn out—until I joined them, hitting a kind of exhaustion where even rest didn't help.
Eventually, I hit a kind of burnout I didn’t even know was possible, where even rest didn’t help. My energy vanished, everything and everyboy annoyed me to the point of tears, and I hardly recognized myself anymore. My body and mind simply refused to play along. For the first time, I couldn't just "fix" or force my way out of it.
The recovery took over 2 intense years of trial and error. Along the way, I started realizing something vital:
It wasn’t me that was fundamentally broken. My natural intensity, curiosity and pace were never the problem. The problem was the way I was trying to live.
The solution:
performance & life design coaching
Anchored in my psychology background and with help from brilliant humans along the way, I dove deep into the nervous system, goal mapping and coaching and finally understood how ambitious overthinkers like us can not just keep up, but genuinely thrive. Little by little, I re-designed a lifestyle that works for me and with me, from a place of compassion, not correction.
Now, I partner with creative, ambitious and sensitive people just like you, to do the same, BEFORE you lose yourself to exhaustion. I can help you to stop forcing productivity at the expense of your health, start activating your unique resources, get unstuck and design a sustainable operating style that fits your flow.
My approach
Think of me as a facilitator of your thinking,
as you build your way forward.
Our sessions are an empowering and confidential space for you to gain clarity, figure out what’s important to you, expand your awareness and design a life that feels aligned with who YOU are — rather than anyone else’s rigid playbook.
Together, we tap into your strengths and resources, explore your situation from new angles, solve real-time frictions and identify the small steps that lead to big shifts.
Our work together is built on two powerful, complementary frameworks, to ensure our sessions are both deeply insightful and practically effective:
Solution-focused methodology
We focus on real-time unblocking and designing the path to your preferred future, rather than getting stuck dissecting the history of a problem.
We don’t try to fix you. Instead, we uncover your needs and priorities, then activate the resources, mental models and environmental structures that can best support you to operate at your best.
Design thinking
We treat life as a creative, dynamic system, building your way forward through curiosity, rapid prototyping and collaboration with your environment.
We look at your world holistically and use small, low-risk experiments to safely test new avenues before committing to big shifts.
The goal: A custom-built operating system
✦ Clear away noise to establish what success actually looks like for you.
✦ Shift from reacting to your circumstances to designing your calendar, energy and decisions.
✦ Gain momentum through small, safe experiments that lead to lasting change, without overwhelming your nervous system.
✦ Maintain focus and impact over the long haul, backed by a personal leadership operating system.
Here is how we show up in this space:
I provide the process and the tools, yet you are the expert and authority on your life. I merely help you navigate the terrain.
Our sessions are a judgment-free zone. We treat every outcome (even the ones that don't go as planned) as valuable data for your next design.
We don’t aim for overnight transformations. We look for the small, 1% shifts that are easy to start and impossible to ignore.
You will often leave with a small action or observation to test in the real world between our sessions.
This is your invitation to turn paralysing overwhelm into focus. Self-awareness into self-design. And to design the personal infrastructure that works with your unique brain, so you can grow your impact without losing yourself.
Let’s build a spacious, creative, joyful life that actually feels like your own.
the elements that set me apart?
Professional foundation
✦ MSc Positive Organizational Psychology & BA in Psychology
✦ 6+ years inside the global tech startup ecosystem, as a senior tech recruiter, guiding tech founders, executives and high-growth talent toward their goals,, as well as speaking at conferences
✦ ICF (International Coaching Federation) Certification in progress via Solutions Academy), specializing in solution-focused coaching
✦ Additional training: strengths-based living, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), accepance-based (ACT) frameworks, design thinking, neurodivergent (ADHD) coaching, goal mapping
✦ Certified Hatha & Vinyasa yoga teacher (200-hour YTT, One Bhakti, Sri Lanka)
✦ Additional training: anatomy (level 200), postural interventions, nervous system regulation, functional somatics and the fascia
You need a life that flows with you, not against you.
When in doubt:
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That is okay. Actually, it’s an exciting place to start! You don’t need a perfectly defined goal. Sometimes, people come to me only knowing what they don’t want: less stress, less overthinking, less friction in their week. Wherever you are, we start there.
You just need the willingness to take the first step and see what happens. Clarity comes when we use curiosity as our compass, look at what is already working in your life, even in a small way, and use those clues to figure out what small step you want to take next.
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While a standard conversation with someone you know can be great for venting or getting advice, this type of coaching is entirely different in 3 ways:
1) Rather than staying stuck looping in the details of a problem or dissecting the past, we acknowledge where you are and then point the conversation toward where you want to go.
2) I won’t tell you what I would do – or what you should do, for that matter. Instead, I help you uncover your own strengths and design your own strategies that actually fit your unique wiring.
3) You maye leave our session feeling lighter, but you especially leave prepared. With a concrete, low-barrier next step to test out in real life before our next session.
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Then you’re in the right place. Most mainstream advice is built on a one-size-fits-all framework that ignores your unique nervous system and daily realities. They expect you to force your life into their system and, when that creates friction, you’re left feeling like you are the problem. (You are not!)
Here, we look at your life as it actually is, find your hidden strengths and resources and build a bespoke strategy around your unique wiring and natural energy flows. It’s about making the system work for you, not the other way around.
When ready for a change:
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Absolutely not. I see coaching as a temporary partnership for problem solving and skill building.
You don't need to endlessly overanalyze the problem or flip your whole life upside down to take meaningful steps toward your goals. If you already feel the pressure, piling on even more of it is the last thing you need!
Instead, we work on bringing about the most relief, clarity and momentum — one small, practical step at a time. We look for the smallest domino that will knock over the rest. Like finding the moments where things are going even 5% better and doing more of that.
Many clients with a clear goal feel a clear and sustainable shift in just 5 sessions.
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Think of this call as a judgment-free conversation, to explore what you’re hoping to unlock and see if I can be of help in you getting to where you want to go.
Feel free to bring any questions that help you decide.
By the end, you’ll know whether my approach feels like the right fit. Either way, we’ll make sure you leave the call with new insights to help you along the way.
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Yourself, exactly as you are that day, and an idea of what you’d like to be different in your life moving forward.
You don’t need to bring a detailed history of everything that’s ever gone wrong. In our first session, we will spend a little bit of time looking at where you are now, but most of our energy will go toward defining your preferred future.
And a notebook, if you like capturing insights.
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A 1:1 online coaching session with me costs € 100 (incl. VAT)*.
Coaching packages are discounted if paid in advance: 6 sessions for € 550, and 12 sessions for € 1000, to be used within 6 months of purchase.
When it comes to in-office coaching in Utrecht, a coaching session costs a maximum of € 120, depending on the location.
* If you live in a country where the exchange rate differs significantly from the Netherlands, please reach out for custom pricing.
** These are personal rates. Contact me for more info about corporate rates.
I am here to hold the space, provide the tools and support your momentum, as you build your way forward. Let’s see where your curiosity takes us.