How Good Can It Get

I’ve spent years copying what looked impressive without ever asking whether it fit me. Maybe you have too. I never consciously chose most of it. Seeing people operate a certain way, over and over, conditioned me to believe that was what it took to be respected and seen as valuable. As I practice doing less to impress, I’m uncovering a new layer of the work I started years ago, when I had to separa...

I said out loud that I don’t want to be impressive anymore, and then I posted it. Maybe you’ve felt that pull too. As a millennial eldest daughter and lifelong overachiever, that admission made my pits sweat. It started with my revenue goals. When I looked closely, I saw a number built to prove myself to people from former lives, people I no longer work with or even respect. This episode explores:...

For most of my life, I’ve wanted to be impressive. This week I started to wonder whether I still do. I recorded this one on my phone, diary style, with no outline and no research. It came right after I got to witness my brother and sister-in-law welcome their baby into the world. Being in the room for a birth has a way of rearranging your priorities. As an Enneagram 3, achievement has always been...

This week’s headlines about women and money scared me more than my boys’ Halloween costumes, and one of those masks squirts fake blood... So I put on my former news junkie hat, with my employment attorney hat right on top of it, and took you on a haunted house tour of the stories that caught my eye. Some are spooky and a few are downright ghoulish. Together, they say a lot about how work is treati...

Right now, rewiring my relationship with ambition feels kind of boring. Nobody warned me about that part. We love a comeback story. What I’m living is the slow middle, where I catch old patterns in tiny moments and unschool them one decision at a time. Ambition and I are basically in couples therapy. On one side of the table sits the ruthless, get-shit-done version of me who was a rock star in the...

Burnout and the ambition hangover love to show up together. For many of us, burnout is what finally slows us down long enough to notice the hangover was there all along. From the inside, the two can feel almost identical. Audacious ambition got me into the C-suite, and I look back at that version of me with a lot of love. Then, after one work wound after another, I started asking what all that str...

I’ve spent most of my career climbing, and lately the wanting has gotten a bit stale.  For years, ambition was how people knew me. It was also how I came to understand myself. Every role I held, from managing partner to COO to chief strategy officer, asked me to keep reaching for the next thing. Even three years into building Executive Unschool, I still catch myself chasing goals designed to prove...

I’ve chased the same financial goal for three years, and this weekend I finally asked who it was really for. Maybe you have too. I told myself the number meant financial freedom and legacy wealth for my family. When I sat quietly with it, I found a hidden audience behind it: colleagues, and earlier versions of me, from a professional life I walked away from years ago. Seven years into healing old...

Two weeks ago, I stopped giving my resistance a seat at the table. Maybe you’re ready to do the same. This week, we’ve looked at resistance from every angle, and today I’m sharing what’s actually working for me. I record a daily podcast, write every day and go live on Instagram every day, with no outs, no matter what. Even in a week full of disruptions, the practices held. They’re quietly rewiring...

For three years, I told myself I was writing a book. Maybe you’ve told yourself a story like that too. I had 54 pages I kept tinkering with, a publishing course I’d paid for, and a very reasonable list of reasons to wait. Then I heard a question that stopped me: whatever it is that you want most, do you want to be an amateur or go pro? That’s when I finally got sick of my own BS. This episode expl...

Who am I to want more when I already have so much? Maybe you’ve asked yourself that too. There’s a saying from recovery circles that I can’t stop thinking about: if it’s hysterical, it’s historical. When a reaction feels much bigger than the moment, it’s usually carrying something from long ago. This week I’ve been exploring resistance, and today I’m going deeper. Sometimes the thing holding us ba...

Sometimes my resistance shows up right when things are going well. Maybe yours does too. This week, the daily podcast and my 999-word writing ritual have started to feel mundane, kind of like opening a pantry full of snacks I can’t eat anymore. A friend told me her season is about turning the ordinary into extraordinary moments, and it sent me back to one of my favorite books, Gay Hendricks’ The B...

Most days this month, I’ve felt resistance before doing the very things I chose to do. Maybe you’ve felt that too. I committed to recording a daily podcast and writing 999 words a day for the book I’ve wanted to write since I was a little girl. Some mornings, folding laundry sounds better than either one. For a long time, I read that resistance as a warning. Now I’m wondering whether my internal a...

If I give myself grace, will I lose my edge? Maybe you’ve wondered that too. If you built your career on getting everything done without complaint, letting yourself off the hook can feel like opening Pandora’s box. As an Enneagram 3, I’ve wrestled with this one for years. Part of the answer lies in how our culture rewards grit, and in what that’s taught us to call discipline. This episode explores...

After burnout, so many of us start asking when we’ll get back to normal and feel like ourselves again. In this episode, I give you my honest answer. You may never return to the version of you who existed before burnout... and that might be the best news. When you look at your patterns with radical honesty, you find things you want to change. That could be how you work, how you show up for your wor...

I’ve wrestled with this one for years: when do I give myself grace, and when do I push through? After burnout, your internal alarm system can get out of whack. Some women feel like everything is forcing. Others feel so numb that nothing registers at all. No one can watch you work and tell you whether you’re in flow. You’re the instrument, and this episode helps you tune it so you can feel into wha...

When a woman comes to me after burnout, I ask her what she wants for herself. Most of the time, she can’t answer. Maybe you can’t either. She can tell you exactly what her team needs and what her boss expects. Her own desires are much harder to find. That long pause says a lot. Burnout is the work wound our culture has finally named, and underneath it, so often, is self-abandonment. In this episod...

I’ve said “I’m burned out” in the same breath as “I’m tired.” Maybe you have too. In the past few episodes, we redefined growth as capacity expansion. This week, I’m looking at what happens when our capacity gets pushed past its edge for too long. Burnout might be the most overused word in work culture right now, and I think it’s one of the least understood. We use it as a catch-all, then take som...

I used to believe growth came from pushing harder. This week, I've been redefining growth as capacity expansion: the capacity to hold more of my own truth and to stay with myself when life gets full. That definition leads to a better question. If growth is capacity, what actually expands it? In this episode, I share my answer in two parts. The first is environment. So many of us leave a job that h...

I'm becoming suspicious of the way I've defined growth for most of my life. For 20 years, I lived inside reports. As managing partner, COO, and chief strategy officer, I watched revenue, headcount and expense trends, and the "successful" direction of every line was up. Flat meant a problem. A sharp decline meant a crisis. Somewhere along the way, I started measuring my own life the same way. More...

I know what it feels like when the thing you built becomes the thing you have to leave. Ashlei Rolloff got the email on her day off. The million-dollar agency she had built was being divested and spun out to her. On paper, it was a gift. Inside, it showed her how much of her worth had been tied to her VP title and her output. In this episode, Ashlei shares the grief that came in waves and the very...

I signed up for something a few weeks ago that my body was already saying no to... and I said yes anyway.   Fresh off the Growth Day Conference, I've been sitting with the word growth. Somewhere across 20-plus years of work, I started treating growth and more as the same thing. More clients, more partnerships, more posts, more speaking engagements, all stacked on top of what I already carry.   The...

I've drafted email replies in my head while someone I love was telling me about the best moment of their day. Guilty. Maybe you've been there too. You walk through the front door (or up the stairs, if you work from home) and realize you never actually left work. Your body is home, and your mind is still in the 3:00 meeting, rewriting what you should have said. Then the shoes and backpack in the en...

This week felt heavier than most, and I don't want to pretend otherwise. Every time I opened a news app, there was another story where something went terribly wrong for a woman, and the people who were supposed to help...didn't. None of those stories were mine. And my body carried them all week anyway. In this  episode with our new, shorter format, I'm naming what I believe gets activated in momen...

I came back from a summer that expanded me in ways I'm still catching up to, and the first thing I felt was a pull to make sure I wasn't leaving any of you behind. Before I tell you where we're going, let me tell you where I've been. This summer held executive retreats I got to lead, a hypno-breathwork Level Two certification, and a whole lot of work that stretched what I thought I was capable of....