My six-year-old daughter looked at me and asked, “Mom, what can I do where I can win a trophy?”

It was wildly convicting because I could hear my own relationship with work inside that question. How often have I made the prize, the proof, or the outcome the whole point?

So I went down a rabbit hole to find out what science says actually happens when we make success our business. Turns out, it can make us less creative before we even begin, interfere with skills we already know how to use, and leave us more interested in checking whether the work succeeded than continuing to make it.

This episode is about what success quietly costs the work, and the questions that can bring us back to what we actually set out to create.

Which one is it for you?

The opposite of depression isn't happiness. It's expression.

This is the first episode of A Loving Disruption, and I'm starting with the question that rearranged my life. It was 2021, my daughter was one, and I walked into a 96 hour conference I did not want to attend, feeling stuck on a cellular level. A psychological sniper Jean Marie Jobs walked up to me and asked why I was there. I said I was stuck. She said stuckness is usually a symptom of two things, arrogance or avoidance, and asked me which one it was.

I've been unpacking that answer ever since.

In this one: why arrogance is really unwillingness, what the five frenemies cost you (look good, be right, be liked, stay safe, stay in control), why creating from a "not" traps your brain, and the question I ask myself every time I get stuck.

The closing question: if you were being more courageous today, what would you be doing?

Send me a voice note on Instagram @elenakunkel. I actually listen and respond to them.