Excellence Over Perfection: What I Learned From My Wildest Year Yet

I disappeared for four months... What happened in that time? 160 hours of master practitioner training, ten unreasonably sunny days in London, a graduation followed by a loss I never saw coming, for the second year in a row, and a $9.6 billion plot twist to a project you might remember. You truly cannot make this shit up.

This is what happens when the woman who rewires subconscious patterns for a living has to run her own playbook in real time.

I get into:

• Why perfection is one of the lowest frequencies you can operate from, your inner overachiever won't like this one
• The one word quietly running your identity while you're busy optimizing everything else
• Why the universe meets you at the level of your audacity, not your vision board
• The client who said something to me days before she passed that I'll carry forever

Bottom line:

You have four months left in 2026. The question isn't whether there's time.

Work With Me:

Done trying everything except the operating system underneath? Book a free consult: https://calendly.com/laurendegolia/fsconsult

Subscribe & Review:

Season 4 drops in a few weeks. If this one hit, send it to someone who's been white-knuckling their way through the year — and leave a review so more people find it.

Your ambition was never the problem.

The system you’ve been applying it in? That’s where things get expensive.

In this episode, Lauren sits down with Stefanie O'Connell, personal finance expert, author, and founder of Too Ambitious, to break down the real economics of ambition.

This isn’t theory. This is data-backed reality on how success actually plays out.

We get into:

• Why ambition isn’t rewarded equally (and what the data actually shows)
• The hidden penalties tied to performance, efficiency, and leadership
• How hustle culture quietly reinforces inequality
• The difference between individual success… and systemic change
• Why community—not just self-optimization—is the real power move

Bottom line:

You’re not doing it wrong. You’ve been operating inside a system that was never designed to fully support you.

Links & Resources:

Explore Stefanie’s work: https://tooambitious.com/

Pre-order The Ambition Penalty

Work With Lauren:

If you’re ready to rethink your relationship with success and stop overpaying for a version of ambition that doesn’t fit, apply to work together here.

Subscribe & Review:

If this episode hit, send it to someone who needs to hear it and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Cosmic Goodness, Burnout, & Preserving What You Own with Cassidy Gard

You can be exceptional at a life… and still feel completely disconnected from it.

In this episode, I sit down with Cassidy Gard, journalist, storyteller, and author of Cosmic Goodness, to unpack what actually happens when high performance, identity, and reality stop aligning.

After more than a decade inside national news, producing under extreme pressure and shaping stories in real time,

Cassidy made a decision most people avoid:

She stopped building a life that required her to abandon herself to sustain it.

This conversation is a real-time look at what it means to:

• walk away from environments that reward over-performance but drain your humanity
• redefine success outside of external validation
• and start building something that is actually yours

We get into the nuance most people skip:

- burnout as an identity issue, not a time management problem…

- motherhood as a complete psychological and emotional reorganization…

and the uncomfortable truth that many women are building careers on patterns that were never meant to sustain them.

This is not a polished transformation story.

It’s a conversation about what it takes to tell the truth about your life and have the courage to choose differently.

Resources & Links:

• Follow Cassidy on Socials: Instagram | TikTok
• Cosmic Goodness by Cassidy Gard, launching May 12 (preorder here)
• Join The Expansion Suite (formerly Pivot Club): a free space to upgrade your energy, shift your thinking, and expand your identity
• Explore 1:1 work with Lauren (limited openings available)

The Truth About Internet Magic: Why Intuition Requires Action

This week on Corporate F*ckery, Lauren goes solo and breaks down one of the most misunderstood ideas in personal and professional growth: intuition.

After years of operating in survival mode, chasing logic, and trying everything from corporate hustle to backyard full-moon manifestation rituals (yes, really), Lauren shares what she’s learned about the difference between waiting for magic and actually creating momentum.

The episode also includes the story behind a bold new idea she recently followed—an unexpected attempt to explore a female-led ownership bid for the Seattle Seahawks—and what it taught her about intuition, courage, and taking aligned action even when the outcome is uncertain.

This conversation isn’t about blind faith or spiritual bypassing. It’s about something far more practical: learning to recognize the signals inside you that point toward your next move.

In this episode, Lauren explores:

1. Why high-performing people often ignore their intuition
2. The trap of waiting for manifestation instead of taking action
3. What it actually looks like to follow a “crazy” idea
4. How intuitive hits can lead to unexpected opportunities
5. Why detaching from outcomes can unlock real momentum

If you’ve ever felt a pull toward something bigger, but talked yourself out of it, this episode is your reminder that inspiration is rarely convenient, but it’s often worth following.

Sometimes the boldest move isn’t having the perfect plan.

It’s trusting the nudge and taking the first step to let go of what isn’t working.

This season, we’re rewriting the rules.

And today’s rule is simple: don’t confuse a corporate decision with your worth and don’t sign away your power because you’re in shock.

In this episode of Corporate F*ckery, Lauren sits down with Tara Bodine, global HR and talent leader and CEO of True North People Consulting.

After seeing the writing on the wall at her company, Tara was laid off and offered a two-week severance package. So we talk about what most people don’t realize in that moment: You have leverage. Even if they act like you don’t.

Together, Lauren and Tara unpack:

1. Why layoffs hit your nervous system like a threat
2. What HR is actually optimizing for and how to navigate it
3. Why severance is an exchange, not a favor
4. What can be negotiable (and how to advocate for more runway)
5. Why you shouldn’t do this alone: resources, counsel, and community

This conversation isn’t about “being difficult.”

It’s about being self-led, when the system shifts and your body, ego, and identity take the hit.

Connect with Tara Bodine

🌿 Website: https://www.truenorthpeople.com/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarabodine/

The Sledgehammer of the Universe: When Stress Forces the Truth with Carole Murko

This season, we’re rewriting the rules.

And today’s rule is simple: trust yourself before it costs you.

In this episode of Corporate F*ckery: Stories of Survival, Psychological Warfare, and Choosing What’s Best for You*, Lauren sits down with Carole Murko, founder of Love. Eat. Heal. and certified consultant with NeuroChangeSolutions.

Carole shares how decades in finance and corporate leadership, combined with suppressed anger, people-pleasing, and chronic stress, culminated in a rare eye disease that threatened her vision.

The wake-up call? What she calls the “sledgehammer of the universe.”

Together, Lauren and Carole unpack:

1. How corporate conditioning teaches women to override their intuition
2. Why unprocessed emotion doesn’t disappear — it stores
3. The difference between external achievement and self-mastery
4. How to observe the signals your body is giving you before they escalate
5. Why you don’t have to burn your life down to start telling the truth

This conversation isn’t about quitting your job.

It’s about reclaiming your authority, internally first. Because sometimes stress isn’t random. It’s redirection.

Connect with Carole Murko

🌿 Website: https://www.loveeatheal.com/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loveeatheal/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carole-murko-2b310b/

The Dark Side of Success: When Achievement Turns on You with Dr. Ashley Cerda

⚠️ Trigger Warning: This episode includes discussion of suicidal ideation, catastrophic thinking, burnout, shame-based self-talk, and nervous system dysregulation.

What happens when the very skills that made you successful begin to work against you?

In this deeply honest and necessary conversation, Lauren sits down with Dr. Ashley Cerda, behavioral scientist, clinical leader, and founder of a multi-location mental health organization, to unpack a pattern many high-achieving women experience but rarely name: the dark side of success.

Together, they explore how intelligent, capable, adaptive women can unknowingly slip into survival-based achievement, where productivity becomes identity, safety becomes conditional, and the nervous system never truly stands down. The result? Panic, shame loops, emotional shutdown, and in some cases, passive suicidal ideation that feels frightening, confusing, and deeply isolating.

This episode dismantles stigma and replaces it with clarity. You’ll learn why these thoughts don’t mean you’re broken, how the brain behaves under prolonged pressure, and why awareness, not willpower, is the first step to creating safety for yourself.

This is not a conversation about failure, it’s about what happens when achievement starts to feel unsafe.

Learn more about Dr. Ashley Cerda's work here. or follow her work on Instagram.

Explore Lauren's world: www.laurendegolia.com

Season 3 opens with a hard reset.

In this episode, Lauren sits down with Lynda Harvey (aka @Lynda.Leads) to dismantle one of the most persistent, and profitable, patterns in corporate life: imposter syndrome. Not as a personal flaw, but as a systemic conditioning tool designed to keep high-performing women compliant, underpaid, and constantly self-questioning.

This conversation sets the tone for the season: clear eyes, clean boundaries, and new rules.

1. Why imposter syndrome isn’t a diagnosis, it’s a learned response
2. How women are conditioned to equate humility with worth and likability with safety
3. The hidden cost of “being grateful” instead of being compensated
4. Why lightning does strike twice and what makes us pretend it doesn’t
5. The difference between what you deserve and what you’ve earned
6. How corporate systems quietly reward self-abandonment
7. Why settling “temporarily” often becomes a long-term identity tax
8. Naming the voice at the boardroom table of your mind—and asking it to leave
9. How to turn imposter syndrome into usable data instead of self-sabotage

1. Powerhouse women navigating leadership, promotion, or reinvention
2. Corporate leaders questioning whether the system still fits
3. Women who know they’re capable but still find themselves negotiating against themselves
4. Anyone ready to stop performing gratitude and start claiming leverage

Lynda Harvey, known online as Lynda Leads, has built and scaled high-performing teams, led cross-functional decision-making at the executive level, and built a platform rooted in corporate truth, not corporate fantasy.

Her work centers on self-advocacy, compensation, boundaries, and the reminder that your company is not your family, it’s a business.

In this Season 2 finale of Corporate F*ckery, Lauren DeGolia weaves together the biggest revelations from nine powerhouse conversations into one transformational episode. This season explored the emotional, strategic, and psychological realities of women redefining power, leadership, and success on their own terms.

Across episodes featuring:

Olivia Howell, Episode 2, How to Be a Powerhouse Without a Blazer

Corporate Christie, Episode 3, Owning Your Value & Choosing Your Freedom

Beverly Dines, Episode 4, Rebuilding Power with Purpose

Heather Boneparth, Episode 5, Redefining Wealth Without Losing Yourself

Mollie Tregillis, Episode 6, Finding Fulfillment in the Chaos)

Raena Boston, Episode 7, Corporate Scams & Micro-Pushback Leadership

Roxy Couse, Episode 8, How Powerhouse Women Rise in a Broken Workplace

Dr. Corinne Low, Episode 9, The Economics of Power: Time, Money & the Lies Women Were Sold)

A shared truth emerged: Powerhouse isn’t something you perform, it’s something you return to.

This finale stitches together:

• Raena’s reminder not to let your company become your identity
• Roxy’s PIE Method, revealing why performance alone won’t move you forward
• Christie’s truth about nervous system survival and reinvention
• Beverly’s call to lead with humanism
• Heather’s distinction between systemic failure and personal failure
• Mollie’s strategy for working less while having more impact
• Corinne’s insight that your job is a technology for converting time into money, not the measure of your worth

Lauren closes with The Powerhouse Manifesto, a guide for navigating career, ambition, identity, and agency as we close out 2025 and enter 2026 with intention, clarity, and self-trust.

⭐ THE POWERHOUSE MANIFESTO

1. You’re being shown things for a reason.Your misalignment, frustration, or clarity isn’t random, it’s direction.
2. What you want in your deepest, truest self is possible. Your soul-level desires are invitations, not fantasies. Follow them with curiosity and courage.
3. Your powerhouse-ness is an asset. It fuels your legacy. Stop shrinking it to fit environments that can’t hold it.
4. Know your energy. Protect it fiercely. Your patterns, nervous system, and astrology reveal where you leak power and where you gain it.
5. Step off autopilot.Your thoughts, emotions, and reactions were built to protect you and they’re completely changeable.
6. Lead with strategy and self-trust, not over-functioning. You don’t have to hold everyone else up. Let your humanity be seen.
7. Build a longer table. Surround yourself with people who expand your timeline, challenge your thinking, and support your evolution.
8. You are radically responsible for your results. Shift your perspective, adjust your decisions and if you need support, ask for it.
9. Choosing what’s best for you is what’s best for everyone. Try your value on until it feels like home.
10. Your ambition is not a liability. It’s a compass. Use it to design a life that feels intentional, honest, and aligned with who you’re becoming.

Season 3 returns in January with a new theme: New Year. New Rules.

This week, economist and Wharton professor Dr. Corinne Low hands us the data-backed truth about why powerhouse women feel overextended, under-supported, and blamed for systems they didn’t design.

We break down two game-changing concepts:

Your utility function is the economist’s version of your life scorecard, the sum total of joy, meaning, fulfillment, and alignment across your lifetime.

Not your boss’s profit.

Not comparison culture.

Not the invisible rules handed to women.

You’re maximizing your utility, not the company’s.

Your job is simply a tool that converts time → money.

Once you see it as technology, not identity, you unlock the power to redesign your career around better ROI, more time freedom, and the life Future You actually wants to live.

We also hit the hard truths: unpaid labor, sexual harassment as an economic crime, why even top-performing women earn less, and why “leaning in” was never the solution.

If you’re ready to reclaim your levers, time, money, agency, this conversation is a reset.

Share this episode with a powerhouse woman who needs the reminder: she’s not broken. The system is.

Links:

• Follow Dr. Low on LinkedIn
• Follow Dr. Low on Instagram
• Get Dr. Corinne Low's book: Having it All, What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours.
• Unlock Your Moon Sign (Aka, Emotional Advantage)
• Follow Lauren on LinkedIn
• Follow Lauren on Instagram
• Book a Complimentary Consult with Lauren