How Good Can It Get

I’ve decided we all need more joy, so I’m making it official. Maybe you could use a little more too.

I choose joy over happiness because joy feels easier to reach, even in the hard moments. So I’m wrapping up a week in my creative cocoon and less to impress season by looking at what brought me joy, both in the headlines and in my own heart.

This episode explores:

What brought you joy this week? Send me a note and tell me, then share this episode with a friend who could use a little joy date of her own.

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When I stop trying to be impressive, I learn quick how much space it had been taking up. 

This week, I’ve been naming what I’m setting down in my less to impress season. Today, I talk about what’s filling the space: steadier work that my inner Enneagram 3 sometimes calls boring, which is also where I’m finding a whole new zone of genius. It looks like 999 words a day, grace when life asks for it, and a lot more presence for the people and conversations right in front of me. This episode explores:

What could you see more clearly if you stopped scanning the horizon? If this one lands, share it with a friend who’s ready to put her attention back on what’s already hers.

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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 separate my work from my worth. This time I’m pulling apart being impressive and being successful, and it feels uncomfortable in real time.

This episode explores:

What would shift for you if you did less to impress this month? If this one lands, share it with a friend who’s ready to stop performing for an audience that isn’t even watching.

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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:

Whose approval is quietly setting your goals?

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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 my native language. “I’m an attorney” used to say everything that needed saying. Now I’m sitting with a gut-punch of a question about what kind of ambition fits this season of my life, when my boys and my family matter more than any title.

So in this episode, we get more precise. This episode explores:

If you’ve worn the “impressive” mask too, send this one to the friend who would recognize it.

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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 treating women right now. This episode explores:

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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 C-suite. On the other side sits the slower, more devoted life I’m choosing now. Some days I miss her. Other days I feel deeply sad for who she thought she had to be.

So in this episode, we get more precise. This episode explores:

If you’re in a complicated relationship with your own ambition, I’d love to hear how you’re choosing a way of living and working that fits who you are. Come find me on Instagram and tell me.

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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 striving was really for. That old ambition still shows up when I set revenue goals, and this chapter of my life is asking for something different.

This episode explores:

Are you tired of the work, or tired of the reasons you’re doing it? If this one lands, send it to the friend who keeps saying she just needs a vacation.

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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 made it on my own.

Then something shifts. A promotion feels flat. A work wound or a season of deep exhaustion forces you to stop, and you find yourself asking what it’s all for. So in this episode, we get more precise. This episode explores:

Where in your life have you reached the goal and then wondered what it was all for? 

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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 work conditioning, I’m still finding new layers of it. This one showed up as a scoreboard I didn’t know I’d packed.

So in this episode, we get more precise. This episode explores:

Here’s a question to sit with this week: what would you go after if no one from your past was watching?

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