What Success Doesn’t Show

Your highlights don't tell the whole story, and that is your advantage.

From the outside, my life looked like a continuous highlight reel. Executive consulting in my 20s, record-breaking athletic performances, global projects, accolades in finance. But behind all of those wins, I was sacrificing. I was sacrificing sleep, relationships, and basically my entire identity, which I'm sure is really hard to believe, but it happened. And it was wild.

Excellence without boundaries isn't ambition. It isn't hustle. In fact, it is the antithesis. That's you slow marching into burnout like it is your entire personality. And for years, I tied my worth to output. If I wasn't producing, I didn't feel valuable. But then literally everything changed. The turning point came when my life brought me back to below baseline. Literally the bottom of Maslo's hierarchy of needs. It was the most clear and profound shift that you could imagine. Literally, everything fell apart. My parents retired, which meant so did the consultancy. My marriage ended, and I woke up realizing that I had spent my entire 20s building somebody else's vision. I had no idea who I was, what I wanted, what I was capable of. I laugh and say I had a full on Julia Roberts runaway bride moment when she has to figure out what kind of egg she likes. The massive shift forced me to redefine success. Now that I know true excellence and my definition of excellence is all about protecting your piece. It means recognizing that the highlight reel is just the trailer. It is not the full movie and you get to edit the narrative. In fact, you have to edit the narrative.

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