Our culture is not just stressful, it’s counterproductive. Stress impairs our ability to make good decisions, collaborate with others and orient toward possibility.
Besides, we spend 90,000 hours at work over our lifetimes. Shouldn’t we enjoy it?
I spent a chunk of my twenties in the stress capital of the world, New York. I earned a six-figure salary that I squandered on endless drinks and distraction because I kept a calendar so full that I’d slam six coffees a day as I ran from meeting to meeting. Back in my covetable apartment, I couldn’t sleep at night.
Eventually, I did what burned out people do at their breaking point: I quit and took a long vacation.
I embarked on the ultimate Eat, Pray, Love cliché—traveling Europe, falling in love in Berlin and training as a yoga teacher in India. This led to my eventual move to Berlin, where I promptly began to replay my busy life in New York. I was stuck adhering to the way things “should be.”
We are so deeply conditioned to be productive, stay busy and ignore how we feel.
This is how work turns into a source of misery.
We ignore the reality of our human existence, which can be messy and uncomfortable, but also richly creative and meaningful beyond material gain.
I love an overpriced latte, and I don’t believe we have to forsake the world to be happy.
But I do know this counterintuitive truth: the more honestly we confront the harder aspects of our experience, the more easily we create results that make us happy.
We can alchemize stress into strength, and even bliss.
This one skill separates people who are truly successful from the rest. They embrace the range. They don’t shy away from fears, failures or flaws.
They are the rare leaders who not only get results, but have fun doing it—and make the working world a better place to be.
With my trauma-informed, neuroscience-backed approach, I help my clients tap into this power to enjoy what they’re building and become more effective leaders as a result.