You’re Solving the Wrong Equation

Sienna, Sabrina, and I

What if the formula you’ve been running your whole career was never yours to begin with?

I got everything I optimized for. And it wasn’t what I actually wanted.

For twenty years, I did what most driven leaders do: I worked harder, earned more, rose higher, and assumed I’d eventually arrive at a life that felt right. And by most measures, it worked. I had the career I’d been building toward since my twenties. 

I made it home for dinner most nights my daughter was with me. I’d sit across from her, ask about her day, and try to have a real conversation. But she was a teenager, and teenagers don’t talk when you’ve scheduled time for them. She’d give me one-word answers, finish eating, and disappear to her room.

And here’s the part I didn’t want to admit: I was relieved when she left. I’d spent so much of myself keeping the whole thing running that by the time I got home, there was nothing left. Instead of following her, sitting on the floor of her room, being present on her terms, I’d open my laptop and get back to work.

Sitting there on a Sunday night choosing a deck over my daughter, I realized that everything I’d built was optimized for a life I didn’t actually want.

That moment is what eventually led me to the work I do now. Because most accomplished leaders face the same problem, it's not a failure of effort or talent, but a failure of the equation itself. We optimize for income, titles, recognition, and control, and by those measures, it works. But then why does it still not feel right?

For most of us, the equation was set early. A parent who showed love through praise for achievement. A family where scarcity became the engine for everything, long after the scarcity was gone. The equation made sense once. It just hasn’t been examined since.

Before anyone dismisses this as indulgent, the leaders I coach who examine their equation don’t become less effective. They become more effective. When your career, relationships, health, and sense of meaning are pulling in the same direction, you stop spending half your energy managing the internal cost of being out of alignment.

But the equation doesn’t change through planning. It changes through noticing. These are the questions I had to sit with myself, and they’re the same ones I ask the executives and founders I work with:

• What am I doing right now purely because I’m afraid of what would happen if I stopped?

• Who in my life is getting the real version of me?

• What would change if I believed I was already enough?

If those feel easy, you’re probably answering too fast. The ones worth asking are the ones that make you want to move on to something else.

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