In 2013, I read Lean In. I wanted to love it. I knew I was supposed to love it.
But I didn’t.
My issue with Lean In wasn’t the enormous amounts of privilege that Sheryl Sandberg used to achieve success. Hell, I did the same thing, albeit with a few less zeroes on my paycheck. We’d be silly not to do this. I take no umbrage about this oft-maligned fact.
But, I’d gotten to the top using the same playbook as Sheryl: say yes to all the opportunities, lean in to my career, be all things to all people, and do it early enough in my career that the dividends would pay off for decades to come. Did I lean in? You bet your ass I did.
I got to the top. I had that kind of success. I was the youngest Vice President in the executive search firm where I’d worked. I had the corner office, the view over the Boston Common, the fancy title, and the big salary.
But it didn’t make me happy.
This was my issue with “Lean In.”
I had all the success she promised, but it turned out that it wasn’t enough.
My issue was not how Sheryl Sandberg achieved success. It was how she defined success.
You see, this one, myopic, unflinching definition of success limits us. And it’s not just women who are limited by this singular definition of success. We are all limited, women and men both, to measuring our progress by how fast and how high we climb. We are limited by the imaginations and burdens of others. We are limited by their opinions about who we are and where we belong. We are so limited by checking off the boxes of other people’s versions of success that we forget to determine our own. And in these limits, we lose ourselves.
So, let’s figure out what really matters to us… and lean into that, instead. That’s why I wrote Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life.
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