Let’s Actually Make Our Lives Amazing, Not Just Look Like It.

Since I launched my first business in 2014, I’ve noticed something.

Worldwide, we’ve become obsessed with the wrong goals.

Appearances.
Productivity.
Acceptance.

We have a literal front row seat to an epidemic of people slowly disconnecting from themselves while calling it “self-improvement.”

We’ve felt this as Chronic Bosses, but now the world is on fire and it’s hardest on us. So I say, no more!

This ends now, for us all.

When did looking good “on paper” become the standard?

Don’t tell me you don’t feel the pressure to seem more put together than you are. 

A polished version.
A marketable version.
A more inspiring version.
A more successful version.
A less complicated version.

And women? Yes! Women especially.

Ambitious women in particular.

Even more so, those of us who have big dreams and are silently fighting battles nobody else can see. Who live with “invisible” illnesses that consume us without anyone blinking an eye.

From autoimmune disease to ADHD, chronic pain, burnout, anxiety, hormonal issues, grief, exhaustion, nervous system overload…

…while simultaneously building careers, relationships, businesses, families, bodies, routines, and identities that look “normal” enough for the world.

It’s exhausting on every level.

We’ve become so focused on appearing “okay” that we completely lost touch with who we are as people.

If you’ve lived with an invisible illness for so long that we’ve let it define us, for good reasons and bad.

But our illness is not responsible for our success.
And it’s not a scapegoat for our failure.

And no, I’m not anti-growth.
I’m not anti-ambition.
I’m not anti-success.

I love ambitious women. I AM ONE.

Big lives.
Big impact.
Beautiful things.
Powerful careers.

Give me all of it, but don’t make me feel like I need to become someone I’m not to get it! Or any of us.

Somewhere along the way, I think we lost ourselves.

This whole “fake it till you make it” mentality didn’t just become business advice.

It became an ideology.

Everyone is performing, whether it’s selling a dream more than a reality, adding filters to photos to feel better, or pretending not to care when we’re totally destroyed by one tiny slip up.

Because the judgment is real, and it festers inside.

No wonder everyone’s secretly anxious, disconnected, burned out, lonely, inflamed, exhausted, and wondering why nothing feels fulfilling anymore. It’s a mess!

And as someone who’s worked in sales for the better part of two decades, I’ve gotta say…

This is why sales feel so hard for so many of us entrepreneurs.

Because we think we need to perform, and your next client is totally turned off by any inkling of inauthenticity (aka, no one wants it but we all do it!).

We know when your content’s AI-generated.
We question any offer that remotely sounds “too good.”
And the more “perfect” you seem, the more annoyed we get.

This is why user-generated content (UGC) and behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos are exploding like never before. TikTok is a great example. It’s a magnet for the (mostly) unfiltered bingeable marketing we are begging to watch.

Just real people doing their “thing.”

I mean, I watched a girl eat dinner every day for a week straight. Don’t ask me why, but WOW! It was addicting!

And I don’t think I’m alone.

Because the more we see this, the more we feel okay deviating from the norm of suffocating pressure to always get it right and be “on.”

As women with chronic illness, we have lived this battle of performing to hide our true selves for decades.

And now that it’s infiltrated our lives on all sides, it’s been made ten times worse!

No more, please.

Because, for those of us who are quite literally pained by this, our bodies keep the score. And we’re running on empty.

Every flare.
Every ache + pain.
Every sleepless night.

And I can’t spend my life like that. Nor will I build my identity around being a “sick” person, flares or not. And you don’t deserve to, either, if you don’t want to.

Because we’re whole people outside of any symptoms or successes.

I am more than my diseases and ambitions. You are, too.

You are not your diagnosis.
You are not a goal to be hit.
You are not your follower count.
You are not your perfect blow out.

You are a human being.

A real, complete, loving, beautiful, smart, caring, dreamy, badass woman.

And there’s no world in which you need to become less of YOU to live a truly fulfilling and amazing life.

In fact, I think that’s the key to our salvation. Being unapologetically ourselves, no performance required.

In life. In business. In sales. And beyond.

Because in a world full of people who think being “on” is where it’s at, a Chronic Boss who’s fully herself?

Well, that feels revolutionary. ♥️