No ‘Sunday Scaries’ this week, friend. Just some food for thought:
From the time we were little - with our earliest influences guiding us - we have been shaping an idea what success looks like. And for many driven women in the workforce today, success may look like:
A title.
A role.
A salary of some significance.
A position that signals you’ve “made it.”
For many women leaders, those markers weren’t chosen lightly. They were learned. Inherited. Sometimes fought for. You watched who got promoted. You noticed which paths were rewarded. You learned — often without anyone saying it out loud — what success was supposed to look like if you wanted to be taken seriously.
So you aimed for it.
You said yes.
You raised your hand.
You kept going — even when it cost more than you expected.
Brianna Doe once believed that becoming a CMO would be the proof she was looking for — until she paused long enough to ask why.
“I realized I was chasing someone else’s idea of success.”
One moment of honesty can change everything.
Because when success is borrowed, or someone else’s idea for you, it’s rarely sustainable. It pulls you forward with pressure instead of purpose. It asks you to contort, to overextend, to silence parts of yourself in service of a goal that doesn’t actually fit.
And often, by the time you reach it, you’re too tired to enjoy it — or too disconnected to recognize yourself inside it.
Redefining success doesn’t mean wanting less.
It means wanting what’s aligned.
What might that look like?
Work that energizes instead of depletes.
Ambition that supports your life — not replaces it.
Achievement that doesn’t require you to disappear to earn it.
So here’s a question worth sitting with – or journaling about if that’s your thing:
If you stopped striving for other people’s approval, what might success actually look like for you?
There’s nothing wrong with ambition.
There is something costly about unexamined ambition.
And you’re allowed — at any point — to choose differently.
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This email was inspired by a recent conversation with Brianna Doe on our podcast about redefining success on your own terms.
p.s. Every issue of this newsletter is written by hand, by one of our amazing Wednesday Women team. Have an idea for something we should include? Simply reply to this email and we’ll be in touch!
