I started reading a book by George Saunders, and there’s a quote that felt like electricity in my brain. He teaches a Russian Literature course at Syracuse, apparently not an easy class to get into. But what he says about the writers he accepts is exactly how I feel about the work I do with my clients:

“What we try to do over the next three years is help them achieve what I call their ‘iconic space’—the place from which they will write the stories only they could write, using what makes them uniquely themselves—their strengths, weaknesses, obsessions, peculiarities, the whole deal.

At this level, good writing is assumed; the goal is to help them acquire the technical means to become defiantly and joyfully themselves.”

Swap “writing” for “living,” and that’s my job description.

A few weeks ago, I gave the closing talk at CAMP, the sleepaway retreat I started hosting three years ago for the Myleik + Mommas community. That year, I’d just finished a nine-month life coaching training program and opened my calendar to regular clients. Since then, I’ve worked with roughly 600 clients, 130 of them 1:1, and 70% of them see me on a consistent rhythm.

People come to me when something breaks. Job exit, health, business failure, family collapse. Or when they look like they’re winning on the outside and feel lost on the inside. Or when they’re stuck at a threshold, knowing exactly what they want and unable to move. Or when their identity hasn’t caught up, still operating from an old story about who they are. Or when they’re moving so fast they can’t feel anything at all.

So I stood in front of this year’s CAMPERS and told them what I know for sure: you are further than you think.

Here’s where I started with them.

You’re a terrible witness to your own life.

You spend so much time measuring your current self against some future self that you never check in with the person who got you here. Who got you to this exact point? At CAMP, it was the woman who put you in that room with 150 other brilliant women, at a five-star property on 23 acres at the base of Camelback Mountain. Can we have a moment for her?

Nope. We’ve normalized our own growth.

So I asked the room: what’s completely normal to you now that would scare the younger version of you? Mine: autopay, renting a car, having a credit card (multiple credit cards), owning a home, kids (!!!).

Some of your progress has disappeared into normalcy.

We count what photographs well and skip what doesn’t. Money, titles, awards, marriage, weight, launches. We don’t count recovering faster, leaving sooner, asking for help, disappointing someone, and living through it, showing up to a retreat where you don’t know a soul.

Your life can look the same on the outside while the person living it has completely changed.

You use today’s problem to grade your whole life.

Something you’re dealing with right now, a difficult client, a job you hate, a friendship ending, an uncertain season, becomes proof that you can’t keep friends, that everything’s falling apart, that you have no idea what you’re doing.

That last one gets on my nerves. You? The person functioning, holding a big bag of wins, standing in this moment right now? You have no idea what you’re doing? I need you to stop.

Zoom out three years. I don’t know why I’m obsessed with that window, but I am. What felt impossible then? What do you know now that you didn’t?

Growth can look like subtraction.

This one always stings. Not buying things. Removing people from your life. Breaking the pattern of constantly buying stuff to feel better. That’s growth too, even though it doesn’t look like a win.

We don’t count maintenance.

We’re addicted to the breakthrough, the before-and-after, the big leap. But most growth doesn’t hand you any of that. It’s small, almost invisible, like turning a massive ship. You can’t just bust a U-turn with a full life. It slowly starts to turn, and from the shore it’s hard to see anything happening at all. Eventually, you look up, and it’s headed somewhere new.

Progress is deeply unsexy. Deeply. The discomfort of keeping your money instead of spending it doesn’t feel good. Holding the boundary, keeping the promise to yourself, maintaining the friendship, the relationship, the business, the career. Most of that doesn’t look good from the outside or the inside. It’s just true.

So: pursue the evidence of your life. Look at what you’ve already done that proves you’re capable of more than you’re giving yourself credit for. Stop calling it “behind” when it’s actually “in-between.” Your old life doesn’t fit anymore, and the new one hasn’t fully shown itself yet. That’s not behind. That’s just unfamiliar.

You are not lost.

I told the room to look around at each other, but you can just look in the mirror. Think about what had to happen for you to get here. The money, the decisions, the childcare, the courage, the job, the business, the grief, the starting over. You are sitting inside a life, a previous version of you was trying to build.

Figuring out what to start and what to stop is an easy exercise I use in my work to figure out what needs to change, because where you want to go requires your behavior to change. You cannot think about it or use those lofty sayings of 'going out more,' or 'being more present,' or 'putting yourself first.' Those are wishes, not instructions. All too vague to act on.

Start is a specific action: text the friend back today. Stop is a specific action: stop checking your phone during dinner. If you can't picture yourself doing the thing tomorrow morning, it's not a start or a stop. A start or a stop has to be something you could literally do tomorrow.

That’s the work I do with clients inside Bring Your Work and one-on-one, week after week, until “further than you think” starts to become how you actually see yourself. If you’ve been circling the idea of coaching, this is usually the sign people wait for.

Reply and tell me what you’re starting and stopping. I read every one. You are further than you think.

I’m Myleik. I coach people through career pivots, business decisions, relationships, reinvention, and all the moments that ask us to choose differently. I write about what I’m seeing, learning, and questioning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1, join Bring Your Work, or simply stay here and keep reading.

I have been creating communities for a long time, though I would never have called it that when I first began. At the start, my aim was to connect with people who shared something with me, and for a long time, that was a ferocious ambition.

Work and my pursuit of success were a major component of who I was, and I enjoyed being among other people who shared my strong interest in work and in winning. Some things that happen when you’re aiming to become successful are difficult to explain to those who aren’t striving in the same way. The sacrifices ... the money ... the loneliness ... achieving a great deal of what you want and then realizing that it didn’t satisfy nearly as much as you had expected.

I was looking for people who understood, so I brought them together. For a time, I held these gatherings in magnificent and costly rooms. I organized events for ambitious women and invited successful people to come and share what they knew. In fact, I was doing precisely what I had wanted to do.

After about two years of hosting my retreat, I was entirely annoyed with the whole thing. At first, I couldn’t figure out why. The events were excellent, and people liked them, but the thing I wanted people to experience wasn’t actually happening.

Back then, there was a whole language around women and success: empowerment, leveling up, becoming your best self, being a boss! It was everywhere, and some of it still lingers, and I want to be crystal clear: I used that language too.

It took me a while to figure out what was wrong. If my purpose is to empower you, then what have we agreed about you before you even enter the room? Have we decided that I have the power and that you need it? That I know the answers and that you need to learn them? That I have already arrived at some destination, and you are trying to get there?

I saw this play out in my own events. Put someone onstage with a microphone, and suddenly they’re the expert and everyone else is there to listen. And I started thinking about what both sides were missing; the audience could forget what they already knew because they were so focused on the person with the microphone, and the person with the microphone could forget how much they didn’t know.

I wondered what would change if I assumed everyone who walked in already had something valuable to offer. Sure, someone might want help, feel lost, be hoping for a new job or better relationships, or want a different life. But that didn’t mean they showed up with nothing. It meant the room should begin with what people already carry.

So I stopped worrying so much about who was up onstage and started caring more about what it actually felt like to be in the room. What did it really take to feel like you belonged? Could you show up solo? Leave early if you need to? Change your mind? Just be quiet? I wanted to see if I could make a space where no one had to impress anyone or prove they deserved a seat.

Could I acknowledge our differences in experience, knowledge, success, and access without turning them into a hierarchy?

Somewhere along the way, people started using a word to describe M+M, the membership community I’ve been building online and off, that I hadn’t been using myself: Safe.

I don’t believe I can personally create safety; I don’t think anyone can. But I do think you can create the conditions that make belonging easier. And to me, that’s the work: not to declare safety, but to create conditions for belonging. Once you feel you belong, you no longer have to ask yourself whether you’re doing things the right way, if they like me, who is important in this group, where I should sit, if that was a stupid thing to do, whether I’m successful enough to be here, or who I need to meet.

Once we set those questions aside, we can recover all that energy. We can be curious, take risks, tell the truth, play, rest, and connect without placing ourselves within the hierarchy. There is greater generosity because there is less competition. Instead of managing ourselves in the room, we can actually be in the room.

And so, after several years of watching this thing become in-fcking-credible, here’s my first stab at what makes it possible:

The hierarchy is intentionally weak. Of course, there are differences in money, access, experience, knowledge, visibility, and success. And I’m not pretending those differences don’t exist; I’m just refusing to use them as the organizing principle of the room. I have made it nearly impossible for someone to tell us their profession. “What do you do?” is one of the quickest ways adults figure out where to place each other, and I have purposely made that sorting harder.

Nobody has to prove they belong. You don’t have to be accomplished, interesting, outgoing, stylish, or connected enough to justify your presence. You’re already in it. Let’s get to the good stuff.

People arrive with something to contribute. Nobody is treated as an empty vessel waiting for the expert to fill them up. Some of the best parts of CAMP come from the campers themselves. Our counselors lead hikes, meditation, book clubs, and reading hours. Someone teaches calligraphy; another member leads a floral class. Expertise is scattered all over the room. The person sitting next to you may have as much to teach you as whoever has the microphone.

There is nothing to perform. There’s NO need to work the room, make the right connections, attend everything, or prove you’re having an incredible time because nobody is keeping score.

The host, in this case me, is not the prize. M+M may have started with me, but access to me is not the point of being there. I’m in the room, not hovering above it. I eat, swim, sit, talk, learn, and participate alongside everyone else. My job is to tend to the room, not be the most important person in it.

Adults retain their agency. You get to decide what works for you. Show up or don’t. Leave early if you want. Take a nap, change your mind, find a quiet corner, or spend time with just a couple of people. I trust that everyone here knows what they need, and you don’t have to prove you belong by how much you join in.

There are many ways into the room. I think a lot about the person who comes alone … who isn’t going to walk up to a table of strangers and introduce herself. So I try to build rooms that do a lot of that work for them. There are a range of activities, CAMP counselors of ALL personalities, shared tables, morning walks, silent reading, things to do with your hands, and enough downtime to keep bumping into the same person until eventually you start talking. You don’t have to be outgoing to get access to connections.

There is room for the ordinary. I’m not interested in manufacturing transformation, in my coaching work or here. Not every conversation needs to be profound, and not every hour needs a purpose. Sometimes we eat, read, walk, swim, drink wine and talk sh*t. People need enough unimportant time together for something important to happen on its own.

Nobody has to be okay. We can be having an incredible weekend, and you can still be sad. You can still miss someone, and feel lonely in a room full of people. You can cry without us all treating the tears like a five-alarm fire. We don’t feel like we have to get you back to “good” for the rest of us to keep being good.

Safety isn’t endless accommodation. Making people feel safe does not mean nobody is ever disappointed, uncomfortable, told no, or asked to adjust. There are edges here, standards, and expectations for how we treat each other, and I am willing to protect them. A room can’t feel safe if nobody is willing to be responsible for it. I think people can feel when nobody is in charge of the edges, and they can also feel when someone is.

Repetition matters. People come back, and with them, the rituals and language we’ve developed together. We’re no longer building trust from zero. You know you can show up alone because you did it last year and somehow ended up at dinner with six people. And if it’s your first time, chances are you’re sitting next to someone who already knows the way. They know to wave at the woman who looks like she might be with us. They know to invite the new person along, and eventually, the culture starts to hold itself.

When I first started hosting events, I believed my role was to select the right people, put them on stage, and arrange the rest of us so we could learn something. Now I believe my role is to look after the conditions and, more and more, to step aside.

I am still inviting those who have something to say, and I am still carrying out my role as host and coach; yes, I will take the microphone from time to time. However, the true magic does not lie in any one individual having all the answers. It is in the little instances—such as at the pool, while on a hike, over a meal, or when two strangers begin a conversation. It is when someone notices a woman standing alone and invites her to join them. It is also when the person who needed a little encouragement last year is now the one giving it to someone else.

Perhaps that’s what I’ve been aiming to create all this time: a room sturdy enough for people to bring more of themselves to it. If that sounds like a room you’d like to be in, and eventually help hold for someone else, come sit with us.

I’m Myleik. I coach people through career pivots, business decisions, relationships, reinvention, and all the moments that ask us to choose differently. I write about what I’m seeing, learning, and questioning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1, join Bring Your Work, or simply stay here and keep reading.

Uncertainty is sneaky. It often feels like proof that we’re behind or should know what’s next, instead of what it is: a neutral state of not knowing.

Uncertainty makes us feel like we don’t know what we’re doing, but really we just don’t know yet. It makes the time it takes to figure things out feel too long, and it turns the time needed to decide into us thinking we’re indecisive.

And here’s what I want to tell you: Sometimes you’re just in between things. That’s it. And that does not mean you’re off track or even behind.

Every week I work with clients who believed they knew exactly what their lives would look like by now. They did everything right: degree, title, corporate role or business, income, family. Then suddenly, the version of right they arrived at no longer fits, and uncertainty moves in. Once it does, they try to get rid of it.

The first idea is always a new job. People think this feeling can be solved at a new company. A close second is another degree. After that, it’s either starting a business or moving to a new city. And if none of these work, you can always ask ten people what they think.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of these. It’s just that I know what you’re really looking for is relief from what uncertainty brings. You want to tell people what’s next because saying I don’t know feels like failure.

This is one of my favorite things to work through with clients. We stop treating uncertainty as a problem to solve quickly and start letting it work for us. When you stop trying to force the future, you become someone who can live well while the future takes shape. And part of this, I think, comes from getting more comfortable with white space.

Instead of reacting to the instinct to fix or fill the space by making more plans or starting another project, I ask them to leave room for serendipity. I usually recommend doing things outside their usual routine. If you need a place to start, try Do. See. Eat. Drink. for a running list of things worth trying.

As they stare at me blankly, I tell them to prepare to say, “You are NEVER going to believe how this all came together.” Most times, that’s how it happens. You cannot plan your way into every good thing, but you can make room for it.

So much in your life is going to change, and the goal is not to get rid of uncertainty. It’s learning not to confuse uncertainty with incompetence. You don’t know yet, and for now, let that be enough.

I'm Myleik. I coach people through career pivots, business decisions, relationships, reinvention, and all the moments that ask us to choose differently. I write about what I'm seeing, learning, and questioning in real time. If you're ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1, join Bring Your Work, or simply stay here and keep reading.

“I know my value.”

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard this. We say it about jobs, pricing, relationships, and friendships. When someone doesn’t seem to value us, we walk away saying, I know my value. And I get it. This is one of our ways of saying, I won’t accept less than I deserve.

One of my friends used to say it’s less about your value and more about what the market demands. I’d take it a step further: we aren’t universally valued. You can be overlooked in one room and indispensable in another, which is why I’d much rather say:

I don’t expect everyone to value me. Knowing my value has very little to do with convincing other people of it, and everything to do with accepting that some people, jobs, clients, and relationships simply aren’t a good fit, and letting that guide my choices.

☕ Buy Me a Coffee

There’s a story I love to tell about a guy I met and spent all of five minutes with. I was talking about a breakup I could not seem to get over, and I had convinced myself I’d never take anyone seriously again.

He looked at me and said, “Imagine walking into a shoe store and finding the perfect pair of shoes. If they didn’t have your size, would you stop wearing shoes?”

Of course not.

That conversation unlocked something for me. The problem wasn’t that the shoes were bad or that my feet were wrong; it was simply that they weren’t my size.

He didn’t end up being my person, but I’ve never forgotten him because he gave me a framework I’ve carried ever since.

So here’s what I want you to remember the next time you find yourself saying, I know my value.

There’s another part to this that I have to call out. Knowing my value also meant preparing for the moments when I’d have to act on this knowing. That’s one of the many reasons I learned to save (and then invest) my money. I never wanted to be in a position where I knew I should leave but couldn’t afford to. Financial freedom isn’t just about what you can buy; it’s also about what you can leave.

Knowing your value means you’re willing to leave environments that consistently fail to recognize what you bring. It means you stop trying to convince people they need something they’ve already decided they don’t. It means your standards become something you practice, not just something you can recite.

When I graduated from college, I had two jobs that shaped the rest of my career.

The first boss was loud and mean, saying whatever they wanted. Everyone knew it and worked around it. I decided I wouldn’t, so I left.

The second boss was kinder, but still spoke to people in a way that lacked basic respect at times. I remember driving to work some mornings with what felt like a bear sitting on my chest. I told myself I wouldn’t do that either.

I work too hard to spend my days dreading them.

I’m the person who shows up early, stays late, and cares deeply about the work. But I also made myself a promise: the moment someone crossed the line of decency, I was gone, and that’s what knowing my value has come to mean. I know that everyone won’t see it, AND I won’t spend my life trying to convince the people who don’t.

My job isn’t to be valued by everyone; it’s to keep finding the people, places, and opportunities that already do.

If you need to up your savings game, you might find this useful:

I'm Myleik. I coach people through career pivots, business decisions, relationships, reinvention, and all the moments that ask us to choose differently. I write about what I'm seeing, learning, and questioning in real time. If you're ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1, join Bring Your Work, or simply stay here and keep reading.

In my twenties, I believed discipline could solve almost anything. I talked about it incessantly because I genuinely believed it was the answer.

I became disciplined about my career, my fitness, and what I ate. I trained for stamina, built routines that kept me focused, and organized almost everything I did around getting to the top, and for a long time, I thought discipline was the thing separating successful people from everyone else.

These days, I see things … differently.

Discipline is an incredible tool, but a terrible compass. It will faithfully multiply whatever you point it toward. It doesn’t know whether you’re building a business you’ll love, a relationship you’ll outgrow, or a life you’ll eventually realize doesn’t fit anymore. It just keeps making you better at whatever you practice.

That took me years to understand because discipline worked. It helped me build a career I was proud of. It opened doors I wanted to walk through. It gave me confidence that I could figure the really hard things out.

The problem wasn’t discipline; it was assuming it knew where to go. Somewhere along the way, I started reaching goals that looked exactly like what I’d once wanted, only to realize I wanted something else instead. I wasn’t necessarily reaching for something bigger, but something truer.

That’s when I realized I had spent years asking discipline to answer questions it was never designed to answer. It could tell me how to keep going, but it could not tell me where I belonged.

When I decided I wanted to become a parent, I knew I’d have to choose someone to build a family with. That felt less like finding the right person and more like becoming honest about the kind of life I wanted.

I’d spent years carrying around a picture of who I thought I’d end up with. The person who actually fit the life I wanted looked different in almost every way that mattered.

What mattered wasn’t chemistry, but someone familiar with repair. It was emotional steadiness … someone who understood that conflict is part of being close to another person, but punishment doesn’t have to be. It was someone who could grow.

Giving up the picture I’d carried around for years required far more discipline than choosing ever did.

Parenting has continued that education. Before I had kids, I thought discipline in parenting meant consistency. Bedtimes. Routines. Following through. And don’t get me wrong, some of it does.

But the hardest discipline I’ve practiced as a parent has almost nothing to do with managing my children, and learning to manage myself. It’s resisting the urge to solve every problem the moment it appears. It’s returning to my own work after seasons when they’ve needed more of me. It’s remembering that my job isn’t to control every outcome, but to stay steady enough that they can find their way back to me.

None of those things earns applause or looks particularly impressive. Most of them happen in complete privacy, and the older I get, the more I think we’ve reduced discipline to achievement. We celebrate the discipline that builds businesses, earns promotions, transforms bodies, and fills bank accounts. We don’t talk nearly as much about the discipline it takes to leave work that no longer fits, choose the right partner, repair after conflict, or protect a life you’ve worked just as hard to build.

The trouble with this brand of discipline is that it never asks you to pause and reflect. It rewards momentum. I’ve met plenty of people who became incredibly good at building lives they eventually didn’t want. They never questioned the next promotion, opportunity, or the next goal because discipline had taught them to keep moving, not to stop and ask why.

These days, I still care about discipline. I just no longer believe it’s the first stop. Before discipline comes discernment. Before consistency comes clarity. Before climbing comes deciding whether the mountain is one you actually want to spend your life climbing.

Discipline will faithfully multiply whatever you point it toward. The hardest work is choosing what deserves your devotion, because eventually your discipline becomes your life.

I'm Myleik. I spend my days coaching people through some of the hardest decisions of their lives. I write about what I notice, the assumptions we rarely question, and the much quieter work of building a life that feels like your own. If you're ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1, join Bring Your Work, or simply stay here and keep reading.

It’s probably the question I’ve been asked more than any other over the last fifteen years.

“Should I quit my job?”

I can rarely answer that question right away because I first need to understand how your work fits into the larger context of your life.

People often shrink their lives down to work and maybe one other category: family, a relationship, or self-care if they’re lucky. Work becomes dominant and the most obvious place to look when something feels off. But it’s hard to know if work is actually the problem until we’ve right-sized it within the rest of your life.

Maybe you should quit your job. Or maybe you’ve allowed work to crowd out everything else, and the answer is getting back to living. Logging off at 5:00 to make your kickball game. Signing up for the improv class you’ve been talking yourself out of. Taking the pottery class, joining the run club, or making room for hobbies unrelated to your career.

Maybe you should quit your job. Or maybe you’ve been postponing your personal life because work is the easiest place to pour your energy. Instead of refreshing your inbox, maybe it’s time to refresh your dating profile. Instead of saying yes to another late meeting, maybe you need to say yes to invitations where you might actually meet someone.

Maybe you should quit your job. Or maybe you’re exhausted because you’ve built a career around overfunctioning. You overdeliver before anyone asks, anticipate others’ needs before your own, and quietly carry work that was never yours because you learned your value comes from being indispensable. If that’s the pattern, a new employer won’t solve it. You'll simply recreate the same dynamic at the next company: overperforming, overfunctioning, and eventually wondering why you're exhausted all over again.

I hear a version of this question from aspiring entrepreneurs all the time. They assume leaving corporate will eliminate everything they dislike about working, but many of those same patterns follow them into business ownership. If setting boundaries with a manager feels impossible, setting them with paying clients usually feels harder. If you’ve been avoiding difficult conversations at work, entrepreneurship doesn’t magically make you better at having them. Often, it amplifies what was already there.

That’s why I spend much less time deciding whether someone should quit and much more time understanding what they’re trying to leave behind: the company, the manager, the work itself, their own patterns, burnout, or a season of life asking for something different.

Those are very different problems, and they don’t all require the same solution.

What I’ve found is that most people don’t need someone to tell them whether to stay or go. They need help diagnosing what’s happening, separating circumstances from patterns, and figuring out what bridge needs to exist between where they are today and where they want to be.

Sometimes that bridge is financial. Sometimes it’s emotional. Sometimes it’s building confidence, learning to communicate differently, creating better boundaries, or developing enough clarity to make leaving an intentional decision rather than an escape.

Sometimes the bridge is building the business while you're still employed. It’s keeping the paycheck while you find your first clients, test your offer, figure out who you want to serve, and learn what it takes to run a business. The goal isn’t a dramatic leap, but to build enough evidence that when you leave, you’re walking toward something you’ve already started rather than away from something you no longer want.

I think people often assume the only choices are to stay or leave. In reality, there are usually a dozen options in between. My job is to help people see those options, build the right bridge, and make a decision from clarity instead of urgency.

This is the kind of work I do with clients every week. We untangle what's actually happening, identify the real constraint, and figure out what bridge needs to exist before making a decision. Sometimes the answer is to leave. Sometimes it's to stay. Either way, the goal is to make the decision from clarity instead of urgency.

If you're sitting with this question yourself and want someone to help you think it through, I'd love to work with you.

I'm just going to say it.

Of all our relationships, friendship might be the hardest.

Unlike any other relationship we have, friendship comes with almost no structure. Nobody trains you for it. There is no ceremony, no contract, no shared last name, or biology pulling you back to each other. There’s barely any obligation, and yet it’s the relationship we expect to feel the most chosen in. We want it to be the place where we are fully known and fully held, and we want that with no instructions.

When you say it plainly, friendship is mostly this:

Hopefully, we keep choosing each other correctly, forever, even as we both constantly change.

That’s a pretty risky deal, if you ask me. And yet, thinking back, it’s the deal most of us are making without ever acknowledging it.

Childhood friendship asked little: it depended on proximity, not compatibility. You lived nearby or shared a lunch table—closeness defined the relationship. In contrast, adult friendship is tested by career, children, romantic relationships, money, location, health, burnout, identity shifts, aging parents, grief, ambition, and mental health. It must endure all these challenges, even as proximity disappears and obligation remains low.

With so many competing demands, it’s easy to see why friendship is usually the first thing we get flexible about when life gets full and hard. It’s the relationship with the least built-in accountability, so unfortunately, it’s often the first to absorb what we don’t have left to give.

I’ve never had trouble keeping friends.

And, at the same time, I’m certain some people have a problem with the way I friend.

I know there are moments when I have not been the friend someone needed. Sometimes that was because I genuinely did not have the tools yet. I did not have the capacity or emotional skill set. I didn’t have it to give, and you unfortunately cannot give what you do not have. Other times, it was because what they wanted from friendship was not something I naturally offer. And other times, it was because I did not want the same closeness, consistency, dependence, or emotional exchange they did.

I want to sit there for a second, because that last one is the one we don’t talk about at all. It's what's actually going on beneath so many disconnections.

Some people have experienced me as distant when I felt fully connected, and some have wanted more than I instinctively knew how to give. I own my part in that. At times, my personality can come across as intense—too honest. In a society where most people prefer to hover on the surface, I like the deep end. I’m a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency friend: always there for your big, hard moments. This matters (to me), especially when so many friendships stop at the surface. And I get it; for some, showing up only for emergencies isn’t enough. Some people want a friend who texts and calls more. I used to do that, but my current life stage changed that for me.

Adulthood keeps teaching me: friendship is not a universal language. People define care differently; what feels respectful to one may feel like an absence to another. We can both do our absolute best and still miss each other.

With all of this in mind, maybe the question was never whether someone is a good friend or a bad friend.

Maybe the question is whether they’re the right friend for you right now.

I think maturity is being able to let that be true without making either person the problem. They wanted more. I had less to give. Both of those can be true, and neither one makes either of us a villain. Accepting this isn’t an easy task … it’s so much easier to assign fault and move on.

Here’s something else I had to unlearn. Most of us were taught to evaluate friendship by compatibility—whether we click, like the same things, and get along. Compatibility does matter, and it is not everything. While compatibility is about matching, capacity is about being able to show up, and those are not the same. You can love someone completely and still be in a season where you don’t have the capacity to be what they need.

Different seasons call for different capacities. The friend who could talk every day in our twenties is now raising two kids, running a business, trying to stay healthy, and caring for a parent. Trying to get one person to check every single one of your friendship boxes, in every season, forever, is a setup. You are asking one human to be a whole community, and then resenting them when they can’t.

What I keep landing on is this: flexibility in friendship is not about lowering your standards or settling. It’s letting someone be who they are instead of who you decided they should be. It’s letting a friendship be what it can be now, instead of what it was, or what you imagined it would be.

Of course, none of this works without honesty.

Going deeper in friendship requires honesty. Honesty about what you can actually offer, what you want, and about the friend you have been and the friend you have not been.

So let me just say it.

I have not always been the friend someone needed. And I’d rather know that about myself and own it, than keep calling myself a good friend without ever asking who I’m actually good for. Friendship doesn’t need to tick every box; it needs to be honest, flexible, and real for the season. The best friendships, in any form, are the ones where both people get to show up as they are and let that be enough.

I’m Myleik. I coach, consult, and advise people building businesses, careers, and creative work—and yes, the people part too, like how we show up in our relationships and friendships. I write about what I’m learning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, work with me 1:1 or join Bring Your Work, my live coaching community. Or stay here and keep reading.

It’s graduation season, and it has me thinking about how confused I felt when I graduated.

I spent most of my time in college (four different schools, about as many majors, and $85K in student loans) trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I couldn't find a single thing I wanted to do for a few months, let alone for the rest of my life. I spent a lot of that time ashamed and embarrassed, woefully aware of how flaky I looked in a sea of peers who “knew” what they wanted. As a kid who spent most of my formative years in “gifted” or “honors,” the people I went to school with were walking their goals down and had jobs upon graduation.

I, on the other hand, had finessed my way into an internship just before graduating, in one of the marketing departments at Unilever. It was sexy to say, “I’m headed to New York for a summer internship on the global marketing team for Calvin Klein’s classic brand fragrances.” But the experience? Mostly boring. Everything outside of the actual job was better than the job itself.

When I graduated, I thought maybe I’d find my way back to New York. I reached out to the magazine that sponsored me for the internship, and to the company I worked for. It was almost as if I should have known there would never be a job offered to me. It read like a DEI box check before DEI existed. I was offered exposure. That’s it.

And so I went through the motions, graduated, and moved back home to my mother’s house.

This is where I give the advice I wish someone had given me.

Congratulations. You finished something.

This is going to matter more than you know. Finishing something teaches you how to continue, even when things are unclear. And a lot of being an adult is unclear. Damn near all of it.

Promise me you won’t panic.

It is so very early in your life. I swear. I’m going to beg you to enjoy this season before you fill it with stuff and responsibility. This is probably the lightest you’ll ever be, so float. Weave in and OUT of everything.

You won’t want to seem flaky, so you’ll try to prove you can stick out something you don’t love. Hear me clearly: don’t. Go. More than anything, this is the time to get crystal clear about what you don’t want.

Weave in and out, knowing there will probably be some regrets. That’s the price of learning. You’ll look back and think, “I probably should have hung there longer.” That’s okay. None of us gets to live a life where we don’t regret something.

Meet people who are nothing like you.

Force yourself to meet as many people as you can who are different from you. People with different family setups, who went to different types of schools, people you wouldn’t necessarily hang out with, but maybe you can sit and have a cup of matcha with (that’s what the young people drink, right? ha!).

Variety in who you know expands your imagination for your own life. You start realizing there isn’t just one way to build a career, relationship, family, friendship, or future. Even if you have deep admiration for your parents’ way, it is still A way. It is not THE way.

It also gets you further than staying in your circle ever will. The more people you understand, the less you take personally.

Ask everyone what they “do.”

Ask everyone who looks like someone you’d want to hang out with what they do. College points you toward maybe a dozen careers. There are thousands, and the best ones nobody's named for you yet. My mind is blown by what people are doing and making a good living at, things that never would have crossed my mind because I’d never heard of them.

And don’t be afraid to tell people you’re still looking for work. So many people know about opportunities inside their companies, and they won’t consider you if they don’t know you’re looking.

Use proximity.

Take a job that will expose you to the kind of people you want to learn from. It likely won’t be the highest paid or the most impressive. Work at the gallery. Work the front desk at the wellness studio. Assist the photographer. Take the restaurant job in the neighborhood where interesting people gather. Become the junior person in the room where people are building things you admire.

That’s how you learn how people think, how opportunities happen, how relationships get built, how creative lives are sustained, how money moves, how confident people communicate, how problems get solved.

Be a “youthful” mentor.

Instead of asking someone to be your mentor, become a youthful mentor to them. Find someone you admire and fill them in on the apps, the connections, the things young people are doing. Most successful people don’t fully have their ear to the street. Consider it an exchange, but treat it as something you’re doing for them. You’ll show up as less of an empty vessel.

Be audacious.

The first job that eventually thrust me into my career was one I created for myself.

I was watching TV and saw a company come on during a Grammy segment. I went to their website, didn’t see any openings, and if I’m being honest, didn’t even know what I would have done for them. I called anyway and asked for an interview. I asked to come talk about where I might fit, and I offered to work for free. I was already living at home, so the plan was to do it part-time and work something that paid on the side.

After a very short time working for free, they offered me a paid part-time job. A new employee noticed the way I worked and couldn’t believe I didn’t have a full-time job somewhere better. So she started sending me an underground job list, the “UTA Job List,” a then-secret list of entry-level jobs in the coveted entertainment industry. I got the first one I went after. From that job, I was hired away by a client. And eventually I quit, having learned (just) enough to strike out on my own.

So here’s the part I most want you to hear. The kid with four schools, four majors, and $85K in loans, the one who looked flaky in a sea of people who had it figured out, is the one who built a career out of a cold call and the audacity to ask. What you’re ashamed of right now is the thing that’s going to work. You just can’t see it yet.

So please don’t panic. Float. Go.

Whether you just graduated or just feel like you're starting over, this is the kind of work we do inside Bring Your Work. I run a live coaching group every month. If you're ready to get specific about what you actually want, come join us. [link]

This morning, a client’s email landed in my inbox, and I knew immediately that a “Congrats!” from my iPhone wasn’t going to cut it. She had just closed a significant offer after a competitive process. But the number wasn’t what stood out to me; it was how she moved.

What she had actually done was hold her position, let silence do its job, and let the other side recalibrate without explaining herself to death. She didn’t panic and stayed steady at the exact moment most people unravel.

I wrote her back and made sure she understood what I actually saw. What happened in that negotiation didn't come “out of nowhere.” It was connected to the choices she'd made over the past year, how she'd started protecting her time, the standard she'd raised for her environment, the clearer picture she'd developed of what she was actually worth. The offer was the outcome of the work she put in the year before.

This is something I’m watching closely inside my coaching community. Recently, in a group session, we did an exercise together: map out who is actually in your corner. One of the most common answers when people identified what was missing: “Honestly? I need a cheerleader.”

What strikes me is how many accomplished, driven people have never had that. The environments that shaped us rewarded critique and forward motion. Recognition wasn't always a part of the deal. After a while, you stop expecting it, and some people go further and mistake that absence for maturity. Push through. Figure it out. Move on.

A lot of depletion I see in clients isn’t from a lack of discipline. It’s from years of delivering in environments focused entirely on improvement, never on recognition. That’s isolating, and it’s hard to name because we’re trained to keep moving regardless.

Think about the last time you carried something hard all the way through and nobody really acknowledged it. I often wonder if people notice what that costs them.

We tell ourselves it’s nothing. But the impact compounds, and you can start to feel invisible inside your own effort. You stop sharing wins or believing anyone sees how hard you’re trying. Sometimes you stop before the breakthrough because carrying everything alone starts to feel pointless.

But here’s what I need you to know: encouragement compounds too. The right witness to your life can keep you from giving up on yourself.

When I work with clients on this, we build the team intentionally. Roles first, then people. A good starting point includes a strategist, a connector, a challenger, a therapist, a collaborator, an accountability partner, and a cheerleader. The first six come easier. The cheerleader is usually the one people didn’t know they were allowed to ask for. If you want to start somewhere, write down the people who already support you and note which roles they fill. Your list doesn’t have to be limited to people who have your number.

I also believe your cheerleader doesn’t have to be alive. Barbara Sher, who wrote Wishcraft (affiliate link), suggested imagining the people who inspire you sitting across the room, fully in your corner. You can read someone’s work, absorb how they moved through the world, and ask yourself what they would say to you right now. It sounds unconventional, but it works. Not everyone has a person yet, but that doesn't mean you go without.

Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, Keke Palmer, Issa Rae … they all count.

When I was a teenager, I ran on a 4x400 relay team. We set a national record in 1993 that still stands. And what I remember most isn't the race itself. It's my teammate on the second leg screaming for me through that last 50 meters. That sound determines how many tenths of a second you shave off your split.

Your cheerleader does the same thing. They show up at the last 50 meters, and their belief in you changes what you're capable of.

If you have a cheerleader, tell them what their belief in you actually made possible.

If you don’t have one, start looking.

If you want to build your support team intentionally, this is exactly the kind of work we do inside Bring Your Work. I run a live coaching group every month. If you’re ready to get specific about what you need and who’s filling each seat, come join us. [link]

I saw The Devil Wears Prada 2 recently and caught a line about how we use clothes to shape others’ perceptions. Since having two kids, I’ve been constantly editing my closet. We wear brands, labels, silhouettes, colors, and signals, hoping people understand us before we speak.

I understand this concept deeply. I started my career in PR and came to understand the strange and very real ways in which presentation shapes opportunity, perception, power, and belonging. Clothing is not frivolous. Style can be art, pleasure, creativity, identity… play. Sometimes, getting dressed is one of the few ways people can express themselves honestly.

I notice how women, especially mothers, are judged for “letting themselves go” or “losing themselves.” This language equates a woman’s value with her ability to maintain societal standards of femininity and effortless appearance, reinforcing the pressure to perform rather than authentically express.

This brings me to a passage from Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity, where she writes about “hustling” — all the ways we perform versions of ourselves to secure approval, safety, love, or status. Not just at work, but everywhere. In beauty, parenting, relationships, wellness, and identity itself.

Anything done solely to influence others rather than express your true nature, she argues, becomes a kind of hustle.

Building on this idea, many women (raise hand) are tired from the invisible labor of staying legible, likable, and desirable. If you feel worn out by the constant demands, you are not alone. We’re exhausted by managing perception, pretending to handle life well, and constantly performing competence, desirability, balance, motherhood, relevance, ambition, health, style, self-awareness, and discipline, all while staying calm. Modern womanhood is endless perception management, a shared struggle so many of us face in silence.

And the internet has only intensified it. Online, coherence is rewarded. Clean aesthetics, strong points of view, and consistent identity translate into a recognizable “personal brand.” Now seems like a perfect time to remember: we are people, not brands. Real lives are contradictory, cyclical, messy, and constantly changing.

Sometimes “letting yourself go” is actually reclaiming authenticity after years of performative identity for others. Women and mothers can love fashion, yet tire of public beauty standards, and opt out without meaning they’ve “given up.”

If this resonates, try a simple exercise: spend a few moments in front of your wardrobe and notice what clothes you naturally reach for in this season. Which items make you feel comfortable, true to yourself, or simply at ease, regardless of trends or others’ expectations? Let yourself wear something today that aligns with your real mood, not just your projected image. Sometimes, the first step toward authenticity is this small act of noticing and honoring what feels right for you.

Integrity may not look aspirational. It often departs from cultural ideals, signaling true self over polished image. It doesn’t always look polished or photograph well. Sometimes integrity looks like opting out of a performance you no longer wish to maintain, thus less legible to others.

I like getting dressed. I love beauty and aesthetics. But I no longer organize my life around managing perception. And maybe what some people call “letting yourself go” is actually returning to yourself.

A life with less performance. Less fear.

If that’s what letting go looks like, maybe it’s exactly what we need.

I’m Myleik. I advise and support people building lives and careers and trying to build deeper trust with themselves while they do it.

I write about what I’m learning and noticing in real time. If you’d like support in your own process, you can work with me 1:1 or join Bring Your Work, my live coaching community.

Every few months, the internet obsesses over someone new, and the discussion quickly shifts from their work to what associating with this figure represents socially. The conversation turns into a debate about picking sides and what your choice says about you.

What stands out to me in these cycles is that the focus isn’t on genuine action or change. What I don’t often hear is: “Here’s what I’m doing differently now.” What I see more often is people situating themselves inside the energy of it all: the ambition, the belonging, the identity of being “in the room.”

The gap between inspiration and action, excitement and follow-through, isn’t accidental.

I’ve been watching this pattern for years. People organize themselves around whoever seems to embody the life, confidence, freedom, visibility, or certainty they want for themselves. The ticket prices, formats, and faces change, but what draws people there often stays the same.

It’s usually not hunger, curiosity, or even a specific problem they need solved.

It’s a sense that something is missing. People start hoping that proximity to the right person, energy, or room will somehow give them access to what feels missing in themselves. Showing up begins to feel like progress — buying the book, attending the event, publicly aligning yourself with the conversation — all of it creates the feeling of movement without necessarily requiring change.

These aren’t really networking events, even if that’s what you’re hoping for. They’re gatherings, and what brings people together isn’t always hope or ambition — it’s a feeling of not being enough.

Wanting to be near people, rooms, or energy that represent something you want for yourself is not a weakness; it’s human. The issue is not our desire to belong; it’s what we’ve been taught belonging looks like. Somewhere along the way, many of us started confusing belonging with proximity to people who seem more certain, successful, visible, or fully realized than we feel inside ourselves.

If you no longer need the room to tell you who you are, your relationship to it changes. You might still go, learn, and be inspired, but you understand that growth is something you participate in, not something you absorb.

And honestly, I think this dynamic is especially seductive for intelligent people.

There’s always another method, expert, or group with answers you haven’t found. Thinking about these things feels like progress because it looks like effort. You take notes and meet people, and everyone still has to go home and face the thing that was waiting for them before they bought the ticket.

I know this because it’s literally the work I do. When I sit with someone long enough to get underneath what’s actually holding them back, it is rarely because they haven’t found the right strategy, room, book, or expert. It’s usually something more hidden and personal. Fear. Shame. Avoidance. Grief. Self-betrayal. The inability to tolerate uncertainty long enough to become the truest version of themselves.

That’s not something a conference or a gathering can reach, because these events are designed to make you feel like being there is the work.

This is how the cycle works:

You join a group → take part in a conversation → buy a book→ or pick a side that fits who you want to be.

You get a rush → someone inspires you → you feel validated → you feel like you belong.

That feeling is real, and the enthusiasm is genuine. You go home feeling energized.

The energy fades → the group isn’t with you anymore → the people you met aren’t close friends → the insights don’t add up → the gap stays or feels bigger, now that you’ve seen others further ahead → so you look for the next group, book, or version of that feeling.

The answer isn’t in the room, the book, or the conversation. It’s in the decisions you already know you need to make.

No amount of proximity can build self-trust for you. Only honest action can.

I’m Myleik. I coach, consult, and advise people who are building things and trying to build deeper trust with themselves while they do it. The work I do is exactly what this essay is about: getting underneath the thing that's actually in the way.

I write about what I’m seeing and learning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1 or join Bring Your Work, my live coaching community. Or stay here and keep reading.

Most people come to me because something feels off. Sometimes they can name it, but more often, they can’t. It’s elusive—never just one thing. Instead, it shows up as a constellation of symptoms: low energy, irritability, boredom, envy, overworking, and endless scrolling. And surfaces as:

• a constant sense of being behind

• feeling both restless and stuck at the same time

• overplanning, over-researching, but not deciding

• feeling like you’re performing your life instead of living it

• wanting recognition but resenting what you have to do to get it

​If you’ve listened to my podcast, you know I don’t play about this: check in with your life, and do it often. Ask yourself what you really want. Say it out loud, write it down, and then look at your actions—are they lining up with your desires? If you want love, claim it. If you want change, move toward it. [Episode 116: Streamlining Your Journey: How To Edit Your Life, 2017]

Most of us get tripped up on verbalizing what’s not working anymore. It’s being able to say, “This job isn’t it for me,” or “I’ve outgrown this relationship,” or “I’m doing too much at work, and my life is paying the price.” Sometimes it’s as simple as, “I just don’t care about what I used to want.”

A few years ago, I hired coaches at a pivotal moment in my business. If I were able to be honest at the time, I wanted to quit. The coaching was about helping me find new ways to fit a square peg into a round hole. I finished the program with a blueprint and support—then promptly quit. Sometimes alignment means walking away.

​When your life looks good on paper, telling the truth gets trickier. We want to hold onto the version of ourselves that gets applause, that opens doors, and makes people nod in approval. People get you when your story is neat and fits inside a box.

If you’re ready to question what you’ve always accepted, start by naming what feels off. Most people already know, they just haven’t said it out loud yet.

I’m Myleik. I coach, consult, and advise people who are building things—businesses, careers, creative work—and need help turning insight into action and decisions that hold. I write about what I’m seeing and learning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1 or join Bring Your Work, my live coaching community. Or stay here and keep reading.

The more I work with people one-on-one, the more I see a pattern: what I call “borrowing what you need to build.”

You know how it goes: you show up at all the right events, keep company with the movers and shakers, fill your journals with quotes and routines, and stack up book lists like trophies. It feels like progress, right? You get those “aha” moments, and for a second, it seems like everything is shifting.

But if you look closer, the change is often just on the surface.

You pick up the language from books—you can talk the talk.

Podcasts give you fresh perspectives (no shade, sometimes you need to hear it a different way). Conferences? They hype you up. There’s nothing like being in a room full of people who get it and who want what you want.

And being around the “it” folks, the influencers, the ones who seem to have it all together? It feels like you’re getting closer to the life you want.

All that proximity won’t build your capacity.

One of the biggest lies we’re sold is that success is something you build alone.

Like Dr. Lakeysha Hallmon says in “No One Is Self-Made,” that’s a lonely lie. Nothing real—no business, no career, no life worth living—gets built in isolation. Success is a community project, and trying to go it alone doesn’t make you strong; it makes the road longer and lonelier than it needs to be.

Here’s where we get tripped up: we start thinking support is just information.

Friction is when something pushes back—deadlines, expectations, that little bit of pressure that makes you stretch.

Reflection is about seeing yourself clearly. It’s getting help catching your patterns, your blind spots, those habits you keep repeating—so you can actually do something different.

Accountability is having someone who expects you to show up. It’s what turns “I should” into “I will because I said I would.”

Proximity is about being close—physically or socially—to people who are actually doing the work you want to do. Being around them raises your standards and nudges you from just admiring to actually changing how you show up.

So how do we stop borrowing and start building for real?

Here’s what you need:

1. Repetition
You’ve got to get your reps in. This is where most folks fall off. The minute things get hard or don’t go as planned, you want to move on. But you have to learn to stick with it, even when it’s uncomfortable.

2. Feedback
This one is tough—even for me. I have a handful of trusted people I go to and say, “Tell me what’s wrong with this. Tell me what I’m missing.” You can’t just look for compliments. You need people who will challenge you and help you see what you can’t see on your own.

3. Witness
This is the most slept-on. When someone is watching, you don’t want to keep showing up empty-handed or making the same excuses. You want to be in integrity with someone who sees you, and that can push you to keep going, even when change feels hard.

4. Constraint
Folks mix this up with discipline, but it’s really when your environment makes the call for you. It’s that deadline you can’t wiggle out of, a group counting on you, a commitment you can’t just skip.

If you don’t have these things yet, you can build them.

Here’s how:

• Join something where participation is required (not optional lurking)

• Pay for proximity that creates accountability, not just access

• Create a 2–3 person working group with a shared output (not just “support”)

• Put your work in a place where it will be responded to, not just liked

• Ask for specific feedback, not general opinions

You see the pattern, right?

You can’t just consume your way into becoming. You have to put yourself in rooms where growth is the only option.

So ask yourself: what’s the first step you’ll take to create the kind of environment where real change is required?

Don’t wait. Your next level is waiting on you.

I’m Myleik. I help people turn insight into action through my 1:1 work or Bring Your Work, my live coaching community.

I’ve noticed something about hard seasons: people start editing their lives down to the essentials, and fun is usually the first thing to go.

When times are hard, we will often attempt to punish ourselves even further, trying to prove to ourselves how disciplined we are this time around, or trying to show others that we’re responsible for our mistakes, and taking accountability.

It sounds like saying no to anything that isn’t productive, or narrowing your life down to only what is necessary. It’s removing anything that doesn’t directly move you forward, putting yourself on probation until things improve.

Most of these rules and edits? We made them up ourselves. We call it discipline, but really, it’s just another way to keep yourself stuck. The fuel you need for rebuilding often comes from simple joys: making a sick playlist and playing it loudly, a three-way call with friends to brainstorm how you can make it on the trip this summer, or taking the time to try to make that one dish you had and never stopped thinking about.

You don’t need to have it all together to enjoy your life. You can be in the thick of figuring things out and still make moments to laugh, connect, and be seen. I remember one holiday when life felt especially uncertain. Instead of waiting for things to get better, I threw myself a solo celebration: cooked my favorite meal, poured my favorite bubbles, lined up a marathon of documentaries, and opened the one gift I’d asked a friend for—a NARS lipstick in “Dragon Girl.” It was all the rage at the time and out of my budget. That tiny act of treating myself reminded me I had more agency than I thought. It reminded me that I could have moments of feeling alive, even when everything else was up in the air. That experience made it hard to keep believing there’s a “right” time to start living.

And I see that belief show up all the time, especially around dating: “I’ll date when I’m in a better place.”

But how long are you supposed to wait? How many times do we push the finish line out further? Connection isn’t a distraction from getting your life together. It’s often part of how you do it. Being seen, having someone to talk to, letting yourself show up as you are—those things don’t slow you down, they support you.

If you don’t know where to begin, start small. Send that text to someone who has a refreshing spirit. Say yes to coffee. Smile at someone new. Even if it feels awkward, those little moments of connection are how you remind yourself you don’t have to wait. Each step is a win, and each one opens your world a little wider.

If you still aren’t convinced, let me make the case for fun itself.

Fun is not the extra thing you sprinkle on top, after you’ve gotten “everything” done. It’s the secret ingredient that helps us get through the rough patches. Too often, we forget that joy is what steadies us when everything feels shaky. When we’re rebuilding, and money is tight, our career is in limbo, or maybe our heart is a little bruised, we start to believe the good stuff has to wait its turn.

“ Fun is something you can do. It doesn’t require education, money, or power. All it requires is intentionality. If happiness is a mirage, fun is your backyard oasis.” – Dr. Mark Rucker

Fun is medicine for your spirit, and real fun is something you choose, whether you’re reading, dancing in your living room, picking up a new hobby, or just connecting with someone who gets you. It’s the thing that reminds you who you are underneath all the stress, and it gives you the push you need to keep going.

Don’t wait for everything to line up to let some fun in. Progress and joy can live in the same house. You can send out job applications in the morning and still laugh with your people at dinner. Fun isn’t separate from the work; it’s part of what gets you through.

Remember: rebuilding isn’t a straight line. There will be setbacks and slow days, and you get to choose joy and connection, even in the mess. Start today: give yourself a little fun, and do something that makes you smile. Fun, laughter, and being seen are what hold the hard parts together. Let joy and connection be the foundation you build on, right now.

Affiliate links above. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission.

I’m Myleik. I coach, consult, and advise people who are building things—businesses, careers, creative work—and need help turning insight into action and making decisions that stick! I write about what I’m seeing and learning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1 or join Bring Your Work, my live coaching community. Or stay here and keep reading.

“A loving mother gives a person a kind of confidence to exist.”

I read that line in The Wedding People and felt it viscerally because I know exactly what that “kind” of confidence is, because I didn’t always have it. Being mothered well shapes not only your relationships and capacity for love, but also your confidence in your own thoughts and your willingness to share them. This early influence determines if you grow up feeling there is a place for you in the world. Do you believe your perspective matters? Did you learn to speak up, or do you silence yourself before your words even form?

A few more lines follow: “Having a mother helps you believe that everybody wants to hear every little thing you think.”

“Having a mother helps you speak without thinking. It allows you to trust in your most awful self …”

Together, these lines point to a deeper truth: feeling safe enough to risk showing your rawest fears and deepest flaws. Trusting that even the parts of you that feel tangled or unworthy will still be met with acceptance. That kind of safety is rare. It’s a freedom to be your truest self without fear of judgment or loss.

I rarely write about motherhood or parenting here, mostly because so much of the experience feels pending. As soon as you name something, it changes. As soon as you think you know, you don’t. I usually keep these reflections within my Myleik + Mommas community, a private space with people who are in it, too. But if you’ll humor me for a moment, I want to talk about something I’ve been noticing as the mother of a daughter.

When the nurse called to say I was having a girl, I cried quietly at a picnic table at Star Provisions over lunch. Even before she spoke, I sensed what she would say, knowing how sick I’d been—so unlike my pregnancy with my son. My tears weren’t from surprise, but from the confirmation of the weight and tenderness of the opportunity ahead. Now, I had the chance to love a daughter as I believed daughters should be loved, in a way I wasn’t.

Saying that out loud still gives me pause—it sounds presumptuous. How could I know what my daughter needs? Every child is different; every relationship is its own ecosystem. Still, I knew, because I saw the difference in myself and in women mothered with steadiness and care, not enmeshment or control posing as closeness. Mothers who quietly and persistently tried to get it right inspired me.

Kelly McDaniel, author of Mother Hunger, says mothering requires three essential elements: nurturance, protection, and guidance. Protection that creates physical and emotional safety. Nurturance that leaves a child feeling wanted and responded to. Guidance that helps them understand their emotions and locate themselves in relationship to others.

McDaniel says:

If there were a job description for motherhood, it might look something like this:

Ideal candidate must be a self-starter, able to comfort and bond with a new, vulnerable human by holding, feeding, and responding to nonverbal cues. Responsibilities include protecting this human from external threats and actively engaging in their academic, spiritual, and social development. Candidate needs equal parts tenderness and strength, grace under pressure, and healthy boundaries. This job is unpaid.

The job description assumes you were taught how to do it, and that these instincts were modeled for you, over and over, until they felt natural.

My mother had my brother at nineteen and me at twenty-three. As a young mother, still developing, she carried more responsibility than she had support for. She loved me deeply, but I’ve learned there are forms of care you can only give when you’ve received them yourself.

When I think about what was missing, the first thing I feel is longing. Every time I reached out for love, a hug, or a touch, I just wanted to be accepted, not pushed away. Now I see how exhausting it is to keep reaching and not be met. This hits me most when I remember the last day of our senior retreat in Big Bear. Everyone opened letters from their parents, and the room filled with tears and hugs. When I opened my letter and saw it wasn’t my mother’s handwriting, I felt a wave of disappointment. I felt exposed and alone while everyone else shared something real, and I was left with something that felt empty. Sadness and shame settled in my chest as I realized how isolated I felt. The school pastor had spoken to my mother by phone and wrote the letter on her behalf. The words felt distant and impersonal. My mother couldn’t open up enough to share real feelings, especially not with a stranger.

She’s gone now, and that finality settles heavily. There are no more conversations, no more chances for clarification or repair. I am alone with my understanding and the challenge of holding the truth gently enough that it doesn’t harden into blame. In her absence, I turn to what I can shape now.

My daughter is still so young, but already, I see what good mothering can foster.

She moves with a confidence I never had—then or now. Seeing her easy openness with friends highlights the unfamiliar ache of my own guardedness. She asks for help without apology, and recovers quickly when things don’t go her way. Not preoccupied with proving her place, she simply assumes it and expects the same in return. Watching her, I move from longing to witnessing the power of being truly seen and valued, a gift I yearned for and now strive to give.

Watching her stirs awe in me, and sometimes, grief, because I am witnessing, in real time, what can flourish when someone doesn’t have to fight to belong.

Watching her has changed how I see myself. What we call independence is often adaptation. What we call resilience can be born from necessity. Many personality traits reflect environments that required them, not our true selves, but who we learned to be to stay safe and connected.

Watching my daughter orients me toward what was missing, but also what is possible, and what ends with me. I am both the ending and the beginning. In her, I see not only what I lacked, but all I have chosen to give.

The books are affiliate links, which means I earn a very small amount if you purchase through them.

I’m Myleik. I coach, consult, and advise people who are building things—businesses, careers, creative work—and need help turning insight into action and decisions that hold. I write about what I’m seeing and learning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1 or join Bring Your Work, my live coaching community. Or stay here and keep reading.

We’ve gotten very good at gathering information and very bad at doing anything with it.

We now live in an era of unprecedented access to information. Every day you can get a short, digestible burst of info: a podcast, a reel, a thread. Many of us have built entire personal archives of knowledge: folders filled with screenshots, highlighted passages, and bookmarked frameworks we intend to revisit.

We can reference something we heard or read at a moment’s notice. We got it! The language and the concepts. And yet, if anyone really looked, the gap would be obvious.

The work is often not done.

The photoshoot is complete, but the work is not.
The website is live, but the work is not.

We have gotten really good at creating the appearance of progress without the substance. Collecting things — watching TED Talks, reading the highest-rated business book, listening to podcast interviews with those who’ve “made” it — feels remarkably similar to moving forward. These actions create proximity to change without requiring the discomfort of it. You get to sound informed and aligned without having to make any of the decisions necessary to test whether that alignment is even real.

It looks like this:

Being able to explain your attachment style in detail and name other people’s patterns, while still avoiding any honest conversations that would actually shift your relationships.

Reading every book on boundaries, quoting them cleanly, and still saying yes when you mean no because you haven’t practiced tolerating the discomfort that comes after.

Investing in the branding, the photos, the website, the copy — and still not being able to sell it because nothing underneath has been tested or lived enough to carry real conviction.

Listening to hours of content on money, wealth, and expansion, but not having opened your accounts, raised your rates, or made a single decision that reflects what you say you believe about your value.

You can hear it when someone uses the right words — healing, doing the work, holding space, ease, expansion — but their life doesn’t reflect any of it.

I see this often. It looks like constant preparation: signing up for another program, saving another framework, revisiting the same idea from a different voice, hoping it will finally click. But nothing needs to click. What’s missing is a decision.

Converting looks different:

• It means making the decisions you already know you need to make.

• It exposes you in a way collecting does not. You have to try in public and get it wrong.

• It requires saying what you’re sharing isn’t fully formed (which, inconveniently, is true for most things).

• It has no certainty.

• It shows you where you are, not your potential.

And all of this is uncomfortable.

When people see that discomfort coming, they do what makes sense: they keep gathering. New ideas become a reason to postpone living the old ones. And this is the stagnation I see every day — hard to name because it’s masked by constant intellectual activity that keeps you active in your head but not in your life.

There’s a difference between discernment and delay. And you know which one you’re in.

A more useful question is not what else you need to learn, but what you’ve already learned that you are not yet living. And before you give yourself a beautiful, abstract answer that could double as a quote on a yoga studio wall, be honest. Not “I need better boundaries.” What is the actual conversation you haven’t had? The actual number you haven’t charged? The actual account you haven’t opened?

A gentle reminder: The internet sells reassurance, not transformation.

Reassurance says: here’s the plan, do this, you’ll get that, you’ll feel better quickly.

Transformation says: tell the truth, make the decision, act without full clarity, and accept that you may feel worse before you feel better.

Most people say they want transformation. Very few are willing to tolerate what it requires.

You already know enough. The question is whether you’re willing to move on it.

I’m Myleik. I coach, consult, and advise people who are building things—businesses, careers, creative work—and need help turning insight into action and decisions that hold. I write about what I’m seeing and learning in real time. If you’re ready to do the work, you can work with me 1:1 or join Bring Your Work, my live coaching community. Or stay here and keep reading.

I’m the person you can share your dreams with, and I will listen diligently and with enthusiasm. Now, where might I annoy you? If you’re in year one or two, talking about quitting because “it’s not working.” I’ll probably say, “What do you mean it’s not working? You’re in year one.”

I have a rule I live by that I want to share with you: my three-year rule. (Innovative name, I know.)

Year 1 → Discovery
Year 2 → Actual Start
Year 3 → Takeoff (or at least traction)

I don’t care how much time you spent on the logo or website; year one is still discovery.

Year One: Discovery (a.k.a. “It Didn’t Blow Up Immediately?!”)

Year one is discovery. You don’t know what you’re building yet, even if you think you do.

I had a stroke of luck when I launched CURLBOX, but the business still changed completely in the first year. Initially, it was supposed to be sample sizes, then we transitioned to full sizes. I thought it would serve a few hundred customers as a side hustle, but we kept doubling until it became a full-time thing. Even with early traction, I was still figuring out what this actually was.

You’re learning what works and what doesn’t. You’re building your taste and skills, so doubt and comparison are normal. Sit next to me so I can say this to you: It feels hard, messy, and impossible because you’re doing it right.

Year Two: The Actual Start (a.k.a. “Oh… This Is Work”)

This is the year you know yourself better, so you’re no longer just dabbling. You’re telling people you’re doing “it” in a way that says you’re serious. The fantasy phase and new energy have worn off, and you’re starting to see this as a real thing. You’re more disciplined now, and showing up when there are fewer dopamine hits. You’re having more friction, but you’re also starting to see some small wins.

This is where most people drop out. The novelty has worn off, and it’s still not as rewarding as they hoped. Stay with it. This is the first year when everything really starts to count.

Year Three: Takeoff (a.k.a. “People Think You’re Lucky”)

This is when everything finally starts clicking together. You know your stuff. You really know what doesn’t work. Things are getting steady. There’s some money coming in, you’re clearer about what you actually do, and it’s easier. So. much. easier. You’ve made so many bad decisions that you’re making good ones now. Hi, experience!

You've built real trust with yourself and with others. People see that you stuck with it. There's absolutely no magic here. You're just no longer a beginner.

Let me switch gears for a second.

Because I operate by this rule, I usually have a few things going on at once. I look at my career like a stovetop with four pots going at all times. The one roaring the hottest is my bread and butter (whatever is bringing in the most income). The other three are simmering at different levels because I know they'll all need time to get good. When my hottest pot (bread and butter) goes dry (because every good thing ends), I've got three other things to choose from, ready to take its place.

I'm Myleik. I coach people who are building things—businesses, careers, creative projects—and need someone to help them stay in the game long enough to get good at it. I write here about what I'm seeing and learning. You can work with me 1:1, join my group coaching community, Bring Your Work, or just keep reading.

This essay explains why being busy doesn’t always mean you’re moving.

Bring Your Work

When I was really trying to make it in the world, one of my mottos was simple: eliminate distractions.

I didn’t mean this in a cut-yourself-off-from-life kind of way. I meant it in the sense that if something wasn’t helping me move forward, it had to go. That mindset served me well, and honestly, I still believe in it.

If you’re in a season of life where you’re trying to build and build quickly, you might want to stay with me here.

I got the idea to write this because someone recently asked me in a Q&A how I allocate expenses for trips to places like Mexico City. I understand why the question was asked. I didn’t answer it in the moment because every version I tried to come up with felt arrogant.

So here’s the most honest answer I can give.

I ran it up. I lived just below my means. I don’t budget trips line by line because I built enough margin over time that I’m not living month to month. Hear me clearly: I still have to earn (because kids), but there’s room. That room came from earlier seasons of restraint. That’s it.

When I think about how I got here, I keep coming back to how seriously I took eliminating distractions. It’s not a lifetime strategy. You do need to live your life. But it absolutely can put you in the fast lane for a while.

But here’s what I’m noticing now: distractions are much harder to spot. They don’t look like wasted time anymore. They don’t look like binge-watching Netflix or endless scrolling. They look like being responsible.

They look like:

• taking another course

• reading another book

• screenshotting quotes

• studying other people

• productivity tools that don’t actually produce anything

• waking up at 5 a.m. with no real plan, just because “successful people do”

• green smoothies, matcha, HIIT classes, cold plunges

None of these things are bad. Most of them can be helpful. But leaning too heavily on things that don’t create much friction can feel like progress without much risk.

That’s why they’re seductive. They calm the nervous system and give the ego a receipt.

Work With Me

I know this because there was a time I assumed everyone knew more than I did.
I never went to school for marketing, creative direction, or events, but I had ideas. I didn’t have the titles, but I had the instincts.

Instead of trusting that, I kept outsourcing my confidence. I hired people to confirm what I already knew. I kept asking for permission when what I really needed was practice.

I see this pattern everywhere now.
When we don’t trust ourselves yet, we reach for proof.

That’s why we love Duolingo streaks. Closing our rings on the Apple Watch. Step counts. Habit trackers lighting up green. Certificates. Being seen as “disciplined” or “consistent.” Posting the routine without the result. Staying busy enough to avoid being questioned.

So here I am, knocking on your door, holding a sign that says this:

The work. The real work you’re avoiding doesn’t always come with receipts.

Sometimes the only proof is that you did the thing you were avoiding.

You sent the email.
You made the call.
You named where you’re underdeveloped and did something about it.
You said the hard thing and stayed.
You let it be bad until it got better.

When I’m not sure whether something is real work or a disguised distraction, I run it through a simple test. Feel free to use it.

Does this require me to:

• decide instead of gathering more information?

• be seen before I feel ready?

• risk being misunderstood or getting it wrong?

• give something up to make room for it?

• tolerate discomfort without immediately soothing it?

If the answer is yes, it’s probably real work. Let’s go!

If you want to go deeper on this, I talk about it more in my latest podcast episode:
233: Why You’re Still Stuck (And How to Move)

If this resonated, Bring Your Work is where we practice it.
It’s my monthly coaching community for people who want more forward motion and less performative productivity.

Years ago, I used to quote Jedi Master Yoda: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

It worked for me then. Like many phrases that land at the right moment, I carried it forward as if it were a rule. Not something I said once, but something I lived by.

What I’ve since learned is how easily we organize our lives around language we didn’t create and that we no longer question. Quotes, sayings, song lyrics. Words that once motivated us begin to harden into expectations we never intended to keep.

So, in the spirit of updating our language and allowing ourselves to be flexible with our words, I want to offer something different this time.

Try.

Back when I used to say that quote, try felt weak. It sounded like uncertainty, and like I wasn’t fully behind the thing I was doing.

I believed that if I was going to do something, I needed to bring total conviction with me. Confidence and clarity first. Anything less felt irresponsible.

In that framework, trying felt like failure in advance. And if certainty was the standard, it made more sense not to begin at all.

“Do or do not” worked in a season when execution mattered more than exploration. It rewarded decisiveness and left no room for hesitation.

Here’s the problem with skipping try: you don’t just skip failure. You skip information, learning, and the small, clarifying experiences that tell you what fits and what doesn’t.

Work With Me

Without try in your vocabulary, everything becomes a test of worth. Every choice has to be right. Every step has to mean something. And under that weight, nothing moves.

When you don’t try, you don’t fail.

You stay in planning. In fantasizing. In comparison. You watch other people test things you’ve been thinking about for years, not because they’re braver, but because they were willing to be seen trying.

Something that surprised me this year was how often people describe themselves as inconsistent or say they aren’t living up to their potential. When I ask what they mean, they usually say the same thing: they started something and then stopped.

Sometimes they stopped because it wasn’t actually the thing they wanted, or because they weren’t good at it. Sometimes they stopped because in the process of trying, they discovered something else they wanted more.

None of those are character flaws.

Trying is how you learn what’s for you and what isn’t. It’s how you find out what you’re good at. It’s how you build self-trust without demanding certainty upfront.

You don’t need a master plan, a framework, or a strategy. You need to try and let what’s next meet you there.

About Me

I’m Myleik Teele, an entrepreneur, coach, and community builder. Over the past decade, I built, scaled, and eventually closed CURLBOX, creating a blueprint for modern brand-building and cultivating thriving communities both online and in real life. Today, my work is centered on helping people lead lives and careers that feel like theirs again.

I coach people who want to grow without losing themselves in the process. My approach blends clarity, strategy, and the kind of honesty that actually moves you forward. I also host the online community Myleik + Mommas, with a range of in-person events, workshops, and retreats that bring this work to life.

If you’re ready to grow and build a life that feels aligned from the inside out, you’re in the right place. You can also find me on Instagram, Threads, and on my podcast, where I dive into life, business, and everything in between.

I’m starting to notice something in my work.

People tell me they feel stuck, burned out, or afraid. They say they know what’s next for them, but can’t seem to take the step, and they’ve already diagnosed the problem: fear of success, fear of failure, impostor syndrome, lack of clarity, overwhelm, not enough time, not enough money, not enough confidence.

They’re not lacking self-awareness.

But when we slow down and actually look at what they’re reaching for, the issue isn’t what they think it is. The idea isn’t too big. That’s the version we like. It’s too small.

Most of the “next steps” look the same right now. Sell a course. Build an audience. Start a Substack. Launch a YouTube channel. None of these are inherently bad ideas. But I don’t think people are stuck because they can’t execute them. I think they’re stuck because these dreams don’t ask enough of them to create any real momentum.

A dream that stretches you doesn’t slot neatly into your existing life. It rearranges it, asking for new skills, sharper boundaries, and a level of self-trust that can’t be outsourced. It forces you to confront how much of your life is organized around staying safe rather than being intentional.

I understand the appeal of smaller dreams. They let you do something different without becoming someone different. You can change the activity and keep the identity. People don’t have to update how they see you. No one is confused. No one is disappointed. And you don’t have to outgrow the version of yourself that only knows how to survive.

Most people don’t realize they’re choosing this.

Many of us haven’t been close to real examples of expansion. We haven’t watched someone we know intimately let their life get bigger in a way that required them to change. We’ve seen versions of it online. Without that kind of proximity, we aim for what feels reasonable and then wonder why it still feels flat.

This is where people start calling it a clarity problem, and where I tend to enter the picture.

What I see instead is numbness. A lack of aliveness that gets mislabeled as confusion. So people look for a better plan, a clearer strategy, another round of thinking it through, when what they actually need is a vision that would require them to become someone new.

You want to know what gets overlooked?

Excitement.

We treat excitement like it’s unserious, something to grow out of. But excitement is often the first honest signal that something in you wants more room. If you’ve trained yourself to prioritize stability, that feeling can register as destabilizing. So you manage it, explain it away, or wait for it to settle. Eventually, it does—by disappearing.

What happens next isn’t surprising. You make a plan that lets your life stay mostly the same. And because it doesn’t require much of you, the dream doesn’t pull you forward. It just lives in your head, waiting for you to feel different first.

Feeling stuck is often a sign that the life you’re living has outgrown the size of your vision.

I’ve felt that moment myself.

When I decided to launch an online subscription business for haircare products, close friends were quick to point out how hard it would be. They weren’t wrong. It was hard. I didn’t need a 22-page business brief. I needed one clear step. Customers first. Products second. I started with a signup page to test demand. Over a thousand people signed up in the first hour, and then I contacted the brands. That was enough to keep going.

I was stretched and excited. I hadn’t seen anyone do exactly what I was doing, but sampling wasn’t new, so there was enough of a trail to follow. And that’s the part people miss. You don’t need certainty. You just need just enough signal to move.

Say the thing you actually want out loud, even if it sounds unrealistic—especially if it does. Stop aiming for the dreams you see circulating everywhere. We can’t all want the same life.

What would it take to let yourself go beyond what currently feels reasonable?

About Me

I’m Myleik Teele, an entrepreneur, coach, and community builder. Over the past decade, I built, scaled, and eventually closed CURLBOX, creating a blueprint for modern brand-building and cultivating thriving communities both online and in real life. Today, my work is centered on helping people lead lives and careers that feel like theirs again.

I coach high-level leaders, founders, creatives, and people in transition who want to grow without losing themselves in the process. My approach blends clarity, strategy, and the kind of honesty that actually moves you forward. I also host the online community Myleik + Mommas, with a range of in-person events, workshops, and retreats that bring this work to life.

If you’re ready to grow and build a life that feels aligned from the inside out, you’re in the right place. You can also find me on Instagram, Threads, and on my podcast, where I dive into life, business, and everything in between.