The Best You Bulletin (August 2026)

Dear Friends,

Does anyone else feel like late August is the Sunday night of the calendar year?

Summer isn’t quite over (or winter, for my friends in the Southern Hemisphere). But the final stretch of the year is coming into view—and with it, the meetings, deadlines, travel, school schedules, year-end goals, and all the other things we promised ourselves we’d accomplish before December 31.

This can trigger familiar instincts: It’s time to get serious. Time to get organized. Time to get ahead. But before we start piling more onto our plates, maybe the smartest thing we can do is decide what deserves our energy, what can wait, and what we can finally let go.

I don’t just mean what’s on our calendars or to-do lists. I mean everything taking up space in our heads: the email we still need to send, the problem we haven’t solved, the decision we haven’t made, the project we keep meaning to start.

Because even when we’re not working on them, our brains keep quietly whispering: Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.

If this sounds familiar, there’s a reason. As I recently explained in Parade, unfinished tasks have a pesky tendency to linger in our minds, triggering intrusive thoughts and making it harder to focus.

Achievement-oriented people are great at keeping a lot of balls in the air—staying vigilant, anticipating problems, thinking three steps ahead. It’s part of what makes us good at our jobs and good at running our lives. Psychologically, though, that vigilance can leave us carrying dozens of things that don’t actually require our attention right now.

But here’s the good news: we don’t actually have to finish an unfinished task to quiet our brains. The science shows that simply making a specific plan for when and how to pick it back up can be enough to let it go for now. Our brains don’t need everything to be finished; they just need to know nothing will get lost.

So what does this look like in real life? I’ve recently started a daily “shutdown ritual” at the end of most workdays. First, I close out today’s loops: I scan my meetings and notes and capture any action items in Microsoft To Do. Second, I look at tomorrow: What’s one action I can take to advance one of my most important goals? I capture that too.

Once all of my “open tabs” have a home (and I know what I’m coming back to), I close the 47 browser tabs, 12 applications, and three documents I’ve inexplicably kept open since Tuesday. The relief is almost embarrassingly immediate.

But heading into one of the year's busiest stretches, I’ve been thinking: September is about to ask a lot of us. And a new season doesn’t give us a clean slate if we arrive carrying a summer’s worth of unfinished business.

So if clearing our mental decks helps us face tomorrow, what could the same practice do for the four-month marathon ahead? I’m going to find out, and I invite you to join me. Sometime before August 31st, set aside 15 minutes for a “Seasonal Shutdown.”

That’s it: DO means double down. PARK means shut it down for now. CLOSE means shut it down for good.

So often, the power of DO is crystal clear. What’s easier to miss is how much focus we lose by keeping everything else mentally open. PARK and CLOSE let us put a few things down—turning up the signal on what matters most so we can pursue it with more energy and joy along the way.

Psychologist William James once observed, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” And maybe that’s the best reason for a Seasonal Shutdown. What we focus on doesn’t just shape what we accomplish; it shapes how we experience our lives.

So let yourself close a few tabs to turn up the signal on what truly matters. The next four months are worth more than our leftover attention.

~Tasha

P.S. If you’ve found Shatterproof useful, I’d be deeply grateful for an Amazon review. Reviews help new readers find the book. (For context, Insight has a respectable 1,164 Amazon reviews, but Shatterproof has a mere 111!) If you’ve been meaning to leave one, I hereby nominate it for your DO column and send you all the world’s best karma. 😉

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📚 This Month’s Book Club Pick: Calling All Leaders! 📚

Leadership Intelligence by Caroline Webb

I’ve known Caroline Webb for years, and I don’t say the following lightly: she’s a rare thinker who can take rigorous behavioral science and turn it into advice you can actually use on a Tuesday morning.

Her new book, Leadership Intelligence, might be her most useful work yet. Drawing on three decades of advising senior leaders, Caroline tackles 21 of the situations that make leadership hard in real life—from making tough tradeoffs and giving feedback to navigating conflict, strengthening collaboration, and leading through uncertainty. And rather than offering lofty leadership principles, she gives you practical, science-backed tools you can pull out when you actually need them.

If you lead people—or want to someday—I highly recommend pre-ordering this one. Leadership Intelligence publishes September 8, and there’s a good reason: order by 11:59 p.m. ET on September 9, and you can claim two bonuses—a live webinar with the one and only Caroline and an exclusive preview PDF.

Pre-Order the Book

Claim Your Bonuses

Below: Caroline and me celebrating the launch of Shatterproof back in 2025.

Congrats, dear friend, on YOUR latest masterpiece!

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The Best You Bulletin (June 2026)

Dear friends,

This month's newsletter is arriving a little later than usual. June turned out very differently than I'd planned, and I simply didn't have it in me to write the issue I'd envisioned. But as we wrapped up our selection process for the new cohort of the Tasha Ten, I realized there was something I'd much rather focus on: hope.

If you’re new here…Years ago, my mentor and honorary dad, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, invited me to join his 100 Coaches initiative, where he brought together leaders from around the world—and taught our community everything he knew for free. The only thing he asked in return was that, someday, we'd do the same. In 2021, I launched the Tasha Ten as my own way of keeping that promise—the first of Marshall’s 100 Coaches to start their own pay-it-forward community. (You can read more about the project here.)

After a few years without adding new members, we wanted to get this cohort right. Four current Tasha Ten members joined me on the selection committee as we searched for four women leaders from around the world who are uniquely advancing human-centered leadership.

We planned to welcome four new members. Instead, we are welcoming six—and wish we had room for more. Together, they call six corners of the world home, speak more than a dozen languages, and are tackling some of the world's most important human challenges.

But it wasn’t until I wrote the email introducing everyone that I noticed something fascinating: every new member, in her own way, is working to advance wellness.

Not wellness in the narrow sense, but wellness in the broadest human sense. Together, they're transforming healthcare, strengthening humanitarian organizations, redesigning work to prevent burnout, redefining women’s health, helping women lead without leaving themselves behind, and teaching leaders to communicate with confidence and authenticity.

Reading every application left me with the same conviction: there are far more people quietly building a more human, more sustainable future than the headlines would ever have us believe.

To everyone who applied, thank you. You reminded us why this community exists in the first place. And with that, I’m delighted to introduce the 2026 Tasha Ten Women of the World cohort (below).

Look for another message in a few weeks when I get caught back up—and back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Here’s to paying it forward,

~Tasha

PS: Can I ask a quick favor beofre you scroll? If you’ve had a chance to read Shatterproof, and it’s meant something to you, can you leave a quick review? It takes just a few minutes and genuinely helps more people find the book in our very noisy world. I’m grateful for your support!

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Meet The Tasha Ten “Women of the World”

You can read more about each member here.

GRACE De CASTRO-BUNDE

Leadership Identity Guide

Metro Manila, Philippines

Grace De Castro-Bunde believes the best leaders don’t compartmentalize their humanity—they lead through it. For nearly three decades, she has helped leaders navigate growth, change, and the complexities of being human at work. Her career spans corporate HR, entrepreneurship, and executive coaching, including leadership roles at Nestlé and Globe Telecom. Today, Grace is especially passionate about helping women chart their leadership path while carrying the invisible load that rarely makes it onto a résumé: caregiving, parenting, identity shifts, and, yes, the reality of functioning when hormones start behaving like unsupervised interns.

Grace believes “human resources” got the order right: the human comes before the resources. She’s also a card-carrying member of the BTS Army—because there should always be room for joy, whimsy, and a little well-placed fangirling.

KRIS LONSWAY

Healthcare Culture Architect

Illinois, USA

Dr. Kris Lonsway is an organizational psychologist, speaker, and nonprofit founder transforming healthcare from the ground up. As CEO of The Lonsway Group and founder of OptWell, she helps create healthier cultures for patients, providers, and communities throughout the Chicago area. A former head of human resources and organizational effectiveness who also held leadership roles at Accenture and ABN AMRO, Kris combines evidence-based insights with practical tools to help leaders navigate change, develop talent, strengthen culture, and build thriving teams.

Inspired by her family’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease—and her own genetic risk—Kris is also a passionate brain health advocate, translating emerging science into hope and action through community partnerships, public education, and her forthcoming documentary.

MASI NJAWAYA

Performance Medicine Pioneer

New South Wales, Australia

Born in Zimbabwe and now based in Sydney, Australia, Dr. Masi Njawaya is a Sports, Exercise, and Lifestyle Medicine Physician whose work challenges one of our most deeply held beliefs: that success must come at the expense of health, relationships, and well-being. Working with everyone from everyday women to elite athletes and professional sporting organizations, she advocates for a more human-centered approach to sustainable performance, an approach shaped by her experience living and working in both Zimbabwe and Australia.

Today, Masi’s work sits at the intersection of health, leadership, wellbeing, and sustainable performance. She advocates for a more human-centred approach to success, one that recognizes that healthier people make better leaders, partners, parents, and contributors to society. At the heart of her work is a simple truth: when women are well, families are stronger, workplaces function better, communities thrive, and future generations benefit.

MEGHAN AUDETTE

Social Impact Strategist

Essex, VT, Unceded land of the Abenaki people

Across leadership roles at ChildFund International, Tetra Tech, UNRWA, and other global nonprofits, Meghan “Meg” Audette has overseen multimillion-dollar portfolios, led diverse teams, and guided organizations through complexity—helping them strengthen governance, build resilient systems, and create lasting impact in high-stakes environments. Meg’s work is rooted in peacebuilding, community building, and honoring stories of resilience and humanity. As an Indigenous woman, Meg understands leadership as service, reciprocity, and intergenerational learning. That identity is central to how she builds trust, shares power, and creates space for others to lead.

Whether advising executives, strengthening organizations, or, for the past 30 years, moonlighting as Buttercup the Clown to bring joy and comfort to children facing extraordinary circumstances around the world, Meg's work is guided by a simple belief: lasting impact begins with human connection.

MYLENA MAULEPES

Sustainable Work Designer

Santa Catarina, Brazil

Mylena Maulepes is an engineer with a Master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and a leadership educator dedicated to proving that human flourishing and business performance are not competing goals. Her career has been shaped by a persistent question: Why, despite growing investments in workplace well-being, are burnout and work-related mental health challenges still rising?

Rather than treating burnout as an individual resilience problem, Mylena helps organizations redesign the conditions of work that create it—identifying psychosocial risks before they compromise people’s well-being and sustainable performance. Based in Brazil and working globally, she is also embracing one of the most meaningful leadership experiences of her life: being a new mom while helping build a future where people and organizations prosper together.

RASHMI SHETTY

Authentic Voice Coach

Karnataka, India

Rashmi Shetty helps C-suite executives and global change-makers align their inner truth with their outer voice. By moving leaders beyond mere performance, she helps them own the room through grounded authority, deliberate silence, and intentional presence. Her mastery of this work is rooted in a highly decorated decade-long career in broadcasting, where she earned national recognition for radio scripting and international acclaim for documentary narration.

Today, Rashmi serves on the International Coaching Federation Global Board after being elected Chair of the ICF Foundation Board in 2025. Recognized by the Women Economic Forum as an “Iconic Woman Creating a Better World for All,” she frequently draws leadership insights from the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and the intentional design found in nature.

Read More About Our New Cohort Here

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The Best You Bulletin (May 2026)

Learn More About The Tasha Ten

Dear friends,

There’s a specific type of praise that high achievers tend to love:

You’re so easy to work with. Really low-maintenance. You handle everything without becoming one more thing for everyone else to deal with.

In a world of friction, this ease feels like real strength. At work, you’re the one given the impossible deadline because you won’t make things more complicated. With friends, you’re flexible, steady, and “fine with whatever.” As a romantic partner, you’re understanding, adaptable, and endlessly “no drama.”

Repeated over time, being “easy” can be more than a personality trait. For many high achievers, it becomes a highly-rewarded survival strategy. When other people see you as emotionally low-maintenance, you become the person they trust, rely on, promote, include, and keep close. That’s what makes this strategy so intoxicating: when it’s working, it stops feeling like people-pleasing and starts feeling like success.

But there’s a catch: the longer we stick to “easy,” the more we disappear into the version of ourselves everyone seems to prefer. Our value starts feeling bound up with how much we absorb, manage, or smooth over for other people. After enough practice, we forget to ask, What do I actually want, need, feel, or deserve here?

At some point, being “easy” morphs into a requirement. If we start being less accommodating, less frictionless, less endlessly understanding, we risk being labeled as “too much”: too difficult, too needy, too exhausting. The person people quietly resent, replace, or stop choosing.

That’s often the deeper fear—not just that being “easy” earns approval, but that it’s tied up with how we have earned love, belonging, protection, and being chosen in the first place.

That’s why the costs run deeper than overwork or resentment. Being “easy” asks us to override three fundamental human needs: choice, connection, and confidence (or, as we call them in Shatterproof, Three-to-Thrive Needs).

1. Confidence cracks. What looks like competence on the outside is often being held together by constant self-monitoring, over-functioning, and the effort not to be a problem. Best case, we keep up the ruse; worst case, something finally gives.

2. Choice erodes. The more your preferences weaken, and your needs start to feel inconvenient, the easier it gets to lose yourself—and the harder it is to notice you wanted something different in the first place.

3. Connection thins. When you’re “easy,” people know your steadiness, competence, and responsiveness, but not your lived reality. The cruel irony is that withholding the “hard” parts of ourselves quietly blocks the very thing we want most: to be fully known and supported.

Research reveals that real connection is about more than being liked, included, or depended on. It requires mutuality—relationships where both people can be vulnerable, both people’s needs matter, and care flows both ways.

That’s the trap for “easy people.” In working so hard to stay helpful, agreeable, and undemanding, we can create relationships that run smoothly while skipping the mutual disclosure and reciprocity real closeness requires.

People may rely on you constantly and still have no idea what anything is costing you. Your relationships can look warm and high-functioning while still being organized around your self-suppression. You can be someone’s safest place to put stress and still feel profoundly alone.

Here’s what I know: you do not exist to make everyone else’s life easier. The biggest mistake “easy people” make is treating every inconvenience, unmet expectation, or flicker of disappointment from others with equal weight. You awkwardly tell the server your order is wrong. A coworker has to wait for a reply. A friend has to try a new restaurant. A date hears, “Actually, I’d rather not.” A family member hears a boundary.

But these moments don’t all require the same response. Sometimes the healthy move is simply to let a low-stakes person be mildly inconvenienced. Other times, the deeper move is to let a high-stakes person confront a truth about you that they may not prefer. The real discipline is learning the difference.

Over the last seven years, I’ve learned this lesson in one of the most infuriating ways possible. No matter how implausibly “easy” you were to begin with, chronic illness and disability have a way of stripping you of the luxury of being “easy.” At one point, in the middle of the pandemic, after learning I was significantly immunocompromised, I started making very simple asks of friends and family before seeing them: would they meet outdoors, take a COVID test, or wear a mask? These were small inconveniences for them. For me, they materially lowered the real risk that getting infected would kill me.

And yet, about half the time, the text thread would just end. Often with the people I least expected.

It was painful. It was also clarifying in a way I would never have chosen, but ultimately needed. It showed me that some people had only ever known how to love the version of me that existed for them: endless funny stories, easy company, catering to their needs. The moment I needed something real, they disappeared—and in doing so, revealed who could actually show up for me and was only there when I was “easy.”

A friend and client of mine has a phrase for this: backers and barnacles. Backers are the people who show up and help carry you forward when life gets hard. Barnacles are the ones who cling comfortably in the easy seasons but create drag the moment you need something real. One of the hidden gifts of becoming less “easy” is that people start revealing which one they are.

This, to me, is the practice of becoming less easy:

1. Notice where you make yourself easy by reflex.

2. Ask which bucket this person belongs in:

   1. If they’re low-stakes, stop overprotecting them from everyday disappointment.

   2. If they’re high-stakes, stop overprotecting them from your real needs, limits, and truth.

3. Make one small, honest move that tells the truth about what you need.

Here’s to becoming less easy—and more known.

~Tasha

PS: In the spirit of practicing what I preach, here’s a less low maintenance—abeit clammy—ask: if Shatterproof has meant something to you, can you leave a quick review? It’s less awkward than sending food back, and it genuinely helps more people find the book. TIA!

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The Best You Bulletin (April 2026)

First, a rare but important “above the fold” message. Then back to our regular programming.

Applications for the newest Tasha Ten cohort close on April 24 (extended deadline!). If you’re committed to human-centered, sustainable leadership and want to join a global community of like-minded peers, our Women of the World cohort may be for you.

Click below or scroll down to learn more about my global pay-it-forward project, the Women of the World cohort, and our FAQ. There is no cost to participate. Questions? Email us at info@theeurichgroup.com.

P.S. If you applied for rolling admission after our last advertised deadline in 2023, we’d be so grateful if you could re-upload your video and information. It should only take a few minutes.

Learn More + Apply!

Now…back to our regular programming.

Dear friends,

As a self-awareness researcher, the one lesson I keep learning (and relearning) is that I’m not as self-aware as I once thought. In the five-plus years since my team started our study, I’ve got enough examples of “have I really been doing that for so long and didn’t notice until just now!?” to fill (another) book.

But this isn’t a bad thing—quite the contrary. My friend and mentor Alan Mulally calls these moments of unexpected insight “gems” because they give us a chance to re-evaluate what we’re doing. The gem discovery process can be funny, painful, and shocking, but I am always grateful for the ensuing wisdom.

This month, I wanted to share a gem I haven’t told many people about, mostly because of my sheer sheepishness upon noticing it. But after learning just how common the mistake I was making can be, I’m going to fess up in the spirit of shared improvement.

Let’s set the context with an instructive study. Over several years, psychologist Philip Tetlock collected thousands of political and economic predictions from experts who made a living off their advice and forecasts (for example, whether there would be a non-violent end to South Africa’s apartheid).

Twenty years later, Tetlock compared these predictions with what actually happened—and the results were shocking. The experts’ judgment was so poor that, according to Tetlock, a dart-throwing monkey would have been infinitely more accurate! And strangely, the more well-known the expert was, the less correct their predictions tended to be.

There is a simple yet counterintuitive explanation for these findings. Time and again, research has shown that people who fancy themselves as experts on a given topic often think they know more than they actually do.

This can be surprisingly risky. The more we think we know about something, the more enamored we become with our own knowledge—and over time, it blinds us to the need to do our homework, look at all the evidence, and question our assumptions. This is why so many of Tetlock’s experts—especially the prominent ones—performed so poorly.

Now for my confession. A while back, I was talking to another author about all the new non-fiction books that had come out in recent months—he had seemingly read every one. When he asked which titles I’d tackled, a river of excuses tumbled out of my mouth to justify why I hadn’t read even a fraction of what he had. (And mind you, the non-fiction world is small, so many of these authors were our friends, which made it even worse.)

Later that day, I realized the error of my ways. I’d become so obsessed with advancing my own thought leadership that I’d stopped learning from others. Think about that: I was becoming an author who only focused on her own work, virtually ignoring the brilliant contributions being made by her colleagues.

To say that this is unlike me is a profound understatement. In the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, my top strength is “learner.” One good self-awareness rule of thumb is that the more we cringe when we discover a gem, the more valuable it will be.

Indeed, in this quick conversation with a friend, I’d uncovered a newly developed blind spot that, if gone unnoticed, could have trapped me in my own intellectual echo chamber for an untold number of years.

But for any of us afflicted by knowledge blindness, there is good news. Research shows that the best antidote is to keep learning, especially in the areas where we consider ourselves experts.

I’ve done my best to take this advice to heart, diving headfirst into the sky-high pile of books that have been accumulating on my nightstand. Several months later, not only do I feel more like myself, my work is stronger because of these new perspectives.

Deciding to say to ourselves, the more I think I know, the more I know I need to learn, is a powerful choice—one that doesn’t just help us be better, but more humble and complete human beings.

After all, as Buddhist monk Shunryū Suzuki once said, “in the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.”

~Tasha

P.S. Interested in The Tasha Ten? Scroll down for more on the Women of the World cohort, FAQs, and how to apply by April 24.

Want to learn more about this global community of changemakers—or considering an application? Below, you’ll find a brief overview of The Tasha Ten and answers to frequently asked questions. Applications for the Women of the World cohort close on April 24.

Learn More and Apply

About The Tasha Ten

The Tasha Ten is a global community of leaders committed to advancing human-centered, sustainable leadership and making a meaningful impact in the world. Members span industries and countries, but share a common purpose: to grow as leaders together while advancing something larger than themselves.

What makes the community special is its rare combination of growth, honesty, and heart. It’s a carefully curated circle of leaders who bring their whole selves, learn from leading experts, and build trusted relationships that help them think more boldly, support one another, and expand their impact.

After four years without opening applications to new members, we’re welcoming a new cohort into The Tasha Ten—one we’re calling Women of the World. Our most recent cohort happened to be entirely male, so this round, we’re intentionally focusing on women leaders.

Anyone is welcome to apply. We review every application and keep strong candidates in consideration for future cohorts. If you applied for rolling admission after our last advertised deadline in 2023, we’d be so grateful if you could re-upload your video and information. It should only take a few minutes.

Applications close April 24.

Learn More and Apply

The Tasha Ten: Frequently Asked Questions

Who should apply to The Tasha Ten?

The Tasha Ten is designed for leaders around the world who are already doing meaningful work in their fields and want to grow alongside others committed to expanding their impact. Members come from a wide range of sectors—including business, healthcare, education, government, entrepreneurship, and social impact—but share a commitment to advancing human-centered, sustainable leadership.

How selective is the application process?

The Tasha Ten is intentionally small and carefully curated. Each cohort includes a limited number of members selected from a global pool of applicants. You don’t need to be a household name or a CEO to apply, but you do need to demonstrate that you’re already doing meaningful work and are committed to expanding your impact.

What happens in The Tasha Ten?

The core of the experience is a virtual mastermind session every two months, facilitated by Dr. Tasha Eurich and select guest experts. Sessions focus on leadership and personal growth, helping members explore new ways of thinking, solve real problems, and develop practical skills to lead and contribute more effectively. Each session combines thoughtful dialogue, shared learning, and candid exchange among leaders doing meaningful work around the world.

What is the time commitment?

Each mastermind lasts two hours and takes place every two months. The group meets on Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time (16:00 GMT), though the exact local time will vary by time zone.

Can you clarify why this cohort is focused on women? I’m not a woman, but I’d still like to apply.

Our last cohort happened to be entirely male, so this round, we’re intentionally focusing on women leaders to ensure broader representation. Anyone is welcome to apply. We review every application carefully and keep strong candidates in consideration for future cohorts.

What is the application timeline, and when will I hear back?

Applications for the Women of the World cohort close April 24. Finalist interviews will take place from late April through mid-May, and final decisions will be communicated by the end of May.

What if I miss the application deadline?

If you miss the deadline, don’t worry. We also accept rolling applications for future cohorts and will notify you when the next application cycle opens.

Apply by April 24!

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The Best You Bulletin (February/March 2026)

Dear friends,

During a recent mastermind with my Tasha Ten leadership community, I asked the group a question:

“What is something ‘past you’ cared deeply about that matters much less to you now?”

The Zoom room went quiet as brows furrowed. High achievers are used to asking what comes next, not wondering whether who they once were still fits who they are today.

To protect the group’s confidentiality, I’ll share my own answer: one thing “past me” cared deeply about that now matters much less is performing for success. As I typed, I could see more clearly what it had been costing me.

For 25 years, I lived by a simple rule: over-produce, over-deliver, no matter what. I tried to prove myself by presenting the always-on professional I believed success required. To be clear, that approach helped build the career and life I’m deeply grateful for today.

But the past five years broke that equation. A chronic illness forced me to look honestly at where my energy was going and admit it wasn’t unlimited. In that meeting, I realized I was still living by a success script built on constant performance—one my life and body could no longer sustain.

You might have noticed there wasn’t a February issue of this newsletter. Even a few years ago, I would have pushed it out no matter how many keynotes or consulting clients I had, whatever the cost to my health. This time, I didn’t.

That choice made the shift impossible to ignore. The question was no longer, “Can I get this done?” but rather, “Will doing this increase my lasting impact—or quietly dilute it?”

Around the Zoom room, similar realizations surfaced. Some saw they were still holding onto identities that no longer fit who they’d become. Others started questioning whose expectations were still driving their decisions. And some realized that goals they’d been chasing for years no longer felt meaningful.

When you care deeply about making a difference, letting something matter less can feel harder than taking on something new. Addition looks like ambition; subtraction feels like retreat. Yet what once demanded most of your energy may no longer serve the person you are becoming.

Realizations like these rarely happen in isolation. They emerge in conversations with people willing to challenge one another’s assumptions about success, identity, and impact. That’s exactly why I created the Tasha Ten: a community where leaders come together to do that work.

The Tasha Ten is now welcoming applications for its next cohort. If you’re committed to human-centered, sustainable leadership and want a global community of like-minded peers, this cohort may be for you. Scroll down to learn more about the Tasha Ten, the Women of the World cohort, review the FAQ, and apply by April 17.

For everyone else, I want to leave you with the reflection that inspired this newsletter:

What is something “past you” cared deeply about that matters much less to “present you”? In this season of your life, what one thing quietly deserves less of your attention—and what deserves more?

Because not everything that once deserved our energy should keep defining us.

~Tasha

P.S. Scroll down to learn more about The Tasha Ten and how to apply!

Learn More and Apply Today

Want to learn more about this global community of changemakers—or considering an application? Below, you’ll find a brief overview of the Tasha Ten and answers to frequently asked questions. Applications for the Women of the World cohort close on April 17.

Learn More and Apply

About The Tasha Ten

The Tasha Ten is a global community of leaders committed to advancing human-centered, sustainable leadership and making a meaningful impact in the world. Members span industries and countries, but share a common purpose: to grow as leaders together while advancing something larger than themselves.

What makes the community special is its rare combination of growth, honesty, and heart. It’s a carefully curated circle of leaders who bring their whole selves, learn from leading experts, and build trusted relationships that help them think more boldly, support one another, and expand their impact.

After four years without opening applications to new members, we’re welcoming a new cohort into The Tasha Ten—one we’re calling Women of the World. Our most recent cohort happened to be entirely male, so this round we’re intentionally focusing on women leaders

Anyone is welcome to apply. We review every application and keep strong candidates in consideration for future cohorts. And, if you submitted a rolling application during or after 2022, we have your materials on file.

Applications close April 17.

Learn More and Apply

The Tasha Ten: Frequently Asked Questions

Who should apply to the Tasha Ten?

The Tasha Ten is designed for leaders around the world who are already doing meaningful work in their fields and want to grow alongside others committed to expanding their impact. Members come from a wide range of sectors—including business, healthcare, education, government, entrepreneurship, and social impact—but share a commitment to advancing human-centered, sustainable leadership.

How selective is the application process?

The Tasha Ten is intentionally small and carefully curated. Each cohort includes a limited number of members selected from a global pool of applicants. You don’t need to be a household name or a CEO to apply, but you do need to demonstrate that you’re already doing meaningful work and are committed to expanding your impact.

What happens in The Tasha Ten?

The core of the experience is a virtual mastermind session every two months, facilitated by Dr. Tasha Eurich and select guest experts. Sessions focus on leadership and personal growth, helping members explore new ways of thinking, solve real problems, and develop practical skills to lead and contribute more effectively. Each session combines thoughtful dialogue, shared learning, and candid exchange among leaders doing meaningful work around the world.

What is the time commitment?

Each mastermind lasts two hours and takes place every two months. The group meets on Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time (16:00 GMT), though the exact local time will vary by time zone.

Can you clarify why this cohort is focused on women? I’m not a woman, but I’d still like to apply.

Our last cohort happened to be entirely male, so this round we’re intentionally focusing on women leaders to ensure broader representation. Anyone is welcome to apply. We review every application carefully and keep strong candidates in consideration for future cohorts.

What is the application timeline, and when will I hear back?

Applications for the Women of the World cohort close April 17. Finalist interviews will take place from late April through mid-May, and final decisions will be communicated by the end of May.

What if I miss the application deadline?.

If you miss the deadline, don’t worry. We also accept rolling applications for future cohorts and will notify you when the next application cycle opens.

Apply by April 17th!

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The Best You Bulletin (January 2026)

Dear friends,

January has a bit of a reputation problem.

Every year, we enter it resolved to be healthier, more focused, more disciplined. And then, a few weeks in, the wheels start coming off. (Last Friday, apparently, was “Quitters Day.” That tracks.)

We rarely quit for lack of commitment. We quit because somewhere along the way, “doing better” starts to shrink our lives—replacing rhythms that once sustained us with routines that feel narrow and unforgiving.

Before long, improvement feels less like progress and more like punishment. A new gym routine leaves us feeling awkward and out of place. Going after a promotion means turning down social invitations we want to accept. Prioritizing sleep cuts short the late nights that turn into real conversations.

The outcome is predictable. We either abandon the plan and blame ourselves, or we white-knuckle it, postponing joy until some imagined future version of ourselves has earned it.

This is the January Crash: a structural failure we mistake for a personal one. It happens when becoming “better” requires cutting what was quietly holding us up.

In Shatterproof, I describe three needs humans require to function well: confidence (feeling able to handle what’s in front of us), choice (feeling free to decide what we do), and connection (feeling like we belong). Decades of research show these aren’t indulgences. They’re the very conditions that make persistence possible when change gets hard.

The trade-offs look like this:

• The awkward gym routine doesn’t just feel uncomfortable; it undercuts confidence, requiring us to keep trying while feeling visibly incompetent.

• Pushing for a promotion means declining invitations we care about—not because they stopped mattering, but because ambition has quietly narrowed our choice.

• Cutting evenings short to protect sleep may improve our health, but it can thin connection by trimming the moments that remind us we belong.

When self-improvement makes us feel less capable, less free, or more alone, effort gets heavy fast. We’re asking ourselves to improve while removing what helps us keep going.

Change built on deprivation doesn’t last. It asks us to give up what steadies us now in exchange for an as-yet unfelt long-term payoff.

A recent piece in The Guardian names a counterintuitive solution. Pleasure isn’t the opposite of self-improvement; it’s often the missing piece. Not indulgence or escape, but the kind of pleasure that keeps us regulated, connected, and able to keep going.

That’s the idea behind need crafting. It’s the scientifically-supported practice of making sure our core needs are being met—especially when things feel hard.

Applied to self-improvement, need crafting expands the question:

When I begin this goal, what will help me feel capable enough to try, free enough to choose, and connected enough to keep going?

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that question shaped one of my most unexpected decisions of 2025.

Anyone who knows me knows I hate celebrating my birthday. Under any circumstances. Ever. (There was a surprise 30th birthday party once. It was canceled within minutes. That’s the whole story.)

And yet, a few weeks ago, I threw myself an entirely out-of-character birthday party in New York with 40 of my closest friends.

It ran directly counter to one of my 2025 goals: saving money. I stepped away from that goal briefly, and deliberately.

Here’s why. I’d spent the year tightening, not spending, staying home. The “responsible” choice would have been another quiet birthday. But after a year that completely upended my life, I didn’t need to take that goal from a B+ to an A+. I needed to stand in a room full of friends who had shown up for me—to name the wreckage out loud, to thank them for staying, and to feel restored in a way that no amount of financial discipline could ever provide.

Nothing spectacular happened at that party. And somehow, everything did.

Meeting our core needs isn’t an escape or indulgence. It’s fuel. It’s that moment when you can exhale, and then keep going.

Ignored needs don’t disappear. Instead, they leak into exhaustion, overwork, isolation, or that quiet sense that something is off even when everything is “just fine.” That’s how well-intentioned change quickly turns into something we start to resent.

So if January has you questioning your willpower, pause. This may not be a discipline problem at all.

What if this year, success means designing goals that don’t cost what keeps us whole?

Going after a promotion doesn’t have to mean saying no to all fun things. Eating better doesn’t have to mean eating alone. Saving money doesn’t have to mean treating connection as a luxury when we need it most.

The question isn’t whether we’re capable of more discipline. It’s whether we’re willing to design change that honors the human who has to live inside it.

With you, always,

~Tasha

P.S. The Shatterproof Workbook is designed to help you put need crafting into practice—so change strengthens you instead of starving you.

Learn More

P.P.S. If you’ve found Shatterproof useful, I’d be deeply grateful for an Amazon review. Reviews help new readers find the book—and help reach the people who need it most.

Leave an Amazon Review

📚 January Book Club Pick: Calling All Leaders! 📚

Any Dumbass Can Do It by Garry Ridge

I’m thrilled to share “Any Dumb Ass Can Do It,” the USA Today bestseller from my friend Garry Ridge, Chairman Emeritus of WD-40 Company and “The Culture Coach.”

It’s smart, funny, and full of real-world wisdom on what it actually takes to lead with love, humility, and purpose in a world where little feels certain. Garry—who has done this work in the real world—shows that building a culture where people feel they belong isn’t complicated. It just takes heart and a little less ego.

A must-read for every leader who wants to make work human again.

Learn About Garry's Work

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The Best You Bulletin (October 2025)

Dear friends,

How do you keep believing in possibility when life keeps showing you its limits?

This weekend on a flight to Denver, I finished the brilliant series Fleishman Is in Trouble. It’s about love, loss, and the quiet pressure to hold everything together—it all hit a little too close to home. (My seatmate seemed unconvinced about my “allergies.”)

Days later, I still can’t shake its final lines. They begin:

“God,” he thought, “You could die of the loneliness. But you could die of hope, too.”

This year—maybe for you, definitely for me—has been one of those years. I’ve lost things I thought were unshakable and wondered how many times a person can actually begin again.

When the world feels so fragile, and endings start to stack on endings, hope itself begins to ache. The courage to keep trying starts to feel more like dressed-up denial: you keep showing up and trying to stay whole, but quietly wonder whether your belief in better days is wisdom or wishful thinking.

To understand why hope can hurt, let’s turn to the science.

For decades, psychologists treated hope as a mental skill—a mindset we could strengthen with effort. In one influential model, it has two parts: the belief that you can find pathways toward your goals, and the motivation to pursue them. Hopeful people, the thinking went, don’t wish, they plan. They adapt. They keep searching for a better way.

The model proved useful. People high in hope are less prone to anxiety and depression and tend to have more resilience resources. Hope lights up the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the region governing planning and problem-solving.

But if hope lives only in our heads, how do we explain how much it aches? How can it shimmer and sting in the same breath?

New research offers a clue. Beyond being a mental skill, hope may be a core human emotion—one that sustains purpose and strengthens well-being. In one compelling study, people who experienced hope, not just as a strategy but as an emotion, reported higher levels of meaning than those who “simply” felt joy or happiness in the present.

And that’s why it hurts. Hope reveals the space between where we are and where we long to go—between what where it hurts and where we must heal, what’s ended and what can still begin. It’s the ache of choosing to live between what is and what could be.

I recently saw that kind of hope at work on a larger scale. Last month, I was invited to speak at Dubai’s inaugural Mohammed bin Rashid Leadership Forum, a gathering designed to help the city’s leaders turn bold national ambitions into (we hope) lived reality: doubling the economy, expanding education and innovation, empowering women and youth, and investing in sustainability and quality of life.

In every conversation, that hope felt alive, not in slogans, but in quiet resolve. Not a policy or a plan, but an emotional, embodied pulse. People daring to believe in something better, together.

Yet that raises a harder question: How do we carry this grounded hope into our own daily lives—especially when the context isn’t as bold or well-resourced?

Research offers a clue. In one study, when people’s three fundamental psychological needs—confidence, choice, connection (what I call the “three-to-thrive” in Shatterproof)—were met, they reported higher levels of hope.

In other words, when we feel competent, autonomous, and supported, hope is more likely to flourish.

A few weeks after Dubai, I found myself on Michael Chernow’s Kreatures of Habit podcast. In one conversation, Michael helped me distill the practice of becoming shatterproof into one simple habit. The Three-to-Thrive Reset is a quick morning check-in built around three questions:

1. What’s one thing I can do today to feel more confident?

2. What’s one thing I can do today to feel more choiceful?

3. What’s one thing I can do today to feel more connected?

Simple as the questions are, enacting their answers strengthens our inner scaffolding: small wins that make us happier, steadier, a little more shatterproof. Each one anchors hope, channeling the vitality that comes from feeling capable, free, and supported into something we can build on, one day at a time.

In the end, hope doesn’t erase pain; it gives us somewhere to stand inside it.

And while the world reminds us of how fragile peace can be, I find myself thinking about how vital it still is to try. When we do, hope can break our hearts. Yet hope is also what brings our hearts back to life: the force that makes building, and rebuilding, possible.

Back to that flight to Denver, and the final lines of Fleishman—the ones that stopped me cold:

“You could die of the loneliness. But you could die of hope, too… The way it blinded you a little. The way it led you to try again, despite what you knew.”

As the plane began its descent, I could see the city lights blooming beneath us—quiet, steady constellations stitched across the dark.

There it was: proof. Proof that we’re still here. Still believing. Still trying again. Distant beacons against a dark sky—but still, enough to find our way home.

So as this long year winds down, may we let it soften us, not harden us. And may we remember that the world still needs our hope—not blind optimism, but the brave, steady kind that tries again anyway.

Here’s to the glow that reminds us: we’re still here.

~Tasha

📘 P.S. If Shatterproof has resonated with you, I’d be so grateful for an Amazon review. ✍️ Reviews help new readers find the book—and fuel a saner way to navigate life’s chaos.

Leave an Amazon Review

📚 Hark! The Return of Tasha’s Book Club! 📚

The Compass Within by Robert Glazer

Bob Glazer is one of those rare friends who grounds his success and influence in deep moral clarity.

Over coffee or quick calls, he’s always circling back to values—not as nice-to-haves, but as the coordinates that steer hard choices. His new book does something rare: The Compass Within turns the “values talk” into a living story—a fable that shows how identifying and living by your core values can transform the way you lead, parent, and find fulfillment in life.

Whether you’ve been exploring your values for decades or are new to the work, this book is a gift: a clear, practical guide to deeper purpose and clarity. I love it because Bob isn’t asking us to do more; he’s giving us a map. One he’s tested in his own life and leadership.

In a recent episode of Kreatures of Habit, Bob explained why so many of us get “core values” wrong: we treat them as abstractions instead of grounding them in our relationships, decisions, and daily habits. It’s the kind of wisdom that feels simple only after someone brave and wise enough has lived it first.

Oh, and PS: Through the end of this week, if you order a hardcover copy, Bob is offering the book’s companion course (value: $105) for free. Just buy The Compass Within and register your purchase here to get the course emailed to you.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful book as much as I did!

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The Best You Bulletin (September 2025)

🎯 Quick ask: If Shatterproof has resonated with you, I’d be so grateful for an Amazon review. ✍️ Reviews help new readers find the book—and fuel a saner way to navigate life’s chaos for all of us.

Leave an Amazon Review

Dear friends,

It’s September. I’m back!

Earlier this summer, I was at dinner with three close friends—two single, one married—when I tossed out a question I figured would be a one-hand poll (mine): “Okay, real talk…does anyone else feel lonely?”

(Lately, I’ve been adjusting to a new chapter: living solo with a calendar that looks full but a home that’s usually very, very not. I’m slowly finding my footing, but some nights the quiet can be deafening.)

To my surprise, every hand went up. We chuckled, because what else can you do? Then we got quiet. Under our big jobs, packed calendars, and “I’m good!” texts, the truth was we were lonelier than we cared to admit.

The data back this up: we spend 20 fewer hours per month with friends than we did 20 years ago; only 39 percent of people feel “very connected”; and nearly half of us experience persistent loneliness. Loneliness raises risks of depression and anxiety and harms health on par with smoking a pack a day.

It isn’t just you: it’s the water our society is swimming in. We move more, gather less, and our shared rituals—Sunday dinners, book clubs, rec leagues, even weekly team lunches—have thinned or disappeared.

And still, there are pockets of light.

Last month, I was honored to speak at GLN’s Global Leadership Summit. The lights, the buzz, the crackle of 10,000 people leaning in at once (and hundreds of thousands joining virtually) left me with goosebumps and deep gratitude.

But what stayed with me wasn’t the size of the event—it was its uncommon spirit. GLN isn’t a fly-in, talk, and bounce conference. Speakers come back year after year. They get to know the organizers. They watch from the wings, swap notes in hallways, and text the next day to ask how it felt. Speaking can be a lonely profession, but this felt like a family—thick ties in a thinning world.

What GLN has built is fellowship: intentional belonging + depth, repeated over time.

Zoom out and the contrast is stark: for many of us, the rhythm isn’t built in, so connection quietly thins. And as busy, ambitious professionals, we’re especially vulnerable to loneliness—not because we don’t know people, but because we are often too swamped to create real, repeated connections. We substitute “touch points” for touch. We vow to have lunch “soon.” We like a post, but can’t remember the last time we saw that person IRL. Then we wonder why we feel flat.

Here are three practical moves we can all make this month to feel less lonely.

1) Choose depth over breadth

Fellowship doesn’t come from grinding or finding followers—it comes from intentional focus. A CEO I once worked with gave me a simple filter: the people in your life are either backers or barnacles.

• Backers are engines: they show up, steady you, and make you better. (They text, “I’m nearby—can I swing by?” And then they do.)

• Barnacles cling in calm waters and add drag when the seas get choppy. (That is, chatty in fair weather but scarce in storms.)

Try this: Name 2–4 backers—your inner crew. Tell them. (“You’re on my inner crew; I want us to invest in each other more intentionally.”) Then double down on these relationships this month. (For anyone in the barnacle camp, add boundaries or take a polite pause.) Believe what people show you and prioritize accordingly.

2) Turn toward connection bids

Real connection is built in micro-moments, not grand gestures: a “got a sec?” ping, a “look at that sunset” photo, a hug after a long day. Psychologists call these connection bids—someone reaching for interest, conversation, or support.

What we do in the next 5–10 seconds makes or breaks the relationship over time: we can turn toward (respond to them), turn away (ignore them), or turn against (dismiss them).

Strong pairs say yes to about 86 percent of connection bids; struggling pairs do so roughly a third of the time—and those tiny misses morph into micro-abandonments that thin trust and safety. The good news is that “turning toward” takes only seconds.

Try this: Pick two backers. For one week, respond quickly to every bid they make—and make one bid of your own each day (a 30-second voice note, “thinking of you,” or a short article + why it made you think of them). If you miss a bid, repair: “I want to hear this—can I give it my full attention at 4:15?”

3) Calendar your connections

Loneliness loves ambiguity. Depth requires repetition: time on the calendar, on purpose… not “soon.”

Try this:

• Add a 30-minute “Fellowship Block” this week: schedule something, show up for someone, or send one thoughtful update.

• Create one standing ritual (weekly or monthly): first-Friday coffee, a Wednesday walk, Sunday soup night, or a group thread where everyone posts a “Win/Wobble/Ask” once a week. Keep it simple so it survives busy seasons.

Now, back to that dinner table with four accomplished friends and four raised hands. That night, we put a weekly Friday dinner on the calendar—and we’ve kept it, through travel, deadlines, and life’s mess. I can’t overstate the difference it’s made in my life (I know my crew would say the same).

Most Fridays, the door swings open at my place. Someone brings a salad, someone brings a story, and at least one of us arrives wrung out and leaves a little less so. Phones face down, we ask, “How was your week?” and stay for the real answer. Nothing spectacular happens—and somehow everything does.

I’m learning that fellowship isn’t a feeling you wait for; it’s a rhythm you keep. So pick your people. Say yes to the tiny bids. Put time on the calendar. Let it be small—but let it be steady.

That’s how we find our way home.

With you (truly),

~Tasha

👉 📘 P.S. The Shatterproof Workbook is finally here! As a thank you to this community, it’s 50% off for the next 7 days: instant download, fillable PDF or print-friendly. It’s time to escape survival mode—your future self will thank you.

Get 50% off the Shatterproof Workbook

Friday Night Dinners (I’ll save you a seat!)

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The Best You Bulletin (June 2025)

✅ Quick share: Shatterproof was recently featured on Brené Brown’s bookshelf! → Check it out here! 🎉

🎯 Quick ask: If Shatterproof has resonated with you, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave an Amazon review. ✍️ Reviews help new readers discover the book—and fuel the movement toward a stronger, saner way to navigate life’s chaos, for all of us. It’s a win-win.

Leave an Amazon Review

Dear friends,

Last week, my psychiatrist was three hours late to our virtual appointment.

I had little choice but to wait. When he finally appeared, he was flustered and apologetic. “I am so sorry,” he said. “People are just… not okay right now.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

These past several months, I’ve been walking through my own punishing personal stretch—the kind that forces you to confront parts of yourself you’d do almost anything to avoid.

For me, it’s meant facing old trauma and deep, damaging patterns—ones I wish I could go back in time and rewrite.

And because I try to live what I teach in Shatterproof, my first instinct wasn’t to run from the pain. It was to understand it. To analyze it. Fix me. Fix everything. RIGHT NOW.

If I could just do that, I figured, maybe I could find peace again—and reclaim the version of myself I was before this latest chapter.

Carl Jung once wrote, “In the soul there lives a longing for light and an indispensable urge to emerge from the... darkness.” That’s what I was chasing: the fastest possible path back to the light.

Then last month, I reconnected with someone who’s shaped my life more than she knows: my college psychology advisor.

I first met her as a sophomore, when I was a walking Tracy Flick. Smart on paper, but trying to prove myself in ways that were rarely healthy or reasonable.

She saw it instantly. But instead of trying to strip away my drive, she taught me to hold it with more grace and trust (or at least as much as a Type A overachiever could manage at that age).

Flash forward 26 years, and there I was, breathlessly explaining how I was trying to force my way out of this latest chapter. Fixing, fixing, fixing. She listened, as she always has. Then she said something that stopped me cold:

“Be still. And let your future rise up to meet you.”

I’ve thought about those words every day since—and how urgent they are, for all of us.

Summer arrives with its own momentum, pushing us to perform joy. Everyone seems to be moving, doing, and posting about it all. Vacations. Social feeds of sunsets. Perfect outfits. As in, “Dammit, I am having FUN.”

But beneath the surface, so many of us are carrying a frayed nervous system or fractured heart that hasn’t caught up with the year—or years—we’ve just lived.

(By the way—if you’re curious about how close you are to your Resilience Ceiling, check out our just-released, 5-minute Resilience Ceiling Quiz!).

And when we layer the instinct to perform on top of that exhaustion, we risk emerging from summer no more whole than when we entered it.

Why? Because there’s a difference between taking time off and claiming the space to truly reset.

Without that space, we bring the same depleted system to the beach, the concert, the barbecue — and wonder why the moments meant to restore us feel strangely hollow.

Now, you might be wondering: Wait. Isn’t Shatterproof a whole book about proactive personal transformation? It is. And I believe in it with my whole self, as a researcher and a human.

Science shows our core traits aren’t fixed. In one study, personal growth didn’t just predict improved happiness: it was twice as effective as having a successful marriage or career combined.

But here’s the thing: personal growth doesn’t have to be loud.

Sometimes the most profound transformation isn’t about maxing out your potential. It’s about letting the change unfold: quietly, steadily, in its own time.

Here’s what that can look like:

• If you’re burned out at work, instead of taking on a big new project or enrolling in a leadership program, maybe you politely decline a high-profile opportunity that would drain more energy than it gives back.

• If you’ve just had a relationship end, instead of creating a profile on every dating app, maybe you make one non-romantic plan each week with someone who makes you laugh.

• If a friendship feels distant, instead of forcing a dramatic reconciliation, maybe you send a simple text: “Thinking of you—no pressure to respond.”

  (Fun fact: over time, these small “connection bids” predict relationship strength better than grand gestures do.)

Which is to say: the biggest move isn’t always radical reinvention.

It’s choosing to sit with what is. To reject performative transformation. To do the deep work and rebuild in ways no one can see—knowing that true strength comes from what you build beneath the surface.

If this is where you find yourself this summer, know this:

… You are not falling behind.

… You are exactly where you need to be.

… What matters is who you are becoming: steady, clear, grounded.

Rooted enough to welcome it when it comes—and wise enough to wait for what is real.

~Tasha

🎯 P.S. If Shatterproof has resonated with you, I’d be so grateful if you’d take one minute to leave an Amazon review. Thank you in advance! It means the world. 💛

Leave an Amazon Review

P.P.S. I’m thrilled to endorse Say It Skillfully—a powerful new guide from leadership expert Molly Tschang with the incomparable Marshall Goldsmith (two people I deeply admire!) on navigating tough conversations and building trust in a world of constant change. A great companion to Shatterproof. Check it out → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5BPB2HF | More: sayitskillfully.com

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The Best You Bulletin (April 2025)

Dear friends,

Last week, I had a little...incident.

It was late the night before I was supposed to leave for Miami. All day, I’d found every excuse not to pack. Now, staring at my empty suitcase, I felt the stress hum under my skin.

Sitting cross-legged on my closet floor, I opened the suitcase and started making up for lost time—rolling up clothes, cramming socks into shoes, chucking toiletries. Beside me was my trusty glass carafe—the one I carry everywhere in a desperate attempt to stay hydrated.

In the scramble, I grazed the carafe hard with my arm. It went flying across the closet, hit the floor, and exploded—sending water and shards of glass skating across the wood.

Without thinking, I jumped up to grab a towel—and THWACK.

The outside of my foot slammed into the edge of the closet door. Hard. The pain was sharp and immediate—the kind that makes you freeze, grip the wall, and bargain with the universe for a do-over.

Eventually, I slumped onto the closet floor, foot throbbing, realizing pretty quickly that walking was off the table. And because I live alone, no one was coming to rescue me.

After a few minutes of evaluating my (nonexistent) options, I decided the only real move was to crawl—across the hardwood floors of my bedroom—toward my bed.

With every drag forward, the reality set in a little deeper as I cursed my choices: I was alone. I’d done something stupid. I couldn’t walk. What if it was worse than I thought? What if I couldn't go on my trip? What if everything just kept falling apart?

When I finally hoisted myself up to bed, I muttered the classic lie we all reach for in these moments: I’m sure it’ll be fine by tomorrow.

Spoiler alert: It was not fine. It was way worse. I wasn’t going to Miami.

Calling an ambulance felt ridiculous—“Hi, yes, I injured myself...packing?"—so I did the next logical thing: I called my mom.

She was in the car within minutes, driving two hours through morning rush hour to take me to the urgent care.

But when she arrived, we had a new problem: How, exactly, were we going to get me—pajama clad, with only one working leg—out of my apartment, down the hall, down ten floors, through the lobby, and into her car?

We sat there, surveying the situation like battlefield generals. Crutches? Didn’t own any. A one-person fireman carry? We’d both end up in that urgent care. Just… hopping? Tempting, but out of the question.

Then, a smile flashed across my mom’s face. She disappeared and quickly returned with my rolling office chair. We exchanged a look—the kind you only have with someone you’ve known your whole life—and without a word, the mission plan locked into place.

She wheeled me across my apartment like it was an obstacle course—door frames, rogue rugs, one very judgmental houseplant—then rolled down the hallway toward the elevator.

When the doors opened to the lobby, the doorman looked up, took in the scene—a 74-year-old woman pushing a wincing adult across the marble floor in a battered office chair—and just gave us a small, respectful nod. Like this was exactly the kind of thing he saw every day.

Just two exhausted, slightly sweaty women making our slow, ridiculous parade out to the curb. (Photographic evidence below)

The Bottom Line

People often talk about resilience like it’s heroic—pushing through pain, keeping it together, getting back up fast.

But that morning in my apartment, resilience wasn’t even on the table. I wasn’t bouncing back by pushing through the pain. I wasn’t powering through by hobbling to the airport. I was overwhelmed, alone, and falling apart (yet again—it’s been a really weird year).

What I did—in this case, out of sheer necessity rather than wisdom or will—was something else entirely: slowing down. Asking for help. Letting it be absurd.

Because it wasn’t grit I needed—it was care. Connection. A little levity. And I found new ways to meet those needs: Calling my mom. Letting her show up. Laughing through the pain.

That’s what becoming shatterproof really means. Not holding it together—but finding new ways to meet your needs when everything is falling apart.

In these moments, strength isn’t always about standing tall—it’s about finding a way forward, even if you have to roll.

P.S. And speaking of moving forward… I want to share some incredible news—and a heartfelt thank you.

This community—you—have been part of Shatterproof from the very beginning.

You completed our surveys.

You participated in interviews.

You became beta readers.

You joined the street team.

You pre-ordered the book (P.S.: The workbook is on its way soon!)

You shared it with your friends, colleagues, and communities.

You helped us launch Shatterproof into the world with more heart and momentum than I could have ever imagined.

And thanks to you, in just 29 days, Shatterproof has already 🎉 🥂🌟

• 📈 Debuted as the #1 Behavioral Science release on Amazon (and two other categories!)

• 💡 Been named a Next Big Idea Club Must-Read

• 📺 Been featured on CBS This Morning, introducing "grit gaslighting" into the national conversation—and picked up by more than 40 local stations across the country!

🎯 To keep the momentum going… If Shatterproof has resonated with you, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a quick review on Amazon. ✍️ Every review helps new readers find the book—and grows a movement toward a stronger, saner way to live through life's chaos.

Leave an Amazon Review

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being part of this community—and for proving that even when the world gets messy, we don’t have to face it alone. 🙏

Until next time,

Tasha

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Get early access and exclusive bonuses before they disappear at midnight!

Hi friends,

Tomorrow’s the big day—Shatterproof officially hits bookstores! (Here’s a sneak peek of tomorrow’s launch day post! 👀)

But here’s the important part: Today is your last chance to pre-order and grab all the free bonuses we created just for this community. It all disappears after midnight tonight—no April Fools.

I spent five years researching and writing Shatterproof for one reason: to help high-achieving humans like you stop barely holding it together—and start growing, leading, and thriving through the constant chaos.

If you’ve felt burned out, overwhelmed, or like you’ve lost a little of yourself lately—this book is for you.

Pre-order TODAY and get these exclusive bonuses:

✅ Early access to the Introduction and Chapter 1
✅ A FREE workbook + discussion guide
✅ A ticket to an exclusive masterclass with me—a tour de force of Shatterproof, Insight, and Bankable Leadership—plus a raw, unfiltered Ask Me Anything just for this community

Just upload your receipt by midnight tonight!

Submit Receipt Before Midnight

(And yes—our website issues are fixed! IT nerds can scroll down for more details. If you hit any snags, email us at websecurity@theeurichgroup.com, and we’ll take care of you.)

Still need a nudge? Here’s what early readers are saying:

Brené Brown: “A generous weaving of brave storytelling, insightful science, and wise guidance for overcoming and reclaiming.”

Marshall Goldsmith: “A life-changing framework for mastering self-leadership ... and becoming the person you want to be.”

Alan Mulally: “A revolutionary blueprint for living, leading, and thriving through uncertainty.”

Amy Cuddy: “A master class in transforming pain into power.”

Want to go a step further? Join the Shatterproof Street Team. A few quick actions can make a big difference (and hey, you might just become the office hero for helping your crankiest coworker become 25% less cranky 😄).

Join the Street Team

Thank you for being here. Thank you for believing in this work.

I can’t wait for you to read Shatterproof.

With deepest gratitude,

~Tasha

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The Best You Bulletin (March 2025)

First, a rare but important “above the fold” message. Then back to our regular programming!

A Huge Moment 5 Years in the Making—Launching in 5 Days!

For the past five years, I’ve researched an urgent and growing problem. In a world of relentless chaos—where every day brings yet another crisis or headline—we just want to find peace and enjoy our lives again. But even the most successful, driven, and resilient among us are barely keeping their heads above water. Despite doing all the “right” things, we’re exhausted, stretched thin, and witnessing our best coping tools fall apart. (Check out my recent ABC News interview to learn why.)

We all deserve more than just getting by; we deserve to thrive. Enter my new book Shatterproof (coming April 1st)—a fresh, science-backed roadmap to build a better life and a stronger, more peaceful, and more joyful you in a world that won’t stop demanding more of us. I’m equal parts terrified and thrilled to finally share it with you!

1️⃣ Pre-Order by March 31st: If my past work has resonated with you—and/or you’re ready for a new roadmap to build a better life—you should pre-order your copy today to:

1. Get freebies that vanish on April 1st: Limited-time bonuses include an exclusive masterclass, a free workbook ($19.95 value), a signed bookplate, and more (Click here for a complete list.)

2. Make the world better: Pre-orders signal to the wider world that Shatterproof matters, helping it reach more people who need it most.

2️⃣ Join the Shatterproof Street Team: A few small actions can have a huge ripple effect in the world around you. (Just think how much better your life would be if that cranky coworker became even 50% less cranky!)

Join the Street Team

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Last month, we learned an uncomfortable truth: that resilience has its limits, and everyone has a resilience ceiling where our best coping tools stop working, leaving us exhausted, stuck, and confused.

Sometimes, small stressors add up: demands to do “more with less” or the weight of holding everything together. Other times, gut punches bring us to our knees: a self-worth-shattering career setback, a breakup or betrayal that makes it hard to breathe, or a loss we’ll never get back.

Common wisdom tells us to power through, stay positive, and bounce back. Yet be they quiet or cataclysmic, these moments often reveal just how much we’ve been white-knuckling through.

My research team has spent the last five years examining how people respond to “bad things.” In short, some break, most bounce back, and a few emerge stronger, wiser, and more fulfilled than before.

I became obsessed with Group Three. What were they doing differently?

The answer is as simple as it is profound: the best response to chaos isn’t to endure it—it’s to harness it. Group Three wasn’t clawing their way back to the status quo; they were using their pain as fuel for reinvention—paying attention to their pain, recognizing the unmet needs and self-limiting patterns behind it, and rebuilding back better. They weren’t just resilient; they were becoming shatterproof. (Specifically, following the four-step Shatterpoof Roadmap I cover in the book.)

In contrast with the one-size-fits-all strategy of resilience (gratitude, optimism, reframing, etc.), becoming shatterproof means identifying what’s specifically holding us back—What is this pain trying to tell me? What need is going unmet?—then consciously choosing to pivot. Becoming shatterproof means moving beyond bouncing back to grow forward, looking inward and proactively reinventing ourselves.

A powerful analogy is Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. When we become shatterproof, we don’t simply superglue our broken pieces and carry on. Gold flows through our fractures, marking their history while transforming us into someone stronger and more beautiful than before.

No one demonstrates this more powerfully than mother and school administrator Shamayim Harris—known in her community as Mama Shu.

Mama Shu and her family were living in her hometown of Highland Park, Michigan—a once-prosperous city that had lost nearly everything when the auto industry left.

One September day in 2007, Mama Shu’s two-year-old son Jakobi was playing outside with his older brother when a speeding car struck him and drove away. A hit and run. Her baby boy.

Jakobi was pronounced brain-dead at the hospital. Every breath felt like swallowing glass. This wasn’t just grief—it was obliteration. No one would have blamed Mama Shu for giving up.

But through her grief, she kept passing one particular block brimming with trash and abandoned homes. She began to picture what it could become.

Six months after Jakobi’s death, she combined a tax refund with a loan from her sister to buy one house for $3,000.

That was her first pivot. Then one house became two, two became many, and Avalon Village was born. In the heart of it all was Jakobi Ra Park. Beneath a towering tree with white petunias at its base framing a plaque bearing her son’s name, families gathered for concerts and picnics, their laughter replacing the silence that once filled the air.

Mama Shu and her volunteers did more than just revitalize a street. They transformed grief into beauty.

Then, on January 26, 2021, tragedy struck again, in the cruelest way imaginable. Her eldest son Chinyelu—who’d been holding Jakobi’s hand that fateful day—was shot and killed at point-blank range while working security at Avalon Village.

Lightning had struck twice. Mama Shu’s second son was gone. No one would have blamed her for walking away. But Mama Shu stood firmly in this wreckage—again—and decided, This isn’t where my story ends.

She doubled down, mobilizing security teams, installing cameras, and vowing that no other mother would experience the same suffering.

Now, Avalon Village spans three city blocks. A Homework House boasts a music studio and 3D printer; a Healing House offers yoga and massage; a community garden feeds the neighborhood. Families gather in Chinyelu’s Invincible Garden and play basketball on a court painted with the faces of Mama Shu’s sons.

While her grief remains stitched into every decision she makes, Mama Shu has harnessed her broken parts to heal her community and herself. By transforming “grief into glory, pain into purpose, and loss into love,” she has learned that you can live with a broken heart without letting it break you.

Becoming shatterproof doesn’t mean never breaking—it means choosing, over and over, to keep reinventing and rebuilding. It means asking what our pain is telling us, identifying which of our fundamental needs is unmet, and finding new ways to meet them.

But let me take off my researcher hat. Personally, this past year has brought me (as Mama Shu calls it) more “raw shit” than I could have ever fathomed. And what I’ve come to know is this: just when we think we’ve weathered our worst storm, another one rolls in. But rather than hiding below deck, we must summon new strength to adjust our sails. Even in our darkest moments, we can still find the courage to grow forward, into the light.

So let me ask you this: What if you could become the best version of yourself, not in spite of your broken parts, but because of them? What if that version isn’t waiting on the other side of your pain, but is being forged by it? What if you could be you, but better?

Here’s to the reinvention that lies ahead,

~Tasha

PS: Not to put too fine a point on the pre-order thing, but my back-of-the-napkin calculation shows that if just 10% of our community pre-orders Shatterproof, it would debut on the freaking New York Times bestseller list! How cool would that be? Remember… pre-order your copy, then submit your receipt for your freebies.

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The Best You Bulletin (February 2025)

Shatterproof February Freebie Drop

With less than 5 weeks until Shatterproof releases (eek!), now’s the perfect time to pre-order and score your exclusive perks! Scroll down for this month’s goodies. (And if you’ve already submitted your receipt, look for an email this week!)

1. Pre-Order Now

2. Claim My Incentives!

For context: “[We] authors,” per my friend Dan Heath, “obsess about pre-orders.” Why? They build buzz and secure resources, helping the book reach the most people possible. So, if you’re planning on buying Shatterproof at any point, why not do it today—especially because most freebies will be gone after April 1st?

Learn More

Hello friends,

Are you pushing harder than ever but still falling behind? Perhaps you command yourself: Just be tougher. Just keep going. Just hang on.

But what happens when pushing through stops working? When every ounce of endurance is gone, and suddenly, a single feather—a snarky email, a missed deadline, a traffic jam—feels too heavy to bear. I call this phenomenon hitting our resilience ceiling.

And while I didn’t have a name for it until recently, I know exactly what it feels like firsthand.

The Scourge of Self-Limiting Habits

It’s September 2021. I’m sitting in another doctor’s office in a paper gown, feeling as clammy and vulnerable as humanly possible.

This isn’t my first specialist appointment. It’s probably my 455th.

Since my teens, I’d battled inexplicable pain. In my 20s, I started seeing specialists, but every test was always “normal.” Over the decades, my symptoms worsened, and the pain became unbearable. My “resting” heart rate would reach 150 beats per minute. I forgot the names of longtime colleagues, friends, even family members.

Then came the passing out. I’d wake up on the cold tile of a hotel bathroom thinking. I guess I fainted… again.

As a fourth-generation entrepreneur, I always prided myself on my resilience. So, I waited—for answers to appear, for doctors to connect the dots, for my body to heal.

In hindsight, I was clearly stuck—not enduring but avoiding—and for one simple reason. Waiting felt safer than acting. What if I tried something new and it failed?

The Crack Is Where the Light Enters

Then, about two months before that doctor’s appointment, an epiphany hit me like a thunderclap. What wasn’t killing me wasn’t making me stronger; it was actually killing me.

In that moment, I knew that there would be no cavalry coming to save me. No miracle cure. No real-life Dr. House with unlimited time to crack the case. If I wanted my life back, I would have to save myself.

I started by spending 30 minutes a day scouring peer-reviewed research on rare diseases. And by the time landed in that rheumatologist’s office, I was no longer a passive participant; I was the self-appointed CEO of my medical journey.

I knew what was wrong—I just needed her to confirm it. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. A genetic connective tissue disorder where the body can’t correctly produce collagen and elastin—the glue that holds every system of the body together… literally.

Miraculously, my doctor agrees. I exhale. Relief starts to set in.

And then… I see the look. The “I hear you, but I can’t help you” look.

Standing up, smoothing her coat, she says softly, “But unfortunately, I can’t diagnose EDS” and turns to leave.

The old me—who spent years waiting, hoping, giving in—would let her go. But today? Today is different. Because I am different

Instead, at a volume just shy of shouting, I demand an answer. "Okay … WHO CAN?"

She stops. Turns back. Blinks.

And then, she gives me a name. That name would soon set off a chain reaction that didn’t just lead to answers—it literally saved my life.

Beyond Resilience

I wish this lesson—that when life keeps getting harder, we have to save ourselves—only applied to medical mysteries.

But the truth is that our world simply won’t stop demanding more than we have to give. At work, at home, in our relationships, we feel pressure to always be “on” but are never doing enough. We’ve turned the craft of pretending to be fine into an art form. Then, when pushing through stops working, we blame ourselves (aka grit gaslighting).

But hear this: hitting your resilience ceiling is not a personal failure. Science shows that resilience is not an infinite wellspring of strength—rather, it’s an exhaustible resource. It can help us survive in the short term but is rarely, if ever, a foolproof coping strategy in the long run. Blaming yourself for running out of resilience is like getting mad at your phone battery for dying.

But hear this: hitting your resilience ceiling is not a personal failure. Why? Science shows that resilience is not an infinite wellspring of strength—it’s an exhaustible resource. It can help us survive in the short term but is rarely a foolproof long-term coping strategy. (That’s why blaming yourself for running out of resilience is kind of like getting mad at your phone battery for dying.)

So the real question is: If resilience isn’t enough to thrive in constant chaos, what is?

Becoming Shatterproof

In January 2020, my research team set out to answer an important—and oddly prophetic—question: Why do some people barely survive life’s challenges while others grow stronger, wiser, and even happier because of them?

Our first surprising finding? Those who thrived through adversity weren’t more resilient than anyone else. Instead, they proactively leaned into a new skillset—one that helped them harness life’s hardest moments rather than simply endure them.

This is the skill set of becoming shatterproof. Thankfully, it doesn’t require a total life overhaul—just four simple, science-backed steps practiced consistently:

1. Probe Your Pain – Instead of ignoring or brushing past struggles, get curious. What is that pain trying to tell you?

2. Trace Your Triggers – Identify the moments, people, and patterns that flip you from “fine” to “falling apart” before you even realize it.

3. Spot Your Shadows – Recognize the invisible habits keeping you stuck in the same frustrating cycles.

4. Pick Your Pivots – Make one small, powerful shift that helps you better get your needs met.

In sum, shatterproof people don’t just bounce back; they grow forward. Instead of waiting for things to change, they proactively transform. This starts with one simple shift: believing a better way exists.

Back to that moment in the doctor’s office. My decision to demand an answer became my turning point. One that didn’t just lead to a diagnosis, but set off a chain reaction that reshaped my health, my work, my relationships, and the way I moved through the world. It was the first step toward a future that I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine—one where I could rediscover a life full of confidence, peace, and joy.

For all of my fellow stressed-out strivers for you. Not just as a scientist but as a human being desperate to stop merely existing—and to start living again.

For my fellow stressed-out strivers, weary from barely getting by, I wrote Shatterproof for all of us. Not just as a scientist but as a human being desperate to stop merely existing and start truly living again. Because a better way exists. We are worthy of it. And we will unlock it. This beautiful future lies just ahead, closer than you might think.

Scroll down to take the first step - and/or, if you’re interested in “screaming deal” bulk orders, just reply to this email.

I hope you’ll join me in building the beautiful life we all deserve.

~ Tasha

PS: My back-of-the-napkin calculation shows that if just 5 to 10% of our community pre-orders Shatterproof, it would debut on the freaking New York Times bestseller list!

Make Shatterproof a NYT Bestseller!

February Freebie Drop!

This month, it’s all about choosing how you want to experience Shatterproof to help you feel better, do better, and live better in a world of constant chaos—as a self-guided journey or with a person or group who has your back.

1. Pre-Order Now

2. Claim My Incentives!

Buy 1 book and get…

• Early Access: Instantly start reading Shatterproof's Introduction & Chapter 1.

• Summary Sheet: The definitive summary of Shatterproof’s takeaways and tools.

• Signed Bookplate: One signed bookplate (500 available—first come, first served!).*

Shared Journey – Buy 2 books and get…

• All of the above, plus…

• Discussion Guide: The perfect companion for reflecting, learning, and building a better life together.

• Substitute the signed bookplate with…Two Personalized Bookplates: Made out to you and a friend by name, with a special message from Tasha.

*US & Canada only, shipped in March. **US & Canada only; both plates mailed to you in March.

1. Pre-Order Now

2. Claim My Incentives!

I’m Humbled By These Early Reviews of Shatterproof

“A generous weaving of brave storytelling, insightful science, and wise guidance.” - Brené Brown

“Thoughtful and compelling... [Eurich] offers hope and practical guidance to foster psychological safety and fail well.” - Amy Edmondson

"Smart, practical, and timely… Shatterproof is a modern approach to the perennial challenges experienced by every high achiever.” - Shawn Achor

“A deeply personal master class in transforming pain into power.” - Amy Cuddy

“Leading, working, heck, just living these days is relentless. This brilliant book will teach you how to become shatterproof.” - Michael Bungay Stanier

“A life-changing framework for mastering self-leadership.” - Marshall Goldsmith

“A revolutionary blueprint for living, leading, and thriving through uncertainty.” - Alan Mulally

“A game changer for becoming your best self.” - Erik Spoelstra, Miami Heat Head Coach

“A much-needed guide to help you navigate [chaotic] times.” - Scott Barry Kaufman

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The Best You Bulletin (January 2025)

January Shatterproof Drop: From now through March, I’ll be announcing exclusive incentives for pre-orders. Scroll down to see the “January drop.” And don’t worry, you’ll get ALL the goodies as long as you order by March 31st!

Hello friends,

January is always full of big dreams and bold intentions. Maybe you vowed to get in shape, unplug after work, or finally score your dream job. But as February rolls around, many of us are already feeling the gap between our plans and reality. This is rarely about a lack of commitment—more often, life’s curveballs derail our best-laid plans.

Take me, for example. I kicked off 2025 in Paris (!!), confident it would be my most productive year yet. Then, I came home to find my loft flooded… and completely uninhabitable. Nothing screams “new year, least productive you” like waterlogged floors and unending calls from contractors, insurance adjusters, and housing providers.

(Pssst: If your resolutions are just as waterlogged, join me and the brilliant Michael Bungay Stanier on January 30th for a webinar about getting back on track. Details below.)

What if, instead of just surviving 2025’s inevitable curveballs, they could actually fuel lasting growth, not just for ourselves but for our teams and organizations?

For years, resilience—our capacity to cope with tough times—has been hailed as the golden ticket to overcoming hardship. Practices like gratitude, social support, and optimism are undeniably powerful. But are they enough to live a fulfilling life?

I spent five years researching my new book, Shatterproof, while battling a health crisis that nearly took my life. As my well-being unraveled, I noticed that my go-to resilience strategies—powering through, positive thinking, reframing challenges, exercising—weren’t even keeping me afloat anymore, let alone helping me grow through adversity.

It felt like I’d hit an invisible ceiling limiting my ability to cope.

When I dove deeper into the research on resilience—reviewing 400 studies, to be exact—what I learned shocked me. Resilience, while valuable, isn’t the ultimate solution for thriving in adversity. Specifically, three widely-held myths can hold us back:

• Myth 1: Resilience helps us thrive. Its main benefit is actually to help us survive—maintaining or regaining our baseline, not lifting us higher.

• Myth 2: Resilience is a choice. While we can build resilience, it's also limited by factors outside our control like genetics, upbringing, and life circumstances.

• Myth 3: What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. In reality, ongoing or extreme stress makes it harder to be resilient, not easier. Some people have more resilience than others, but everyone has a limit.

Believing the myths of resilience doesn’t just leave us stuck in survival mode; it leads to a phenomenon I call “grit gaslighting.” Instead of recognizing resilience’s limits, we blame ourselves for struggling under stress: Why can’t I handle this when others have it so much worse?

But the truth is, in an increasingly chaotic world, resilience alone isn’t enough to build a beautiful life. We need a second, complementary skillset—we need to become shatterproof. Becoming shatterproof means using life’s toughest moments to grow stronger, wiser, and more fulfilled, not in spite of our cracks, but because of them.

In the coming months, I’ll share the Shatterproof Road Map, a four-step process to transform setbacks into strength. But today, let’s focus on one simple exercise to help you move from burnout to “best you” in 2025. To build your Grow Forward Plan…

1. Grab a blank piece of paper or open your Notes app.

2. Capture your aspirations using this framework: “In 2025, I want to move from ______ to ______.” Fill in the blanks and aim for 3 to 5 responses. For example:

   1. From avoiding feedback → to actively seeking it to grow and improve.

   2. From saying yes to everything → to setting unapologetic boundaries.

   3. From feeling overwhelmed → to prioritizing the critical few.

Taking just 10 minutes to reflect on where you are now, and the version of yourself you want to be, will drive small but intentional shifts and lay a foundation for transformative growth.

As we’ll explore in the coming months, becoming shatterproof is not about avoiding adversity—it’s about harnessing it to proactively transform into your strongest, most fulfilled self.

***Make sure to scroll down for an exciting announcement about FREE, EXCLUSIVE Shatterproof bonus materials.***

What if our cracks were features rather than flaws?

~Tasha

PS: I'm doing a webinar on January 30^th—"Your 2025 Boost"—with my friend Michael Bungay Stanier. I'll be teaching a new tool from Shatterproof, and Michael (author of The Coaching Habit and more) will be sharing a new framework to reboot and reset for 2025. Entry is by pre-order of his (gorgeous) new journal—click the button below.

Learn More and Register

The Official Launch of Shatterproof (Squee!)

Remember when I said you could pre-order Shatterproof back in December? Well, it’s January now, and the pre-order campaign is officially LIVE!

From now through March, I’ll be announcing exclusive “drops” of pre-order incentives. Don’t worry, whether you ordered in December or decide to jump in later, you’ll get them all. Just submit your receipt here or through the button below.

Get My Exclusive Incentives

Also, if you’re interested in a bulk book buy (including screaming deals on keynotes and fireside chats), please reply to this email.

Don’t forget, Shatterproof releases on April 1st, so we’ve got plenty of time to share all these goodies and get pumped for what’s ahead. :)

I am deeply humbled and truly grateful for the support of our wonderful community. Let’s get this journey started!

Advance Praise

“A generous weaving of brave storytelling, insightful science, and wise guidance for overcoming and reclaiming.” —BRENÉ BROWN, New York Times bestselling author of DARE TO LEAD

“Tasha Eurich offers a quietly revolutionary guide . . . empowering us to stand strong and show up as our true selves in a noisy, high-pressure world.” —SUSAN CAIN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of QUIET

“A master class in transforming pain into power. Eurich masterfully guides us to find confidence in the chaos of life.” —AMY CUDDY, New York Times bestselling author of PRESENCE and BULLIES, BYSTANDERS, AND BRAVEHEARTS

Pre-Order Shatterproof Today

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The Best You Bulletin (December 2024)

Welcome to Substack, a wonderful, reader-centered platform where you can comment, interact, and engage on the Substack App. Make sure to add this email to your safe sender list!

Hello friends,

The holidays are here—the season of joy, twinkling lights, and peppermint-flavored everything. And…the season of burnt cookies, awkward family gatherings, and realizing at 11 p.m. that your kid needs 24 homemade cupcakes tomorrow.

A few years ago, during a particularly rough patch (think: epic meltdown, no resilience left in the tank), I came up with a simple tool to help me regroup in moments of overwhelm. Featured in my new book Shatterproof (coming April 1st!), it’s called the 2-2-2 Tool. This little miracle has become my secret weapon—the kind of tool we all need during moments like, say, the holidays.

Here’s how it works: When everything feels like it’s falling apart (including you), don’t rush to fix everything immediately. Instead, whenever possible, give yourself a 48-hour timeout—no more, no less—and focus on what you need in three simple timeframes. For example:

• Two minutes: Hide in the pantry with some chocolate and a dramatic sigh.

• Two hours: Cancel dinner plans, and watch Love Actually in cozy socks.

• Two days: Let the holiday chaos simmer while you nap, say no to something, or permit yourself to let go of perfection.

The beauty of the 2-2-2 Tool is that it gives you the space to pause and reset. You don’t need a Plan B right away. It’s okay to wallow, breathe, and step back from the relentless pressure to be everything to everyone.

But wait, what if taking even two minutes to yourself feels impossible, let alone two hours or two days? That’s exactly why the 2-2-2 Tool is designed to work within your reality, no matter how demanding it is. In two hours, it might look like skipping an optional meeting, saying no to a nonessential task, or grabbing takeout instead of cooking—small adjustments that give you a little breathing room.

In two days, it could mean finding an hour to go for a quick walk, going to bed earlier, or connecting with a friend. The 2-2-2 Tool isn’t about creating extra time—it’s about finding small, intentional ways to reset in the middle of whatever life throws your way.

So for the next few weeks, I encourage you to give yourself a break. Let go of the pressure to make everything perfect, and focus on what truly makes the season special for you. Embrace the messy, magical chaos and give yourself permission to breathe—and (radical idea) prioritize your own needs.

And when it all feels like too much? Just remember: 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days. They could be the difference between barely surviving and rediscovering the joy of the season.

Wishing you joy, calm, and a well-stocked pantry for your chocolate escapes.

~Tasha

**Shatterproof Pre-orders: If you’ve already pre-ordered, I can’t wait for you to get your hands on Shatterproof! (Make sure to hang on to your receipt for the amazing pre-order bonuses coming in January.) If you haven’t, grab your copy here—and let’s tackle life’s chaos together. Also, if you’re interested in a bulk book buy (including screaming deals on keynotes and fireside chats), just reply to this email.

Learn More

P.S. I’m thrilled to be speaking at Workhuman Live—in my home state of Colorado, to boot—the can’t-miss conference for all things HR and workplace culture, taking place from May 12–15, 2025. I rarely speak at public events open to everyone, so I wanted to make sure to share this with you. Why not join me as we explore insights from Shatterproof? (Save 20% on registration with code WHL25-TEURICH.)

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Welcome to Substack, a wonderful, reader-centered platform where you can comment, interact, and engage on the Substack App. Make sure to add this email to your safe sender list!

Hello friends,

A funny thing happens when you’re writing a book about how to navigate a world of constant chaos (aka Shatterproof). People start calling you to share their “I can’t believe I let chaos get to me” moments.

Take Emily, a friend of mine who always has it together. While managing a demanding job, supporting her husband through a health crisis, and navigating her son’s struggles with a school bully, she was the very picture of composure.

That is, until one morning at kindergarten drop-off.

Right there in the parking lot, a routine encounter with her son’s bully and her mom suddenly snowballed into a full-blown Real Housewives-style shouting match—complete with a tug-of-war over glitter and glue sticks—all while their confused kids looked on. “I don’t know what happened,” she told me. “I just . . . snapped.”

Or consider a CEO I’m coaching. He kept insisting he was “just fine” while leading a major business transformation and caring for his elderly parents. Then, one day, he snapped at his team during a routine meeting. “So . . . I guess I’m not fine,” he admitted sheepishly.

Then there’s the entrepreneur juggling client deadlines, a chronic illness, and launching a new book. Last Thursday at 11 p.m., as she was scanning revisions for her publisher, her copier jammed. Instead of calmly troubleshooting the issue, she started slamming the machine with her manuscript, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you!”— followed by a dramatic movie moment where she slowly slid down the wall, thinking, Who have I become?!

Yup, that one was me.

After five years of studying what it really takes to flourish in constant chaos, I’ve learned an important lesson: the moments that make us snap are rarely as sudden as they seem. And trust me, Emily, my coaching client, and I are not the exceptions.

Think about your life today. How often are you running at full speed but still falling behind? How often do you insist you’re “JUST FINE,” even when you’re not? Do you ever wonder whether your next setback will be the one that breaks you?

If any of this feels familiar, you’re not alone.

Research shows that worldwide, chaos and uncertainty are accelerating. Forces like digital disruption, geopolitical instability, natural disasters, and economic and social turbulence have turned the unprecedented into our new precedent. Every news cycle is yet another reminder of how unpredictable life has become.

And especially for stressed-out strivers—driven people worn out by the relentless pace of life—stress is hitting harder and more often across every aspect of life: work, marriage, parenting, health, and beyond. One post-COVID study found that a staggering 75 percent of workers felt more stressed than the year prior.

For those of us who value resilience, our default response may be to double down on healthy coping. We’ve all heard the advice: meditate, practice gratitude, stay positive, practice self-care, and power through. These practices, as the thinking goes, won’t just help us survive, but come out stronger.

But if resilience alone worked the way we think, why are so many people—Emily, my CEO client, and maybe you—so exhausted? Why are the most resilient among us increasingly weighed down by more anxiety and self-doubt than we’d care to admit? All we want is to feel like our best selves again, but this goal might feel out of reach.

Moreover, when stress brings out our worst selves, we tend to overlook curiosity and self-compassion. It’s too easy to blame ourselves for breaking. I’m tough, we think, so I really should be able to handle this.

After writing Shatterproof, I've come to realize a powerful truth, not just as a researcher but as a human being who was desperately in need of answers. While resilience can help us recover from challenges, on its own, it can’t unlock the kind of growth and transformation we need for more fulfilling lives amid endless uncertainty.

What if, beyond bouncing back, we could draw on a second, complimentary practice alongside resilience to reliably grow forward through tough times—finding lasting peace, confidence, and connection in a world that tries to break us (and occasionally succeeds)?

So how do we get there? It took me years to answer this question. In the coming months, I’ll share more about what it takes. For now, let me leave you with this quote from Rumi (and Leonard Cohen): “The crack is where the light enters.”

When we become shatterproof, we embrace our “cracks” as catalysts for proactive transformation, unearthing rare insights that allow us to confidently reinvent ourselves—so we can feel better, do better, and live better.

As we will see, it’s in the very moments that break us when we can uniquely remake us.

Here’s to finding peace and purpose in the pandemonium,

~Tasha

—> Make sure to scroll down for access to a great free resource from my friend Laura Gassner Otting!

PS. Pre-order Shatterproof today to unlock exclusive incentives. Visit the websites below or your favorite bookseller—then, hold onto your receipt and keep an eye out for January’s message. Also, if you’re interested in a bulk book buy (including limited deals on keynotes and fireside chats), just reply to this email!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop

Audible

PPS. Want more productivity and purpose? My brilliant friend, WSJ bestselling author (Limitless, Wonderhell), and GMA Career Contributor Laura Gassner Otting has created a fantastic assessment to help you take charge of your career, your workplace, and yourself—making your most productive hours also your most fulfilling. Laura’s free 10-minute assessment is both insightful and empowering, and after taking it myself, I couldn’t wait to share it with you. Discover valuable insights to become the best of who you are and what you do!

Take Laura's Assessment

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*Make sure to scroll down after my message for an exciting announcement.

Welcome to Substack, a wonderful, reader-centered platform where you can comment, interact, and engage on the Substack App. Make sure to add this email to your safe sender list!

Hello friends,

Before you read the next paragraph, take a deep breath. Are you ready?

There are only nine weeks left in 2024.

Yeesh. Time certainly has a way of sneaking up on us, doesn’t it? Especially when we're juggling so much. Around this time of year, it’s easy to feel frantic about checking everything off our 2024 to-do list.

But first, let’s take a step back. What are your top three priorities right now? Go ahead—jot them down. Now, take a minute and look back at your calendar from last week. Did the way you spent that time reflect your top priorities? If not, you’re not alone. (When I did this exercise at our latest Tasha Ten meeting, I audibly gasped.)

Here’s an interesting tidbit: The English word “priority” comes from the Latin "prior," meaning "first." It wasn’t until the 20th century that we started using the plural form, and since then, humans have seemingly tricked ourselves into believing we can have multiple “first” things. (Shout out to Tasha Ten member Al Dea for this factoid).

I often see this problem when I work with executive teams. In an ever-changing world, hedging our bets feels far easier than doubling down on what matters most. But when we have too many priorities, we end up spreading ourselves so thin that we’re not doing anything well.—leaving us with what Tasha Ten member Matt Stone calls “priorities in name only” (PINO for short).

Which is to say, when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

Research backs this up. For example, in one study, as executive teams’ number of priorities grew, their revenue started to shrink. Specifically, companies with 10-plus priorities had a 71 percent chance of performing below industry average, while 44 percent of companies with three or fewer priorities exceeded industry average growth.

This is evidence that smart prioritization isn’t about squeezing more into our day. Rather, it’s about defining what truly matters to us, then making intentional (sometimes tough) choices about what we should be doing, and what we shouldn’t.

To that end, the Tasha Ten recently brainstormed three questions to see whether an activity is truly worth our precious time:

1. Am I making this choice to feel better right now, or because it’s truly right?

2. To what extent is fear driving my action or inaction?

3. Am I being the person I want to be or the person I used to think I needed to be?

Finally, prioritizing well requires that we give ourselves grace. It’s a bit like juggling glass balls and tennis balls—some things are delicate and need extra attention, while others can bounce a few times and still be fine. The trick is to know which is which, and not beat yourself up when a tennis ball drops. (Second shout-out to Al Dea.)

Today, I’ve got some exciting news about my Biggest Glass Ball of 2025…

For the first time anywhere, I’m excited to reveal the cover of Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And Why Resilience Alone Isn’t Enough)—launching April 1st, 2025! (It’s at the bottom of this message).

Shatterproof is the result of five years of research on how to build a beautiful life in a world of endless change. Inside, you’ll find the Shatterproof Roadmap—a fresh mindset and toolkit for tackling stressors and setbacks—one that goes beyond the traditional concept of resilience. Because, let’s face it, simply “bouncing back” isn’t always cutting it anymore.

Instead of just enduring tough times, what if you could harness them for forward growth? What if you could thrive through adversity instead of simply waiting for it to pass? What if, no matter what life throws at you, you could find a way to be you … but better?

In the months leading up to the Big Book Launch, I’ll reveal sneak peeks and some super cool pre-order incentives (think exclusive content, signed copies, and more). Please reply to this message with any incentives on your wish list!

For now, I challenge you to reflect on what truly matters to you. Just like becoming shatterproof, fine-tuning our priorities is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. One smart hack is to identify your “glass balls” and, if needed, allow the tennis balls to bounce.

Thank you, as always, for being part of this community. I can’t wait to share this journey with you.

(Don’t forget to scroll down for the cover reveal!)

With gratitude,

Tasha

~Tasha

PS. If you pre-order Shatterproof today, you’ll be eligible to receive our pre-order incentives. Just hold onto your receipt and keep an eye out for that announcement in the coming month or two.

Pre-Order on Amazon

Pre-Order on B&N

Pre-Order on Bookshop

And Now, The Shatterproof Cover!

Let me know what you think! :)

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You might notice things look a bit different. I’ve switched to Substack, a wonderful reader-centered platform, where you can comment, interact, and engage on the Substack App. I hope you’ll let me know what you think—and make sure to add this email to your safe sender list!

Dear {first_name},

One bright spring day many years ago, I was driving to an important appointment. 

Despite never having recorded an audiobook, my publisher hired me to narrate Insight. I was excited but wondered, “Am I really qualified for this?” Still, I dove into preparations, setting my sights on creating the perfect audiobook.

That morning, my coffee stop took a bit longer than I planned and I was running late. When I finally got to the recording studio—a brick building nestled in a commercial area of Denver—I spotted a parking space near the entrance. As I pulled in, I started gathering my things so I could run right inside.

To this day, I still don’t understand what happened next.

Instead of pressing the BRAKE, my foot hit the GAS. My sedan sailed over the wheel stop, flew a few feet in the air, and crashed straight into the building. 

BOOM.

Everyone inside rushed out to see what had just happened.

And there I was, covered in coffee, watching their eyes dart between my car and the brick wall (both of which, thankfully, were intact).

After a moment of stunned silence, the only thing I could manage to say out was, "Don’t worry, everyone—I’M OKAYYY!”

It was, without question, the most embarrassing moment of my life.

The bewildered studio manager approached me, unsure of what to do. "We should probably call our insurance companies," he said. After that, we agreed to continue with the recording.

I was led down a long hallway to a tiny recording booth where I’d spend the next three days. As I sat down, a wave of embarrassment hit. I slipped on the headphones and tried to focus, but all I could think was, Forget the perfect audiobook. I’m an incompetent fraud. And now everyone knows it.

When was the last time you felt unworthy of an opportunity? That feeling is called imposter syndrome, and about 70 percent of us experience it. While imposter syndrome doesn’t always block us from performing, it often brings depression, distress, and harm to our mental health with it.

And for many of us (ahem!), imposter syndrome also triggers perfectionism. It can feel like the only shield against our constant self-doubt. Over time, we start seeing perfection as a measure of competence. Then if we fall short—like crashing a car into a building or some other mistake—we convince ourselves we’re frauds.

But I didn’t quit. I came back the next day, and the next—and finished the audiobook, despite my epic mistake. Looking back, I’m proud that I pushed through my self-doubt. I’m also grateful for the studio team’s kindness and the positive feedback we eventually got on the finished product.

And still… I didn’t tell this story for years. I was too busy projecting perfection. But perfectionism doesn’t just fuel imposter syndrome—it prevents people from really knowing us. And honestly, most people want connection more than perfection.

That’s why I’m sharing this with you now.

As poet Criss Jami said, “To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength." In today’s world, few of us are spared stress, struggle, and self-doubt. However, even when we fall short of our own standards, vulnerability makes us stronger.

Speaking of vulnerability, I’m excited to let you in on something. I’m gearing up to release my new book, Shatterproof, on April 1st! Starting next month, I’ll be offering exclusive insights, behind-the-scenes access, and special bonuses to this amazing community. As always, you’ll be the first to know what’s coming, and I’m so excited to (vulnerably) share this crazy journey with you.

Until then, here’s to a strong, imperfect September.

~Tasha

PS. Have you checked out The Insight Course? Designed to improve your self-awareness and success, this on-demand virtual experience features the same battle-tested tools I use with my C-suite clients, at a fraction of the price. Check out the course website for more info.

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