What's standing between you and freedom.
When your ego loves prestige, but your soul craves purpose.
“Oh, there is absolutely NO way.”
I was panicking as my mind cycled through:
“Ah, well I guess I didn’t need my MBA.”
“What will my classmates think?!”
“Oof, this is really stepping off the path.”
My career coach had just walked me through the results of my personality test.1
At the top of the list of suggested careers were:
Social worker
Career coach
Human resources
In other words, roles you did not need an MBA for.
Roles that didn’t have a clear path to the C-Suite, wouldn’t turn heads on a LinkedIn profile and certainly wouldn’t give me that jolt of pride I felt introducing myself as a consulting manager.
I had spent years working exhaustively to get to that point in my career, and my identity was tied to being an ambitious, high-achieving professional.
As was my ego.
Or the very human part of all of us that craves approval, status and external validation.
That conversation was the first time I realized how much validation and self-worth I derived from prestige markers.
And how much my ego — not my heart or intuition — was driving my career.
I took a deep breath, told my coach, “I’ll think about it…” and logged off the call.
I always do my homework - and so followed through on my commitment to explore.
I talked to a classmate and former colleague - also ambitious and business-oriented - working in people-focused roles. Read books. Listened to podcasts. Followed thought leaders.
After each conversation and resource, I felt a pull. A quiet but persistent “huh… I want to keep talking about this.”
I realized I had a choice:
Keep going on my current path - the one that looked so good on paper but left me drained and burned out, or
Start doing what actually felt good.
That meant getting over my ego.
And letting go of all the stories I’d told myself about what professions were “MBA-worthy” or impressive.
I didn’t leap straight into coaching - that felt like a bridge too far.
But I did take a People + Culture leadership role, leading to the four most fulfilling years of my corporate career.
Fast-forward a few years later, an my People + Culture role had evolved into a Chief of Staff promotion. I was leading a team of seven and part of our firm’s management team.
It’s funny — while I had stopped worrying about what my classmates and former consulting colleagues thought when I took the People + Culture role, I ended up with the all the trappings of external credibility I had been so afraid of losing (i.e., impressive title, larger team, multi-six-figure strategy).
And those very things?
They were starting to trap me again.
After a few years in that role, I kept feeling a pull to do something different.
My daydreams kept drifting towards coaching, which my mind immediately quashed with more panic screams of “oh, there’s no way” and “that’s just not significant enough.”
(One of Clifton Strengths is “Significance” or valuing being seen as credible and working on high-stakes opportunities. Great for leadership roles, less great for purpose-driven pivots).
This time it wasn’t podcasts or informational interviews that got me over the hump.
It was this Yung Pueblo quote:
“If you measure the length of your ego, it will equal the distance between you and your freedom.”
I still remember the moment I read that quote on a flight back from Denver.
It landed deeply in my body, and I knew I needed to start letting go of those ego-trappings again.
As a coach, I wouldn’t have a title. Or a team.
I’d be doing the thing I’d once written off as “not MBA-worthy.”
But I took a deep breath and decided to go for it.
(my decision wasn’t quite so simple - you can read the full story here).
It hasn’t been all roses and sunshine ego-wise, and yes, at times, I've felt self-conscious introducing myself or talking about my business when catching up with classmates.
However, those small discomforts are 100% worth being able to do work that feels so engaging, aligned and just good. Every. single. day.
I share all of this because I hear other ambitious women wrestle with the same tension all the time:
The role or industry they want to pursue doesn’t match the expectations or identity they’ve built for themselves.
The exec who wants to be a social worker.
The business operator who was born to teach.
The consultant who wants to be in culture + employee engagement.
The product leader whose passion is education.
The strategist feeling called towards public service.
As ambitious women, we don’t make up these stories out of nowhere.
We absorb them — from mentors, social media, family, cultural narratives.
We’ve spent our whole lives being praised for our good grades, promotions, shiny job offers.
But sometimes, the same stories that have fueled our success are the ones that keep us trapped (see my multiple examples above!).
If you’re at a similar point - feeling called towards something different but hesitant to let go of that “great on paper” success - here are three ways to start loosening your ego’s grip:
1️⃣ Get familiar with your ego’s soundtrack.
Your ego - the very human instinct to value status, prestige and external credibility that we all have! - is just a voice at the back of your head. It’s not your authentic self and doesn’t represent what’s truly important to you. It’s just trying to protect your image.
Pay attention to when your ego screams “you’ve worked too hard for this” or “they won’t take you seriously.” Then get curious…is it more important to be viewed as “serious” by the random guy from your macro econ class or to do work that feels true to you?
2️⃣ Get curious instead of resistant.
Just because you have an idea or daydream, doesn’t mean you’re blowing up your life to pursue it next week. Ease your ego into this shift - have conversations, learn, try it on. Follow the breadcrumbs of what sparks your interest without immediately judging whether it’s “worth it.”
Over time, your ego soundtrack may quiet down or you’ll decide you want to go for it anyways, ego be damned.
3️⃣ Redefine success for who you are today.
You’ve probably been defining success by the same metrics for the past 10-20 years…number of promotions, seniority of your title, size of your team or number of zeros on your paycheck.
Anddd, my guess is that your definition of success is more expansive today and includes metrics like core family memories, time in nature, hours of sleep / night or number of pottery classes taken.
Clarify what you’re optimizing for now. You’ll be amazed at what that does for the volume on your ego soundtrack.
It’s your turn to chose — do you want to keep doing what looks good or are you ready to create a career and life that feels good?
I’m an ‘ENFJ’ in Myers-Briggs / 16 Personalities. IYKYK.
Absolutely love the raw honesty AND the framework to release yourself from the ego trap!