That spectacular failure forced me to do something I'd been avoiding: Separate my identity from my work. It was the hardest growth experience of my life, but looking back, it was also the most necessary. This failure taught me infinitely more than my first company ever did when I sold it successfully.
I spent forty years telling myself I was less than. Less educated. Less qualified. Less worthy of having an opinion on anything that mattered. All because I didn't have a piece of paper with a university seal on it. Started when I was eighteen. Everyone else was heading off to college, and I was heading to a job site with a toolbox.
You can call me a dork, but working in public radio was my dream as a teenager - and the hours I spent mapping out my career path and building up my résumé paid off by the time I was an adult. After graduating from college in 2019, I interned at NPR, then landed a job at my local public radio station. Within a few years, I'd worked my way up to being a beat reporter, the role I'd always wanted.
You can have all the markers of success-the steady job, the decent apartment, friends who think you're crushing it-and still feel like you're playing life on easy mode when you know you could handle expert level. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after a conversation with someone who, from the outside, looked like they had everything figured out. Good career, great relationship, traveled regularly. But over drinks, they admitted they felt like they were sleepwalking through their own life.
Picture this: the wine glasses are half-empty, the main course plates have been cleared, and suddenly the conversation hits that dreaded wall. You can hear the forks scraping against dessert plates, someone clearing their throat, the uncomfortable shuffle of feet under the table. We've all been there, watching a lively dinner party deflate like a punctured balloon, everyone suddenly fascinated by their napkins or reaching for their phones.
Ever wonder why some people seem to crush it in every area of life while others stay stuck in the same patterns year after year? According to Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and author of "12 Rules for Life," the difference comes down to one brutal practice: Telling yourself the truth about your weaknesses. Not the comfortable half-truths we usually feed ourselves. The real, uncomfortable, sometimes painful truth.
For most of my life, I thought of myself as a fixed entity: This is me. These are my traits. This is who I am. I assumed I was essentially that same person who loved sugary cereal at age 8, fried chicken at 12, and tequila at 21, and who still loves those things now, even if my stomach disagrees. But this is an illusion. Neuroscience, physics, and Buddhism all agree: There is nothing fixed about us-not even close.
Now, listening in late 2025, I no longer felt heroic. Instead, what I felt most strongly was tenderness. Tenderness for that young man who believed he could outwork any obstacle, who thought the American dream was just a matter of refusing to quit. He had no idea what was coming-the failures, the losses, the ways life would refuse his tidy narrative.
"When you don't say what needs to be said in the moment to spare somebody else's feelings, first of all, like, you're rejecting the truest part of yourself," Paltrow said. "And then it's going to come out another way. And that's like, you'll end up being dishonest. You'll end up not saying what needs to be said. You'll end up stringing out some lame relationship for eight extra months and treating them not so nicely because you have stuck yourself in something, you know, you just make a mess," she said.
Sometimes we feel like we're not progressing in our personal development if we don't have an Etsy shop that makes six figures a year, haven't done an Ironman, or still feel upset about a friendship that broke down five years ago. But there are all sorts of ways we mature and develop that we barely notice. When you give yourself credit for quiet ways you've matured psychologically, it can help you feel more settled within yourself and build on these wins.
There is a holiday moment many of us know well: the quiet walk outside, the long exhale, the brief escape from a room full of people we love but sometimes struggle to navigate. This season carries both beauty and weight. It can draw out our best qualities- generosity, gratitude, warmth-and also uncover the places where we are still growing. I used to think this tension meant something was wrong-and honestly, part of me still does.
Winter is the perfect time to curl up with a good book, sip on some hot cocoa (or coffee, if you're me), and get smarter. But hey, let's not limit ourselves to design books alone. As a designer, growth isn't just about mastering tools, it's about mastering life and the skills that can help you elevate your work and your hustle. So, here's a list of books that will level up your game in ways you didn't see coming.
When you think back on your life so far, you'll likely see a few pivotal moments that played a major role in your storyline. At the time, the events might not have seemed like a big deal - a haircut, a part-time job, a quick weekend trip - but now that you've lived through them, you know exactly how they shaped you into who you are today.
The qualities that made Karen Carney an unstoppable winger on the football pitch her speed and attack, and the sheer relentlessness of both are more of a hindrance in the ballroom, for some of the dances at least. As the emerging star of this year's Strictly Come Dancing, she has had to learn to slow down, stand up straighter, to be softer, and it's taken a lot of hard work.
