The question is why your life doesn't look like it yet.

In this episode, I'm talking about the gap. The one between the vision you have for yourself, the leader you know you're meant to be, the things you know you're capable of creating, and the way you're actually showing up right now. The unfinished projects. The broken promises to yourself. The snooze button you hit six times before your feet touch the floor. The track record that says one thing while your mind says another.

I'm sharing how I lived in that gap for years, how I tried to fix it by doing more, organizing more, planning more, and how none of that worked. What actually changed everything was learning how to believe differently. Not affirmations on sticky notes. Real beliefs, built through small actions, until my brain couldn't argue with the evidence anymore.

I'm also getting honest about what happened when rejection hit me at a level I didn't even know I was carrying, how I slowly started hiding in my own company, and how I almost shut the whole thing down three weeks before everything turned around.

If you're a physician who knows exactly who she wants to be but can't figure out why she's not being her yet, this one is for you.

In this episode:

Why the gap between your vision and your reality isn't a discipline problem

The difference between self-esteem and self-trust (and why you have one but not the other)

Why affirmations fail when your actions don't match

How I went from "the chick who can't do her billing" to keynotes, publications, and a promotion

What rejection-sensitive dysphoria actually looks like when you don't know you have ADHD

The moment I almost closed my company and called it "purpose"

Why sitting in the gap is the first step every single time

Then things went from bad to worse. I got pregnant, my mother got sick, and a year and a half later she was gone. Cleaning out her house after the funeral, I found a manila envelope with her handwriting inside — an entire book she had written by hand more than twenty years earlier and never told a single soul about. Sitting on her floor with that book in my hands, I said out loud, "I want to live a life of purpose." I share what happened next, which was not the manifestation story you're expecting: I got fired from a leadership position, I papered my office in affirmations that did absolutely nothing, and in December 2017 I hit my actual rock bottom.

This is also the episode where things turn. Therapy. A Mel Robbins video on my thirty-sixth birthday. The morning I stopped saying "5, 4, 3, 2, 1" and started saying "I can do hard things" — and the realization that changed everything: my brain is not broken, it's different, and it needs different support. I'll take you through what that belief shift unlocked (the textbook chapter, the keynote, the leadership roles) and end with the day I got called into the chair's office and, voice shaking, named racism out loud to the most powerful person in my department — and got an apology.

This is part one. Next episode: building the company, scaling it, and how I almost burned the whole thing down.

Chapters
01:10 — Triple board certified in being a hot mess
06:51 — The book my mother wrote by hand and never told anyone about
08:37 — "I want to live a life of purpose"
10:04 — Fired from a leadership position a month in
12:18 — Why affirmations did nothing for me
16:17 — Rock bottom, and finding a therapist
19:04 — The five-second rule and my thirty-sixth birthday
22:20 — "I can do hard things": belief built through action
24:40 — My brain is different, so I gave it what it needs
28:55 — Called into the chair's office
32:32 — Speaking truth to power, and the apology
36:04 — Why this is part one

If this one landed, share it with someone who's brilliant at their job and quietly drowning everywhere else. And tell me what you want me to unpack next — I'm listening.