I'm not a boxer.

But I was ready to pick a fight.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Another leadership meeting. Another conversation negotiating who in our leadership team was taking on what portion of our division’s goals. Yet another situation where my team was being pressured to take on an additional 30 Million in quota to cover the shortfall of another team. 

I felt my jaw clench. My voice got inappropriately loud. My hands slapped down on my notebook on the table.

And I had this wild thought: "I could flip this table right now."

(I didn't. But the impulse was real.)

That's when I knew something was deeply wrong.

Not with the meeting. With me.

Because leaders don't fantasize about flipping conference tables in quota meetings.

But managers who are pretending to lead? We absolutely do.

Here's what I realized in that moment:

I was no longer leading my team. I was managing their problems. I was no longer leading myself. I was managing my resentment. I was no longer leading with vi...

"You can have it all, just not all at the same time."

We used to say this constantly. To our team. To other women. To ourselves.

And we were wrong.

Not wrong about the sentiment. Wrong about what it implied.

Because when we say "you can't have it all at the same time," what we're really saying is:

"Leadership requires sacrifice." "Success requires compromise." "You have to choose between your career and your life."

And we’re calling BS.

The problem isn't that you can't have it all.

The problem is that you're trying to have it all in someone else's design.

Let me explain.

We spent years trying to lead like the men around us. Early mornings, late nights, constant availability, relentless drive.

We thought that's what leadership looked like, because that was all we saw.

So when we burned out, we assumed the problem was that we wanted too much. Career success AND personal fulfillment? That's not realistic. Pick one.

But here's what we discovered after a decade of deep work in ...