The Script

We are all handed a script when we start our careers. You know the one.

In coaching, its: Get the GA spot. Sleep under your desk. Grind eighty hours a week and chase the biggest logo you can find.

The script tells you that ambition only counts if it comes with a bigger title and less time at home.

It is the same in the corporate world. Climb the ladder. Defer your happiness until retirement. Measure your worth by your salary and your status.

For a long time, I read the lines perfectly. I chased the success through hours and hours on the floor and in the office.

But the script is a trap. It forces you to trade your actual life for a hypothetical future. You let the job become your entire identity, and you forget why you started working in the first place.

I read an article this week by Paul Millerd about questioning these "scripts about work." He realized that the relentless pursuit of success was leaving him empty. So he went off-script.

He stopped working to fuel his ego and started working to fuel his life.

That is the ultimate flex.

Too many coaches think they have to choose. You either dominate your career or you are a present father. You either win championships or you actually see your wife.

That is a false choice. It is an excuse used by people who refuse to build efficient systems.

True ambition is not blinding yourself to everything outside the facility. True ambition is having the discipline to dominate your professional, and the boundaries to leave it at the door when you walk into your house.

You need to rewrite your script.

Stop letting the field tell you what success looks like. Define your own version of good work. Build the systems to win at your job without sacrificing the joy that comes from your family.

Tear up the plan. Write your own script.

Keep the Fire Burning,

Leech