Make a Life, Not Just a Living
You did everything you were supposed to do.
You worked hard. Built the career. Took on more responsibility. Said yes to the opportunities. Earned the promotions, the salary, the recognition.
You became someone other people would probably describe as successful.
And somewhere along the way, you started wondering:
Is this really it?
Make a Life, Not Just a Living is for high-achieving mid-career women who are starting to question the version of success they’ve spent years chasing.
Not because they don’t want to work hard.
Not because they’ve stopped caring about their careers.
And not because they secretly want to burn everything down.
But because they’re realizing that a successful career and a successful life aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Maybe the rules aren’t actually rules
For a long time, I believed being successful meant constantly proving myself.
Do great work. Say yes. Be available. Take on more. Get promoted. Earn more. Win the award. Be the person everyone can count on.
And when you accomplish the thing?
There’s another level to reach.
I was very good at playing that game.
The problem was that there was no finish line.
Every accomplishment created a new standard I now had to maintain. Every piece of proof eventually expired and needed to be replaced with more proof.
And when your career becomes the primary measure of your success, everything else can slowly become something you fit around it.
Your health. Your relationships. Your interests. Your time.
Your life.
I don’t believe the answer is to stop caring about work.
I think we need to care differently.
You can care deeply about your work without carrying all of it.
You can work hard without believing exhaustion is evidence that you’re doing enough.
You can want the promotion without making getting it mean something about your worth.
You can be excellent at your job without making your job the most important thing about you.
And you can be ambitious without directing all of that ambition toward climbing a corporate ladder.
I don’t believe in balance. I believe in intentional imbalance.
There will be seasons when work asks more of you.
Maybe there’s a project you’re excited about, a promotion you’re pursuing, a business you’re building, or a goal you’ve deliberately decided is worth pushing for.
Great.
Hard work isn’t the problem.
Hard work should be intentional, not perpetual. And there should be recovery on the other side of it.
I want there to be seasons when you strive.
And then I want you to accomplish something, recover, celebrate it, enjoy what you’ve built, and consciously decide what you want next.
Not immediately move the finish line because there’s always another thing you could be doing.
And your workout, vacation, hobbies, friendships, sleep, or Tuesday night dinner with someone you love don’t need to make you more productive to deserve space in your life.
They’re part of the life you’re working so hard to build.
So, what do you actually want?
That’s the question underneath almost everything you’ll find here.
Not what you should want by this point in your career.
Not what would look impressive on LinkedIn.
Not what your manager, parents, colleagues, friends, or younger self assumed success would look like.
What do you want now?
Maybe you want to keep climbing.
Maybe you want to change careers.
Maybe you want to build something of your own.
Maybe you want to stay exactly where you are professionally and direct your ambition somewhere else.
Maybe your job can simply be one part of a full life.
Maybe you don’t want to be striving toward anything right now.
There isn’t one correct answer.
The point is that you get to answer the question.
What you’ll find here
I write about work, ambition, identity, career, leadership, burnout, health, relationships, and what happens when the life you were taught to build no longer feels like the only option.
But this isn’t just a place to talk about what’s wrong with work.
I want to help you question the rules you’ve been following, decide which ones still deserve a place in your life, and make different choices without assuming you need to quit your job, become less ambitious, or blow up everything you’ve built.
We’ll explore how to care about your career without carrying all of it.
How to work hard without making hard work your default setting.
How to stop treating every opportunity as an obligation.
How to change your experience of work before assuming changing jobs is the only answer.
How to build a career around your life instead of continually building your life around your career.
And how to create a definition of ambition that has room for everything else you might want to care deeply about too.
Most importantly, we’ll keep coming back to a question that sounds simple but can be surprisingly difficult after years of following the path in front of you:
What do I actually want?
You’ll also find Woman in Progress, my podcast, here, where we have these conversations out loud.
Hi, I’m Samantha 👋🏽
I’m Samantha Ushedo, a life coach for mid-career women and someone who spent years getting very good at achieving.
I built a successful corporate career. I chased the promotions, recognition, awards, bigger opportunities, and all the other markers I thought would tell me I was doing well.
And for a long time, they did.
Until I started questioning whether constantly achieving more was the same thing as actually having more of the life I wanted.
I haven’t become anti-career, anti-ambition, or anti-hard work.
Quite the opposite.
I’m interested in what happens when we become more intentional about where all that ambition goes.
When success becomes something we can sustain.
When our careers are allowed to matter without being the only thing that matters.
When we stop postponing our lives until after the next promotion, project, deadline, or achievement.
And when we actually give ourselves permission to enjoy what we’ve worked so hard to build.
That’s the conversation I want to have here.
Because your career can be part of a successful life without being the measure of one.
And success isn’t just getting what you want.
It’s being able to enjoy what you’ve built.
If that’s a conversation you’ve been needing too, subscribe and join me!
Work with me 1:1
If you’re a mid-career woman who has built a successful career but is starting to question whether the way you’re working, or the version of success you’ve been chasing, is still working for you, I can help.
My 1:1 coaching is a space to figure out what you actually want, understand what’s keeping you stuck, and start making meaningful changes without assuming you need to quit your job, become less ambitious, or blow up the life you’ve already built.
Over four months, we’ll work together to help you change your relationship with work, make decisions with more confidence, and build a career and life that feel successful to you, not just one that looks successful from the outside.Join the crew
