Raise the floor

What turning 40 is teaching me about wanting more, tolerating less and refusing to make myself smaller

I turn 40 at the end of this month.

And lately I keep having the same thought:

What am I no longer willing to negotiate with myself about?

Not what should I accomplish before 40.

Not what do I need to fix.

Not even what do I want the next decade to look like.

But rather, what have I known for a very long time that I keep talking myself out of?

A few weeks ago, something happened with someone I care about that hurt me.

Nothing dramatic.

No betrayal. No big confrontation. Nothing that would make a particularly interesting story.

Just one of those interactions that left me sitting there wondering:

What happened?

Did I misunderstand something?

Did I do something?

Am I expecting too much?

Am I allowed to be upset? Confused? Hurt?

Should I reach out?

Should I give them the benefit of the doubt?

And I noticed how quickly my brain wanted to start explaining someone else’s behaviour away. And more importantly, as this is my pattern, to make it a ME issue.

Maybe they’re busy.

Maybe they’re dealing with something.

Maybe I shouldn’t take it personally.

Maybe I completely misunderstood the relationship this whole time.

Maybe I care more than they do and I just need to accept that it just wasn’t that deep.

Maybe I got it all wrong.

Some of those things could even be true.

But I’ve been thinking about how much of my life I’ve spent asking whether I am allowed to want more.

Not only from people.

From EVERYTHING.

Raise the floor

I recently finished The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson. Great read, highly recommend! It’s a business book, but one concept from the book has been lingering in my mind ever since I heard it:

Raise the floor.

We spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about ceilings.

How successful could I become?

How much money could I make?

How much fitter could I get?

How big could the business get?

How incredible could the relationship be?

How good could life become?

But the floor is your baseline.

It’s what you are willing to accept as normal.

And I’m starting to wonder whether the biggest changes in my life right now are going to come not from reaching for a bigger ceiling, but from deciding that certain things are no longer allowed to be the floor.

I’m allowed to have preferences

When I first moved to Dubai, I took a job teaching fitness.

I had moved here believing I would be teaching in a particular kind of boutique environment, the kind of room I had spent years teaching in and loved leading back home in Toronto.

Instead, I ended up doing work that felt completely different.

I wasn’t challenged.

I wasn’t learning.

I wasn’t getting opportunities to do the kind of teaching I had come here believing I would do.

And slowly, it started affecting the way I saw myself.

I was constantly thinking:

Maybe I’m not actually that good.

Maybe I should just be grateful to have the job.

Maybe this is what I’m qualified for here.

Other people would have been thrilled to have the opportunity.

And that became part of the argument I used against myself.

Someone else would be happy with this.

Eventually I quit.

And one of the most important things I had to tell myself was embarrassingly simple:

I’m allowed to have preferences.

Something does not have to be terrible for me to not want it.

An opportunity doesn’t become right for me simply because someone else would be grateful for it.

Wanting more challenge doesn’t make me ungrateful.

Wanting to work in an environment where I’m learning, growing and becoming better doesn’t mean I think I’m above anyone.

It means I know what I want.

That shouldn’t require a defense.

Tbh, I think I’ve been doing this everywhere

With work.

With money.

With relationships.

With my business.

With myself.

I’ve always had this feeling that there is something very big I am supposed to do with my life. (And I don’t mean that in a mystical the universe has chosen me kind of way.)

I just know what I am capable of.

I know the amount of energy I have.

I know how much I care.

I know how ambitious I am.

I know how much I want to create.

I know I want my work to matter.

I want to build something significant.

I want to have an impact.

I want to make money. And lots of it.

I want to write a book.

I want to speak on big stages.

I want to build a business I’m wildly proud of.

I want incredible friendships.

I want deep love.

I want freedom.

I want a really fucking great life.

And if I’m being completely truthful, I think I have spent years trying to make those wants sound smaller.

Because wanting a lot can make people uncomfortable.

Being confident about what you’re capable of can sound arrogant.

Saying you think you are capable of greatness can sound like you’re saying other people aren’t.

Having big ambition can look like dissatisfaction.

Having preferences can look like entitlement.

So I learned how to soften it.

I learned how to say, “We’ll see” and “I’m not sure”.

I learned how to hedge.

I learned how to make my dreams sound a little more reasonable.

I learned how to adjust my POV when someone challenged or disagreed with my perspective.

I learned how to make sure everyone understood that I didn’t think I was better than them.

And somewhere along the way, I started confusing humility with self-erasure.

Your light doesn’t require mine to be dimmer

This might be the floor I most need to raise.

I don’t want to spend my 40s making myself smaller so other people never have to confront how they feel about themselves.

I don’t want to apologize for having big goals.

I don’t want to minimize what I want because somebody else thinks it is too much or not “realistic”.

I don’t want to stay in rooms where I am bored and uninspired because leaving might look ungrateful.

I don’t want to pretend I don’t care when I care enormously.

I don’t want to act like my business is a cute little side project when I want to build something important.

I don’t want relationships where I have to continually downgrade what I need in order to maintain access to someone.

And I don’t want to keep convincing myself that breadcrumbs are enough when I want to eat the whole damn meal.

That doesn’t mean everybody needs to match me.

It doesn’t mean everyone has to want the things I want.

It doesn’t mean someone else’s smaller, quieter, simpler life is less meaningful.

That’s the part I think I’m finally understanding.

Someone else’s light does not require mine to be dimmer.

Their choices don’t threaten mine.

And mine don’t have to threaten theirs.

The floor is not perfection

Raising the floor doesn’t mean I expect every person in my life to behave exactly the way I want. People get to be who they are. They get to communicate the way they communicate, make the choices they make, and show up however they choose.

But I get to decide what I want in my life.

I get to decide which relationships I continue investing in, which behaviors I am willing to live with, and what no longer works for me.

It doesn’t mean I leave every job the moment I’m frustrated.

Things don’t have to be terrible for me to decide they’re not enough.

They don’t have to be objectively bad for me to decide they no longer work for me.

Sometimes raising the floor is simply admitting to myself that something can be fine and still not be in alignment with the life I’ve decided I want.

I want deep relationships.

I want repair.

I want grace.

I want people to be human around me.

And most of all, I want to be allowed to be human too.

But grace and standards are not opposites.

Understanding someone’s bad behaviour doesn’t require me to accept it indefinitely.

Caring about someone doesn’t require me to chase them.

Being grateful for an opportunity doesn’t require me to stay in it.

Being humble doesn’t require me to pretend I don’t know what I’m capable of.

And wanting more doesn’t mean what I already have is worthless.

So what does raising the floor actually look like?

In my financial life, it means debt and financial insecurity are no longer things I am willing to casually carry.

In business, it means I stop treating the work that matters most as optional and secondary to things that are easier and more certain.

Professionally, it means I choose environments where I am challenged, valued and learning.

In friendship, it means raising my own floor too. Putting in the effort to build the kind of friendships I say I want, showing up for the people I love, and intentionally investing in the people I want to become my ride-or-dies, my forever people.

In love, it means I stop accepting scraps because some part of me is afraid there might not be anything better out there. I would rather hold out for the deep, mutual love I actually want than keep convincing myself that less should be enough.

Personally, it means I stop making myself smaller before anybody has even asked me to and showing up in the fullness of who I really am.

I’m realizing the work now is becoming the person who is willing to admit how much she wants.

40

There is something about turning 40 that makes this feel less like a New Year’s resolution and more like a reckoning.

I don’t feel old.

I don’t feel altogether behind (moreso behind where my high-achiever brain expects me to be, but I’m working on that!).

In truth, I feel like I’m just getting started. Forty feels like a launch pad for everything I want to build next.

I’ve changed countries.

Changed careers.

Started over.

Built new friendships.

Taken risks.

Failed at things.

Changed my mind.

Wanted things I wasn’t supposed to want.

Stopped wanting things I thought I was supposed to want.

And I think the next decade is asking something different of me.

Instead of it asking: How high can you reach?

What if it’s asking: How low are you still willing to go?

How much inconsistency will you explain away?

How much of yourself will you edit?

How long will you stay somewhere that doesn’t fit because leaving feels ungrateful?

How much of what you want will you minimize so nobody thinks you’re asking for too much?

How long will you keep negotiating against yourself?

I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be fully self-expressed.

Big goals.

Big dreams.

Big energy.

Big LIFE.

And I don’t mean big in the way the internet often means it.

I don’t care about more followers, more stuff or status.

I mean a life that feels like the fullest expression of the person I know myself to be.

A life with work I care about.

People I love.

Money that creates freedom.

A strong, fit body I feel proud to live in.

A business that makes an impact.

Relationships where I feel chosen too and don’t require me to disappear in order to maintain them.

Experiences that transform me.

And enough room to keep becoming whoever the hell I’m going to become next.

I’m beginning to think raising the floor is how I get there.

Not by becoming harder or less forgiving. And definitely not by pretending I don’t care when something hurts. But by finally believing that what I want doesn’t need to be justified or softened to be more palatable.

I’m allowed to have preferences.

I’m allowed to want more.

I’m allowed to outgrow what once felt good enough.

I’m allowed to be disappointed and say ‘this doesn’t work for me anymore’.

I’m allowed to take up the full amount of space my life requires.

And perhaps most importantly: I don’t have to make myself smaller to prove that I don’t think I’m better than anyone else.

I can let other people be as big as they want to be.

And I can finally let myself be big, too.

- Samantha

If this made you realize there are parts of your life or work you’ve been tolerating that no longer feel good enough, that’s exactly the kind of thing I help my clients work through.

I work 1:1 with high-achieving mid-career women who know something needs to change, but aren’t always sure what that change is yet.

We figure out what’s actually making work and life feel so heavy, what you want instead, and what needs to change so you can make a life, not just a living.