It’s Not Too Late: How to Transform Your Life at Any Moment

Be honest, if nothing changed, would you be happy with your life one year from now? Like same job, same relationship patterns, same everything. Like would it actually feel good? Don't answer out loud, just notice how your body feels. This episode is a mirror and it's also a road map. This is one of our most shared episodes because it gives a way for you to get honest and be honest without blowing up your entire life.

And we're bringing it back right now because this is the time where people are making the decisions that shape their next year. We heard from you guys and you said that this episode changed your lives, so we're bringing it back for the new year. And this applies to anyone, no matter where you are in your journey, stop settling. Hi, Tiger fam, I'm Cherie. And I'm Jean. We are your Wall Street and Silicon Valley Big Sisters. And we're a top business podcast that talks about money, power

and love. So the new year is here, and this is such an important time to take stock of your life and see where you're settling. Yeah, because I feel like the new year is kind of a crossroads. You can either take all of your old habits and all of your ways of being from the previous year and just roll it into the new year, or this is an opportunity to go down a new path. OK, so mini exercise right before we get started, take 10 seconds and rate yourself in these categories.

The first number that comes to mind. So rate your alignment one to 10 in career, relationship and identity. And here's the rule. Anything under 7 is actually a yellow flag, but it doesn't mean you have to panic. It's more so just data that you can take in for yourself. It's a good exercise to check in with yourself because then you can see how aligned or misaligned you are in those three categories.

Yeah. And actually my favorite framework is the 12 month projection framework where you think ahead and you say if I were to do everything and continue on this path in 12 months, would I be happy? We use that self reflection question in all different parts of our decision making, like in work, in our career and in our relationships. So as you're listening, don't just nod along. Pick one exercise and do it. OK, let's get into it. The first thing we're going to

talk about is the symptoms of settling. Yeah, I think a lot of times people think settling is something that's like, really dramatic, and when you're in it, you feel terrible, but it doesn't always feel like straight misery. Sometimes you just feel fine, like you're in a job that you know is going fine, or you're dating someone that looks perfect on paper but it's not actually great, or you're shrinking yourself to keep the peace. It's fine.

Everything's fine. According to a Harvard Business Review article, 85% of people worldwide feel actively disengaged at work. And that's not just burnout, that's people waking up, going through the motions and calling it a career. And that's settling. Yeah, I think that's very common for people. They basically choose something that's comfortable, which is kind of the equivalent of settling, but they don't realize they're kind of killing off their future self. Is that dramatic? Kind of.

It's been very dramatic. But it's kind of true. If you're like looking back on yourself at times when you were settling, don't you feel like, oh, what was I doing? I almost like closed off this whole amazing life that I have for myself if I kept going in that path. So how can you figure out if you're settling then? So the mini exercise is think about where you are today and if you were to continue in this path for the next 12 months, would you be happy with where you end up?

And if the answer is no, or if you just feel yourself kind of like shrinking away from the answer and unhappy with it, that means you're settling. OK, so now that we've talked about how to know if you're settling, we're going to talk about why women and men settle. So high achieving people, especially women, are trained to endure. We're trained to not want too much, to be grateful and to wait our turn. And we end up internalizing that. Oh yeah, and there are so many

studies that support this. So the one that comes to mind for me is most recently in 2020, Stanford did the study about

women and basically how they put themselves up for promotion or how they don't put themselves up for promotion. So the take away is that women in leadership consistently underestimate their readiness for promotion, even though objectively for all the women in the study they actually were outperforming their male peers. So it's not just lack of opportunity for women, a lot of times it's more so this sense of lack of self belief, which is also reinforced by our existing

patriarchal systems. Yeah. And I think the really hard part about that, and especially about hearing that study is that settling isn't always like a dramatic thing that you see in the workplace or in your personal life. It can feel like a like steady drift into settling and not realizing that you're there until you're actually there. Right? I. Feel like that's actually why it's even more dangerous. Nefarious. Yeah. It's like insidious.

Yeah. You don't realize you're settling until you watch this episode and we ask you, are you settling? Yeah, and it's like an also an uncomfortable thing, like an uncomfortable conversation to have with your friends too. Because I think from the outside, if you see one of your friends settling in the workplace or in their like personal lives in a relationship, it's also a really hard thing to call out.

So I don't think it's like talked about, no. Way no one would ever call someone out for settling. I mean it's even like a harder it's even a hard conversation to have with yourself. Yeah, it actually reminds me of this concept called value drift. And it's this concept that people slowly disconnect with what really matters to them, and they don't even realize it, but they're feeling all these side effects, which are burnout, resentment and loss of identity.

So have you ever called me out on settling before? Not that I can remember, but it seems like you. Well, I mean, not not like explicitly, but I feel like I've always like, pushed you to do more than you thought you wanted to do at times, right? But that's not settling. I feel like that's me not knowing my potential or understanding my potential and you widening my horizons.

I don't settle. I'm just kidding like some I have in relationships when I didn't realize that like, like I thought this was a good thing on paper, but then like, you know, in reality it wasn't exactly what I needed or wanted. Yeah, but did I ever call you out? I I can think of one time I sort of called you out for settling

Ish. OK. Would you OK? I'm nervous. Well. No, it was when. Maybe this is again, back to the potential thing, but it was when after you had gotten into Stanford, GSP and you had already LinkedIn. Yeah. And you had the whole summer and I was like, and you had that job offer to work at Bain Capital Ventures, which I was like, hello, this is incredible. And yeah, like, well, I don't know, like I was planning to just. Create content Yes, I wanted to pursue my content career full

time I thought you. Were just going to hang. No, well, I wanted to create content full time before school started to like, experiment and see if that was a viable career path. And lo and behold, here we are. But I think to my take at the time was I was like, well, this is an incredible way to create content. Like once you have this internship as AVC intern, like what an amazing way to, you know, show show everyone in the world like what it's like to do this.

Yeah, no, I think that's that's as close to calling me out as possible. Have you ever called me out? Yeah, I have. Do you know what I'm going to say? No, maybe. I don't know. I've only called Gina out once in her life. Yeah, honestly, for settling, and it was with her last relationship.

If you see a friend or someone you care about who is settling, it is. And the reason why I said it's a hard conversation is because it's really hard because one, you don't want them to feel any resentment for you for bringing something up. That might be like a really hard truth to swallow. Especially when it's a Type 1 irreversible decision, which we talked about on one of our other

episodes. Yeah. So it was in her last relationship where I I saw some things, I observed some things and I wanted to bring it up to Jean. And I did. And only like maybe once or twice. It wasn't something I brought up on a weekly basis because I knew how the importance and the weight of my words and how to navigate the situation very carefully. So I did bring up and settling wasn't quite how I phrased it, but that's how I felt in the bottom of my heart.

So I brought it up to you and how? Do you phrase it? I don't remember. Well, I was just like, I'm really concerned. This is coming from a place of concern. I see some things after like, you know, observing time spent with you and this other person. And here are some things that I just don't think are are good objectively as your sister, as objective as I can be. And I think you deserve more and

better. And it was really, really tough for me to say and I think even tougher for you to hear, especially because if your friend or your loved one is settling it's and you want to bring it up, you don't want, you don't want to be wrong. You know.

And like, yeah, yeah. Like if you tell like a friend, you're like, I think you're settling with the person that you're about to marry and they end up marrying that person. And like you have to go to the wedding and see. Them. That was a close one. That was a close one. We did get engaged. Yeah, but like that's also just not easy in it of itself. Like that's not a good conversation or like a fun

conversation to have. But I also think it's also kind of saying like, not that I don't trust you, but I you might have a blind spot. That's what was really hard about it. I trust you to make the decision, but this is something you might not see that I'm seeing from the outside. That's why it was hard. I mean, it's also hard in general because it's probably something they don't want to confront about themselves. I mean, it's, it must be, yeah. Yeah. Fun. Times.

Really fun times. So yeah, this podcast is real personal. Well. It was a happy ending in the end. And I think another reason why, like myself and a lot of people don't actually confront it is because it's been shown that high achievers are very good at rationalizing. And so I wrote down some of the lines that people say. So I'm lucky to have this. It's not that bad. Everyone would kill for this job or this relationship.

Yeah. So like if you've ever heard yourself saying those those words to yourself or like thinking them in your head, it might be another sign that you're settling and you're not admitting it to yourself yet. Yeah. And I think it's really hard. One thing that we talked about a few minutes ago was that, like, if everything looks good from the outside, like if it looks

right on paper, yes. If everything you know is like, beautiful and like, shiny and Instagramable, yeah, it's even harder to let that go because there's that cognitive dissonance of like, it looks good, but it doesn't. Feel good? Yes. And what do other people think and perceive? OK, so I have another example that is not about my love life, it's about my work life. Can you make it about your love life? Just kidding.

You know, so my other example is just my last job where, you know, finally I had worked so hard. I had, you know, worked 15 years in my career to get to this dream job. So like if you had told me, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, that I was going to be the head of product for augmented reality shopping and monetization at Snapchat, I would have been like, holy shit,

like what? That's insane. That's my dream job. But like, by the time I was like actually in that role and in earnest doing that role, I was, I was really disengaged by the end like I was. Like 85% of the worldwide population is actively disengaged, according to Harvard Business Review. But no, it's it was crazy. Like I I almost couldn't even reconcile it with myself because. You worked so hard to get there I.

Worked so hard to get there. And then finally I was in this position where honestly, I was doing less actual work than I had ever done in my entire life. Like, a lot of my, my job was just to like, tell people what to do and like, you know, try to make things happen, etcetera, which is hard in and of itself. But it was less like actual work than I'd ever done. But I was so tired from it. Like I was so, so drained.

And I couldn't figure out why. Yeah, I mean, I think I knew deep down, but again, I wasn't admitting it to myself. Yeah, because of the shiny exterior, because of the title, because of the pay, because I'd. Worked because I'd worked so hard to get there. Some cost. Yeah, yeah. Kind of when you're there, when you've been working so hard to get there and your head's down, it's just like, now what? Well, and also, like, in my instance, I felt like I had sort of like, defied all the odds to

get there, too. Like I felt like I had to, yeah, like fight tooth and nail and like, fight against a lot of things. The Patriarch being one of them. Wasn't going to say it again, but yeah. Yeah. And we have a mini exercise to help you figure out if you're settling and why. So the mini exercise for this section is to complete the

sentence. I'm scared to walk away because because when you finish the sentence, your fear will show where you've tied your worth and once you name and label it, it can make it much easier to figure out if you are actually settling. OK, so Next up is the science of why we stay too long. Right after this quick break, this episode of Tiger Sisters is brought to you by Reed. AI, yes, and it's not just another note taker. It's like an AI AI copilot that can read, transcribe and

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we sent you. We're obsessed with Read AI and we think you're going to love it too. And we're back. So let's talk about a term called cognitive dissonance, which was first coined in a 1957 Stanford study. And it's about the feeling that you have in your mind and your body when your actions don't align with your values. So when you value growth but you stay in a job that you hate or a relationship that you know that's not right for you, your body and your brain signals

distress. That's why you get irritable. That's why you have anxiety. It's literally your body telling you something is not right here. Right. And the question of why we stay too long, a lot of it can be answered by the things we've talked about already. So fear of regret, some cost fallacy and external validation. Like everyone thinks this job is so amazing, Like everyone thinks my relationship is so great. Those are like the main reasons.

So one way to think about it, if you're afraid of leaving, what if you were afraid of staying? It could be much more scary or dangerous in the long term. So next we have another mini exercise and I'm really excited about this one. OK, So this one is to rate your alignment on a scale of 1 to 10 in three different areas, career, relationships and your personal identity. And anything under A7 is actually a beige to red flag to sort of re evaluate that area.

This is actually something that I do quite often. It's not like a monthly activity, but maybe like every, I try to do it every three months or every quarter just to feel like, to ask myself, like, am I In Sync with what's going on in my life? Is everything like in homeostasis? And oftentimes the answer is no. Like sometimes I'm feeling like, you know, in my relationship, I'm not like 100. I'm not like 10 out of 10. If I am a 7 out of 10, like, then I like, I'm like, wait, why

do I even feel that way? Like, what is the reason? And I can dig deeper. Excuse me, God bless you.

And I can dig deeper if I have like the mental capacity to, the time to and the willingness to. And that's OK if I don't right at that point, but it's just making sure I ask myself. Excuse me, she can dig deeper. Dig deeper. I didn't. I didn't realize you did it so often. Yeah. You must be in the like top 1% of people who are. Probably. Who are like re evaluating themselves if you do it every quarter, yeah, that's a lot. But yeah, I don't even need this mini exercise.

It sounds like a lot, but it doesn't have to be a lot. It doesn't have to be like you sit down for like an hour and a half and like journal for all that time and meditate. No, it's kind of just like asking yourself like, am I happy in my career right now And like being OK that like the answer can be no and it doesn't have to be like yes, I'm so happy all the time. Like life is great.

Like it's OK that the answer is no, but then asking yourself afterwards, like a follow up, like why is it no? Like are there things that I can because I want to be happy? Are there things that I can do to make it better for myself? And are there things that are within my control or is it out of my control? Or is this seasonal? Like it's OK to ask those questions and like have an answer that you're not satisfied with.

Right. Yeah. So just like the mini exercise, I just described that, that's what I'm saying. I like doing that. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. It's something you are already doing. Yeah, as a practice in your life. Yeah. OK, so now we've talked about the symptoms of settling, why people settle, and why we stay for too long. Now let's talk about how to know if it's actually time to move on. So you know it's time to move on when you ask yourself these

three questions. The 1st is, does this version of me only exist to serve other people's comfort? The second is, am I becoming someone that I admire? And the third is, would the woman I want to be say yes to this? These are pretty intense questions. They're big questions, yeah. And what if the answer is no? Then you have your answer, and I think that's a very good thing to understand about yourself. These are not questions I think to shy away from.

It's scary, but it's only for the better that you know. And actually, we have this great case study about someone that I think she probably asked herself these questions and it's about Reese Witherspoon who founded Hollow Sunshine, which is a company that we really look up to. And we think that, you know, Tiger Sisters can eventually be

in that ilk. But the story behind Reese is that she obviously was this incredibly talented and super commercially successful actor, and she kind of sort of like

threw that all away to start Hello Sunshine because she wanted to create roles and wanted to work with people that were telling stories that she cared about. So like mostly women? Yeah, and I really love this story of Hello Sunshine one because it's super successful now. So it's like fun to look at a success story, but also that it was born out of. Kind of like a problem that broke her heart in the way that like, there weren't roles that she was getting that she wanted

to play. And so if that's not in the environment that she's in, she created an environment and created a game that she wanted to play herself. And I think that's so cool, yeah. So she was like, I want to create this version of Hollywood that I want to be in. Like she was like, we're getting away from the place that I want to work. Yeah, she was anti settling. Yeah.

You know, she, she like, realized that it was not what she wanted and she did something really big about it and created like a massively successful studio. Yeah, it actually reminds me of this other like concept I'll just talk about really quickly, which is that this idea of like zone of excellence versus zone of genius.

So she obviously was in her zone of excellence because she was an award-winning actor, but she wasn't in her zone of genius because she wasn't doing something that she really like, cared about and wanted to dedicate her life to. So she sort of like, threw it all away and started anew, doing something she'd never done before. Be a founder, be a producer, be a director. It's really incredible. And on this idea of zone of excellence, I think it sounds like a good thing, but it can be

quietly like nefarious. Because if you are really good at something and it looks shiny, kind of like we were saying before, shiny and good on the outside, you're like excelling in a field that other people are looking up to you for. But if you do not feel fulfilled or feel like you are in your zone of genius at the same time, it can be really easy to then settle. One quote I like is sometimes power means letting go of the thing you've built to build

something even bigger. And I think the reason I like it is because it's about you. It's about me. I feel like that's what I've done. Like I sort of threw away this 15 year long, really successful corporate career to start over with just the two of us and build this thing that I've never done before, like I'd never been on camera before this. Hopefully I'm doing OK job. Leave a comment below. Please give her success like

give her comments. Give her. Compliments and comments on how she's, you know, doing well. They mean a lot and she reads all of them honestly. I really do. She needs the help with the validation. I do the validation, but yeah, that's what it really resonates with me, that one. So the last mini exercise for this video is to write a letter to yourself, but imagine that it's coming from you five years in the future. What did she have to let go of

to become who she is now? And I really like this exercise. This is just like write a mini letter doesn't have to be long. I've done a couple of like meditation and like manifestation exercises, yes, where I literally like close my eyes and I imagine myself in the future.

I imagine what I look like. I imagine the house that I'm in, I'm in. It's an amazing exercise and it was a guided meditation and it like made me like burst out into tears because your future self is asking your current your way. So your current self is asking your future self a bunch of questions and future me is so knowledgeable. She's calm and she's. Amazing skin.

Confident and it's really powerful to do this exercise because then you can kind of see what can be if you are not afraid of going out of your comfort zone and doing, you know the hard reflections that we've kind of prompted you guys to do in this video. So I think if you can write a letter to yourself, imagine kind of your greatness, like step into that power. Imagine your greatness in five years because it's there. It's like you have all the answers with it within you, inside you.

Do that exercise and I think you'll you'll learn some things about yourself that you might not realize like this very second. Should Sharif be a motivational speaker? That was really good, isn't? It yeah, I believe in, I think these exercises are so helpful for mindset. Yeah, yeah. And feeling grounded and realizing what you want. Yeah. OK. And the very last part is just some really quick practical

steps to stop settling. You don't need to blow up your entire life, but you do need to start listening to your intuition and your gut. And you could do this with just starting with micro moves, doesn't have to be a huge thing. So you can book an exploratory call or ask yourself these uncomfortable questions from the many exercises. Or, you know, spend an hour acting like the version of yourself who knows exactly what she wants.

I think if you're watching this episode and you decided to open this up, like I think your gut already knows that you are settling in some part of your life, Let this episode give you

permission to do something about it. Like I think it's even worse to just sit back, feel that you're settling, know that you're settling and literally not do anything about it. Like take one of these many exercises. Maybe it's 5 minutes, maybe it's 10 minutes. Like think about it and then do something to then kind of bring yourself like give yourself a little momentum to like take the first step to get unstuck and

then to stop settling. I'm going to give the listeners a little bit of grace actually, and say that like a lot of times, sometimes I think the hardest thing to do is actually admit to yourself that you're settling. Like, I think for me, that's a step that took years in some cases perhaps. And so I think if that's something that you haven't even done yet, that might be the most important thing that you can do. That is sort of the the output or the next step of this episode, right?

Like actually admit it to yourself and like fully embody that. And then like bookmark the episode. Come back to the episode in a few days or a week, or once you've like really settled with that sort of realization in your body, come back to the episode and then do all the mini exercises. What is this good cop, bad cop? Why did I have? Why did I have to give the tough love? And then you have to give the nice advice so. Next time I'll give a tough love.

OK, It's just our styles. You're mean and I'm nice. No. Yeah. And so I mean, be that as it may, like, yes, I was just the good cop, but I do still want to say and give some realism here that like, think about yourself in a year, in five years, in 10 years, if you're looking back and you're like, hey, I'm still in the same place in this specific area that I feel like I've been settling. Would you be happy with yourself? No, right.

So take whatever first step it is for you, whether it's actually acknowledging to yourself that you're settling or doing all these mini exercises and taking the action to break out of your sort of settling mode and and do it today. I think the scariest thing is a future of regret, regret for having not done something. So I think today is probably the day to like, if you feel like you are stuck or you are settling, like do something today.

Take that first step so that you don't feel that regret in the next year, in five years and in 10 years. And honestly, with with hard things like getting unstuck, it's not going to be easy. It's gonna get like life gets

hard when you make a big change in your life, life gets harder before it gets easier. If you need to go through a breakup, going through that process says going through a breakup, life sucks for a little bit and then it gets easier. If you're changing jobs, life sucks for a little bit and then it gets easier. And so I realized it is going to be hard. But that's something you should confront now because in the next year, five year, 10 years, you won't regret it. Thank you for that, Cherie.

And don't do this alone. A lot of people, well, Gene and I have like personal board of advisors. So that like when we're, you know, having these existential questions which are pretty hard to answer, like you can call someone up, call a friend up, have this conversation with

them. And also, as we said before, we read every single comment and we'd love to see, you know, some of you guys move through these mini exercises, any questions that you guys have and how you're thinking through these things. And we'll read through them and try to answer as many as possible. Yeah. Treat the comments section like

your board of advisors. True. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode of The Tiger Sisters. If you found it helpful, please make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. And when you subscribe, you get notified when a new episode is released. Yes, and if you have some friends who you think they might be settling or playing small or not selling at all, but you would just want to share Tiger Sisters with them, then please share this episode with them.

And we'd so appreciate it if you can give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It takes literally 3 seconds and it helps Tiger sisters get discovered. Yes, and if you have 10 seconds, actually write a review, because I've heard that those also make a huge difference in people deciding to listen to the episodes. Thanks guys. We'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye. OK. So watching that episode, it's kind of crazy to see because it's still so relevant.

Yeah, In the last six months, I've been so much better at kind of catching myself when I'm settling, even when it's something really small. Like I'm just being like, oh, like this is fine. And I'm just being sort of like non confrontational now. I notice it ever since we did

this episode. And one of the biggest things that I've learned since recording this episode is that your body feels it before your brain does, like that cognitive dissonance, uncomfortable feeling that lets you know that you're actually settling. So if you felt kind of like a tightness in your chest or just like a little bit uncomfortable as you were listening to this episode, take note of that. That is information you can act on. And don't ignore that information or that data from

yourself. And if you're listening in January, take advantage of that clean slate energy. Pick one exercise from the episode and and do it this week. And like we mentioned in the episode, make sure you're subscribed to Tiger Sisters and you leave us a five star review. It only takes a few seconds to do and it really helps with the growth and survival of Tiger Sisters podcast. And next week, we're back with a brand new episode to kick off the season. We'll see you then. Bye.