EP 119: Choosing Health Over Hustle: A Radical Reimagining of Success and Survival with Kirsten Powers

Have you ever looked around and felt that the way you live and work isn’t sustainable? It’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t felt the weight of this relentless pace and the intense pressure to keep up as if this is just how modern life has to be.But what if it doesn’t have to be this way? Our culture in the U.S. is burdened by pressures to keep up, excel, and do it all, often without the support systems to help us carry that load.What if we paused to question the assumptions driving us to stay so busy and overextended? Today’s guest invites us to imagine stepping off the hamster wheel and envisioning what it would look like to challenge the norms we’ve been handed about work and life.We can’t all pack up and move, but we can make small but powerful steps towards a more sustainable way of living, working, and leading.Kirsten Powers is a New York Times bestselling author and writes the bestselling Substack publication Changing the Channel. Jon Meacham called her most recent book, Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts, "a great gift at an urgent hour.” Kirsten served as an on-air CNN senior political analyst for seven years. She has been a columnist for USA Today, the Daily Beast and the New York Post, and a political analyst at Fox News. Before her career in journalism, Kirsten was a political appointee in the Clinton Administration, worked in New York Democratic politics and was Vice President for International Communications at AOL, Inc.Listen to the full episode to hear:Kirsten’s awakening to the fact that American culture is “not normal”How neoliberalism reshaped our relationship with work, class, and consumerismA reality check on what it takes to make radical changes in your life, at home or abroadHow unpacking paradigms about work and being busy has led Kirsten to question so many other norms in American lifeThe intense and long-term physical toll of our culture’s obsession with overworkWhat gives Kirsten hope that America can do and be better in the future Learn more about Kirsten Powers:Changing the ChannelInstagram: @kirstenpowersSaving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You NutsLearn more about Rebecca:rebeccaching.comWork With RebeccaSign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader EmailResources:The way we live in the United States is not normalThe Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, Gary GerstleNever Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do about It, Jennifer Breheny WallaceCircle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church, Eliza GriswoldHouse of the DragonPretty in Pink