A case against 'leveling up'

What constant growth takes away from us.

What if your life didn’t need to be a project?

Last week, I caught myself scrolling Instagram, heart beating a little faster with each scroll: Someone with better workout habits than me. Someone with a new book deal. Someone summering in the Hamptons. Someone with a cuter outfit. My brain did the math automatically: what I hadn’t done yet, what level I was still on, how far behind I had fallen.

I’m hosting my first Toronto book event at Another Story on Nov 1st, at 630pm. It’s free but please RSVP so we get an accurate headcount! RSVP here.

And then I realized something: While I was celebrating their achievements, I was also grading my own life as if it were a project plan that needed more deliverables. Suddenly, everything I was doing (or not doing), felt like a problem.

What if the problem wasn’t me, but the idea that life should be managed like a product launch?

A friend reminding me to be grounded.

It’s the start of fall, a season that’s supposed to feel soft, open, unhurried. But when I check in with friends, I notice the same undertone: restlessness. Even in this supposed downtime, we carry urgency like it’s a second skin. To be doing something: healing faster, building stronger habits, finally getting our routines in order.

We tell ourselves it’s self-care, growth, evolution. But sometimes, underneath the pastel-colored language of “leveling up” is a more sinister belief that we’re not really enough as we are. And that belief is exhausting.

We’ve been sold a story that life should always be moving upward: another hack, another milestone, more progress, another version of ourselves to build. But what if that story is the very thing keeping us restless, exhausted, and convinced that who we are right now is never enough?

This essay is about questioning that story. About noticing the ways we turn our lives into projects, and about what becomes possible when we stop climbing and allow ourselves to simply live meaningfully.

Consider becoming a subscriber to read on about:

• Why you’ve made your life to feel like a project

• The hidden cost of “self-care” hacks that shame us

• Why you keep postponing your joy: do you not deserve it?

• What nature’s seasons can teach us about growth, fallow periods, and being enough

• Simple fall practices + reflection prompts to help you break out of constant self-improvement; seasonal rituals to ground you for fall/winter; an emotions audit; creating a mission statement of being enough.

• Plus: the WellGuide Watchlist for deeper learning for your self-acceptance practice.