Episode 75: Redefining Success
/“There becomes this thing inside of us that we know if we don’t jump we’re going to die inside just a little. ”
“I wanted to explore why I was so obsessed with this idea that I had failed in my ambition - that I had failed in not really pursuing it to the ends of the earth. ”
It's the end of the year - a time when a lot of us think about changing our lives in one way or another. In this show we talk to two traditionally successful women who left their old work lives for the unknown. But jumping meant leaving their identities behind as well as their paychecks.
Tess vigeland
Tess Vigeland is the former host of Marketplace Money, the public radio show here in the US. She left her job at the top of her game, and initially wondered if she was nuts to have done so. She writes about it in Leap - Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want. Whitney Johnson was itching to move away from her comfortable existence at Merrill Lynch and challenge herself in new ways. She invites other people to do something similar in her book, Disrupt Yourself - even if you may not think you need disrupting.
whitney johnson
This episode of the show is sponsored by Foreign Affairs. Listeners can get three-quarters off a year's subscription by going to ForeignAffairs.com/broad.
Since the three of us spoke, Tess has begun her life on the road in Vietnam - you can follow her travel blog. You can read Whitney Johnson's Harvard Business Review posts here.
You can also read a transcript of the show.