“Most people approach business relationships transactionally. You don’t. You help people without expecting anything in return. Why is that?”

Earlier this week, I was recording a podcast, and got hit with that question.

My first reaction was to feel wildly flattered by the host’s kind veneration of my character. He was basically saying that he believes I’m a genuinely nice person. How lovely. 🥰

But my second reaction was a painful acknowledgement that this “genuinely nice person” thing is an embarrassingly recent development in my life.

Because for most of my career, I was kind of an asshole.

👉 Embrace your limits, and use them to guide you.

👉 The values that are most important to you in one season of your life might be hurting you in another season of your life. Regularly ask yourself what wealth really means to you.

And now — the story behind why this advice matters. 👇

Whether it was from my teachers, my bosses, my bullies, or even my parents, I never tolerated being told “no”. I’m an obsessively goal-oriented person — with a freight-sized chip on my shoulder.

At the onset of any challenge, my brain has never been like “Ehh, that goal seems a tad lofty, maybe I should slow down…” Instead it screams “LET’S F*CKING DO THIS AND PROVE THOSE B*TCHES WRONG!”

It’s no surprise my noodle works this way. As you learned last week, my first career was in competitive figure skating — which is basically gymnastics on butcher knives, and requires the confidence of a king.

I spent my days flinging myself high into the air, rapidly rotating my body at 300+ RPMs, all while attempting to land gracefully on a 3mm blade.

On ice. 

Again. And again. And again. And again.

Sometimes I would land. Sometimes I would crash with the same downforce as a grand piano, splintering onto a frozen sidewalk.

I was just a kid, and had no intellectual understanding of the complicated physics that determined my ability to execute (or fail to execute) seemingly impossible skating maneuvers. I simply had to ignore my limits and remain steadfastly focused on my goals — even when my ass was bruised so badly that doctors would threaten to call CPS.

But while this kind of brutal determination to push through my physical and mental limits seems like a required character trait for a competitive figure skater, I’d argue that it carried a pretty undesirable side-effect:

It turned me into an insufferable jerk for most of my life. 🤦

Hear me out — I’m not saying that big goals are an inherently bad thing. I love having goals. I even teach classes about goal-setting, and how to set up systems to help people achieve their goals.

But the dark side of all that is a transactional approach to damn near everything — especially relationships.

You start viewing all the people in your life through a (pretty nasty) binary lens. They’re either:

This is a depressing way to go through life. So let me propose an alternative:

Instead of setting goals, start leaning into your limits, and using them to guide you.

When we organize our life around achieving our goals, we view our limits as constraints we must break through — else we’ll fail — miserably and embarrassingly.

But what if constraints are a good thing? What if they’re the best compass we have to guide our path forward?

The last few years have dramatically knocked me on my butt.

Back in May, two of the most esteemed orthopedic surgeons in the world (not exaggerating) sliced my body in half (again, not exaggerating.)

They literally chiseled my hip socket off. It was like… completely detached from the rest of my body. Loosey goosey. Flubbly bubbly. Swimmy whimmy. My entire left leg was just sort of… out there.

Then they screwed me back together in a new position. 👇

I was bedridden for months. I had to be pushed around in a wheelchair whenever I left the house. And the whole ordeal was brutally painful.

Then, when things were supposed to begin looking up, I received news that I had developed not one, but TWO stress fractures (an uncommon complication from this procedure) — which would delay my recovery, and possibly require extra surgeries.

God dammit. 

But the pain and physical restrictions from the hip condition this surgery is designed to cure had been torturing me for two years before they ever even sliced me open. Pretty much every form of exercise was a no-go. Just walking around the city was torture. I couldn’t even roll over in bed without excruciating pain.

And I gained 40 agonizing pounds. 😭

I’ve been an athlete my entire life, so my physical deterioration not only impacted my mental health — it screwed with my entire sense of identity. And to top it off, I’m in the midst of building a new business, which means my income is hit-and-miss.

So let’s recap. I’m currently:

But strangely, I’m also the happiest I’ve ever been. How is this possible?

Because all this crap has forced me to no longer view my limits as constraints which keep me from reaching my goals and attaining happiness.

Instead, my limits are like bowling bumpers, keeping me out of the gutter as I move toward the pins at whatever pace I damn well please. And since my goals no longer involve crashing through limits, taking out anyone who gets in my way, my heart is open to helping others — which, it turns out, brings me far more pleasure than crushing goals ever has.

I’ve redefined what “wealth” means to me. 

It used to mean money and prestige. (And I do believe that definition served me well for the emergent season of my life.)

But now, “wealth” means flexibility, the freedom to explore creative pursuits, and most importantly, the ability to prioritize my relationships.

Being fat, poor, and immobile — constraints that challenged my ruthless goal-oriented mindset — ended up being precisely what I needed to find happiness in this new season of my life.

Unless you’ve been hiding out in a hut with no TV, internet, or smoke signals for 100 miles, you’ve probably paid witness to the inspiring story of America’s newest Olympic figure skating gold medalist — Alysa Liu.

(I know I’ve been writing a lot about figure skating these last few weeks, but this is the brief moment that rolls around every four years where people actually give a hoot about my sport — and I’m gonna milk it thankyouverymuch.)

Now… I’ve seen a lot of “What Alysa Liu’s comeback taught me about B2B sales,” posts on LinkedIn these last few days (🤮), but there truly is a shit-ton of value to be gleaned from her story. 

Here’s how I see it—

Her entire identity was built on crashing through limits and crushing goals. Just like mine was. I have a stomach ache thinking about it. That’s a brutally hard life — a life where the line between soaring success and dismal failure is razor-thin.

Alysa’s surface-level story is": “Child prodigy burned out from the pressure, then discovered the joy of her sport, and returned to win Olympic gold”.

But I believe the reason she found joy in skating is because she redefined what “winning” meant to her.

I’m not in her head, so I can only speculate on what her goals actually are, but it’s pretty damn clear that she didn’t re-enter the sport to dominate the podium. She has said herself that she started skating again to make art and be with her friends. 

And that mindset shift just happened to also earn her the first Olympic gold medal for the U.S. in ladies figure skating… in her entire lifetime.

Her limits guided her to a much happier, and more successful, season in her life. And I f*cking love her for it.

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin