You've probably seen it by now. The headlines, the think pieces, the quiet consensus forming online that the "girlboss" era is officially over and good riddance to her.

For over a decade, our culture told high-achieving women exactly one story: hustle harder, want more, lean in, don't apologize for your ambition. And a lot of us did! We built the businesses, took the promotions, said yes to the stage, the title, the next level. And then... a lot of us also fell apart doing it.

So now the pendulum has swung the other way. There's a new label going around for the moment we're in: burnout feminism. The idea that we finally, collectively, admitted that the hustle broke something, and the smart move now is to want less, do less, protect our peace.

I understand the relief in that. I feel some of it myself.

But I want to name something that's getting lost in the celebration, because I think it matters for every woman reading this who still feels the pull to build something big, even after everything the last decade put her through.

Two Eras, One Woman Getting Burned by Both

Here's the pattern I keep seeing, in my own life and in the women I coach: she was told to want more > she wanted more > she got the more. And somewhere in the getting, she lost herself; her energy, her health, sometimes her relationships, chasing a version of success nobody ever taught her how to hold without disappearing into it.

Now she's suddenly being told that the fix is to want less.

Here's where I struggle with this: wanting less isn't healing. It's just a different instruction coming from the outside, and she's spent her whole life following instructions from the outside about what she's allowed to want.

Neither the hustle era nor the burnout era ever asked her the important question: what do you want, and how can you have it without it costing you yourself?

That's the conversation nobody's having. So I want us to have it here.

Ambition Was Never the Problem

I want to be really clear about something, because I think it gets misunderstood constantly.

Ambition didn't break you. Chasing ambition without ever checking whether your nervous system felt safe getting there... that's what broke you.

Here's what's actually happening in your brain when you go after something bigger than what you currently have - your brain tracks the gap between who you believe yourself to be right now and the person you're becoming. That gap reads as unfamiliar. And unfamiliar, to a brain whose whole job is keeping you alive, reads as a threat.

So your inner critic, the voice that shows up right when you're about to do the big thing and suddenly has a list of reasons you're not ready, isn't sabotaging your dreams. She's doing exactly what she was built to do... she's trying to keep you safe inside the gap.

The problem was never that you wanted too much. The problem was that nobody ever taught you how to close that gap without white-knuckling your way through it, running on adrenaline and self-abandonment until your body finally forced you to stop.

That's not an ambition problem. That's a nervous system problem wearing an ambition outfit.

Why the "Want Less" Answer Doesn't Actually Fix Anything

If burnout feminism is right that ambition itself is the villain, then the fix is simple: want less, do less, opt out.

But if I'm right - and this was never about how much you wanted, it was about how unsafe your body felt while getting it - then wanting less doesn't fix anything. It just relocates the exhaustion. You're still the woman who doesn't trust that she can want something and stay safe in her own skin while she goes get it. You've just aimed that mistrust at a smaller target.

I see this constantly with the women I coach, and I've lived it myself. Growing up, building businesses, rebuilding a marriage that nearly ended, being headhunted into a role I never would have believed I was qualified for. None of that happened because I finally wanted less. It happened because at some point I stopped trying to out-discipline the fear and started actually addressing what the fear was protecting.

The Actual Work

You are allowed to want the big thing, my darling. The promotion, the business, the stage, whatever your version of more looks like. You do not have to shrink your ambition to prove you've healed.

What you actually need isn't a smaller goal. It's the ability to want something out loud and still feel steady in your body while you build toward it. That's identity work. That's nervous system work. That's not something a better planner or a stricter morning routine gives you.

This is the exact work I do with the women I coach, 1:1. Not talking you into wanting more, and not talking you into wanting less. But helping you close the gap between who you are right now and who you're building toward, so wanting more stops feeling like a threat your body has to survive.

You didn't lose your ambition. You just learned somewhere along the way that wanting things loudly came with a cost you weren't ready to keep paying. That's worth naming.. and it's also worth changing.

If you're ready to have that conversation, the application to work with me is right here. 

Love you. Mean it 💋

Sabrina