i'm megan hellerer
I'm a coach and an author on a mission to change our approach to success and achievement.
After checking all the traditional boxes of success and achieving everything I'd set out to achieve —graduating at the top of my class from Stanford and spending 8 years as a Google executive—I was still freaking miserable (like panic attacks and SSRI miserable.) Then, I surprised everyone and quit my great-on-paper job with no plan.
In an effort only to help myself find fulfillment, or at least not be so damn miserable, I created a whole new approach to success and achievement, which I called Directional Living®.
Since then, I've worked with hundreds of Underfulfilled Overachievers, including AOC, to share this methodology and to transform their careers on the way to transforming their lives.
the short story:
Hi, I'm Megan and I used to be an Underfulfilled Overachiever™.
MY WORK HAS BEEN FEATURED IN:
I didn't start out lost. I knew exactly where I was headed and I had a 10-year plan in a spreadsheet to prove it. I'd checked all the boxes, done all the "right" things, graduated from Stanford with a 3.9 GPA, climbed the ladder at Google, won awards, worked hard and then even harder, and achieved everything I'd set out to. I had the dream job and the dreamy boyfriend, the swanky apartment and the flawless wardrobe, and the salary and the stock options. I had "made it!" This was the epitome of success.
And yet...I was miserable
I was living a great life,
it just wasn't My life.
I had this great-on-paper life that felt anything but great inside. I was deeply depressed and having almost daily panic attacks. And I was so ashamed of my dissatisfaction. If this didn't make me happy, then probably nothing would! I was convinced something was seriously wrong with me. I must be broken! I thought. Or probably this is just what being a responsible adult feels like.
So, I just kept suiting up and showing up. Until I couldn't anymore. I was completely falling apart. And I surprised everyone (including myself) and quit my job at "the best company in the world" with no plan.
I was determined to find another way to do this whole career thing. I wanted to find the work that I was uniquely well-suited to do in the world and to build a life that was particular to me and no one else. There had to be a way to do work that filled me up, instead of broke me down, that made me look forward to mondays as much as fridays and that didn't leave me living from vacation to vacation.Was this all a pipe dream? Of course, I was terrified that such a thing as purpose and fulfillment didn't actually exist, but I had to find out. Because the only thing I did know is that I couldn't live like that anymore.
I sold my Google stock and committed to not taking another job, or even updating my resume, for at least 6 months.
As part of my personal research on finding fulfillment, I took a coaching class — mostly thinking that it would help me when I inevitably went back into the corporate world. And something clicked...which is also why I didn't go back for 3 whole months. Work that doesn't feel like work!? Must be a sham!
But as I started doing some practice sessions with friends and friends of friends, their lives started to change. And they started referring their friends. And pretty soon I had a full roster of clients, and yes, work that truly didn't feel like work.
There is another way.
I call it Directional Living®.
I was determined to find another way to do this whole career thing. I wanted to find the work that I was uniquely well-suited to do in the world and to build a life that was particular to me and no one else. There had to be a way to do work that filled me up, instead of broke me down, that made me look forward to mondays as much as fridays and that didn't leave me living from vacation to vacation.Was this all a pipe dream? Of course, I was terrified that such a thing as purpose and fulfillment didn't actually exist, but I had to find out. Because the only thing I did know is that I couldn't live like that anymore.
I sold my Google stock and committed to not taking another job, or even updating my resume, for at least 6 months.
As part of my personal research on finding fulfillment, I took a coaching class — mostly thinking that it would help me when I inevitably went back into the coaching world. And something clicked...which is also why I didn't go back for 3 whole months. Work that doesn't feel like work!? Must be a sham!
But as I started doing some practice sessions with friends and friends of friends, their lives started to change. And they started referring their friends. And pretty soon I had a full roster of clients, and yes, work that truly didn't feel like work.
story continued..
Another funny thing happened as I started sharing my story with others, I realized that many of the smartest, most creative, accomplished, inspired and inspiring people I knew felt the same way I did. Something was very wrong with this picture. How could this be?!
I've been working with people I've come to refer to as Underfulfilled Overachievers for 10 years now — people who, like me, did everything they were supposed to do and have these great-on-paper lives that feel far from great inside.
You see, we were taught that the path to fulfillment was through success and achievement. But we were taught a lie. And this lie created an entire generation of us Underfulfilled Overachievers, who have all of the achievement and none of the fulfillment.
What I realized, through my own experience and working intimately with UFOAs, is that we've been focusing on the destination — the outcome, the 10-year-plan and the ladder climbing — and getting there as fast as possible (see: hustle culture and the cult of busyness) instead of the directionality of our lives — moving iteratively in our own personal right direction without needing to know the precise destination.
The solution to the Underfulfilled Overachiever problem and the old broken way of doing work and life, and the way to your Something Bigger, is to stop living destinationally and start living directionally.
And, in fact, I've written an entire book about just that!
