How to get motivated when life is comfortable for career-driven women: honest answers for Chicago

Here's a question worth asking over your next coffee in Chicago: are you content, or have you quietly settled? The two feel identical from the inside — until you learn comfort is the hardest place in the world to start from.

And this is Chicago: one of the Chicago area's most established communities — the kind of place where life looks handled from the outside, which is exactly why the gratitude-versus-settling question lands so quietly here. Which is exactly why this question lands differently here than anywhere else.

Where Chicago makes it easy to coast

• The routine here works well enough that questioning it feels ungrateful.
• Everyone around you seems fine too, so your quiet restlessness feels like oversharing.
• Comfort in Chicago is easy to keep and easy to notice too late.

Try this tonight (5 minutes)

• Write down one thing you're genuinely grateful for in Chicago — then write one thing you've been calling 'gratitude' that is actually fear of trying.
• Set a 10-minute timer tomorrow morning and do one small thing your 'more' would do.

The goal isn't to despise the life you have. It's to love it enough to keep growing inside it.

Start with the free sample

Read the opening chapter on Amazon — no purchase needed. The Kindle edition is $0.99, and it's free with Kindle Unlimited.

Kindle — $0.99 Paperback — $14.99

Free with Kindle Unlimited · Prime shipping on paperback · Discussion questions on the main site.

Keep reading

• How to get motivated when life is comfortable for career-driven women — a guide for Los Gatos, CA readers
• How to get motivated when life is comfortable for career-driven women — a guide for Menlo Park, CA readers
• How to get motivated when life is comfortable for career-driven women — a guide for Pleasanton, CA readers