In 2025, Women in Auto Care gave me a Lifetime Achievement Award. I was shocked, then delighted. It felt like an entire industry gave me a hug and said, "We see you, and you did good." I felt validated. Then, Women in Auto Care asked if I would give a presentation at their annual conference. The nonconformist in me thought: now is the perfect time to say some contrarian things. I work for myself, so no one is going to fire me. And if the industry has decided my career is worth honoring, I figure I've earned the right to push back on a few ideas I've never quite believed.

So here is my disclaimer before I begin: I am not a life coach. I am not a therapist, a self-help author, or any kind of authority on how to live. These hot takes are nuanced. They are observations about myself, and I'm far from perfect. However, I suspect I'm not alone here. There are probably others out there who have had these same quiet doubts but assumed they were the only ones, or that something was wrong with them. If that's you, I hope this helps a little.

Some of the most repeated pieces of career advice are things I cannot do, will not do, and indeed have never done. They are:

• Be yourself! Know your worth!
• Set long-term goals!
• Get motivated!
• Build your legacy!
• Stay ahead of the competition!

"Be Yourself" and "Know Your Worth" Are Banned From My Vocabulary

I understand these sentiments. I do. But these phrases have always made me a little confused and uneasy.

Be myself? I was unaware that I had options. Sometimes being me kind of sucks, and being someone else sounds appealing. But "be yourself" presumes that the self is a single, stable, finished thing—something you discover and then deploy, and that exists outside of time, experience, and context. That doesn't match my reality.

Most of us, especially early in our careers, are trying on different traits, behaviors, and roles to see what fits. We evolve. We adapt. We grow. I would have defined myself completely differently in every decade of my life so far.

The self isn't something about which I've had an epiphany. It's something I'm always building. If you also feel confused by "be yourself," you're not defective. You're human, and you're working on it. We all are, for our entire lives.

"Know your worth" is its own puzzle. Worth is contextual. It shifts depending on the situation, the relationship, the market, and the moment. I understand that the phrase is often shorthand for "don't tolerate poor treatment," and in that narrow context, it makes sense. But it conflates human dignity, which is non-negotiable, with economic or professional value, which is highly negotiable. Is my worth quantified in body weight? Botox units? Cattle? US dollars?

My own approach is less catchy, but more honest: get to know yourself as best you can, and act accordingly. Ask not "what am I worth?" but "what do I have to offer here, right now?" That is a question I can always answer.

I may not know my worth or how to be myself, but I do have a motto: "Not a thoroughbred. More like a fast donkey." I saw this on a bumper sticker and stopped in my tracks. That was a solid clue to knowing myself, what I have to offer, and how I show up in my work.

Set Long-Term Goals. Or Don't.

I don't set long-term goals. I realize this sounds like heresy. And yet I have somehow managed to accomplish quite a bit, which I offer not to boast but as evidence that the relationship between goals and achievement may be more complicated than the productivity gurus suggest.

What I've actually done, consistently over decades, is replace destination thinking with what I'd call directional discipline. I don't aim my efforts at a five- or ten-year endpoint. Instead, I orient around a fixed set of values: do good work, be reliable, be kind, act in service to others, keep learning, and don't waste people's time.

Long-term goals assume the future will cooperate, and in my experience, IT WILL NOT. Often spectacularly. Plans with shorter time horizons (anywhere from one second to one year out) keep me responsive to what's actually in front of me rather than locked into a destination that circumstances may have already rendered irrelevant.

Instead of asking where I want to be in ten years, I ask: Am I proud of how I'm doing this? Would I trust me? Those questions keep me honest without requiring me to predict things I cannot possibly predict. This approach makes pivots feel rational rather than shameful and aligns effort with reality in real time. Over time, that combination creates momentum. And momentum has taken me places a vision board never could.

I'm Rarely Motivated to Do Anything

I'm seldom motivated, and that isn't a personal quirk. It's a misunderstood trait of many high performers, especially people who've been productive for decades rather than seasons.

We are constantly told that productive people are driven by motivation—that they wake up inspired, energized, and internally compelled toward big goals. That story doesn't match my experience at all. I'm seldom motivated to do anything. Not because I'm lazy or disengaged, but because motivation is unreliable, intermittent, and frankly unnecessary for most meaningful work. This is especially true for large, complex, or long-term projects where motivation is a poor predictor of follow-through.

I don't run on motivation. I run on discipline and low friction. Discipline means I don't wait until I feel like doing something. I do it because it's the next right thing. Motivation might show up halfway through, or not at all, but that doesn't change the outcome. When I start a project I'm not feeling, I just start, then break it down, then finish it. There's little internal drama or justification rituals. Procrastination is just arguing with myself about when I'm going to do something. I'm not waiting for the right mindset, because that may never come.

The motivation myth is especially damaging because it quietly shames people who are steady, consistent, and methodical. The world wants sparkle, charisma, and passion. It rewards thoroughbreds and shames fast donkeys.

That said, here are two bonus phrases I never want to hear again, despite the fact that they glorify discipline: "Eat. Sleep. Hustle. Repeat." and "Rise and grind." Hustle culture is a fool's errand. No one wants to spend their one precious life doing THAT.

I Do Not Care About My Legacy

And I've never heard a good reason for why I should. Legacies are about ego. I'm not working this hard so people will say nice things about me at my funeral. I won't care because I'll be dead. Instead, I try to do right by whoever or whatever is in front of me right now, because that's the only place my behavior actually matters. If I'm working in service of my legacy, I'm living in the future, not the present.

But I'm not rejecting meaning or saying that nothing matters. "Legacy" asks me to imagine an abstract version of myself, evaluated by people who are not present, in a time I will never experience. That framing pulls attention away from the only place where ethics, effort, and responsibility actually live: right now, right here, with real people. Legacy shapes how I'll be remembered, not how I'm behaving in real time. If I behave with integrity in real time, the rest isn't up to me. My legacy is not my business; it has very little to do with me, and honestly, I won't be around to manage it anyway.

I Don't Have Competition

I know how that sounds. But hear me out, because I think this one is especially relevant for women in a male-dominated field.

Feeling competitive, in most situations, is useless. I'm not saying I've stopped caring or that I'm complacent. I'm saying that our culture treats competitiveness as synonymous with ambition, when in reality, those are different muscles.

Early in my career, competitiveness served me, sometimes. It created focus and urgency, and it helped me measure myself in a system that rewards comparison. But comparison is a noisy metric. It tells you who got something; it doesn't tell you whether chasing that thing would actually make your life better. And for women in particular, treating each other as competition is a waste of an opportunity. If I'm not your competitor, I'm free to be your champion.

I'm not pretending to be above envy and jealousy. I'm not. I feel those emotions. That's not weakness; that's self-awareness. But I've learned to use them as signals that something wonderful has happened to someone else, and there's beauty in that. When I feel envy, it's a signal that I still care about and value the thing that someone else has. And my next move, every time, is to congratulate the person who got the thing I wanted. This is not performative. Think of it as emotional hygiene. It interrupts the comparison loop, moves me away from scarcity thinking, and realigns me with generosity instead of resentment. And honestly, it makes me feel better.

Selfishly, it's not about being nicer. It's about being freer.

The Fast Donkey Philosophy

I offer all of this not as advice, but as a report from the field. These are the things that have been true for me. These approaches have accumulated, without fanfare or a ten-year plan, into a career I'm proud of. They may not be true for you. There are plenty of thoroughbreds who set ambitious goals, burn with motivation every morning, and thrive in competitive environments. I love those people. They're just a different kind of people. But if you've ever felt quietly defective because vision boards feel like smoke and mirrors, or because you go weeks without feeling inspired and just do the work anyway, or because you genuinely don't spend much time thinking about what the person next to you is doing or what your obituary will say, you are not broken. You might just be a fast donkey. And fast donkeys, it turns out, go a long way.