When Work Stops Loving You Back: Dr. Mónica Lebrón | 100 Stories ep. 20

What happens when the work that gave you identity, purpose, achievement, and belonging suddenly stops holding you? For 27 years, Dr. Mónica Lebrón built her life around college athletics. She worked relentlessly, climbed the ladder, and made herself available to everyone. Then she found herself on the outside. Her realization was simple: “Work didn’t love me back.” What makes her story especially interesting isn’t that she stopped being ambitious. She didn’t. It’s that she is trying to discover whether ambition can come from a different story. We talk about workaholism, identity, achievement, safety, service, sabbatical, and the gap between understanding a pattern and actually changing how you live. Mónica’s definition of Narrative Intelligence? “Owning your own script.” And the question I’m left with: What happens when you finally recognize the story you’ve been living, but then have to prove to yourself that you can live another one?