The Fear of Living a Small Life

“I’m afraid of living a small life. Of not living up to my potential. Of never being great.”

We hear this often: people wondering whether their life is enough—whether they are enough— and whether they will have regrets in the future about how they chose to lead their “one wild and precious life” (to quote Mary Oliver).

In today’s episode, we unpack the paradoxes bound up in considering whether a life is “big enough," and ask the questions: big by what metric? My whose measuring stick? 

Sheryl shares personal experiences of touching a certain "bigness" (being on the Oprah Winfrey show and amassing 100,000+ followers on Instagram), followed by unhooking from the seductive but soul-sucking tentacles of a certain kind of success.

Traversing stories of Taylor Swift and Doechii, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Jane Austen, we look at messaging from mainstream culture and wisdom traditions about what it means to live a life that is connected, engaged, and meaningful, and how we can resist the “hungry ghost” culture of quantity over quality.

• Sheryl’s blog post, How to Cool Down Internet Inflamed Relationship Anxiety
• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
• "The Goodness of Ordinary Life" episode of Gathering Gold
• Taylor Swift's song “Anti-Hero” and her commentary about it
• Sheryl’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show
• "DENIAL IS A RIVER" by Doechii
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Jane Austen’s writing table