I’m an Atlanta girl, raised on 90s hip hop, Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice,” Biggie’s “Hypnotize,” and TLC’s “Creep” – these are definitely the kind of tracks that make you want to strut into a room like you own it! But those aren’t my hype songs. You might think my hype song is something Harry Styles, because anyone who’s worked with me for more than a hot minute knows about my shrine-level devotion (seeing him three times in concert in the next three months!). But you’d be wrong. My actual hype song found ME sitting in a Deloitte conference room 5 years ago, wondering whether to walk away and finally do the thing I was already known for doing anyway.
Encanto had just come out. My kids played it on repeat until I could recite it in my sleep, and one song hit me in all of my feels: Isabela’s “What Else Can I Do?” I wasn’t Isabela. I didn’t have the perfect flowers or a magic gift that made me the family’s golden child. But I knew her fear. The tight grip on doing everything right. The dread of the mistake, the wrong word, the thing left out of place that might prove I wasn’t as good as everyone assumed. I’d been carrying that fear around for a very long time, and when you’re a high achiever surrounded by high achievers, that fear tends to be much bigger and much deeper.
That song hit me like she’d been watching my whole career. She breaks out of the “perfect” cage, stops performing flawlessness, and finally lets herself feel something true and a little wild. Sitting in that conference room with the perfect path and the perfect recognition and the perfect blah blah blah behind me, I realized none of it mattered anymore. I wanted to build something messy. Something mine.
If you’re a parent leading a team by day and negotiating bedtime by night, this one’s really for you. High achievers have plenty of ambition – that’s not your problem. You struggle with letting anything be unfinished, unpolished, or yours before it’s earned “perfect” status. Replaying the meeting where you said the wrong thing. Softening every ask so nobody’s inconvenienced. Taking feedback personally when it was never that deep. It’s a trap. Perfect feels safe. Perfect is also small.
So I’m inviting you to actually listen. Turn everything else off for three minutes. See if she’s singing to you, too.
I wanna feel the shiver of something new. I’m so sick of pretty, I want something true, don’t you?
And hit reply with YOUR hype song! I wanna know!