Success Is a Random Tuesday

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You can tick every box and still feel strangely flat. The house, the title, the money, the promotion, the “finally” moment arrives and instead of joy you feel… relief. I’m Jo Stone, and I want to name what so many high achieving women whisper to themselves: the scoreboard version of success is loud, public, and measurable, but it often has very little to do with fulfilment, presence, or feeling at home in your own life. 

We dig into the real moments that stop you mid-stride and make you think, yes, this is why I’m here. Not the new car or the next big goal, but the random Tuesday stuff: the drive home where your head goes quiet, the dinner where you actually see your partner, the meeting where you say the true thing without marinating in it for hours, the night you can relax even if the bench is not clean. We also talk about why ambition isn’t the enemy, and how hustle culture teaches us to walk straight past the moments that matter because they don’t look “big enough”. 

Then we tackle the moving goalposts pattern head-on, including my half marathon moment where I changed the target mid-run and robbed myself of the win. And we land in the story that rewired everything for me: a Disneyland rule about hugs, a timer, and a two and a half minute hug in a hallway that became the clearest definition of success I’ve ever had. If you’ve been craving work-life balance, deeper connection, and a calmer nervous system without giving up your drive, this is your reminder that you don’t need a new life, you need more of you back in the one you’ve already built. 

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The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

We know high achievers, because we are one. This podcast draws on Jo's 20 years in global leadership and thousands of hours coaching executives and ambitious women: the patterns she sees, how to untangle them, and what it actually takes to keep your success without paying for it with yourself.

If something landed today, there's more where that came from.

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Transcript

Welcome To Balance And Beyond

Jo Stone (Host) 0:04

Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for women who've outgrown the old model of success. The ones who look fine on the outside but know the way they've been living no longer fits. If you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming, this is for you. Honour the space you've created today. Let's dive in.

Chasing The Scoreboard Version Of Success

Jo Stone (Host) 0:27

I'm the first to say that I wanted the house, the title, the bank balance, and everything that came with that. I thought that was what it was all for, and that when I got those things, I'd feel like I'd made it. But when you actually stop and look at the moments in life where you've gone, yes, yes, this is what it's all for. They are never the big things. They're always something small, actually teeny tiny, that happened on a random Tuesday. Chances are very high that you've been hustling for the scoreboard version of success. No shame, I was right there with you, climbing that mountain of promotions and opportunities and team and size and budget and then all the house stuff and the everything that comes with that. And many of you have got some or all of those things. And what I find fascinating is there's a moment when one of those things arrives. Maybe you buy the dream house, or you get the title that you want, or the thing happens, and you're like, yee, it arrived. And you waited, but you didn't arrive. So you went and got the next thing. Because in that moment you felt very little. And if we're honest, the probably the main thing you felt was relief. But here's what no one tells you about

The Small Moments That Matter

Jo Stone (Host) 2:03

success. Those moments that you remember. And if you've spoken to anybody over the age of 80, they will always tell you the moments that matter. They're those ones that stop you mid-stride. Like, yes, yes, yes, this is this is why I'm here. They're not the promotions. They're not the new car or the new house or the new thing. They are actually embarrassingly small. It's that drive home where your head is quiet for the first time all week long. That dinner where you actually realize you're looking at the person in front of you and go, oh, they've grown a little bit more. That meeting where you say the actual thing instead of swallowing the thing that you want to say, but you can't, and that's safe. And what about Brad over there? And you just say the thing and you move on and you don't marinate about it for the next six hours. Or that moment where you can actually relax after dinner, even if the bench isn't clean. And your body just goes, yeah, I'm good. Everything on the bench stops screaming at you. And one of my favorites is that deep guttural laugh that comes from somewhere real. Whether that's with a night out with girlfriends, when you're being silly with the kids, it's not one of those, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah. It's a real one that comes from a deep place of joy. None of that shit is on the scoreboard, people. None of that is going to light up a LinkedIn post. It is not going to go on the highlight reel of life with your insta fabulous, look at my holiday, look at what I've just done, look at my life. But every single one of those is what you're actually changing. And despite everything we've been told, we're allowed to count those little things because it's a very good chance the success you are chasing is not found in the title. It's the version of you who can actually feel the life that the title bought in the first place. Now, before you go, oh my God, I'm doing it all wrong again, Joe, you are wired for big. As am and was I. Big, we like things to be bigger. We want more. We want them to be better. We want more aspirations. We want more ambition. And when something small happens, even if that something small actually matters, we walk straight past it. We're like, nah, didn't big enough. Didn't no, no, that's that's not gonna cut it. The bar is set so high for everything that those random Tuesday moments never even make it onto the measuring stick in the first place. And even if, let's say for a second they did, well, you're a high achiever. You don't want to be mediocre and you definitely don't want to settle. So if I've had that much joy,

Moving Goalposts And The Marathon Trap

Jo Stone (Host) 5:13

next time I need more. Not because you're greedy or ungrateful, but your measuring system was all designed on external proof, not internal experience. And that external bar doesn't just sit high once and you go, oh yay, I've got it. Yes, that fulfillment. Now I feel amazing. It moves. And it moves when you start to get close to it. Because if you happen to reach your goal, you might have to feel it. And somewhere underneath, you're not even sure that it would be enough. So this moving of the goalposts isn't accidental. I used to do this all the time. So much so that I was running a half marathon. Yes, high achiever, just like you, my friend. Let's set ourselves some crazy goals. And I decide on a time, I train for a time. Get to the 15K mark. I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna reach my time. This is amazing. And then my brain went, oh, maybe you haven't pushed yourself hard enough. Maybe that was an easy goal. Maybe you should set a harder goal. So there at the 15K mark of 21, I changed my goal that I'd had for six to 12 months because I thought I was wussing out and not pushing myself enough. So I shifted the goalpost by six minutes, which isn't a lot with only six Ks to go. And guess who crossed the finish line? Ahead of my time that I'd had on my wall, on my vision board, but not behind the time of set at the 15 came up. No shit. I walked across the finish line. Instead of being delight, I was like, oh, I guess I didn't push hard enough. I completely denied myself the opportunity for joy because anything that I said was never high enough. It wasn't big enough. It always had to be more. And in this constant moving of the goalposts, it means we never have to confront the thing we've been chasing. We never have to sit with the fact that, oh, will it actually deliver what I think it will? So you never get to feel the wins. You never have to, even if they're right in front of you, whether that's at home, at work. Do you know the amount of people that work with me, that I speak to, that get these promotions, that get amazing wins, they deliver huge projects. And at the end, they come to me and go, Joe, I this has been big for me. This has been months of work, years of work. I meant to feel something, aren't I? But I don't really feel anything. Because I had to compromise on this bit, or because I damaged this relationship in the process. You were always focusing on the bit you haven't done, the bit that wasn't good enough. Now I want to share with you a moment that completely stopped me in my tracks and was key to me rewiring everything

The Disneyland Hug Rule At Home

Jo Stone (Host) 8:35

I knew about success. I love hugging my kids and always wanted my kids to know that affection was fine. That was not how I grew up. Affection was a bit of a weird thing in my family. But anytime I'd get a hug, I'd be like, yeah, yeah, nice, nice. Off to off you go on, clean your teeth. Go to your homework. Off you go. I've got to go back to work. I've got a call. I've got a this. So I was always the one breaking the hug. Then I heard when I went to Disneyland that they have a rule. The child always breaks first. I'm like, what? What is this? The character, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, whoever it is, always holds the child for as long as they need. They never break the hug. So I thought, huh, interesting. Oh, I've been breaking the hug. Shit. Okay, I'm gonna try it. The first time I did it with Stella, and she was probably six or seven at the time, she hugged me for two and a half minutes. And I know because I set a timer because I was curious on how my little experiment was going to go. She finally knew that I wasn't gonna go anywhere. I was the one who was deciding how much connection she needed, not her. And yet, often that hug was for both of us. But why was I the one just going, right? That's it. We're done. Move on. Next thing. Go, go, go, go, go, come on. People to do, things to see, let's go. But for that to happen, so much had to shift in me first. I had to actually be present, not running to the next 14,000 things on my list. As I was hugging her, I had to then be feeling her cues rather than overriding them because I would hug her, but my mind was on to the next thing that I had to be doing after the hug. So I had to in that moment resist the voice that was like, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, and just sit there and override that voice and hug her and feel her and actually blow her into my body and just feel her breath and slow everything down. And eventually, when she peeled away from this hug, I still remember it vividly to this day. She peeled away this look of surprise and was like just wide-eyed and said, I love you, in a way that she'd never had before. And she's hugged me differently ever since that moment because she knows that I'm never gonna break. That moment is never on any scoreboard. It does not make a highlight real, but if you ask me to point to a moment of what's it all four, why am I doing this? That's it. That's the moment. It's a two and a half minute hug in a hallway on a random Tuesday. That's why we're here.

Tiny Shifts That Change Everything

Jo Stone (Host) 11:41

What's really interesting is when the women come in to work with me or step into this work that we do, they always think the changes are gonna be dramatic. I'm gonna leave my job, I'm going to maybe leave my marriage, fix my marriage, I'm going to become calm and zen. I'm going to need less, I'm going to want less. I'm going to dampen my ambition. I'm going to hold those boundaries like a boss. And they are always disappointed by what shifts first. And I know because I've done this over 500 times with Balance and Beyond. Those first shifts, tiny. Things like driving home and realizing that your jaw isn't locked, sitting through dinner and being so present that when your head hits the pillow, you chuckle at something that happened at dinner. Because you were present there to capture it and you're not thinking about tomorrow while you're lying down. You stop skipping pages in bedtime stories because you're so anxious to get back to your laptop to get ahead of tomorrow. And ever so slowly, tiny little 1% shift at a time, you start showing up differently to your own life. It doesn't announce itself. There's no big ceremony, ta-da! Your door is now unlocked at 2 45 on a Thursday. You don't need this new life that you've probably convinced yourself that has to happen. You need enough of you back to live the one that you've already built. So a question I would love you to sit with is when was the last time you were actually in your life? Not managing it or running it or all the things in it. Because that is what's on the other side of this. In the hug, in those moments. Now I wanted the house, the title, the bank balance, all the things, and I got most of them. And yet, the moment I remember most is a two and a half minute hug in a hallway on a Tuesday. The life you've been working so bloody hard for isn't waiting for the next best thing, the next big thing. It's already here. It's already arriving. In moments you keep deciding, don't count. Start counting them.

Start Counting What Counts

Jo Stone (Host) 14:38

And if you want to be part of the Ripple Effect, leaving a review helps it reach the women it's meant for. I'll see you next time.