The Success Trap

I was the youngest female PADI Course Director (scuba diving teacher's trainer) in the world, freedove with Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet and James Cameron shooting Avatar - for years. I've worked on 27 Hollywood productions, travelled across 57 countries. By Hollywood standards, I'd made it.

By my own standards, I was drowning.

The Success Trap

Los Angeles runs on a particular metric of success: bigger budgets, bigger credits, bigger reach. We measure our worth in IMDb pages and Instagram followers, in who we know and what we've done lately. The question isn't "Are you happy?" It's "What are you working on?"

I spent two decades answering that question. The next film. The next certification. The next country. I built a career that looked extraordinary from the outside while losing track of why I'd started. I'd wanted to spend my life underwater because it felt like freedom. Somewhere along the way, it became a resume.

Then cancer at 39 gave me a different question: "What if this is enough?"

What I Learned About Fulfillment vs. Achievement

Here's what I've discovered in the years since, building a small jewelry business and raising a family in Los Angeles instead of chasing film credits around the globe: We've confused achievement with fulfillment. And we pay a steep price for that confusion.

Los Angeles is full of people who "made it" and still feel empty. We celebrate the ones who break through while ignoring the toll that breaking through takes. We tell stories about people who sacrificed everything for their dreams, then wonder why our mental health crisis deepens, why our relationships crumble, why success so often leads to burnout rather than satisfaction.

The real question isn't whether you can make it. It's whether you can stop once you have.

Lessons from 100 Feet Below

I learned this lesson 100 feet underwater, where every breath demands presence. You can't think about the next dive when you're monitoring someone's air supply. You can't worry about tomorrow's call time when you're ensuring Kate Winslet surfaces safely. The ocean taught me something Hollywood never could: be here, now, or people get hurt.

But I forgot that lesson the moment I surfaced. On land, I was already thinking about the next job, the next achievement, the next proof that I was enough. The irony is obvious now—I made my living teaching people to be present underwater while being utterly absent from my own life.

Redefining Success

Redefining success in a world that values "more" feels almost countercultural. When I tell people I left Hollywood to make jewelry and raise my daughter, I see the calculation in their eyes. They're trying to figure out if I failed or if I'm lying about being happy. The idea that I chose something smaller, more intimate, more aligned with who I actually am—it doesn't compute in a culture built on scale and ambition.

But here's what I want you to know if you're navigating this relentless pursuit of "more":

You don't owe anyone a superhuman performance of success. You don't have to prove your worth by working yourself to exhaustion. You don't have to keep chasing just because you're good at it.

The Buddhist practice I discovered traveling through Asia taught me about "enough." The ocean taught me about presence. And cancer taught me that all the achievements in the world mean nothing if you're not actually alive to enjoy them.

The Most Subversive Thing You Can Do

I still live in Los Angeles. I still love this city and the creative energy that pulses through it. But I've stopped letting external measures define success for me.

My jewelry business will never make me famous. Raising my daughter won't get me a credit on IMDb. Building a life that feels aligned with my values won't impress anyone at an industry party.

And that's exactly the point.

We need a different conversation about success—one that includes rest, presence, and the radical notion that you can stop climbing and still be worthy. One that celebrates people who choose fulfillment over achievement, who build small beautiful things instead of empires, who define "making it" as finally coming home to themselves.

I spent 20 years proving I could do the impossible. Now I'm proving something harder: I can be ordinary, grounded, present. I can have enough.

That might be the most subversive thing you can do in a world that always demands more.

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