Unhappy Achiever: Reclaiming Identity, Intuition, and Inner Fulfillment with Ashley Jordan

Full Episode Page: Unhappy Achiever: Reclaiming Identity, Intuition, and Inner Fulfillment with Ashley Jordan

Host Kelly Berry sits down with Ashley Jordan to unpack why high-achieving women still feel empty inside. Ashley shares her pivot from burnout to inner fulfillment, the inspiration behind her book The Unhappy Achiever, and practical ways mothers can reclaim self-worth, trust intuition, and live with intention without abandoning ambition.

Find Out

• How Ashley defines inner fulfillment and why it outshines trophies
• What the “unhappy achiever” pattern reveals about women’s growth
• Whether your intuition is the missing data point in big decisions
• Best first steps for a soul-led self-discovery journey
• Worst habits that keep burnout and identity loss on repeat

Links

• Ashley’s Official Site
• Buy The Unhappy Achiever
• Ashley on Instagram
• Ashley on LinkedIn
• Ashley on X

Chapters
00:00 Welcome to Life Intended: Living with Intention and Purpose
02:16 Ashley Jordan’s Story: From Unhappy Achiever to Inner Fulfillment
08:00 How Trusting Your Intuition Sparks Self-Discovery
17:20 Defining Inner Fulfillment: More Than Just Checking Boxes
23:09 Reclaiming Self-Worth: The Journey Back to Your True Self
27:40 Joyful Living: The Role of Hobbies in Women’s Personal Growth
30:52 Emotional Healing: The Power of Feeling What You’ve Avoided
35:02 The Self-Discovery Journey: How Growth Happens in Layers
39:03 Facing Fear and Embracing Change in Your Life’s Redirection

Life Intended is a podcast and coaching platform for women who are ready to stop waiting and start leading. Co-hosted by Kelly Berry and Sadie Wackett, each episode explores self-leadership, identity, emotional wellness, and living with intention.

About Kelly Berry
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader, coach, and founder of Life Intended. She helps women build clarity, confidence, and alignment in life and work. She enjoys spending quality time with her husband American entrepreneur Nick Berry and daughter Vivienne. Her life is a testament to the power of resilience and intention.
🔗 kellyberry.info | @lifeintendedpodcast

About Sadie Wackett
Sadie Wackett is a C-suite HR executive, certified coach, and co-founder of Life Intended. She supports women through leadership transitions, self-trust, and personal transformation. Sadie is originally from the UK and now lives in South Florida with her husband, daughter and dog, Pickles.
🔗 sadiewackett.com | LinkedIn

Life Intended is published in partnership with FCG...

Transcript

00:00 Welcome to Life Intended: Living with Intention and Purpose
02:16 Ashley Jordan’s Story: From Unhappy Achiever to Inner Fulfillment
08:00 How Trusting Your Intuition Sparks Self-Discovery
17:20 Defining Inner Fulfillment: More Than Just Checking Boxes
23:09 Reclaiming Self-Worth: The Journey Back to Your True Self
27:40 Joyful Living: The Role of Hobbies in Women’s Personal Growth
30:52 Emotional Healing: The Power of Feeling What You’ve Avoided
35:02 The Self-Discovery Journey: How Growth Happens in Layers
39:03 Facing Fear and Embracing Change in Your Life’s Redirection
42:40 The Power of Intention and Creating a Life You Want
48:03 Must-Read Books for Self-Discovery and Emotional Healing
52:53 The Life Intended Mission: Living with Purpose and Alignment

Kelly Berry (01:04)
I'm so excited to talk with today's guest, Ashley Jordan. Ashley has done many things throughout her life. She's been a feminist activist, a licensed attorney, public speaker, and a stay-at-home mother. Most notably, however, she's a well-published journalist

with her works appearing in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and HuffPost, among others. Today,

Ashley Jordan (01:27)
you

Kelly Berry (01:28)
she lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her three children, and we are recording this during the great freeze of January. So I'm here in South Florida. It's cold. And when I say cold, it feels like 50, high 40s, but I'm sure it's very cold where you are.

Ashley Jordan (01:44)
Oh, Kelly, yes. We had sub-zero temperatures earlier this week. So poor Florida temperatures would feel like vacation for us over here in Milwaukee.

Kelly Berry (01:46)
you

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm from the Midwest, so we've only been in Florida for four years. I've never seen so many Uggs and beanies and all of the things. It's like everybody in Florida has them and they just break them out on the one day of year that it, well, not just the one day of year, probably a lot more days than that than they should,

Ashley Jordan (02:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kelly Berry (02:16)
Welcome. I'm happy that you're here. You did just write a book and that's going to be a big topic of our conversation, but I wanted to say congratulations. That's so exciting. I know you've done a lot of writing, but your first book, as I understand it.

Ashley Jordan (02:31)
Absolutely, yes. Unhappy Achiever is my very first book, so thank you. It is such a delight to be able to share this journey and these stories with other women to help illuminate their own journeys and their own paths forward. So I'm grateful to be able to do that and to be here with you.

Kelly Berry (02:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love the title of the book and really Ashley's book is what prompted me to reach out to her to have her on the podcast and have this conversation because you know the name itself just stands out and you know is very in line with I think a lot of what we talk about here on Life Intended but more like living the life that you want to live more so than living the life you feel like you're expected to live and so

I can't wait to hear more about that. before we get into it, tell us just a little bit more about your story. You've done a lot. You've had like a lot of, I'll say chapters. So just give us the 10,000 foot view of how did you get where you are now?

Ashley Jordan (03:31)
Sure. you know, think most of us, my path wasn't necessarily a straight line, right? It was a roundabout curvy path, particularly in the past four and a half years. But in terms of the title of the book, Unhappy Achiever, the reason I chose that title is because when I was 37, I realized that Unhappy Achiever was this lens that I could actually view my entire life.

through from early childhood until the present moment at almost 40 years old. Because what I realized is that achievements became a way for me to earn love. And I think so many of us, particularly in childhood, for one reason or another, or from one source or another, feel a lack of unconditional love, of being of acceptance, of

of being worthy, whatever that looks like for us. And so for me, early on, I realized that I could earn love by being a very good girl and making my parents and significant adults in my life proud by doing really impressive things and achieving, right? And so the version of me that was created from that was

Kelly Berry (04:49)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (04:55)
a version that was based on external approval, expectations, perfectionism, right? All of those things that were sort of conditioned create our sense of self around, right? When other people applaud us and say, awesome job, we're like, they like me, right? And then they love me. And so that led me to kind of go from one achievement or box to check whether it was

grades, whether it was sports, whether it was college, whether it was law school. And so I ended up going to law school because than asking myself who I was, because I didn't know, I didn't even know, you know, in my late thirties, that's what I realized I lost her. Rather than asking myself that question, I thought what would make my family proud, right? And it was a doctor or a lawyer and

Kelly Berry (05:39)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (05:52)
math and science weren't my forte, so doctor was out and so I was like, okay, lawyer it is and went to law school, hated it from day one, hated it, but again, unhappy achiever. was like, well, I worked so hard to get here. I have to finish what I started and so I practiced law briefly, got married, had three children, became a stay at home mother and then

Kelly Berry (06:02)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (06:19)
Shortly after my third child was born, I had realized like so many women that in that process of becoming a wife and a mother, that I had completely lost myself, that I had nothing for myself anymore, that I didn't know myself except as someone else's mom or someone else's wife. so I started blogging because blogging was really big at the time. This was probably about six years ago.

Kelly Berry (06:39)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (06:48)
and that got me writing and I hadn't written anything since, I mean, golly, probably my mid-20s. And so I started writing through that process and then a little, you know, a little way into that my ex-husband said, why don't you try to get published? And I was like, well, how do I get published? And so I did some online research. I took a couple online courses and I published my first

in October of 2019. And in June of 2020, I stumbled into this journey of healing, growth, transformation completely unexpectedly. I wish I could tell you, Kelly, that I was like,

I realize at 37 that I do not know myself and I have work to do. No, that's not really how it happened. It really was that an unexpected trigger sent me spiraling into 24 years of repressed traumatic grief from childhood. And it was really in that space of kind of going from running around unhappy achieving woman to sort of down on the ground overnight.

Kelly Berry (07:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (08:00)
that I cracked open and that I had enough time and space to stop and really start to find myself and unbury my being from all of the doing. And that led me here to this book and to this time with you today.

Kelly Berry (08:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing. There's a lot of things in there I think that we can like dig into. But one thing I think is very important to reflect on is that, you know, in the moment, whenever this, I guess, pivot point for you was, you didn't know what it was. And like you kind of only know now upon reflection. And I think for so many of us, we're like,

looking for the sign guy, right? Like who's around us holding up this sign that's saying like, you're not on the right path or, you know, do this or do this. And we, you know, that's not really out there. It's all of these more subtle or sometimes in your case where you say it like knocked you on the ground, you know, it's a lot bigger than that, but you still in the moment don't, don't realize exactly what you're going through. And I think like,

I'm on kind of like the other side of a transitional period as well. And looking back, you know, I can say, I was burned out and I was this and I was that. But in the moment, I couldn't have labeled any of that. And I just think that that's important to highlight for people because you may not realize what's going on until you're through it. And that's, hard.

Ashley Jordan (09:35)
Absolutely. love that you made that point. was actually just having a conversation this morning where I said, know, so many of us, we don't realize how much we are struggling or suffering or how lost we are until we're not because because this becomes our norm. Right. And I found that I truly did not know how much I was

Kelly Berry (09:53)
Right.

Ashley Jordan (10:02)
suffering under the weight of that version of myself that I had created for others. I really didn't know how much I was suffering and had lost touch of myself until I started to crack open and move to the other side of it, right? And so for so many people, it's true. It's not until we get a little bit outside of what has become the norm for us that we can see clearly.

how much we were struggling and hurting.

Kelly Berry (10:32)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, they say hindsight is 20-20 and that's so true. It would be really awesome if the present site was 20-20 as well. But sometimes, you like you may have, I've been talking a lot lately about intuition and listening to yourself and like getting back in touch with who you are and your knowing and all of that. you know, you may feel these like tinges of

something's just not quite right, but when you're achieving and everybody's telling you, like all the feedback that you're getting from everybody is like, wow, you're so amazing. All of the things that you're doing are awesome. Keep going. If your intuition is telling you different, you don't listen to it because you're like, well, that can't be right because everybody else is saying this is the way.

Ashley Jordan (11:03)
you

you

Absolutely. intuition is so critical. And I'm so glad that you're talking about it. Because particularly for women, we are so intuitively connected, but we lose that connection often early on. And we're conditioned to look outside of ourselves for answers and for truth. And for

Kelly Berry (11:39)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (11:46)
what's right for us on our own paths. And the real truth is that there are no prescriptions that fit everyone. That if you are walking your unique path as a woman, it will not look like anybody else's path. And so the only way to uncover what is right and true for you is to rewire the...

broken connections of your intuition and go within into your heart space, into your inner knowing and ask yourself what right and true look like for you. And every single woman has an incredible capacity to connect to her own inner wisdom. We just have to stop looking outside of ourselves and rewire the connections inside of ourselves.

Kelly Berry (12:38)
Yeah, well, I want to come back to that because I want to talk about what you mean by rewire and how you do that. so I was just having a conversation and this is more just like to illustrate this point a little bit more for listeners who maybe are just starting to think about intuition or just starting to think about like, how do I even ask myself what I want or what I need? So I was having a conversation the other day. I don't think that really there's anything more intuitive.

Ashley Jordan (13:01)
Thank

Kelly Berry (13:07)
for a woman than becoming a mother and how we know what our children need and know what's best for them. And so to illustrate this point, we have been conditioned to not trust ourselves. We have been conditioned to listen to all of the experts on Instagram. This is what we need to be doing. We have been conditioned that when our baby isn't acting normal or isn't sleeping normally or isn't doing any of

Ashley Jordan (13:23)
you

you

Kelly Berry (13:35)
eating normally or normally in quotation marks, we need to go ask a Facebook group, what is everybody else telling us to do? When I think if we would just take a little bit of time and sit with ourselves and think, what do I think I need to do? Or what do I want to do in this situation? That's what we were talking about when we're talking about not listening to seeking outside influence. And I just think motherhood is so

Ashley Jordan (13:38)
Thank you.

Kelly Berry (14:02)
easy right now because it's everywhere. Everybody's telling you how to raise your kids, to discipline them, how to feed them, how to love them, how to not screw them up, you know, all of the things. And I think we're not acting intuitively as mothers in the moment, at this moment in time. And I think like, I don't know, I feel like maybe down the road there will be a little bit of kind of

correction of that or maybe you know us as mothers will maybe start to shut out all that noise and just start to to use that as a really good way to tap back into our own intuition.

Ashley Jordan (14:41)
Absolutely. I really believe that one of the most significant ways in which women are disempowered is by being taught not to trust themselves. We are taught that we can't trust ourselves, that we don't have the answers within, and so we need to rely on other people to tell us what's right for us and for our children.

And it's not to say that you can't have wonderful trusted advisors or experts. And that needs to be included in your own connection with your own truth and wisdom. Because when we act from a place of I don't know, but everybody else does, we give all of our power away. Right. And so being

condition as women to distr- to mistrust ourselves and to trust people outside of us to tell us what's right and true for our kids and for ourselves place where we actually are completely susceptible to being controlled all the time, right? Because we think we can't possibly know, but somehow everybody else knows what's right and true for ourselves when it comes to our lives and

Kelly Berry (15:47)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (15:59)
our children. And that isn't the case. You know, that just isn't true. And I think part of the reason for that is that I write about this in a chapter in the book called Mothers and Martyrs, is that part of what women are taught motherhood is, is self-sacrifice, is to sacrifice yourself for your children first and foremost, and then everyone else in your life, that your joy, your fulfillment comes second to everyone else.

Kelly Berry (16:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (16:29)
And that works really well for everyone else. It doesn't work really well for women. And I would also argue that the reality is it also doesn't work very well for everyone else because I don't think that it is possible for children to be truly joyful when they have a mother who doesn't allow herself true joy. I don't.

Kelly Berry (16:52)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (16:53)
I don't think that we can pour into our children more than we pour into ourselves, right? It's like filling a cup. If we don't fill our own cups, we have nothing to pour out into those we love. And so the idea that women should self-sacrifice, I think, is deeply connected to the idea that women need to look outside of themselves for

Kelly Berry (17:05)
Mm-hmm

Ashley Jordan (17:19)
the answers and for other people to tell them how they should live their lives, which really does put us in a position where we are only living based on the whims and perspectives and expectations of other people instead of ourselves. So I'm really glad that you brought up motherhood because I do think it's deeply entwined with intuition and inner wisdom.

Kelly Berry (17:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you know, there's a place for all of those inputs. You know, there's a place for you to take all of the things that you're seeing and learning and kind of, you know, don't know, analyzing that against what your knowing is telling you, but to ignore your knowing for the inputs of strangers. You know, I see this like all the time. It's like, I don't know if I would...

Ashley Jordan (17:47)
Mm-hmm.

Kelly Berry (18:08)
I Sally Q on the internet about what I should be doing in this certain situation when she knows nothing else about, you know, it's just like, I don't know, but people are just conditioned, like, I don't know, I need to ask other people, because the other people do know. So, yeah.

Ashley Jordan (18:25)
And I would be weary of anyone that any expert that says they know everything. Because I think that often the most reliable experts are those who do their best to provide wisdom and to serve and support others, but also hold the perspective of and I don't know, right? And

Kelly Berry (18:32)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (18:52)
And that is the most honest and authentic place to live and to be. And so even when it comes to writing a book like this, you I am sharing my journey and the stories and hopes that they resonate with other women and that they see themselves in those stories and find their own inner wisdom and reconnect to themselves and their paths. It would be impossible for me to responsibly write a book in which I prescribe.

what that path looks like for every single woman. That just isn't possible because I don't, I'm not living the lives of every single woman. Only she is. So only she knows. And I think as mothers, particularly, even when we're disconnected from our intuition, when it comes to our kids, most of us have had an experience in which we were like, something isn't right regarding one of our children or something is wrong.

Kelly Berry (19:26)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (19:49)
and experts and family members were like, no, it's fine. They're fine. Don't worry about it. And we were right. Everything wasn't fine, right? And so, so we do have that connection always, even when we're really, we've really lost it. And, and we can apply that connection to every other aspect of our lives, not just our kids.

Kelly Berry (19:57)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. We should use those instances to remind us and build confidence in ourselves that we have it in other areas and we have the capacity to do that. Yeah. OK. So yeah. I feel like that was kind of a tangent, but I think that was all super valuable conversation. But I do want to get back to a couple of things about the book.

The first one is kind of the tagline of the book. It is, I'll read it, rejecting the good girl image and reclaiming the joy of inner fulfillment. So I wanted to ask you, how do you define inner fulfillment? Like what does that mean to you?

Ashley Jordan (20:52)
Thank you.

I define inner fulfillment as the parts of us that feel content, peaceful, whole. The parts of us that feel true love, right? And I think particularly as women, we're taught that love, again, exists outside of us. That, and especially when it comes to romantic love, that living a life of love means finding a partner to love us and having children who love us.

Kelly Berry (21:14)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (21:24)
But the truth is living a life of love starts foremost as an inside job. It starts inside of us. And what you realize and what I realized with this book is that when I say achievement, I'm not just referring to getting good grades or getting a promotion or making money. I think that even personal

achievements, women associate the purse getting married, having kids, they've all become these boxes on our lifetime list of to do's that we feel like we have to check off. And, and so even the most beautiful boxes on that list, right, the ones that light us up the most, for instance, our children, when we don't have that fulfillment, that love, that peace, that contentment, that wholeness within.

Kelly Berry (21:53)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (22:16)
nothing else can ever fully fill us up. And the more we find that within us, the more we're able to see that reflected back in all of our relationships, in our work, in our friendships. But it starts within and it's dismantling the lie that we're sold that what is broken inside of us can be fixed by someone or something outside of us. That simply isn't true. And when we are

acting under that myth, we just go from one thing to the next to the next. And we wonder why when we get to this place where we feel like we've done all of the things, we don't feel the way that we thought we would feel. And sometimes we even feel worse because we feel like a failure somehow. Like I have these beautiful babies. Why am I not happier? They're gorgeous and perfect. What is wrong with me? Right? So yeah, I think that fulfillment can

Kelly Berry (23:07)
you.

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (23:13)
only come from within and carving out whatever time and space we can as women to connect with ourselves, right? To know ourselves, to do the things that make us feel the most like us, like what we love to do when we were eight years old, right? The things we did for joy, for joy's sake. You know, we have to, I always say for women,

Kelly Berry (23:32)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (23:40)
In some ways, I think that our sense of self becomes fragmented because it's like as we become wives, mothers, as we're building careers, as we're daughters, sisters, friends, our sense of self gets fragmented, right? And we're broken into all of these pieces. And at some point, we don't know where everyone else starts and where we start and they end or where...

Where are we except as an extension of everybody else and everybody else's lives? And so I always say you have to recollect those parts of you, right? Those, if you think of them like pieces of broken glass, you have to like piece them back together again to find out who you are. Who am I? What did I love to do before it became about everyone else? What brings me joy? What sorts of things light me up from the inside out?

Kelly Berry (24:29)
Mm-hmm.

And do you have some suggestions for people who are like, I don't know, am I really, I think there's a lot of people who are just unaware of how unfulfilled they are. So I guess if somebody is unaware or if they wanna start seeking, what do you recommend that they do to figure this out?

Ashley Jordan (24:55)
Well, the first thing that I would say, and I think that this is often the hardest thing for women and the easiest at the same time, and the simplest is to start carving out a little bit of time for yourself, just for you, nobody else, even if it's only five minutes, right? Even if it's just sitting down for five minutes, sipping a cup of coffee and just getting quiet, because one thing that I've found is that it's impossible

to connect to yourself when you are stressed, when you are scattered, when you're anxious, when you're depressed, when you're over-scheduled. And so the hardest and the easiest thing that we as women can do is just to carve out even five minutes for yourself a day. Five minutes to sit and look out the window and sip a cup of coffee, right? Five minutes, go on a walk, right?

Kelly Berry (25:42)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (25:51)
just some time that is just for you, nobody else, because when anybody else is around, we're distracted, right? We immediately, especially when it comes to our families, we are more worried about what's going on with them than we are about ourselves. And so in order to find ourselves, to assess where we're at, how we're feeling, we need to carve out time to just be, just be. Like that's the first step, right?

And from that place, you will start to discover who you are. You'll actually start to discover how you feel, right? You can ask yourself questions like I referenced just a bit a few minutes ago in our conversation about what you love to do when you were a kid. Because again, what we did when we were kids, we did just for the sake of joy. We did not have a boss on our backs.

We weren't worried about what our mother-in-law would think. We weren't worried about how it would look to the PTO, whatever it is, right? So remembering when you were a child, when you were eight years old, what did you love to do is a great question to ask yourself and look back at that and say to yourself,

Kelly Berry (27:00)
Right.

Ashley Jordan (27:16)
wow, what was that thing I used to just because it made me shine? And can I start doing that again? Or if it was a childlike version of something, what would the adult version look like if I was to start doing that again? And another great question to ask is, what is the thing that I've always wanted to do but never tried?

And I think often we think to ourselves, if it's a hobby, for instance, well, a hobby is kind of a waste of time because it's not making money and it's not, you know, serving my family. And that's just not true because the beautiful thing about a hobby is that there's no pressure. There's just pleasure. So if you're doing that thing that you want to do just because.

Kelly Berry (28:03)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (28:08)
doing it because it lights you up and brings you joy and because you're you and you deserve it is all the reason you need because you have no idea what doing that one thing will lead to. And so for me, I've tried all sorts of things in the past four and half years that I never thought I'd do. And one example was improv class. I never thought I would take a comedy improv class, but one of my

Kelly Berry (28:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I love that. Yeah.

Ashley Jordan (28:38)
best friends from childhood did an improv class and I went to her showcase and they were having so much fun. And I was watching her and her classmates and I just thought to myself, I want to play. I want to do that too. And so two months later I signed up for an improv class and I have to tell you, Kelly, for eight weeks it was some of the best two and a half hours of my week, every week, right?

Kelly Berry (29:04)
Yeah.

Ashley Jordan (29:09)
And I also met fantastic people who have been instrumental to me on my journey, who I now call dear friends that I never would have met had I not done that. And so all of the things that came out of that one decision acting from a place of my own inner wisdom and joy and pleasure led to so many other unexpected, beautiful things. And for all

Kelly Berry (29:15)
you

Ashley Jordan (29:33)
Someone knows doing that one thing could lead to a job idea or a job opportunity. You just never know what opening that one door will lead to.

Kelly Berry (29:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, I like how you said no pressure, just pleasure. That's a really, and you know, it seems simple, but that's so true. And I find like hobbies that I've taken up as an adult, like they do make me feel like a kid again. Like that's where I get to feel like happy and free and kind of like lose the fear. Yeah, so.

That's really great advice. Do you find, I probably know the answer to this, but do you find that there are some women who will avoid that five minutes of time for themselves? They do not want to lift the lid on what they might find when they sit with themselves.

Ashley Jordan (30:25)
I that that is true for a lot of people. And I say this as a woman for whom that was very true five years ago. Part of the reason I was an unhappy achiever and I was a doer and I was always over scheduled and going from one thing to the next to the next was to avoid being with myself. And so that's why I say, when an unexpected trigger

Kelly Berry (30:47)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (30:52)
sent me into grief and I was too emotionally incapacitated in that space to do what I'd always done, which was to just go, go, go. I was forced to stop. And the irony is that it was in that place of stopping, of silence, of getting quiet, that I started to find myself and to see myself for the first time. I always say,

Kelly Berry (31:03)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (31:20)
that one thing that makes me so sad about our culture and our society is that there is this emphasis on being positive and happy all the time, even when it's inauthentic, right? And so I'm not saying that there aren't benefits to positivity, but when we are using positivity as a way to avoid feeling what we're actually feeling,

It is not productive. It is not healthy. We are meant, if we're living truly alive, we're meant to feel it all. Doesn't mean we have to stay there. And what makes me sad is that, like so many, was taught to avoid hard feelings. I was taught to suppress it, to push it down. That being strong meant not allowing myself to feel emotions that we would consider negative, right? Sadness.

Kelly Berry (31:49)
Thank you.

Ashley Jordan (32:17)
anger, pain, all of that was suppressed. And I considered myself strong because I was a woman who never cried. And now, Kelly, I say, guess what the prize was for never crying for the first 37 years of my life is that when I cracked open on this journey, I got to cry all of the tears. I never cried in four and a half years. I don't recommend that. so.

Kelly Berry (32:43)
Hahaha!

Ashley Jordan (32:44)
I think it's much better to allow you to have your organic emotional experience as it comes. Emotions are like ocean waves. If we allow them, they rise and they fall. And the other problem with avoiding what we perceive as negative emotions, which I actually don't think we should label emotions positive or negative. I think we should just.

Kelly Berry (32:52)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (33:09)
allow ourselves to have an emotional experience and to realize that all of our feelings are important and they are teachers for us, right? Because when we are triggered or sad or angry, it's saying to us, something's wrong. There's something in me that's asking for attention, right? What do I need to be with? What do I need to look at, right? There's often learning in what's coming up for us if we don't avoid it.

Kelly Berry (33:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (33:38)
But the other thing that there is is in that space of grief and pain and darkness, for me, that was the space where I started to find my light again. It was only in that space of grief that I started to reconnect with love and my heart. It was only in that space of darkness that I started to uncover the light that was buried in me, right? Who I was, right? And so...

We really suffer, we really struggle coming from a place of avoidance when it comes to our own emotional experience and trying to be happy and positive all the time. It's okay not to be okay. It's appropriate not to be okay sometimes. And when you're on these journeys of growth and transformation and healing, I wanna normalize for women that it is magical and messy and in between.

Kelly Berry (34:23)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (34:36)
Right? And it's all completely normal. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not crazy and you are not alone. In fact, you are doing courageous work. You are doing work that many, many people are afraid to do. And I understand that too because it isn't always easy, but I will say it is so worth it.

Kelly Berry (34:54)
soon.

Ashley Jordan (35:02)
and for no one more than ourselves because, you know, what I always tell women when I get asked, why is it worth it? Right? What would you say? Would I come back to time and time again are two main things. One is I am unmarried, right? For the first time in my adult life. And I'll say I've never had more unconditional love in my

life than I have today. More beautiful relationships with women, with a partner, with my children, in my work. And so I can't imagine going back to four and a half years ago. It would feel like a figurative death of its own. And the other thing that I say is that I have never felt more free, more alive, more liberated or more true to who I am. And

Kelly Berry (35:48)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (35:58)
You can't put a price on that. You can't earn that with an achievement, right? But it is our birthright by virtue of nothing else but our being.

Kelly Berry (36:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, have a few questions because you talked about like fear I think is a big one I guess my first question to you is would you consider yourself like being on the other side of this journey for you?

Ashley Jordan (36:24)
So I yes and no, I'm going to answer this two ways. One, when you're on this journey, you make your way through, always say it's kind of like an onion, right? Like you peel one layer and so you get on the other side of that and then there's another layer, right? And so often we get frustrated because if we take, for instance, for me, grief, for example, right?

Kelly Berry (36:27)
Okay.

Ashley Jordan (36:50)
Man, I was two years into having that crack open and doing all of this healing work. And I remember I was traveling on a trip and grief was coming up. And I was like, what the heck is going on? I've dealt with this, right? And it wasn't that I hadn't dealt with it. It was just that I was ready to peel back that next layer. And so on this journey, we're always moving.

to the other side. But my other answer to your question is, will I ever be on the other side completely? And I would say no, because I think if we're breathing air and being here, we're meant to be ever evolving, right? We're meant to be learning and growing. And it doesn't always have to be heavy or hard, but we should always be curious, right? We should always do our best.

to live as the most true, alive, loving version of ourselves. And so I always say, I am marvelously mortal, hopelessly human, and an ever evolving woman, and I will be an ever evolving woman until my dying day. And that's the most honest place to be, I think.

Kelly Berry (38:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay, that's a really good answer. my follow-up question is that you'll be able to answer, and it may even make more sense, but I imagine four and a half years ago, you I don't know if you talk about like the event in your book or if you talk about that openly, what happened, but I imagine that whenever you were kind of going through this, a lot of what you have gone through in the past four years,

when you were at the starting line was very, very scary. And now that you can see like how you moved through it, may still have been the same amount of scary on the start line, but you now understand like you lived through it and you made it and you're still okay to other people who may tapping in and are.

super afraid of the changes that they will have to make in their life to get there? What's your advice to what does it feel like now having moved through a lot of that?

Ashley Jordan (39:03)
have to tell you that, you know, being in the place that I'm in today is is in so many ways richer, bigger, better, more beautiful and fulfilling than I ever could have imagined. And I will also say that there were multiple times in the past four and a half years that took me to my depths that were hard, right? Lots of

moments, ugly crying in the shower. and so I want to acknowledge that and also reassure everyone who's listening that yet look at me, I'm still standing, right? I survived. And when you are living from your heart and your truth, you will be amazed at the magic and the miracles that

can manifest for you when you're walking that path, right? The people who come in at exactly the right time that you need them, people you probably don't even know yet, right? The opportunities, the jobs, the books, whatever it is, it will look different for every woman. But I can tell you that I have been infinitely supported on this journey in the past four and a half years in ways I never could have.

predicted in ways that do feel extraordinary at times. And I do believe that when we find the courage to face ourselves and to take the journey within to lead more loving, liberated and free lives, everything outside of us lines up to support us. It's not to say it isn't hard. It's not to say it won't take you to your depths

Kelly Berry (40:31)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (40:54)
It's not to say it won't call you to make changes big or small, but it is to say that you will be amazed how you'll find exactly what you need when you need it, when you're living from that place. Everything changes around you to help you walk that path with both feet. And it is remarkable, I have to say.

Kelly Berry (41:16)
I think that that, you know, I hope that that is encouraging to people because I can only imagine, into yourself and kind of getting to know yourself and realizing that you are as far off of your center, as far from where you want to that that gap that you have to cross.

and the changes that you have to make to get there can be terrifying. But knowing all of the things that you just said, right people will show up, the right opportunities will show up, there will be people to pick you and all of that just, it just happens.

I'm a big believer in like the things that you create are the things that just happen. You know, it's not like you can just sit here and be like, I am not living true to myself. I'm not living my life. Now that I've acknowledged that, everything's just gonna fall into place. You know, it's like responsible for your journey and you're the one that has to like...

take those steps and get those things moving. But when you do, the reality that you create as a part of that is what, you know, those things step in pieces fall into place that you've made happen. And I think that's an important distinction as well.

Ashley Jordan (42:40)
Absolutely, absolutely.

It is not, as you say, having an awareness and then just sitting back and expecting, you know, things to happen. It is though, showing up as the truest form of yourself in the world so that the people meant for you can find you. It is taking heart centered, inspired action, right?

Kelly Berry (42:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (43:05)
also trusting that when you do, you will have what you need when you need it to move your path along as you walk that path actively. And I say that as a woman who changed, with the exception of my three children, every major aspect of my life in the past five years, from my marriage to friendships to my work, nothing about me is the same today, with the exception of my kids. And so that is not...

Kelly Berry (43:29)
you

Ashley Jordan (43:33)
I also want to say that is not what every woman's journey is going to look like. Rest assured. But I say it to let women know that that is right, maybe one of the more extreme versions of what a journey like this can look like. And I think it was necessary for me to live that and to survive it so that I could write this book and say to women, I survived it. I all of that right and I am more joyful.

Kelly Berry (43:57)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (44:01)
more aligned, more fulfilled than I've ever been. Not only am I still standing and it's also to say that, you know, the path of alignment, even though it is often fraught with difficulty, it is the only way to live and be truly alive.

Kelly Berry (44:21)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (44:22)
For me to not follow my heart's calling, to have ignored it, I might not have been physically dead, but I certainly wouldn't have been truly alive today. And I think that is true for so many women. And so I just want to reassure them that as someone who's made all of those changes in a pretty short period of time,

Kelly Berry (44:34)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (44:50)
where I was required to take quantum leaps of faith, Kelly, I have never fallen. I have never not been caught. And so that is the message I want to share. I heard a wonderful quote recently and it said, fear or faith, both require us to believe in something we cannot see. Which do you wanna believe? And I choose faith at the end of the day.

Kelly Berry (44:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

I mean, I believe exactly what you just said, that it really is the only way because can either live your life or you can live somebody else's life. And if you are in control of which one of those you're living, which one do you wanna choose? And it is, I do believe it's a choice. I think some, in a lot of ways,

The choices are harder for some people than they are for others. The path is harder. There's a that go into how we're able to change our circumstances, but it is possible, I believe, for everybody because it is its choice. It's agency. It's taking responsibility and making a change. Easier said than done, but possible.

Ashley Jordan (45:57)
you

Absolutely. And I think that intention, our intention is more powerful than we understand. So when you set the intention to reconnect with yourself and to make some changes, a change, a single change, even if it's, you know, less than five minutes to yourself a day, that one choice can lead to another choice and another choice and another, and they don't have to be big ones. Start small.

Kelly Berry (46:25)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (46:31)
and don't listen to people who say you have to do it this way. You have to meditate, you have to do yoga, you have to, no, there are no prescriptions. The only thing for you to do is be and to listen to what feels right for you. Whatever that is, if it's just sipping a cup of coffee for a couple minutes quietly, if it's taking a painting class, whatever it is, is right. And listen to that.

Kelly Berry (46:58)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (46:59)
Listen to that and don't be discouraged by all of those voices who should on you, who tell you what you should do. They are not living your life. They do not know what's best for you in the way that you do. And so don't let those voices make you feel like less than or discourage you. You have the power to make the changes that are right for you. And there is no right or wrong when it comes to that. It's just what feels

Kelly Berry (47:05)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (47:27)
the best for you in this moment and that will be ever changing and that's okay too.

Kelly Berry (47:28)
Mm-hmm.

And each time you make a decision to pour into yourself or invest in yourself, it gives you a little bit more confidence to do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And that is what will get you eventually where you need to be. Yeah, that's so great. This has been a great conversation. We're running up to time. I want you to tell everybody, where can they find your book? Where can they find you? Where can they follow you?

How can they just hear more of all of your great wisdom that you're sharing?

Ashley Jordan (48:03)
Well, thank you, Kelly, for asking that. As you said, the book is Unhappy Achiever, Rejecting the Good Girl Image and Reclaiming the Joy of Inner Fulfillment. And it is available anywhere you buy books, Amazon, Audible, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, all of those places. You can also find it at unhappyachiever.com. You can find me at ashjordan.com or on Instagram at MsAshJordan.

Kelly Berry (48:32)
I'll put all of that in the show notes as well. This is kind of an off the cuff question, but on the topic of books, what are some of the books that you have read during this four and a half years that you would recommend to people who are on a journey like you are? Or, yeah, on a journey like you are, have been, they're on,

Ashley Jordan (48:52)
That is such a great question. And I will give some of my favorites, but I also want to say, again, relating to everything else that I think, especially if you love to read and if you don't, again, don't, that's great. That is totally fine. Listen to podcasts like this one, right? Listen to music. Music is healing. So, but if you do love books, books have been instrumental to me and

Kelly Berry (49:06)
Right? You don't have to read to make a change like this. Exactly.

Ashley Jordan (49:21)
The biggest thing I want to say about it is that

As an unhappy achiever, I used to force myself to finish every book that I started. And now I don't do that. I read whatever I'm called to. And if I'm in the midst of it and I feel called to something else, I just put it away and I jump to the thing that I'm called to. And wow, Kelly, it is a liberating act just to not force yourself to finish a book. And it doesn't necessarily have to be that the book is bad. It just means that maybe

you got what you needed and now you need something different and that you'll come back to it or you won't. For instance, I read a fantastic book called Women Who Run With The Wolves and it's long, it's over 500 pages and it's an older book and I loved it but I would, it probably took 18 months to read it because I would read some and then I would put it away and then I would come back to it whenever I felt called again and whenever I would come back to it, it would magically

the chapter that I was on would seem to reflect what I was going through. And it would be the message that was so resonant for me in that moment. Whereas had I just forced myself to power through, right? That wouldn't have been the case because I had the experience that made each of those parts more meaningful. So that is one book I love. I also love authors like Young Pueblo, who wrote Lighter

Kelly Berry (50:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (50:45)
Shay Iyanna who wrote a book about becoming your own beloved, which I really loved because I think as we talked about romantic love earlier, so many women don't realize that we need to be our own beloveds first and foremost and that there's nothing that a partner can do for us that we can't do for ourselves. And that is true whether you're partnered or not, right? Why can't you deserve to have flowers and

Kelly Berry (51:12)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (51:15)
buy them. I usually have fresh flowers in my house as often as possible. I buy myself flowers all the time. So you can take yourself out for a lovely dinner, right? All of those things and same is true when it comes to parents, right? We often feel like we missed out when it comes to, you know, our relationships with our mothers often is the case. And the truth is, we can be

Kelly Berry (51:23)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Jordan (51:44)
the mother to ourselves, we never had, right? There's nothing you can't do for your own children that you shouldn't also do for you, right? Even if it's just saying the things, I realized at a certain point that I hadn't, the things that I say to my children that are second nature about how much I love them and how precious they are to me, then nobody had ever said those things to me. You can say them to you, right? And so that is more than you asked for, but I still think it's worthwhile.

Kelly Berry (51:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ashley Jordan (52:09)
So I'm glad I

Kelly Berry (52:09)
Yeah.

Ashley Jordan (52:10)
got to go off on a little tangent and share it.

Kelly Berry (52:12)
Yeah,

yeah, that's of this was great. I'm gonna read the book. I'm excited to read the book. It's very in line with all of, I mentioned, I'm kind of, I will say I agree with you on being on the other side. I don't think anybody's really on the other side because we're all on a journey. But I am in a very different place than I was and I'm looking forward to reading your book and just continuing.

Happy to get your message out there and help people really understand the importance of just asking themselves some questions. What do I want? What do I need? All of those things. So thank you so much. This was amazing.

Kelly Berry (52:53)
Thanks for listening to Life Intended.

Sadie Wackett (52:56)
If something from this episode landed with you, stirred something up or gave you a new perspective, share it. Tag us, leave a review. That's how this work reaches more women who really need it.

Kelly Berry (53:09)
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Sadie Wackett (53:17)
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Kelly Berry (53:20)
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