Greatness Is a Conscious Choice
Choosing Greatness When Life Gets Messy
Jim Collins once wrote, “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.”
I’ve returned to that quote often—but never more than this week.
Today, my husband is having back surgery. The kind that requires careful timing, constant updates, and a mental load that hums in the background no matter how hard you try to stay calm. At the same time, both of my young children caught a virus—runny noses, spiking fevers, tears that come fast and loud, and the kind of meltdowns that only happen when little bodies feel overwhelmed.
Layered on top of that are the invisible stressors many women know well: insurance battles, surgery time changes, last-minute logistics, emails that still need answering, and the quiet pressure to keep everything moving forward for everyone else.
By all accounts, this should be the moment where I slowly crumble.
But I’m not.
I’m steady. I’m clear. I’m present.
And—somewhat surprisingly—I’m thriving.
Not because the circumstances are easy. They aren’t. Not because I’ve mastered some superhuman balance. I haven’t. But because somewhere along the way, I learned something Collins points to so simply: greatness shows up in the choices we make when life is inconvenient, messy, and uncertain.
Thriving doesn’t always look like joy or calm. Sometimes it looks like choosing not to spiral when plans change for the third time. It looks like holding a feverish child with one arm while advocating firmly yet politely on the phone with an insurance company. It looks like facing a house full of irritable, on-edge humans while still driving initiatives for your brand, packing for the hospital, and quietly praying to maintain emotional steadiness—then deciding, I can do this.
There is a quiet kind of power that emerges when women realize they don’t have to wait for ideal conditions to lead, love, or rise. We don’t become strong when everything goes right. We become strong when we consciously decide to meet what’s in front of us with intention instead of fear.
This season is asking a lot of me. But it’s also revealing a lot about me. It’s showing me that resilience isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself. It simply keeps choosing forward motion. It keeps choosing steadiness. It keeps choosing belief—especially on the days when it would be easier not to.
If you’re reading this while carrying more than you think you should be able to handle, know this: you are not failing because things feel heavy. You are practicing greatness every time you choose to show up anyway. Greatness is not reserved for stages, titles, or awards. Sometimes, it looks like a woman standing in the middle of real life—the runny noses, hospital bracelets, and all—choosing strength, again and again.
And that choice matters.
