What If You’re Not Failing — You’re Just Not Willing to Be a Villain?

The day the cybertruck cracked the illusion

I live on a small island in Mexico. It’s not the kind of place where you expect to see Teslas, much less one of those absurd angular Cybertrucks that look like someone gave a 10-year-old too much aluminum and power. But there it was. Just after my son and I had spotted a mega-yacht offshore — the kind with a helicopter, multiple speedboats, and a “we could end world hunger but chose this instead” energy.

And I had a thunk moment. One of those sudden internal drops that lands in your gut and changes how you see things.

I turned to my son and said, “You’re probably not going to get a lot of this, but I have to say it out loud: We’ve been trained to believe that rich people are smarter than us. Even when we hear with our own ears, how very not smart a ‘successful’ man is, everyone will still chime in. ‘oh"! But he’s smart at business!’

But I’m starting to see it differently now. The ultra-rich? I think they’re actually sick.”

Wait—did she just say that out loud?

Yes. Yes I did. And I’m going to say it louder for the women in the back who are still trying to build something beautiful without turning into something hollow:

There is something deeply broken about a system that rewards disconnection from empathy, community, and soul.

There’s a mental disorder that gets celebrated in modern culture — the drive to acquire more, more, more, without ever stopping to ask “why” or “at what cost.” To laser focus on you and only you, never worrying about harming others as you go. It’s the same disorder that lets someone step over people suffering on the street while boarding a yacht with a helipad.

Sane people know when to say “I have enough.” Sane people with recources would turn toward suffering with empathy and aid.

And yet... we’ve been gaslit to believe they are the ones who figured it out and that something is us is broken or defective.

That they’re “disciplined.”
That we’re “too emotional.”
We scroll our phones too much. Watch too much Netflix. That they “worked harder.”
That we just “don’t want it bad enough.”

No. Actually, we just don’t want to become cartoon villains.

Why good-hearted women hesitate

If you’re someone who’s ever tried to build a business, launch a product, put your art into the world, or even just stand up and say, “I deserve more” — and then immediately got hit with doubt, guilt, or the feeling that success = selling out?

You’re not alone. That inner freeze isn’t laziness or fear of hard work.

It’s self-protection.

It’s your nervous system recognizing a pattern: the people who seem to “make it” are often the ones who have cut themselves off from their hearts, their ethics, their virtues. And you’ve vowed, consciously or not, that you will not become that.

But here’s the plot twist: that vow isn’t your limitation.
It’s your superpower.

You don’t have to become hollow to be successful

Following Sparks was never about becoming someone you’re not. It’s about remembering the parts of you that never stopped caring. The parts that still feel sick seeing luxury stacked on top of suffering. The parts that know there has to be another way — even if you haven’t seen it modeled yet.

That’s what we’re doing here.

We are learning how to:

• Show up with heart without leaking all our energy

• Claim space without performing

• Create value without playing by the “success = sociopathy” rulebook

And even allow wealth to come in — not as a signal of our worth, but as a resource we can direct toward healing, rest, creativity, and joy.

Let’s reclaim success as something soft, sacred, and rebellious

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a beautiful life.

But we were taught that in order to get one, we’d have to betray our values or out-work everyone else.

What if the truth is simpler — and far more radical?

What if the reason you're struggling to succeed in the systems we were handed is because you're not willing to become a villain?
And what if that means you’re exactly the kind of person the world needs to succeed?

Let that land.

You don’t need to hustle like a tech bro.
You don’t need to buy into a culture that praises yachts over human dignity.
You don’t need to fix your softness.

You just need to keep following the sparks — one honest moment, one sparkly rebellion at a time.

🌀 Ready to reclaim success on your terms?
Try the Softening the Edges Journal — 30 days of gentle prompts to unravel old beliefs and soften into your truth.

🧭 Need a compass after calling out the conditioning?
The Leapbook is your daily reminder that you can succeed without selling your soul.