Welcome to Untangle. I'm Patricia Carpice. Many of us spend years chasing success,

believing that if we achieve enough, we'll finally feel fulfilled. But what happens when we

arrive at the destination and still feel empty? In this conversation, our guest, Megan Pellaher, former Google executive,

executive coach, and author shares the emotional reality behind high achievement, burnout,

identity loss, and the search for a more meaningful life. She shares the story of leaving

Google without a plan and explains how that

difficult transition ultimately led her to create a new framework for navigating life through curiosity,

alignment, and what she calls directional living. Hence the name for a new book, directional living,

a transformational guide to fulfillment in work and life.

If you've ever questioned your career path, struggled with uncertainty or felt disconnected,

despite outward success, this episode offers both reassurance and practical guidance for finding

your way back to yourself. One of my favorite quotes from our conversation

is curiosity and joy are the best proxies we have for purpose. Now, here's Megan.

Megan, it's so great to have you on Untangle today. Thanks for being with us.

Patricia, I'm so happy to be here. Yeah. So you worked for Google for a long time.

And why did that experience inspire you to this book and to this way of thinking?

I suppose it was the anti-inspiration. It required me in a backwards way. But, yeah, I was what I would consider, what I would call now an under-fulfilled overachiever. So someone

who checked all the boxes, done all the right things, everything I was supposed to do,

went to Stanford, got good grades, went right into working at Google and climbed the ladder there

dutifully for eight years. And while it was this great on paper life, I did not feel great inside.

And I was really miserable and really ashamed of how miserable I was. And eventually, the dissonance

between who the way I was showing up in the world and what my

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