Mandy Balak knows what it looks like to have a lot going on and keep moving anyway. As an entrepreneur, she spent years building businesses and pushing toward the next goal, all while carrying the pressure to always do more.
That changed during a particularly difficult stretch, where she found herself questioning the foundations she had built her life on – and whether the constant pursuit of more was actually getting her where she wanted to go.
Her new book, Chasing Enough: The High Achiever’s Guide to Sustainable Success, grew out of that process. Part memoir and part practical guide, it explores ambition, guilt, perfectionism, and how to move past the often-unspoken pressure so many women feel.
We spoke with Balak about what she learned along the way – and why sometimes moving forward starts with stopping.
THT: You’ve written this book about chasing enough. Who would you say would benefit most from reading it?
Mandy Balak: There are two types of people that this book is for. The first is the person who is winning on paper but who is running on empty. That person, no matter how much they do, constantly feels behind. They’re hitting a goal and then moving the goalpost and feeling nothing from it.
The second person is the one who feels a little bit stuck in their life, but they know exactly what to do. They don’t lack the skill or the know-how. They’ve probably been polishing that for a long time. They’re the people who take the courses and workshops, read the books, and listen to the podcasts, but something is holding them back from actually taking action.
Those two sound like different people, but really, they’re the same. At the core, both of those things are the chase. One of those people can’t stop, and the other can’t start.
THT: The book is part memoir – sharing your own story about struggling with “enough” – and part toolkit, giving readers practical ways to move forward. What was it like to peel back those layers and be vulnerable? Was that process difficult?
Mandy Balak: One hundred per cent. I think many people write a book, especially a memoir-style book, when they’re at the top of the mountaintop. I actually wrote this book from the middle of the climb, and I feel like that is very important because that’s where most people are. I wrote this book from the messy middle, which was a very transformational period of my life.
The book is set between 2017 and 2022, and in that timeframe, I dismantled the foundation of everything.
I was running multiple businesses at the time, barely keeping it together. Then, in 2018, I got the call that my dad was in a Colombian prison. I didn’t tell my team. I barely told my friends. I was dealing with this immense, high-pressure family crisis on top of the demands of my day, and I kept showing up on calls like nothing was happening – because that’s what high achievers do. We armour up, and we perform. And we carry it, alone.
So, you’ll hear the story of how I burned down a business. I had to completely shift the way that my marriage, my health, my everything was running because all of it was built on this shaky ground. There’s a lot of honesty and realness and rawness and vulnerability in the book, and I felt like that was very important. What I share in the book, I had to become. So I’m also honest about the places that I still struggle and that I’m still working on.
THT: What does “enough” mean to you, and why do you think so many people struggle with it?
Mandy Balak: Well, I think that “enough” changes. The problem isn’t that people don’t have enough – it’s that they never defined it, so nothing ever counts. High achievers think in all-or-nothing, so there’s no finish line, and we never get to land.
I really encourage people to ask that question every day: What is enough today? And choose it, and let it be.
And that doesn’t mean we’re handing our ambition back. That doesn’t mean we don’t have high standards for ourselves. That doesn’t mean we’re letting ourselves off the hook, slacking, or settling.
What it means is that we are letting ourselves arrive. We’re setting a clear finish line and saying it out loud, and so that allows us to celebrate. It allows us to arrive. It allows us to land. And then tomorrow we’re continuing on the climb.
THT: Where does guilt come in, especially for women? How do you let go of that guilt so you can set those boundaries for yourself without feeling like you’re letting anyone down?
Mandy Balak: Guilt is so layered, and in my experience, guilt is the currency of high achievers. And it always feels like if we choose ourselves, we’re letting someone else down. That’s a pattern, and patterns can be broken.
So the first step in breaking any pattern is to bring awareness to it. And so instead of pushing aside the guilt, and instead of pushing aside those feelings of shame or anything that comes up, we have to acknowledge it, and we have to notice it, and we have to get curious about where it’s coming from.
Sometimes it’s not even ours. Sometimes it’s completely made up. Sometimes it’s an expectation. Sometimes it’s an unwritten agreement or a conversation that just hasn’t been had. But when we bring awareness to it, and we don’t make it wrong, it allows us to ask those specific questions. Guilt is a feeling, not a fact. It’s real; it’s just usually not information.
And I’ll also say that guilty rest doesn’t work. If you take the day off and spend it feeling guilty, you didn’t rest, and your family got the worst version of you anyway. You paid the price and got none of the benefits.
THT: If somebody is reading this and sees themselves in all of these patterns, but feels overwhelmed by making a change, what would be a good first step?
Mandy Balak: The first step is the pause. And the pause is so simple, but there’s so much power there.
The pause gives us a choice point, right? So we can either repeat the pattern because patterns will repeat and they will loop until we stop the loop. But the pause is a simple moment where we get to make a new choice.
The other thing is to not over-identify with language, such as giving ourselves the identity of a people-pleaser.
Well, when we say, “I am a people-pleaser,” we’ve now given ourselves a life sentence to people-please. Versus if we say, “I have a tendency to people-please or try and make everyone happy,” then we realize, “Oh, that’s actually something you can make a shift from.”
It’s also really important not to shame ourselves when we catch ourselves in these very human patterns, because you can’t shame your way to change. You have to have compassion and curiosity, and really be kinder to yourself if you’re going to implement habits that are going to be sustainable.
THT: What did you learn about yourself through the process of writing the book?
Mandy Balak: So many things. Oh my goodness.
I think the writing process in general was a really healing experience for me because it’s taken me six years to write the book, and seven versions of the manuscript.
What I’ve noticed is, because I have a tendency to be a perfectionist, this has been a really challenging project because we’re constantly in evolution. So I’ve had to really come to terms with my own enoughness in this: that this is enough for this book.
And as I continue to grow and evolve and have these really powerful conversations – because I believe that this book is the beginning of really getting this out in the world – I know there’ll be another evolution of it.
So I’m learning that, again, you can choose enough for anything. And I’m choosing enough in this project, even though I know it’s not finished.
THT: Finally, for people who pick up the book, what do you hope they take away from your story and the lessons you’re providing?
Mandy Balak: I think it’s empowerment.
It is recognizing that you already have all the tools. You have everything. You already know what to do.
And I hope that my words and story and frameworks can give you really valuable tools that you can use to experience the success, aliveness, joy – everything that you want in your life is completely possible for you.
And I hope that the tools really give hope that it’s there.
Lisa Thibodeau
