Hi there, and welcome to the very first episode of Success Reimagined. I’m your host, Dr. Amna Shabbir, and I’m so excited to have you here with me on this journey. This show is for you if you feel stuck in that never-ending cycle of chasing achievement after achievement, only to feel… tired and empty once you get there. It’s also for you if, despite being given the label of being successful, you don’t actually feel that way inside. Maybe, like me, you’ve found yourself wondering: Is this all there is? Is success supposed to feel like this? And it is also for you if you want to become successful and feel lost about where to start your journey or wondering what your next steps will be. You are all welcome here and all parts of you are welcome here. Every week you will get small digestible episodes that will help you truly lean into authentic success. Today, I want to share a bit of my story—how I fell into the trap of chasing productivity and external success, and what led me to start reimagining what success means for myself. This journey has been messy, imperfect, and deeply personal, but if any part of my story resonates with you, I hope you’ll stick around because you’re in the right place. Here’s a bit about me. I’m a physician—a board-certified geriatrician-internal medicine doctor. I’m also a Master Certified Life Coach, a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and a Duke Certified Integrative Wellness Coach. I empower high achievers to thrive, not just survive - as we often are doing, merely cruising by life. I’m also a fierce mental health advocate. I’m a mom to two young girls and the wife of an entrepreneur. I’ve faced and overcome some physical and mental health challenges along the way. And honestly, like so many people in high-pressure careers, I was juggling a lot. Being a mom, supporting my husband’s entrepreneurial journey, and navigating my own professional and personal goals—it often felt like life was one big balancing act. For the listeners who work in healthcare- you know the very struggles of burnout and moral injury! So No matter how much I did, it never felt like it was enough. I was constantly moving from one task to the next, from one goal to the next. I couldn’t afford to slow down—there was always something that needed to be done, something else to achieve. As a medical student, then a resident, then a fellow, and even after I became an independently practicing physician, I lived by this internal script that told me: success is something you earn. It’s something you achieve by working harder, pushing further, and striving constantly. I believed that when I finally got there—wherever “there” was—I’d feel complete. Fulfilled. Like it would all finally make sense. But it didn’t. Every time I reached a goal, I immediately set my sights on the next one. There was this constant pressure to do more, be more, achieve more. And when I did achieve those goals, instead of feeling fulfilled, I just felt… tired. And it wasn’t just physical tiredness—I felt drained inside. There was this persistent feeling, like something was missing. No matter what I achieved, it felt like there was this gaping hole in my heart, and nothing external could fill it. That’s when I learned about something called the arrival fallacy. It’s the belief that once you reach a certain point in your life, you’ll finally feel happy and content. And let me tell you, living with that mindset is exhausting because the moment you “arrive,” you realize it didn’t fix anything—and so you set a new goal, and the cycle starts all over again. Looking back now, I recognize that I was suffering from extreme perfectionism—more on that in future episodes. I tied my sense of worth to what I could accomplish, and anything less than perfect felt like failure. Eventually, I reached a point where I had to stop and ask myself: Is this what success is supposed to feel like? If I’m doing everything “right,” why do I still feel so unfulfilled? That’s when I began to reimagine success—not as something purely external, but as something that integrates ambition with wellness, productivity with joy, and achievement with a sense of peace. And that’s what this podcast is all about: exploring how we can still achieve, create, and live our lives to the fullest, but in a way that feels fulfilling, not draining. I don’t have all the answers—I’m still figuring this out myself—but my hope is that by sharing my journey, we can start redefining what it means to be truly successful together. In upcoming episodes, I’ll dive deeper into the themes of ambition and wellness. I’ll talk about everything from battling burnout to cultivating mindfulness, from letting go of perfectionism to finding purpose in what we do. And I’ll leave you with practical and evidence-based strategies that can help you reimagine success in your life and start feeling whole. For today, I just want to invite you to reflect on what the word success means to you. What does success look like in your life right now?How do you feel when you think about the goals you’re working toward?If you could redefine success in a way that feels more fulfilling, what would that look like?Connect with Dr. Shabbir on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Linktree and Facebook
