The internet loves to romanticize the solo grind. You know the narrative… waking up at 4 AM, building empires alone in dimly lit rooms, choosing yourself over everyone else. But here’s what nobody tells you: some of the most transformative career shifts happen when you stop trying to do everything alone and start recognizing what actually moves the needle.
2025 taught me three mindset shifts that completely changed how I approach work, both at my 9-5 and in my personal projects. These aren’t the typical “hustle harder” platitudes you’ll find everywhere else; these are the real, unsexy truths about building a career and life that actually feels fulfilling.
Mindset Shift #1: Working With a Great Team Is the Ultimate Flex
The Cultural Narrative We Need to Unlearn
Somewhere along the way, we started believing that the ultimate career goal was to escape… escape the 9-5, escape corporate culture, escape having a boss. The message became clear: if you’re still working for someone else, you haven’t “made it” yet.
But here’s what I realized in 2025: working with brilliant people who challenge you, support you, and push you to grow is worth more than any solo venture could ever be.
Why Great Teams Matter More Than We Admit
My 9-5 isn’t just a paycheck or a placeholder until I “figure out” my real dreams. It’s where I work alongside people who:
- Challenge my assumptions daily
- Bring expertise I don’t have
- Create space for me to learn and fail safely
- Push projects further than I could alone
- Celebrate wins and troubleshoot losses together
The truth is that working with a great team is the biggest flex. Not because it’s easy (it’s not), but because it requires humility, collaboration, and the wisdom to recognize that your growth accelerates when you’re surrounded by people who are better than you at things you want to master.
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What This Looks Like in Practice
Instead of viewing my 9-5 as something to tolerate, I started seeing it as:
- A masterclass in skills I’m actively building
- Access to mentorship I’d pay thousands for elsewhere
- A testing ground for ideas before I scale them personally
- Community and connection that fuels everything else I do
The shift wasn’t in my job; it was in my perspective. And that changed everything.
Mindset Shift #2: Collaboration on Personal Projects Is Mentally Expansive (Even When Solo Feels Safer)
The Comfort of Working Alone
I’ll be honest… working alone is my default mode. It’s comfortable. There’s no need to explain your vision, compromise on decisions, or navigate different working styles. When it’s just you, you move at your own pace, in your own way.
And for a long time, that’s exactly how I operated on my personal projects: my blog, my app, my networking dinners. I kept them solo because it felt easier.
Why I Started Letting People In
But 2025 taught me something critical: comfort doesn’t equal growth.
When I finally started collaborating on my personal projects, inviting others into my creative process, something shifted. Suddenly:
- Ideas I thought were fully formed got challenged and improved
- Perspectives I hadn’t considered opened new directions
- Energy that used to drain me alone became energizing with the right people
- Projects that felt stuck gained momentum through fresh input
The Mental Expansion That Happens Through Collaboration
Here’s what collaboration unlocked:
- Creative breakthroughs: Two minds approaching a problem differently creates solutions neither would’ve found alone
- Accountability without pressure: Having someone invested in your project keeps you moving without the crushing weight of “I have to do this all myself”
- Skill-building through osmosis: You learn by watching how others work, think, and problem-solve
- Shared celebration: Wins hit different when someone else gets why they matter
Working with others on my personal projects… whether it’s brainstorming blog content, building app features, or planning networking events… expanded my mind in ways working alone never could.
Yes, it requires vulnerability. Yes, it means letting go of some control. But the trade-off is worth it every single time.
Women in Tech Orlando Networking Dinner
Mindset Shift #3: You Can Do It All Without Choosing Just One Thing
The Pressure to Pick a Lane
We’re constantly told to niche down. Choose one thing. Become known for a singular expertise. And while specialization has its place, this advice can become a cage that limits how fully we live.
For years, I felt torn between my 9-5 and my side projects. Like I had to choose: am I a corporate professional or an entrepreneur? A specialist or a generalist? Serious about my career or dabbling in hobbies?
The Liberation of Doing Everything You Want
But here’s what 2025 made crystal clear: you can literally do everything your heart desires, in all capacities, without apologizing for it.
I can:
- Excel at my 9-5 and care deeply about my team and our work
- Build my blog and share ideas that matter to me
- Develop an app that solves problems I’m passionate about
- Host networking dinners that bring people together
- Pursue creative projects just because they light me up
None of these things cancel each other out. In fact, they fuel each other.
Why a Full Life Means Exploring All Your Interests
The mindset shift here isn’t about doing more for the sake of being busy. It’s about recognizing that:
- Your 9-5 expertise informs your side projects: The skills, insights, and connections from your day job make your personal work stronger
- Your personal projects make you better at your 9-5: The creativity, ownership, and problem-solving you practice outside work translates directly into how you show up professionally
- Specialization and exploration coexist: You can be deeply skilled in your primary field while exploring interests that make you more dimensional, interesting, and fulfilled
The Permission You Don’t Need (But I’ll Give You Anyway)
You don’t have to pigeonhole yourself into one identity. You don’t have to choose between being excellent at your job and pursuing your passions. You don’t have to wait until you’ve “made it” in one area before exploring another.
A full life… a truly full life… is one where you explore every interest that calls to you, where you specialize enough to be valuable but diversify enough to stay curious, and where you refuse to limit yourself to society’s narrow definitions of success.
The Throughline: It’s All About Growth, Connection, and Possibility
These three mindset shifts might seem unrelated on the surface, but they share a common thread: they’re all about expanding what’s possible instead of limiting yourself to what’s comfortable or expected.
Whether it’s recognizing the value of great teams, opening your personal projects to collaboration, or refusing to choose just one path… each shift requires you to challenge the cultural narratives that keep us small, scared, and stuck.
2025 taught me that the real flex isn’t doing it all alone. It’s not hustling in isolation until you burn out. It’s not sacrificing one part of your life for another.
The real flex is building a career and life so full, so collaborative, so expansive that you can’t imagine going back to the way things were.
And honestly? That feels better than any solo success story ever could.
