Why Women Need to “Get a Life”

Why do so many high-achieving women feel like their lives are full… yet somehow small?

In the first episode of Get a Life, Jackie Oña Cascarano explores why high-achieving women in mid-life often find themselves trapped in cycles of productivity, caregiving, and responsibility that leave little room for curiosity, adventure, or personal exploration. Drawing on research from positive psychology, Jackie introduces three different ways scientists think about a life well-lived: the happy life, the meaningful life, and the psychologically rich life.

She also shares her personal story, the origin of the Juno Women’s Collective, and introduces Adventure Year, her experiment in bringing novelty, creativity, and exploration back into everyday life by getting out of her comfort zone in the form of hobbies and micro-adventures.

If you’ve ever felt the quiet pull toward something more, this conversation is for you.

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Show Notes

Modern life often rewards productivity, caregiving, and achievement, but leaves little space for curiosity, novelty, or exploration. Drawing from the science of positive psychology, Jackie introduces three different ways researchers understand a life well-lived: the happy life, the meaningful life, and the psychologically rich life.

Psychological richness—defined by interesting, novel, and perspective-changing experiences—may be the missing ingredient for many women whose lives are built on routine and responsibility. Jackie also shares the story behind the Juno Women’s Collective and introduces Adventure Year, her personal experiment in intentionally bringing new experiences, creativity, and exploration back into daily life.

This episode sets the stage for a season focused on helping women build lives that are not just productive, but expansive, interesting, and deeply alive.

Research References

Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Oishi, S. (2018). Advances and open questions in the science of subjective well-being. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.115

George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2016). Meaning in life as comprehension, purpose, and mattering: Toward integration and new research questions. Review of General Psychology, 20(3), 205–220. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000077

Holmes, C. (2022). Happier hour: How to beat distraction, expand your time, and focus on what matters most. Gallery Books.

Oishi, S., & Westgate, E. C. (2022). A psychologically rich life: Beyond happiness and meaning. Psychological Review, 129(2), 263–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000317

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Get a Life. This is a podcast for women who feel the pull towards something more. Women ready to become the main characters of their own stories and build lives filled with interesting experiences, passionate pursuits, and adventures big and small. I'm Jackie Cascarano, former lawyer, turned women's wellness coach, and I'm a practitioner of positive psychology, the science of well-being. I help high-achieving women reconnect with themselves and create lives rich with authenticity, alignment, and agency. Welcome to the Get a Life podcast. So I'm from the 90s, and if someone told you to get a life back then, it was definitely not a compliment. It meant you were boring or nosy or you were way too invested in someone else's business. But lately I've been thinking that maybe a lot of women that I know, that I interact with, actually do need to get a life. And it's not because our lives are too empty. In fact, it's the opposite. They are packed with responsibilities, careers, caregiving, logistics, endless to-do lists. I'm a well-being coach for high achieving women, and I am a high achieving woman. So it works out beautifully for me. And what I see every day are women who are doing everything right. They are succeeding professionally, they're caring for families, and they're managing households. It's a lot of invisible labor, right? And yet they are quietly wondering why does my life feel so small? So this podcast is about that question and about how women can start building lives that are not just productive or responsible, but interesting and curious, filled with adventure and deeply alive. So are you feeling stuck in the productivity trap? I often am for sure. If you have one moment of precious discretionary time, how do you use it? That's kind of how I think you can tell. Like, are you in this productivity trap? If you have that one precious hour of quote unquote leisure time, what do you do with it? Do you prep lunches for kids or prepare a slide deck for work? You know, we are constantly checking things off of a to-do list. We handle everything. We are everything to everyone. And I think the missing component here is the pursuit of something, anything, solely for ourselves, that actually lights us up. And really the permission to ask ourselves what we want out of our lives. You know that amazing Mary Oliver quote Tell me what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life. So, yeah, one day, a few years ago, I realized I needed to get a life. And one that wasn't centered around productivity and my caregiving roles. Even though I adore my children and husband, I'm I'm I have to say that I love my family. I love my family, I love my husband, uh, and I love caring for them. I really do. But I'm more than a caregiver and I am more than my output. I am a human being who is worthy of the pursuit of passions, adventures, and things that spark joy and depth, challenges the light of fire in our bellies, and to reach goals that we actually really care about. And this is the conversation that I want to start. And that is what I hope for you too. I hope that this conversation inspires you to go out there and get a life, uh, even though you're busy. I know you're busy. I am too. So I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself and how I got to be curious about well-being for high-achieving women. I was a lawyer a very long time ago. I started out my career as an attorney. And then I pivoted to counseling in law schools. So I was a career counselor for law students and lawyers. And I had a really meandering, kind of winding path to being a full-time coach. And then I started a women's network called Juno. What I encountered over the course of my career really were feelings of shame. There were a lot of feelings of shame because I had left one profession, even though, by the way, it was a terrible fit. I felt the expectations of my family, my friends. Uh, worst of all, I would say the expectations of like random acquaintances and people I knew from college or law school that I didn't even like, but I really kind of like felt them judging me. And I really felt regret or shame for having honestly made the brave choice to prioritize my own needs. And I've been a career and professional wellness coach for over 15 years, and I see this a lot. This is a common story. This, my story is not unique in the least. Women often have winding paths when it comes to their careers. There are pauses, there are starts and stops. And that's because we are socialized to be caretakers, right? I mean, it's like the patriarchy. Men simply do not have these roles in our society. And as such, their careers are far more linear than ours. You know, you have that idea back in like the 1950s and 60s of, you know, working, you work at the company for 30 years and you get the gold watch as a retirement gift. Like that's not a thing anymore, even for men, but that's not stopping women from feeling shame for taking time to either be home with their kids, to take alternate career paths, maybe that are conducive to their family schedule. And for me, I was working full-time and juggling three kids and a husband. I felt shame for not doing it all at 100%, which is really just not possible. Be honest. You know, I don't think you can be a plus plus in every single area of your life. That's just a message we've been internalizing. And as I reflected back, the concept of seasons really struck me. Seasons in your life where you want certain things. And that makes sense. You know, women are cyclical creatures. It makes sense that we would have seasons of work, seasons of restoration, seasons of exploration, specifically asking yourself, what's next? What do I want out of my life? So I started a women's professional network in Nashville, where I live. It's called Juno Women's Collective. And it's a network of women who are navigating professional transition or seeking clarity, momentum in their next chapter. Women are often leaving corporate to start their own businesses or pivoting careers altogether. Or we have this demographic of women who have been home with kids for a while and they're looking to jump back into the quote unquote traditional workforce. That's really hard. And I mention this because what these women have in common, the common thread there and where they find community and connection is that they have what I call a stirring inside them. They feel an inner tug that there is something more out there. Something more they want, even if they can't quite articulate it. And they ask themselves, what do I want out of my life? A lot of them say they want to utilize their strengths and talents. They want a full, deep life because a lot of us are numbing out from the frenetic pace that we are keeping. They want joy and excitement, interesting experiences to get out of their comfort zones. And maybe not necessarily they're they're seeking to get out of their comfort zone because no one really wants that, but they know it's good for them. So the curriculum for Juno is based on something called positive psychology, which is what I'm currently studying. And positive psychology is the scientific study of human well-being. And that's what a lot of the content is going to touch upon in this podcast. Positive psychology asks questions like what is a good life? What does it mean to flourish? And this is what I'm curious about women and well-being, because we are surviving, to be sure. We are doing all of the things because we can, but a lot of us aren't flourishing per se. And I study this specifically in relation to women. I'm currently getting a master's degree in this topic, and it's all I can think about. It's all I care about focusing on. Traditionally, psychologists have focused on two major constructs when thinking about a life well lived. The first one is a happy life, and this is a life that's characterized by pleasure, comfort, positive emotions, right? Happiness, kind of easy, easy breezy. The second construct is just a meaningful life, right? So you got happy and then you got meaningful. And this is a life that's characterized by purpose or contribution or a feeling that your life matters. And both of these are incredibly important, no doubt. And sometimes they overlap, right? Um, and sometimes they don't. So think about motherhood or marriage or a job that you love that's that's mission-driven. Those are happy at times and meaningful at times, right? So if you've devoted your professional life to working for victims of domestic violence, that is going to be a very meaningful aspect of your life. Not necessarily happy all the time or pleasant on the daily, but really meaningful. My experience as a mother, often very meaningful, but not particularly pleasant when you're changing diapers or, you know, navigating like school politics and tutoring and all that, right? But really, really meaningful. So in recent years, though, there has been research out of the University of Chicago, spearheaded by a professor friend of mine named Shigehiro Oishi. And it measures a third construct of a good life. And this one is particularly interesting to me and inspired me for this podcast, for the work that I'm doing in my master's program. And it is particularly interesting for me in the context of women and well-being. It is called psychological richness. And a psychologically rich life is a life that's filled with interesting, novel, and perspective-changing experiences. So, not just pleasant or happy experiences and not just meaningful ones. These are experiences that shift how you see the world, experiences that make life feel textured, deep, full, and basically very interesting, eventful. And what I contend is that high achieving women are sorely lacking in psychologically rich experiences, especially in midlife. Because think about it high-achieving women, their lives are built on routine, right? We work, we mother, we wife, we have to get exercise in or get our hair done or comply with other societal patriarchal expectations of being productive and fit. We do not have time for interesting lives. And this is what Professor Cassie Holmes out of UCLA calls time poverty. The experience that many women have, that they do not have enough time in the day to do what they need and want to do, let alone interesting things that our patriarchal hustle culture society has labeled as extraneous, frivolous, self-indulgent, like hobbies, the exploration of new places and topics that intrigue you, learning new skills that are not necessarily useful in a professional setting, ones that you just find interesting, uh, things like art and music, conversations that challenge your thinking, exploring unfamiliar places, being exposed to new ideas, travel, everyday adventures. Psychological richness often involves novelty, curiosity, and exploration. And I believe this is low-hanging fruit for our well-being. And we just need to be brave enough to carve out time to reach for it. So when I say get a life, I don't mean blowing up your responsibilities or abandoning everything you've built with your families. I love my family and I have work that I'm very passionate about. And I want to care for them, both things, my work and my family. I want to care for them as energetically and deliberately as possible. That is a beautiful part of my life. But when I don't have other pursuits that light me up, I am not running on all cylinders. I was created for more than just productivity and caretaking. And so were you. I mean something much simpler by telling you to get a life and much more radical, I think. Actively creating a life that lights you up, an interesting life of depth and novelty and passionate pursuits that makes you better, makes you your true self in every area of your life. One of the things you'll hear me talk about on this podcast is something I'm doing called Adventure Year. We talk about this in the next episode. Adventure year is my personal experiment in psychological richness. Over the course of the year, I'm intentionally trying new things, hobbies, creative pursuits, learning opportunities, travel, experiences that are pushing me outside of my normal routine and comfort zone. And I am a person who has a lot of anxiousness and fear. So this is why I'm doing it. It's pushing me out of my comfort zone for sure. And the first thing I did and am doing was pursuing a master's degree at 46 years old with three kids at home and a high maintenance entrepreneur husband. The goal is simple to intentionally bring novelty, curiosity, and exploration back into my everyday life. And throughout the season, I'll be sharing what I'm learning from that experiment, what works, what feels uncomfortable, what sticks, and what surprises me and shifts my perspective. And also what happens when we start intentionally adding interesting experiences back into our lives that are built on routine. So if you've ever thought to yourself, I've always wish I could learn how to ABC, but I don't think I have time anymore. Or I used to love doing this and wish I could do it again. That episode's gonna be for you. This season we'll talk about the science of well-being, but also the practical side of this, how women who are busy and responsible can start creating more abundance in their lives that are already really full. We're gonna explore topics like why hobbies are so powerful for well-being, why productivity culture has made leisure feel indulgent, the difference between a happy life, a meaningful life, and a psychologically rich life, how to cultivate resilience and identity shifts in midlife, how art, music, and humanities impact our well-being, and much more. Some episodes are going to be solo reflections like this one, and some will be conversations with experts in the field, with women I think of as exemplars of having a life. If you're a woman who feels the pull towards something more, more curiosity, more exploration, more adventure, more abundance in your life, you're in the right place because your life is not just about productivity. It's about experience. It's about curiosity, it's about truly living. Thank you for being here and welcome to get a life.