Les Alfred Wants You to Stop Being Good and Start Getting What You Want

January always tries to sell you a makeover. Les Alfred isn’t interested. Her message on She’s So Lucky is simpler and way more useful: a lot of what feels like “being stuck” is really you following outdated rules—quietly, automatically, and at your own expense.

She invites you to use 2026 as a year for editing your operating system. Not your personality. Not your whole life. Just the invisible rules you’ve been living by. Staying “good,” playing it safe, forcing yourself onto timelines, keeping your goals private until they’re perfect. Those rules can look responsible from the outside, but they often produce the same result—smaller choices, fewer risks, and a constant feeling that you’re behind.

Stop Letting Invisible Rules Decide What You’re Allowed to Want

Rule 1: How being the ‘good girl’ trains you to disappear

The good girl rule doesn’t look like self-sacrifice at first. It looks like being agreeable, helpful, and easy to be around. But Les explains how that wiring sticks. “People who are obsessed with being a good girl when they’re younger, as we get into adulthood, we often tend to obsess with things like people pleasing,” she shares. Over time, that approval-seeking turns into self-editing—softening opinions, shrinking goals, and putting everyone else first by default.

The danger is that the behavior gets rewarded. You become dependable and considered low-maintenance. But as Les says, “constantly shrinking to stay palatable” trains you to believe that visibility is a liability. Standing out feels risky. Wanting more feels embarrassing. Ambition starts to feel like something you should apologize for.

“When I say don’t be a good girl, I mean stop bending over backwards, putting everyone’s needs before your own,” Les clarifies. Because the life you want doesn’t come from politeness alone. 

Rule 2: Playing it safe guarantees a smaller life

The “play it safe rule” feels responsible. It sounds like being realistic, setting “attainable” goals, and choosing options with the least risk attached. But Les points out how safety can quietly become stagnation. “When we set these little super realistic things, we feel like it’s within our reach,” and that sense of control can feel productive—until you realize nothing is actually changing.

Fear is doing more of the decision-making than you think. Fear of disappointment, fear of looking stupid, fear of failing publicly. The result is a cycle where comfort replaces growth. “It’s keeping you in the same spot. It’s keeping you small,” Les bluntly states. You may avoid loss, but you also avoid momentum.

“When you so greatly fear disappointment that you don’t try to stretch yourself at all…you are actually guaranteeing that you lose,” she warns. Playing it safe protects your ego in the short term, but it blocks the kind of wins that require risk. The stretch wins—the ones that change your confidence, your career, your sense of possibility—only happen when you aim higher than what feels comfortable. Remember, growth asks for discomfort. Luck follows movement.

Rule 3: ‘Should have’ is a luck killer

The “should rule” is relentless. It shows up as mental pressure—where you should be, what you should have accomplished, how your life should look by now. That loop is extremely destructive. “There is nothing more unlucky than shooting all over ourselves about what we should have and where we should be,” Les says. It keeps you focused on an imaginary benchmark instead of the reality in front of you.

What makes the “should rule” especially toxic is how it ignores context. Les states that timelines fall apart when you’ve had to pivot, rebuild, or start over. “The shoulds simply don’t apply” when your path isn’t linear. Holding yourself to standards built for a different life only compounds shame and stalls progress.

She also pushes back on empty reassurance. Being told everything is “aligned” doesn’t help when you’re dealing with real consequences, real bills, real pressure. The work is accepting the timeline you’re on without letting it define your worth. That means releasing comparison and acknowledging that choosing to start over puts you on a different clock.

Being a good girl, taking the safe route, listening to “the shoulds”—they all shrink you in different ways. Drop them, and suddenly the path forward gets a lot clearer.

To listen to Les Alfred’s full conversation, tune into She’s So Lucky wherever you get your podcasts.

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