Mental Wealth
There’s more to you than The Version That Works.
For those who know more is possible than what they’ve been told they can have and be.
We all learn what works.
We read our families, schools, workplaces and relationships, and we notice which ways of being help us belong, succeed, stay safe and be understood.
Maybe being competent works. Or agreeable. Funny. Independent. The one with the answers. The one who never needs anything.
There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s something human beings are incredibly good at doing.
But sometimes “this is a way I know how to be” starts becoming “this is who I am.”
We become fluent in certain versions of ourselves, and without really noticing it, our range can start to flatten.
I call this The Version That Works.
It may have built your career, helped you through difficult experiences, held relationships together or made you excellent at what you do.
The problem isn’t that it didn’t work.
Sometimes it works so well, we mistake it for all that we are.
And that can leave us in a strange place: successful but flat, surrounded by people but not always deeply known, grateful for what we have while still wondering why something feels like it’s missing.
Sometimes nothing is obviously wrong.
Technically, a lot may be right.
And yet the question remains:
How much of you is alive in the life you’ve built?
I’m not sure we always need another version of ourselves to become.
We hear a lot about finding, improving, and reinventing ourselves to become our “best” selves.
I’ve spent plenty of my own life in that world.
Lately, I’m more interested in range.
Because when we get really good at being The Version That Works, it doesn’t only shape how we think about ourselves. It can shape the conversations we have, the people we connect with, the ideas we share, the things we create, even what we do for fun.
We can become more predictable without realizing it.
We say the thing we know will land well. We play the role people expect us to play. We keep showing up at work in the way that has made us successful. We spend time with people who know us well, but may only know certain sides of us. We stop doing things we once enjoyed because they don’t seem to fit who we are anymore.
And after a while, life can start to feel a little flat.
Not bad. Not broken. Not even necessarily something you want to change.
Just... less alive than you’d like to feel inside it.
This is why I keep coming back to Recovering Range.
Not as another self-improvement project, but as an experiment in creating a little more breathing room for what is already there.
It might mean saying something you normally edit. Bringing a different side of yourself into a relationship. Trying a new approach to something at work instead of automatically reaching for the one you know you’re good at. Picking up something you used to love doing simply because you want to.
Small things. But they let something move from the inside out instead of always shaping ourselves around what is coming from the outside in.
And I think that matters.
Because aliveness isn’t about being happy all the time or creating some perfectly expressed life.
It’s being in your life. Being present enough to be affected by it, expressive enough to participate in it, and connected enough that the people around you have a chance to know more than the version of you they’ve come to expect.
The goal isn’t to become someone new. It’s to create enough breathing room for more of who you already are to participate in your life.
That’s what I explore through my speaking and writing.
Speaking
Conversations about the versions of ourselves that work—and what can happen when they become too small.
Lauren Polly is an award-winning author, speaker and speech-language pathologist whose work sits at the intersection of identity, expression, communication, connection and aliveness.
Drawing from more than 20 years in communication and her own experience of moving beyond a defining mental health label, Lauren explores how we become fluent in certain versions of ourselves—and what can happen when we create enough breathing room for greater range.
Her talks are thoughtful, story-driven conversations that leave audiences with questions they can keep exploring long after the room clears.
Substack
The questions I’m still thinking about.
Mental Wealth is Lauren’s Substack and ongoing exploration of identity, expression, communication, connection and what it means to participate more fully in our lives.
It’s where personal stories, more than 20 years working in communication, and the questions Lauren is currently turning over tend to meet.
Current explorations include:
Identity & the stories we inherit
Expression & the parts of ourselves we leave behind
Communication & feeling known
Success, fulfillment & what comes next
Belonging, loneliness & human connection
Creativity, possibility & living with greater range
Multi-Award-Winning & Best-Selling Author of The Other Side of Bipolar • National Media Contributor • 20+ Years in Healthcare Leadership & Communication
Different chapters. The same question:
What else might be possible?
Book
What if the label was never the whole story?
Long before Mental Wealth had a name, Lauren was asking the question that still sits at the heart of her work:
What if there is more to us than what we’ve been told?
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at fourteen, Lauren spent years understanding herself through the possibilities and limitations of that label. The Other Side of Bipolar grew from what happened when she began questioning whether the explanation she had been given was the whole story.
Part memoir and part reimagining of diagnosis, healing, and selfhood, the book explores what can become possible when we stop relating to ourselves solely through what is wrong and begin getting curious about what else is there.
Its original dedication still captures the heart of Lauren’s work today:
“To those who know more is possible than what they were told they can have and be.”
ABOUT LAUREN
A career spent looking for what else is there.
For more than 20 years, Lauren has worked as a speech-language pathologist, helping people bring more of what is inside them into expression.
At the same time, she was walking her own path beyond a defining mental health label.
Looking back, those two paths were teaching her something remarkably similar:
There can be so much more inside a person than what is currently making it outside.
Lauren was helping other people use their voices while learning to trust her own.
Today, that intersection sits at the heart of her writing and speaking.