I built my career performing for others, and I had a lot of success doing it—but I didn't notice that the performance never stopped. I’d become a pro at people-pleasing and perfectionism, often suppressing what I felt so everyone else could get what they needed.
Until a trifecta of tough circumstances put all of that to an end.
Within two years, a long, hard fertility journey ended in disappointment, I was thrust back into entrepreneurship unexpectedly, and if that wasn’t enough…my marriage ended, too.
It was a perfect storm that revealed a very clear bottom line. Someone had to go: either the people-pleasing perfectionist, or the real me.
Fortunately, the real me won.
"Are you showing up as the real you, to you?” Jamie Kern Lima writes in one of my favorite sections of her book, “Worthy.” She goes on to say: “Do you truly connect with yourself and know yourself? Do you see you?"
Mic drop.
The Performance Trap
Most of us learned early that success or sometimes belonging meant becoming who others needed us to be. The straight-A student. The reliable employee. The person who never rocks the boat. We became masters of performance, shape-shifting through life, collecting achievements like armor against the world's judgment.
But here's what no one tells you about the performance trap: the better you get at being who others want you to be, the further you drift from who you actually are. Your authentic voice gets buried under layers of "professional speak." Your natural rhythms get overridden by productivity systems. Your creative impulses get filed away as "hobbies" while the "real work" takes center stage.
The cost? A career that looks impressive on paper but feels hollow in practice. A life where you're succeeding at being someone else's version of you.
When Something’s Missing
When life threw its hardest blows, I noticed that I hadn’t been dancing regularly. There was a longing to express parts of myself that I’d somehow abandoned.
And I know the same is true for others, too. When we disconnect from who we are, we instinctively abandon the activities that most express our true nature. The writer stops writing. The singer stops singing. The natural connector stops reaching out.
This isn’t about picking up hobbies, per se. It's about the essential expressions of self that keep us tethered to our authenticity. When these disappear from our lives, we lose access to ourselves.
True fulfillment requires us to excavate the parts of ourselves we buried in service of success and belonging. The same impulses we often sacrifice for career advancement are exactly what we need to find our way back to ourselves.
And the tools for reconnection are already within us—we just need to give ourselves permission to use them. Music becomes medicine. Movement becomes meditation. Storytelling becomes a bridge back to truth.
Clearing the Fulfillment Block
If you’re feeling a little lost or out of touch, use these tips to help you find your way back to you.
1. Audit your energy.
Notice when you feel most alive during the day. Do you feel energized during strategic conversations? While mentoring others? When you have time alone to create? These energy peaks are breadcrumbs that can lead you back to your authentic professional self.
2. Reclaim your abandoned creativity.
What creative expression did you used to love but haven't touched in years? Designing, writing, organizing, sewing? These are pathways to reconnection. Schedule time for them, not as productivity tools, but as play dates with yourself.
3. Listen to the whispers within.
Pay attention to those secret dreams you’re too afraid to even say out loud. Often, our resistance points to exactly where we need to go. That presentation style that feels too "you," that business idea that seems too creative, that pivot that feels too risky—these might be the “real”, most authentic you trying to break through.
4. Find your community.
Reconnection can be really powerful when it happens in relationship with those you love. In my own journey back to myself, I had a powerful community of family and friends supporting me along the way. Find people who see and celebrate the real you, not just your achievements.
5. Use your story, don’t let it use you.
Your experiences—including the difficult ones—are raw material for authentic expression and for helping those around you. Resist the urge to keep it to yourself out of shame. Whether it's through a conversation, speaking engagement, creating, or leading, let your story be the bridge that connects someone else with the hope, comfort, or understanding they need.
Plus, when you start showing up authentically, you don't just change your own experience—you give others permission to do the same. That’s exactly how RIZE was birthed. I wanted a marker in time reminding me that my tough season didn’t break me, and that yours won’t break you either.
The Truth
Most of the high-achieving creatives I support are searching for fulfillment in external places: the next project, promotion, the higher salary, the better company culture. While each of those could help, the truth is that real fulfillment is an inside job.
Some folks are fortunate enough to go through life always knowing, accepting, and fully expressing who they truly are. I really admire those people. But for the rest of us, I pray we all face the internal whispers and deep knowings that something’s off.
Because only when you’re able to accept and express yourself in your work will you find the professional fulfillment you’re looking for.
-
Want more stories that move your soul and your soles? Subscribe below to our newsletter for weekly inspiration, practical guidance, and more stories of creatives building their career and lives on their own terms. Join our community of 1000+ artists and creative entrepreneurs charting their own paths to success.
