Breaking Free from Success Traps: Reclaim Your Power and Redefine Success
I want to share a true story with you about one of my clients. I’ve changed the name for privacy. Let’s just call her Jessie. This client faced a pivotal moment in her life and her story highlights the power of listening to your inner wisdom and finding the courage to redefine what success truly means. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the most important shifts happen when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and to ask ourselves the right questions.
It was a late afternoon on a cold, snowy day in February 2020, and, like everybody else in 2020, I was working from home. I had just signed off from hosting a podcast interview with Jesse, who is among one of the most interesting and accomplished people I know. I was walking toward the kitchen to stretch my legs and make a cup of tea when my cell phone rang. It was Jessie. I assumed it was something about the conversation we had just recorded for the pod. To my surprise, it was something quite different. She thanked me again for holding space for her in our conversation and said that something had shifted in her. After we had talked, she asked if it would be okay to share. I repeat Jesse is one of the most accomplished, confident, creative people that I know confident, creative people that I know.
The moment Jessie picked up the phone was a powerful testament to her courage and vulnerability, showing how listening to your inner wisdom and facing your fears can truly lead to transformative change. And let’s own it Change can be fear-inducing. Let’s own it. Change can be fear inducing. But, according to Brene Brown, courage is the willingness to show up and be seen, even when you’re vulnerable and afraid. It’s about choosing to be authentic and expressing your true self, even when it might lead to discomfort or uncertainty. And it’s also about having the hard conversations, asking for what you need and sharing how you’re feeling, all while embracing vulnerability.
This is exactly where Jessie was when she asked me if we could speak. Naturally, I said yes. She went on to tell me that, although she was working on the most prestigious project of her life, she was miserable. It just wasn’t bringing her the joy she had expected and it was affecting her job performance and her life. I acknowledged and validated her feelings about her predicament and I honored her for her courage to reach out. I have to figure it out. I just can’t go on like this. I don’t know what I’m going to do. She said, I listened and then I told her that she knew all the answers but just hadn’t been asking the right questions. And then I stopped talking. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. There was a time when that silence would have felt painfully awkward for me and I might have rushed in to fill it in with explanations of how I could help her. But I waited patiently instead, while Jesse considered what I had just told her, knowing full well that her silence is the sound of deeper insight. When she spoke again, she was determined to dig in and discover what those questions were.
We started to work together the very next day. I helped Jessie to reconsider and redefine her definition of what success means to her. I challenged her to see that her strengths are useful tools, not defaults, and I helped her see that how she chooses to engage in life is entirely up to her and connected to her values, which can and will shift. Three months later in the spring, I was outside my garden enjoying the morning sun when Jessie called again. She told me that she had walked away from the prestigious gig and is happier and more successful in life and career than she ever could have imagined back on that cold February day, when she first called me, and that our work together helped her realize that success meant much more to her than another award or credit on her resume.
What Jessie is doing now is not important. What matters is that she was able to create a life of her own design, and I am so honored to have helped her uncover what she already knew. Success is personal. Like Jessie, I refuse to be defined by what I’ve done or make choices based on what I think I should be doing next should be doing next. I understand that success is often the very thing that stands in the way of becoming who I know I can truly be, and even if I don’t know what that is right now, I am open to be courageous and vulnerable and to live a created life of possibilities life of possibilities. As you reflect on Jesse’s story, I encourage you to ask yourself what does success really mean to you? Are you living in alignment with your true values or letting external expectations dictate your choices? You know the answers, my friend. You just got to start asking the right questions.
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Editor's Note: At StageLync, an international platform for the performing arts, we celebrate the diversity of our writers' backgrounds. We recognize and support their choice to use either American or British English in their articles, respecting their individual preferences and origins. This policy allows us to embrace a wide range of linguistic expressions, enriching our content and reflecting the global nature of our community.
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