The Season I Realized I’d Been Building Someone Else’s Definition of Success
A quiet turning point that changed everything.
There’s a moment — sometimes it comes gradually, sometimes all at once — when you look up from your life and think:
“Wait… who was I doing all of this for?”
For me, that moment didn’t come during a crisis or a dramatic life change. It didn’t arrive with flashing lights or a grand epiphany. It came in a slow, subtle unraveling. A season where I was working hard, achieving the “right” things, saying yes to everything…and feeling strangely hollow underneath it all.
On paper, it made no sense.
I had the title.
The responsibilities.
The praise.
The results.
Everything I had been taught to chase.
But my body told the truth before my brain would: the burnout creeping in, the mornings I woke up already tired, the constant sense that no matter how much I did, it wasn’t enough.
High-functioning anxiety is sneaky like that — it rewards you for the exact behaviors that harm you. You get praised for overextending, celebrated for overdelivering, promoted for pushing your limits a little too far. You start mistaking survival for excellence. You start confusing other people’s approval with your own satisfaction.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped asking myself the most important question:
Do I actually want this?
I didn’t realize how lost I’d gotten until life forced me to slow down — the kind of slowing that isn’t optional. The kind that comes with illness, change, grief, or the quiet collapse of a system you’d been leaning on for too long. My own chronic illness didn’t arrive like a warning; it arrived like a boundary I didn’t know how to honor yet.
Suddenly, I couldn’t outrun my own exhaustion.
I couldn’t push through the way I always had.
I couldn’t keep performing a version of success that wasn’t built for the body I live in or the values I hold.
And that’s when I realized:
I’d been building someone else’s definition of success.
Someone else’s pace.
Someone else’s expectations.
Someone else’s version of being a “good” worker, leader, consultant, human.
But the thing about losing your old capacity is that it gives you permission — sometimes for the first time — to build a life that actually fits.
A pace that lets your nervous system breathe.
Work that aligns with your values instead of burning through them.
Boundaries that protect your peace rather than your performance.
A version of success rooted in meaning, not martyrdom.
It didn’t happen overnight. It still doesn’t happen neatly. But once you see that the ladder you’re climbing is leaning against the wrong wall, you can’t unsee it.
There’s grief in that.
There’s liberation, too.
The season I realized I’d been building someone else’s definition of success was the same season I began building my own. Slowly. Gently. Imperfectly. With a lot of resting and reimagining along the way.
If you’re in a similar season — feeling misaligned, burnt out, stretched thin, or simply not yourself — know this:
You are allowed to choose again.
You are allowed to redefine everything.
You are allowed to build a life that honors who you are now, not who the world expected you to be.
And you’re not behind.
You’re right on time.