Moments of success didn’t bring peace—this is what happened when I finally listened to what was out of sync.
I read a newsletter recently about a woman who decided to close down her paid newsletter, even though it was thriving. Despite all the external “success,” something felt deeply off.
It reminded me of a moment in my own business a few years ago that’s been front of mine for me because I’ve been talking about it with students inside Life-First Business and Traction.
At the time, I had just experienced my first multiple six-figure months.
On paper, I was doing everything I set out to do. We were scaling – and fast.
I was in that juicy flow where everything felt like it was building on top of each other; launches kept getting bigger than the last, and we were in a real season of momentum.
In spite of it all, though, instead of peace and contentment, I felt an unmistakable, visceral feeling that this wasn’t it.
It wasn’t the revenue itself that was the problem; it was how I’d been operating my business in order to achieve it and how I felt while living in the manifestation I’d asked for.
All of it felt painfully at odds with how I wanted things to feel.
I had this strong intuitive knowing that things had to change, but of course, it didn’t make sense at the time.
And so one day, I logged off of social media and didn’t log back in.
I decided to close down private coaching, end my masterminds, announced that I’d no longer be teaching live and took the tentative steps to reimagine my entire business.
I had entered what I now lovingly call a liminal space, where the old way no longer fits, but the new way hasn’t revealed itself yet.
And I see so many women arrive at this exact place when they come into Life-First Business.
Sometimes it’s triggered by entering a new season—like becoming a mother, chronic illness or leaning into therapy to start untangling a lot of the dynamics that have started showing up loudly in their businesses.
Other times, it’s after years of trying to fix their business and get it back to the golden years when things felt easier, only to feel exhausted by all the pathologising and trying to force things to work that never actually felt aligned in the first place.
In other instances it comes after a moment of growth like finally hitting a $30K or $50K month, only to still feel pressure, noise and chaos. Intellectually, they know that they’ve built something powerful, but they haven’t internalised success in their bodies. Just because your brain knows you’re safe, doesn’t mean your body also knows. When your nervous system has spent long periods of time in survival mode through things like stress, fire-fighting and chaos, it learns to stay alert and there’s no over-intellectualizing or talking about it that can change that. But that’s a conversation for another day…
Regardless of the catalyst that brings them into my work and this work, the common thread is that the peace they imagined would arrive at some point, just isn’t there.
The spaciousness they envisioned when starting out their own still doesn’t feel available.
And their relationship with work still feels… sticky.
They’re asking:
- “When does this stop feeling so stressful?”
- “Why do I still feel anxious about money even though the revenue is here?”
- “Why is the money not coming through, even though the work feels so aligned?”
- “Am I really going to have to keep pushing like this… performing like this?”
And what I’ve found is—these questions don’t go away.
They get louder.
And once you’ve been in business for long enough, you learn that money isn’t equipped to solve the nuanced issues that are actually making things harder than they ought to be.
You can have money and still feel activated.
You can hit a record money and still feel like you’re sprinting.
You can be ‘rich’ and energetically bankrupt.
This is the work and the richness that we dive into inside Life-First Business, on top of all the aligned strategy stuff.
Because focusing only on strategies to make more money—without unpacking how you’re operating to get there—misses the entire point if you want success financially and personally.
But back to my point earlier about the liminal space, if you’re willing to sit with all of the discomfort and questions and relinquish control, it can actually be one of the most powerful seasons you can move through.
Take my decision to build off of social media for example.
It had been orbiting me long before I actually made the decision to step away. It didn’t feel good, not because I didn’t know how to show up. I was great at showing up. But because I was tired of being so visible all the time and the performance of it all.
At the time, I didn’t know what the alternative would look like. I didn’t know anyone doing it in a way I wanted to. And I had no guarantees that it would work. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that the idea of stepping away felt expansive, nourishing and like relief.
So I did.
No strategy. No backup plan.
Just an intuitive commitment to build differently—and trust that the clarity would come.
Now, nearly two years later, I’m in London again with my family. And what strikes me is: if I hadn’t told you I was here, you wouldn’t know. Because I’m not documenting it. I’m not performing it. I’m just living it.
And what used to feel so normal—curating my life into content, mining every part of my experience for digestible “value”—feels so far away now. At the time, I thought it was aligned. In hindsight, I see that I’d just gotten very skilled at doing what I thought was required to succeed.
What I’m most proud of now isn’t a launch result or an engagement rate.
It’s the fact that I’ve built a business that doesn’t require my performance.
A business that has structure. That has boundaries. That allows me to clock in and clock out.
A business that gives me back my attention. That gives me peace.
That honors the season of life I’m in and the woman I’ve become.
And that’s exactly what we hold space for in Life First Business.
We enter the liminal space together.
We stop over-identifying with our output. We let go of the business models that require constant contortion. We build from a place of peace, clarity, and clean ambition. We make room for the grief and ego death that come with letting go of what’s no longer aligned.
We support you as you build in a new way—not just in theory, but with tangible frameworks, strategic shifts, and an entire ecosystem that supports your nervous system.
And what’s wild is—it was this time last year that I wrote to you about Nicola Jane Hobbs’s quote:
“Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman. Successful women? Yes. Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At-ease women? Women who don’t dissect their days into half hour slots of productivity? Women who prioritize rest and pleasure and play? Women who aren’t afraid to take up space in the world? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax? Without guilt? Without apology? Without feeling like they need to earn it? I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one.”
I hadn’t either.
Not in the mirror. Not in the spaces I was in.
And to be here now—back in London a year later—and to be able to say, with full integrity, that I am her…
It’s a hard-won peace.
I’ve had to go through countless ego deaths and dark nights of the soul to be this version of me.
My business, my life, my peace—they’re finally aligned.
And the best part is that I now witness my students becoming “relaxed women”, too.
Women who aren’t just successful on paper but who genuinely experience peace, calm, and nervous-system safety—some of them for the first time ever.
I want that for you, too.
If you’re in that in-between place… I see you.
It’s uncomfortable. It’s disorienting. And it’s also where so much opens.
You don’t need to have it all figured out. You don’t need to know the “how” yet.
Sometimes just naming what no longer feels aligned is enough to begin.
If this resonates, brings something up for you, or you’re in this kind of season too, I’d love to hear from you. Just hit reply.
🔗 What to explore next…
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