I built the exact life I set out to build. And it was quietly costing me myself.
For years I gave everything 110%. I wanted to do well in everything I did, and I did it, without ever truly acknowledging myself. My worth was tied to productivity and achievement. My value too.
There's a whole genre of internet humour about this now, the suffering from success memes, someone posting their new car or their sold-out launch captioned like it's a terrible burden. A humble brag dressed up as a complaint. Funny, mostly. But take the joke out of the suffering from success meme and you're left with something a lot of high-achieving women recognise and can't say out loud. The life looks right. It doesn't feel right.
The life that looked right on paper
At about 19, at university, I set myself an aspiration. I wanted to be a consultant helping farmers get the most from their businesses while doing right by the environment. And I did it. I ran my own consultancy, doing exactly what I'd set out to do, making lots of money, driving a fancy car, husband, picket fence, two kids. All the things I'd been told would make me feel great.
They didn't.
There was still a hollow, empty feeling. None of it scratched the itch or filled the hole. A constant ache. And that ache is where my substance abuse came in, because I needed to numb myself. I wasn't living in alignment with who I was. I knew it, and I kept avoiding it, still chasing the illusion of the version of success I thought it was.
You can want that success so badly it overpowers everything. My ego was so strong, my desire to be seen as successful was so strong, it was actually stronger than my addiction. My substance abuse was secondary to my need to look like I had it all together.
That is what "suffering from success" really means when it stops being a suffering from success meme and becomes your actual life.
The secret of my success
People wanted to watch the secret of my success. From the outside I was the woman who'd done it. I was so good at projecting the image of having it all together, and what it was costing me underneath was incredible.
There's that quote everyone shares, success is not final, failure is not fatal. Reading that success is not final quote used to slide right off me, because I hadn't understood the first part yet. I thought if I could just reach the pinnacle, that would be the finish line. I'd arrive and finally feel enough.
The pursuit of something outside yourself to feel enough is never going to be satisfying. I know this first hand.
The hardest thing I ever had to do was accept that my life had become completely unmanageable. That how I was doing it wasn't working. And I had to accept it quite publicly, that I needed help beyond what I was doing, and go to rehab, and sit in that place with nothing else to do but look in the mirror and take responsibility for how I was showing up and creating my reality.
Terrifying and freeing.
When you can fully embrace that you are the creator of your reality, the question changes. It stops being why does this keep happening to me. It becomes, what am I contributing to this situation. Some people find that confronting. I found it very confronting at first. How dare you tell me I'm choosing this. But if the reaction is that strong, there's something in it for you, and inquiry is where freedom begins.
Rewriting what success looks like
It's taken a lot of work, and it continues to. Even having decided those old versions of success are no longer for me, there's still a pathway there, a pattern of thirty-plus years of chasing the illusion. And it takes some undoing, some remembering over and over again to come back to knowing that being a present, conscious human, a loving mother, a considerate wife, those were the things I sacrificed in my pursuit of success. And they are no longer the sideline. They are the whole point.
So I've had to settle into new measures of whether I'm doing well. Now, when I catch myself thinking oh, I don't feel successful, I stop and ask, interesting, by what measure? Usually the measure is the old one, the money, the status, the approval, the being seen. The hooks.
There's nothing wrong with ambition. I still want adventure, to travel, to provide for my children, to see my family. Those things are fantastic and I'll keep going after them. It's the energy underneath that had to change. I don't need any of it to make me enough.
Here's the bit that took me longest to trust: you don't have to sacrifice yourself to have it. In fact the better I take care of myself, the more I enjoy my life, the more magnetic I am to the right women who want to do this work. By being me, I get to be of greater service. I get to earn a living being joyfully me.
The "success takes sacrifice" story was so deeply ingrained it's taken real practice to believe it doesn't have to be hard.
Your success is my success
The other thing that changed everything was not doing it alone. Out in the world this isn't the common way of living. You get drawn back into the old metrics constantly, a partner who challenges you, a friend who asks what on earth you're doing. So we build a place where being all of yourself is normal, where you bring your wild, ambitious idea and it's met with a hell yes, how are you going to make that happen. No comparison. No competition. Your success is my success, because I want a flow-on effect, not just wealth for me and mine but for the women beside me too.
If any of this is landing, that quiet knowing that the success you built is costing you something, come and find me.
Sit with one question this week. By what measure am I calling myself successful, and who taught me to count it that way?
