When the Old Way Stops Working

There comes a point when the old way simply stops working.

Not because we’re failing—but because we’ve outgrown it.

I’ve met this threshold more than once. The most important time was finally realizing an entire identity had run its course—the pushing, the self-correction, the belief that just a little more effort would make everything fall back into place.

When this model collapses, we don’t feel relief.
We feel disoriented. Untethered.

Because what do you do when the strategies that once brought success and meaning suddenly fall flat?

I see this everywhere now, especially with high-performing women.

We’re still capable. Still admired. Still high-functioning.

But the old strategies don’t land anymore.
Motivation feels hollow.
Self-optimization feels fake.
The idea of being “fixed” or “leveled up” feels deeply wrong in the body.

We’re not broken.
We’re exhausted.

Not in the way sleep fixes.
In the way decades of over-functioning eventually ask to be laid down.

What we want when we hit this kind of impasse isn’t more joy being sold to us.
Or another version of ourselves to strive toward.

What we want is orientation.

A way to feel where we actually are.
To listen inward without trying to override the signal.
To let truth come before effort.

This isn’t a rejection of joy or ease.

It’s a rejection of manufactured joy.
Of joy as performance.

What emerges instead is quieter—and longer lasting.

The kind of ease that comes online when we stop arguing with ourselves.
The kind of joy that isn’t chased, but arrives.

And stays.

Not because we worked harder for it.
But because we finally got honest.

And once that happens, the old way doesn’t just stop working.

It stops making sense.