In Part One, you saw that:
The version of success you were handed was never neutral, it was designed to reward performance and punish your humanity.
That pressure, disguised as ambition, slowly started replacing your clarity, peace, and self-trust. And the toll of it wasn’t random, it showed up layer by layer, touching every part of your life, and pushing you to the edge without ever calling it by its name.
You’ve already started to put the pieces together.
Recap From Part 1: (1 of 4 parts)
Reality 02: The Solutions You Have Been Presented With Were Incomplete
In this part of the essay, we’ll walk beside
Allysa an imaginary founder with very real experiences.
PART two
what breaks first?
This part isn’t about tearing anything down. It’s about understanding what those options were really built to do, and what they weren’t.
Let’s follow Allysa and see what it really looks like to try everything the experts and the online industry recommends when founders feel exhausted, tense and reactive under pressure and still feel like you're barely keeping it together.
Because at some point, something has to break.
The question is:
Her journey isn’t just a story.
It’s a reflection of what most ambitious, emotionally overloaded founders go through when they try to get help.
You won’t just read what she did.
You’ll see what options she is presented with, what expert advice is given, what decisions she makes (what she tries, what happens when she does) and how the lessons that come through her experience begin to shape her decision to resolve this situation altogether.
her, the business, or the habit of pushing through everything that’s been running both?
Gets things done, solves problems fast, and carries more than most people even realize.
Her service-based business is growing. She is hitting her goals, and doing everything “right.”. On paper, her business looks GREAT, but underneath the momentum, she is barely keeping it together.
Her day-to-day life feels heavy. She’s constantly exhausted. Her body feels maxed out. Her mind won’t shut off.
And she can’t figure out WHY.
In this section, we’re not going to analyze Allyssa. We’re going to walk beside her on her journey to see if it’s actually possible, to feel lighter, more spacious, and grounded again…
While still running a business that keeps growing.
Allysa Is Kind of person who
So she chose to grow, not because she had to, but because:
Allysa had a problem she wanted to solve…
She wanted to navigate uncertainty with confidence, knowing she could handle whatever came next without spiraling into stress or overwork.
Always felt behind before the day even began
She wanted to make decisions without constantly feeling like she has to choose between success and her well-being.
Mind spinning through a dozen worries while trying to focus
She wanted to enjoy time off without guilt or the urge to check emails, Slack, or fix something in her business.
Constant pressure to keep everything together
She wanted to go through the day without the sense that something was always about to go wrong.
Fear of disappointing clients or dropping balls
Never knowing if the next stress spike would break her
She wanted to experience quiet in her mind instead of looping through the same worries.
She knows that the skills she builds now, and how well she understands herself, will determine how much freedom and stability she gets to have in the future
Allysa didn’t start this intentional journey of personal growth, emotional development, and self-awareness. (What most people would call doing ‘the work”) because she had to.
But when she looked for support (in this personal development space), the “options” online industry offered didn’t match the reality of what she was living through.
She chose it because:
The moment Allysa seeks out help...
She was presented with 2 extremes:
Reality Check
If Allysa had believed this advice was the truth,
She would’ve been expected to surrender her leadership, trusting tarot cards, moon cycles, and signs from the universe to tell her when to move.
Instead of building the clarity and capacity to lead herself forward.
Real challenges, like operational gaps, emotional pressure, and rising responsibility would be reframed as energetic “blocks” or “misalignments”
She'd be expected to heal herself into success without ever naming or fixing the real conditions.
But Allysa wasn’t looking to hand over her business, or her future to hope and intuition alone.
She was looking for grounded growth. The kind built on clarity, responsibility, and tools she could actually trust to hold under pressure.
Reality Check
If Allysa had believed this advice was the truth,
She would’ve had to ignore her body’s cues, silence her emotions, and turn her stress into proof she just wasn’t trying hard enough.
She’d be waking up at 4am,
Overworking in silence,
And feeling ashamed every time she needed to rest, pause, or say no.
Knowing that every sign that something was off in her business or life would be reframed as a “mindset problem”
…and she’d be expected to fix it by pushing harder.
But Allysa wasn’t looking for blind ambition. She was looking for clarity. For being anchored in reality.
For a way to grow her business that didn’t require abandoning herself to do it.
spiritual gurus
motivational gurus
Visualize it
Increase your capacity to receive
Lock it in your nervous system
heal your inner child
Journal about it
Manifest your future
listen to “I’m abundant” / “I’M money magnet meditation”
Raise your vibration
You need to change your money mindset
feel the fear and do it anyway
Keep pushing while others sleep
It takes courage
You’re not tired you’re just not disciplined enough
Ignore your feelings & emotions and push through the discomfort
You have to wake up at 4 am to be successful
If you really wanted it, you’d already have it
Just be grateful
You’re just not consistent enough
Allysa quickly realised that…
Neither offered something that felt structured, clear or was actually helpful.
Neither one acknowledged the weight she was carrying.
Neither one addressed the real complexity of what it means to grow while running a business, managing a team, meeting deadlines, and living a very real life.
Nothing the industry offered actually fit the reality of leading a business with real pressure and real responsibilities.
This was the moment she realized: these two options wouldn’t work for her.
So even though she was ready to grow (not just personally) but in how she operated day to day.....
Instead of blindly following the advice that felt off,
Allysa decided to look deeper. To question the options she was being given, and take a closer look at what kind of support she actually needed.
“Is this a business issue that’s causing all of this, or am I the bottleneck?
“Is there something I need to change or build within myself to actually resolve this?”
But first, she had to get honest with herself and ask questions like:
She was hyped up on the call with her mentor.
(cortisol spiked, stress disguised as momentum) But 45 minutes after the call with her mentor, her body crashed.
Instead of executing these amazing new ideas her mentor gave her as an advice, she couldn’t do anything other than just take a nap after each “business coaching call” she had.
And the moment she woke up, the shame kicked in. Why am I like this? Why can’t I just execute?
but she got
A message that she was the problem for not keeping up
More pressure
A list of tasks that didn’t solve the real problem
To feel supported as a human, not treated like a machine
Emotional clarity
Space to figure out what was actually wrong
Allysa wanted to feel clear. Supported.
Like someone could finally help her name what was actually making her business feel so heavy.
She wasn’t looking for more to-do lists. She was looking for insight, some sense of why she felt stuck, off, and exhausted all the time.
But instead:
She got a 90-minute call packed with advice to“tighten her visibility strategy,” “change her offer structure.”and “optimize her pipeline,”
Her coach meant well.
But Allysa left the call with even more pressure, a dozen new tasks, no deeper understanding of herself, and absolutely no support for what she was feeling.
she wanted
Hiring a Business Mentor:
“This must be a business problem.”
Business coaches are trained to optimize systems, not support human founders.
So instead of making her life lighter, the advice made her feel even more robotic, overwhelmed, and misaligned.
Lesson Learned:
No amount of operational clarity could touch what was happening inside her.
Her backend looked clean, but she didn’t feel any different.
And when the overwhelm came back, the questions returned:
“Why am I still feeling this way when everything is ‘in order’?”
“What am I doing wrong that I cannot fix this?”
but she got
The sense that she was the bottleneck
A perfectly organized system that didn’t change how she felt
Structure—but still no peace
To feel like her business wasn’t swallowing her whole
Mental and emotional relief
Less chaos in her day-to-day experience
Allysa figured that maybe her problem was operational.
She thought: If someone could just organize everything, clean up the backend, manage the projects, handle the details, I’d finally feel clear and grounded again.
So she hired a capable, organized team member.
They cleaned up her ClickUp. Built SOPs. Organized folders. Created systems around tasks and launches.But the heaviness didn’t go away.
Even with everything in place, Allysa still woke up with dread. She still spiraled after unexpected feedback.She still felt like she was holding it all together with duct tape.
she wanted
Hiring a Team Member:
“Maybe I just need better systems.”
You can systematize the entire business, but if your internal world is still in chaos, the business structure won’t save you.
You don’t need just a system.
You need stability in you.
Lesson Learned:
REMOVING BUSINESS FROM EQUATION AND FOCUSING ON OPTION 2 ONLY
After trying every business fix she could think of such as building better systems, hiring better help, paying for better strategy
Allysa realized something:
None of it was truly resolving her situation, the heaviness, the pressure, the constant stress of running and growing her business.
Everything she had tried was aimed at fixing the most obvious problems. Logically, those fixes should have worked by now. But in reality, she was just adding more structure to a space that still felt chaotic and optimizing a business she didn’t actually feel safe inside.
So she made a bold decision:
She removed the business from the equation completely. Not because the business was perfect but because she was finally ready to ask a harder question:
“What if this isn’t just about the work?
“What if I’m the one unintentionally creating this situation over and over again?”
That’s where her next phase began.
She turned inward. Not from a place of shame but responsibility.
And this time, her focus was clear:
Option B, start with herself.
The “real” work, as they say. And like many sophisticated high-performing founders, Allysa started searching for support in the personal growth space, the realistic kind.
Not fluff. Not hype. But professionals who promised deeper answers.
She reached out to:
→ Mindset coach
→ Therapist
→ Nervous system coach
Each one offered a version of the same hope: That with the right tools, Allysa could finally understand herself more deeply and start moving forward with clarity knowing that at the end she could feel lighter, at ease and expanded in her own business.
But what actually happened next…might sound a little too familiar.
“Maybe I just need a better way to think about it.”
The mindset coach helped Allysa see things differently.
After many lessons about: “healing her inner child” and “healing her wounds from childhood”
✅ She learned how to reframe her thoughts.
✅ To zoom out.
✅ To shift her perspective when she started spiraling.
And it helped—in the moment.
But when real pressure hit…
🚫There was no structure.
🚫No process to follow.
🚫No tools to hold onto when everything started closing in.
It was just a better lens on top of the same internal chaos.
She wanted:
- A clear path to move forward—out of the emotional cycles keeping her stuck
-The ability to thrive under pressure—without being emotionally crushed by it.
-Reliable tools she can actually use to process what’s happening internally and take aligned action externally
But she got:
✅ *The ability to reframe situations and shift her perspective—*which helped her stay more regulated at the moment. (which covered the ability to thrive under pressure—without being emotionally crushed by it.)
🚫 But she didn’t walk away with a clear path forward.
🚫 And she didn’t leave with tools she could rely on when things got hard again.
🚫 But she didn’t get reliable system to help her manage the actual pressure of leadership (what it takes to match the demands of successful business online)
Lesson Learned:
Mindset work can help you see your patterns, but it doesn’t always give you the structure or skills to shift them. Especially when the pressure is real, and the stakes are high.
Allysa needed more than insight, she needed a way to move through it.
go back to choosing another option 🔝
“Maybe I need to understand where this is coming from.”
The therapist helped Allysa connect some powerful dots.
She saw how old family dynamics. How past experiences were showing up in her business under pressure.
It explained why she froze before launching, avoided conflict with her team, overdelivered for every client.
It wasn’t just strategy, it was survival.
She wanted:
- A clear path to move forward, out of the emotional cycles keeping her stuck
-The ability to thrive under pressure, without being emotionally crushed by it.
-Reliable tools she can actually use to process what’s happening internally and take aligned action externally
But she got:
✅ A deeper understanding of how her past was shaping her present decisions which gave her emotional clarity.
🚫 But there was no clear path forward for what to do with that insight.
🚫 And she didn’t leave with any tools to manage her day-to-day experience as a business owner under pressure.
🚫 A deeper understanding of her past—but no clear path forward.
Lesson learned:
Talking therapy helped Allysa understand what shaped her, but it didn’t give her a way out.
Especially when the person supporting her didn’t fully grasp what it takes to run, lead, and grow a business under constant pressure.
The sessions helped her reflect. But they kept circling the past trying to make sense of what happened, without offering the kind of tools or forward action she needed to actually change it.
go back to choosing another option 🔝
“Maybe I just need to regulate better.”
The nervous system coach gave Allysa tools to regulate
breathing exercises,
somatic tracking,
“shaking it off.”
She understood the logic.She believed in the science. She even saw how stress affected her body differently than her mind.
But still—none of it made her feel like herself again.She was doing what she was told.
Practicing the drills.
Following the cues.
And yet… She still didn’t feel present and grounded in the moment.
Still didn’t feel clear. What made it worse was that she was still carrying the same weight—only now, she was more aware of it… but still had nothing to help her release it.
She wanted:
- A clear path to move forward, out of the emotional cycles keeping her stuck
-The ability to thrive under pressure, without being emotionally crushed by it.
-Reliable tools she can actually use to process what’s happening internally and take aligned action externally
But she got:
✅ Body-based tools that helped her feel temporary relief in the moment—
🚫 But there was no structured path to apply those tools in the actual context of running her business
🚫 And without understanding why certain patterns kept happening, the regulation never led to resolution
Lesson learned:
Nervous system work helped Allysa manage the symptoms but it didn’t help her transform the patterns behind them.
It focused on calming her body after she was dysregulated
Instead of helping her build remove the very thing that was triggering the “dysregulation” of her nervous system in the first place.
go back to choosing another option 🔝
She didn’t just follow bad advice. She followed what the industry told her would work.
She did not end up in this situation because she wasn’t trying hard enough. Or regulating enough. Or healing enough. It was because the tools she was handed were never designed to hold someone like her, under pressure like that.
And if any part of her story sounded familiar to you, You’ve just been walking through the same situations expecting it to lead somewhere it was never designed to take you.
So here’s what Allysa’s experience made clear:
What professionals told her was “the real work.” But the truth is, none of it was built for someone carrying the weight she was carrying.
Each expert gave her a piece of what she needed, but none gave her the full picture. She got moments of clarity. Perspective shifts. Small wins. But still no structure, no full resolution, no sustainable change. And for the first time, she realized: it wasn’t her.
