The force is working. That’s exactly why it’s so hard to let go. And it’s also why your vision keeps slipping just out of reach.
”But if I surrender … how will I know I’ve just drifted into complacency?”
That’s the question that keeps high performers stuck longer than anything else.
Because you can see it. The potential, the plan, the version of this thing that could actually exist. “But something between the vision and the doing – between the inspiration and the actual manifestation of it – keeps slipping just out of reach.
The friction lives in the gap between the inspiration and the standard you attached to it.
Picture this: I have a Hot Seat Q&A opportunity to ask a mentor a question. I am grasping to say something, anything.
So I say – “I feel there’s a greater reality I want to showcase to the world. But I find myself stuck in this playing small version. But I also don’t want to be caught up in the frenetic “always on” marketing that turns all my life moments into content. Is there a marketing cadence you reccomend?”
She said “It’s so easy to get caught up in all of the rules. What do you really want to do?”
And then I realised the answer had nothing to do with business.
I said “I mean, right now, I’d probably just go and lie on the grass outside, and look at some daisies, and watch the clouds go by and then go for a bike ride.”
She then said a bunch of wise and practical stuff – “When it’s easy and it’s aligned, you’re more likely to do it more often and more regularly” classically simple and universally true – but in that moment what I really just realised was that she gave me permission to do it my way.
And it’s hard for high performers to get that permission, High performers struggle to receive it. Most of the time we think the other person is just bullshitting us – like that’s advice that other people are allowed to listen to … not us! (even when we literally teach it ourselves!)
This is why my husband is always like “I already told you that!”
It reminds me of that quote – We teach what we most need to learn.
But that’s also why it matters who the permission comes from. When you find somebody you respect, who you’d actually listen to because of their embodied experience – it actually lands. It doesn’t bounce off like a flippant line from somebody we think is too close to really see it, or that we just don’t really believe has the runs on the board.
And in that moment all my inspiration came flooding back. The timing, the pacing, the vision, the clarity.
That’s the thing about desire. Before the idea was ever a concept in your mind – before you had a plan or a launch date or a vision board – it was just a desire. Something that wanted to exist. Something that wanted to come through you.
Then your brain got involved. Decided it had to look a certain way. Feel a certain way. Hit certain numbers by a certain date to count as real.
And somewhere in all of that, conditioning crept in. It has to be this way. Or that way. Or perfect enough to actually be worth doing.
And the rules killed the joy that started the whole thing.
That’s the friction. Not laziness. Not lack of discipline.
The thing that’s stopping you is the distance between what the desire actually is and what you’ve decided it has to be.
Surrender isn’t about giving up. But that’s what the ego tries to convince you it is – right before surrender becomes available. It’s the warning shot to keep you forcing and grinding.
It’s the ego wrestle within that tells you you’re only ALLOWED to have that goal in that form. Or not at all.
The desire was real.
But the deadline you attached to it, the specific way it had to land, the version of yourself that had to deliver it – that’s where the suffering was living.
Surrender is just… going for the bike ride. Feeling the wind. Remembering you’re a person, not a productivity machine.
Letting the thing breathe for a minute without you managing it to death.
And then what usually happens? The desire comes back. It was never actually gone.
But it comes back recalibrated.
The goal wasn’t wrong. The grip on how it had to look – that was the problem.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
But you can lay one brick today, exactly the way you want it.
