How to Rediscover Your Joy After Years of High Achievement (When You've Forgotten Who You Even Are)
When was the last time you felt genuinely, ridiculously, for-no-particular-reason joyful? Not "relieved the meeting went well" joyful. Not "the kids are finally asleep" joyful. I mean the kind of joy that lights you up from the inside. That makes you forget to check your phone. That feels like you.
Take your time. I'll wait.
If you had to think hard, or if nothing came to mind, I want you to know that is not a personal failure. That is what years of high achievement, chronic overgiving, and putting yourself last can do to a woman. Joy doesn't disappear overnight. It fades so gradually you don't even notice it's gone until one day you're standing in your perfectly managed life, looking around, thinking: Is this it?
Joy didn't leave. You just stopped giving yourself permission to experience it.
THE COST OF “HANDLING IT” FOR TOO LONG
Here's what I see over and over again in high-achieving women in midlife. At some point you learned that your value lives in what you produce. In how much you handle. In how little you complain.
And you got really, really good at it. But the quiet cost of all that "handling it" is that somewhere along the way, you stopped asking what you actually wanted. What lit you up. What made you feel alive, not useful, not needed. Just alive.
The parts of you that used to paint, or dance terribly in the kitchen, or read novels until 2am, those parts didn't die. They just got shelved. Quietly.
"Joy is not a reward for finishing your to-do list. It is your birthright and reclaiming it is one of the most radical things you will ever do."
THE “STRANGER” FEELING IS REAL AND IT HAS A NAME
A lot of the women I work with describe feeling like they're living someone else's life. No diagnosis. No dramatic breakdown. Just this persistent, hollow sense of: who even am I anymore?
This isn't depression, necessarily. It's what happens when you've spent so long being who everyone else needed you to be that your own identity got buried under all of it. Your authentic self got quieter and quieter until you couldn't hear her anymore. The good news? She is still there.
Start here — a two-minute practice
Once a day, close your eyes and ask yourself one question: "What would feel really good right now, just for me?"
Don't overthink the answer. Just notice what comes up. That noticing is the beginning of everything.
CREATIVE PURSUITS AREN’T JUST HOBBIES, THEY’RE HOW YOUR SOUL SPEAKS
When you create something, when you put paint on a canvas, or plant a garden, or move your body to music, you are existing outside of productivity. You are making something that doesn't need to perform or impress anyone.
For 30 minutes, your brain stopped running the to-do list and your body remembered that you are a human being, not a human doing. That is the point. That IS the whole point.
A real moment
I organized a happy hour on the day I was laid off from my corporate job of 40 years. A Friday the 13th, no less.
Something in me said: you do not have to perform the grief everyone expects.
And we had a great time, sharing stories, laughing more than I had in a long time. That is exactly the energy that rediscovering joy requires. Not frantically trying to fill the hole. But the energy of openness.
NEW EXPERIENCES ARE ABOUT OPENING BACK UP
Take the class you dismissed as "not practical." Drive the long, winding way home. The joy doesn't live in the destination. It lives in the moment you decide you deserve to try.
the shelf audit - try this once a week
- Write down three things you used to love before life got so full.
- Then pick one. This week. Give it 20 minutes.
- Because you are worth 20 minutes of something that has nothing to do with anyone else.
JOY IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF HARD THINGS, IT’S THE PRESENCE OF ALL OF YOU
The goal isn't permanent bliss. The goal is to stop being a stranger to yourself. To move through your life with the lights actually on. To feel the full range of your own experience.
That is joy. The real, sustainable, built-to-last kind. And it's already inside you. It just needs a little room to breathe.
Let's spend 30 minutes together, no pitch, no pressure. Just a real conversation about what coming home to yourself actually looks like for you.
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