When the Life You Built Doesn’t Feel Like Yours: How to Redefine Success Before It Breaks You
- Tricia Parido
- Sep 10
- 3 min read
Let me ask you something no one ever asked me when I was climbing the ladder of “success”:
Does any of this actually feel like yours?
The title. The house. The role you play. The goals you set every January that exhaust you by March. The smile you wear when you're praised... even though you're dying inside.
I work with high-functioning, heart-heavy achievers every day. People who can outperform, outlast, out-sacrifice... until the lights go down and the quiet creeps in. And then suddenly, what looked like “success” feels more like a cage.
We don’t talk enough about this part of success. The part where your nervous system is fried but you can’t stop. Where you’ve reached the mountaintop and it’s… empty.
So I want to say this clearly, in case no one has given you permission before:
You are allowed to change your definition of success.
And no, that’s not a woo-woo Pinterest quote. It’s emotional survival. It’s behavioral recalibration. It’s a psychological truth.
Success Was Never Meant to Be a Punishment
Somewhere along the way, “success” stopped being about fulfillment and started being about performative suffering.
You know the story:
Do more.
Be everything.
Hustle harder.
Sleep when you’re dead.
Except… you’re not dead. You’re just disconnected.
You’ve traded your internal compass for external metrics. You’ve learned to equate self-worth with productivity. You’ve become addicted to proving your enoughness... at the expense of ever feeling it.
Let me be blunt: If success comes at the cost of your sanity, your health, your relationships, or your peace... it’s not success. It’s a trauma response.
The Real Cost of Chasing the Wrong “Win”
When we don’t interrogate our definition of success, we inherit someone else’s. Usually built on old programming:
Childhood validation patterns
Familial pressure
Cultural standards of “having it all”
Internalized ableism or productivity narratives
Codependent dynamics masked as ambition
We perform, we please, we push. And then we wonder why our wins don’t feel like victories.
This isn’t about failure. It’s about misalignment. And misaligned achievement is just as dangerous as failure — sometimes more — because it keeps you stuck in a cycle that looks impressive while killing your joy.
So What Do We Do?
You don’t throw everything away. You redefine. You reclaim. You realign.
Let’s pause here and breathe into this:
“Success, for me, now means…”
Can you answer that? Can you let it feel expansive instead of rigid? Can you allow your success to include:
Rest
Joy
Spaciousness
Self-belonging
Enoughness even when you’re not “winning”?
Because the truth is this:
Behavioral performance is changeable.
Emotional experience is teachable.
And purpose can be redefined, reclaimed, and reshaped to fit your evolving truth.
Reframing Success: A Blueprint Worth Testing
Here’s a quick framework I teach inside the Insight & Impact Focus Group. Use it like a lens:
Is this aspiration driven by love or fear?
Does it allow me to rest, grow, and adjust without guilt?
Would this still matter if no one else clapped for me?
If your answers make your chest tighten or your stomach clench... pause. Your body knows when you’re betraying yourself.
Final Thought (The One You Might Need Most Today)
You are not behind. You are not a project to be fixed. You are not a mess because you don’t love the life you worked hard to build.
You’re just awakening to the fact that you don’t have to succeed the way you were taught to.
You get to choose a new measure. A new model. A new mission.
Because when success is shaped around your truth instead of your trauma, it finally feels like home.
—
Need a place to untangle the old definitions and build something better?
This is exactly what we’re doing this month inside the Insight & Impact Focus Group. And if you're not in yet, I’m just going to ask... why not now?
Come rebuild from the inside out.
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