The Measuring Stick That Wasn't Mine

A few years ago, I decided I wanted - and needed - to go back to work.

I started where most people start — looking for the kind of job I thought I was supposed to want. Nine-to-five. Structured. Respectable on paper.

My body had other plans.

I'd known for a while that a high-pace, high-stress schedule wasn't something I could sustain anymore — my nervous system had been telling me that for years, quietly at first, then not so quietly. But knowing it in the abstract and living it while job-searching are two different things. Every posting I looked at assumed the same shape: long hours, an office full of people, a commute, someone else deciding what my day would look like.

I got frustrated. Then scared — the specific fear of what if I can't find work that fits.

And then I noticed something: I wasn't afraid I couldn't find work. I was afraid I couldn't find work that matched a standard I'd never actually chosen for myself.

I was using a measuring stick that wasn't mine.

Here's what I mean by that. Most of us inherit our definition of success before we're old enough to question it — for me, success looked like a certain kind of executive: full days, full calendars, physically present in a building with a hundred other people, proving commitment through hours logged. I didn't build that definition. I absorbed it. And I kept measuring myself against it long after it stopped fitting who I actually was and what I actually needed.

So I built a different one.

Success, on my new terms, looked almost nothing like the old version. Working from home instead of commuting into an office. A smaller house, a slower pace. Being the primary adult in my kids' lives, not the parent who got the leftover hours. The ability to shape my day around what I actually needed instead of what a schedule demanded of me.

By the old measuring stick, that would have looked like giving something up. By the one I built myself, it was the only definition of success that was ever actually going to work — for my nervous system, and for my life.

I want to name something most people skip past: the confidence didn't come first.

I didn't wake up one day feeling brave and then decide to redefine success. It happened in the other order. I redefined what I was actually measuring myself against — and then the confidence showed up, because I was finally moving toward a standard that was mine instead of chasing one that had never fit.

I see this constantly in the leaders I work with. They're waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel confident, before they'll let themselves question the paradigm they're operating inside of. But the readiness tends to arrive after the redefinition, not before it. You can't feel confident chasing a finish line you never actually chose.

So if something in your life currently feels like it's not working — a role, a pace, a version of "successful" you're supposed to want — it might not be a motivation problem. It might be the wrong measuring stick.

What would you actually be measuring, if you built your own?

If you're not sure yet — that's not a gap you have to close with another framework or another five-year plan. That's exactly the kind of question worth sitting with someone over. Book an Executive Audit.