Permission To Evolve Beats Loyalty To Misalignment

Ever felt that slow, sinking sense that something once perfect no longer fits? We go straight at that feeling and unpack the quiet restart—how to tell when a role, routine, or identity has drifted out of alignment and what it looks like to begin again without the drama. Drawing on a candid layoff story and the messy middle of nearly quitting the show, we unpack why outgrowing a path isn’t failure but evolution, and how grief often accompanies growth.

We talk about misalignment as more than frustration; it’s data. Values shift, leadership changes, and the container you’re in can stop matching who you’re becoming. Rather than hustling harder, we outline a practical path: name the drift, honor the grief, and take small, scary steps that rebuild momentum. You’ll hear how to design a bridge plan that respects income and integrity, why authenticity beats perfection, and how one honest conversation can change your trajectory more than weeks of polishing behind the scenes.

If overwhelm has you second-guessing every move, we reframe it as proof you’re expanding. We share simple, repeatable practices—breath, prayer, micro-actions—and focus on signals you can control: outreach, drafts shipped, conversations started. This is a friendly push to choose alignment over attachment, permission over perfection, and action over anxiety. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs a nudge, subscribe for more candid coaching, and leave a review to help others find the show. What’s the one scary step you’ll take today?

Chapters

• 0:57 Welcome And Setting The Tone
• 2:49 Naming The Confusion And Misalignment
• 5:09 The Quiet Kind Of Starting Over
• 7:43 Grief For Paths That No Longer Fit
• 11:03 Layoff Story And Sudden Change
• 16:32 Revolving Door Seasons In Work
• 19:40 Control, Alignment, And Letting Go
• 23:48 Permission To Move On And Evolve

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:29

Welcome back to Unleash Your Inner Radiance. If you found yourself here today, I am so excited that you're here, and it is not by accident. I'm Lisa, your life, wellness, and transformation coach, and I am also a real estate agent in the state of Minnesota. I come from a small town, so this is me. And welcome to 2026. So maybe you are standing in a season that feels really confusing. And you probably are because you're listening to me, right? This is confusing. But maybe something you once loved feels heavy now. Do you have that problem? Because I think we all go through that and you just don't quite understand it. It's like, well, hmm, I just don't understand that. It could be a job, right? Maybe you really loved your job, but deep down inside, you remembered when you were a child that you wanted to be something more. And maybe people told you that you couldn't be that or do that, right? Maybe that's what you're feeling. Maybe that's what you're confused about. So if you are questioning a decision that you poured your heart into, it's okay. Just take a deep breath. And remember that feeling, that warm feeling, that warm fuzzy that you get in your stomach when you think about something that you really, really, really want to do. Because remember, you are in the right place. You are in the right place at the right time. You are here. Everything that happened in the past was meant to happen so you could be right where you are right now. So today we are talking about starting over. Not the dramatic kind, but the quiet kind. The kind that no one really prepares you for. And the truth about outgrowing what wants fit. That is the big question. That is what we're gonna discuss today. The truth about outgrowing what wants fit. Because I don't know who needs to hear this today, but it's okay to start over. It's okay to start over in whatever you're doing. I mean, there was a time where I didn't do a podcast episode for a couple months, right? I just could not get my life together to do it, and that was actually when I was gonna quit. So I started over. I started over again. You can start over as many times as you want. It's your life, and it's okay when things don't go the way you plan them. It's okay, it's okay when someone or something that once felt right no longer feels aligned. Maybe it's that job that just doesn't feel aligned with where you are right now. Sometimes the company you joined years ago becomes something different, and you don't want to work there anymore, or you don't want to do that thing anymore. It's not bad, it's not wrong, it's just different. Maybe different leadership, maybe different direction, maybe different values. And then one day you wake up and you realize it no longer fits who you're becoming. I've kind of had that happen to me, so yeah, we're working through that on my own. But you know, that realization can really shake you because you you didn't just show up casually, you used to show up with heart, with belief, and with sacrifice. And all of a sudden now you're admitting that it's no longer aligned and it doesn't feel like I don't know, something that's right for you. So you look at it as admitting failure. But here's the truth it's not failure, it's your evolution, it's your evolution, it's who you're becoming. That's why leaders struggle to see it first. Sometimes leaders, we're the first ones, or the I guess I should say, we're the last ones to see the cracks. Not because we're naive, but because of how much we've poured in. You know, when others gently point out things, we kind of have a tendency to brush them off. We rationalize and we hope that it will just shift back because facing misalignment means facing grief, right? And that just doesn't feel comfortable, right? And we don't want to do that, or maybe we do because that's where we want to stay. And here's the thing grief is for what you thought it would be, grief is for what you built, grief is for the version of you who believed that this was forever, and that's really heavy because you know, I think back when I lost my job in 2014. Um, I literally we were busier than busier. I worked for a top law firm, and um over the weekend, one of our big clients settled without us, which then left us all hanging, right? And um that morning, that happened we found that out on a Monday, Tuesday, I decided to drive into work, and this is going somewhere. Um, I drive into work, and at about 1:30 in the afternoon, I get called down to HR. And she slides a piece of paper across the table and she's we're gonna have to let you go. And I'm like, go where? Did I ever think I was going to be let go? No, I had been there for 10 years. No. So literally, they're like, Oh, you can walk around, say goodbye to people. I just was like, what just happened to me? You know, and I I think I knew prior to that that it was misaligned, that I really truly didn't like my job. And maybe I was portraying that to everybody else, right? But you know, I grieved for it because it was kind of like it was kind of like a blow. I drove to work, didn't know why I drove to work because I always took the train, drove to work, and all of a sudden I was like, oh, I don't have a job. I have a house, I have a teenager, and I don't have a job. And so that was kind of my misaligned grief, right? I had to face the grief immediately, and everything that I thought was there and what was meant to be all of a sudden wasn't. And that's really heavy, and that's really heavy for you to realize I'm in this job and I hate it. What am I gonna do? I want to do this, but I need to get to that point so I can quit this. So that's what we call the revolving door season. Because there's nothing harder than watching your business turn into a revolving door. The company you work for turn into a revolving door. People come in, they're excited, then they leave. Customers drift, momentum slips, and then you internalize it. That's part of being your own business. That's part of running a coaching business like I do, or a direct sales business like I do, right? And then you internalize it and you ask yourself, what am I doing wrong? Should I work harder? Should I be more consistent? Will that fix the problem? It's just like when you're working in a company and you maybe don't want to work there anymore and you want to start your own business, and something you you're going really good, and then you think, oh, I'm gonna be able to quit my job, but then something goes wrong, right? Because sometimes when we push harder, and sometimes the harder that you push, the smaller the check gets, and the heavier your heart feels. And this is the part that no one wants to say out loud. Not everything is within your control, and that is hard to remember all the time, right? Not everything is in my control, and as leaders, we don't control the direction a company chooses to go. Do we? No, we don't, unless it's our own company, right? And then sometimes we don't choose that either. And when alignment fades, people don't usually announce it. Think about it in yourself. When you're aligned, you're on, everything is great. When your alignment drifts and fades, it just drifts, right? Because that can happen to an individual too. You're all of a sudden you're not in alignment, and you're like, what is going on? I don't understand. Because slowly things begin to unravel. And that doesn't mean that you failed, and it doesn't mean that the company you work for is bad or the company you're with is bad. It just means that seasons have changed. And this is going to give you permission to move on. Because when I lost my job in 2014, I needed somebody to say, This is your permission to move on. This is your permission to go get that degree. This is your permission to do whatever. But you know what actually happened to me? I went to the unemployment office and they had my resume. And I walked in there, and the guy looked at me and he goes, I would have thought you were 65 years old and ready to retire from your resume. Well, how do you dumb a resume down? Because I've been doing legal for 25 years at that point. That's all I've done. I have nothing else to put in there. And by that time, I had applied for 75 jobs. And do you know what they told me? You don't qualify because we're not going to pay you. You're overqualified. Okay, paying me$10 an hour. I don't care. I just want a job. But what happened to me at that point is he didn't tell me that I could go to school. He didn't tell me that I could just change careers. And that would have been a perfect time for somebody to stand up in my court and say, you can do this. You're allowed to move on. You're allowed to choose something that aligns with you over your attachment to this job that was paying you. You're allowed to find something that matches your values, your vision, and the leader you become. I didn't have anybody to tell me that. Because you can't hustle your way out of misalignment. And let me tell you, I was misaligned. And alignment isn't easy to get back into, right? You get stuck, you're just struggling, and you don't know why, and you don't know what's wrong. And which is why last summer I was going to quit this podcast. I was just like, I'm done. I started it to get coaching clients and to to give value to people. And I just felt like I was so misaligned, even at this stage in my life, that I couldn't give value. That's how I felt. And so there's no way to hustle your way out of it. And you let me tell you that you don't have to stay somewhere just to prove that you're loyal or strong, because I learned that that company didn't care about me. It didn't care that I had been there for 10 years. It didn't care. Why did I care? Right? Because sometimes the bravest leadership decision that you can give yourself is permission to begin again. And it took me a lot to learn and understand that. Now let's talk about starting something new. And let me say this clearly: nobody is going to die if you don't have everything figured out today or tomorrow or whenever, because we are not learning brain surgery, right? We are learning how to lead others. We are learning how to give value to others. That's what we're learning. That's what we're doing. Starting something new can feel so incredibly overwhelming, but the overwhelm doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong. It means that you're growing. It means that you're expanding. It means that you're stretching beyond what's familiar. And right now, there's a lot of new energy, new people, new excitement. And that's a good thing. Just don't let overwhelm talk you out of something that you were once excited and prayed about. Because you are not supposed to know everything. You are not supposed to know everything in one day. You are not supposed to know everything in three years. But what I learned in my journey is that what I read, I need to put into action. So keep reading. But you don't have to know everything. I didn't know anything when I started this podcast. I literally was up until three o'clock in the morning. I had recorded probably 75 episodes, and finally I was like, I need to go to bed. It is my dad's birthday, and I am going to post this. I'm just gonna put it out there to the world. That's what button I pushed. And you know, that was really scary. So you need to, you need to, you know, you don't want to just quit your job because it feels unfamiliar. But you need to keep going, you need to learn by doing, you need to learn by trying, and you need to learn by breaking things. That's what you need to learn. Break it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're going to mess up. I mess up on my podcast episodes all the time. Do I fix them? No. Do I have do I send it to somebody to make it professional? No. I've got listeners. Apparently, you like listening to me. I don't care. You learn by trying, you learn by breaking things and you learn by messing things up and doing it messy. It's not a flaw. That's just the process. It's a simple service that people genuinely need. They need the authenticity. And sometimes growth starts with one real conversation. And I hope that you think that I'm giving you genuine conversation because I am doing my best to do that. It takes one person and one honest share. So if you like this episode, please share it with your friends. Please. You know, it's not, don't overcomplicate whatever you're trying to do. There's no pressure. Take the pressure off. Just go ahead and do it. You're here. This is why. And I know this about you. You wouldn't be here listening to this episode if you didn't believe this could be something more. So if today feels heavy, pause. Take a breath. Pray about it. Trust that good things are unfolding, even if you can't see the full picture yet. And that is something that we need to trust. I need to trust it. I need to trust that what I'm doing is there's something unfolding that's bigger than I can ever expect. And you don't need to know everything, and you're not behind, and you're not alone. And everything is brand new. We're learning together, we're figuring it out. And even the people you look up to are still learning. They're still learning too. So enjoy the ride, enjoy your life, enjoy the things that you get to learn. So I want you to learn one new thing today. Do one thing today that absolutely scares you. Recording a podcast should scare the crap out of me. But you know what? It doesn't. That's okay. Because I want you to know that you are more than capable. You are more capable than you think to start that business, to do that thing, to quit your job and show your passion. Do what you're passionate about. That's what's gonna light the fire in you. If this episode spoke with you, to you, to your friends, please share it with your friends because someone else needs to hear this too. If it touched your heart, someone else needs to hear it too. Because you do not have to do this alone. And I'm so glad that you're here. And um, I will see you on the next episode of Unleash Your Inner Radiance. Have a great week.