#63: You're Not Misaligned - You're Over-Adjusted

Alignment Reset Form

Influential Women Verified

IW Badge

Episode Description

You’re not stuck because you lack clarity.
 You’re stuck because you keep overriding it.

In this episode, we go deeper into alignment—not as a concept, but as a lived experience. If you’ve been feeling exhausted, second-guessing yourself, or stretched between expectations, this conversation will help you understand why.

We explore the hidden pattern of over-adjustment—how constantly calibrating yourself to meet external expectations disconnects you from your internal truth.

Backed by insights from neuroscience and psychology, you’ll learn why your brain is wired to prioritize belonging, how that leads to subtle misalignment, and what you can do to interrupt the pattern in real time.

This is a wake-up call—but also a way forward.

What You’ll Learn

• Why misalignment is often a result of over-adjustment, not confusion
• How the brain processes social rejection as a threat (and why that matters)
• The concept of cognitive dissonance and how it drains your energy
• What self-congruence is and why it leads to clarity and confidence
• How over-adjustment shows up in leadership, parenting, and daily decisions
• Simple, practical ways to reconnect with your internal alignment

Key Takeaways

• You don’t need more information—you need to stop overriding what you already know
• Alignment is not something you create; it’s something you uncover
• The cost of staying misaligned is subtle but cumulative
• True belonging doesn’t require you to adjust who you ar

Research & References

• Social pain and the brain (anterior cingulate cortex and rejection response)
• Self-congruence theory in psychology
• Google’s Project Aristotle (psychological safety in teams)
• Work of Carl Rogers on authenticity and self-acceptance
• Research and writing by Brené Brown on belonging vs. fitting in

Buzzsprout-Just Count Me In

Instagram- Just Count Me In

Facebook-Just Count Me In

Thank you for joining me!

If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!

Transcript

Welcome And The Exhaustion Pattern

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back. Welcome back to Just Count Me In. I'm Sari and I'm your host. This week in particular, a lot of the people I've been talking to have for some reason been exhausted. And some of them were maybe overperforming and doing too much, but most of them weren't. And the kids and teenagers and people in college were actually coming back from spring break. So we tried to figure out what the pressure was and where this was coming from. And it really ties into what we've been talking about, which has been leadership and alignment. We figured out you're really not exhausted because you're doing too much. You're exhausted because you are constantly adjusting who you are. At work, at home, in conversations. You've gotten really good at being who people need you to be. And I've been there. I was there about 20 years ago, maybe even 15 years ago, still there. I was really good about being what people needed me to be. But somewhere in that, I actually had lost track of myself and who I was, what I really believed. That is not alignment. That, my friends, is more like performance. Last week we talked about attention and how your focus is being pulled away from you. This week is different because we realized, and some people contacted me, they actually did try the cell phone suggestion. I'm meeting with another one today, so we'll find out how it went, where we removed the external, the environmental distraction, which is people having their cell phones while we're talking. So even when they got their attention back, they didn't always know what to do with it. It's kind of like, okay, so I've ruled that out. I'm still not feeling right about this. The real problem is not that you're lost. You're not lost. You're misaligned because you've been trained to prioritize approval over truth. And I want you to really think about that. Approval over truth. It's a hard one to admit, but it shows up everywhere. It's anytime that you're saying yes when you actually mean no, it's any time that you soften or tone down what you really think about something that's important when someone has asked you. It's about becoming a different version of yourself depending on who you're with. And we call that being adaptable, we call that being flexible, but it's really not adaptability. When I was living like that, I was fragmented. It is fragmentation. Overadjustment is when you've spent so much time calibrating yourself to everyone else that you've lost your own internal reference point. And I see it with some of my juniors and seniors in high school. I see it with some of my freshmen in college. I see it with some of my friends actually, and with some of the people that I'm coaching, one that owns a business and one that works in a business is a CEO. And they've lost themselves. They've just gotten so caught up in doing things to be politically correct all the time that they have lost themselves. And then, yes, they're not aligned. And when you're not aligned, we know that that's not the place that you want to be. You're managing perception instead of leading, and your job is to lead, not manage everybody's opinions. This is a pretty powerful episode. For parents, you're making you're modeling exhaustion instead of alignment. For leaders, you're modeling morphing, just molding into the most popular sayings of the time of what good leaders do or what your teams want you to be. For high achievers, you're successful, but it doesn't feel like your success. You can build an entire life that looks right and still feel completely disconnected inside of it. Now I want to be honest with you, if you're listening to this and you're recognizing yourself, this is exactly what I'm doing with my clients. I am right now for spring offering a little alignment reset sessions, just short ones, 20-minute sessions, where all we do is pinpoint where you're overadjusting and we kind of zap you right back to clarity pretty quickly. I will make sure that I put connection in information in the show notes. The cost of this misalignment isn't dramatic. It's very subtle. When I was doing it, I didn't notice, but I did notice that I was constantly second-guessing myself. I had extreme decision fatigue. I had low-level anxiety almost all the time. And I mean, I took the edge off of it with exercise, or I took the edge off of it with chocolate, or you know, I took the edge off of it by getting on my computer and buying something for somebody, but it was still low-level anxiety. You have a resentment that you don't even want to admit you have. Because when you keep overriding yourself, you stop trusting yourself. And when that happens, every single thing gets harder. Alignment is not something that I'm going to teach you to create because it's not something that you do create. Like being who you really are is what's left when you strip away all the layers, all the masks, all the external things that you put onto yourself to try to look a certain way, sound a certain way, act a certain way, be judged as a certain type of person. When you pull all those things away, that's really who you are. And when you stop adjusting yourself by doing all these things, therein lies your alignment. Your alignment is natural. So instead of asking, what should I do? You can start asking, where am I overriding what I already know? So start small. You can do things like take a pause before you respond. I actually take my hand, I'm right-handed, so I do it with my right hand and I take my put it on my leg and I press my thumb, pointer, middle finger, ring finger, and pinky into my leg. Or I just make a little fist or release a fist, reminding myself that I've this is my freedom, is how I respond to what I'm about to say. And then I notice, I take a breath and I notice, I drop in where I'm feeling myself and where I feel myself tightened within a conversation. And I'm just noticing, not even asking myself to do anything about it always. I also tell people pay attention to what drains you after your interactions. So if you walk away, walk out of a meeting and you're feeling drained. Now it could be the physical environment in the meeting, it could be the lighting, it could be the lack of fresh air, it could be too many screens around you, it could be that, it could be other people's energies, or it could be your constant adjustment, your constant attempt to be in resonance with people. Two questions that you can use right now would be number one, really simple, would I choose this if no one was watching? And number two, the big one for adults especially, or actually, I even see it with my children in elementary school, so I'm going to correct myself. It's the big one in general. What am I pretending not to know right now? And followed closely by what am I pretending that I know that I don't know right now? Because we are all in one way or another doing that unless we're aligned. We're either acting like we know more than we know, or acting like we don't know something that we do know, because it's just gonna mess up our stride. So, leaders, if your team only experiences the version of you that's appropriate, politically correct, that way they actually are being trained to not trust you because it is not always you. Alignment is going to create clarity in your teams. Clarity is gonna reduce your drainage of overmanaging people. Parents, you don't need a perfect version of you. Your kids don't need that, they just need a real one. And when they see that, you're modeling self-trust or you're modeling self-abandonment. When I ask kids that have a problem expressing anger or are afraid of failure, you know, well, so where's an example where your parents lost it, or where's an example of something they tried that they couldn't do? Very often, the kids that have the hardest time with it, and this is no guilt intended, it's just a fact that they might not see it modeled enough because they think you're perfect. Check that out. They think you're perfect. So, where might they have gotten that impression from? Well, you don't want to show them the hard parts of the world, maybe. Maybe you don't really want to brag about times that you failed because you're not trying to teach them that. Either way, think about modeling self-trust instead of self-abandonment. A lot of people are afraid that if they stop adjusting, they're going to lose connection. So I'm wondering why this is so scary? It's scary for all of us. What you actually lose is not real connection anyway. You lose a myth-aligned connection, the kind that requires you to keep abandoning yourself to maintain it. You are losing nothing, and I can tell you, I swear to you, my friends, it is the best feeling in the world to let go of this one. And just let them do what they do and let go of those relationships whenever possible that require you to abandon yourself to maintain it. It's the most freeing thing. You don't need a new strategy from me. What you do need is to stop overriding yourself because the version of you that you're trying to become is actually who you were before you learned to adjust. If this hits for you and you're realizing how often you actually do override yourself, this could be a part of an alignment problem. Book an alignment reset session. It's only 20 minutes, it's super focused, and it's going to give you immediate clarity. Please contact me if you're interested in this and just email me or text me the word alignment. The next episode, we're actually going to talk about what happens after this awareness because once you see it, you have to start making some different decisions, and that's where a lot of people get stuck. Until next time, please remember, stay in touch, stay connected. Please, if you've enjoyed this episode, download it. Send it to anyone who you think might benefit from it. And it does help the podcast if you subscribe. Have a beautiful weekend and just count me in.