Trapped by the thing that was supposed to set you free: What it means when your soul says this isn’t it (and your body agrees).

You left the job, the marriage, the religion, the profession.

You built the thing, became “the one to watch.”

You built it. They came. It worked. It succeeded. 

You should feel free. Right?
But instead… you feel trapped. The victim of your own success.

In this solo episode, I share the raw, unfiltered story I usually only tell behind closed doors — of building a seven-figure business called Illuminate Freedom … that looked and felt like freedom at first but eventually, it felt like a cage. 

I tell the story of mislabeling the early signals from my body. 

Of realizing I’d shape-shifted into something “successful” that everyone I knew was clapping for, but no longer matched my Soul.

This is for the woman who’s been clapped for with lots of eyes on you  — but doesn’t feel seen.

For the high-achiever who built something beautiful — and now wants to burn it down.

For the midlife luminaire who knows: you can’t swim in alignment until you let it sink.

Intro: The Unexpected Trap of Success (00:00)
 Welcome to the story behind the story — the freedom you chase, and the cage you don’t see coming.

Midlife Awakening & the Dissonance Dilemma (04:53)
 Why your body knows before your brain does — and how shame creeps in when your “dream life” doesn’t fit.

You Can’t Heal in a Container That Wasn’t Built for You (09:29)
 Self-care isn’t always the answer — sometimes, it’s the cage.

When Coaching Becomes a Conformity Corset (17:53)
 Leaving clinical life only to re-create the same dynamics in a new form.

The Reckoning: “This Isn’t It” (20:14)
 The slow, quiet reckoning: your soul is no longer onboard.

Bridge Time & Reimagining the Next Chapter (29:46)
 How I deconstructed a million-dollar business and created breathing room to find out who I really was.

People, Purpose, and Permission to Pause (35:35)
 The deepest layer of the work: discovering who your people are now — and who you no longer need to perform for.

If you're feeling seen by this episode and interested in discovering more -- join me for my virtual Summer Soulstice gathering June 25 -- for the woman straddling two worlds. One world you know "is NOT it." ...and one world you can't quite see, touch, taste, or feel yet. 

We'll help you sink in and find the grace and energy to navigate this liminal space -- all while harnessing the full bodied energy of summer to move with purpose and passion toward what's most soul aligned for you next.

June 25 | 5 PM ET | On Zoom 

Tap here to read more about the Soulstice gathering and sign up to join us!

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Transcript

Julie Granger (00:00)

Welcome to Sink and Swim,

podcast that invites you to sink deeply into your

the stories you were born to tell about yourself,

swim and shine unapologetically into your soul's

I'm your host, Julie

this is the space where we celebrate the powerful, raw, and transformative stories of

have discovered that life isn't sink or

It's sink and swim.

These are the people who have gone from paddling furiously to rise, succeed, and stay on top in life,

and their relationships,

to instead sinking into the deepest and most hidden stories of the soul

discovering there the power to rise to even higher heights.

My guest and I will share our untamed, unfiltered truths and

and illuminate how to live in love with more purpose, wholeheartedness, freedom, and

So take a deep breath, settle in,

on your swimsuit, goggles, and

and get ready to sink into the deep end with us.

Julie Granger (00:59)

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Sink and Swim podcast. This is a topic that I talk about with clients all the time. And I had a conversation with a client just this week on this topic and I know that this client is not alone.

And I know that because I have lived this type of situation too, personally.

I think it's one of those topics that isn't talked about, at least not in this way that I'm framing it today. So my goal is to give voice, give oxygen to this topic

about when you build something that you think is gonna free you from a past version of you, a past career or job that you're in.

some version of you, a relationship that you were in and how down the road, once you get into that thing, you realize that the very thing you built is actually trapping you. It's a cage, not a pathway to freedom. And what I said to a client this week

if you build it, they will come in this particular scenario. And that is what traps you. So this client had left an employee job in health care that was sucking the life out of her. And she built her own business aligned with her passions and her expertise.

and it has now become this multi six figure, probably on the road to seven figures business. Super successful. She has built it. They came. But what we talked about was how she's like, shit,

I have this deep knowing that this is not it for me. And I don't just mean, and she didn't just mean like, this isn't the end of the road, which is true, that's part of it. But this actually wasn't the fix to get out of the original toxic, whatever we want to call it, employee job. And she's realizing that she

built this beautiful thing. It's very successful. You know, for all intents and purposes, it's working, but it's not working for her now that she's finally kind of like come up for air from all of the building phase. And I say resonate with that because I did the same thing. I built a seven figure business and

once I kind of, once things actually got going and we're on maybe what we would call autopilot and things were just rolling and working and clients were happy and everything was happening, I finally felt like I could settle and come up for air. And just as I did that, I had that feeling in my body, deep in my soul, this is not it.

for me, it's like panic washes over me at first. It's like, well, if it's not this, then what is it? And that's like the worst feeling for someone who typically is very goal oriented and growth mindset and very much like, here's my thing. I'm gonna go after that. That's the first thing. And then there's guilt.

of, but this is actually a pretty good thing. What's wrong with you? How can you say you don't want this? How can you say this isn't right? Look at like you're helping people. It's purposeful. You're allowed to be yourself. It's authentic. And I did feel that way that those are all true things. And so there was this like guilt that came in, both guilt and shame that was shaming me for, for feeling like I want more or this isn't enough. And when I say I want more and this isn't enough,

I don't mean I want more money or more clients. I mean, I want something that's more me, that's more rooted, that's more joyful, that's more inspiring, that gets me out of bed every day, just completely like, yes, that doesn't feel like it's become this anchor I'm dragging. So there was guilt and shame around that.

And I just want to highlight that I work with a lot of clients who are in this, this spot right here, who know

that what they have right now, that what they're doing sort of is their full-time job. It could be not related to a job. It could be a full-time relationship you're in. That's not, you're like, this isn't right. This isn't it. It could be a way that you're living. So I've worked with a lot of people who identify as women, mothers who are realizing that being a working mother is actually not it for them.

that they have this drive, this deep passion to be a stay at home parent. And they're feeling a lot of shame about that for any number of reasons. That's not the point of this podcast episode, but if you are one of those people, I just want to highlight that I see you and that you could feel a lot of emotion around that. But it's not just a career thing that I help people with and that I work with clients on, although that's oftentimes

the entry point. And when we see that it's the career or the job or the business is not it, we also see that a lot of parts of their life that they built almost around their career or they're like in tandem with their career are also not it. And we could call this a midlife crisis. That's what society wants to call it. Most of my clients are anywhere between 30 and I'd say 60.

But really more specifically, I'd say 35 and 55. And so that's what society wants to label it as because it absolutely feels that way. You know, and this isn't like me slapping lipstick on a pig, but what I've learned through my own process and through the process of guiding hundreds of other people now is it's more of an awakening. It is a sink and then a swim. Really, I would call it a sink and then

sink away from all of the old versions and you have to like let them die. There's like sort of a grieving and a letting go. And then there's an uncovering that happens once you're at the bottom where you give yourself the opportunity to actually listen to the whispers of your soul. And then there's a rising that happens that is bumpy. There's a lot of ups and downs as you're trying on like letting the voice of your soul lead.

instead of listening to the voice of what we might call the ego or society or conditioning patterns or whatever you want to call it. Or your inner parts. I do a lot of parts work with people and listening to the voices of your parts instead of yourself, whatever you want to call it. We're just going to call it listening to the voice of everything else that's not the voice of your soul. And the rising part is where you're trying on different ways of being and trying to feel what I call like somatically feel.

what is actually soul driven versus what's a little bit more not soul driven. Not that making un-soul driven decisions or actions is wrong, but you can feel in your body what feels like, yes, and it's ease and it's flow versus what feels wrong or what just doesn't, what feels like resistance and sludge and it's hard. And then the last phase is the swimming phase where you get to the next mountain top or you're, you you've hiked through the valley of that darkness of uncovering your soul and you're at the next.

mountain. And what's interesting is people go through this awakening multiple times in their life. It's not just in midlife. I remember going through it when I went through cancer. I went through it when I left my second employee job and started my physical therapy business. I went through it when I left my physical therapy business and went into coaching. I talked about that in the

outgrowing the white coat double episode that I published earlier in this podcast. And so that sort of like death and then re resurrection, we'll call it to use biblical terms is, is normal. That's part of the human experience. And in midlife, it's just heightened because we also, especially as people in bodies with ovaries, things are happening hormonally.

things are happening spiritually. All of this is part of the normal human experience. And it's just like under a microscope and megaphone at this stage in life. Anyway, so that's what I see it as. And what's interesting is sort of like the reason it feels so hard and a crisis is not simply attributable to your hormone changes. That's like such a reductionist viewpoint. And I don't say that lightly. I don't say that.

to put down anyone who thinks it's only hormone changes. But as someone who has been gaslit for a long time, both to ignore my body's signals that are hormone changes and also to blame everything on hormone changes, I know that it's not just that. And most of us also know that too, deep down. But sometimes I find that people end up in this dissonance.

we'll call it, of this is who I really am and what I really desire to do and be and have and who I really desire to surround myself with versus this is where I am. And it's a dissonance. It's just a total mismatch. And part of it is because perhaps you have focused on the have and the do your whole life. That's how you've been conditioned. That's how you thrive. So I'm going to choose this career path. I'm going to choose this relationship. I'm going to choose this

role and responsibility to play because at the time it seems like the right thing to do looks good on paper, it's respected by people, it's a great moneymaker, whatever it is feels right. But the problem is when you focus on the do and the have and not the be you'll inevitably shape shift yourself into the conventions of whatever that thing is you're choosing your career relationships.

even the way that your relationship with your body. So that's a big one, you know, for people who identify honestly as any gender. I'm just going to say women because the culture of femininity is, you know, you need to be a small shape. This is what your body should look like. This is the size you should be. This is how you should eat. You know, it's like body dysmorphia has grown into this whole world of what I call health dysmorphia.

dressed up as wellness and this hyper controlling way of being. And it's just us doing and having what we think we should be doing and having, but not actually being aligned with our inner wisdom at all. So that's number one is focusing on the do and the have and not the be. The second reason that I find that people tend to find themselves in

a certain container of life, whether it's career, relationship, or your relationship with your body, and then move on to another, move on to a new way of being is personality type. So sometimes this is simply a personality type thing. You simply are the type of person who is, you just don't stay in any one place very long. Variety is the spice of life for you. You're multi-dimensional, you're entrepreneurial, you're neurodivergent.

You are very into nuance. You kind of really see yourself as very fluid. And this isn't a bad thing. Of course, society likes to make it a bad thing because society likes to pin us down into neat, diagnosable labels and boxes. But this is simply can be a personality type. it's something that I think you can make work for you. And I love to work with clients who are multidimensional or entrepreneurial.

or neurodivergent or all three, or any number of other things, like people who are very fluid and nuanced and just kind of live in that world and help you really uncover that that's a beautiful thing about you and live from a place of celebration and acceptance of that, which is very hard to do again in a world that doesn't like to accept that. The third reason I find is that you might, this kind of goes with the focusing on the do and the have and not the be.

is you try to fix and heal yourself from inside a container that was never designed to hold you in the first place. So it could be a relationship, it could be a religion, it could be a school, like a profession, it could be a career, it could be a job, it could be a business you built. And when your body starts to speak up about that dissonance that says, this isn't right, you look at you and go, well, what did I do?

or what have I done or what can I do to fix myself? How can I make this a more palatable place for me? How can I make this a better experience for me from within this container? And again, we dress this one up, especially in the health and wellness world, as you're empowered. Look at you taking care of yourself. Look at you doing all these things to heal your body. Look at you doing all this self-care. Look at you meditating every day. Look at you regulating your nervous system.

The truth is you can't heal fully inside a world or a container that was never designed to contain you.

The fourth reason that people find themselves in this dissonance that I see at least in my own clients and in myself is you keep looking for something that soothes certain boo-boos or symptoms of yours and helps you get out of like a situation that no longer aligns with you. And that's not a bad thing to do. I always say even a little bit of freedom is still you're on the right path.

But it doesn't always fix the underlying problem that got you into the misaligned container in the first place. So sometimes that's your karmic journey on this planet is to just move along and get little bits more freedom and little bits more and just kind of do it that way. So there's also nothing wrong with doing this. But for some people, they see that they're putting Band-Aids on things and they really want to get to the deeper.

underlying issues. So that's what I help people do. The last one, and this isn't quite in my scope as a coach, but I do recognize it and see it in people, is what we might call codependency. It's a strong word, but we might call it that. Just again, give it a word. It's codependency with certain, and I'm just going to use this one in the context of careers.

people who are looking for career shifts or like work shifts. So you can have a codependency with your work, your professional career in the same way that you can have a codependency in a personal or romantic or familial relationship. And a lot of times, no, I have no research to back this, so please don't come at me. But what I've learned,

from clients I work with who have done quite a bit of therapy themselves, which I recommend, is people who have been in codependent families, they were brought up that way. There's all kinds of things, alcoholism, abuse. They tend to adopt a martyr role or a savior role or a fixer role, or they become emotionally responsible for other people. And so they carry that into their career.

And a lot of times this shows up for women in health care or for people in serving and helping professions. So not just women or female identifying people, but it tends to be heavily skewed in that direction. what I've had a lot of clients tell me who've done therapy around this in their personal relationships is that they come to realize it. They're like, I feel like this is the same relationship dynamic, the relationship I have with my career and my work.

is the same dynamic I had that I worked on in trauma therapy and relationship therapy and couples therapy, all the things. And they get to this dissonance where they realize they're feeling the same way about their career, about their clients, that they once were in those personal relationships and they realize, shit, you know, I need to, I need to look at this particular dynamic and how I haven't quite, you know, uncovered that dynamic in my career as well. And, you know, they're willing to do that brave work too.

so again, the five reasons that you can find yourself here, you may feel you see yourself in all five of these, or maybe additional reason you find yourself here that I didn't cover. I'm not trying to say that this has to be a reality. I'm just offering some, you know, our brains really like to have some like reasons, like, why did I get here? How did this happen? And

only you can really figure that out. And ideally with the support of someone who can help you figure that out.

Today,

What I'm really going to speak about most is the first couple, like the do have without the be, the personality type, and of course, trying to fix and heal from within a container that was never designed to hold you in the first place. So this happened to me in my own career. And what you've heard so far in this podcast on my

two episodes about.

removing the white coat of going from clinical to coaching was just the first part of this. So once I got into that coaching world, I transitioned to coaching, I think it was 2018. And I, you know, it took several years to get some footing and figure out what the heck I was doing as a coach.

For me, I had to go through that for several years and I did have some mentors who were helping me. And I did have to kind of like have the confidence to just like start and have confidence from the coaching skills I did practice with my clinical skills. And so getting my coaching business started was like a multi-year process of cementing my identity, figuring out how to tell people what I was doing and why it was valuable. Figuring out...

what types of people I actually really felt inspired to help and developing programs and offers that met those needs and filled the gaps for these people that they weren't getting elsewhere in life. And then also learning how to market and sell coaching, which is a completely different skill set than clinical work. Well, interestingly, I very intuitively figured that out. And so my coaching business took off.

At first it started as health coaching and I really enjoyed that. There was quite a bit of life coaching intertwined into health coaching, sort of the soul and the body and the emergence of those helped a lot of women with kind of that tangent I went down a minute ago. I helped them really uncover their inner wisdom around it. At time it was a lot of women struggling with infertility, but also like teenagers with period problems and teenagers with sort of chronic health issues.

And that was really good. Well, as my coaching business took off, I really figured out how to market and sell it. I figured out how to really talk about it. I was just very naturally gifted at messaging, at writing, at communication, at the more business-y side of things. And people started asking me for mentoring around that. So I started adding that into what I was doing. And eventually I saw that this was actually really meaningful work because it was helping mostly other clinicians.

I don't like, it was helping clinicians on that first step of freedom, which was like leaving a clinical job that's sucking the life out of you and starting your own clinical business. So was most of my clients. And there was a lot of soul work that we did. There was a lot of really tapping into your heart and like letting it be heart led a lot of let's look at your whole lifestyle, like what's going on there too, so that you don't build a business that where you recreate the problems from your employee job and all of that.

It was really, really cool. And eventually those clients saw that there was even more freedom to be held in building a coaching business. And so I not only was coaching people on how to build a clinical business, but also a coaching one. And it was really, really cool. Well, after COVID hit, I saw that a lot of people didn't want to work in traditional healthcare settings anymore for any number of reasons, or they were laid off.

because of all the things that happened during COVID. And I could really empathize with this and it became an opportunity to really help a lot more people. so without me even turning up the dial on my marketing or trying to do more, a lot of people just naturally found their way to me through word of mouth and clinical channels that I was still connected with and all those kinds of things. And so

By 2021, my business went from a $150,000 business to a million dollar business. And it had really taken off. And it was really meaningful work. And I was starting to see, I had some mentors at the time, like, who had just planted the seed in my head, like, this is something you could position to sell one day. It could be your retirement plan.

for an entrepreneur who's not really contributing to like big retirement accounts, that was really cool. For someone who had just paid off her student loans in one fell swoop and like had never really contributed to retirement, I was like, wow, that like felt really empowering. And I wanted to grow it sustainably. I wanted it to be heart centered. I wanted to make sure was really authentic, but things just grew.

really fast. And I started adding members to my team. I had a very active and engaged and lovely audience. had amazing clients. And so much of it was so genuinely authentic. I felt like, wow, maybe this is what I was supposed to do. I just kind of stumbled into it. So it felt very aligned. Honestly, like, and I just look back and I remember looking at my numbers and seeing like 80 to $100,000

months of revenue and being both incredibly humbled and grateful and also just like, whoa, like how did this become normal to me? It didn't scare me. It was just kind of like, whoa, holy crap. And realizing, by the way, I just want to say at least from my experience, and this doesn't have to be your experience, that literally nothing about me changed. Nothing about my life changed. I mean, I had some access to like buy first class seats on planes, but like

nothing else really changed. wasn't like you get to making a hundred thousand dollars every month and being like, my God, my life is now Shangri-La. Like it's, it's so not true. There's literally no difference. And actually interesting changes started to happen once this became the norm. And this is when I started to pick up on some little cues in my body, in my intuition that, no,

If I build it, they will come, but that very thing I built is trapping me. So...

I realized I'm doing something so meaningful and I'm really good at it, but this is not it. I can't name one moment. I think it was more death by a thousand cuts what I can tell you is it started to just show up in my body before I really could look around and name it and put my finger on it.

I honestly had a pretty darn, what we might call balanced life. I was working maybe 20 to 25 hours a week. I had added people to my team. I'd outsourced all kinds of things. I was doing the parts of the business that I really wanted to do for the most part.

And my body really just started to speak up. There were some sleep issues, there were some cortisol issues, there were some hormone issues, my progesterone started to get low. There were some skin issues, lots of like psoriasis, eczema, just like kind of random things popping up. Energy problems,

I was working out enough, but I felt like recovery was hard to come by. And I have a history of cancer and lots of things that make exercise just a little bit more challenging for me. But ultimately I knew it wasn't just that, or at least I was starting to realize it wasn't just like my history of cancer. I was having like musculoskeletal pain, myofascial pain. was having headaches. And so, you know, the first thing that

my little diagnose and treat brain did as a healthcare provider, ⁓ this is perimenopause, this makes sense. And so really kind of started tackling it from that angle, lots of supplements, lots of diet, lots of, you know,

really focusing on what was going to help me feel good. And that helped for sure.

So I was doing what I needed to do on that more like helping to manage and take care of my body and even my mind and my spirit. There was meditation, there was journaling, there was things, but it was also feeling like if I dropped up one ball of my like wellness and self-care routine, everything was gonna fall. And

I'm saying this looking back on it now. So I didn't clock this at the time, but it's like I was performing self care and wellness and not actually being it. So I say all of this with such grace for myself and anyone else, that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And that's how I thought it was supposed to feel. But I also started

simultaneously to get these little whispers going on. I would feel dread before I needed to show up and do a live stream and talk about business or marketing coaching. I would feel irritated when a client seemed unwilling

or unable to access the deeper parts of the soul work that I incorporated into business and marketing coaching. And they only wanted the framework or the formula or the whatever. That felt so antithetical to me. And honestly, it felt antithetical to what I was marketing.

And I came to learn I couldn't prevent people from leaning on their own desire for rigid structures and the map and the five-step framework and all that kind of stuff. And so I started to feel irritated not so much at the client but at myself

But then I started to realize that I was really so much more driven by that soul level identity work.

purpose work, like what is my real purpose here? And I really started to love working with the clients who weren't in such a rush to get their business growing, who weren't feeling so much pressure to make money, but actually were quite more interested themselves in like, wait, wait, wait, wait, before I move forward and like, say I'm gonna build this business, can we actually work on me? And I was also feeling pressure.

from the clients who were feeling pressure themselves. I was keeping energetic boundaries, but I felt helpless because I was like, there's nothing, I can't give you a formula or a framework to make this go faster. And the very act of wanting it to go faster is what's slowing it down for you. So it was just a really hard place for me to be. And when I came to realize it, so I was grappling with all this as my body was sending me all these symptoms, was that irritation, that pressure, that...

those little just that dread. Those weren't things that I needed to silence because also the first thing I thought was, I'm just having a mindset issue. I need to fix my thoughts and beliefs. At least that's what my mentors were telling me to do. Behind the scenes, I'm sitting there sitting with it going, shit, like I have built this and they have come and this is not it. And what am I supposed to do about

that because I've not only built my financial future that my body and my soul are saying it doesn't want to have anything to do with, but I've also like hired people employed them. I have all these clients and clients worked with me anywhere from six months to a year and a half.

And was like, I am so in this. Like, I don't know. I don't know what to do with this because it just doesn't feel right. So that was probably three years ago. I really had this clear realization and it took about a year and a half to completely unwind from it. I, you know, fulfilled contracts. I was there with my full heart, but what I really had to do was sink into that knowing and trust it.

instead of judge it or try and quiet it or silence it with supplements. And that knowing again wasn't just that like voice that spoke up, it was my body that was speaking up. And when I offered myself compassion and grace and mercy, that this wasn't it and it was okay for me to say that to myself, this is just with me and in the presence of very trusted mentors and friends,

It changed everything. That was just the first step. That was the first part of the sinking. I just need to sink into my soul's truth that this isn't right. I was doing and having And a lot of the being part I was, I was totally authentic. It was totally aligned when I was in the more like soul category of coaching and mentoring people. But when we started tacking on this like pre-written, preconceived

box of business and marketing coaching. Not that I wasn't good at it. I was very good at it. But it just felt like there was this dissonance. And I felt like I could no longer tell the world I was doing one thing when

what really lights me up is the deeper layer of the work that I was offering. So I remember giving myself the out a year and a half before I actually completely let it go. And that took care of a lot of the dissonance, just the frustration, the tension that I was feeling. It allowed me to look at the work I was doing still concurrently as the investor in whatever the future version of me was. The tricky part was is

and I hear this from clients a lot, is it was really hard for me to envision what was next while I was still very much immersed in that work. And also knowing that I still need to be making money. Like financially speaking, I need financial stability, maybe not $100,000 a month, but I still need something. And I still need something to offer to the world. I don't know what my next chapter is. I have no idea, but I know it's not this. And so what I did was I created like a bridge offering.

And I started to deconstruct all that I had built very quietly. I just didn't renew contracts with certain people. just, you know, gently started letting go members of my team. I started just slowly, slowly downscaling to the point that I started offering this sort of bridge thing that was mostly personal work around the questions of who am I, what's my purpose, and who are my people.

So it was like not as hardcore as what I'd been offering before from a business and marketing perspective, but it was a bridge. And that felt like a place where I could breathe a little bit.

I also, you know, really bravely decided and I had the financial resource to do this. I just want to highlight the privilege and the gratitude I have for that. To break things down to a fraction of the income and when I say fraction, I mean, I'll just be fully honest about it. I was making anywhere between, I went from a hundred thousand dollar months to maybe five thousand dollar months, which is nothing to sneeze at. That's a lot of money. That's great.

And I just broke it down to make sure I could cover my expenses and live comfortably, not have to like drastically change my lifestyle and my family's lifestyle and trust myself, you know, and just be like, I really need to be in this in-between time. I had two full years of in-between time. had, and it looked different. So the first year was this bridge and then the second year was almost nothing.

where there was nothing. I was all internal, reimagining exactly what this was gonna be. And just to illustrate one of the big conflicts I needed to work through myself was I knew the value of the soul level, sort of spirit level mind and the intersection of all those things of helping people.

really define out who they are, what their purpose is, and who their people are. I knew the value of that deep down. I just knew it in my tissues. And I knew that's what I had actually really been doing all along. I didn't know what to call it. That was the first conflict. was like, what on earth do I even call this thing?

And you know, I think the big part of it was I was going through that process myself. who am I now?

What is my purpose now? And who are my people now?

I realized how layered those questions were. Those aren't a quick journal it, manifest it, answer the question. So as I started to ask those questions of myself, I knew I needed people, coaches, therapists, all the things to help me really work through that. It was a deep, beautiful, layered, sinking, uncovering, rising, and the rising being a nonlinear,

very up and down rising. And now I'm just starting to get a taste of the swimming. I think my body was clear on the identity. In fact, when I really stopped all my work for the second year of my sinking process, I had some meetings with some old very trusted clients and I...

they were so gracious to allow me to just riff. I was just like, here's where I think I'm going. Here's who I think I am. And I asked them if they would mirror back to me what they see in me, what value they got from the work we did and what they would call it. And it was so helpful because

I just needed to be really radically honest with myself about that first. And that was a process because there were all kinds of labels and boxes I had unconsciously put myself into or society had put me into. And that was a really hard thing.

identity lives in your nervous system, it lives in your limbic system. And when there is any type of threat to a change in your identity, or a perceived threat, your nervous system is going to kick in, and it'll come up with all kinds of ways to keep you from changing your perception of your identity. And so that was quite a soulful and spiritual process for me.

The next part was getting clear on my purpose. And I think because I realized I was clear in my identity, it was kind of easy to start to name where I was going with it. But getting those words out of my mouth in a way that felt meaningful, wrapping words around something that was so intangible. You can hear me now. I'm like, it's soul work, it's spirit work. I don't really know, right?

I think the biggest thing I could do was accept that this is something that's really difficult to describe in words. And for someone who is so good at using words, whether it's in writing or speaking or whatever it is, like that's one of my gifts, that was a really difficult dissonance for me to navigate is I just can't find the words. And what my soul kept saying is, don't rush this, they will come. And they came.

You know, over that year of where I really just had a couple of private clients I was working with and like actually testing the waters of this new work. the words would come and they came at the most, you know, surprising times. I'd be out on a walk with a dog and I'd find myself ripping my phone out and doing a voice memo to document what had just downloaded through my soul.

through my heart. Gosh, there's so many voice memos in my notes app at this point. And over time, I just kind of put all of those in one place and eventually put all the cards out on the table and started to really wrap words around it. But of the three big questions, who am I now? What is my purpose now? And who are my people?

The hardest layer was and still is the question, who are my people now? So what I came to learn in my own process is you can absolutely do all of the work internally with very little interaction with other people to figure out who you are. You can do all of the work internally with very little interaction with other people to figure out your purpose.

Figure out what work you're doing, what you're building, all those kind of things.

But You can't fully express it out in the world. You can't fully live it. You can't fully tell that story. I call it your soul story. Unless it's in containers of people who accurately reflect back to you your greatness, people who can accept you for all of you.

people who clap for you genuinely and not in a way that's putting you on a pedestal and flattering you so they can get something from you. The who are my people question became an inflection point for me. And what I realized, and this is actually backed by quite a bit of science, is in my whole process of changing job, changing career, moving into a new one, moving into a new one.

Part of the reason I never really paused completely to listen to my soul, to really look at my personality type, to look at my human design, to look at all the things, was because I sensed unconsciously, if I completely came out, as my full expressed version of me.

people wouldn't like it.

And not just any people, the people closest to me, friends, family, colleagues, people who I really valued the connection with.

And here's why that is actually not a mindset problem and why it's not a failure of belief in myself and why I'm not just some person who's too dependent on external validation from people because that's what society is going to tell you. We are neurobiologically wired for belonging. It lives in your nervous system. We are humans. We are a communal species. And as women,

We're wired even more for that, for our community.

Now I'm quite introverted. And so I'm not the type of person who just has, you know, droves and droves of best friends around me at all times. I actually really do value my alone time. But we are wired.

to be seen, to be held, to be heard, be validated, to be affirmed. And what we've been taught is we need to be seen, held, heard, validated, and affirmed in ways that other people can stomach.

that makes other people comfortable.

We as givers, we as empaths, we as people who can feel what other people feel, unconsciously feel, that when we're going to fully express ourselves, who am I and what's my purpose, someone close to us might not like it. And so we'll shrink, we'll shape shift, we'll slightly hide parts of ourselves, we'll over explain, well, here's why I'm doing this or here's why I want to do this.

We'll qualify it. We'll put a sugar coat on it, whatever. You guys know the drill. Society calls it people pleasing But it's actually your neurobiological wiring. We have a stronger wiring to preserve the bond of attachment than we do to fulfill

the human innate drive for authentic expression of who I am and what my purpose is. So the first two parts, who I am and what's my purpose can't fully live and breathe if you don't have healthy attachments around you. Healthy attachments, your closest relationships.

Whether it's family, whether it's friends, whether it's colleagues, whether it's parasocial people on social media. And so that is why we shrink and shape shift into what I've called the conformity corset. The conformity corset is the attachment. It's the people part. It's the unwritten and written expectations.

It's the things you might've picked up from a way too strict religion growing up. It's the things you might've picked up from a sports coach. It's the things you might've picked up from an abusive relationship. It's the things you might've picked up from just society's conditioning on how you're supposed to be, And so that creates this corset of belonging. If you remain in this corset, what you're trading in is belonging and love. And that feels good. It feels supportive, right?

for a time and you find yourself in one space and you're like, well, I've outgrown this and you move to another corset. And so when you don't feel fully accepted, fully celebrated, fully valued, fully and accurately reflected on your purpose and your identity, you will just...

unconsciously start to take on the expectations of other people so that they don't feel uncomfortable. That is not a weakness. That is not you people pleasing and just like whatever. It's actually part of your wiring to have your belonging needs met, love, worthiness, feeling seen, heard, validated and important.

So you can do all of the internal work. I'm internally validated. I feel good about myself. I have self-confidence. My relationship with myself is great. But it's that external work, actually going out and finding your people who really, really honor you. For all of you, that is the hardest part of actually shifting from one thing to the next. And in this case, again, the examples in both the client story and my story.

are shifting from one career track to the next. And in this client story and in my story, not only is it a career question, but it's an also looking around at everyone around you and going, ooh, how did my relationship with that person actually shape who I am and shape what I think my purpose is? And will that relationship be compromised if I move into the next thing, whatever that is?

And I see this with, again, people who are going from career to stay at home parent. I see this in people who are trying to get out of relationships that aren't serving them anymore. I've seen it in women. I've worked with several women who are getting out of religion and moving into more of a non-definable theological sort of spiritual approach to the world.

So it's not just career, but I think the most dominant thing that I help people with is when it starts with career and then we kind of look at the whole iceberg below.

I was getting belonging behind a guise of a certain level of achievement inside a pre-written socially acceptable box that was business and marketing coaching. That's something people could wrap their heads around.

They could wrap their heads around, wow, OK, you help people get out of their job or get out of a business and build a business. It's a linear thing. People could wrap their heads around that. So it was like a respectable career box. But also, the person I was in in that was, when people hear me talking about how to grow a business, that's a very different type of conversation than who are you and what's your purpose in life. And

Who are you and what's your purpose in life is not tangible. It's very nuanced. It's very deep. There's soul work we do. It's emotional. There's feelings. you know, that's its own very nuanced world that's hard to explain, not to mention it's hard for other people to understand. So it felt like if people could understand me, then I was important, then I mattered. Then, you know, it wasn't my parents on my back wondering,

why I wasn't making money, right? If I was able to show and talk about that this is a career path that makes sense and all this money's coming in, then people were off my back. But I felt like when I was in that corset, that conformity corset, that I was doing exactly that. I was conforming to society's, other people's expectations, even my own expectations of what makes a good business owner. And ultimately, I had to break it all down.

and really allow, this sounds cliche, but it's true, allow my intuition to define what, who I am, what my purpose is, what I want my business to look like as a result of that, and who my people are. And it's meant, it's also meant grief of letting go of a past identity. There's been grief of letting go of

past parts of my work. There's also been a lot of gratitude for both of those things. So I see that with grief comes gratitude, right? There's been grief on letting go of relationships or setting lots of boundaries in relationships that can't honor me as my fully expressed version of me. I hold nothing against people, right? People are where they are on their own journey. And when I come out fully as myself, they're scared. Something gets triggered in them, right? It feels like a threat to something.

that felt like it was stable and maintained in the way I was before. And so sometimes there's boundaries. Sometimes there's a complete severing of ties. Sometimes it's just a frank conversation that needs to be had, right? But ultimately it's been okay. That's what I can say. And now I'm at this point where...

even though by the numbers perhaps fewer people are clapping and cheering me on the quality of the clapping and cheering on that I get is so rich and it's so authentic and when people can mirror back like when I get that extra when I feel really confident about what I'm doing but people mirror it back it's the best feeling in the world to have someone say I see you I get it.

What you're doing is really important. And if you hear nothing else from me, by the way, in this whole episode, if you could go say that to someone today and actually mean it, you have no idea how much that would mean to them because Everyone's on that journey of trying to be the most authentic versions of themselves in some way, shape or form. And when you can accurately mirror

that back to them and let them know that whatever version of them they're being right now matters. With no strings attached, you're not going to try and get anything from them by telling them that. You can just generally tell them that. That's going to help them along their path so much. We need this support and affirmation from each other. So now I feel such radiant joy in my work. There's no dread.

There's no existential what now. There's spaciousness, there's flow. It looks nothing like my million dollar business. I'm the only one. And what's really interesting is I didn't have to scale and build a team where you're promised, if you just scale and have a team and you outsource everything, you'll have more time. Yeah, I had all that, but I didn't have freedom.

to fully be me, to fully fulfill my soul's purpose. And all the people I built around me expected something of me that wasn't me. No shade to them, because I told them what version of me to expect, right?

Now I get to be fully me. And that is like my tenet moving forward is like this business that I have is called Illuminate Freedom and it's the freedom to be fully me, fully live in my purpose, and to be surrounded by people who celebrate that. And I'm also here for disagreement. That's fine too. So it's not that I'm just saying if you don't agree with me you're not allowed in my space. It's if you can't

co-exist with me fully as myself, that's where the problem is. And that's where the boundaries get set. But that is happening far, far less because as I step into the confidence around that, then people will either be attracted to that or repelled by it. And again, I can't control people's experiences like that. So I tell this story.

for lots of reasons, but I want to honor if you are someone who has built a practice or a brand.

as a means of freeing yourself from one thing, one part of your life. And I just want to celebrate you for that, because that's an amazing thing. I also want to offer that you're not alone and you're not wrong. If you're now in that thing and you're going, this ain't it, shit. I just want to offer that it's okay to listen to that voice.

And then it's not necessarily like a belief problem or a mindset problem or you just being lazy and ungrateful for all that you've built.

I want to honor if you keep trying to make it work within a structure that you feel like is no longer right for you. Whether it's a job you're in, whether it's a business you've built, whether it's a relationship you've built, whether it's a group of friends you've joined, that now you're like, no, this is not it. And you keep trying to like make it work, make yourself show up, set boundaries.

work on your wellness, whatever you're doing. I want to honor that because it comes from the best and most self-caring place. I also want to honor that if you're doing all of that and it feels like you're shape-shifting and just trying to control yourself.

that that's okay. I want to honor that it's okay to say these aren't my people. And you can say that without coming from a place of being the victim or blaming people or making them wrong. And that is something that I, with a lot of help and support, had to learn to recognize that in my quest to not blame someone else, I was not holding them

energetically accountable for the way they treated me or the way that they were gaslighting me or canceling me or encouraging me to shape shift. And I believe that no one really super consciously does that. Some people do, but it's okay to call a spay to spay and say, this is not a match for me. It's not generous. It's not kind of you to say, yeah, they're just them.

It's fine. I accept them. It's a very spiritually bypassing, we're going to unconditionally love everyone. That's not love when you're not including yourself in the equation.

I'm also wanting to honor you if you are someone who is tempted to build the next thing. You know that what you're in is not it.

you feel trapped in it, whatever it is. I talked to someone yesterday who felt trapped with her live-in aging parent and she feels like her whole life now revolves around that aging parent and it's keeping her from being able to pursue her dreams.

Honest. Such an honest thing to say out loud. And she feels horribly guilty and mad at herself and like a bad child.

she's hearing this stirring in her soul that she wants something different. And she felt tempted to just like name what the next thing's gonna be if I just know where I'm going and then I can figure out how to extricate myself from this.

So I want to honor you if that's you. Maybe not stuck trapped by your parent, but stuck trapped in a job or a business or whatever it is, religion, who knows? And you're like, if I just know the next place I'm going and can picture it and create it and just go there, I'll be fine. But the truth is, you know this, I know this, but it merits saying, you can't go from one mountaintop to the other.

without first sinking into the valley. Unless you have a gondola or a helicopter or wings, right? So generally speaking in life, we've got to sink in. We've got to let the parts of us die that got us there in the first place, but also honor them and thank them. We've got to uncover

the stories of our soul. And that can only happen when you think all the way in. You have to go inward to get outward, right?

You've got to be willing to rise on the top sea turvey hike up the next mountain. You might hit some dead ends. You might find the edge of a cliff that feels like you're about to fall off. You might run into some pretty bad storms. And then all of that is in service to getting to the next mountain. All of this knowing that, especially if it's your personality type,

or you tend to outgrow things that you might not be there forever. But even that, even that one process might not be the end.

So that's what we talk about here on Sync and Swim. This is one example of the story. And I really want to invite you to just, if nothing else, if you're feeling like you're getting that tug internally, that this is not it, and you don't know what is it, that's okay. It's okay. In this particular example,

that first cue of me saying this isn't it to now going, yeah, I think I got it. It's three years. That timeframe is different for everyone. So I'm not telling you it's going to be three years. Could be longer, could be shorter. But the real commitment is to stop acting like it has to be it. And at least give yourself permission to pause and go, okay, this is not it.

I don't know what's next, but at least give yourself permission to name it first and foremost. And if you need support going from this is not it to I don't know what to answer the question, what is that's what I'm here

All right. Thank you all for listening. I appreciate you holding this space for me as I tell the story. I would love to hear your stories, your takeaways. So please, please, please don't be a stranger. If you have questions, feel free to DM me, reach out, tell me what landed with you. Tell me what stirred something in you. That would be so helpful. So I also know what to include in future episodes. All right, y'all.

Have a good time and I will see you in the next episode.

Julie Granger (54:20)

Thanks for joining me on this episode of Sink and

hope today's story has inspired you to sink into your raw, unfiltered truths and illuminate the power to rise and swim into the most authentic soul story that's been waiting to be told and shared with the

As your host,

an honor and joy to share the story of luminaires who have done and continue to do exactly this.

I hope you enjoyed diving into today's topic.

If you're feeling the tug to discover more,

be sure to check out the show notes where you'll find links to resources, articles, and more.

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for listening, and until next time, keep sinking deep so you can swim into a life that aligns with the story your soul came here to tell.