It was a Friday evening in the warm embrace of August 2017 — one of those serene nights that promised nothing extraordinary yet quietly held the potential to alter everything. I had just poured a rich, garnet-hued glass of cabernet sauvignon, its aroma filling the room with notes of blackcurrant and oak. Settling into the deep cushions of the couch beside my husband Craig, I exhaled the week’s exhaustion. Then, quite unexpectedly, the words slipped from my lips without forethought or ceremony: “Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? What is the point of any of it?” At the time, I did not recognize the significance of that simple utterance. Yet, as I would later come to understand, that night marked the quiet but definitive beginning of a transformation that would unfold from the deepest corners of my being — a complete restructuring from the inside outward.
To the outside world, it looked as if I had effortlessly achieved the kind of life people spend decades striving to reach. Up until that moment, my existence could have been mistaken for a case study in balance and control — an immaculate performance of having it all together. I occupied a demanding executive position, devoting roughly ten grueling hours each week to commuting between home and office. Simultaneously, I meticulously orchestrated my children’s schedules, attended to their endless needs, guarded the appearance of a flawless household, and managed the ceaseless projects that accompany ownership of a home. Even my exercise regimen mirrored my professional tempo — intense, measured, and driven. Each workout felt like an attempt to match the internal velocity of my strained nervous system. And, almost ritualistically, at exactly 5:30 every evening, I poured myself a glass of wine — a small indulgence meant to dull the sharp edges of fatigue and anxiety.
My days had fallen into a monotonous repetition, a type of life that felt eerily reminiscent of the movie *Groundhog Day* — predictably repetitive, dutiful, and emotionally numbing. For years, I refused to confront that sense of suffocation, instead investing immense energy into the pursuit of external validation. I looked everywhere but within: the next raise, the next title, the next company, the next luxurious vacation. Each milestone offered only fleeting satisfaction before the familiar restlessness returned. I had convinced myself that reshaping my outer world would somehow soothe the unease within. Yet, at some unconscious level, I may have been using this constant striving as a distraction from a more painful truth — I was not truly living my own life, and worse, I was profoundly unhappy inhabiting a version of life borrowed from someone else’s expectations.
What I could not yet grasp was how deeply I had been conditioned to view my worth, efficiency, and value exclusively through the lens of others’ judgments. I had become so efficient at meeting external demands that I lost the ability to discern what genuinely mattered to me. In my pursuit of excellence, I disposed of the most precious aspects of my inner world — my focus, time, and vitality — as though they were mere remnants unworthy of protection. Like a fisherman tossing scraps back into the sea, I continually sacrificed my essence to feed societal definitions of success, duty, and discipline.
Then came that pivotal Friday evening. Something subtle within me shifted — a pressure that had long been buried began to rise to the surface. The internal voice that had whispered faintly for years finally demanded to be heard. And for the first time, I stopped running. I allowed the question to reverberate, not as an idle complaint, but as a sincere inquiry. For the first time, I truly listened — not to the voices of colleagues, culture, or obligation, but to the faint but insistent truth whispered by my own heart.
Like countless others, I had pursued success with single-minded devotion, believing that fulfillment could be captured through achievement. Yet my longing carried a particular intensity, perhaps shaped by the circumstances of my upbringing and the unspoken desire to live a life radically different from the one I had witnessed growing up. I sought freedom, and I was convinced the only path to that freedom was through accomplishment — through the socially sanctioned symbols of success.
Determined to build a better future, I became the first in my family to earn a bachelor’s degree. That journey required resourcefulness and grit: I navigated a demanding academic schedule while juggling work-study positions, grants, student loans, and scholarships. Every step was powered by the mantra that where there is will, there is a way. My perseverance paid off — I graduated magna cum laude, soon secured a position in client services at Reuters, and by twenty-four, I had packed my belongings and relocated to New York City without knowing a single person there. What followed was another benchmark of success — a recruitment into a prestigious role as a business analyst at Goldman Sachs.
On paper, my reality appeared enviable. I had what many might define as the complete package: prestige, stability, and the thrill of achievement. However, beneath that polished exterior, a quieter, more troubling story was beginning to unfold. My body became the first to register the truth I refused to acknowledge. It began communicating through distress — searing migraines, unexplained skin rashes, fainting episodes, and anxiety attacks that felt like my nervous system imploding. My body knew what my mind could not admit: that beneath my professional attire and polished composure, I was still functioning in survival mode. I had merely traded scarcity for sophistication — fast food for fine dining, but the same restless energy consumed me.
My years at Goldman Sachs tested every aspect of my resilience. The culture rewarded micromanagement and constant output more than creativity or compassion. It was a system that revered endurance over empathy. For years, I found myself answering to managers — often women — wrestling with their own insecurities and projecting them onto others. I tried to meet impossible standards, striving not only to succeed but to be liked, to be seen as deserving. I worked tirelessly to outrun exhaustion and muffle the quiet panic that rose within me each day. I replaced intuition with ambition, exchanged inner stillness for outward recognition, and bartered my mental health for fleeting validation. That was the formula I had internalized since childhood — that relentless effort was the price of success.
The deterioration of my well-being wasn’t due solely to the external pressures of a rigorous career. The root cause lay deeper — I had never learned how to nurture the mental and emotional skills necessary to guard my time, energy, and peace. I didn’t yet know how to lead from within, to honor boundaries, or to recognize that high performance does not require self-erasure.
As I ascended into higher leadership roles within Fortune 500 companies, the speed of life increased exponentially. Titles grew fancier, decisions carried heavier weight, and expectations became all-consuming. But surprisingly, it wasn’t the organizations themselves that broke me; it was my unrelenting approach to them. I continued to sacrifice myself in the name of excellence — attending to everyone and everything except my own needs. I was perpetually chasing perfection, craving new measures of success, unable to rest in sufficiency. To be content felt, perversely, like settling. Gratitude, which should have grounded me, instead felt like a betrayal of ambition.
And eventually, the truth could no longer be disguised. After marrying Craig, having children, and relocating to suburban Chicago, I found myself one ordinary evening standing in the center of the life I had meticulously constructed — a life that, from the outside, seemed idyllic. There was the spacious house, the enviable salary, the respect of peers, and the carefully maintained social life. Yet inwardly, I was profoundly numb, consumed by a bleak hollowness that no accolade could fill.
The professional milestones I had fought so fiercely to achieve now rang hollow. Each day felt like a battle against exhaustion, a never-ending cycle of doing more to feel less. Slowly, and with painful clarity, I understood that the life I had been pursuing was never truly mine. It was an inheritance — an unexamined collection of beliefs, expectations, and ambitions passed down through culture and circumstance. In fulfilling it, I had succeeded by conventional definition but lost connection with my own authenticity. I had avoided my mother’s hardships and honored promises made long ago beside my father’s hospital bed, yet in doing so, I had drifted far from the essence of who I aspired to become.
That revelation marked not an end but the beginning of a lifelong reorientation — a conscious movement away from survival mode toward a life shaped by intention, balance, and inner sustainability.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/career-coach-to-top-executives-author-erin-coupe-excerpt-2025-11
