This past summer, I thought I was taking a pause to get back in touch with what matters most. What I didn’t expect was to discover just how much my relentless ambition in recent years has been costing me. Not just in energy or health, but in ways that cut so much deeper. Ways that have compromised my integrity, damaged a friendship I treasured, and showed me that sometimes the very drive that creates success can also destroy everything that makes that success meaningful.

So today, I’m sharing the lessons that have changed everything for me this summer and why I’m making a decision that might surprise you. This is my debrief from the Summer Secret Series, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s about the courage to change course and listen to your soul when your shoulds are calling very loudly.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello my friend, and welcome to today’s Summer Secrets debrief. I’m recording this from my very quiet little corner of the world in the beautiful mountains of Andorra. And there’s something so fitting about the stillness around me today as I share what has been perhaps one of the most confronting and transformative summers of my life.

If you’ve been following my Summer Secret Series, you know I started this journey thirteen weeks ago thinking I needed a simple pause, a reset. But what unfolded for me was a complete reawakening. Not just to what matters most, but to just how radically we sometimes need to evolve our approach to achieving it as we move through different seasons of our lives. Especially the season of midlife.

And I questioned sharing what I’m about to share with you today because it’s not the usual kind of inspiration I aim to show up and deliver each week here on the podcast. But at the end of the day, this is the realness of life. And I know if I’m going through this, there’s a really good chance that you will relate on some level too.

To be honest, I think what I have to share is the grittiness of midlife that needs to be discussed at more tables where women sit. It’s a messy unglamorous parts of the evolution that is imposed on us by Mother Nature that so many of us resist and struggle through unnecessarily alone, often with a sense of shame and embarrassment that really puts a dent in our self-esteem.

So my friend today, I’m bringing you behind the scenes in a very raw and intimate way to share what my summer pause asked me to hear. And it feels a little difficult for me to share all of this with you but what I know is, the most powerful conversations often come from the most challenging experiences.

Let me take you back to earlier this year in the lead up to launching a new offer as part of the work I’ve been doing in my high-level mastermind. I was working particularly long hours under a lot of pressure to meet some upcoming deadlines. And I’m no stranger to dedicating time like this to projects when it’s called for. My ability to do that has always served me very well.

But this time everything was quite honestly a blur. My midlife brain fog was at an all-time high, and some days I didn’t know if I was Arthur or Martha. If you’ve experienced this you know exactly what I mean, right? It’s like suddenly you can’t keep track of your commitments. Entire conversations disappear from your memory. And it seems like you can’t put two coherent words together. And if you haven’t experienced this yet, I’m here for you when the time comes, my friend. Because that midlife brain fog, that mental exhaustion? It is very, very real.

Anyway looking back, I can see that I was running on pure adrenaline hustling my way through a level of exhaustion that I did not want to admit I had. Telling myself to just keep pushing through to the other side because that kind of grit and determination to push through has led me to my greatest successes time and time again over the years.

I was in complete denial about how midlife was impacting my ability to pursue my goals in the way I have always done so. Honestly? To admit that I wasn’t capable of working at the level I was used to seemed like the ultimate defeat. Like I was somehow giving in to this business of aging and with it my power to go on and achieve my bigger and bolder dreams. No, this midlife slowdown business was not for me.

And it is during this period of time that I made a mistake in both my business and personal life that I never ever thought I would be capable of making. A very costly mistake but one that has become my greatest wake up call this summer, for which I am very grateful.

Here’s what happened.

As I prepared to launch my new offer, I was busy gathering results and testimonials from the women I had worked with over the years. But there was one story in particular I really wanted to share because it’s a story that I hold very deeply in my heart. The story of a dear friend who has been my greatest supporter since day one in my coaching business.

Her achievement of a major goal through the early work we did together in a retreat has always been a foundational source of inspiration for me whenever times got tough over the years. It would remind me of just how much what I do truly can change lives. How much it matters.

So I asked her, could I share her story and photo. And she didn’t hesitate in saying YES!, because that’s the kind of woman she is. Generous, supportive, always willing to help me in my business endeavors in whatever way she can.

Here’s the thing. I drafted her story with every intention of getting it back to her for her final approval, and then it completely disappeared into some black hole in my brain. The drafted email with her story included got sent some weeks later and I did not even realize it went out. That’s how overloaded my midlife brain really was at the time.

And it wasn’t until many weeks later in the space of my summer pause when my messages to her were going un answered that I realized what had happened. It was one of those heart in your throat moments. I had seriously stuffed up. And I owned up to my mistake immediately. I apologized. I hoped that she would see how completely out of character it was for me. But at the end of the day, I betrayed her trust in me. And she had every right to be upset and choose to end our friendship, which heartbreakingly she did.

I have to tell you, it has been really quite devastating. A friendship I deeply valued. A woman I admire and respect. A friendship that has so much life-changing history on both sides. Yet in my refusal to acknowledge that I was operating beyond my capacity, I betrayed not just her trust and our friendship, but I betrayed my own values. And I compromised one of my highest values, my integrity.

That has weighed very heavily on me this summer. It made me realize that my relentless drive to achieve my goals wasn’t just affecting me anymore. It was compromising everything and everyone I valued most. It was certainly some wake up call.

And if you’ve ever unintentionally done something wrong by someone, you’ll know how heavy and painful it feels to know you’ve inflicted hurt on someone you deeply care about and not be able to right your wrong. But sometimes our heaviest and most painful experiences carry our most important messages. And they’re heavy because sometimes it’s the only way we’ll stop to listen.

For me, I came to see this lesson wasn’t just about integrity and friendship. It was my soul’s way of saying, “Stop. Look around you. See what’s happening when you refuse to honor the changes your body and mind are going through.”

The reality is my mistake wasn’t really about overlooking that approval. It was about operating from a place of complete disconnection from my own needs, my own limits, and my own humanity. It was about being so one-sided with my ambition and pushing so hard towards external achievement that I lost touch with the internal alignment that makes that achievement meaningful. The very same internal alignment I worked so hard to achieve some years ago.

I can tell you the irony was not lost on me. Here I was running a coaching business that helps women across the globe transform their lives in the same way I had many years before. And the way I was going about that was slowly destroying the very things that made my own successful transformation so meaningful. My ambition and determination was compromising what truly matters most. Things like my relationships, my health, my integrity, my peace of mind.

I realized I had fallen into the exact trap I helped my clients get out of. The exact trap I worked so hard to get out of myself all those years ago in my personal life. I had become so focused once again on building external success that I’d lost touch with what actually makes it feel successful on the inside.

It’s a familiar lesson for me. It’s not my first rendezvous with compromising internal success for external success. And that this lesson was being delivered to me yet again, that’s when I knew my relationship with ambition needed to change. Not just temporarily, but fundamentally. Because really this wasn’t sustainable anymore, and it was high time for that to be okay. But even more importantly, it’s no longer who I want to be.

So, while I may have lost a friendship and that loss is very real and it will hurt for a time to come, I gained something equally precious. I gained the clarity to see that my relationship with ambition had once again become toxic. That my relentless determination had become detrimental determination.

And in the space of my summer pause, that clarity exposed me to all the other ways this pattern was again showing up in my life. Because when you’re running on empty for too long, when your nervous system is in overdrive and your brain is in fog mode, you don’t just make one mistake, right? You make a pattern of decisions that aren’t aligned with who you want to be.

And oh boy, I could see them clearly. Not just in business decisions I wouldn’t normally make, but in the gentle strain I was placing on my marriage from always being ‘on’ in my business. In the slow deterioration of my health because fitness kept getting pushed to after this launch, after this goal, after this milestone.

The friendship loss was truly devastating, yes. And it was also the wake up call that may have saved everything else I value you most.

Look, I’ll be honest. For years, my ambition has been my superpower. It has helped me escape situations that weren’t working, create opportunities that didn’t exist, build a life I truly love. I could outwork outthink, and out hustle just about anyone with my ambition. And I wore that capacity like a badge of honor.

But what I was refusing to see is that midlife changes the rules of engagement. Our bodies start demanding that we listen in ways we could ignore in our twenties and thirties, maybe even into our forties. What used to be sustainable with coffee, grit and sleep in on Sundays, suddenly isn’t.

And it’s hard to let go, right? It’s hard to change parts of us that we don’t want to change. It’s hard to need to do things differently when we are quite happy doing things the way we always have. But here’s where I’ve landed this summer on that. This isn’t about becoming weaker. This is about becoming wiser. It’s about creating a sustainable relationship with success that honors both our ambition and our humanity.

The exhaustion that felt so defeating to admit, I now realize it was actually my body’s internal intelligence trying to protect everything I’d already worked so hard to build. So instead of seeing this change of pace as a limitation, I’m learning to see it as simply my next evolution. As an invitation to evolve that I can resist or I can intentionally shape and take part in it.

Midlife changes the rules of the game, whether we want to admit it or not. And when the rules change, so too must our identity and how we identify success and achievement under these new rules.

My friend, if you’re recognizing yourself in this story, if you’ve been operating beyond your capacity, telling yourself to just push through to the other side—I want you to pause for a moment and consider what relationships or values might you be compromising without realizing it? Take an honest look at your own life right now. Are you making decisions you wouldn’t normally make? Missing details that matter to you? Feeling like you’re always ‘on’?

These aren’t character flaws, they’re signals. They’re a deeper part of you asking for your attention. And I hope by sharing my story with you today that you might be realizing the importance of giving them your attention. You don’t have to wait to lose a valued friendship or hit complete burnout to change the way you play the game.

Now, let me bring you back to what it was that really started this whole summer pause for me, a soul versus shoulds test. If you listened in to episode seventy-four, you’ll remember me talking about this.

Earlier this year, I decided on an audacious goal that felt big and exciting and worthy of marking my upcoming fiftieth birthday. But pretty quickly I was met with the question, “Is this should YES! because it’s my fiftieth and it should be a grand event?” Or, “Is it a soul YES! because it truly matters to my life experience?”

And I didn’t share what that goal was at the time, but I wanted to perform in the Carnivale in Rio next year. Not just go to the Carnivale, but actually take part in it. It’s something that’s been on my list of goals for around twenty-five years. But you see, as I started mapping out that goal, I realized it was going to demand a whole lot more for me than I first thought. It wasn’t just a case of booking tickets and boarding a plane.

If you’ve been listening in for a while, you’ll know I have been a lifelong dancer but I haven’t danced for quite some time now. And as I’ve been sharing, my focus on building my business over the past few years has meant my fitness has gone completely sideways. So I knew I was going to have to train really hard to be up to the challenge of this goal and well, to look my best in one of those cheeky little wheel outfits, right?

Then there was the logistics. The amount of time I need to spend in Rio for rehearsals, both the time and financial cost, and the sacrifice. Because spending all that time in Rio would mean we’d have a whole lot less time to take in other places in South America during our travel. And this would be my first trip to South America. So of course, I wanted to see as much as possible.

There was just so much research and planning and getting all of the moving parts for this trip to align. And it felt pretty overwhelming. So I knew I was going to need to be sure about the why behind this goal, because I was already secretly feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, right?

And during my summer pause as I was sitting with what my health and fitness really needed, I knew that YES! they needed to be a priority, but not for the reason of this goal. I could see how in many ways pursuing this goal would actually drive me back into pushing through mode. And that is the very last thing my body needs right now. My body is asking me for slow, sure progress that isn’t tied to the demand of any deadline. And sometimes, we just need to respect the timing of things in our life.

This Carnivale goal would be a great achievement, a bucket list experience, and truly a once in a lifetime thing to do. But right now what matters more to me is to spend time with my husband enjoying our travels and exploring as much of the world together as we can. Not weeks on end rehearsals for one night in the Sambadrome.

So, we will go to the carnivale. I have booked tickets and I am very excited. But I will not dance in it. On this trip in any case, because I’ll not say never. I just know that right now other things matter more. And who knows? Maybe I make the connections I need on this trip to make that goal so much easier down the track.

My friend, I really do believe that life is happening perfectly for each and every one of us. We might not always understand why things are happening as they are, but with hindsight, generally we can see how one thing led to another and to another and how much happier we are because of that.

So think about a goal that you’re currently pursuing. Maybe one that you’re pushing through on too. And ask yourself the same question I asked back at the start of summer. Is this coming from should energy, because you think you should want it, because you think you should achieve it? Or soul energy, because it truly lights you up from the inside? And trust what comes up for you.

Now I want to bring all of this home for you because here’s where all of this really came home from me.

As I was going through this process of letting go of the Carnivale goal in its original form, I started to see all of the shoulds that had reappeared in my life. Shoulds are something I’ve worked very hard to let go of over the years, but I realized that my relentless determination to keep pursuing the original goals I’d set in my business was being fueled by a whole list of shoulds.

“I should, because I’ve spent so much time working towards them.” “I should, because what people think if I suddenly change path.” “I should, because I’m capable of doing so.” “I should, because I always finish what I start.” “I should, because I’m good at what I do and the difference I can make matters.”

The more I tuned into the soul versus shoulds test, the more I realized just how many shoulds were behind me continuing to push forward on goals that were draining my soul. And not because I don’t love the kind of work I do. My work it gives me so much satisfaction. Seeing women change their lives, fall in love with themselves, and design a life they love waking up to? I mean, I’ve lived that change and nothing fills my soul more than when I see that happen for other women.

But what was draining me was the way in which I was approaching my work and building my business. It was my ambition, my relentless drive, my determination that no longer aligned with my midlife evolution. And it was almost sucking all of the life right out of me, which is no way to show up and serve anyone.

And what I realized, again with the benefit of hindsight, is that YES! I had stopped living according to my shoulds in my personal life, but I filled that void right up again with shoulds in my business life. And from the lessons of my summer pause, I know it’s absolutely time for me to shatter that next level of shoulds and shake things up.

What about you? Do any of those shoulds sound familiar? Have you stopped to consider what shoulds, if any, are driving your current goals? Maybe it’s time you also shatter your shoulds and shake things up.

So listen, with all of that said, I had hoped to tell you today what’s next for me and what’s next for The Self-Creation School. But the honest answer to that is, I haven’t yet decided. Because my soul is asking me not to rush what’s next. I have ideas. I’m sitting with them. I’m having conversations with my future self in each one of those ideas to see if she is someone I really want to spend my time becoming.

But what I do know for sure right now is this. I created a personal life I love. I’ve reinvented myself and shattered the shoulds that kept me tied to people, places, and things that did not serve me. Now it’s time to lovingly do the same for my business. To create a business like I have a personal life, one I love every bit of. One where I savor the moments instead of rushing through them to get to the next milestone and meet my next deadline. One that feels every bit as good as it looks.

I’m about to turn fifty, and I’m really feeling like the next chapter day is ready to start. And it’s a chapter that leaves my old hustling ways behind, as much as they may have served me over the years. This gradual build up to the exhaustion I’ve finally admitted this summer has been life teaching me that I cannot sustain ambition the way I have been. That it’s time for my relationship with ambition to change and evolve alongside the changes and evolution that comes with my fifty-year-old body.

And I’m not saying it’s all over that I can no longer achieve great things. Not for a minute. I feel like my best work is yet to come. And I feel like stripping back this next level of shoulds and building a vastly different relationship with ambition is what will enable me to produce it.

And that brings me to what this means for this podcast and for you, my dear friend.

This may come as a surprise, but this will be my last episode for now at least. I am taking a longer, deeper pause before I decide what’s next for both me and The Self-Creation School. And I have to say, at a time when my podcast has exploded, crazily exploded, this decision does feel a little scary on the should level. But it also feels very right at the soul level.

I’m also stepping away from all of my regular weekly content. Which means if you have been one of my avid loyal readers of CREATED my weekly email, issue number one hundred and five this week is the last one to hit your inbox.

But before I close this out today, I want to leave you with some questions that have been guiding me through this process. Questions that I hope will serve you just as powerfully as you navigate your own relationship with midlife, ambition, and what truly matters in your life.

What if there is no rush? What if you can’t get this wrong? What if you don’t achieve that goal you’ve been chasing? And what if setting it aside opens the door to the path you’re really meant to follow?

Listen, a life you love isn’t built on shoulds or on a timeline. It’s built on soul deep YESES!. And conversations at that level sometimes need space. They sometimes need no schedule. But they will always lead you to places you never dreamed of going. Places that bring that next level peace, joy, and happiness you seek.

If you haven’t listened to episode seventy-four, “What Matters, Truly”, where I talk about the soul versus shoulds test, I highly encourage you to go back and listen in or re-listen. I feel like it really brings the thirteen Summer Secrets I shared all the way home. And then take a look back through all of the conversations I’ve shared with you over the last eighty-eight podcast episodes to see what speaks to you next. I’ve always found that what attracts your attention is what you most need to hear right now.

Which brings me to the end of this episode. If you would like to hear what’s next for me, do be sure to follow me over my socials to stay connected, and I look forward to sharing more with you as things unfold for me.

It has been an absolute privilege to have your company on this podcast. Thank you for listening, for sharing, for being a part of this community of women who are ready to say YES! to themselves and create lives they wildly love.

Remember, sometimes the bravest thing you can do is change course when your soul is calling for something different.

Until we meet again, be the woman who says YES!.

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my free 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

This past summer, I thought I was taking a pause to get back in touch with what matters most. What I didn’t expect was to discover just how much my relentless ambition in recent years has been costing me. Not just in energy or health, but in ways that cut so much deeper. Ways that have compromised my integrity, damaged a friendship I treasured, and showed me that sometimes the very drive that creates success can also destroy everything that makes that success meaningful.

So today, I’m sharing the lessons that have changed everything for me this summer and why I’m making a decision that might surprise you. This is my debrief from the Summer Secret Series, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s about the courage to change course and listen to your soul when your shoulds are calling very loudly.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello my friend, and welcome to today’s Summer Secrets debrief. I’m recording this from my very quiet little corner of the world in the beautiful mountains of Andorra. And there’s something so fitting about the stillness around me today as I share what has been perhaps one of the most confronting and transformative summers of my life.

If you’ve been following my Summer Secret Series, you know I started this journey thirteen weeks ago thinking I needed a simple pause, a reset. But what unfolded for me was a complete reawakening. Not just to what matters most, but to just how radically we sometimes need to evolve our approach to achieving it as we move through different seasons of our lives. Especially the season of midlife.

And I questioned sharing what I’m about to share with you today because it’s not the usual kind of inspiration I aim to show up and deliver each week here on the podcast. But at the end of the day, this is the realness of life. And I know if I’m going through this, there’s a really good chance that you will relate on some level too.

To be honest, I think what I have to share is the grittiness of midlife that needs to be discussed at more tables where women sit. It’s a messy unglamorous parts of the evolution that is imposed on us by Mother Nature that so many of us resist and struggle through unnecessarily alone, often with a sense of shame and embarrassment that really puts a dent in our self-esteem.

So my friend today, I’m bringing you behind the scenes in a very raw and intimate way to share what my summer pause asked me to hear. And it feels a little difficult for me to share all of this with you but what I know is, the most powerful conversations often come from the most challenging experiences.

Let me take you back to earlier this year in the lead up to launching a new offer as part of the work I’ve been doing in my high-level mastermind. I was working particularly long hours under a lot of pressure to meet some upcoming deadlines. And I’m no stranger to dedicating time like this to projects when it’s called for. My ability to do that has always served me very well.

But this time everything was quite honestly a blur. My midlife brain fog was at an all-time high, and some days I didn’t know if I was Arthur or Martha. If you’ve experienced this you know exactly what I mean, right? It’s like suddenly you can’t keep track of your commitments. Entire conversations disappear from your memory. And it seems like you can’t put two coherent words together. And if you haven’t experienced this yet, I’m here for you when the time comes, my friend. Because that midlife brain fog, that mental exhaustion? It is very, very real.

Anyway looking back, I can see that I was running on pure adrenaline hustling my way through a level of exhaustion that I did not want to admit I had. Telling myself to just keep pushing through to the other side because that kind of grit and determination to push through has led me to my greatest successes time and time again over the years.

I was in complete denial about how midlife was impacting my ability to pursue my goals in the way I have always done so. Honestly? To admit that I wasn’t capable of working at the level I was used to seemed like the ultimate defeat. Like I was somehow giving in to this business of aging and with it my power to go on and achieve my bigger and bolder dreams. No, this midlife slowdown business was not for me.

And it is during this period of time that I made a mistake in both my business and personal life that I never ever thought I would be capable of making. A very costly mistake but one that has become my greatest wake up call this summer, for which I am very grateful.

Here’s what happened.

As I prepared to launch my new offer, I was busy gathering results and testimonials from the women I had worked with over the years. But there was one story in particular I really wanted to share because it’s a story that I hold very deeply in my heart. The story of a dear friend who has been my greatest supporter since day one in my coaching business.

Her achievement of a major goal through the early work we did together in a retreat has always been a foundational source of inspiration for me whenever times got tough over the years. It would remind me of just how much what I do truly can change lives. How much it matters.

So I asked her, could I share her story and photo. And she didn’t hesitate in saying YES!, because that’s the kind of woman she is. Generous, supportive, always willing to help me in my business endeavors in whatever way she can.

Here’s the thing. I drafted her story with every intention of getting it back to her for her final approval, and then it completely disappeared into some black hole in my brain. The drafted email with her story included got sent some weeks later and I did not even realize it went out. That’s how overloaded my midlife brain really was at the time.

And it wasn’t until many weeks later in the space of my summer pause when my messages to her were going un answered that I realized what had happened. It was one of those heart in your throat moments. I had seriously stuffed up. And I owned up to my mistake immediately. I apologized. I hoped that she would see how completely out of character it was for me. But at the end of the day, I betrayed her trust in me. And she had every right to be upset and choose to end our friendship, which heartbreakingly she did.

I have to tell you, it has been really quite devastating. A friendship I deeply valued. A woman I admire and respect. A friendship that has so much life-changing history on both sides. Yet in my refusal to acknowledge that I was operating beyond my capacity, I betrayed not just her trust and our friendship, but I betrayed my own values. And I compromised one of my highest values, my integrity.

That has weighed very heavily on me this summer. It made me realize that my relentless drive to achieve my goals wasn’t just affecting me anymore. It was compromising everything and everyone I valued most. It was certainly some wake up call.

And if you’ve ever unintentionally done something wrong by someone, you’ll know how heavy and painful it feels to know you’ve inflicted hurt on someone you deeply care about and not be able to right your wrong. But sometimes our heaviest and most painful experiences carry our most important messages. And they’re heavy because sometimes it’s the only way we’ll stop to listen.

For me, I came to see this lesson wasn’t just about integrity and friendship. It was my soul’s way of saying, “Stop. Look around you. See what’s happening when you refuse to honor the changes your body and mind are going through.”

The reality is my mistake wasn’t really about overlooking that approval. It was about operating from a place of complete disconnection from my own needs, my own limits, and my own humanity. It was about being so one-sided with my ambition and pushing so hard towards external achievement that I lost touch with the internal alignment that makes that achievement meaningful. The very same internal alignment I worked so hard to achieve some years ago.

I can tell you the irony was not lost on me. Here I was running a coaching business that helps women across the globe transform their lives in the same way I had many years before. And the way I was going about that was slowly destroying the very things that made my own successful transformation so meaningful. My ambition and determination was compromising what truly matters most. Things like my relationships, my health, my integrity, my peace of mind.

I realized I had fallen into the exact trap I helped my clients get out of. The exact trap I worked so hard to get out of myself all those years ago in my personal life. I had become so focused once again on building external success that I’d lost touch with what actually makes it feel successful on the inside.

It’s a familiar lesson for me. It’s not my first rendezvous with compromising internal success for external success. And that this lesson was being delivered to me yet again, that’s when I knew my relationship with ambition needed to change. Not just temporarily, but fundamentally. Because really this wasn’t sustainable anymore, and it was high time for that to be okay. But even more importantly, it’s no longer who I want to be.

So, while I may have lost a friendship and that loss is very real and it will hurt for a time to come, I gained something equally precious. I gained the clarity to see that my relationship with ambition had once again become toxic. That my relentless determination had become detrimental determination.

And in the space of my summer pause, that clarity exposed me to all the other ways this pattern was again showing up in my life. Because when you’re running on empty for too long, when your nervous system is in overdrive and your brain is in fog mode, you don’t just make one mistake, right? You make a pattern of decisions that aren’t aligned with who you want to be.

And oh boy, I could see them clearly. Not just in business decisions I wouldn’t normally make, but in the gentle strain I was placing on my marriage from always being ‘on’ in my business. In the slow deterioration of my health because fitness kept getting pushed to after this launch, after this goal, after this milestone.

The friendship loss was truly devastating, yes. And it was also the wake up call that may have saved everything else I value you most.

Look, I’ll be honest. For years, my ambition has been my superpower. It has helped me escape situations that weren’t working, create opportunities that didn’t exist, build a life I truly love. I could outwork outthink, and out hustle just about anyone with my ambition. And I wore that capacity like a badge of honor.

But what I was refusing to see is that midlife changes the rules of engagement. Our bodies start demanding that we listen in ways we could ignore in our twenties and thirties, maybe even into our forties. What used to be sustainable with coffee, grit and sleep in on Sundays, suddenly isn’t.

And it’s hard to let go, right? It’s hard to change parts of us that we don’t want to change. It’s hard to need to do things differently when we are quite happy doing things the way we always have. But here’s where I’ve landed this summer on that. This isn’t about becoming weaker. This is about becoming wiser. It’s about creating a sustainable relationship with success that honors both our ambition and our humanity.

The exhaustion that felt so defeating to admit, I now realize it was actually my body’s internal intelligence trying to protect everything I’d already worked so hard to build. So instead of seeing this change of pace as a limitation, I’m learning to see it as simply my next evolution. As an invitation to evolve that I can resist or I can intentionally shape and take part in it.

Midlife changes the rules of the game, whether we want to admit it or not. And when the rules change, so too must our identity and how we identify success and achievement under these new rules.

My friend, if you’re recognizing yourself in this story, if you’ve been operating beyond your capacity, telling yourself to just push through to the other side—I want you to pause for a moment and consider what relationships or values might you be compromising without realizing it? Take an honest look at your own life right now. Are you making decisions you wouldn’t normally make? Missing details that matter to you? Feeling like you’re always ‘on’?

These aren’t character flaws, they’re signals. They’re a deeper part of you asking for your attention. And I hope by sharing my story with you today that you might be realizing the importance of giving them your attention. You don’t have to wait to lose a valued friendship or hit complete burnout to change the way you play the game.

Now, let me bring you back to what it was that really started this whole summer pause for me, a soul versus shoulds test. If you listened in to episode seventy-four, you’ll remember me talking about this.

Earlier this year, I decided on an audacious goal that felt big and exciting and worthy of marking my upcoming fiftieth birthday. But pretty quickly I was met with the question, “Is this should YES! because it’s my fiftieth and it should be a grand event?” Or, “Is it a soul YES! because it truly matters to my life experience?”

And I didn’t share what that goal was at the time, but I wanted to perform in the Carnivale in Rio next year. Not just go to the Carnivale, but actually take part in it. It’s something that’s been on my list of goals for around twenty-five years. But you see, as I started mapping out that goal, I realized it was going to demand a whole lot more for me than I first thought. It wasn’t just a case of booking tickets and boarding a plane.

If you’ve been listening in for a while, you’ll know I have been a lifelong dancer but I haven’t danced for quite some time now. And as I’ve been sharing, my focus on building my business over the past few years has meant my fitness has gone completely sideways. So I knew I was going to have to train really hard to be up to the challenge of this goal and well, to look my best in one of those cheeky little wheel outfits, right?

Then there was the logistics. The amount of time I need to spend in Rio for rehearsals, both the time and financial cost, and the sacrifice. Because spending all that time in Rio would mean we’d have a whole lot less time to take in other places in South America during our travel. And this would be my first trip to South America. So of course, I wanted to see as much as possible.

There was just so much research and planning and getting all of the moving parts for this trip to align. And it felt pretty overwhelming. So I knew I was going to need to be sure about the why behind this goal, because I was already secretly feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, right?

And during my summer pause as I was sitting with what my health and fitness really needed, I knew that YES! they needed to be a priority, but not for the reason of this goal. I could see how in many ways pursuing this goal would actually drive me back into pushing through mode. And that is the very last thing my body needs right now. My body is asking me for slow, sure progress that isn’t tied to the demand of any deadline. And sometimes, we just need to respect the timing of things in our life.

This Carnivale goal would be a great achievement, a bucket list experience, and truly a once in a lifetime thing to do. But right now what matters more to me is to spend time with my husband enjoying our travels and exploring as much of the world together as we can. Not weeks on end rehearsals for one night in the Sambadrome.

So, we will go to the carnivale. I have booked tickets and I am very excited. But I will not dance in it. On this trip in any case, because I’ll not say never. I just know that right now other things matter more. And who knows? Maybe I make the connections I need on this trip to make that goal so much easier down the track.

My friend, I really do believe that life is happening perfectly for each and every one of us. We might not always understand why things are happening as they are, but with hindsight, generally we can see how one thing led to another and to another and how much happier we are because of that.

So think about a goal that you’re currently pursuing. Maybe one that you’re pushing through on too. And ask yourself the same question I asked back at the start of summer. Is this coming from should energy, because you think you should want it, because you think you should achieve it? Or soul energy, because it truly lights you up from the inside? And trust what comes up for you.

Now I want to bring all of this home for you because here’s where all of this really came home from me.

As I was going through this process of letting go of the Carnivale goal in its original form, I started to see all of the shoulds that had reappeared in my life. Shoulds are something I’ve worked very hard to let go of over the years, but I realized that my relentless determination to keep pursuing the original goals I’d set in my business was being fueled by a whole list of shoulds.

“I should, because I’ve spent so much time working towards them.” “I should, because what people think if I suddenly change path.” “I should, because I’m capable of doing so.” “I should, because I always finish what I start.” “I should, because I’m good at what I do and the difference I can make matters.”

The more I tuned into the soul versus shoulds test, the more I realized just how many shoulds were behind me continuing to push forward on goals that were draining my soul. And not because I don’t love the kind of work I do. My work it gives me so much satisfaction. Seeing women change their lives, fall in love with themselves, and design a life they love waking up to? I mean, I’ve lived that change and nothing fills my soul more than when I see that happen for other women.

But what was draining me was the way in which I was approaching my work and building my business. It was my ambition, my relentless drive, my determination that no longer aligned with my midlife evolution. And it was almost sucking all of the life right out of me, which is no way to show up and serve anyone.

And what I realized, again with the benefit of hindsight, is that YES! I had stopped living according to my shoulds in my personal life, but I filled that void right up again with shoulds in my business life. And from the lessons of my summer pause, I know it’s absolutely time for me to shatter that next level of shoulds and shake things up.

What about you? Do any of those shoulds sound familiar? Have you stopped to consider what shoulds, if any, are driving your current goals? Maybe it’s time you also shatter your shoulds and shake things up.

So listen, with all of that said, I had hoped to tell you today what’s next for me and what’s next for The Self-Creation School. But the honest answer to that is, I haven’t yet decided. Because my soul is asking me not to rush what’s next. I have ideas. I’m sitting with them. I’m having conversations with my future self in each one of those ideas to see if she is someone I really want to spend my time becoming.

But what I do know for sure right now is this. I created a personal life I love. I’ve reinvented myself and shattered the shoulds that kept me tied to people, places, and things that did not serve me. Now it’s time to lovingly do the same for my business. To create a business like I have a personal life, one I love every bit of. One where I savor the moments instead of rushing through them to get to the next milestone and meet my next deadline. One that feels every bit as good as it looks.

I’m about to turn fifty, and I’m really feeling like the next chapter day is ready to start. And it’s a chapter that leaves my old hustling ways behind, as much as they may have served me over the years. This gradual build up to the exhaustion I’ve finally admitted this summer has been life teaching me that I cannot sustain ambition the way I have been. That it’s time for my relationship with ambition to change and evolve alongside the changes and evolution that comes with my fifty-year-old body.

And I’m not saying it’s all over that I can no longer achieve great things. Not for a minute. I feel like my best work is yet to come. And I feel like stripping back this next level of shoulds and building a vastly different relationship with ambition is what will enable me to produce it.

And that brings me to what this means for this podcast and for you, my dear friend.

This may come as a surprise, but this will be my last episode for now at least. I am taking a longer, deeper pause before I decide what’s next for both me and The Self-Creation School. And I have to say, at a time when my podcast has exploded, crazily exploded, this decision does feel a little scary on the should level. But it also feels very right at the soul level.

I’m also stepping away from all of my regular weekly content. Which means if you have been one of my avid loyal readers of CREATED my weekly email, issue number one hundred and five this week is the last one to hit your inbox.

But before I close this out today, I want to leave you with some questions that have been guiding me through this process. Questions that I hope will serve you just as powerfully as you navigate your own relationship with midlife, ambition, and what truly matters in your life.

What if there is no rush? What if you can’t get this wrong? What if you don’t achieve that goal you’ve been chasing? And what if setting it aside opens the door to the path you’re really meant to follow?

Listen, a life you love isn’t built on shoulds or on a timeline. It’s built on soul deep YESES!. And conversations at that level sometimes need space. They sometimes need no schedule. But they will always lead you to places you never dreamed of going. Places that bring that next level peace, joy, and happiness you seek.

If you haven’t listened to episode seventy-four, “What Matters, Truly”, where I talk about the soul versus shoulds test, I highly encourage you to go back and listen in or re-listen. I feel like it really brings the thirteen Summer Secrets I shared all the way home. And then take a look back through all of the conversations I’ve shared with you over the last eighty-eight podcast episodes to see what speaks to you next. I’ve always found that what attracts your attention is what you most need to hear right now.

Which brings me to the end of this episode. If you would like to hear what’s next for me, do be sure to follow me over my socials to stay connected, and I look forward to sharing more with you as things unfold for me.

It has been an absolute privilege to have your company on this podcast. Thank you for listening, for sharing, for being a part of this community of women who are ready to say YES! to themselves and create lives they wildly love.

Remember, sometimes the bravest thing you can do is change course when your soul is calling for something different.

Until we meet again, be the woman who says YES!.

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my free 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.