For as long as I can remember, I’ve been driven by a need to “succeed” in order to feel valid, to
feel that I have a right to exist. I’ve worked really hard, doing whatever I was told (or perceived) was necessary in order to be okay – from modeling school at age 14 to working full time through high school, to being married with a child by age 21 while putting my then husband through medical school. No matter how much I accomplished, I never felt like I was okay – I never found “that” success that could finally validate my existence.
Growing a small business of less than 1 million in revenue and 15 employees to a thriving 15 million and 120 employees didn’t do it. Creating a software product line from scratch that was eventually purchased by a Fortune 500 company didn’t do it.
I could point to accomplishments, I could value my children and my friends… and none of it made me feel that I was okay.
I would jump from gerbil wheel to gerbil wheel, hoping that the next accomplishment would be the one to finally validate me. 
And now, years later, I’ve awakened to the fact that it doesn’t work the way I thought it did. I simply cannot succeed my way into feeling okay. It was like a drug. I kept needing more, and it was never enough. And, I still find myself doing it. I’ve found work in which I feel creative, motivated and of deep service, and then – seemingly out of nowhere, I trip and find myself face-flat on the gerbil wheel once again.
Sound familiar?
Even as I write this, I notice I’m not breathing… And I can see – I’m on a wheel again, and this time it ‘s a fear of public proof that I’m not okay.
This is what we do. All of us in our own unique ways… we’re pulled toward living fully (human), yet we bump up against our need to stay safe. That subtle, or not so subtle, part of me invokes my own unique (and not so unique) safety mechanisms. “Protecting” me from “threats” – and keeping me from the life I so quietly and deeply yearn for.
