Repetitions of patterns are habits. What if those repeated patterns are keeping you stuck?
Do you wake up and feel like you’re going through the motions?
From the outside it looks fine, you’re doing what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. The job, the relationship, the responsibilities. All of it functioning. All of it… fine.
But inside, not so fine.
Does it feel like you’re playing a role and you’re exhausted and bored of the performance?
The performance we don’t talk about.
I see this all the time in my coaching practice. People arrive feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, stuck. They describe themselves as tired, but when we dig deeper, it isn’t just the tiredness that comes from doing too much. It’s the exhaustion of being someone you’re not.
It is the editing and second-guessing every decision and conversation.
Performing for who?
Here’s what I’ve learned after nearly 20 years of coaching – the audience we’re perfoming for isn’t really paying attention to you. They’re too busy inside THEIR own heads.
Is it approval you are actually seeking?
Your parents? Your friends? Your colleagues? Who are usually too busy performing their own roles to notice yours?
Is it your own approval you are seeking? The version of yourself you thought you’d be by now? The one with the perfect career trajectory and the unshakeable confidence?
I remember when I was 23, spending a weekend on a coaching course with 150 other people. I discovered something profound, everyone in that room, from 18 to 91 years old, was spending an inordinate amount of time worrying about what other people were thinking of them.
What a hilarious farce.
We’re all so busy worrying about the imagined judgments of others that we’ve forgotten to ask ourselves what we actually want. We point our lense outwards instead of inwards to ask ourselves how we want to act and be, with free will.
Signs you’re performing and exhausted by it.
Does any of this sounds familiar?
You over-explain your decisions, even to yourself. “I’m doing this because…” followed by a list of very sensible, very acceptable reasons that have nothing to do with what you genuinely want.
You censor what you really think in conversations, always gauging what’s safe to say, what might land well, what version of yourself you should present in this particular context.
Someone asks how you are and you say “I’m fine” when you’re absolutely not fine, but admitting otherwise feels like it would require a level of vulnerability you can’t afford right now.
You’re curating rather than existing. Every choice, what you post, what you say, what you do, passes through a filter of “what will this look like?”
Sound exhausting? That’s because it is.
My Grandma’s regret.
I think about my Grandma often. She died at 99, and in her final years she told me something I’ll never forget. She regretted not really going for the things she wanted from life.
She wished she’d run a post office or a small shop. Not Everest. Not some grand ambition. Just this one thing that kept calling to her. But she never got around to it. She spent her life being sensible, being appropriate, being what she thought she should be.
It wasn’t time she ran out of, she lived to 99! It was courage to not seek permission.
The sadness I saw in her those last years stays with me. Not because she failed at something big, but because she spent a lifetime performing a role instead of choosing her own path. That included how she behaved around men too. That’s for another blog piece!
She told me, “Don’t waste a minute.” I carry that with me.
So let me ask you something.
Sit with this for a moment.
When did you stop asking what YOU actually want and start asking what looks right?
Was it gradual? A series of small compromises that felt reasonable at the time?
Did you edit yourself so slowly, so carefully, that you didn’t noticed that so much of life had become a performance?
I’m not saying you have to blow up your entire life. Just kindly notice where you’re performing instead of living. That exhaustion you’re feeling? That flat, grey tiredness that no amount of rest seems to cure? That could just be the bone-deep weariness of being someone you’re not.
What would change if you stopped performing?
Here’s what I know from working with hundreds of people over the years, the relief that comes when you stop performing is immediate. When you actively take action from a space of authenticity it feels great. The practice comes in the form of doing is just because, not always for a specific reaction or response from someone else. Bring your focus back to you. Do it for you, just because.
One of my clients put it perfectly: “I feel unknotted.”
So here’s my question for you.
What could possibly change this week if you stopped performing and acted from your honest self? Just one thing.
Maybe it’s saying what you actually think in a meeting instead of the diplomatic version.
Maybe it’s admitting to a friend that you’re not fine, actually, and you could use someone to talk to.
Maybe it’s spending Saturday morning doing something you genuinely want to do instead of something that looks productive or responsible.
Maybe it’s finally acknowledging that the path you’ve been on isn’t yours, it’s just the one you thought you were supposed to take.
A new trajectory. Choosing authenticity over performance.
You don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to know exactly what you want or where you’re going.
You can start noticing when you’re performing.
And then, one choice at a time, you start choosing differently.
This is the work I do with my clients, helping them see where they’ve been performing, untangling the mess of ‘shoulds’ and expectations, and creating space for what they actually want.
Not what looks good. Not what’s sensible. What’s true.
Because here’s what I’ve learned- Authenticity isn’t comfortable at first, but the exhaustion of performance is far more draining in the long run as it will continue to dim your fire.
If this resonates with you, if you’re ready to stop performing and start living, let’s talk. I’ve been coaching full-time since 2009, and I specialise in helping people untangle exactly this, the gap between who you’re being and who you actually are.
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