When the path to your purpose doesn’t look the way you thought it would

There’s a version of the entrepreneurship story we’ve all been sold – the one where you quit your job, bet on yourself, and never look back. The highlight reel. The linear ascent.

And then there’s the real version.

The one where you leave, come back, leave again, question everything, rebuild your nervous system from the ground up, and slowly, sometimes painfully, find your way back to yourself.

That’s the conversation Kelly Chase and I had on this week’s episode, and it’s one I think so many women need to hear.

The truth about building while healing

Kelly’s story isn’t the polished version, and that’s why I love it so much – so many of you will be able to relate with her. She left corporate America in 2017 after eight years, certified as a health coach, and started building. A year later, she was a participant on the hit Netflix show Love is Blind.

But here’s what most people don’t see behind the sudden visibility: she started 2019 with $30,000 in debt and no clients. The show aired in February 2020, right as the world shut down. And suddenly she was juggling a corporate job, a coaching business, brand deals, and a nervous system that was running on fumes.

A year to the day after the first episode aired, she had two back-to-back panic attacks. She’d never had one before.

Two weeks later, she left that job. And for the first time in a long time, she let herself feel.

“I think I cried every day for two weeks,” she shared. “Because I finally had time to feel. And I was crying because I had held all these emotions in – but I was also crying because I finally chose myself.”

The gift of going back

What struck me most about Kelly’s story is her honesty about returning to corporate work – not once, but twice. And how she’s reframed that choice.

So many of us carry this belief that going back to a nine-to-five means we’ve failed. That if we really wanted it, we’d make it work no matter what. I’ve heard coaches say things like, “If you don’t quit your job, you obviously don’t want it bad enough.”

I don’t believe that.

What I heard in Kelly’s story was something different – a woman who recognized that her nervous system needed a foundation. That stability wasn’t a sign of weakness. It was a boundary.

She’s been at her current job for three years now. And instead of seeing it as a limitation, she’s let it show her what she’s actually good at – building relationships, having high-level conversations, being present with people. It’s reflected back her gifts in ways she couldn’t see when she was spinning.

“I would not leave corporate America if I did not feel like I was in a grounded, regulated space,” she told me. “I don’t want to jump ship before it’s time to jump ship, because I don’t want to rock my boat again.”

That’s what I call empowered wisdom.

The knowing-doing gap

One of the things Kelly named that I think so many of us can relate to is what she called the “knowing-doing gap” – that space where you know what to do, but you’re not doing it. Or not doing it to the extent you know you’re capable of.

She’s invested in coaches. She’s done the programs. She’s read the books. And still, she found herself dimming her own light, questioning her content, feeling disconnected between who she was on her podcast and who she was showing up as on Instagram.

“I’m so unapologetic on my podcast,” she said. “But then on Instagram, I got this weird fear and imposter syndrome.”

I felt that deeply. There’s something about the energy of social media that can pull us out of our center if we’re not careful. We start looking at what’s working for other people, and before we know it, we’ve turned creative influence into creative control. We stop trusting ourselves.

Kelly named it so clearly: “The underlying theme of my whole last five years was self-abandonment.”

Coming home to yourself

What I love about where Kelly is now is that she’s not pretending she has it all figured out. She’s honest about the frustration. She’s honest about the seasons that felt like failure. And she’s honest about the slow, layered process of coming back to herself.

She talked about her daily rituals – walks, journaling, grounding practices. She shared how her spiritual journey deepened this past year in unexpected ways. And she spoke about the quote she keeps on her phone:

“God’s gift to you is more talent and ability than you will ever use in one lifetime. Your gift to God is to develop and utilize as much of that talent and ability as you can in this lifetime.”

That’s the energy she’s building from now. Not from lack. Not from pressure. From presence.

What Kelly’s story reminded me

Listening to her, I kept thinking about how many women are going through some version of this in isolation – feeling like they’re behind, feeling like they’re failing, feeling like everyone else has it figured out.

But everything Kelly described – the pivots, the panic attacks, the going back and starting over – I’ve seen so many iterations of that in my ten-plus years of doing this work. It’s not the exception. It’s often the rule.

And hearing her say it out loud, with so much honesty and grace, felt like medicine.

Her closing words landed deep in my body:

“Stay true to who you are as much as possible. Because the more you start being influenced by what you think is working for someone else, it’s going to pull you away from who you are. And then you’re in this cycle of self-abandonment… Stay connected. Stay off your phone. Create more than you consume.”

Create more than you consume.

I really agree wholeheartedly.

Kelly’s new offering

Kelly has a beautiful new program launching in 2026 called Becoming Her – all about saying no to the things that lead to burnout and self-abandonment, and yes to what’s actually aligned with your goals, your desires, and who you really are.

I’m excited for her. And I’m excited for the women who will find their way to her medicine.

This episode is now available on all major listening platforms, click below to listen!

Xoxo, Lauren

Listen on Apple Podcast!