If you’ve ever built something successful and still felt like you were dying inside, this conversation might change the way you understand why.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from building something that looks good on the outside but feels misaligned on the inside. It’s not the tiredness that rest can fix. It’s deeper than that. It’s the kind of fatigue that whispers, this isn’t working anymore – even when the numbers say otherwise.

I’ve been there.

I remember the first five years of my entrepreneurial path, how much comparison lived in my body. I was constantly trying to fight and advocate for my worth with numerical data. If Instagram looked a certain way, I could feel good about myself. If it didn’t, I spiraled. The burnout and the success felt so intertwined that I genuinely didn’t know how to separate them. I thought that’s just what it took.

And then there was the season where everything fell apart financially – right in the middle of chronic illness, right when my nervous system was already taxed beyond capacity. The shame was unbearable. Not just the shame of struggling, but the shame of struggling while teaching other people how to succeed. I couldn’t face the part of me that felt like a failure. I didn’t want to look at her.

When success stops feeling like success

What I’ve come to understand is that so many of us build businesses and lives that we eventually outgrow. The container that once held us starts to feel too small. The pace that once felt exciting starts to feel like a prison. And the version of success we worked so hard to create starts asking more of us than we have left to give.

That’s what I call evolution, baby.

But it doesn’t feel like evolution when you’re in it. It feels like something is wrong with you. It feels like you should be grateful, like you should be able to handle it, like everyone else seems to be doing just fine…

The truth is, I had to learn the hard way that my body will always tell me when something isn’t working. I just wasn’t listening. I had such a history of overriding her signals – from childhood trauma, from conditioning, from years of pushing through – that I genuinely couldn’t tell the difference between fear and intuition, between exhaustion and laziness, between a real no and resistance.

The year everything clicked

Something shifted for me a few years ago. The first year I hit the million dollar level in my business, I actually wasn’t trying so hard to make it happen. I was making my life as good as I wanted to make it. I was finding all the ways to make business feel yummy and delicious. And then it happened.

That taught me something I’ll never forget: the energy matters. How you build matters. You can white-knuckle your way to a certain level of success, but you can’t sustain it from that place. And eventually, your body will make the decision for you.

A conversation about building without losing yourself

This week’s episode of The World Needs Your Medicine brought all of these themes rushing back.

Amanda Bucci joined me for one of the most honest conversations I’ve had about entrepreneurship, burnout, and what it actually takes to rebuild from scratch. Amanda was one of the first fitness influencers, built a seven-figure business by her mid-twenties, and then experienced what she calls “business injuries” – the kind of burnout that creates subconscious beliefs pairing success with suffering.

She spent five years in what she describes as a void space. Not pushing hard for the next thing. Just going deep into herself, uncovering her spiritual gifts, and asking the hard question: Is there a way to build without abandoning myself?

What struck me most was her clarity around protecting her sensitivity. She shared how her body started shutting down when she took on energy that wasn’t hers – getting sick, becoming exhausted, unable to work the way she wanted to. And instead of numbing or armoring back up, she made a choice. She said, We just increased our wattage. Going backwards isn’t an option.

The questions that change everything

One of the things Amanda shared that I keep coming back to is the set of questions she asks herself now:

Am I actually in flow, or am I just in comfort? Is it time to push, or is it time to pull back? Is it time to challenge myself, or is it time to take a rest?

These questions require brutal honesty. They require you to know yourself well enough to catch your own shadow hiding in comfort zones disguised as alignment. They require you to care more about your wellbeing than your output.

And that’s the real shift, isn’t it?

You don’t have to choose between ambition and aliveness

What both Amanda and I kept circling back to in this conversation is that you don’t have to give up your dreams to have your health. You don’t have to sacrifice your relationships to build something meaningful. You don’t have to abandon yourself to be successful.

There is a way to build that honors your body, your sensitivity, and your expansion.

It’s slower. It requires more honesty. It asks you to leave money on the table sometimes. It demands that you stop comparing your timeline to everyone else’s.

But it’s sustainable. And it’s yours.

A reflection for wherever you are

If you’ve been feeling the weight of what you’ve built… If your body has been asking you to slow down and you haven’t been listening… If you’ve been carrying shame about not being where you thought you’d be by now…

I hope this conversation gives you permission.

Permission to protect your sensitivity. Permission to rebuild from scratch if you need to. Permission to trust that the version of success meant for you doesn’t require you to lose yourself in the process.

This episode is now live – I can’t wait for you to hear it. Click below to listen!

Xoxo, Lauren

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