Part III: The Hidden Bargain Beneath Achievement
I Had It All Backwards
Perfectionism was a Loyal Guardian
The rules didn’t stay tucked beside a photograph in a velvet pouch.
They followed me.
Into my goals.
Into my work.
Into the way I measured my worth.
Work hard.
Persevere.
Be respected.
Those rules governed the goals I wrote on that paper.
They promised that if I worked hard enough, proved myself enough, controlled enough, I’d be rewarded:
Joy.
Freedom.
Ease.
Authenticity.
Those rules became a way of living.
A way of earning safety.
A way of proving my worth.
The backbone of that strategy was perfectionism.
Not because I wanted to be perfect.
Because I wanted to feel safe.
Perfectionism had been my loyal guardian for many decades.
It protected me when I felt unsafe and in danger of exposure before I was ready.
It helped me achieve.
It helped me belong.
It helped me feel safe.
But it couldn’t provide pleasure, play, or aliveness.
Safety was its job.
Thriving was not.
I remember thinking repeatedly during that time:
Every day is such drudgery.
Just doing all the things I thought I had to.
Get up at 4:30am.
Walk to the gym in the dark.
Workout.
Eat breakfast and lunch at my desk.
Spend all day in a windowless office in a fast-paced industry where performance and image felt like everything.
Groceries.
Cleaning.
Meal prepping.
MBA studies.
Rent. Bills. An old student loan.
Go to bed at 8:30 because I had nothing left.
Some mornings I’d be making my bed while looking at it longingly, wishing I could crawl right back in.
Not for forever.
But for longer than a day.
I Had It All Backwards
I thought I was doing it right.
I identified my values.
Then I built goals that were aligned with those values.
The missing piece was never the goals.
It was the journey.
I hadn’t considered how my values would inform how I got to the goal.
How joy could already be present.
Freedom.
Ease.
Authenticity.
I had placed those things at the finish line.
Subconsciously I was re-living an old story:
Work hard.
Play later.
Earn it.
I claimed to value joy, freedom, ease, and authenticity.
While building a life organized around exhaustion, control, achievement, and external validation.
This is how I’d become someone who wrote “joy” in a velvet pouch while constructing a life of drudgery.
A New Definition of Success
For years, I believed my values lived at the finish line.
Joy.
Freedom.
Ease.
Authenticity.
I thought success would grant me access to them.
Now I see the subtle misunderstanding.
They were never rewards.
They can’t be rewards.
They already exist.
They always did.
I’d been earning a life I already had permission to live.
The values are the foundation.
They’re where I begin.
Joy.
Freedom.
Ease.
Authenticity.
Maybe these were inherited too.
Not just the rules about proving my worth.
Not the bargain that said I had to earn my place.
But something deeper.
The part of my grandma who understood me without asking me to be different.
When she didn’t shame me for being quiet.
When she made it safe to be myself.
Maybe I inherited perseverance.
Maybe I inherited resilience.
Maybe I inherited grit.
I’m glad for those things, but that’s not the whole story.
There was something else too.
The pull toward joy, freedom, ease, and authenticity.
The desire to create.
To imagine.
To become.
I inherited these too.
The difference is that some things were passed down as survival strategies.
Others were passed down as possibilities.
And I have the luxury of discernment.
I choose what I carry forward and what I leave behind.
I keep the wisdom.
I keep the strength.
I keep the love.
And I let go of the outdated bargains.
I’m not rejecting where I came from.
I’m honoring it by living.
And this was the biggest reorganization of all.