The Work Beneath the Work | EP 560

🔗 Mentioned on this Episode: Show Notes 👈

Lately, I’ve been sitting inside a question I didn’t expect to be asking at this stage of my life and business. Something has shifted. Grief, transition, and deep relational work have softened me in ways I didn’t anticipate, and I’ve noticed the same quiet edge appearing in conversations with high-capacity women I respect.

In this episode, I speak about the difference between living from survival and leading from expansion. The kind that asks for a different internal orientation. I share what I’m seeing in my clients, in my own nervous system, and in the collective field of women who are building legacy.

If you’ve felt something loosening inside you, even though your life looks good on paper, this conversation is for you. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Grief Rewrites The Plan
• 2:35 Letting Emotions Lead, Not Content
• 4:40 The Polished Face Of Survival
• 8:10 The In‑Between Identity
• 11:15 Renegotiating The Inner Contract
• 14:05 When The Body Knows First
• 17:00 Grieving Who Carried You Here
• 19:25 A Homecoming To Alignment

Transcript

Sheila: 0:03

Over the last few weeks, I've been having conversations with high capacity women who look successful on the outside but feel something shifting underneath. It's like something's asking to change. In this episode, I share what grief, transition, and deep self-leadership have revealed to me about the difference between surviving and truly expanding, and what becomes possible when you stop letting your old identity lead what's next. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. Today's solo chat is one that was originally going to have a different focus, and I had it loosely mapped out, or at least I thought I did. And then over the last couple of weeks, I felt myself adding to it. And this wasn't intentional. It just really felt like it was something I needed to do. Kind of like how a conversation can keep changing, shape in your head, because something real has happened and you can't quite pretend that it hasn't. You see, this holiday season looked really different for us. We were in California for the second year in a row, which in itself has become a bit of a rhythm that we've really enjoyed. There was so much beauty in this with my loves, the light, the pace, the way that our bodies were responding with winter not feeling so sharp as it does in the north. And there was something about being there that really softened me. And I notice it every time. And then there were events in our extended family that none of us expected. The passing of someone very special to us. And this kind of loss really landed quietly for us, but it feels like it keeps landing in waves that you just don't see coming. I've experienced this before. If you've been listening to other episodes, you'll know the last decade plus there has been quite a bit of loss in my family life. And these types of things, I don't think we ever really get good at handling it or moving through it. It feels familiar, but often what I found for myself is it was starting, this particular loss was starting to trigger some of the other experiences of loss that I had in the past. You know, these are times where our humanity just shines through. And so this holiday was very different. And this experience obviously altered everything, the way moments like that tend to do. And of course, you get perspective shifts, whether you want to get them or not. And I'm always grateful for those. They really landed me in a very grounded, connected time with my loves. But it was a very emotional time, as you can imagine. I've been there so many times throughout my life that part of me almost assumes I'll be steadier with it by now. Like grief should be familiar territory or like I should know the terrain well enough that it doesn't move me as much. And yet it really did. It reached in and asked for my full attention. I'm grateful that it did as well, because it really speaks to the relationship. And it caused me to pause plans that I had made for the start of the year. There was just a really clear internal weight come into my mind. And I'm aware as I say that, how much of a privilege that is to be able to listen to that signal, to be able to slow down when something inside is slowing down due to necessity. I've spent a lot of time sitting with the human emotions that come up in moments like this and not rushing to gain insights from them or turning them into content or clarity, which is so easy for me to do because I am always a meaning maker in that way. But I've just been allowing them to be what they are, letting grief exist alongside of gratitude and letting love feel heavy and tender at the same time. It's also been a time of returning more deeply to my spiritual practice in a really private way, and the kind that happens when you're not trying to get anywhere with it, just listening, just being with what's present, loving on the people closest to me, having slower days, getting more rest, paying attention to nourishment in a very literal sense, food, sleep, hydration, silence. And all of that became the priority. Everything else moved to the edges. And it was inside that slowing down that I started noticing something else. Not just in myself, but in the conversations I've been having in recent months. Those with clients and peers, women I've worked closely with for years, high capacity women, women who are capable of caring a lot, women who are used to being steady, self-aware, and really responsible, responsible for themselves and for others. And the same theme kept surfacing. There's this moment I find that comes up when you realize you've been living from the part of you that knows how to survive, and suddenly something else is asking for the lead. Because what's interesting is that survival at this level doesn't look like what people think it looks like. It's not like the scrambling desperation type of survival. It's competence, it's consistency, it's being the one who figures it out. It's emotional regulation, discernment, knowing how to keep things moving, even when parts of you are tired or quietly longing for something that doesn't have a name yet. That kind of survival. And you may have experienced this yourself when you look at it, when you look back on your life and on your business and what you've been able to do in your business in spite of what you've been experiencing in your personal life. It's like survival becomes polished over time and impressive. And that kind of survival, like, wow, look what they're going through and look how they're still showing up in all the ways. That kind of survival for high-achieving women becomes rewarded. And that's part of why this realization can feel so disorienting for me, even as I witness it, because nothing's wrong with that. Like it looks good. Everyone's life looks good. Businesses are functioning, relationships are intact. And from the outside, it can look like stability. And yet there's so much happening behind the scenes internally. And I've noticed a shift happening because I kept noticing this pause in conversations, a moment where someone would slow down mid-sentence and where their voice would change slightly, where they'd say something like, I don't know how to explain this yet. Or they'd say, I feel like something has changed, but I don't know what to do with that. It was disorienting for them and they were trying to make sense of it. And they weren't asking me to give them an answer, obviously, um, or give them strategies. They were naming the internal recognition that was coming up. And that's the reason that they've been operating in this way that they realize is different from how they want to do what comes next. It's like they want a different kind of drive in their life, or they want to slow down the drive. I've been walking through my own version of this too. This year has really reshaped me. Quietly behind the scenes, but truly, thoroughly. I will say, like transitions in my career, in my business, the move that I made, the deep relational work in my marriage that asked for a different kind of presence than I've practiced before. And again, this relational work in my marriage was something that my husband and I decided to do from a place of wholeness and healthy relationship. We just realized, hey, like we're approaching 30 years. Like maybe we can see if there's anything we need to change. And then, of course, as I go through all of these different things, then life happens and grief comes because of this experience. And a new kind of grief surfaced in ways I didn't anticipate because I think it triggered past grief I went through. And I had assumed I'd already done a whole lot of work on that. And you realize, you know what, we don't have to do work on grief. We get to just experience it, and that should be enough. But what all of this did this year was soften me in a way that really feels accurate. I actually feel less armored than I used to, and I didn't realize how much energy the armor required until it wasn't necessary anymore. Because, of course, like anyone in any kind of leadership role, we all have a lot going on behind the scenes. And it can toughen us. And this is also what I'm seeing mirrored in the conversations I've been having. There's an identity that's a loosening, the one that knew how to get through things or that could hold it all together, and the one that made sense of chaos and created order from it. That identity is just simply no longer the right primary orientation right now. There's a new identity forming, and it's not fully anchored yet for me and also for some of these other women I'm talking to. And that creates this in-between space that can feel a little wobbly, especially for women who are used to being internally anchored, used to knowing who they are and how they move through the world. This in-between moment doesn't have a whole lot of language to describe it because it's not something we talk about a whole lot. There's no clear next step. And it's like it's asking us to tolerate ambiguity in a way that doesn't always feel comfortable. And yet there's something to it that makes me feel so alive because it's like there's this change afoot that is like, I'm just so ready for it. And I'm feeling this in these conversations I've been having with others. It feels like you're standing in a doorway and you can feel the air from the other side, and it's floating and it's it's like hitting your face. And you know that when you turn around to walk back into the room, you're walking back as a bit of a different person. You're walking back in a different way. You haven't crossed the threshold, you know you will, and you're not quite there yet. And this kind of experience of transition where you know change is about to happen. This is something we like to try and rush and push through and explain away. But truly, it's something that just needs to be recognized and sat with because survival, when you've been good at it, becomes part of your self-concept. It's woven into your standards, your sense of responsibility, your ability to manage complexity. And when you let go of that identity, even partially, it can feel a little less solid when in reality it's like you're becoming less compressed. And I've been thinking about how many of us build success on an internal contract that was necessary at the time. We had this agreement with ourselves that said, I will be the one who holds it together. I will be the one who figures it out and I will not collapse. And that contract has worked. It created safety, it created results, it created momentum. And like I realized when I was rewriting my relationship contract with my husband, and it was so fun to do it. Like we were doing it from a healthy place. So it made us get really creative. We did it because we realized contracts have seasons. Think about sports teams. They go into it knowing they're going to eventually play for another team or at least just renegotiate the contract for those stellar athletes that stay with one specific franchise. And here's the thing, though, sometimes the discomfort isn't a signal that something is broken. It's actually a signal that the terms no longer match who you are because we're always growing and changing. Thank God. And here's what I've noticed, and I've I've really noticed it this year, especially, because my body was leading the way. It's this the body often knows this first. You get these subtle signals, like for instance, fatigue that doesn't resolve with rest, like taking a long weekend and just really unplugging and then getting back at it. You notice perhaps disinterest in things that used to be energizing to you, or a desire for simplicity that doesn't align with the complexity of your external life. And I want to be clear this isn't about wanting less in your life. It's just about wanting a different relationship with the life you have, the way you are operating in your days, in your relationships, in your business. And when I use the word expansion, I just want to be really clear on this too. I'm not talking about doing more and just like extra expansion of everything you're doing in your world. What I'm talking about is living from a part of yourself that isn't constantly scanning for threat or proving its value. It's a very different internal orientation. And it takes time for your nervous system to trust it because it's so different from what you've experienced in the past, especially when survival has been rewarded for a long time. And I notice that language starts to shift when someone is in this phase. There's less certainty, but there's not confusion. People are having more pauses, they're getting more honest, even though they don't have full language to describe what they're experiencing. It's like everything is just internally organizing itself. And even though this can be very exciting because it's like, oh, there's some change, and I just know in my body that I need it, and now I'm getting clarity about it. Grief can rear its head here too. Grief for the version of yourself that carried you to this point, and sadness that you can't leave the next chapter in the same way because my goodness, it's much easier for our brains to do things the same way. But that loss, the loss of how we used to do things, the loss of perhaps how we used to show up and who we were, that does deserve space. It deserves to be felt without being rushed into empowerment language. I think that's part of why this moment matters as we move toward what's next. Because how you relate to yourself now sets the tone for what follows. When this phase is overridden or bypassed, the same internal dynamics tend to show up again, but they're just dressed in different kinds of experiences. And what I'm sensing, both personally and collectively, is an invitation for us to come home to ourselves in a deeper way as our lived experience. Coming home to your rhythms, to your truth about what actually costs your energy and to the places where you no longer want to contort yourself to maintain an identity that no longer fits. This kind of homecoming, it's really important and it's like a rite of passage, I believe, for this phase of your life. But it doesn't announce itself. It shows up in really small decisions. It shows up in what you tolerate, what you no longer override, and also in whether you stay present with discomfort instead of immediately turning it into insight. Like sitting with the discomfort is something that has been a practice that I've been doing over the last seven years increasingly over time. I'm really grateful for that practice because I've learned so much about myself. And I've caught myself also defaulting to old survival reflexes this year, which is interesting. It's like, oh, I've done all this work and hello, the old meat is still there. And there is a tenderness in noticing them now, though. I'm I'm kinder to myself when I see that happening. I can feel the impulse without letting it drive the car. And that pause changes everything. I just slow down, I notice it, and noticing it is actually very regulating to my system. And that's the shift I'm pointing to for the people I work with and perhaps for yourself. It really is something that helps you get more congruent with what is true for you. And there's a reason why so many high capacity women are touching this same edge right now. It's like a collective recalibration is happening beneath all of the noise that we see in the massive change in the world, in the economy, in business. And what's available on the other side of this, again, is like an ease that comes from internal alignment rather than force and a clarity that guides every next step. I'm going to be continuing to explore this because I really believe it matters. It's hard to find words to describe it, but it matters because we need to begin to orient ourselves toward what is ahead. Life is a little different now, it looks different in so many ways for all of us. But for now, I just wanted to name what I'm seeing, what I'm living, and leave it here without trying to resolve it. It's something for you to possibly sit with if you found that it resonated for you as well. And if this conversation touched something in you and you're curious about what it might look like to explore this terrain more intentionally, I've shared details in the show notes about expansion season. It's a space that I've created for women who feel this shift happening and who want room to meet it with depth and discernment as we move into what is next. If you're finding yourself less interested in proving, fixing, or pushing and more interested in clarity, steadiness, and sustainability, that is worth paying attention to because it may be a sign that the way forward wants to feel cleaner and more self-respecting. And as we step into this next season, I hope you give yourself permission to let that guide you, even if you can't fully articulate where it's leading yet. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week, and I will see you on the next episode.