Why High Achievers Feel Stuck (And Why Pushing Harder Backfires)

BONUS audio of The Weekly Recharge Newsletter

Subscribe to The Weekly Recharge and get a 7-day Gratitude Alignment - Subscribe Here

Why does everything feel harder than it should?

In this episode of The Weekly Recharge, Renae breaks down the hidden cost of forcing things that aren’t aligned — and why more effort isn’t always the answer.

Through a simple (and slightly humbling) story, this episode explores:

• why high achievers default to pushing harder
• the difference between growth discomfort vs misalignment
• how forcing outcomes creates more resistance
• and what it actually looks like to step out of that cycle

If you’ve been feeling stuck, frustrated, or like nothing is clicking… this might explain why.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to the audio version of the weekly recharge newsletter. I'm Renae, founder of Wayward Wellness Coaching, and if you landed here from the Hustle Rebels podcast, welcome. I'm glad you're here. Stay a while. And honestly, you might as well subscribe to the weekly recharge newsletter while you're at it, because we've got some pretty good shit in here. Alright, let's get into it. Sometimes it's not that life is complicated. It's that we won't stop forcing it. Some of the things that we'll cover this week are why forcing things creates more friction than progress, the difference between hard growth versus misaligned struggles, the moment that I realized I was making things harder than they really needed to be, and a simple challenge to spot where you might be staying too long. I've been on a decluttering kick the last few weeks, slowly going through one thing at a time. This week I opened up a little end table that I haven't touched since I moved two years ago. And buried in there was a bracelet I bought for me and the other woman I graduated the Fire Academy with. It said, prove them wrong. At the time, it meant everything strength, grit, that I'll outwork anyone in this room type of energy. So I'm sitting there, kind of smiling, replaying some memories, and I decided to put it on. And I cannot close the clasp. And it's not a normal clasp either. This thing was like a Chinese finger trap with magnets. You had to twist it just right and somehow line it up. I'm literally sitting there for 20 minutes, fully committed, like this is now my life's purpose, surrounded by the mess I had just created by emptying out the end table. But that no longer mattered. The only thing that mattered was figuring out this clasp. And I knew it had to be easy. There had to be some trick to it, right? What was I doing wrong that I just couldn't clasp it? Meanwhile, Nick is across the room, watching this whole thing unfold like it's a nature documentary. He jokingly poked, You get so hyper-focused on the most meaningless things. Naturally, I doubled down. Okay then, you do it. He walks over, takes it, and within seconds, click. Done. I just stared at him like what just happened. He goes, You're forcing it. And then he shows me. You don't push it, you don't muscle it, you don't try to dominate it into submission. You had to position it correctly, get it close enough, and the magnets just do the rest. It literally slides into place. No effort, no force, no fight. And I just sat there thinking, how much of my life has looked exactly like that? And honestly, I wasn't even high. Trying to force things to fit, pushing harder when something isn't clicking, staying in situations long after they've stopped making sense. Because I thought effort was the answer. Like if I just tried harder, proved more, pushed more, eventually it would work. But what if that's the problem? What if the issue isn't a lack of effort? It's misalignment. Because there is a difference between doing hard things that grow you and forcing things that drain you. One builds you, the other slowly erodes you. And we love to confuse the two. We stay in the wrong relationships, the wrong environments, the wrong expectations of ourselves. Not because we don't see it, but because we've trained ourselves to override it, to push past the red flags, to prove we can handle it, to make it work. But not everything is meant to be worked. Some things are meant to be released. I'm not saying life isn't supposed to be hard. It is. Growth is uncomfortable, expansion stretches you. But alignment, alignment doesn't feel like fighting something that won't move. It feels like things clicking into place once you stop gripping so tightly. I've spent a lot of my life being, as I like to say, a stubborn mule. Learning everything the hard way, literally everything. But I'm starting to question that. Not in a soft, everything should be easy kind of way, but in a what am I still forcing that I already have my answer on kind of way. Because if I'm being honest, there were plenty of times I knew I just didn't listen. And if you're curious about what that Chinese finger trap, uh, er, I mean bracelet clasp looked like, here you go. Also, if you hear heavy breathing, that's mookie, I promise. It's not me in the video. And if you're listening to this audio, the video's in the email. So go ahead and watch it. And take a look and see if you could figure it out on the first try. This week's nervous system regulation, the where am I forcing it audit. Take a minute and ask yourself, where in your life are you still trying to force something to work that isn't naturally coming together? Maybe it's a relationship you've been overextending in, a job or a role that feels like constant friction, an identity you've outgrown, but keep performing, a decision you already know the answer to. Don't overthink it. Whatever comes first is usually the right one. Then ask, what would happen if I stopped forcing this? And just let it show me what it actually is. Not fix it, not control it, just observe it without interference. Because maybe, just maybe, it's not that life is hard, per se. It's that you've been trying to close the clasp the wrong way. And the second you stop forcing it, everything either falls into place or shows you it was never meant to be. Either way, you get your answer. Here's a little update on the Burn the Blueprint identity reset program. I officially have hard copies of the Burn the Blueprint workbook. If you're someone who hates doing everything on a screen, same. There's something different about having it in your hands, writing things out, flipping back through it. So now when you enroll in the four-week program, you'll have the option to add the physical workbook. You'll still get the full experience, the four brain spotting sessions, the full digital download, but now you can actually sit with it, write in it, and work through it in a way that doesn't feel like another tab open on your laptop. For more information on the program, you can check it out in the link in the newsletter. There's also a quick teaser video in the newsletter so that you can see what it looks like. And you'll also see that my pups are just as excited. Also, this week on the Hustle Rebels podcast, in case you missed it, the latest episode of Hustle Rebels, I am joined by therapist and first responder specialist Steve Bisson. And we get in the topics of leadership betrayal, burnout inside toxic work systems, why people stay too long after they know something is wrong, and why mental health still gets treated like something you're just supposed to push through. It was honestly too good for one episode, so I split it up. And part one dropped this past week, and part two drops tomorrow morning. And if you're new here or you're feeling a little nostalgic, I also included a link so that you could read some previous newsletters as well. As always, I appreciate you guys, and I'm always here if you have any questions or even if you just want to have a chat. Share the weekly recharge with a friend so they can be regulated just like you. See you guys next week.