Finding Y.E.S. - The Gift of Depth Beneath Success

“I have everything…but I feel empty.” If you’ve ever whispered that in the quiet, between roles or between breaths, I want you to know this - I’ve lived that moment too.

Not the dramatic collapse. Not the rock-bottom heroic story. Just the slow, quiet fading of myself beneath what many refer to as success.

The mornings where the doing was flawless but the being felt hollow. The days where I performed leadership in every room but felt absent in the doing. 

If you’ve felt that, even once, it’s not a personal flaw, it’s a pattern millions of high-achieving women are living. It’s the quiet ache beneath achievement. You’ve done everything “right.” You wake early. Earn the title. Raise the family. Hold the household. Lead the team. Soft-launch the next dream. And still, you lie awake wondering why a full life still feels hollow. 

It’s not burnout. It’s not inadequacy. It’s the quiet ache achievement can’t fill. You’ve spent years chasing external proof of progress while starving for the inner experience of fulfillment.

Then comes the morning you recognize something is off. You wake and you check your phone before you breathe. Your day begins with leadership before sunrise, not in the boardroom, but at the breakfast table. Your mind starts before your body. Emails, lunch prep., and calendar notifications. You make a dozen executive decisions before 9 a.m. that no one sees. The day is “handled.” Kids dropped off,  mascara on, smile ready. 

Waiting for the elevator you then walk into work to lead again, different rooms, different faces, same emotional labor. A quiet ache gnaws at you: “How can a life this full feel this hollow?” This question is not failure. It’s an invitation to go inward from the truth trying to reach you. It is a  whispering of an ache that is unfulfilled.

That’s the invisible double shift of high-achieving women. You’ve lived on the surface of success. You’ve learned to perform competence even when your body is whispering exhaustion. You wait to exhale and then do so quietly so no one hears. And the ache remains.

This isn't a lack of success. It’s cognitive dissonance - the friction between the image you project and the experience you live. Modern success rewards output, not alignment. You’ve survived your own excellence. But the question remains, how long can you keep going before something breaks you or you consciously choose to break the pattern?

This is not just a dramatic statement. Across neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and leadership research, that ache you feel beneath achievement traces back to one thing - a loss of internal alignment and agency. It is the quiet disconnection from self. It sounds simple, but it’s not easy - not when you can’t change what you’re not yet aware of. Unlearning becomes even harder when the world applauds the very performance that pulls you away from yourself. This is the hidden cost of “having it all”.

The Turning Point: You Can’t Change What You Can’t See

I didn’t know I was disconnected from myself. I only knew I was tired. Not the kind of tiredness that sleep fixes, but the kind that speaks in haunting whispers “Something is missing.”

The truth that changed everything for me is this - you can’t change what you can’t see.

You can’t be the best version of yourself to lead others if you’re not leading yourself. The turning point wasn’t external. It wasn’t a new title, or a new book. It started with the search to find a new career and the unintended learning of the science of me. The self-sabotaging patterns I didn’t know were running me, the unconscious “yeses” I kept giving, the way my nervous system was driving decisions my mind didn’t agree to and my body was definitely “keeping score”. Then I went from the surface of success into the depth of learning and unlearning. I found and practiced the “how-ing” using proven available and accessible science-based tools.

That was the beginning of my transformation, the shift that took me from surface-level success into the depth of understanding myself starting with the neurobiology necessary to do so. The kind that rewires what you reach for, how you respond, and the inner you that you experience everyday.

Y.E.S. Neuroscience™:  Beneath the Moment 

Here’s the key to success as you define it. Every moment you live has two layers, the moment you experience and the system beneath it that creates your reaction. That internal system is shaped by a number of things that include your nervous system, your cognitive patterns, emotional conditioning, identity predictions, survival strategies, and practiced responses. Most women try to change the “moment” without understanding the system beneath it.

We are all in deep need of understanding that system and that’s what I call - The Science of YOU™ and The Y.E.S. Neuroscience™ that supports every moment we experience. It helps you work from the inside where EVERYTHING starts, to the outside where everything is experienced. It’s the science beneath every lived moment and the art of your lived truth. 

It speaks to three key elements of understanding yourself. Your internal cues, Empowered nervous system states and Success patterns aligned with who you are becoming. That's the foundation of YOU because when you finally understand the system you live from, you understand why you react the way you do and how to transform. 

That’s when you move from disconnection from yourself to results that realign who you are being and your achievements. You get to choose how you respond to what happens to you and experience the most satisfying relationships with your family and friends. At work, you find that role in your career you have always wanted with financial freedom. The quiet ache eases as you begin to feel a steadiness - feeling fulfilled in a way that you never have before. 

The Way Back: A New Definition of Depth

Let’s face it. You can’t think or spend your way out of emptiness. You have to feel your way back to yourself. Depth isn’t only poetic, it’s neurological. It’s the foundation of all sustainable transformation.

Depth is the antidote to autopilot. It’s what brings you back to what’s real beneath the routine. My lived truth is this, you can spend a lifetime doing better without ever feeling free, satisfied, and fulfilled. Freedom - be it financial, relationship or personal, they all come from self-leadership. It takes practice and starts with awareness - noticing the patterns that keep success feeling hollow is the success portal. 

So as you close 2025, if you are living on the surface and want to find your way back to YOU - you have to go deep. I offer you D.E.P.T.H - the five gifts of self-leadership that brought me home to my greatest experience of freedom, satisfaction and fulfillment:

D.E.P.T.H. — The Five Gifts of Your Self-Leadership

1. D - Discover: The Science of YOU™

The first gift is awareness through discovering the science of YOU and the impact on your self-leadership. Before anything can change with your career, your kids, your life you have to understand something most of us were never taught - there is a science behind the way you show up every day.

Your nervous system, your emotional conditioning, your practiced responses, they aren’t random and they aren’t personal flaws. They are patterns your brain learned long before you ever chose them.That’s the first kind of awareness - you don’t know what you don’t know until you learn the science beneath your wiring.

Then comes the second kind of awareness, the one that transforms everything. Neuroscience calls this self-discovery, that split second when awareness catches up to behavior, interrupts your autopilot, and you realize, “I’ve been here before… doing this again…I just never saw it until now.” That’s the moment your internal system goes from invisible to visible - and once it's visible, you can work with it instead of being run by it.

The lived moment: You hear a ping, a text or email arrives and your chest tightens before you’ve even read it. You respond instantly, opening with “Sorry for the delay!” even though it’s been less than a minute. Your message is fast, polished, proof you’re on top of it. But underneath the speed, your body feels anxious, braced, slightly on edge like you’re already behind, even when you aren’t.

That’s the part that hurts the most - your reaction doesn’t match the reality but it matches the pattern.

Ask yourself: “Why do I always do that and could this moment go differently?”

Y.E.S. Neuroscience™- Beneath the Moment: Every automatic reaction follows the same simple loop, something triggers you, you react fast and your brain feels relieved.

That relief becomes the “reward,” so the pattern repeats, even if it costs you peace.

That’s the habit loop. It fires faster than your conscious mind. It’s not personal and it’s   not a weakness. That single reflex holds a world of conditioning - social, professional, gendered, cultural and generational. Discovery is noticing the habit loop while it’s happening so you can interrupt the autopilot instead of reliving it. When you interrupt the pattern instead of replaying it, that’s the moment awareness meets choice. Discovery isn’t about blame. It’s about data. Once you  recognize the science of your internal system and how it shows up in your everyday reactions, you can begin to shift the response that does not serve you.

Try this micro-shift: When you hear the notification, pause, name your state, for example, “Tension. Urgency. I’m okay.” Labeling reduces your brain’s amygdala activation and gives you 1-2 seconds of attentional control -  enough to choose differently.

2. E - Experience: The Power of HOW to Shift

The second gift is experience, where emotional intelligence meets embodiment. Where Positive Intelligence becomes practice, and where you move from insight to what finally becomes a felt, lived, cellular truth. This is the hinge between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming.

Awareness can wake you up, but only experience can transform you. You don’t transform because you learn something new. You transform when the life you’re living puts that learning in your hands and asks: “Will you do this moment differently?”

The lived moment: Silence stretches in a meeting. Your chest tightens. Your mind rushes for the right thing to say. You fill the space, talking past your point, performing competence to prove you’re competent. 

Ask yourself:  “Why do I always jump in? What reaction am I rehearsing and what response am I ready to practice instead?

Y.E.S. Neuroscience™- Beneath the Moment: Your nervous system reads silence as threat, not emotional danger, but reputational danger. Your body decides silence equals “I’m not enough” therefore I need to act fast to prove I belong. This is conditioning, not character. The shift is not correction, but a rewiring that interrupts the loop by cueing safety. This tiny recalibration changes the meaning of the moment internally.

This is the power of HOW - when your body practices a new pattern so you can eventually embody it.

Try this micro-shift: When the silence hits, don’t rush to fill it. Interrupt the loop by cueing safety in your body - Inhale for 4. Exhale for 6. Drop your shoulders one degree. Keep your gaze steady. This isn’t woo woo, it’s physiology.  A longer exhale activates the vagus nerve, signaling safety to the brain. 

You’re not performing calm, you’re creating it. That longer exhale shifts your nervous system out of threat. Your shoulders dropping interrupts the old reflex. Your steady gaze tells your body, “I’m not under danger.” It takes less than 10 seconds. But inside your system, everything reorganizes. 

3. P - Practice: The Success-Now Formula

Practice is the third gift, the daily wiring of your success…now…today! The power of HOW is realized in Practice. It's the everyday moments where you experience the feeling of who you’re becoming as you re-define what success means to you. Transformation doesn’t happen on a weekend getaway. It happens in the small repetitions that shape how you wake up, how you transition from home to work, how you respond, how you rest and how you begin again. It happens when you choose presence instead of pressure as consistently as possible. Transformation happens in the ordinary minutes, the ones you’ve never considered powerful until now.

The lived moment: It’s 9:58 a.m. You jump from an in-person meeting straight into a Video meeting. By noon, you feel scattered, overstretched, and slightly brittle. Later that night, you move from bedtime stories to unread emails without a single breath in between. Your brain doesn’t know these are two different worlds, only that you never stopped. And by the end of the day, you don’t feel accomplished. You feel… erased. 

Ask yourself: “How can I accomplish so much… and still not feel fulfilled, even when I’m using the tools?”

Y.E.S. Neuroscience™ - Beneath the Moment: Even when you’ve learned the tools, even when you’ve had those moments of deep steadiness, you can still slip back into the rush, the scramble, the blur of doing. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means your system is doing what it learned, and will continue to do so until you teach it something new.

Tools don’t eliminate disconnection. They give you a way back. And that “way back” only becomes reliable through repetition because in the brain, the baseline doesn’t change with just insight. Practice is how the new pattern starts out fragile and becomes familiar. It is how “returning to yourself” stops being an accident and becomes a pathway you trust.

But here’s why it’s hard: It’s not the task-switching that drains you, it’s switching tasks without switching your internal state. If you move from meetings, emails, caregiving, decision-making all without a pause, your brain interprets each transition from urgency, pressure, or proving as a micro-threat. So cortisol spikes. Executive function drops.Your nervous system moves into chronic “go”, even when your body is sitting still.

That’s why by noon you feel brittle, not because you’re doing too much, but because you haven’t reset even once. But when a transition happens from intention,

from “I know why I’m here, I know what I’m doing, I’m steady in myself.” then

the brain can redirect without stress.

This is the Y.E.S. Neuroscience™ of Practice - teaching your nervous system to transition without losing you.

Practice is where intention becomes the pattern, where the woman you’re becoming learns to show up in tiny and invisible moments. This is not only discipline, it's design. 

Try this Micro-shift: When you sit down in front of your laptop ask yourself: “What energy am I bringing into this moment?” Then breathe (YES … breathe - it’s quick and accessible anywhere you are) - in for 4. Out for 6. This resets your nervous system before you act so you respond from alignment, not adrenaline. Repeat this pattern for seven days. You’ll build a new cue, a new pattern, a new baseline and watch what happens. What you’ll notice is: Less reactivity, more clarity, and cleaner yes/no decisions. A steadier internal pace where you can experience micro-moments that  actually feel steady and peaceful. 

The shift from rushing through your life to returning to it. This is Practice - the everyday rehearsal of the feeling forward to finding the woman you are. One tiny, repeatable moment at a time.

4. T - Transform: The Path to YOU Process 

Transformation is misunderstood. It’s not the big decision, the perfect routine, or the motivational high after a seminar. True transformation is the moment your system recognizes a new way of being.  You’ve seen it discussed in “Discover”, felt it through “Experience”and repeated it in “Practice” that the shift becomes lived - at a cellular level.

It’s not a small change. It’s a business-model shift of the self. Everything still looks the same on the outside but your operating system has changed. Your world view shifts in the powerful grip of not only learning, but unlearning and relearning.

This is the fourth gift - Transform. Transformation doesn’t wait for perfect timing. It happens in the middle of real life. It’s held in the moments your internal wiring stops reacting from survival and starts responding from steadiness.

Ask yourself: What part of me has been waiting for me to finally say YES to her? And what would happen if I listened right now, at this moment? 

The lived moment: It’s 6:40 p.m. You’re cleaning up dinner. The phone is pinging. Your teenager is irritated about finishing their homework. Your partner is asking what time the appointment is tomorrow. Your old pattern rises, the tightening in your chest, the reflex to hold everything, the instinct to manage smoothly, and fix. Normally, this would tip you into overwhelm or performance mode but tonight…something interrupts it.

A micro-second of awareness you didn’t have last year. A breath your body remembers from yesterday’s pause. A clarity that whispers “Wait. I don’t have to meet this moment the old way.” And without fanfare, without announcement, you choose a steadier tone, a slower breath, one clear boundary, one honest sentence, one non-performative choice. Nothing big. But inside? Everything feels different.

THIS is transformation. Not loud, not dramatic, but deep. It’s that moment your body chooses alignment over old identity. That moment your nervous system realizes “Oh, we don’t live like that anymore.”

Y.E.S. Neuroscience™ - Beneath the Moment: Transformation happens when your brain updates its prediction of who you are. Before the shift, your identity is defined by rushing, fixing, performing, anticipating, over-carrying. These aren’t flaws, they’re survival strategies woven into your wiring.

But when a real-life moment hits and you interrupt the reflex you’ve practiced for years…you trigger a neurological pivot that signals this:

• Prediction error - “We usually panic here, but she didn’t.”

• Identity update - “The steady version of me is safe.”

• Pattern weakening - old loops lose power.

• Pattern strengthening - new pathways solidify.

THIS is why transformation feels like relief. Like clarity. Like coming home to the woman you always knew you could be, steady, satisfied, anchored even inside chaos. The shift from performing who you were to inhabiting who you ARE. You don’t fix behaviors anymore. You choose from identity. Not the “becoming” woman but “un-becoming” work - the steady woman. The woman who feels satisfied while navigating hard things. The woman who feels at peace even when the world around her isn’t. The woman who leads from alignment, not adrenaline.

Examples of identity language you can use:

“I’m the woman who honors what’s true for me.”

“I’m the woman who chooses steadiness over speed.”

“I’m the woman who responds, not reacts.”

“I’m the woman who doesn’t abandon herself in chaos.”

Identity tells your brain who you are. Your behavior follows without force.

Try this Micro-shift: 

Pick one identity sentence for the week. Let it meet you in the messy, unscripted moments - the school form, the office ping, the tight timeline, the family tension.

Then, when the moment hits, ask - “What choice feels most like the steady woman I already am?”

Not the perfect choice. Not the bold choice. The true one, the one that feels like exhaling. Then choose the smallest version. Because transformation lives in how small choices accumulate…until you shift where your mind is set and that becomes your new baseline.

The woman you are when you’re steady is your real wealth. Choosing that peace every day transforms.

5. H - Habit-Forward: The Results You Keep

This final gift is protection, not from the world, but from the patterns that once pulled you away from yourself. Habit-Forward is how you make growth durable and sustainable. It’s how you keep your YES alive. Transformation cracks the door open. Habit-Forward is how you keep it open and achieve the success you want. 

Habits aren’t chores. They’re scaffolding. They’re the structures that hold your steadiness when life speeds up, stretches you thin, or tries to pull you back into the woman you no longer are. Proven habits (Habit-Forward) is how you make your YES durable and how you keep your inner alignment alive.

Ask yourself: How will I protect the steadiness I’ve earned when life gets loud again?

The noise will come and life will continue life-ing. But what matters is what stays.

The lived moment: You’re in a good rhythm. Your mornings feel spacious. Your choices feel grounded. You feel like yourself. And then life shifts. A deadline collapses. Your kid gets sick. Your team needs you. The house feels chaotic. Someone else’s crisis leaks into your day. Suddenly, the old patterns reappear, the rushing, the proving, the invisible emotional labor. Not because you’re back at square one but because your system is overloaded. Your first instinct is disappointment. “I knew it. I can’t hold this.” But that’s not the truth. This isn’t failure. It’s biology and biology can be redesigned.

Y.E.S. Neuroscience™ - Beneath the Moment: Under stress, the brain defaults to the path of least resistance, old reflexes, old roles, old identity, old survival patterns. Not because they’re “you.” But because they require less energy. Habit-Forward rewires that equation. It creates choice architecture, tiny supports that make the aligned choice easy, the old pattern inconvenient

This is how you protect the woman you’ve worked so hard to become. The “shift” is possible with design. You stop relying on motivation (which disappears the moment life gets hard) and start relying on structures that steady you even on days when energy is low and chaos is high.

Habit-Forward is the bridge between “I know who I am now” and “I can live like her every day.”

Try this Micro-shift: Choose ONE stabilizing design element and implement it now:

1. Anchor your morning state (see CYF’s Free 5 minute morning routine that will help you shift.) Time-box the first 10-90 minutes.  This teaches your nervous system that “we start from safety, not speed”.

2. Pair alignment with nourishment. Walk plus your favorite podcast. Tea and journaling.

Music and a 2-minute reset. When alignment feels rewarding, your brain repeats it.

3. Pre-commit with someone who holds you with integrity. Public commitment increases follow-through by up to 85%.

4. Build friction around your old pattern. Close the laptop. Put the phone in a drawer.

Move the distracting app. Old habits can’t run if they can’t find you.

These micro-shifts reduce decision fatigue and protect your growth when life accelerates again. This is how your new baseline becomes embodied and steadiness becomes your norm. This is how YES becomes your default instead of your dream. It’s how you keep choosing the woman you worked so hard to become, especially on the days that try to pull you back.

The Real Gift of This Season

December isn’t just the end of a calendar year. It’s a mirrored ornament, reflecting who you’ve been and inviting that woman you are when you’re steady to stay. 

This season, you’ll be tempted to buy your way into a feeling - the dress, the trip, the upgrades. Beautiful things have their place but the one investment that never depreciates is the one you make within. 

We upgrade phones before mindsets, subscriptions before self-study. Yet nothing external can deliver what self-leadership does - the calm that steadies you, the clarity that guides you, the confidence that doesn’t need to perform.

Learning yourself is not a luxury. Finding Y.E.S. is a life imperative. It’s the wealth you keep trying to find when nothing satisfies in a lasting way. The world doesn’t need you to perform harder, it needs you present. It needs leadership that starts at your own kitchen table, the kind that interrupts the quiet cycle of depletion you’ve carried for years.

For high-achieving women, the weight of success without the fullness of self isn’t sustainable. Mastering the system within isn’t self-improvement, it’s survival with depth. It’s how you reclaim your humanity in an age of hustle. When you Discover your patterns, Experience the how, Practice steady shifts, Transform through identity, and go Habit-Forward, you stop chasing meaning and start creating it. 

Why?

Because everything changes when you do. Not when you get a new job. Not when the kids comply. Not when you buy a new house. Not when your partner suddenly understands. When you lead yourself differently, the world around you responds. The next version of success isn’t bigger, it's braver. It begins where you do.

The Invitation: Finding Y.E.S.

This is what Finding Y.E.S. truly is, not another goal, not another performance,

but the ongoing practice of returning to yourself with honesty and steadiness.

It’s the reminder that everything shifts in the smallest choices, in the quietest moments,

in the decision you make before you hit send or say yes or push past your own limits… again. The most extraordinary transformation doesn’t happen in a single moment.

It happens in the moments you decide to stop abandoning yourself and to start listening.

Because success without self is hollow and success with depth becomes legacy.

Begin with YOU. Rewire your success system so you can: Lead better. Live steadier. Love fuller.

If this BLOG resonates, please share the one line that stayed with you. I read every word.