There was a period of my life when I was running three businesses seven days a week, raising two kids, keeping up a household and doing wedding flowers “on the side.”
People would say, “I don’t know how you do it all.”
Oh, and I loved it.
Not necessarily the doing-it-all part.
The fact that they noticed.
Every time someone said it, I got a little hit of validation like a needle in my arm. See? Look how much I can handle. Look how hard I work. Look how capable I am.
Look how very much not lazy I am.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building an identity around being impressive.
And it was exhausting.
When Productivity Becomes an Identity
I grew up believing rest was for the weak and lazy.
I don’t think I ever consciously decided to adopt that belief. Most of our limiting beliefs don’t arrive with a permission slip asking if we’d like to keep them forever. They just sort of seep in until eventually we mistake them for facts.
Somewhere along the way, I learned that being productive meant I was valuable.
Being efficient meant I was good.
Being busy meant I was important.
And doing more meant I was worthy.
So I did more.
Then I got really fucking good at doing more.
I could run businesses and raise kids and manage employees and keep a house and answer emails and make dinner and design wedding flowers and probably start another business before lunch if you gave me a strong cup of coffee and a domain name.
And the world rewarded me for it.
Nobody looked at me and said, “Katy, this seems like a completely unreasonable way to live.”
They said, “I don’t know how you do it.”
Which, to me, sounded an awful lot like:
You’re doing it right.
Then I Quit Drinking
Quitting drinking changed a lot of things for me, but one of the strangest was how clearly I could suddenly see my own life.
I couldn’t unsee how much of it was performative.
That doesn’t mean it was fake.
I loved my businesses. I loved being a mom. I loved creating things and building things and working hard. There were plenty of parts of that life that were genuinely mine.
But mixed in with all of it was this constant need to prove something.
That I was successful.
That I was capable.
That I could handle it.
That I was ambitious.
That I wasn’t lazy.
That I was enough.
And when I stripped away one of my biggest coping mechanisms, I started noticing just how much energy I was spending trying to earn validation from other people.
Around that time, I came across some version of the following advice:
Don’t take advice from people who have a life you don’t want.
It stopped me in my tracks.
Because I realized I had an even bigger problem.
I was trying to impress people whose lives I didn’t want.
Impressive to Whom?
That’s a hell of a question.
Who are you trying to impress?
And maybe more importantly:
Do you actually want what they have?
I had spent years collecting evidence that I was a hard worker without ever stopping to ask why I needed so much evidence in the first place.
I kept adding things.
Businesses. Projects. Responsibilities. Commitments.
More things to manage. More things to accomplish. More opportunities to demonstrate that I could, in fact, do it all.
But I had confused being capable of carrying something with actually wanting to carry it.
Those are not the same thing.
I could do it.
I’d proven that approximately 47,000 times.
But did I want to?
That was a question I hadn’t spent much time asking.
Who Are You Without the Applause?
I think this is one of the strangest parts of midlife discovery.
We talk about “finding yourself” as though somewhere around 45 you misplace yourself behind the couch cushions and just need to look hard enough.
I don’t think that’s what happens.
I think we start noticing the identities we’ve accumulated.
Good mother.
Hard worker.
Successful business owner.
Dependable friend.
Productive person.
The one who can handle everything.
The one who doesn’t need help.
The one who never sits down.
Some of those identities fit. Some used to fit. And some were never really ours at all.
They were performances we became very good at because they earned us something.
Approval.
Belonging.
Safety.
Praise.
Validation.
And eventually, if we’re lucky, we start asking:
Would I still choose this if nobody were watching?
That’s a wildly uncomfortable question when you’ve spent most of your life performing for an invisible audience.
Because what happens when the applause stops?
Who are you if you’re not the busiest person in the room?
Who are you if you’re not proving how hard you work?
Who are you when your worth isn’t measured by how much you produce?
I didn’t have answers.
I still don’t have all of them.
But I think that was the beginning.
Identity Rediscovery Starts With What You Don’t Want
For me, rediscovering myself didn’t start with a vision board or some lightning-bolt realization about what I wanted the rest of my life to look like.
It started with something much simpler.
I realized I didn’t want that life over there.
I didn’t want a life where rest had to be earned.
I didn’t want to spend every waking hour producing something so I could feel valuable.
I didn’t want to keep piling things onto my plate just so people would marvel at my ability to carry the plate.
And maybe most importantly, I realized I didn’t want the life represented by the belief system I’d been working so hard to satisfy.
That realization was disorienting.
Because once you stop living according to someone else’s definition of a good life, you have to start figuring out your own.
And that’s where things get interesting.
Maybe “Who Am I?” Isn’t the First Question
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to know what we want next.
Especially in midlife.
We think if we’re going to question the career or sell the business or change the relationship or stop drinking or rearrange our entire living room for the sixth time this year, we should probably have a clear explanation for what we’re doing.
But identity rediscovery doesn’t always begin with knowing what you want.
Sometimes it begins with finally admitting what you don’t want.
I don’t want to be this busy anymore.
I don’t want to prove this anymore.
I don’t want to impress these people anymore.
I don’t want my productivity to determine my worth.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to earn permission to rest.
Those answers create space.
And eventually, underneath all the things you thought you were supposed to want and all the people you thought you were supposed to impress, another voice starts getting a little louder.
Your own.
I wish I could tell you that I immediately listened to mine and became a beautifully balanced woman who takes leisurely afternoon naps without a single ounce of guilt.
Absolutely fucking not.
This is a deeply ingrained belief for me. I still have to catch myself when I start measuring the value of a day by how much I accomplished during it. I still love efficiency. I still love making things. I still have a suspiciously strong relationship with a completed to-do list.
The difference is that now I can see it.
I can ask myself whether I’m doing something because I actually want to do it or because I want it to say something about me.
And sometimes I still choose the productive thing.
Sometimes I don’t.
But at least now, I’m the one choosing.
Maybe that’s what identity rediscovery actually is.
Not becoming an entirely new person.
Not blowing up your life.
Not finally figuring out exactly who you’re supposed to be.
Just slowly separating who you are from who you’ve been trying to prove you are.
And discovering what’s left when you stop performing.
Turns out, she’s pretty interesting.
