You did such a good job.

I spent days building a deck I believed in. Bold ideas for growing the business, the kind of thinking that used to light me up. Before the meeting, my new manager gave me instructions. Keep it small. Stick to the template. Don’t bring in outside thinkers.

I followed the format. I wouldn’t shrink the ideas. So I presented big thinking inside a small container, to a room that had stopped believing anything different was possible. Silence.

Afterward my manager pulled me aside, genuinely pleased. “You did such a good job.”

 

Hours later, I told her the truest thing I’d said in years. “I felt like a little piece of my soul died in that meeting.”

 

She didn’t know what to do with that. From where she stood, everything had gone exactly right.

 

That’s when I understood what I now call High-Functioning Misalignment. It isn’t always about failing. Sometimes it’s about succeeding at something you’ve outgrown. It wasn’t burnout. Burnout looks like slowing down. Mine looked like speeding up, and getting better at it, while the gap underneath got wider. And because nothing was wrong, I didn’t think I had the right to feel it.

I resigned a few days later, with no concrete plan. With the help of my own coach, I worked through the same four moves I now use with my clients, one step at a time. More than three years into being a solopreneur, I’m more free, creative, and joyful than I imagined I could be. That’s why I share this with others. I know what’s possible because I’m living it.

 

If you’ve heard “good job” lately and felt something else, I know that feeling.