I have a question I ask clients that stops them cold. It’s not about revenue or strategy or their next launch. It’s a simpler question, but hard sometimes to really answer:
What do you actually like?
I’m not asking what they’re good at. Or what makes them money (most of my clients are super good at making money). And I’m not asking them about their work or the parts of their business they enjoy. I’m asking them what they LIKE. You know, like for FUN. Just for doing for the sheer pleasure of doing it.
I’ve watched high-performing people stare at me for a full thirty seconds and come up with nothing. Why? Because their businesses have dissolved so much of who they are. Their businesses are everything. Their friends are their team(s). Their hobbies became side hustles or just disappeared entirely. And…ooof…they aren’t sure what they enjoy anymore outside of the work and secretly…some of them aren’t sure they enjoy the work anymore either.
This isn’t burnout. Burnout implies you were on fire at some point. This is something different, something INTERNAL: a self dissolved into the performance and 24/7/365 DEMAND of running a business. And nobody – especially them – noticed.
I know a version of this from the inside.
For me, it wasn’t that I didn’t know what I liked. I knew. It was that I wouldn’t admit it, wouldn’t make time for it, wouldn’t let myself be a person who had preferences that didn’t produce anything. Before my husband and I sold everything to live and work from our motorhome while traveling the country? We were both in a real period of burnout. And even from that place, I could tell you exactly what I was responsible for. I could tell you what needed optimizing. But making space for what I actually enjoyed? That felt indulgent. Like something I’d get to after my work was done. And the work was just never, ever done.
So I get it. And, my clients are further in because their businesses are more complex, their teams are much larger, and the consequences of their decisions are much higher. They’re IN their businesses 24/7/365 and have been for years. And in those years, they’ve slowly lost touch with themselves entirely. They don’t know what lights them up anymore because they haven’t asked…haven’t had TIME to ask…that “selfish” question in years. Don’t get me wrong, they do get are temporary bursts: landing the giant client, making the big purchase, crossing the next significant revenue threshold. And they really LIKE to things in the moment (heck, so do I): the dopamine and adrenaline high of high stakes, high reward decisions. But the highs also fade fast, because they were never the thing that would make them fizzy-seltzer full of lasting joy or happiness or even peace. Those high highs are Empire’s faux substitute for the thing.
Empire and its machine doesn’t want you to know what you like. The machine — the whole apparatus of more, better, faster, the dopamine loops, the Empire of productivity and optimization — is perfectly happy to keep feeding you milestone highs. Close the deal, hit the number, buy the thing. Rinse, repeat. Because the moment you remember you’re a whole damn person with preferences and pleasures and a body that has opinions and actually needs rest, the whole system stops working on you.
Here’s what I see in the people who come to me:
They’ve built something real. And usually something good. A business, a team, a reputation. They’re great at what they do. But somewhere along the way, the business stopped being something they DO and became something they ARE. And when you ARE your business, any threat to the business is a threat to your existence (your IDENTITY). Any slowdown feels like death. You can’t rest because resting means you stop being you.
Their identity is the last thing they think needs attention. It’s the first thing that’s actually broken. Ask me how I know.
For YEARS I literally couldn’t imagine introducing myself as anything other than a business owner. An entrepreneur. Even “self-employed” worked for my inflated ego. It was a matter of pride. Who I WAS. What was important about me.
But then my husband and I got real burned out. We sold everything. Bought and moved into a used motorhome. Traveled 25,000 across the country and Canada. Immersed ourselves in nature. And it was THERE that I learned something different.
Nature As Guide
When I guide a client into the forest for a sit spot for twenty minutes next to a tree, a rock, a patch of moss…no phone, no agenda, no DO-ing, the first thing that happens is nothing. They fidget. They get bored. Their mind reaches for the to-do list. And then, if they stay sitting, something shifts. A bird lands nearby. They notice the way light moves through leaves. They feel their own breathing. And very quietly, without ceremony, they start to remember they have a body that can rest.
One client told me afterward: “I didn’t even get a chance to tell you about the problem I came to our walk with, but while I was sitting the answer came. I know exactly what to do.”
She wasn’t talking about a business problem. She was talking about herself.
When we live in our minds (instead of in our bodies), we forget: you cannot think your way back to yourself. The mind that optimized you into this place is not the mind that will get you out. You need your body. You need the living world. You need twenty minutes of not trying to fix anything.
And then you need to answer the question: what do you actually like?
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Start Small (aka: get curious, be honest)
Start small in your interrogation of your inner world, because it might be a new and unfamiliar place. Introduce yourself to yourself. Then, begin: was there a food you loved as a kid? Write that down. Was there a song you played on repeat in high school? Find it and save it on your streaming platform. Can you remember the way cold water feels on your feet? Maybe go find a creek and stand in it. What about any book you read for pleasure, not for growth? What’s the thing you do that makes you lose track of time (and I don’t mean “deep work”) I mean the thing where hours disappear and you don’t care if it was productive because it was so FUN? This is how you quietly re-solve yourself: one memory at a time. What about those things brought pleasure?
The revenue milestones will keep coming for you and for my clients because you’re just good at what you do. But also, the dopamine hits will come and go. That’s what they do. But the thing that actually lights you up? That’s still there, underneath the performance and the pressure, waiting for you to make space for it.
Your business didn’t dissolve your identity on purpose. It happened quietly, over time, in a culture that rewards total identification and total commitment. But you can start re-solving yourself. Not with a system. Not with a framework. Just with noticing you’re dissolved. Ooops.
Then, get curious. Ask a question. Sit in a spot, willing to be a person again, not just a high-performer.
What do you actually like?
If the answer scares you, we should talk.
Warmly,
Angie