I don't know about you, but every January I find myself sorely tempted to initiate a drinking game where we throw back a shot every time we hear, "new year, new you!" Considering that the whole internet transforms into a shrine to optimization in the first month of the year, however, we'd all quickly become sotted.

So instead of another blog about fresh goals, bigger numbers, and shinier systems, I'm going to tell you what my heart says every time I see a vision board plastered with stock photos of women laughing at salads and standing on mountaintops: you can't manifest your way out of living someone else's life.

You can't optimize your way into authenticity.

And you definitely can't vision board your way past the fact that you might be chasing a version of success that was never actually yours to begin with.

The Problem With Building on Borrowed Ground

You've inherited more than your grandmother's cheekbones and your father's stubbornness. You've inherited entire narratives about what success should look like, how a professional woman should sound, what legitimate business means, which dreams deserve pursuit and which ones need to stay hobbies.

These narratives don't announce themselves. They don't arrive with a disclaimer that says "Warning: This Definition of Success May Not Actually Be Yours." They just show up as the water you're swimming in, the assumptions you've absorbed, the invisible architecture shaping every strategic decision you make.

So you set goals that look impressive on paper. You chase milestones that would make your parents proud. You build businesses that prove you're serious, credible, successful by all the agreed-upon metrics.

And somewhere underneath all that accomplishment, there's a quiet voice asking: Is this actually mine?

What Excavation Reveals

Before you can build anything authentic, you need to know what ground you're standing on. Is this foundation actually yours, or are you just redecorating someone else's house?

Excavation means getting curious about the narratives running your professional life. It means asking uncomfortable questions about the goals you're chasing, the positioning you've built, the version of yourself you're presenting to the world.

Here are the three questions that reveal unstable ground:

Who Decided This Matters?

Look at your current business strategy. Your professional goals. The way you describe what you do and who you serve.

Now ask: who decided these things were valuable?

Not "do I think they're valuable" but "whose value system am I operating inside of?" Because there's a difference between goals that come from your actual purpose and goals that come from inherited definitions of what impressive looks like.

Maybe you're pursuing speaking engagements because that's what thought leaders do, not because you actually want to be on stages. Maybe you're building courses because that's how you scale, not because teaching in that format brings you alive. Maybe your entire positioning is designed to prove you belong in rooms you're not even sure you want to be in.

The question isn't whether these goals are wrong. The question is: are they yours?

What Am I Performing?

Women are masterful performers. We've learned to read rooms, adjust our volume, edit our intensity, soften our certainty. We know exactly how much authenticity is palatable, how much ambition is acceptable, how much complexity we can reveal before we lose people.

This performance happens everywhere. In how you write your LinkedIn profile. In the voice you use for client calls versus the voice you use with friends. In the gap between what you actually think and what you allow yourself to say publicly.

Look at your professional presence and ask: where am I performing someone else's version of credible? Where am I editing myself for approval? What parts of my actual thinking am I keeping hidden because they don't fit the expected script?

The cost of this performance isn't just exhaustion. It's that you end up building a business around a version of yourself that doesn't actually exist.

Where Am I Editing Myself for Approval?

This is the deepest layer. The place where you've learned to make yourself more digestible, more acceptable, more aligned with what successful women in your field are supposed to sound like.

You qualify your expertise. You soften your prices. You add disclaimers to your strongest opinions. You present the polished, proven, professional version instead of the raw, real, still-figuring-it-out truth.

And here's what happens: you attract clients who want that polished version. You build a business that requires you to maintain the performance. You create a professional identity that feels increasingly far from who you actually are.

The editing never stops because you've built everything on the edited version.

Why Excavation Creates Sustainable Growth

You cannot build authentically on narratives that were never yours.

All those January optimization strategies assume you're starting from solid ground. They assume your goals are actually your goals, your positioning reflects your actual purpose, your professional presence represents who you really are.

But if you're building on inherited narratives, borrowed definitions of success, and performed versions of credibility, optimization just makes you more efficiently inauthentic.

Excavation is different. It's diagnostic, not prescriptive. It's about uncovering what's actually true before you build anything new. It's about identifying which parts of your current strategy come from genuine purpose and which parts come from unexamined assumptions about what successful women are supposed to do.

This work isn't comfortable. It requires looking at the gap between who you're presenting and who you're becoming. It means questioning goals you've already told everyone about, examining positioning you've invested in, challenging narratives you've been performing for years.

But here's what excavation makes possible: building a business that doesn't require constant performance. Creating positioning that sounds like coming home instead of showing up for an audition. Pursuing goals that come from actual purpose instead of inherited blueprints.

January Is for Digging

So this January, I'm inviting you to hold off on the vision boards and goal templates. Instead, get curious about the ground you're standing on.

What would you discover if you stopped optimizing and started excavating? What narratives are you building on? Whose definitions of success are shaping your strategy? What would your business look like if it came from what's actually true instead of what's supposed to be impressive?

The answers to these questions matter more than any productivity hack or revenue goal. Because sustainable growth doesn't come from optimizing inherited narratives. It comes from building on ground that's actually yours.



Ready to excavate? If you're tired of performing someone else's version of success and ready to build from what's actually true, let's talk. The work isn't comfortable, but it's foundational. Connect with me here and let's start digging.