The Day I Stopped Chasing and Everything Changed

“For years, I believed success belonged to the woman who worked the hardest.

Today, I believe it belongs to the woman who is most available to receive it.”

We’ve taught women how to achieve.

We’ve taught them how to set goals, work harder, become more productive, network more effectively, build businesses, grow teams, market themselves and keep pushing forward.

And let’s be honest—we’ve become incredibly good at it.

Women today are building remarkable businesses, leading organisations, creating financial independence and proving, every single day, that there are very few limits to what we’re capable of achieving.

Yet despite all of that…

Why do so many successful women still feel exhausted?

Why do so many secretly wonder why success still feels like such hard work?

Why, after reaching one goal, do we immediately find ourselves chasing the next one without ever truly allowing ourselves to enjoy where we’ve arrived?

Over the last twenty years, I’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of people—from entrepreneurs and business owners to professionals, leaders and individuals navigating significant change. Although their stories were all different, I began noticing something fascinating.

The challenge was rarely a lack of ambition.

It wasn’t usually a lack of intelligence.

It certainly wasn’t a lack of potential.

More often than not, the greatest challenge wasn’t that people didn’t know how to achieve.

It was that they didn’t know how to receive.

At first, even I questioned that idea.

Receive what?

Money?

Success?

Opportunities?

Support?

Love?

Recognition?

The answer surprised me.

All of it.

Because while we spend years learning how to strive, produce and accomplish, very few of us are ever shown how to become truly available for everything we’ve been working so hard to create.

For most of my life, I thought success was simple.

Work harder.

Give more.

Stay strong.

Figure everything out yourself.

Be the dependable one.

The capable one.

The woman who always had the answers.

Those qualities helped me build businesses and create opportunities I once only dreamed about.

People admired my resilience.

They praised my determination.

They commented on my work ethic.

From the outside, it looked like success.

From the inside, however, there was always another mountain waiting to be climbed.

Another target to hit.

Another problem to solve.

Another reason why I couldn’t quite relax.

I became incredibly skilled at creating.

Yet I had never learned how to receive.

That realisation changed everything.

Today, I often ask audiences a question that usually stops the room.

What if the very qualities you’ve been praised for your entire life are also the very qualities limiting how much life is able to give back to you?

Not because they’re wrong.

Far from it.

Determination is a gift.

Commitment is a gift.

Discipline is a gift.

Generosity is a gift.

Leadership is a gift.

The question isn’t whether those qualities serve us.

The question is whether we’ve unintentionally built our entire identity around earning rather than allowing.

Around proving rather than trusting.

Around carrying rather than receiving.

Because there is a profound difference.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see in personal development is the idea that receiving is passive.

It isn’t.

Receiving is one of the most courageous things you’ll ever do.

Receiving asks you to be visible.

Receiving asks you to believe you’re worthy before you’ve gathered more evidence.

Receiving asks you to accept support when you’ve spent years being the one everyone else depends upon.

Receiving asks you to allow appreciation without immediately brushing it aside.

Receiving asks you to expand beyond what has always felt familiar.

And that can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.

Not because you’re doing anything wrong.

But because your subconscious has one primary responsibility.

To keep you safe.

Here’s something I want you to consider.

Your subconscious mind isn’t trying to stop your success.

It’s trying to protect you.

If greater visibility has ever felt unsafe…

If standing out once attracted criticism…

If asking for help led to disappointment…

If earning more money created conflict…

If success meant more pressure than freedom…

Your subconscious may quietly associate “more” with uncertainty rather than possibility.

It isn’t questioning your dreams.

It’s simply choosing what feels familiar.

And familiarity has an extraordinary influence over our decisions.

This is where everything began changing for me.

I stopped asking, “How can I work harder?”

Instead, I became fascinated by a very different question.

How available am I to receive everything I keep saying I want?

When I first began asking myself that question, I realised something that completely transformed the way I viewed success.

For years, I had been focusing on what I needed to do.

I had rarely stopped to consider who I was being while I was doing it.

Like so many women, I had become exceptionally good at holding everything together.

I could solve problems.

I could support others.

I could adapt.

I could lead.

I could keep going when things became difficult.

People often described me as strong.

For a long time, I believed that was one of the greatest compliments I could receive.

Today, I see strength a little differently.

Because somewhere along the way, many of us learned that being strong meant carrying everything ourselves.

It meant saying, “I’m fine,” even when we weren’t.

It meant putting everyone else’s needs before our own.

It meant believing that asking for help somehow diminished our independence.

It meant giving… and giving… and giving… until we forgot what it felt like to simply receive.

The irony is that the very qualities that helped us survive don’t always help us thrive.

And this is where I believe so many ambitious women unknowingly become trapped.

Not by a lack of opportunity.

But by a lifetime of protection.

One of the principles I teach is this:

Protection is not the same as power.

Read that again.

Protection is not the same as power.

Many women have become masters of protecting themselves.

Protecting themselves from disappointment.

Protecting themselves from rejection.

Protecting themselves from criticism.

Protecting themselves from failure.

Protecting themselves from vulnerability.

Protecting themselves from slowing down.

Protecting themselves from being seen.

The challenge is that the subconscious doesn’t distinguish between protecting you from pain and protecting you from possibility.

The same walls that keep disappointment out can also keep opportunity out.

The same armour that once kept you safe can eventually become too heavy to wear.

For years, I believed that if I could just work a little harder, learn another strategy, attend another course or become even better at what I did, everything would eventually fall into place.

Then life interrupted my plans.

There was a season when I lost almost everything financially.

Looking back, I can honestly say it became one of the greatest gifts of my life.

At the time, it certainly didn’t feel like one.

It challenged my identity.

It challenged my confidence.

It challenged everything I believed about success.

Most of all, it challenged the belief that I had to carry the weight of the world on my own shoulders.

Rebuilding my life wasn’t simply about rebuilding my finances.

It was about rebuilding my relationship with myself.

It was during that journey that I became fascinated by what was really happening beneath our behaviour.

Why do intelligent people repeat the same patterns?

Why do capable women underestimate themselves?

Why do opportunities appear in front of us, yet somehow feel out of reach?

Why do some people seem to create success with a sense of flow while others feel as though they’re constantly swimming against the tide?

The more I studied human behaviour, subconscious communication, emotional patterns and what I now call SourceWork™, the clearer it became.

Our lives rarely expand beyond our capacity to hold what we desire.

Think about that for a moment.

It’s one thing to want more success.

It’s another thing entirely to feel safe holding it.

Can you comfortably hold greater visibility?

Can you hold a larger income without feeling guilty?

Can you hold praise without immediately deflecting it?

Can you hold leadership without feeling like an imposter?

Can you hold more love without wondering when it might disappear?

Can you hold peace without feeling you should be doing something?

These are very different questions.

Because receiving isn’t simply about getting more.

Receiving is about expanding your capacity to hold more life.

Imagine trying to pour more water into a glass that is already completely full.

No matter how pure the water is, it has nowhere to go.

Many of us have spent years filling our emotional glass with responsibility…

Expectation…

Pressure…

Perfectionism…

Hyper-independence…

And the belief that we have to earn every good thing that comes our way.

Then we wonder why abundance seems so difficult to hold.

It’s not that life isn’t pouring.

It’s that we’ve forgotten how to make space.

This is why I created SourceWork™.

Not as another technique.

Not as another mindset strategy.

Not as another framework promising to fix people.

I created it because I became convinced that transformation doesn’t happen simply because we learn new information.

Transformation happens when we become emotionally available for a different experience of life.

When our mind, body and subconscious are no longer pulling in different directions.

When success feels safe.

When joy feels familiar.

When receiving no longer feels uncomfortable.

Because here’s what I’ve come to believe.

Life is always responding to who we are being, not just to what we are doing.

And perhaps that’s the conversation we should have been having all along.

People often ask me if this is simply positive thinking.

It isn’t.

In fact, I don’t believe lasting transformation happens because we force ourselves to think positively.

If you’ve ever stood in front of a mirror repeating affirmations while another voice inside quietly whispered, “I don’t believe a word of this,” you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

Real transformation isn’t about convincing yourself.

It’s about becoming congruent with yourself.

When your thoughts, your emotions, your body and your subconscious are all moving in the same direction, something remarkable begins to happen.

You notice opportunities you couldn’t previously see.

You have conversations you might once have avoided.

You communicate differently.

You make decisions from clarity rather than urgency.

Other people experience you differently too.

Confidence is no longer something you perform.

It’s something you embody.

I’ve seen this happen thousands of times over the past two decades.

A woman who spent years undercharging suddenly has the confidence to ask for what she’s worth—and receives a wholehearted yes.

A business owner who constantly second-guessed herself begins trusting her own wisdom, and suddenly opportunities that once felt out of reach begin appearing with surprising ease.

Someone who always felt overlooked starts showing up differently, and the world responds differently.

Did life suddenly decide to reward them?

Or did they become available for what had been there all along?

That’s the question that fascinates me.

Because I don’t believe life suddenly changed.

I believe they changed the way they met life.

One of the greatest shifts I ever experienced came when I realised I had been measuring success by one question:

“What else do I need to do?”

Today, I measure it very differently.

I ask myself:

“How open am I to receiving what is already making its way towards me?”

That one question changes everything.

It changes the energy behind your actions.

It changes the conversations you have.

It changes how you walk into a room.

It changes how you lead.

It changes how you sell.

It changes how you parent.

It changes how you love.

It even changes what you notice.

Because our subconscious is constantly filtering reality.

Every second of every day, it decides what deserves our attention.

If we’re expecting struggle, we’ll become exceptionally good at finding evidence of struggle.

If we’re expecting possibility, we’ll begin recognising opportunities that were always present but previously invisible.

This isn’t magic.

It’s how our minds work.

And once you understand that, you begin living differently.

One of the sayings that has become deeply personal to me is this:

“When I chase, I lose my place. When I believe, I receive.”

People sometimes misunderstand what I mean.

They imagine I’m suggesting we stop taking action.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I believe deeply in action.

I believe in commitment.

I believe in excellence.

I believe in showing up.

What I no longer believe is that fear should be the fuel that drives us.

There is a profound difference between inspired action and anxious action.

One creates.

The other chases.

One invites opportunity.

The other constantly feels as though it’s trying to catch up.

When we operate from fear, there is always another mountain.

Another benchmark.

Another comparison.

Another reason why we aren’t quite enough yet.

When we operate from belief, our actions become calmer.

More intentional.

More powerful.

We stop trying to prove our worth.

We simply express it.

I’ve often found that this is the moment life begins responding differently.

Clients arrive.

Introductions happen.

Ideas flow.

Conversations unfold.

Doors begin opening.

Not because we manipulated the universe.

But because we stopped fighting ourselves.

Perhaps that’s what receiving really is.

Not waiting.

Not wishing.

Not hoping.

Receiving is becoming so aligned with who you truly are that when opportunity knocks, you no longer hesitate to open the door.

And maybe that’s the real success story.

Not the business you’ve built.

Not the income you’ve created.

Not the awards you’ve won.

But the relationship you’ve built with yourself along the way.

Because when that relationship changes…

Everything else begins to change with it.

As I look back over my own journey, I sometimes smile at the woman who believed she had to carry everything.

She genuinely thought that if she just worked a little harder…

Gave a little more…

Learned one more strategy…

Solved one more problem…

Then one day she would finally arrive.

Perhaps you’ve met that version of yourself too.

She’s incredibly capable.

She keeps her promises.

She rarely lets anyone down.

She’s the one everyone turns to.

She’s admired for her resilience.

She’s successful by most people’s standards.

Yet beneath all of that capability, she’s quietly wondering…

“Why does everything still feel so heavy?”

If that’s you, I want you to know something.

There is nothing wrong with your ambition.

There is nothing wrong with your drive.

There is nothing wrong with your desire to create an extraordinary life.

Those qualities are beautiful.

The invitation isn’t to become less ambitious.

It’s to become more available.

More available for support.

More available for joy.

More available for meaningful relationships.

More available for financial abundance.

More available for peace.

More available for opportunities that don’t require you to exhaust yourself before you believe you’ve earned them.

Because perhaps life has never been asking you to become someone else.

Perhaps it has simply been waiting for you to stop holding yourself so tightly.

One of the greatest lessons life has ever taught me is this:

You cannot receive with clenched fists.

Whether you’re holding on to fear…

Old beliefs…

The need to control every outcome…

Or the identity of always being the strong one…

Closed hands struggle to receive open-handed gifts.

Receiving begins with opening.

Opening your mind.

Opening your heart.

Opening your expectations.

Opening your conversations.

Opening your willingness to believe that life can feel different.

That doesn’t mean every day will be perfect.

It doesn’t mean challenges disappear.

It certainly doesn’t mean we stop taking responsibility for our lives.

It simply means we stop believing that struggle is the price of success.

For years I believed life rewarded the woman who pushed the hardest.

Today, I believe life responds to the woman who has the courage to remain open.

Open to possibility.

Open to connection.

Open to abundance.

Open to wisdom.

Open to herself.

Because when we stop living in protection…

We finally begin living in possibility.

And that, for me, is what receiving truly means.

So as you close this magazine and step back into your business, your family, your ambitions and your beautifully full life, I’d love to leave you with one question.

Not a question to answer today.

A question to carry with you.

A question to return to whenever life feels heavy, whenever success feels like an uphill climb, or whenever you find yourself wondering if there has to be another way.

Here it is.

If life wanted to give you more…

More fulfilment.

More confidence.

More financial freedom.

More meaningful relationships.

More health.

More opportunities.

More joy.

Would you recognise it?

More importantly…

Would you allow yourself to receive it?

Because I have come to believe that some of the greatest gifts life has waiting for us are not found at the end of more striving.

They are discovered the moment we become available for more living.

And perhaps your next chapter won’t be written by working harder.

Perhaps it will be written more deeply.

After all…

We’ve spent a lifetime learning how to achieve.

Maybe it’s finally time we learned how to receive.