I Spent Years Asking the Wrong Questions

No amount of information can heal a belief that tells you you're not enough.

I’ve read 22 books about what shapes who we become and how it influences the way we think, feel, and move through life, and I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface.

Some people unwind with Netflix. Most nights you’ll find me lying on the floor, or sometimes my bed, with my legs up the wall, trying to regulate my nervous system after the day. Somewhere between slowing my breathing and letting my mind wander, I’ll find myself reflecting on something I read that morning. Not because I’m trying to memorize it or find the “right” answer, but because something about it lingers. It stays with me. It stirs something inside of me that I can’t quite let go of.

Writing has always been the way I ground myself before jumping into my day. Before I open my email, check social media, or start working, I make my matcha, open my journal, and give myself permission to fill a blank page. I don’t journal with prompts or a framework. I simply allow whatever needs to come through to flow out without judgment or criticism.

Sometimes it’s a single page. Other times it’s five, with every inch of the margins covered in tiny handwriting because I ran out of room and wasn’t ready to stop. I’ll free-write, ask myself questions, challenge old beliefs, connect ideas I’d never connected before, or finally trace a limiting belief back to where it first began. The words don’t come because I have something to teach. They come because I’m trying to make sense of myself just a little more deeply.

I’ve realized the books themselves rarely change me. They simply create enough space for me to slow down, pay attention, and ask questions I never would have thought to ask otherwise.

If there’s one thing I’ve come to learn over the last few years, it’s this: some of the biggest, life-altering changes in my life didn’t happen because my external circumstances changed. They happened because the questions I was asking myself changed.

For years, I was so focused on becoming a better, smarter, more healed version of myself that I never stopped to get curious about the version of me that already existed.

For most of my life, I genuinely believed there was always another version of me I needed to become. For me, healing meant becoming someone better. Stronger. More confident. More disciplined. More successful. The list goes on.

Whenever something wasn’t working, my mind immediately went into fixing mode. I was the fixing queen. I knew how to solve complex problems, organize my thoughts, come up with a plan, and go all in on execution. Looking back, I can see this started long before entrepreneurship. Even as a little girl, I learned how to figure things out on my own because I had to. For a long time, I thought that was simply one of my strengths. Now I realize it was also a survival strategy. If I could solve the problem, I didn’t have to sit with what I was feeling.

I spent years asking the wrong questions.

I’d pick up another book hoping it would finally unlock the answer I’d been searching for. Most of the time, though, it just gave me more information. On top of the books, I was constantly consuming content, doomscrolling, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, taking course after course, asking ChatGPT, hiring coaches, learning marketing, strategy, SEO, funnels, systems, always believing the next thing would finally be the thing.

At the time, I told myself I was becoming more qualified. More prepared. More capable.

Looking back, I can finally see what was quietly sitting beneath the surface...

I didn’t believe I was enough. Oof. That one still hurts to admit.

I never thought of myself as the smart one in school or the one who would really amount to much. Even typing those words makes my heart sink because I can see how deeply I once believed them.

So I kept learning. I kept collecting more information, more proof, more strategies, hoping they would eventually give me the confidence I couldn’t seem to give myself. Looking back, it’s almost heartbreaking because I can see I wasn’t really searching for more information at all.

I was searching for permission.

Permission to finally believe that I was enough exactly as I was. Permission to trust myself instead of constantly looking for someone else to tell me I was doing it right. Permission to stop believing there was another version of me I had to become before I was worthy of being seen.

“No amount of information could ever heal the belief that quietly told me I wasn’t enough.”

I didn’t know that then.

But I know it now.

Then one day, while reading The Happy Pocket Full of Money, something finally clicked. Despite the title, the book isn’t really about money. It’s about consciousness, possibility, and the unseen ways our beliefs shape the reality we experience. Whether or not you agree with every idea in it, it’s one of those books that makes you stop and question the way you’ve been thinking. I’d honestly say it’s a must-read.

It wasn’t the book itself that changed me. It was the way it helped me see what I’d been searching for all along. I realized all of the external work I’d been doing, learning systems, marketing, strategy, SEO, SOPs, building courses, email funnels, becoming a designer, developer, strategist, entrepreneur (whew... that was a mouthful), was never really about building a business at all.

It was about proving to myself that I could do it.

I thought I was building a business, but looking back, I was really trying to build enough evidence to finally believe in myself. Every new skill, every certification, every strategy, every course became another attempt to prove that I was capable.

I’ve always loved learning. I probably always will. But somewhere along the way, my love of learning became tangled up with my need to prove myself. Those are two very different things. I wasn’t reading because I was curious anymore. I was reading because I thought the next book, the next course, the next mentor would finally make me feel qualified enough to believe in myself.

Then I asked myself a question that completely stopped me in my tracks. It’s the question that broke me open and made me question the entire last decade of my life.

If I truly believed in myself, why was I still searching for permission to receive?

Because if I truly believed I was smart enough, worthy enough, and capable enough, I wouldn’t constantly need someone else to validate my work before I believed in it myself. If I didn’t trust myself, why would anyone else? If I was always searching for proof that my work was valuable and transformative, I was outsourcing my worth instead of embodying it.

Looking back, it seems so obvious. At the time, I couldn’t see any of it, and apparently no one else in my life could either. Looking back now, I don’t think anyone was supposed to. I’d become incredibly good at hiding my discomfort behind confidence. From the outside, it looked like I had it all together. I had built the business. I had clients. I had the experience. I had the knowledge. But on the inside, I was quietly searching for someone, anyone, to convince me I was enough.

The more I sat with that realization, the more I realized this had very little to do with entrepreneurship or scaling my business. It had everything to do with the energy I was bringing into my life every single day. I was operating from fear. Fear of not being enough. Fear of not being worthy. Fear of not being chosen. Whether you call that energy, identity, mindset, or frequency, I could finally see it for what it was.

What’s interesting is that my life didn’t magically change overnight. Actually, quite the opposite. Around this same time, I had finally reached a goal I’d been working toward for years: building a six-figure business. I thought crossing that finish line would change everything.

It didn’t.

I was exhausted and burnt out. I’d spent years pouring so much of myself into helping my clients believe in their businesses that somewhere along the way, I’d stopped believing in my own. My energy was constantly flowing into everyone else’s cup because I believed in their vision more than I believed in mine. I was sitting behind the scenes, behind the screen, behind their wins, quietly wondering why none of my own success felt the way I’d imagined it would.

That was one of the hardest truths I’ve ever had to admit.

My circumstances stayed mostly the same, although one thing did change. I stopped trying to learn more and started sitting with what I already knew. I raised my prices. I let go of services that drained me. I started saying no to inquiries that weren’t aligned. But more importantly, I stopped trying to become someone else. I started trusting the woman I already was.

Choosing to stop searching for validation outside of myself and finally turn inward gave me something no strategy, course, certification, or book ever could. It sent me on a journey that ultimately brought me back to myself. Not a new version of me, but the one who had been there all along, quietly waiting for me to trust her.

Here’s what I do know now: I spent years asking, “How do I become someone better?” when the question that changed my life was, “What if there was never anything wrong with the person I already was?” We spend so much of our lives trying to become the version of ourselves we think we need to be that we rarely stop long enough to get curious about the person we already are. Maybe that’s the real gift of life. Not becoming someone new, but taking the time to notice what shaped you, what you’ve been carrying, and what has kept you from believing you were already enough.

The more clearly I’ve learned to see myself, the less interested I’ve become in becoming someone else.

Thank you for reading. Whether this found you in a season of change, curiosity, or somewhere in between, I’m genuinely grateful you’re here.

If this felt like a conversation you didn’t know you needed, I’d love to have you here. Every week, I’ll be sharing stories, observations, and questions about the invisible beliefs, experiences, and moments that quietly shape the way we live. If you’d like these essays delivered straight to your inbox, I’d love for you to join me.