Have you been feeling more frustrated, emotionally drained, or confused, even though nothing is technically “wrong”?
That feeling isn’t a sign you’re failing. It might actually be a sign you’re growing.
So many high-achieving leaders hit a point where things that used to energize them start to feel flat. Small things suddenly bother them. They go quiet in conversations, pulled inward by a desire they haven’t let themselves admit. And instead of recognizing these as signs of outgrowing the life they’ve built, they wonder what’s wrong with them.
In this episode, Blake shares what growth actually looks and feels like before the clarity arrives, and why the discomfort you’re experiencing may not be dysfunction at all.
Signs you’ve outgrown your life often don’t feel inspiring at first. They feel frustrating, confusing, and emotionally heavy.
Most people think growth starts with clarity, confidence, and momentum. But in reality, growth often begins with frustration, lack of passion, feeling undervalued, confusion and questioning why your life or work suddenly feels “off.”
In this episode of the Impact With Ease podcast, Blake Schofield explores the misunderstood emotional experience that often happens before major transformation. She shares why so many successful leaders and founders mistakenly believe something is wrong with them when they are actually experiencing signs of growth, misalignment, and untapped potential.
If you’ve been feeling more emotional, disconnected, frustrated, exhausted, or confused lately, this episode will help you understand why. Blake breaks down the hidden emotional patterns that emerge when you’ve outgrown the way you’ve been living, leading, or operating, and why trying to “push through” often makes the cycle worse.
Drawing from her own journey through corporate leadership, entrepreneurship, and years of personal transformation, Blake shares practical insights, powerful metaphors, and mindset shifts that can help you navigate growth with more clarity, peace, and self-trust.
You’ll learn why:
• Successful leaders often feel frustrated and unfulfilled before major growth
• Growth rarely feels good at first
• Misalignment creates emotional symptoms many people misunderstand
• High achievers get stuck in loops trying to solve problems they cannot clearly see from inside the situation
• The discomfort you’re feeling may not be dysfunction — it may be an invitation into growth
This episode is for leaders, founders, and professionals who have built meaningful success but are increasingly aware that the way they are operating is no longer energizing, sustainable, or fulfilling.
Episode Highlights
Why Growth Rarely Starts With Clarity
[01:02] – The emotional signs you’ve outgrown your current way of living or leading
[02:45] – Why frustration, confusion & emotional sensitivity are so often misunderstood
[04:10] – “You pay the full price emotionally on your unused potential”
Why High Achievers Get Stuck in Loops
[06:30] – You can’t see the label from inside the bottle
[08:15] – Why going to friends & family often keeps you more stuck
[10:00] – When to stop spinning and seek outside perspective
The Blender at the Bottom of the Ocean
[12:20] – Why forcing clarity creates more confusion
[14:05] – How to let the sediment settle so you can actually see
[15:30] – The difference between discomfort and unnecessary suffering
Whispers, Knocks & Bangs
[17:10] – Why misalignment gets louder the longer you ignore it
[19:00] – Susan’s story: 20 years of pushing through before the house came down
[21:15] – How to start hearing the signals earlier and move through them with more ease
Powerful Quotes
“One of the most misunderstood parts of growth is that it rarely starts with clarity. It usually starts with frustration.” –Blake Schofield
“You pay the full price emotionally on your unused potential.” –Randy Massengale
“The longer you push through in misalignment, the worse it gets. It starts as a whisper, then a knock, then a bang, and then the whole house comes down.” –Blake Schofield
“There is a discomfort in growth, but there doesn’t need to be suffering.” –Blake Schofield
Resources Mentioned
Executive Coaching: For founders, executives, and senior leaders who are successful but feeling drained, stagnant, or uncertain about their next step. Whether you’re burned out, standing at a crossroads, or simply know you’re meant for more—you don’t have to figure it out alone.
👉 Go to impactwithease.com/coaching to apply!
Let’s explore what’s possible for your team: If your company is investing in burnout, wellness or adaptability initiatives, but seeing rising burnout, disengagement, or retention risk, it may be time to address the root cause.
We identify & diagnose organizational risk – surfacing the key drivers of burnout, leadership capacity and adaptability strains impacting your team; reduce leadership attrition, disengagement and preventable turnover; equip your leaders with the skills to increase their productivity & lead effectively during pressure and uncertainty.
👉 Explore Workshops, Leadership Capacity Risk Assessments, Leadership Development or Consulting at https://impactwithease.com/corporate-training-consulting/
Discover what is driving your burnout: In just 5 minutes, learn your unique burnout type™ & how to restore your energy, fulfillment & peace at www.impactwithease.com/burnout-type
Transcript
Blake:
Real leadership. Real life. Real impact. No more choosing between your career and your life. Here you’ll find honest conversations, science-backed strategies, and inspiring stories to help you thrive at work and truly enjoy your life outside of it.
I’m your host, Blake, and I’m honored to help you create more impact with ease.
Blake (00:05.206)
One of the most misunderstood parts of growth is that it rarely starts with clarity. It usually starts with frustration. Things that didn’t used to bother you now start building. Things that you used to give you a lot of joy or passion you were excited to do.
Now are tempered, they don’t feel the same way that they used to. And then small things start to bug you. Maybe something, a coworker, a family member, or a friend says, maybe there’s an event that feels triggering and what happens is you’re lively, you’re in that conversation and then all of a sudden you kind of go quiet. You go inward.
Blake (01:07.414)
and now you’re not really present anymore. And it starts bringing up something for you, whether it’s a desire of something that you really want, but maybe you haven’t really let yourself admit or believe was possible. Maybe a sense of frustration like, why am I not there yet? Or why is this not working the way I want? Maybe it’s this feeling that…
You’ve done so much and contributed so much, why do you still feel that people don’t really value you or see what you’re really bringing? Maybe it’s anger or maybe it’s confusion. I just don’t understand why I’m feeling this way.
Blake (01:54.622)
All of these.
are actually the price and the path of growth. But often we don’t know that. They’re actually signs that we are outgrowing the life that we have built or the way of how we are showing up and living and leading in it.
Blake (02:21.356)
If you’re experiencing this, it’s not because you’re failing or that you should be more grateful. And it’s also not a sign that you can’t or won’t be fulfilled or happy.
It’s actually because the strategies, the identity, your environment, or the ways that you’ve been operating in it are no longer aligned with who you’re becoming.
Blake (02:51.906)
You know, in 2022, I entered a program that was a very intense, I like to call it almost like an entrepreneurial MBA. Six months, every single week learning and applying lessons. And I knew stepping into that program, it was quite expensive, that it was what I needed to step into what was next for me.
and the very first class we had, my mentor, Randy Massengale said, quote, you pay the full price emotionally on your unused potential.
Blake (03:33.356)
And the minute I heard that, I broke down in tears because it was the thing that I had known my whole life. That inner feeling that there had to be something more than this, this unsettled feeling that…
The life I was leading wasn’t quite right. And I didn’t know how to get where I wanted to go. I didn’t know how to fix that feeling. And despite all of the things I was doing, right, that feeling kept coming back.
Blake (04:17.976)
There is a discomfort in growth, but there doesn’t need to be suffering. The reality is when you can understand the journey and what it looks like to continue to grow more and more into the life and the career that you want, you can learn how to listen to those signals earlier, and you can learn how to go through the process easier.
I wish that I had had a mentor or somebody to help me understand this because I went through this for decades.
Blake (04:59.56)
often believing that something was wrong with me, often getting stuck in these loops of frustration and anxiety and forcing and pushing, trying to figure out what I could do, and then often being surrounded by people that were telling me I should be grateful for the life that I had, which just further ingrained maybe that it was about me, something was wrong with me. And I’m here to share with you that if you can relate to any of this.
I want you to know there’s nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are not ungrateful. What you’re experiencing are signs and symptoms of misalignment and the visible signs that you have outgrown the way that you have been leading and living. But so often we struggle to understand what are the changes we really need to make? Why am I really experiencing this and actually solve the root of it?
And so I want to share with you today as somebody who has massively grown and changed her life in so many ways, especially in the last decade since I left my corporate career behind. Some of the key things that I learned in the hopes that it can help you have more peace in the journey, that it can help you understand more of what the path looks and feels like.
and in the hope that it can help you shortcut your journey.
The most important lesson, you cannot see the label from inside the bottle.
Blake (06:40.716)
So often, especially if you’re somebody who is responsible, takes care of things, has always been the capable one, it’s so easy to believe that you should know the answer. You should be able to see it and not being able to see it is a deficit or something wrong with you. And that is the biggest misconception that will keep us stuck. The reality and the truth is every single human being has blind spots.
Blake (07:13.6)
every one of us and every one of us are unable to see ourselves clearly. When you can begin to recognize, I cannot see the label because from inside the bottle, I’m too close to it.
Blake (07:30.156)
The first thing we normally do is go to friends and family, but here’s the problem. They have a vested interest in us. They already have a perspective on who we are. And generally, unless they’ve achieved what you want to achieve, they’re gonna end up sharing their fears and worries, et cetera, on you. And what often almost always happens is that keeps us stuck from really being able to see
the full picture. So when you realize you can’t see the label from inside the bottle, the next thing I want you to really stop and do is ask yourself who has already done what I’m trying to do that could be impartial, that could give me real, honest, impartial advice and perspective to see this differently. Because here’s the reality when you’re in a circumstance like this, either you need information that you don’t have, right? Or
You need somebody to help you see what you cannot see.
And if you’ve tried to solve this problem on your own, right, for at least 48 hours,
then if you knew the right information to find, you would have found it, right? Once you’ve hit that 48 hour mark, as I always tell my clients, then that’s where you wanna go seek help, that’s where you wanna go seek guidance. Because continuing to spin in it is just keeping you stuck, right? It’s just creating more suffering.
Blake (09:04.875)
And here’s what I also know, our brains, when they cannot solve a problem, when we continue to try to force ourselves to solve a problem that we don’t have the right information for, our perspective is too limited because we can’t see it, we can actually create, think about it’s almost like if you took a ball of string and you just started running it all across the house, right? Everywhere all across the house, all of a sudden it’s like, man, I can’t even walk through my house because it’s like this huge spider web.
blocking every avenue I go, well that’s what we do to our brains when we keep trying to solve these problems on our own. And so what starts to happen is we start to internalize that either the problem is too hard to solve because we couldn’t solve it, right, or just not solvable, period. And the reality is it’s not solvable the way you’re trying to solve it.
But somebody outside of that can easily and clearly see if they’re impartial and they have the knowledge and experience having done this before to be able to help you. When I really came to understand this, gaining clarity and learning how to deal with that discomfort of growth was one of the biggest challenges I had in my first couple of years in entrepreneurship. And it was a struggle I had had in corporate as well, but certainly amplified when you’re running your own business. And,
I had a mentor, Jeff Moore, who shared a number of really helpful things with me. One of the most helpful was he would describe what we often do to ourselves when we’re seeking clarity that gets us actually more stuck. So envision that you see an ocean and you’re at the bottom of the ocean and you have one of those hand blenders, you know, like it used to blend for pastries or pancakes, and you were taking that hand blender and just cranking it on the bottom of the ocean.
And as you’re doing all the sediment, all the dirt starts floating all up in the air. And the more you crank that, the more dirt starts to fill the water. And soon, you cannot see anything. And that is exactly what so many of us do to ourselves when we face that discomfort. When we’re in those places where we have outgrown the way we’ve been living our life or doing our career, but we don’t yet know, we don’t yet have clarity on what is the root of the struggles that we’re feeling and what is it that we actually need to shift into, right?
One of the greatest gifts Jeff gave me was that understanding of, yep, I am taking a blender to the bottom of the ocean.
And so when I’m experiencing that, what I need to do is stop because everything I’m doing is actually working against me. I need to stop. I need to take a break. I need to get away from the thing that I’m trying to solve over and over and over again. And I need to allow the sediment in the water to land at the bottom so that the water is more clear.
Blake (12:27.47)
I think about the journey that I’ve had and the consistent journey that I see over and over again with successful leaders who feel drained, trapped, unfulfilled, wavering on their purpose, struggling with these elements of frustration and not knowing how to solve it…and as somebody who has lived so much of that and who still works through that because I am growth oriented and so I’m constantly growing and moving and evolving.
Blake (13:23.768)
One of the biggest things I hope today’s episode will help you see is that what you’re experiencing, if what you’re listening to today fits, what you’re experiencing are signs and symptoms of an opportunity for growth.
And here’s the thing I want you to know that I also know to be true: These opportunities of discomfort and growth are a gift. And life will always give you lessons and you’ll keep getting the lesson until you learn it.
I think so often we can get stuck believing that we are not appreciating what we have and we should just push through.
But here’s what I know to be true. The longer you push through in misalignment, the worse it gets. It starts as a whisper, then a knock, then a bang, and then the whole house comes down. So last week I interviewed Susan, and Susan shared about her journey, 20 years in Wall Street with money, making changes, hoping that it would be better, hoping it would be the right path.
She got a lot of whispers, then knocks, then bang, then her whole house came down when she filed for bankruptcy.
Blake (14:50.508)
She was being shown that there was a life that she had outgrown, there were beliefs that she had outgrown, there were ways that she was moving in her life and her career that no longer fit her. But she didn’t know the root of those, she wasn’t solving it, right? She wasn’t solving the root, she was doing it on her own.
And so she kept getting the lesson.
Blake (15:20.106)
In life, we are wired to grow.
And life will give us the opportunities and the lessons. And so what I know to be true is if you’re always going to be growing, because if you’re not growing, you’re dying, if there are lessons that you need to learn in life in order to create the life that you’re really here to live, then the choice that you get is how you go through it.
You pay the full price emotionally on your unused potential. When I was in middle school, I started studying the regrets people had at the end of their life.
And one of their absolute biggest regrets was the things they did not do. And I know viscerally why that is. Because each one of us has those whispers, those dreams, those desires, those what ifs. Those are meant for us.
Blake (16:21.174)
And the more we can learn how to step into them, the more we can learn what the path to growth and what the path to alignment look like, the easier we can navigate it, the more trust we can build in ourselves, the more joy we have on a day-to-day basis, the more energy we have, and the easier the journey becomes.
Blake:
Most Successful People don’t realize they’re in burnout, because stress and exhaustion have become so normalized, but burnout is actually a sign of deeper misalignment between how you’re wired to thrive and how you’re actually working and living. Fix the misalignment and everything changes.
Take the free quiz at www.impactwithease.com/burnout-type.com to discover your burnout type and get next steps to reclaim your energy, lead with confidence and create more ease in your life and career.
