What If You Built Your Dream Only to Want to Burn It Down?

What if success and mastery aren’t proof that you’re on the right path?

In The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks he writes, “The Zone of Excellence is where most successful people get stuck. It’s comfortable, it’s where you’re highly skilled, and people reward you for staying there. But it’s not your Zone of Genius.”

I’ve spent the last eighteen years as a highly skilled esthetician.

I’ve been at the top of my game, fully booked, with a business so in-demand I could barely keep up. On paper, it has looked like I’ve made it. I’ve surpassed my goals and dreams of what I thought I could build. But I’ve had this background feeling for a few years that there was more. Little nudges, quiet discomfort, the sense that something wasn’t quite right, butI kept pushing past this feeling.

Scarcity has kept me tied to something that is starting to not feel good.

One day recently, I stopped and asked myself, “what if you just let yourself imagine what else is possible for you.” I’ve been letting myself play in this idea for a few months now. For today’s writing prompt I asked myself:

What would I create if I burned everything down and started over from scratch?

If I started from scratch, I’d build something that feels deep and wide and unapologetic.

I’d teach and share through writing, podcasting, and classes. Some topics would be similar to what I already talk about in my content, and some topics would be vastly different from anything I have had the courage to touch on yet.

I'd still talk about wellness, but it would be divorced from the “pop-wellness” that fills my Instagram feed and makes me feel simultaneously bored and grossed out.

I’d name what feels broken in modern culture, name what’s missing in wellness spaces: the divine feminine, ritual, depth, spiritual discernment. I’d speak on beauty, self care, and daily habits, but not as performance, more like devotion. There’d be herbalism, recipes, gardening, home tending, books, food, creative work with my hands.

It would be the cultivation of a culture, and a worldview rooted in reverence and radical self-trust.

I don’t have it all figured out, and I’m not rushing the answer. I’m not making a grand exit or walking away from what I’ve built. But I am trying to listen to my heart and hear what it wants to make more space for.

The Zone of Genius, as Gay Hendricks calls it, is where your deepest joy and greatest contribution meet. It’s often overlooked because it doesn’t always seem “practical.” My experience is that your ego will scream at you to stay put in what seems practical… but sometimes what seems practical is truly not the most sustainable in the end.

If any part of this stirred something in you, consider it a quiet invitation: you’re allowed to dream about starting over. Even now.

Especially now.