I learn so much from my clients.
One of my favorite parts of my work as a psychotherapist is getting to see the same human patterns play out across completely different worlds. A founder, a lawyer, an artist, an athlete… the surface details are different, but underneath, there are these shared moments that almost feel archetypal.
Recently, a client told me something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
From him, I learned something about competitive weightlifting. At a high level of Olympic lifting, there’s a point in the movement where effort alone is no longer what completes the lift.
At the beginning, it’s all effort. You pull the weight off the ground, you generate force, you use everything you’ve got to get it moving upward. But as the bar reaches the top, something counter-intuitive has to happen. You have to let go.
Not completely abandon it, but release your grip at the right moment. If you keep gripping the bar the way you did at the beginning, you actually limit the lift. You interfere with the movement.
The most experienced lifters know this. They’ve learned how to generate force and then, just as importantly, how to stop gripping at the point where gripping no longer serves the movement.
Beginners struggle here. They’re afraid to let go, so they hold on tighter. And that’s exactly what prevents them from completing the lift at a higher level.
I think about this all the time in my work. Because I see a version of this moment in so many of the people I sit with. People who have built their lives through effort, discipline, and the ability to hold a lot. People who are capable, thoughtful, and used to being the one others rely on. And it’s worked. It’s what got them here.
But at a certain point, something starts to shift. The same strategies that created momentum begin to create pressure. The same habits that once felt like strength start to feel constricting.
And there’s often an unconscious but persistent question underneath it all: When is this going to feel like enough?
What’s tricky is that from the outside, nothing looks wrong. These are people who are functioning at a high level. Making decisions. Leading. Producing. Showing up.
But internally, something feels off. Not broken or failing. Just… no longer aligned with the way they’ve been operating.
And the instinct, almost always, is to try harder. To grip tighter. To double down on what has worked before.
But this is the part where the metaphor comes in. Because at a certain level, more effort is not what completes the movement. More effort is what interferes with it.
There’s a phase of growth where pushing, striving, and holding everything together are exactly what’s needed. And then there’s another phase, which is much harder to recognize, where those same strategies start to become the thing that’s in the way. Not because they were wrong. But because you’ve outgrown them.
This is the moment I think many high-performing people find themselves in, even if they don’t have language for it yet.
It can look like:
And underneath it, that same question persists: when will this feel like enough?
In my experience, that question doesn’t get answered by achieving more. It gets answered by changing your relationship to how you’re moving through your life.
This is where the idea of “letting go” can feel threatening. Because for many people, the way they’ve gotten where they are is by not letting go. By being disciplined, reliable, in control, focused, driven. There can be a real fear that if you soften your grip, even a little, you’ll lose your edge. That things will fall apart and you’ll become less effective, less sharp, less capable.
What I see, over and over again, is the opposite.
When people begin to loosen their grip—not abandon responsibility, but relate to it differently—something shifts. The pressure starts to ease. Decisions feel clearer, not because they’re easier, but because they’re no longer driven by the same internal urgency.
There’s more room to think, feel, and respond instead of react. Forward movement doesn’t stop, but it begins to feel different. More grounded, more satisfying, more fully your own.
If I had to put words to it, I’d say this: There’s a phase of growth that comes from effort. And there’s a phase of growth that comes from alignment.
The hard part is that the second phase can’t be forced in the same way the first one was. You can’t muscle your way into it. You have to recognize the moment you’re in—and begin to experiment with a different way of relating to yourself, your work, and the pressure you carry.
This is the space I care most about in my work. Not helping people become someone else, but helping them navigate that threshold where what has always worked is no longer serving them—and something new is beginning to take shape.
Because just like in the lift, there’s a point where continuing to grip is what limits you. And the next level doesn’t come from doing more of the same. It comes from knowing when to let go.