Me, 7 Years Later
A look at the patterns that pull you away from your inner wisdom
In 2018, my body called BS on my life.
I had been living on hustle fumes for so long that exhaustion had become my baseline.
Proving, pleasing and powering through. It was the air I breathed.
From the outside, my life looked solid and successful.
On the inside, I was bone-tired in a way sleep could not touch.🥺
What I didn’t understand then was this:
The very patterns that helped me “get ahead” were the same ones burning me out.
Hustle wasn’t power, it was pressure.
Proving wasn’t drive, it was doubt dressed up.
Perfectionism wasn’t high standards, it was fear of being seen as not enough.
It took a long time, and a full-on pause, to see what was actually happening underneath it all.
Pleasing. Proving. Perfectionism.
The 3Ps.
The patterns many high-achieving women learn that teach us to override our own judgment.
The patterns that quietly shape our decisions long before we realize they’re there.
I started noticing how they showed up everywhere:
In the way I said yes too quickly
In the way I apologized for taking up space
In the way I second-guessed my own ideas
In the way I worked twice as hard as needed
In the way I tried to “earn” rest instead of simply needing it
We don’t talk about this enough:
The 3Ps don’t just drain your energy—they distort your signal.
They make it harder to hear your own judgment.
Harder to separate pressure from truth.
Harder to recognize what you actually think, want, or need beneath the noise.
And the hardest part?
These patterns look like strength from the outside. They get praised and rewarded.
Which means it can take years to realize they’re costing you more than they’re giving.
Pressure is a useful signal. It’s a terrible decision-making strategy.
Seven years later, this is the heart of my work.
Today, I help women recognize the pressure patterns shaping their decisions.
How to strengthen discernment.
How to trust their judgment when the answers aren’t obvious.
How to create and lead from clarity rather than pressure.
And if you’re reading this thinking, “I feel this in my bones,”
I created a short quiz to help you start unraveling your own patterns.
👉 Take the Pressure Pattern Quiz
A two-minute reflection on how the 3Ps shape your discernment, your decisions, and your energy.
It’s about seeing clearly, maybe for the first time, the places where pressure has been steering your decisions.
This is the work that shaped everything I do now.
✨ Nothing to Prove Ritual — practices to catch patterns in real time, find your signal, and make cleaner decisions under pressure.
✨ Meredith AI — A private thought partner designed to help you explore decisions, leadership challenges, pressure patterns, and questions of discernment in real time.
The truth is, proving still shows up for me. Pressure still shows up too.
The difference is that I recognize it sooner.
I’m quicker to notice when pressure is steering.
Quicker to pause.
Quicker to find my signal.
Quicker to choose differently.
There is far more space where strain used to be.
And it leaves me with this question, one I return to again and again:
Who might you become when you have nothing to prove? 🧡
If you’re new here, Start Here.
