Eve Stoyan Coaching

Number 4 hurts especially, doesn’t it… ❤️‍🩹

These are the thoughts that you might not even say out loud to yourself … that show up on the commute home. At 3am, turning the day over for the 100th time. In the shower.

The ones too vague to verbalize even to yourself — or too ungrateful, too shameful, too… something.

I’ve had every single one of them along my path.

And what I know now: they weren’t complaints, or ingratitude, or laziness.

They were the beginning of a conversation I needed to have with myself.

A conversation that allowed me to go from feeling off, not trusting myself and over analyzing everything to literally creating the life I’ve always wanted.

If any of these are yours — save this. You’ll know when you need it. 🤍

Which number do you think is the most heartbreaking?
I’m reading you.

True story. 🤍

I often get asked in coaching conversations what the turning point was for me.

And the seed of it really is buried in how often we just take hard situations as they come. Because that’s what we’ve always done. Without stopping to think about it.

Growing up with emotionally distant parents, in a parentified child situation or with narcissistic role models can make you really good at figuring things out. Really good at performing. Just making it work.

But that is still just a coping mechanism. 🤍

And sometimes to recognize that, you literally have to hit rock bottom: with only one way… up.

Our life is guided by the patterns we developed in early childhood and as adolescents. Patterns that kept us safe… or close to someone we loved. Even if that came at a tall price.

Getting unstuck and finding meaning in life again are not about finding a new identity. Not about starting over.

But rather about finding your way back to yourself.

To who you really are underneath the roles you play, free of the emotional dependence on those closest to you.

It is about leaning to hear your voice again.
Use your voice again, telling a strong story.
Your story 🤍

I am a perfectionist which then makes me procrastinate — paralyzed by overwhelming fear and doubt.

That’s how one of the women I’ve worked with some months ago described herself.

She wanted to write a book.
Started one chapter.
She knew exactly what the next step was.
She just couldn’t take it.

She’d been planning the same thing for four years.
Not because she was lazy.

Because the bar for starting was: being guaranteed to succeed.

And you can’t guarantee success before you begin.

So as a consequence… you can’t begin.
This is the trap.

And it has nothing to do with willpower, discipline, or how much you want it.

Because it is not a discipline or an identity problem.
It is a self-trust problem.

Somewhere along the way performing, achieving and trying to be perfect felt safe for you…

- because they helped you keep the peace
- because they gave you that much desired attention
- because they gave you a sense of control in the midst of chaos.

And you’ve been holding on to them ever since.

Moving out of that still stand you’ve been feeling for years doesn’t begin with a better plan, more journaling, or yet another pseudo-psychological diagnoses you can label yourself with.

It begins with re-wiring your brain by reconnecting to what lights you up, by learning to use your voice again and by healing your attachment style.

First and foremost with respect to how you show up for yourself.

The women I’ve been honored to accompany who’ve broken the pattern say the same thing:

“Once I had a direction I could actually believe in and I could hear my own voice again — I could go and get it.”

It’s not about motivation. But that spark, that direction that finally felt like theirs… truly theirs, again.

🤍 Save this for the next time you call yourself lazy.

One of the women I worked with this year described it exactly:

She was recognised as talent. She spoke up, had ideas.
When she got nothing back, she shrunk.
Her ideas get taken. She became invisible.
Afraid of running this circle again.”

Different city each time, maybe even different industry.
And yet the same exhausting pattern.

Another said: ‘I keep living the same exit.’
Another recognised she was ‘the one who lives the same burnout again and again.’

This isn’t bad luck.
It isn’t the wrong companies or a lack of career clarity.
It’s a pattern that hasn’t been named yet.

And here’s what I know from working with women who’ve broken it:
The moment they named it — really named it, building a new strategy around it — it started to shift.
Not the external situation. Something in how they understood themselves.
That’s where your next life chapter truly begins.

📤 Send this to someone living the same loop. 🤍