A year ago, Anna was in that very confusing professional place where so many brilliant women get stuck.
She had work. Good work. Impressive work.
She was contracted to work with an company. On paper it looked like the opportunity of a lifetime. Cutting-edge wellness work. Brilliant people. A team with incredible track records from tech, medicine, and business. The kind of room where your mind says, this is huge, you should be grateful to be here.
And there was truth in that, it was exciting, it was fast-moving, it had potential.
But the way the work actually felt in her body was different.
The team was chaotic. The pace was intense. There were a lot of big ideas, a lot of motion, a lot of urgency, but not always real progress. Anna had been hired as a leader, but when things got scattered, she kept defaulting into doing the hard work herself. Because doing felt tangible. Doing felt useful. Doing felt like something she could control.
Leading the room through presence, rhythm, structure, and clarity was the real edge. And when she did that, it worked.
But then the team would go right back to the old pattern: scattered, chaotic, fast and furious. And this is where it got tricky, because the vision of the work was motivating, and sometimes she felt like there was progress. But that way of working was not what she needed.
At the same time, there was another vision living in her.
Firefly Connects.
Firefly Connects first came through during a microdosing cycle we did in a group program. It wasn’t a business plan at first. It was more like a symbol, a feeling, a little spark of truth. Something in her connected deeply with the vision, but it took a few months before she could even entertain the idea that this could become a real business.
That’s how soul-led ideas often arrive. The body knows first, even though the mind needs proof.
When we started working together more closely, Anna was still between these two worlds. On one side, the exciting external opportunity. On the other, this tender personal project that felt much more alive, but also much less certain.
She had a lot of self-doubt.
Could Firefly Connects really become a business? Would companies actually pay for this? Could she trust her own idea, her own discipline, her own decision-making? She had always been good at working alongside people she admired. But building something from her own center was different.
So we started there. Not with strategy first, with discernment.
Because before she needed the perfect pitch, the offer, the outreach plan, the messaging, or the business structure, she needed to know where her energy actually belonged.
And this is one of the biggest traps I see for high-achieving women. The misaligned opportunity doesn’t always feel dead. It often feels exciting.
Sometimes it comes with brilliant people, beautiful values, money, status, speed, and the feeling that maybe this is the door. But excitement is not always alignment.
Sometimes it’s adrenaline. Sometimes it’s validation. Sometimes it’s the nervous system old way of coping with stress.
And that can feel very convincing, because it's familiar.
So with Anna, we began separating the two: what felt exciting to the mind versus what felt true in the body.
Eventually, she made the decision to leave the contracting role and give Firefly Connects six months. Not forever. Not with a guarantee. Just six honest months to see what would happen if she stopped leaking her best energy into something that wasn’t truly hers.
And then the work became practical.
We translated the vision into strategy. We looked at who Firefly Connects was for, what problem it solved, why companies would pay for it, and how she could talk about it in a way that made sense without stripping out the magic.
We also looked at her energy.
Because Anna could work hard. That was never the issue. The issue was where the energy was going.
So instead of hiding in busywork: updating the website, tweaking social media, perfecting the idea; we focused on what would actually move the business forward: conversations, outreach, pitching, coffee chats, real relationships.
She started taking the work out of the private inner world and into the marketplace. And yes, there were mistakes.
There was one big mistake that felt awful. The kind that makes you question yourself and want to collapse into “maybe I’m not ready.”
But we used it differently.
We turned it into information.
What did this mistake show her about how she needs to work? What conditions does she need in order to show up fully? What are the non-negotiables now?
That mistake became part of her business maturity.
Then, within six months of really giving Firefly Connects a chance, she booked her biggest aligned opportunity so far.
The kind of opportunity she had been hoping for.
Fully aligned with her values. With the kind of team she actually wanted to work with. The kind of room where her presence, intuition, facilitation, and ability to create connection really mattered.
Before the event, we worked on her presence. How to enter the room. How to ground. How to connect back to Firefly’s North Star. How to not over-function. How to let the team bring their part while she brought hers.
And she crushed it. Standing ovations. Future work conversations. Requests to have her back. The team treating her like she was already part of the future.
And then the next layer appeared. Receiving. When the compliments came in, part of her wanted to minimize her contribution.
“Yes, but they were also so open.”
“Yes, but they were part of the solution.”
“Yes, but it worked because they showed up too.”
And yes. They did, but so did she.
That is the next edge for Anna now: embodied abundance. Letting herself receive the praise, the opportunity, the money, the future invitations, without shrinking, deflecting, or compromising the non-negotiables that allowed her to show up so powerfully in the first place.
So, if you are where Anna was at the beginning: holding an aligned idea that feels alive, while another exciting opportunity is pulling your energy; I want to offer you something.
I’ve recorded a short audio practice for this exact moment: Alignment vs. Adrenaline. I’ll guide you through listening to what your body already knows as you contemplate the two options.
We won't try to figure it out only with your mind. Your mind will make a case for the impressive thing. Your body will tell you the truth.
This is especially powerful alongside microdosing, because microdosing can soften the grip of the old mental pattern.
So I invite you to do this on a microdosing day.
