The Best Version of My Limited Self

On inner ceilings, hidden stories, and what becomes possible when we do the real work

I heard a line this week that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

I was listening to Peter Crone's Finding Freedom series on YouTube - a podcast where he works live with guests through the beliefs and stories that are keeping them stuck - when a woman named Leonie said something that stopped me mid-walk.

"I'm living the best version of my limited self."

She said it almost as a throwaway. A way of describing the stagnation she'd been feeling. But Peter caught it immediately because there is something in that line that is both painfully honest and quietly profound.

She wasn't saying she had failed. She wasn't being self-critical. She was naming something true: that the version of herself she had been operating from had a ceiling. And she had been bumping her head on it, working harder and harder, wondering why things still felt so heavy.

The story underneath the story

Leonie is a singer-songwriter. She came onto the podcast feeling stuck. Depleted. Like everything was up to her. Like she was doing it all alone. And the harder she pushed, the more albums she recorded, the more she put herself out there, the more exhausted she became.

What unfolded over the next hour of conversation was remarkable.

Through gentle, precise questioning, Peter helped Leonie trace the exhaustion back to its root. Not to her career or her strategy. And certainly not to anything she was doing wrong on the outside. But to a story...  a narrative she had been carrying since she was fourteen years old, when her father died suddenly and her mother became ill, and she stepped quietly into the role of caretaker.

The story was this: I'm alone. And it's all up to me.

It wasn't a conscious belief. She wasn't walking around thinking those words. But underneath everything — the music, the hustle, the reaching, the striving... that was the operating system. And from inside that operating system, she was doing brilliantly. Genuinely. The absolute best version of what was possible from in there.

But there was a ceiling. And she kept hitting it.

Peter's point is that we don't get what we want in life until we address the energy we're operating from. You can't reach people when you're living in an invisible silo of isolation. You can't receive when every cell in your body is braced for the reality that no one is coming. You can't create from lightness when the weight of it's all up to me is pressing down on your shoulders.

The outer work, in other words, only ever takes us as far as the inner work allows.

Why this matters for practitioners

I work with therapists, coaches, healers, and educators. Brilliant, dedicated, deeply capable people. And I see this pattern constantly.

We are exceptionally good at the outer work. The qualifications, the modalities, the frameworks, the platforms, the content plans. We know how to show up for our clients. We know how to hold space, ask the right questions, sit with difficulty.

And yet.

Quietly, privately, many of us are running on exactly the same operating system as Leonie. I'm alone in this. It's all up to me. If I don't push harder, it won't happen. I should be further along by now.

The irony is exquisite and a little painful... we teach our clients to do the inner work, and then we go home and run our businesses from the unexamined stories of our own childhoods.

We hit the ceiling. We work harder. We wonder what's wrong with us. We push through. We get more depleted. And we do the whole thing again.

We are, in our own way, living the best version of our limited selves.

What lives on the other side

Here's the part of Peter and Leonie's conversation that moved me most.

About twenty minutes in, Leonie, in a moment of unguarded vulnerability, admitted that she was afraid of coming across as stupid on the podcast. That she'd had terrible grades at school. That she'd always felt like she just didn't get it. And in naming that, in being truly seen in that moment of fear and humanness, something shifted in the room.

Peter pointed it out gently. You just came onto this podcast to reach people with your music. You haven't sung a single note. And you just touched everyone listening.

Because she was finally operating from a different place. Not from the story.... but from underneath the story. From the real, undefended, vulnerable self that had been waiting behind the ceiling all along.

That's what becomes available when we do the inner work. Not overnight. Not in a single podcast conversation. But gradually, consistently, with practice and patience and the occasional willingness to be seen without the armour on.

A different quality of presence. A different energy in the room, or on the screen, or in the words we write. Something that clients and audiences feel, even if they can't name it.

Your business is only as good as YOU are

This is something I say often. It's the philosophy at the heart of everything I do. And I want to be clear about what I mean by it,  because it isn't meant as a pressure or a demand to be better or more healed or more sorted before you're allowed to show up.

It's an observation...

The inner work isn't a prerequisite for starting. It's the thing that happens alongside everything else... the quiet, ongoing practice of turning inward. Noticing the stories. Naming the ceilings. Making a little space for what might live on the other side.

And it doesn't have to be grand or dramatic or intensive. Sometimes it's a ten-minute meditation before the working day begins. Sometimes it's a journal prompt that cracks something open. Sometimes it's hearing a line on a podcast mid-walk and sitting with it for a while.

I'm living the best version of my limited self.

The invitation isn't to shame ourselves for the limits. They kept us safe and they got us here. They are, in their own way, a kind of achievement.

The invitation is simply to ask (with curiosity, not criticism) what might be possible on the other side of this?

A place for the inner work

If that question is landing for you, I'd love to invite you into The Nest.

The Nest is a monthly membership I've created specifically for practitioners: therapists, coaches, healers, educators, who know that their own inner wellbeing is inseparable from the quality of their work. It's a quiet, growing library of meditations, reflections, practices, and rituals designed around the real struggles of practitioner life. Imposter syndrome. Burnout. Boundaries. The loneliness of private practice. The vulnerability of being visible.

It isn't a course, and there's nothing to complete. So no pressure to keep up.

It's just a soft, consistent place to land. And to do a little of the inner work that holds everything else together.

You can start for free. No card needed.

Come and have a look. 

https://www.hummingbirdmentoring.com/the-nest-membership 

Jo-Anne x