I feel it when I wake up.
I feel it when I enter my office.
I feel it throughout my day and into the night.
Pressure.
Maybe it’s cultural, the expectations society puts on us to be something, do something, show something in exchange for the oxygen we’ve used.I felt it when I had regular jobs. Show up, do the thing, go home jobs. But when I started my own business, it came to the forefront. Somehow, it’s more potent when my days are my own. The bar is set higher. The possibilities are endless, so the pressure has no cap. No glass ceiling.
Somehow, just by virtue of owning my own schedule, I get sucked into the performance industry. Pressure feeds the urge to perform for money.
Sure, it wears all sorts of different masks. Some downright friendly. Some honorable. All of them deadly. Especially to a soul-driven business.
Professionalism
Leadership
Influence
Everything we are told we must become to be taken seriously
Or action words like productivity, consistency, visibility.
Or the pinnacle of them all…success.
They all have one undesirable thing in common. It’s subtle. It’s tricky. And it keeps us caged until we see it clearly. Until we feel it irrevocably.
They all depend on external metrics.
Likes, follows, engagement, approval, accolades….performance for money.
We are bowing to a faceless audience on a stage built for extraction
We don’t don the mask, put on the costume and take the stage all at once, the urge to perform takes us over bit by bit when pressure mounts.
Yes, pressure comes with the territory of entrepreneurship. It comes with the territory of life, really.
It accumulates quietly in the background. Building. Shaping the way our brains work, the way our actions unfold. The urge to do more, say more, BE more. All in the name of ultra-clean sounding terms. Admirable. Honest. Desirable descriptors.
Who doesn’t want to be influential, a leader in the industry?
So, we don’t question it.
We adapt.
We keep moving.
But that adaptation is what softly takes us away from our truth and toward the stage.
Toward performance for money.
We tighten our language. Polish the edges. Choose words with leverage over what feels true.
We respond faster. Streamline. Prioritize what can be delivered immediately over what needs time to develop.
We check the numbers. Read the room. Scan the market for meaning instead of following what’s in our heart.
We borrow frameworks. Adopt strategies. Follow formulas that promise clarity while our own knowing waits quietly.
And all along, the body registers the divergence. Something inside us resists, even when the mind insists and the hands persist.
A tightening in the chest when we sit down to work.
A shallow breath that stalls in the lungs as we hit “post”.
The body braces. The nervous system stays half-alert, waiting for proof, for permission, for the numbers to say it’s safe to exhale.
Over time, what once felt like devotion now feels like a life sentence
The demand to be always-on. Always performing. Always waiting for the applause takes its toll.
And this is usually the moment we think we need to try harder.
Refine the message. Fix the funnel. Follow the borrowed framework with more consistency.
But, importantly, we feel something else, too. Below that impulse to do more, is the pull to do less. To still the hands, silence the mind, quell the urge to push forward. And listen.
Listen to the voice that says: This isn’t why I started.
To remember.
Remember the pull of wild inspiration. Recall the excitement of untethered creation. Recount the steps along the then-unknown path.
Before the numbers. Before the masks. Before the stage.
There was knowing.
A pull that didn’t need permission. A curiosity that moved you without a plan. An aliveness that woke you in the morning, flowed into everything you touched and sent you to bed with a smile.
This knowing coaxed your business from thought to form, from idea to meaning, from resonance to the ability to change the world around you.
That knowing… your knowing … didn’t mysteriously vanish. It’s still within you. Steady. Unrushed. Unimpressed by numbers. Unresponsive to urgency.
Waiting for the pause. The breath. The unspoken question.
How do I get off this stage?
That is the question that shifts everything.
The shift that took us from job to business, from helping someone else bring their vision into reality to honing our own inspiration.
It’s a subtle shift in focus from “out there” to “in here”. And it’s always just one pause away.
In that pause, the inward pull can be felt. The whisper can be heard. And we can return to the path we already know. The one that started the journey. The one that trusted gut feeling over metrics, natural rhythm over reaction, embodied intelligence over borrowed strategies.
The shift is barely perceptible, easily lost in the chaos of pressure, but it is always found in the stillness of the pause.
The pause is sacred.
Not inaction, but reorientation. When you reorient to what is inside, the entire landscape changes. From stage and audience, to vast vistas with wide horizons and the pathway, your pathway that carves its way from where you stand to what calls to you from the future.
The pause is yours at any moment.
Maybe the moment just after you record a video when the familiar question arises: How will this land?
And you pause just long enough to ask: Does this feel true in my body?
Maybe the moment just before you open your inbox, check your DMs or click to see your stats.
And you pause long enough to ask, What actually needs my attention right now?
Maybe the moment after you read a comment, when the urge to interpret, explain or adjust rises.
And you pause to feel whether action is necessary or simply quells the sting.
Every day, a bevy of voices call to us, invite us, compel us to “look out there” for answers, guidance, permission, when the only authority we’re truly seeking already lives within.
Internal Authority is Perpetually Present
And all it requires is a pause. The moment between breaths, where everything lands.
You don’t need to retreat to a mountaintop to practice for days in solitude. You don’t need a perfect morning routine or a sacred hour carved out of your day. You only need the willingness to pause.
To pause once. And then again. And then again.
Pause to remember where your authority lives. To feel the shift from external demand to internal knowing.
Each time you pause, something recalibrates. Each time you listen inward before responding outward, your own deep knowing answers more boldly. Over time, the pressure loosens its grip, not because the world demands less of you, but because you’re no longer sourcing your direction from it.
You still wake up. You still enter your office. You still meet the day as it is. But now you do so rooted and oriented, in conversation with something deeper than performance. The stage fades, the imagined audience dissolves, and what remains is the quiet, steady rhythm that was there all along.
This is where your work comes from. This is where your business remembers itself.
And you can return here as many times as you need.
Today.
Tomorrow.
And the day after that.
The pause is always waiting to help you set down the mask and quietly leave the stage.
.
I hope this passage stirred something true in you; whether clarity, inspiration, or the simple hum of recognition. If you feel the pull, here are a few ways to walk further with me:
🌬 For the Listeners
Let the words rise through voice. The podcast version of these transmissions lives here:
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/melinda-perkins
🌿 For the Visual Seekers
If you resonate through symbol, image, and ritual inspiration, you’ll find visual transmissions, mythic imagery, and meditative sparks here:
Pinterest: https://pin.it/3wavboY1X
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/primalbeastcoven/
Or step deeper into the Dragon-temple for readings, channeled messages and more here:
https://primalbeastcoven.com
Or if you are a Soul-Aligned Entrepreneur reaching for the next level, but not sure where to start take the Business Integrity Diagnostic https://trainingwithlife.com/the-business-integrity-diagnostic/
If you are craving a business framework that amplifies your gifts and lets them soar, you might be ready to enter The Primal Foundry: Where businesses are shaped by truth, moved by inner rhythm, and built to evolve https://theprimalfoundry.com/
