Something Can Be Off Without Being Wrong

Julie Holly: Your life doesn't have to go off the rails for something to feel off. You can actually look around and feel deep gratitude for everything around you, the people, the relationships, the finances, the influence. And with all of that, you might find yourself wondering, "Why do I feel this way?" And for many of us, because we're really good at figuring things out, it makes more sense for us to try another habit, another strategy, another hack. We're used to keeping things moving forward, progressing, and oftentimes we don't get curious about what feels off in the first place. Today we're exploring the smaller signals we explain away, because keeping things moving can quietly consume the capacity we want for the people and things we care about.

Julie Holly: I'll share what this looked like in my own life, and before we wrap up, we'll walk the Identity-Level Recalibration pathway together so you can have room to experience a small shift while we're here. And let's be real, most of the listeners of this show are avid, voracious content consumers, and oftentimes we consume, but we don't integrate, and that's why I'm building the integration into the actual episode. And the integration doesn't look like some big magic wand moment. It's a small shift taking place. I also want you to know that every Season 5 episode has its very own website page at julieholly.com. What I love about this is that there are questions specific to that conversation, and you're able to fill them out and then copy and paste them wherever you wanna keep them, because I don't wanna keep any of your information.

Julie Holly: So there's no login, there's no gatekeeping, there's no monitoring or data collection of any kind. It just allows you to answer the questions and to copy them and put them on a document or a sheet or wherever you want. I did that because I want you to feel that safety, that you can be deeply honest with yourselves, and then you can choose. Choose where your reflections belong. With that, welcome back, or welcome to The Recalibration, where high-capacity humans realign who they are so they can move from pressure and performance into peace, presence, and clarity without losing their edge. I'm Julie Holly, Identity Coach and founder of the Identity-Level Recalibration Pathway.

Julie Holly: Let's dive in. Let me start with something really ordinary, because I can be so quick to explain these moments away. And I think these are very human moments that you are going to relate to, either for yourself or someone in your life, maybe a coworker, maybe a spouse, maybe a friend. But I'm pretty sure that you know someone who, when they get hungry or they get tired, they get cranky. I mean, this is so common that we actually have a term for this. Hangry, right? I don't know what the tired term would be. I don't know that anybody has coined that yet. If you do know of someone who has, please let me know. Other small moments that you might relate to: craving sweet and salty treats, feeling mentally overwhelmed and just wanting to shut down.

Julie Holly: What I do oftentimes is I just give myself a quick explanation like, "Oh, I'm hangry. I'm tired. I'm hormonal. I'm busy." And I just put this label on whatever it is that I'm experiencing in that moment. But there's a difference between being hangry on occasion or being really exhausted on occasion. The hormonal part I kinda get. I mean, there is a cycle to that. But there's a difference between "this is an occasional experience" and "this is a pattern in my life." So a lot of times we dismiss these smaller experiences that we have, and we kind of say they're just one-off experiences. "Oh, it's just I'm busy at work right now. It's just a season. It's just a period.

Julie Holly: It's just a phase. So I'm putting in extra hours because I'm doing a sprint on a project, and so I'm tired." As I was preparing for this episode, I was reflecting on my own life, my own experiences, and many of my experiences are very common human experiences, especially for listeners of this show and the clients I'm privileged to work with. And so I think you're gonna relate to a lot of this. But the whole concept of this episode is to talk about how we easily dismiss the small signals that we are given, and we move past them because we want to be productive. We want to be people of character. We want to be progressing towards a particular outcome.

Julie Holly: And in that process, many of us have hit the override button, and so we're actually detached from ourselves. In fact, I was listening to a podcast episode with Stephen Porges, who created polyvagal theory, and he was describing this very thing, where it's like we just simply retrain our entire nervous system in these particular responses. So some of these responses I experience, I think you are going to resonate with, so you can always let me know. I know that I turn into an absolute grouch. I think hangry is not even close to skimming the surface with how I get when I'm hungry or when I'm tired, but hangry and tired don't go together. I don't know what the tired version is.

Julie Holly: I know another pattern I have is that if I'm feeling mentally overwhelmed, I will just want to shut things down. I also know that I love sweet and salty treats, depending on what is going on in life. And with every one of these, I can rationalize them. And these types of things in isolation, as instances, okay, that makes sense. Sometimes we have a poor night of sleep and then, you know, the next day we're feeling a little more run down. Sometimes we might be overwhelmed by a particular project for a couple of days, and so our mind is congested. So we can easily rationalize and justify so many of these behaviors. What I have found in my life and in many of the lives of the clients I'm privileged to work with is that these are actually patterns of behavior.

Julie Holly: So when we start looking at the inputs, as they say, when we go upstream and we look at what's happening, we can have a more meaningful discovery. So when I allow myself to have that honest conversation about what's taking place, I might discover that I've overbooked my week, and I am feeling so behind. And with that, I'm so focused on what's in front of me that I'm disregarding my nutrition. And then nighttime comes, and I have less restful sleep. And being willing to see that pattern opens up so many options. The beautiful thing about this is that when we allow ourselves to see the pattern and to not feel the need to rationalize or justify the experience, because it's a defensive posture when we are saying, "Oh, it's just this time.

Julie Holly: I'm just hungry this time. Oh, I'm tired this time. I'm overwhelmed this time." When we're honest with ourselves, when we are in Recognition, we are allowing ourselves that gift of saying, "I don't have shame, judgment, criticism, and condemnation. I'm just looking at the pattern of my life and seeing what is." When I allowed myself to see that there was a pattern between I'm overwhelmed, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I realized that rescheduling was an option, but I had to learn that that was an available option. And I get it. It sounds so silly. I can kinda hear you saying, "Okay, Jules, just reschedule something." And logically I get that. Except when it came to rescheduling, there was a whole lot attached to that little decision for me.

Julie Holly: And again, I think that there's going to be a mirror here. It might not be rescheduling for you, but just step into this for the moment as we dive into what's happening beneath the surface, what's going on at the identity level. When I allowed myself to do that, I recognized belonging. I realized something that I have come to know about myself so much so in the last two years. My sense of belonging was threatened. Yeah, that sounds crazy, but when I was considering rescheduling, I was afraid that I would disappoint someone, that I would anger someone, that I would frustrate someone. And keeping close proximity to relationships is something that is really important to me.

Julie Holly: Having that sense of belonging is not unique to me, but that is one of my core wounds. What's interesting is that with almost every pattern that I recognize in my life, belonging is at the root of that pattern of behavior. And there's something else. This isn't as fun to admit, but it might be relatable to you as well. And that is, when I would go to reschedule, I would have this story looping around in my mind, like, "Oh my gosh, if I reschedule, I'm going to look like I'm incapable." Tangled together in this crazy cluster was competence and ego and character. And so this simple act of rescheduling actually became incredibly complex, because now my sense of belonging is on the line.

Julie Holly: Now my character is on the line, because after all, people of integrity, they keep their appointments. So you don't reschedule that appointment. You keep it because you are a person who follows through, and you are a person of integrity. And if you want to appear competent and capable and dependable, then you are certainly not going to reschedule that meeting. And what's interesting is that most of us have created rules, and those rules are what keep us safe in some way. Those rules are there to protect us, to keep us safe in some way. And what's interesting about that is that most of these are rules that we created earlier in life. And what's wild is that they end up being the rules for an entire lifetime.

Julie Holly: They become rules that we live our entire life by, even though they don't make sense anymore. When you notice a pattern of behavior, if you allow yourself to just stay with it for a moment, there is a high probability that there is a rule that you created. It may have been that time that your boss got angry at you when you were in your early 20s at your first real job, air quote "real," right? It may be something that your coach said or did when you were in high school athletics. It may be something earlier than that. But we end up creating these rules that we live life by, and then we don't end up going back to revisit those rules, and so we just continue to live life by them.

Julie Holly: And of course, let's just take a moment to acknowledge that is the double-edged sword of our neural pathways, and many of those pathways serve us so well. And it's important for us to be able to recognize what's running on autopilot. What are these rules that I am living my life by that are actually dictating how I am showing up in my relationships, in my business, in my community? It's wild how much we can learn about ourselves when we're willing to just peel back behind the most simple things in our lives. Why do I get anxious and uncomfortable when I'm trying to reschedule this appointment? I don't recommend allowing life to hit rock bottom at any point in life.

Julie Holly: My entire life, I've tried to avoid rock bottom moments. Even as a child growing up, I would watch what was taking place with the older people around me, and like, "Okay, that works. That doesn't work." Like, how can I keep myself safe? I was super hypervigilant, super aware, and paying attention. But sometimes we do have rock bottom moments. And I wanna be honest, because my understanding of the rescheduling truly came from a rock bottom moment for me. You've heard me talk about it in previous podcast episodes, especially on the daily podcast episodes. I reached a point where I had to wear a heart monitor because there was something going on. The relationships in my life that were most important to me were limping along at best.

Julie Holly: My business was struggling, and a lot of that struggle wasn't my doing, but I had to experience that struggle, the pain and the hardship of it. This is really in line with what we talked about recently about the conditions having changed, but have we caught up to those changed conditions? At this rock bottom moment, I made some very clear decisions, because I had to prioritize. I decided God was still going to continue to be central in my life. Thank you, Jesus. You have provided for me and sustained me and grown me over all the decades and through every success and every struggle. So I wasn't gonna let God go anywhere. I didn't want God to go anywhere.

Julie Holly: That was and is my lifeline. I resolved that my husband was and is a priority in my life, number one relationship here on Earth. My teens are a priority in my life, and I wasn't willing to sacrifice my aliveness. Like, literally my health was declining. Like, okay, are all of these circumstances worth my life ending because I have something cataclysmic happen because my body has shut down? I didn't think so. Getting to that point, that's why I call this a rock bottom moment. When you're at that point where you recognize I'm sacrificing my actual aliveness for these circumstances, for these rules I adopted in earlier years that are still running my life, I wasn't willing to make that trade.

Julie Holly: And I imagine that there's a lot of people listening to this right now, and that's where you are at. You are spread so thin. Your capacity is maxed out. It feels like there's something going on every day. You walk into the office or every time you hop into the next virtual meeting with your team, you're hedging against the next round of layoffs, against the reorganization of the business that you're working for. And that is putting pressure on your identity in ways that are easy to dismiss. It's affecting the relationships that matter most to you, and it's affecting your aliveness. If you're listening and you are feeling, "That is where I'm at right now, Jules," then please hear this.

Julie Holly: It was so incredibly helpful for me in that situation, and recently this helped one of my clients make a radical career decision that is really critical and very, very important. So I'm gonna ask you this. If you had a heart attack, what would happen? And maybe a heart attack isn't going to be the thing that your health condition would be, so you could insert whatever it is. But if you were taken offline, if you got a diagnosis, what would happen? Most of the time, what happens is that people rally. People come around and they support. When we have a health situation, our colleagues will come alongside us. They'll pick up some of the slack. They'll have a little more understanding for us.

Julie Holly: They may be more encouraging to us. The community that surrounds us may stop by with dinner sometime or help out around the house in different ways. What I want you to hear me say with this is that too many of us are willing to let our aliveness... Whoo. This is deeply resonating with me, because it really brings back that point in my life. And the reality is that I know that there are so many people that are experiencing this right now. So many of us say it's going to get better, and we're just dismissing all the smaller signals, and we're willing to compromise our aliveness and maybe really lose our actual aliveness for things that at the end of the day, they don't even matter.

Julie Holly: Yes, paying your bills matters, but is that the right role for you? Is that the right company to work for? If you're self-employed, if you have your own small business, are you equipped to navigate the complexities of owning and running and operating your own business? That can be overwhelming for many people, and many people are drawn to the allure and idea of having their own business, and yet they don't understand everything that comes along with having your own business. The other element to this is that if you were taken offline, if you were in the hospital, or if you were on bed rest, you would show yourself more kindness. You would be more patient with yourself.

Julie Holly: You would be more surrendered to the reality that "I have to take care of my health in order to get back into my roles and responsibilities." And what I'm hoping that you see here is that there's a direct connection. You don't have to wait for a physical breakdown to show yourself compassion, to show yourself kindness, to understand what is, to recognize patterns of behavior, to unearth what is at the identity level of that, so that you can make a different choice. God didn't create us to live bogged down in this way. We have added that complexity into our own lives. And growing up in faith, I've heard for decades there is freedom in Christ. There is freedom and lightness.

Julie Holly: Most of us don't receive that. That freedom and lightness comes in so many different nooks and crannies of our lives. And so I wanna invite you to just be honest with yourself about these patterns. I spent far longer on that than I intended, but I believe that that was for someone. And if that's you, please schedule a Recalibration Conversation with me, because there is another way to go about life and living, and truly living. So, back on track. What happened with rescheduling? I started to notice something so ordinary I could have missed it, and most of us do miss the really simple things like this. But I started noticing how often other people rescheduled with me.

Julie Holly: And in that process, I wasn't upset with them. I didn't shame them or criticize them or condemn them and say, "I'm never going to talk to that person. They're on the blacklist." I never did that. And just seeing that and observing that, I also noticed that there was another truth that I had been completely dismissing and overlooking, and it's really easy to do that. When we take the time to reschedule with someone, that is actually an expression of dependability, an expression of integrity. The very thing that I thought I was going against was actually what I was demonstrating. I was saying, "Hey, this appointment is important to me, and I wanna show up.

Julie Holly: And because I am dependable and responsible and a person who follows through and a person of integrity, I'm going to reschedule this." Initially I was concerned that people were going to be disappointed, but as I started practicing this, I started collecting evidence, and the evidence showed that people didn't become angry. People weren't upset with me. People didn't cut me off. They didn't criticize and condemn me. And that helped ground that experience, helped ground that safety that you're not going to lose belonging. This isn't a bad reflection of you as a human being if you choose to reschedule, Jules. So I went from being hangry, tired, overwhelmed, craving my sweet and salties, to understanding and recognizing that there was a pattern at play, and then understanding what was going on with that.

Julie Holly: Oh, my sense of belonging. What was going on beneath that? How can I show up? And I was able to recognize that there was a rule that I was operating by, and it was a rule that was very stale, very outdated. And being honest with that rule allowed me to show up in a different way, and allowed me to create a different experience for my aliveness. Before we step into walking the Identity-Level Recalibration, I wanna share that Internal Family Systems (so there's family systems, and then there's Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems) was a beautiful tool in helping me recognize and understand some of the elements that were at play inside of me. Understanding my manager, my firefighter, and my exile was extremely helpful for me in gaining perspective.

Julie Holly: And so in understanding the dynamics... Just briefly, I think of, and I've talked about it on the podcast so many times over the years, before this was The Recalibration Podcast, I talked about this concept of, hey, just imagine inside of yourself having a round table discussion and allowing all of your feelings there and allowing everyone to have a voice. With that idea, I think Internal Family Systems is similar to that concept. What I gained was understanding how strong my protectors are. Ooh. My managers and firefighters, they were working overtime, and seeing where they were working and how they were working and how they were showing up allowed me to see where I was safe to release rules that had grown stale, rules that were written by an earlier version of myself that were not helpful or accurate or applicable to life today.

Julie Holly: The second thing is that I reclaimed so much capacity in my life. Much of my capacity was filled with hedging, with anxiety, with people pleasing, fawning, internal frustration. Ugh, so many different things taking up my capacity, and all of that was tied to a single appointment, rescheduling an appointment. Recalibrating that area allowed me to reclaim that capacity and to open up choices so that there was more of me available for what matters. Okay, I've shared what this looks like in my life, and just how peeling back this small area allowed me to see this whole cavity that needed my attention. And now I'd like to make some room for what you're noticing about your story, about your patterns.

Julie Holly: You may already have a small signal in mind. If you don't, I wanna invite you to bring to mind one ordinary situation where something feels a little off, and you tend to explain it away. Keep that same signal, that same situation with you as we explore the recalibration pathway. We're going to take a few minutes to walk through Recognition, Release, Reclamation, Reinforcement, and Renewed Momentum. With every part of the pathway, I'm going to offer you a reflection question, and I'm going to leave about a 20-second pause before I move into the next part of the pathway. This is your opportunity to integrate in real time. Big change doesn't happen in flashy ways.

Julie Holly: It's not a magic wand. It's not like, poof, it's all exactly how you want it. Change happens in small incremental ways. And so don't dismiss it, and don't hit the 15-second skip ahead button, okay? Give yourself the gift of sitting with a question for 20 seconds. And one more thing before we dive in. I wanna invite you to just find your breath. If you're in a position where you can, you might choose to close your eyes. I do that because it's almost like turning the lights off at nighttime when I go to bed, where it's like, okay, everything is calm and quiet. And we just want to calm ourselves down. You might feel tender about what's come to mind that you wanna explore.

Julie Holly: And in this moment, reassure yourself you're safe. It's okay for you to explore and to see what might be beneath the surface, and also to not make more of something that is simple. Sometimes something is just very simple. Take a breath in through your nose. Full, deep breath, feeling your lungs expanding outward. Keep breathing in and feel the breath all the way down towards your hips. And when you have breathed in as much as you can, hold it for just a moment. And as you let it out, push, actually push the air out slowly. It might sound like air being released from a tire. Feel your body relaxing. Recognition is simply awareness. It's noticing what is. We're noticing what's driving us.

Julie Holly: There's no shame, judgment, criticism, or condemnation. A single signal that you notice, that might not be an established pattern. It might just be a moment or a couple of moments. Allow yourself the space to notice. What are you noticing in the situation that you tend to dismiss? What do you tell yourself about it? We can notice what's happening before deciding what it means. Recognizing is simply gathering the information. It is possible that as you are sitting with that first question you are noticing an inner critic. You are noticing some sarcasm show up in your mind, that you're noticing some shame. And if you're noticing something like that, I wanna encourage you to just speak to yourself, to tell yourself that it's okay to notice.

Julie Holly: Let's move into Release. Release is simply discerning what no longer needs to be carried in the same way and releasing what no longer belongs. We are safe to set down what no longer needs to move forward with us. If you started to see a familiar response, we can be curious about why it's there. Mine was doing something for me. It was helping me keep people close, or at least that's what I believed. Allow yourself to explore the belief or the rules that are beneath that familiar response that you've discovered. I believed that I would anger people. I believed that I would lose belonging. I believed that my character was in jeopardy. What has responding this way helped you protect?

Julie Holly: And if you can name it, allow yourself to go deeper into that question. Does protecting that still require the same response now? And as you explore that, there may be something you still care deeply about. I still wanted and want to be dependable. There were things that I wanted to keep. Reclamation is recovering, claiming, or bringing forward what belongs, because what still belongs comes with you. I gave myself space to keep care, connection, integrity. Those values, those are important to me. And as I recalibrated that area of my life, I allowed those to continue on in my life. Maybe there's something new that you're noticing that you wanna take forward with you.

Julie Holly: So here's your question. What matters here that you wanna keep or bring forward for the first time? Let's transition now to Reinforcement. Reinforcement is practicing and gathering lived evidence in ordinary life. It's a new rhythm, one ordinary day at a time. So what might this look like in the middle of an ordinary day? That's where we're going to get the practice. Take a moment and think about where this actually shows up for you. For me, it can be the moment that I hear myself say, "I'm just tired," and I move right along. That familiar signal arrives and the quick explanation follows. I'm just tired. It's a busy week. I didn't eat right. Notice where that signal is showing up for you in a normal everyday setting.

Julie Holly: Now ask yourself, where might this show up in my life this week, in an ordinary day? And maybe there's a different response that you wanna explore when that shows up. When that moment comes, when you recognize it, you might simply pause. You can notice without finding an answer immediately, without making any change. You can notice what is. And if a practical choice becomes clear, you might explore that. For me, rescheduling was an opportunity for me to grow and expand. Ask yourself here, what have I been explaining away that might deserve a little curiosity? As we continue to gather lived evidence, notice what actually happens if you explore a different response.

Julie Holly: I was anticipating all sorts of reactions to rescheduling. Over time, I had real experiences to learn from. And maybe with the signal you're exploring, you have tried some different responses. Take a moment and consider, what did you notice when you gave that moment some attention? When you showed up differently, when you responded differently? The truth is, when we're recalibrating at the identity level, deep-rooted familiar responses are going to return. And when you catch yourself doing that familiar thing again, I wanna encourage you to let yourself celebrate that you caught it. Celebrate that you can see something that you might have gone right past before.

Julie Holly: The fact that you're seeing something is new. And it demonstrates that something is becoming visible. I want you to know that recognition counts even before your response is changing. Your response will change over time. Your response will change as you are recognizing and as you are releasing and as you are reclaiming. That is exactly what Reinforcement is. So please be patient with yourself. There's no shame, judgment, or condemnation. You can notice what is, and then you can choose again. You might tell yourself, "Okay, I caught it. I might have gone right past that before, and I'm gonna be glad that I noticed, and I gave myself a little more room here."

Julie Holly: And now we transition into Renewed Momentum. Renewed Momentum is moving forward from a place that is more integrated with who you are now. So as you begin listening and responding, it's likely that there is more of you available, more capacity available. I'd love for you to consider, what would you wanna use that capacity for? What might become available for what matters to you? What I have found, and what many clients have found, is that there is far more capacity. For me, with rescheduling, the capacity that was occupied by hedging, anticipating reactions, and frustration, it meant that I had more available for life. As we wrap up for this week, let's go back to where this episode opened.

Julie Holly: I opened with a question: "Nothing's really wrong with my life, so why does something feel off?" Here's what I'd love for you to carry forward this week. You don't have to wait until life goes off the rails to listen to what feels off, and listening doesn't commit you to changing everything. It gives you room to notice and choose. Here's this week's reflection question: What have I been explaining away that deserves a little curiosity? Remember that at julieholly.com, there are more reflection questions that allow you to take the ideas from this week's episode even deeper. If something has felt a little off and you'd like to explore it with me, I'd love for you to schedule a Recalibration Conversation.

Julie Holly: We'll talk about what you're noticing, what you're navigating, and what kind of support might serve you now. The link to schedule is in the show notes. And if it doesn't feel like the time to talk with me, I'd encourage you to check out Get Curious at julieholly.com. I made it specifically so you could walk the recalibration pathway in a moment you want support. It's free, it's ungated, it's untracked, all very intentionally. There's nothing you have to fill out to use it. You can simply bring what you're noticing and begin exploring. Before this episode ends, please hit follow or subscribe, and if this conversation helped you, I'd be so grateful if you left a rating or review so someone else can find the show.

Julie Holly: Remember, this is a daily journey, and you're exactly where you need to be today.