When outer logic and inner knowing collide — and why the voice that makes no sense is the one worth following.
I Had It All. And It Was Literally Crazy Making.
I was 23. Photo editor at Elle Magazine in Germany.
I had the job everyone wanted. The invites to every gallery opening, every glitzy event, every room worth being in. So much of all the desirable stuff. So much of everything that is supposed to mean you have made it.
And it was literally crazy making.
Because I just wasn’t feeling like I really belonged there.
I was playing a part. Performing a version of success that I had achieved — and that gave me nothing I thought it would.
It is a crushing reality check. You worked for this. You wanted this. And then you get there and see what is behind the curtain. Eating disorders. The cattiness. Meanness. The relentless pace. The fakeness dressed up as glamour. And you realize — this isn’t real. None of it is real. And the thing you chased so hard turns out to be a beautifully decorated empty room.
I kept waiting for the feeling to catch up to reality. It never did.
And then it dawned on me — they didn’t care what or who I was. They only cared about what I could do for them.
The job. The title. The function I served. I was useful. I was not seen.
And the moment I understood that I knew I had to leave. I did. Six weeks later I packed a suitcase. Got on a plane to the United States to go to Key West on a houseboat. No plan. Just a knowing so loud I couldn’t unhear it. I remember sitting on the plane next to a guy who had a rash all over his body and kept itching the entire flight — you must have gone nuts!
She Felt It Too. Standing on a Tram in Berlin at 4pm.
This week on The Business Growth Architect Show — Founders of the Future podcast, I sat down with Wiebke Tasch — a fellow German, a publishing strategist, and the founder of Digital Authors LLC.
And within the first five minutes of our conversation, I knew exactly who she was.
Because she had stood in her own version of my Elle Magazine desk.
Hers was a tram. 4pm in Berlin. She had just come from an interview at one of the biggest publishing houses in Germany. She got the job. The dream job. The one everyone who wanted to go into publishing would have done anything for.
And something was knocking on her chest from the inside. Screaming. Get out. Get out now. If you stay, you will die. Not physically.
From the inside.
She describes it as her soul shrinking. I know exactly what that feels like.
She had done everything right. Two bachelor’s degrees. A master. Gap years in Argentina and Canada. The hustle. The city. And a career path laid out in front of her that looked, to everyone watching, like success.
She said no.
This Is What Germany Does.
If you are not from Germany or familiar with the history of the people and how they survived, let me explain something.
Germany is a country that was rebuilt after two world wars on the foundation of precision, order, and the elimination of mistakes. You do not veer off the path. You do not trust feelings over logic. You follow the sequence — study, work, marry, house, car, retire — and you do it correctly so that no one can criticize you. Perfection is the name of that game. There is a lot of guilt and shame we carry for obvious reasons.
The cultural weight of that is immense. Especially when you are the daughter of a mayor, as Wiebke was. Everyone knows you. Everyone has already decided who you are supposed to become. Funny enough, my uncle was the mayor of Munich. There are definitely expectations.
And your inner voice — the one that says this is not your life — does not get a seat at the table.
Feelings, as Wiebke said, are completely verboten.
What Wiebke and I both had to do was not just make a career decision. We had to break out of a generational mold. We had to choose ourselves over the plan that had been made for us before we were old enough to have an opinion about it.
That is not a small thing. That is everything. And perhaps you can relate.
She Asked for a Sign. The Universe Answered.
After Wiebke said no to the Berlin job, she went home and asked the universe for a sign.
The next day, an email arrived. An invitation to a women’s empowerment workshop in Morocco.
She went.
It was February 2020. Ten days with a group of women — visualization, hypnosis, past life regression, and something far more important than any of that: women in their forties and fifties who had followed the calling and lived to tell the story.
They all said the same thing. When you put your energy into something that is truly yours, it works out. Not in a straight line. Not from A to B. But it works out.
Then COVID hit.
Wiebke stayed in Morocco until June. And while the rest of the world panicked, she built. Website. Offers. Pricing. Her first clients were the women she had met at the workshop — coaches and therapists who needed help turning their expertise into books.
Digital Authors LLC was born in a lockdown in Morocco, from a 10-day empowerment workshop, from a sign she asked for because she had run out of logic.
That is not a business origin story. That is a soul story and one that is still evolving. This is the follow-your-dream path.
What Is Your Equivalent of This Awakening?
I want to stop here and ask you.
Have you had a moment like this?
Are you experiencing it right now?
Maybe it is not a tram in Berlin or a desk at a fashion magazine. Maybe it is a boardroom you have worked for twenty years to sit in. A business you built that no longer feels like yours. A role that looks extraordinary on your LinkedIn profile and exhausting in your actual life. You may have fulfilled your parents’ dream, become someone they can be proud of. Or like @Nick Jain realize that your Harvard MBA is useless.
Maybe you are not at the breaking point yet. Maybe it is just a quiet hum underneath everything. A feeling you keep pushing down because the logic says stay. The mortgage and the lifestyle created the golden prison and your logical voice says you have to stay.
But the inner voice is pesky. And it just keeps getting louder.
And you know this is happening, but you are not ready to listen. You can’t. Obligations, expectations and demands.
But there is a price. Your happiness.
I want to ask you — what does that voice say to you? Not the voice of reason. Not the voice of obligation. The other one. The one that shows up at 3am, or in the middle of a meeting, or on a Sunday night when the week is about to start again.
What does it say?
Because here is what I have learned from twenty years of building businesses, interviewing hundreds of founders, and having my own version of every breakdown and breakthrough on this show:
That voice is not a problem to be managed.
It is information. It’s your own wisdom, your connection to your higher, more evolved self that is calling you.
It is the most honest thing about you.
Wiebke heard it on a tram. I heard it at a desk surrounded by everything I was supposed to want. And we both did the same thing — we stopped arguing with it and started listening.
What comes after the listening is the whole story. And it is different for everyone. But it always starts with the same moment.
The moment you stop performing in your life and start becoming the Founder of your future.
A Closing Reflection
How do you reconcile what your inner voice is saying with the obligations of your outer world?
I think we all back up against this. More than once. More than we want to admit because it hurts.
But here is the question I keep coming back to — what makes you think you are going to be more successful doing something you are no longer passionate about versus following the path to your own fulfillment?
Wouldn’t you expect — shouldn’t you expect — that on that new path, your true unfolding happens? That wealth, happiness, the sense of finally being in the right place — wouldn’t that be waiting for you there?
The obligations are real. The fear is real. But so is the cost of staying somewhere your soul has already left.
I’d love to hear where you are in this. Drop a comment or send me a message. This conversation matters.
Let’s grow,
Beate
