When “Fine” Is No Longer Fine: How High-Achieving Women Quietly Outgrow Their Own Lives

You know that line women say when they’re absolutely not fine?
“Everything’s… fine.”

The “fine” job that looks impressive on LinkedIn.
The “fine” relationship that doesn’t technically qualify as a crisis.
The “fine” life where your calendar is jammed, your bank account is okay, and you still feel strangely hollow.

If that’s you, you’re not broken.
You’re just outgrowing your own life.

How “Fine” Becomes a Trap

I recently interviewed Kate Ferrian, founder of Simply Become It, on the Simply Own It podcast.

Her story is an intense version of something I also see in more subtle ways everyday with women who are feeling ‘fine’ in their life, but losing their sense of self and zest for life:

• She had a “fine” marriage… until it wasn’t.

• She entered a new relationship that started with verbal and emotional abuse… and eventually turned physical.

• She found herself sitting with her girlfriends, bruises on her body, hearing them say, “You can’t go back.”
  

That night forced a reckoning.

But here’s what she said that stopped me in my tracks:

“That wasn’t my first ‘fine’ relationship. I’d been living in fine my whole life. I just didn’t have language for it.”

Most high-achieving women I work with grew up around some version of “fine”:

• Parents who stayed together because “that’s just what you do”

• Work cultures that glorified hard work and loyalty over actual alignment

• Family stories about women who were “so strong” because they tolerated everything

So what happens?

You normalize discomfort and minimize your own pain.
You compare your situation to someone who “has it worse” and decide your standards are too high.

And… you stay…..

The Tolerance Scale: Why You Stay Longer Than You Should

Think of your tolerance like a scale.

At first, little things land on it:

• The snarky comments from a partner

• The boss who keeps “joking” about you being emotional

• The constant low-grade resentment toward your calendar
  

Each one feels small and each one, you rationalize. But the pile adds up.

For Kate, it took a physically abusive incident for her tolerance scale to slam down and finally feel “bad enough” to leave.

For many women, the moment is quieter but just as real:

• Crying in the car after work again

• A random Tuesday Target parking lot meltdown

• Looking at your calendar and thinking, “Is this really my life?”

That moment is brutal. But it’s also sacred. It’s the first crack in “fine.”

Awareness Is Not the Problem

Here’s the funny thing: most of my clients are not lacking awareness.

They know:

• Their job is misaligned

• Their relationship is running not one that has grown with them

• Their calendar is a museum to other people’s demands
  

They’ve listened to podcasts, read the books, done the journaling. They can diagnose themselves better than most therapists. The real gap is here: Growth lives in the space between awareness and action.

Awareness without action turns into overthinking, however awareness with tiny, repeated action turns into reinvention.

That’s what I loved about how Kate rebuilt her life. She didn’t leap off a cliff. She layered support:

• A strength trainer to literally feel her power again

• A yoga teacher to move stuck energy

• Traditional and somatic therapy to understand her patterns

• Coaching to reconnect with her values and strengths
  

And then she used her operations brain to turn that experience into a framework:

90 days, 5–10 minutes a day, and a community of women and a “board of advisors” of coaches across different life areas.

Simply Become It is built for the woman who says, “I don’t have time to blow up my life,” but deeply knows she can’t keep living like this.

The Lie of “Hard Work” and the Strong Independent Woman

Let’s call out another sticky belief while we’re here:

“The only way to succeed is to work hard and do it all myself.”

Kate described how she used to wear “strong, independent, hard-working” like a personality badge. Same.

Sounds admirable, yet it feels… exhausting.

In corporate, that meant:

• Taking work back from her team because “they weren’t doing it right”

• Fixing everyone else’s messes

• Crying in her boss’s office because she was drowning
  

Her shift came when she realized she didn’t need to be the fixer, but rather she needed to be the teacher.

She stopped hiring people to replace tasks and started hiring for strengths and personality. She rebuilt roles around what her team members were actually good at.

Then, when she started her own business, she carried that lesson with her:

• Hiring support for social media instead of procrastinating for weeks

• Asking other coaches to post content on her behalf when being “seen” felt terrifying

• Staying in her genius zone: building the infrastructure and the journey, not trying to be the entire company
  

You are allowed to be capable and still ask for help.
You are allowed to be smart and still hire support.
You are allowed to be strong and still want softness.

A Simple “Fine Audit” You Can Do Today

If you’re feeling called out in the best way right now, here’s a quick practice:

Step 1: List the main areas of your life

• Work / business

• Relationship(s)

• Health

• Money

• Time / calendar

• Parenting / family (if this applies)
  

Step 2: Label each one honestly

Next to each area, write:

• “I love this”

• “This is fine”

• “This is not okay”

No justifying. Just your gut.

Step 3: Choose ONE “fine” to get curious about

Ask yourself:

• If I stopped telling myself it’s “not that bad,” what would I admit?

• What do I believe I have to tolerate here to be a “good” partner/employee/mom/daughter?

• What’s one five-minute action I could take this week in this area?

That’s it. No giant plan. No color-coded transformation timeline.

Just honesty + one action.

Where to Go From Here

If this blog is stirring something up in you, here are a couple of next steps:

1. Listen to the full conversation with Kate
We go deeper into:

• How she left a long corporate career and built Simply Become It

• The nuts and bolts of her 90-day journey

• How she uses tools like human design and strengths work to help women rediscover who they actually are
  

You can tune into the episode on the Simply Own It podcast — link is in the show notes of the show and on my site.

2. Explore support that matches where you are:

• If you want a gentle, structured way to start changing your life in five to ten minutes a day — check out Kate’s Simply Become It journey. I’m one of the coaches inside, specifically helping with work reinvention.

• If you already run a business and your identity, offers, and calendar need a serious realignment, my program Industry Icon is designed for exactly that. We focus on identity-first business strategy so your work actually fits your life.
  

Because here’s the truth:

You don’t have to wait for a rock-bottom moment or a bruised body or a collapse in your car to admit you’re not okay.

You’re allowed to say, “Fine is no longer fine.”

And then build something so much better.

Ready to stop living a “fine” life and build one that feels fully yours?

🔹 Or, if you’re a business owner ready to realign your work with who you are now, apply for Industry Icon and let’s rebuild your strategy from the inside out.

Listen to the full podcast episode HERE.