High performers often reach a moment where success feels empty and desire goes quiet.
This episode explores why not knowing what you want isn’t loss — it’s identity-level recalibration creating space for truer ambition.
“I don’t know what I want anymore” is one of the most vulnerable sentences a high-capacity human can admit.
In this episode of The Recalibration, Julie Holly speaks directly to leaders, achievers, and high performers navigating decision fatigue, role confusion, and success that no longer feels fulfilling. Rather than treating uncertainty as a problem to solve, this conversation reframes it as a signal of identity transition.
This episode explores how ambition doesn’t disappear when desire quiets — it simply waits for identity to catch up.
You’ll hear why:
- Burnout recovery often includes a season where old goals lose their pull
- Success without fulfillment creates disorientation, not failure
- Identity drift happens when we continue chasing outdated definitions of success
- Spiritual exhaustion can arise when striving replaces alignment
- Motivation rooted in identity must recalibrate before new desire emerges
Julie draws from identity-based motivation to explain why clarity often arrives after old measures are released — not before. This is where Identity-Level Recalibration (ILR) becomes essential.
ILR is not another mindset tactic, productivity strategy, or performance tool. It is the root-level recalibration that makes every other tool effective again by realigning who you are before determining what you pursue.
This episode also includes a personal reflection on letting go of metrics like output, visibility, and net worth as evidence of worth — and how healing identity wounds allows the need to prove belonging to dissolve naturally.
For listeners navigating burnout recovery, decision fatigue, success fatigue, identity misalignment, or the quiet fear that desire may never return, this episode offers reassurance without rushing the process.
Today’s Micro Recalibration
Gently say to yourself:
I release old measures
and choose true ones.
Notice what softens.
Notice what resists.
Both are information.
Explore Identity-Level Recalibration
→ Join the next Friday Recalibration Live experience
→ Take your listening deeper! Subscribe to The Weekly Recalibration Companion to receive reflections and extensions to each week's podcast episodes.
→ Follow Julie Holly on LinkedIn for more recalibration insights
→ Schedule a conversation with Julie to see if The Recalibration is a fit for you
→ Download the Misalignment Audit
→ Subscribe to the weekly newsletter
→ Books to read (Tidy categories on Amazon- I've read/listened to each recommended title.)
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.