The Hidden Score™ Edition 10: The Cost of Holding On
Sometimes the version of you that's breaking is the version that can no longer carry where you're meant to go.
October marks eight years since I was retrenched.
Eight years since a chapter of my life ended without my permission.
For a long time, I believed that was the defining event.
Looking back now, I realise it was simply the catalyst.
The real work wasn't finding another job.
The real work was learning to let go of an identity I had spent years building.
An identity built around certainty. Achievement. Predictability. And knowing what came next.
It's interesting how perspective changes with time.
I recently came across a photograph of myself taken in March 2020 at a Health Coaches Academy Live Event. In the picture, I'm laughing.
To anyone looking at it, I appeared happy. Relaxed. Present.
But photographs don't capture nervous systems.
They don't reveal the chronic stress quietly accumulating beneath the surface.
They don't show the invisible effort required to keep moving when a part of you is still trying to rebuild.
Looking back now, I repeatedly see something different in that photograph.
I see the beginning of something I have called the Caterpillar Phase.
Not because everything around me was changing.
Because everything inside me has been changing.
The Hidden Score™ We Rarely Measure
I have often mentioned we evaluate our lives through visible metrics:
Performance. Productivity. Results. Achievements.
But beneath those measures sits another score. One we mostly never think to track.
The energy required to carry unresolved stress.
The emotional load of outdated expectations.
The mental effort required to maintain an identity that no longer fits.
This is what I call The Hidden Score™.
And perhaps one of the most overlooked contributors to that score is the cost of holding on.
Holding on to who we used to be.
Holding on to who we thought we'd become.
Holding on to the belief that our value depends on continuing to perform in the same way we always have.
Sometimes the exhaustion we feel isn't created by doing too much.
It's created by carrying what no longer belongs in our next chapter.
When Survival Becomes Part of Your Identity
One of the fascinating things we understand about the brain is its tendency to prioritise perceived safety, particularly when uncertainty or threat is present.
When uncertainty enters our lives, our nervous system adapts.
It learns. It protects. It develops strategies designed to help us cope.
Those strategies can be incredibly useful for a season.
The challenge comes when we continue using them long after the season has passed.
What once protected us can quietly begin limiting us.
I see this often in the leaders and professionals I work with.
The leader who believes they must always have the answers.
The high performer who struggles to rest without feeling guilty.
The professional who derives their entire sense of worth from achievement.
The person who keeps proving themselves long after they've already earned their place.
From the outside these behaviours often look like strengths.
Internally, however, they can become expensive.
Every identity requires energy to maintain.
And the more misaligned the identity becomes, the greater the Hidden Score™.
Why Surrender Is Not Giving Up
For years I associated surrender with defeat.
I see it differently.
Sometimes surrender is wisdom.
Sometimes surrender is growth.
Sometimes surrender is simply recognising that a particular version of you has completed its assignment.
The identities that helped us survive one chapter are not always the identities needed for the next.
Growth often requires us to release:
the illusion that certainty equals safety
the belief that our worth is tied to achievement
the expectations attached to who we thought we should become
the pressure to keep recreating an old version of ourselves
The irony is that we spend so much energy trying to preserve what feels familiar.
Yet transformation rarely asks us to hold on tighter.
It asks us to loosen our grip. Sometimes, it asks us to take our hands off the brakes.
My Cocoon
When much of the world entered lockdown in 2020, I entered what I now recognise as my cocoon.
At the time, I thought I was studying something I have always been passionate about - health coaching.
I was beginning to study reconstruction, a process I now understand never truly ends.
I was becoming deeply curious about resilience, behaviour change, stress physiology and the incredible ability of the brain and body to adapt.
Most importantly, I was learning that healing is not about returning to who you were before.
It's about creating the conditions for who you are becoming.
I was never broken, even though during the season I believed I was.
I was recalibrating.
The Hidden Score™ was never simply about my performance. It was also about measuring the energy required to keep carrying an identity that no longer fit.
Maybe You're Not Broken Either
One of the greatest misconceptions about resilience is that strong people don't fall apart.
Real resilience is often far quieter than that.
Sometimes resilience looks like releasing an identity that no longer serves you.
Sometimes it looks like grieving a future you thought you would have.
Sometimes it looks like sitting in uncertainty long enough for a new version of yourself to emerge.
Nature understands this.
Transformation rarely begins through addition.
More often, it begins through release.
Before a butterfly can fly, the caterpillar doesn't simply add wings. Its previous structure dissolves before something entirely new can form.
Perhaps we should begin asking:
"What new architecture is trying to emerge?"
Your Hidden Score™ Reflection
If life feels heavier than it should right now, pause before assuming you're failing or even asking what I am doing wrong.
Ask yourself:
Which version of myself am I still trying to protect?
What identity am I afraid to release?
Am I exhausted because I'm doing too much, or because I'm carrying what no longer belongs in this season?
Where am I investing energy into maintaining an outdated story about who I need to be?
What if this isn't the end of my story, but the redesign of it?
Because sometimes the greatest hidden cost to our wellbeing isn't created by stress alone. It's created by the energy we spend resisting the person we're becoming.
Final Reflection
Eight years later, the retrenchment itself feels far less important than the lessons it eventually revealed.
The most significant changes in our lives are not always the external events.
Often, they are the internal shifts that follow.
The identities we release.
The stories we rewrite.
The capacity we create for something new to emerge.
When I look at that photograph from March 2020, I no longer see only someone navigating a difficult season.
I see someone standing at the threshold of a new blueprint.
She couldn't see it yet.
But her experience was telling a story her conscious mind had not yet learned how to interpret.
Sometimes life doesn't ask us to work harder.
Sometimes it asks us to loosen our grip on who we thought we had to be.
And perhaps that is one of the most important Hidden Score™ lessons of all.
Because building a life that allows us to thrive may first require us to release the version of ourselves that was only trying to survive.
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