The Success Paradox: When Success Feels Like Failure
Nicole Brûlé-Walker has spent her career helping high-achieving women reconnect with what success actually means to them. Here she makes the case that chasing borrowed goals is quietly costing female founders more than they realise, and what to do instead.
Imagine standing on stage at an awards ceremony, having just accepted Best Large Business. From the front row, people assume this is the happiest night of your life. Inside, something feels completely off.
So many female founders recount moments exactly like this one… the journey from start-up concept to external markers of success, only to find that the arrival feels nothing like the destination they imagined.
You haven't done anything wrong. You've just been following someone else's map.
The Hidden Cost of Borrowed Success
Business, like so many other domains, is rooted in traditional male leadership qualities. When you try to adopt goals, strategies, and structures that don’t feel like you, you eventually experience resistance. On a superficial level, it is a bit like wearing someone else’s clothes: they might look the part, but they never quite fit.
It is easy to fall into the “perfection trap” and feel pressure to prove your worth or capability. When trailblazing in a male-dominated field, it can seem as though all eyes are on you - either waiting for you to trip up or constantly evaluating your outward persona as a role model to young girls.
"If you can see it, you can be it” came up as a theme at a recent conference I attended, and there is no question that this is necessary to inspire future generations. The importance of being visible in your business pursuits can be overwhelming, but it is crucial to stay aligned with who you.
We are at a crossroad where opportunities for women are rising, but the ceilings in some industries are still capped. We need women to step up and show that it is possible - but never at the expense of ourselves.
We must ensure that the girls and young women around us don’t learn that success can only come with burnout, juggling multiple roles, and losing their identity and self-confidence.
This version of success serves no one. But when you become aware of the signs and shift into your own truth, and really live it, you create a sustainable way forward.
Recognising the signs
Winning at all costs only serves to lose yourself in the process. High performance cannot be the road to:
Extreme exhaustion that sleep cannot fix
Success that you feel detached from
Questioning life choices and direction
Feeling unfulfilled despite external success
Nicole Brûlé-Walker, founder of the Core Truths System and a Health & Wellbeing Strategist
When Sarah (name changed for privacy) came to me for an informal chat, she recounted a recent investor meeting that had gone well. On returning to her car, she felt an overwhelming sense of emptiness and sat crying in her driver’s seat. Her reality was working 70-hour weeks and having no vacation time for two years. She asked me: “When did winning start feeling like losing?”
Outwardly, she had built exactly what everyone told her she should want. Her tech startup had just closed a Series A funding round; she had been featured on three “Women to Watch” lists in 2025, and revenue had grown by 300% year-over-year. She was the epitome of female entrepreneurial success - except she didn’t feel it internally.
Sadly, this story echoes the sentiments of so many others at all levels of business. Below are three practical shifts that can help you reconnect with a more genuine sense of ambition and purpose that doesn’t cost your internal alignment.
Three shifts that actually help
Whose goals are you really living?
Write a list of your personal and business goals, large or small. Then take another sheet or page in your journal and draw a line down the centre of the page, making two columns. At the top of the first column, write “What lights me up?” and in the second column, write “What should I want?”
Notice which goals feel alive in your body and which ones come from external expectations. The ‘should’ goals will never bring the same sense of accomplishment as the first column does. Rephrase them into something that feels more aligned - or replace them altogether.
The way we do business is changing. This is the perfect time to create new systems and ways of working that benefit everyone, including you.
Find your own rhythm
So much of Productivity relies on your own internal rhythms, so throw away the templates that dictate what time you should get up every day, the books or gurus you should follow, or what routines fueled someone else’s success. You are the only person who can decide what works best for you.
Start mapping the times of day when you feel most energetic, how long you can focus on a task before needing to take a break, and when creativity naturally strikes. Build your own schedule around these insights. And allow yourself time to rest - this is often where innovation appears and creativity flows.
Find one person you can be completely honest with
Not a polished version of honest. Actually, honest about the struggles alongside the victories. Give yourself permission to be both successful and struggling, confident and uncertain. A good mentor provides that space: honest feedback, steady support, and someone who helps you stay connected to your own direction rather than someone else's definition of where you should be going.
When you align with the values and vision that actually reflect you, it feels like coming home. And as you build that version of success (the sustainable one, the one that's genuinely yours) you make it easier for other women to do the same.