Barbara Patterson and I are launching our second Mastermind this week. We will be exploring with the group how to take their businesses to the next level in a way that is aligned with their Authentic Selves, and naturally fun and inspiring. One of the themes that emerged from the enrollment conversations I had for the group was an inquiry into what success really is. What was clear for many of the people I spoke to is that success involves being able to enjoy life and to have the spaciousness and freedom to do projects and activities they want to. No one was interested in working harder, pushing him or herself more, or experiencing burnout.

It made me realize that in some circles success coaching and business development have become synonymous with a manic, hyped up approach toward growth. The perception is that hard work is “the” path toward success, and if you want more of it, you will need to work harder to get it. Given how exhausted and over stretched many people are, it is not surprising they are throwing the baby out with the bath water and saying they are not interested in more success. They don’t feel they can push themselves anymore so they avoid the exploration altogether.

I had a realization several years ago, when I participated in my first Mastermind group, that the successes I had achieved in my life were either the result of effortless, unplanned synchronicity that I had no control over, or they were a result of my clear intention, but their fruition came in spite of my hard work not because of it. What I saw was the “hard” part of work came from the inordinate amount of stress, insecurity, and self-doubt I engaged with. As a result of being wrapped up in it, I put tremendous pressure on myself to perform. I thought this was just part of what it took to be successful. I had no idea that stress and anxiety were optional. In that moment, I saw how negatively the stress impacted not only my performance, but also my health and wellbeing. Given how crazy I had been, it was a wonder I was able to get anything accomplished.

It wasn’t until a few years later that I really experienced what peak performance felt like. I was on a four-day intensive, and I was so impacted by what was shared with me that I saw I could stop putting pressure on myself to be anything other than what I was in the moment. I saw I wasn’t broken, and therefore, I did not need to fix myself. I stopped judging myself for having insecure thoughts and stopped trying to push them away. I had been in a wrestling match with myself for a long time. When I let go of the struggle, the thoughts naturally went away, and I experienced the quietest mind I had ever had up to that point. The quietness lasted for days, and my mind never went back to the same level of busyness afterwards.

A surprising by-product of this experience was that my work productivity went through the roof, and I thought I was productive before that. I had not intended to do any work while on the intensive, but I found myself feeling inspired to, so I took an hour or two out of each day to get things done. I got more accomplished in that time than I did in a full day of work previously. I felt like a ninja knocking down projects and tasks with speed, precision and grace. Nothing felt too big or too hard. I was expending effort, but it felt effortless. I was skating of ice rather than inching my way up rock wall.

I learned from this how “hard” and “effort” don’t have to go together. Neither do “success” and “burnout” or “motivation” and “pressure” have to go hand-in-hand. Clarity and inspiration drive performance. I saw that how hard something feels is a reflection of my state of mind and does not reflect the difficulty of the task.

I knew I could create my business from this understanding. At the time I was the executive director of operations for a national behavioral health company. I felt burnout and did not think I had room to do another thing, but when I saw that I could let all of the pressure go simply by dropping my thinking about it, I got inspired to go out on my own. Now I do far more than when I was working as an executive, and I don’t feel any burnout. I have my moments of getting out of balance, but I don’t experience chronic stress or overwhelm the way that I did. I also earn more money, serve more people, participate in more projects, and have more free time for my family, friends and fun in general.

My freedom to create from inspiration and to work in an effortless way is the result of me having an understanding of where my experience comes from. I was hoodwinked into thinking that my stress was coming from outside of me. It didn’t occur to me to challenge this even when my work roles changed and the stress followed me. I just put it down to taking on more responsibility and stepping into leadership. I linked my greater to success to greater suffering. I thought this is how life works. No wonder I started to fantasize about an isolated existence of living off of the land in a remote setting with no Internet. Of course, with the state of mind I was in, I would have made that stressful too.

It wasn’t until I saw that the internal pressure I was experiencing came from me bringing my own anxious thoughts to life that I put the dots together. I was feeling my thoughts, but not seeing the role thought played in my experience. I saw my experience as the result of my circumstances and did not recognize the real culprit behind my suffering was my own thinking!

I can live in an internal experience of heaven or hell independent of what my circumstances are. I, like all of us, use the infinite, formless spiritual essence of who we are to create thought. My soul speaks to me in this way. I don’t know why my soul sometimes comes up with a negative thought, but I know that thoughts are fundamentally made up of the formless essence of love, and I can relate to all of my thoughts in this way independent of their content. They are not good or bad. I don’t need to be attached to some and scared of others. I don’t need to react to them. I can simply remember what a gift it is that I have thought and get on with living my life.

I tend not to think about success with a big “S” anymore. I am much more inclined to take the next step that is right in front of me and follow my inspiration. It seems that my True Nature is more than happy to reveal my next steps to me in divine timing; and when there is nothing present to do, I have learned to relax and enjoy the not doing too. This is not a formula. It is was makes sense to me, and I can say that my business only keeps getting better, and more importantly, my capacity to enjoy living life keeps going up too.

Rohini Ross is a psychotherapist, a leadership consultant, and an executive coach. Rohini facilitates personalized three-day retreats for individuals, couples, and professionals to help them connect more fully with their true nature and experience greater levels of wellbeing, resiliency, and success. You can find out more about Rohini’s work on her website, rohiniross.com.