Why “failure” is often misalignment in disguise.
There’s a particular kind of self-criticism that shows up in successful people.
It doesn’t sound like arrogance. It sounds like accountability.
“I’ve lost my motivation.”
“I’m not as sharp as I used to be.”
“I should be more grateful.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Underneath those statements is often a private fear: I’m failing.
But many of the people who say this are not failing in any obvious way. They are still performing. Still delivering. Still functioning in roles that look stable and respectable. Their lives continue to make sense to everyone around them.
Which makes the internal experience even more confusing.
When things look fine on paper, discomfort can feel illegitimate. You assume it must be a mindset issue. Or a discipline issue. Or a resilience issue. You try to push through. You add more effort, more productivity tools, more self-management.
And still, something feels off.
This is where it can be helpful to name a different possibility.
What if you are not failing. What if you have outgrown an identity.
Failure is usually clear. Misalignment is usually foggy.
Failure, for all its sting, has one advantage. It is tangible.
A proposal is rejected. A target is missed. A project collapses. A relationship ends. There is an event you can point to. There are lessons you can extract. There is a narrative you can form about what happened.
Outgrowing an identity rarely offers that clarity.
It arrives as a low-level mismatch between who you are becoming and the life you are still living. It can look like low motivation, but it is not laziness. It can look like indecision, but it is not a lack of courage. It can look like boredom, but it is not a character flaw.
It is often the early signal that your internal definition of self has shifted.
This matters because people tend to treat fog as a personal failure. They assume that if they were more competent, more disciplined, more confident, they would know what to do.
But fog is not always a problem to solve. Sometimes it is the honest weather of transition.
The identity you needed to succeed is not always the identity you want to keep
Most professional identities are built with good reasons.
They are shaped by what you were praised for.
They are reinforced by what you were rewarded for.
They are stabilised by what your environment needed from you.
Over time, a role can become more than a job. It becomes a shorthand for self.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“I’m a consultant.”
“I’m a founder.”
“I’m an engineer.”
Again, none of this is wrong. It is social. It is practical. It helps other people place you. It can also help you place yourself.
The problem appears when the identity hardens.
When you only know how to be valuable in one shape. When you keep performing a version of yourself that once fitted, but now feels slightly outdated. When you start living from an identity that used to be a stepping stone and has quietly become a permanent home.
This is a common reason clarity fades later in successful careers. The external identity remains intact, but the internal identity is changing.
You are still being you, but a different you.
Why it feels personal
When someone misses a target, it can feel painful, but it is at least recognisable as an outcome.
When someone outgrows an identity, it can feel more unsettling because it touches meaning.
If the identity has been the container for your confidence, your status, your sense of contribution, and your belonging, then outgrowing it can feel like losing yourself.
That can trigger shame. Not because you did anything wrong, but because the old identity was socially legible and internally familiar. Letting it loosen can feel like stepping into a room without a name badge.
This is why people often reach for the word failure. It is a word that makes the discomfort sound practical.
But misalignment is often closer to the truth. Misalignment sounds less dramatic, but it is more precise. It points to a mismatch, not a defect.
Overthinking as information
Many people notice the same thing when they outgrow an identity.
Their mind gets louder.
They second-guess decisions. They replay conversations. They wonder whether they are making a mistake. They research, plan, reassess, then circle back to the same uncertainty.
In high-performing cultures, overthinking is treated as something to stamp out. The assumption is that clarity comes from being decisive, and decisiveness comes from having certainty.
But in identity transitions, certainty is often unavailable.
Overthinking can be a signal that the old identity no longer explains your life. The mind is trying to build a new internal map. It is searching for coherence.
The question is not how to stop thinking. The question is what the thinking is pointing to.
Often it points to a gap between what you are doing and what you can stand behind.
Purpose is directional, not fixed
One reason people feel they are failing is that they expect purpose to be a final statement.
A single line that explains the whole life. A stable definition that never needs revisiting. A clear answer to “What do you want?”
That expectation creates pressure. If you cannot name your purpose clearly, you assume you are behind.
But purpose is often directional. It is a sense of orientation, not a permanent conclusion.
When you outgrow an identity, the old direction no longer pulls with the same force. That does not mean you have no purpose. It may mean you are between directions.
Between the old identity, which has completed its job, and the next identity, which is not yet fully formed.
The “provisional self” is part of the process, not a problem
This is where Herminia Ibarra’s idea of “provisional selves” is useful.
Her research describes how professionals in transition often experiment with new ways of being. They observe, try on different approaches, and gradually refine what feels credible externally and congruent internally.
That experimentation can look messy from the inside. It can feel like inconsistency. It can feel like uncertainty. It can feel like you do not know who you are.
But that is often what growth looks like when you are not forcing it into a neat story too early.
The provisional self is not a weakness. It is an honest phase of becoming.
This matters because many people interpret the provisional phase as failure. They assume that if they were truly capable, they would already know their next identity.
In reality, identity tends to be lived into. Not intellectually solved.
Autonomy is essential, especially when identities shift
When you outgrow an identity, one of the most important things to notice is where your choices are coming from.
Not as a checklist, but as a simple line of enquiry.
Are you responding to what is expected, or what is true?
Autonomy is not about doing whatever you want at all times. It is about feeling that your life is not simply being decided by external forces. It is about being able to recognise your own consent in the direction you are moving.
When identity changes, autonomy often becomes more important. Not because you need a dramatic reinvention, but because you need to feel like the next phase belongs to you.
Many people realise, in hindsight, that their earlier success was built on being extremely responsive. To parents, to teachers, to employers, to the market. Responsiveness can create rapid progress.
But eventually, responsiveness without internal authorship becomes tiring.
That tiredness is not failure. It is a signal.
People are not broken. They are often outdated.
It sounds almost too simple, but it lands for a reason.
Most successful people are not broken. They are living from identities that made sense for a previous season.
The identity that got you through your twenties might not fit your thirties. The identity that helped you build credibility might not fit once credibility is established. The identity that was needed to survive intense work years might not fit once you are ready to live with more spaciousness.
If you keep using an outdated identity, life starts to feel heavier. Not because you cannot cope, but because you are carrying an old shape into a new stage.
This is why clarity can return quickly once someone admits, quietly, “I have outgrown this.”
The admission does not solve everything. But it reduces the self-attack.
It replaces “I’m failing” with “I’m changing.”
A calmer way to hold the moment
If you are in this space, it may help to hold a simpler interpretation.
You are not failing.
You are noticing.
You are noticing that the old identity no longer generates energy. You are noticing that motivation has become inconsistent. You are noticing that the story you tell about yourself no longer feels entirely true.
That noticing is not a problem. It is awareness returning.
And awareness is usually the beginning of alignment.
You do not need to force a new identity into place. You do not need to label the whole experience as a crisis. You do not need to rush to make it look tidy.
Clarity often comes after honesty, not before it.
So a question worth sitting with is not “How do I get back to who I was?”
It is this:
What part of me has outgrown the identity I am still performing?