The Hidden Struggle of High Achievers (And How to Break Free)

0:00Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show and boy are we in for a treat today because here's one thing. If you've been watching the show for a while, you know I don't bring on repeat guests unless. Unless they are just so good and unless I've heard from you. I read every single DM, I read my own emails, and I get to know who's actually connecting and who's connective. Those are two separate things. Connecting means, ooh, this hit me. Connective means I actually want to get up close to this person. Now, the person who I'm about to introduce you to, she's coming back on the podcast. And the reason she's coming back on the podcast is because since her first conversation with me to today, I started noticing patterns.

0:43And patterns of the people who I am attracting into my orbit are, number one, high achievers. Number two, perfectionists. And number three, for people who on the outside, people look at them and they're like, oh, they are special. Oh, they're doing something good. Oh, oh, oh. and they themselves don't necessarily see themselves in the same light. So it is with that extreme honor and pleasure that I am excited to invite back Karen Eldad. Thank you for being on the Jasmine Star Show. Thank you, Infinity, for having me back. It's an honor and a pleasure to be back and serve the audience. I am so, I'm very, very, very happy.

1:15And what the audience doesn't know is that you, being the recovering type A, you arrived early. unbeknownst to me you were able to sit outside of the studio door and you got to hear yeah a podcast episode where I broke down a ton of things that was happening in quarter one and you're like oh Jasmine I walked out and I said Karen you're here and you're like boy did I hear a lot I was like oh no oh no because Karen is you're like a master puzzler you get different pieces that seem disparate and then you interweave them through a whole theme and so I have my notes but we're going to take this wherever I believe you know we need to go but first and foremost I want to frame it your message is for high achievers who live successful lives on the outside but feel different on the inside yeah can you expand there for a second because people are like well I'm not sure that that's exactly me so most people who came to read my first book Gilded felt exactly that way I don't feel like this is me and then they read the first few pages I heard this again and again and again from readers and they said oh no it's me here's the deal most of us do not really see ourselves as classic overachievers.

2:20But once we understand that we are intensely focused, we're intensely wired for focus, we're a little more obsessive than the average person in any direction, by the way, tulip growing, child rearing, or running a business, we start understanding this is our category. As a result of that, we have to start understanding that we are externally motivated. We are usually looking to get our bell rung by achievements. If so, it's very likely you've already experienced that happiness is correlated in the inverse, that it's not actually ringing your bells fulfillment-wise, that for some reason, achievements don't land, and at some point, just stop landing.

2:59And even worse, that any form of making a mistake, failure, or detour is extremely painful. If so, welcome to our category. We're here first and foremost to dissolve all of the primal limiting beliefs that got you into what is essentially a golden cage. A gilded cage means a gold covered or gold plated cage. And you and I know that gold plated is not real. It's phony baloney. So my hope is first to dissolve that. Today, I want to talk about a more advanced case, what you see in your business masterminds for sure, because I know some of the wonderful people there. And what I commonly see, which is, all right, they busted out of the cage.

3:43Now they have to live that way. They have to stay in that zone. How do you continue to live that way? How do you continue to make integrous decisions? How do you maintain that focus? That was the podcast episode that I had the privilege of listening to and sustain it. And so I realized, and I'll tell you the story of how this came about, because as you may recall I told you, you were like, are you writing a second book? And I'm like, I'd rather eat my cat. And I love my cat. So that's what I meant by that. I understood that the other piece of the puzzle, what people really needed to hear was not just how I busted out of my own trappings, but how I've lived this way, lived free for 10 years now.

4:23The analogy that comes to mind, and please forgive me, it's simplistic, is in the 90s, I lost like 20 pounds. I was a out through Jane Fonda and Diet Cokes how to lose that weight. And that was brutal. It was very hard to lose that much weight. But you know, what's been like much more interesting is that I've kept it off for 30 years. Taking the weight off first is just one lever. What comes next is what I want to talk about. Okay. So when I was on your podcast, your beautiful, sweet husband, and you drove me back to my hotel. So you finished the podcast and you guys are so kind. I said, let me just Uber.

5:04I'm fine. You said, no, we got to take you back. So we're in the car and we're talking about the book and I come from the world, which you know, and you've helped me a lot where I'm like, okay, so we just don't do a book. Like we do a book, all cap letters. And I said, so talk to me about the marketing strategy. What are the goals? Are we aiming for a New York times bestseller? What's the strategy? How many podcasts and by what time let's reverse engineer. And you were calm and you were sitting in the back seat because you, of course, you made me passenger princess. And you just said, oh, no, Jasmine, whatever happens is great.

5:34But I'm not on a timeline. Like the book finds the right people at the right time. I was like, yeah, oh, yeah, of course. I am clearly that elevator. Of course. So we talk about that. And then when you talked about I didn't want to write a book, I'd rather eat my cat. And then the book became, well, there was something special about helping people get out and then this is the next step and then what happened off camera because you're very good at being you and you are naturally you're good at what you do and you're also very humble but we have a love affair of a book called the great leap yes by gay hendrix and that was the book that started my early early personal development though this is like my god like maybe 2015 that i read that book it still remains one of my top business books that i recommend to people especially when when they are starting out especially when they're struggling it's called The Big Leap.

6:22By Gay Hendrix. Gay Hendrix. And Gay wrote a kind word about your book. Can you tell me what he said? He said, first he said, the long anticipated sequel to Gilded is finally here. But he also said, this is a book about what happens after you bust past the upper limit. And it made me think he really understands the book. Very few people say much about what happens after you break through the first time. after you land the husband after you launch the business after you achieve whatever goal you like you got the podcast out the door there's 10 years on the back of that that need to be discussed as well because the real thing the real work is staying in the creation and staying true to yourself staying authentic through that creation and i've seen it go wrong many times which by the way it brings me to how I ended up in guilt-free.

7:21Okay. There's somebody watching and I'm so attuned to who's watching and listening. Like I know this person. And so what the brain will bring up was, well, I'm actually not sure I've left the cage. Yeah. How do I mean? Yeah. Like, yes. And that's the thing that we say is like, oh, it's the husband, it's the baby, it's the accomplishment. It's a podcast of the business. Right. And then you actually kind of sort of launch it, but it's not what it is that you think. Cause people think like I started a business and it's like, oh, I I have 200 clients. It starts with one and it starts with two. So do people actually say, I've identified as, I'm out, I'm out of the cage, I've landed.

7:52They do. And it's phony baloney. Okay. So guilt-free, spelled G-I-L-T-free, means without any of that shininess. And the impulse for most people will be to create more shininess. Instead of just breaking free, they still are achievement-oriented. And then they speak the language of abundance. they've learned how to talk like us but they're not actually walking like us and the tell is the results and their responses do not match what they intellectually know to say okay we gotta break this down in an example so let's use a business example so I'll give you the case study so I wrote this book very simply I wrote this book because a couple of clients were in practice with me at the time and I could see that there was a missing piece of the work for them so that's why I write I only create things when I see the need for it in clients and I want to serve them at a higher level.

8:48I see kind of like I wrote Heal with Enthusiasm, my new program this year. And I just thought there's a gap here. These people need this extra work. So I'll create this extra piece. Got it. That's basically it. And, you know, the most interesting thing that happens when you do this is you start finding more glitches in yourself that you want to close. As Gilded was going to press, I started to literally smell where there were gaps in the work. and so I thought I have to write a sequel. This is an incomplete work. I thought it was actually perfect when I launched it but as it's going to press, a couple of cases just became earth-shadowingly relevant to me.

9:25I'm going to give you two that are in the business category that are going to be very useful. The first was a woman who continued to come back, spoke the language of abundance like nobody's business, constantly, I am highfalutin, the world is awesome, The deal pipeline is insane. Jet setting and spending money like nobody's business. I've been in the seven figure category for a few years now. I don't live that way. So I'm very aware of profit margins and of what it takes. And then she kept saying things like, I just want to make a million dollars in the next year, which then completely makes no sense to me.

10:01Because with that lifestyle, how exactly is this working and why do these ends just not land for her like something was so are you saying she was living a seven-figure lifestyle without a seven-figure business i think easily so okay and by the way i want to do this yes and you're saying that i'm saying there's something just doesn't make sense to me okay but explain i want to get into your brain and people are like well that's so somebody's watching yeah and they will have the opportunity to work with you maybe but in case that they don't what are you saying like if i'm that woman i'm looking for incongruencies that's my entire secret so give me the incongruency you're saying you're spending it doesn't make sense if you're trying if you say to me that my goal is to make a million dollars next year and your lifestyle very obviously costs i'm gonna be humble and say more than a million dollars that's a mismatch it doesn't make sense it doesn't work on paper the math is not mathing And that's just going to raise my alarm bells.

10:58It doesn't mean I'm going to accuse you of anything or anything like that. It just means I'm going to become aware of the fact that there's very likely a pattern here. And the pattern here is an identity. As you know, what really happens when we break out of the cage is we actually graduate identity. When you made the decision to defy your father, to defy the church, to defy your community, and to say, I am not staying in this miserable school sitch. I'm going to go out on my own and do something cuckoo maluku according to the regs you actually switched identity you broke with some covenants that you grew up around for this particular person and by the way all case studies that I present are usually an amalgamation of case studies this facade of I am impressive I am always well I am rich had to be destroyed for you to actually be a really solid entrepreneur.

11:54Amen. As I just heard you say on that wonderful podcast episode I got to listen to by Osmosis, humility is part of the game. Scrappiness is part of the game. Understanding how to do things and to just allow yourself to always grow and to be authentic about it is part of the game. That's the second tell. The second tell was everything was always on the up and up. Now, I've been in businesses I just shared with you almost 10 years. Never had a bad quarter? Come on. I've had a couple years. Por favor. Years. Exactly. Please. It's like somebody saying my marriage is absolutely perfect. And I'm like, who are you married to?

12:33The Dalai Lama? Like, stop. Enough. And so that was the first case study. The second is also very interesting. And that's, again, something that kept recurring. So, pause. case study number one yeah was incongruency and in this particular situation you lived a seven figure lifestyle without actually having a seven figure business so it's a little bit of like there's a dissonance there and that means you're actually not only not manufacturing the success you want but you end up in purgatory you're not landing the success you want that means there's a glitch in the system that's what i'd like to explore here and explain why i wrote guilt-free to really take somebody who's broken out the gate, has all the right intentions, like did everything in foundation coaching in books like Gilded, in books like The Big Leap, and they're still not sticking the landing.

13:22The results are still not landing. That means there's an identity glitch and there's also a decision making glitch. So I helped myself solve these over time and now I've housed these in a method that helps other people scan for that. So the first thing was incongruity. Yeah. And then what was the second part that caused you to say, like, wait a minute. Doesn't stick the landing. Oh, didn't stick the landing. Okay, great. Incongruency is in didn't stick the landing. How is this not sticking the landing? Eventually you're like, you know, it's kind of like when I coach a lot of people in relationships.

13:55After a while, it's not the world. It's you. You're making a decision. You're getting something out of that decision. Another book I really love is Carolyn Elliott's Existential Kink. Have you read it? You'll love it. It's really messed up. And what she argues is the reason we continue to stay in these purgatories is essentially we're getting something out of staying in these purgatories. I accept that. But most importantly, I also understand that you're just afraid to pay the price, the price again and again and again for freedom. and that's the part that I didn't tell anybody in Gilded which is it's not that you're going to pay for your freedom one time you will continue to have to put your money where your mouth is every freaking day for 10 years now yeah and so you were going to get into the second case study yeah so the second case study that I really love is and you you're familiar with this as an entrepreneur you're familiar with this with clients is some people have the best year of their lives and then they hit a lull.

14:58In a lull, most people who are not in the mindset that makes good decisions and continues to put their money where their mouth is, have a little bit of a panic meltdown. They have a panic response. That panic response can offset years of work. That's the second case study. So for example, I saw this wonderful gentleman client. He'd had the best year ever. He'd produced a seven-figure almost year, and then crickets. The regression was pretty fast. The old identity just right woke up. The success isn't structural. I can't really trust this. This is a fluke. None of this actually works. How do we continue this?

15:42What is this even? I need to redo my offer. I need to have more offers. I need to start hustling harder. I should be operating like the others. let's watch more Leila and Alex Hormozzi content and see how fast we can get stuff out the door and I sat there going yeah I'm going to write guilt free for you buddy when you look back at somebody like that who had like a really great year and then they go into the cricket season and then they want to do more go back to the old identity how are you walking somebody through that? well the first thing I like to say is very unpopular and that's congratulations okay say more And when these things happen, and this just happened to me, I had the best year of my business last year.

16:27Gilded went completely bananas for me. And it's not about hundreds of thousands of copies. When did it drop? It dropped in February of 2025. And we 6X the business by September. That was crazy. That was kuku maluku. And by the way, that's why you write books. Forget how many books I sell. It's just so much wonderful new case studies and exciting new work coming through the door. In Q4, there was an adjustment. The business just went back to normal. I started to initially respond kind of like he did. What's happening? Oh, this was a fluke. Oh, this was just something that has to be sustained by a structure that I have to repeat.

17:10I thought, wait a minute, now I'm going to use my work on myself. and first congratulated myself. I understood what happened. My identity had to expand. It had to move into a new zone and it wasn't ready to do that yet. It still wanted to cling to the comfort of where I was. Just let me stay here a little bit longer. I'm good where I am. You see, the identity, if it really needs to expand to the next level, you need to hire more people, you need to operate at a different level, You need to walk into different rooms. You need to completely change your structure. I'm a one-on-one coach. Suddenly groups become much more of a thing.

17:52By default, you can't manage that volume any other way. And so I realized that I got to do the work myself. And I walked myself through it. I realized that this was a good thing, not a bad thing. This was a moment where I got to show myself what structural success is really about. And here it is. structural success is about not freaking out about chilling out about enjoying this and about asking for the real thing that you want so that you can actually start to receive it and i'll be happy to dive into that i mean girl i'm gonna put my pen down because this is this is the real work and so you know that this podcast is it's the business of business yeah and what we get to do with guilt free is to point back to it as how somebody who's watching you build a business how they apply it to their lives because you know this pod, you know for sure.

18:40I don't bring authors on the pod without reading their book and without actually understanding what it's going to do in somebody's business. And in both of those scenarios and cases, that's what I've done with you. And that's what I experienced on both ends of the book. I even asked you, I was like, girl, you can come on my podcast, but like give me the digital version, like chop, chop. And so what I would love to do, because I know that you were open to it is in Spanish, we call it chisme, like the tea. And so I want to use you as our case study. So you had to step into the container that is the next version of Karen Eldad.

19:08And then, no, here's something else. You told me the last time we were on the podcast, the last time I interviewed you, we were in Austin and you're like, I just do one on one. And then you offered to my audience, you're like, I'm gonna do a free consultation, anybody who wants it. And I was like, what? I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure, Karen? Yes, of course. Send them my way. And we will send everybody the way for them to have a consultation with you too. But that's not here. At the time, you were only doing one on one. So then what happens in the business when you step into this identity where there's a lull and there's crickets and you're like, okay, I need to celebrate it.

19:37And then I need to ask myself, what actually do I want? So number one, what did you decide you wanted? Did the structure of your business change? And then who did you have to become in the process? Yes, I'll be very delighted to walk you all through this. And I want everybody who is an advanced entrepreneur to listen in particularly carefully because what really ends up happening is you'll recognize it. It's a very, very similar structure to what happens when you get out the door. You just unfortunately, as an entrepreneur, sometimes become comfortable, particularly if you're successful, and just chill for a while.

20:07You reach cruising altitude. People with my behavioral style love cruising altitude. You know this. I like to be in bed with a bathrobe and a cat most of the time, reading preferably. So we got to get ourselves out of it. We have to find big gusts of wind and we have to meet the moment when the moment presents itself. So let's talk about this. Q4. I'm supposed to celebrate 2025. I'm supposed to be celebrating the best year in business. And I see numbers I do not like because they're regular numbers. And I start going, what the has just happened. And I was I was literally I was just angry and sad and didn't understand what happened and thought, you know, you've arrived.

20:52How does this not materially change the structure of the business yet? Now, for the record, in 2023, I launched the club. The club is an advanced group. There are 20 people. We're always running together. 90 % of them were new year over year. We always welcome two to four new clients. So it stays fresh and it's very exciting. But I do have one group in place. It's a small container. I started to understand the first thing was that this doesn't make sense. You cannot doubt your success. It is structural. And here's why. It's not because of the numbers. It's because you're good at what you do and you like what you do and people really like what you do.

21:32And the results are speaking for themselves. The case studies were still amazing. The clients were still really happy. And most importantly, the work was still really interesting. So why am I having this heart palpitation? It's simply because I have moved back into a form of perfectionism. And so the first step is to relinquish the things that still have a hold on you. The first section of guilt-free, as you know, is dedicated to crossing the chasms of FOMO, comparison, and obligation. FOMO. Other people are having more fun than me. It's out there is much better and something else is going on that I'm not a part of.

22:15Lose it. Be cool with not being in anybody else's race or at anybody else's party. And as you said so wisely in your last podcast episode, you spend a lot of time outside those rooms and occasionally you do get invited into those rooms and you can create those rooms so you can relax about this. Competition. Who am I exactly comparing myself to now? Did I decide to put myself in the category of an Alex Ramosi? In what universe am I running the same business as him? I don't even share his values. I mean, what's the problem here? According to whom am I supposed to be somewhere at some time? And then, of course, obligation.

22:59This fear of letting people down. But mostly the fear of not being impressive all the time. That's my biggest trap, Jasmine. I have grown up, and I told you this last time I shared with you, I grew up to be impressive. I was taught to always be an A student, to always be polished, to always be thin and to always say the right thing at the right time so you start to build a facade and when that facade starts to crack start freaking out again so my job was first and foremost to just go through these and start understanding no i'm willing to pay all of them as a price sacrifice all of it i have to go back into detachment so you were willing to sacrifice the hold that success has on you.

23:47Yeah. Relinquishing it. You were willing to sacrifice the idea of competition when you started asking yourself, who am I actually comparing myself to? And then number three, you were willing to sacrifice the obligation that you had, an old version of you, that you had to impress people. That's right. And so take me back to December 2025, or quarter four. Let's go back October, November. And you go back and say, these are the things I need to focus on. What happens? Like, what do you do? Thank you very much for asking. So first, I understood what was happening. So the reason I scan for FOMO, I scan for obligation, I stand for competition, is to start understanding what has a grip on me.

24:28And once you, you know, it's kind of like going to the doctor. It's 50 % of the healing process is diagnosis. I understood I am hitting another one of my core wounds that's keeping my identity in a certain space. I have to eliminate this if I am ready to graduate. it because the reason a lull is happening, just so everybody knows, the reason that universe is creating that space is so you can go higher, not lower. It's not trying to kill you. It's just testing you. And the test is always the same thing. It's asking you, how bad do you want this? Are you really in this game for realsies? Or, you know, are you only in it when it's good?

25:08kind of like marriage do you really mean it do you really love this guy or is it only like till awesomeness as long as awesomeness is happening okay don't lose your train of thought you tell me what what happens next so here's what no no but give me a clue because i want to ask you something before we get there that's going to be distracting but i don't want to get distracted because it's so freaking good yeah so what give me a clue for what the next thing that you're about to say. Sure. So what happened next was I eliminated the need to move. Okay, pause, eliminated the need to move. So do you think that there is a time correlation to the lull?

25:46Do we have the capacity to expand the lull or does the lull, do you believe? No, I know that you're not an oracle, but do you believe in your experience and what it is that you see that the duration of the lull is expanded because you're out of alignment or the duration of the lull is to say the longer the low the higher you're gonna go well i can only give the law of attraction answer to that the longer the low the more expanded you are because the length of my little girl i will be in the next hemisphere i'll be i'll be in the next galaxy your job is to be cool with that don't play against life's game you will lose instead get comfortable get super comfortable See, my impulse was to go into hyperachiever mode.

26:29Fix it. Of course. Fix it as quickly as possible. My God. Of course. You have to stay impressive. Who do I need to call to become impressive again? How many old clients can I solicit? Not even that girl. It's what can I do for other people to be impressive? Exactly. How can I figure this out? How can we still right this wrong? And luckily, once I scanned for this and I went, wait a minute. there actually is no problem. First of all, the business is still profitable. And second of all, you're fine. Nothing has changed. Your body is fine. Your health is fine. Your family is fine. Thank God everything is okay.

27:06Once you understand everything is okay, you neutralize the system. And from there you do. I'm sorry for the entrepreneurs out there who are very high achievers and hustling and bustling. You do nothing. You do nothing. You create space. The job is to create space. You're trying to kill us. I'm trying to create space. No, you're trying to kill the old version of ACS. That's right. Bring out the sword. And this is when I introduced the new framework. And I created GOLD, G-O-L-D, the framework before I experienced this in this new iteration. I had experienced this many years ago in the past. And I started to literally use my own system to find my way back.

27:46And now it's March. It's the end of the first quarter of 2026. And let me tell you, everything's fine again. We're back on the up and up. I just started the book tour, so it has nothing to do with the book. It's clearly just we are who we say we are. Everything is awesome. Everything's okay. You're going to be just fine. Okay, so going back to, I definitely want to clarify. Okay, you know, I'm just going to get, I'm just going to be like my woo self. I knew when the low was over. I was told. I went and I spent seven days by myself. Yeah. No computer, no phone. Yeah. I went to a place called Sensei.