The Invisible Grip: what keeps you chasing but never arriving

When you're chasing something, what's the other thing doing?

That's right, running away.

From witnessing and supporting hundreds of online coaches, consultants and creatives build their business from $10k - $100k+ a month, I've noticed a common thread.

The chase becomes an invisible grip that keeps great, intelligent people on a hamster wheel... in motion, but never arriving at the desired destination.

The common goal for people like us (in some way or another) is freedom. Not just in the monetary sense (that too of course) but a deeper feeling of being unchained from limits.

That's an inner state of being.

From what I've lived and what I've seen in the people I work with, entrepreneurs, consultants, professionals and creatives, there's a pattern. Running on fear, comparison, and urgency as the core fuel source to "move the needle forward."

The inner dialogue sounds like:

You see some guy making more money than you? Better work harder. Someone just retired their mother? You're clearly not enough, work harder. Someone just hit a million subscribers on YouTube? You obviously need to post more.

Every one of those is an external urgency-based driver wearing the mask of modern day "motivation."

And it works. For a while.

In the beginning it creates momentum and builds discipline. It's the fuel source that can take you from working a job you don't enjoy to creating freedom that a younger version of you used to dream of.

But over time, the same urgency that built your life becomes the thing that prevents you from living it.

What once moved you forward now keeps you chasing. Never arriving.

You stay in urgency because it once kept you safe. Being in motion became who you are, and stillness started to feel like "wasted potential."

This is an identity loop.

We don't just get used to urgency, we get addicted to it.

Why? Because slowing down feels like losing control. If you stop, everything you've been outrunning gets louder. So you keep moving.

During a guided visualisation practice, a client said: "I had a vision of holding onto the handlebars on a bike... It's like if I let go, I fall off."

That was just a metaphor for his lived experience.

And that grip is how many entrepreneurs live every day. Holding tight to urgency, constant doing, and the illusion of control as fuel for growth.

You start believing: "I'm only safe, worthy and valuable when I'm pushing forward in motion."

That belief makes rest feel undeserved and ease feel like something's wrong.

It caps how much money you can hold with ease, because your nervous system is already maxed out by effort.

Let's explore this a little, shall we?

Across years of personal inner work and guiding other entrepreneurs through a similar process, I've found that your subconscious and nervous system are here to keep you safe. That's their entire job.

If urgency is the core driver, that's a state of survival. And survival signals to the subconscious and nervous system: "keep me safe no matter what."

Even if consciously you desire more money, subconsciously you'll reject it if more money and growth still means more effort and force. Because your system reads that as "not safe."

This is the loop most people never see. Constant action from a state of urgency keeps you blocking your next level of income.

The urgency-driven effort has to stop to shift the pattern.

An urgency-based identity creates results, but only at the level your system can tolerate. You don't grow past what your body can safely sustain.

This level is different for everyone. It depends on how much urgency and force you're willing to live inside.

If urgency is the only fuel you trust, your growth has a ceiling built into it, because you can't sustainably live in peace and urgency at the same time.

The fire that drives you and the fire that burns you out are the same fire. The difference is whether you're running it... or it's running you.

In your mind, you want to hit the next income level. But in your body, that level doesn't feel safe... yet.

Pushing harder doesn't work here. It's a capacity problem, not an action problem.

The identity that got you here was built on effort, discipline, and proving your ability. But the level you want next requires a deeper capacity, stability, and internal safety.

This is a different level of self-leadership.

This is about becoming able to hold more, not just "doing more" to get more. The ability to hold more money, visibility, responsibility, ease. It's an inside-out job.

so what if stillness is not the absence of progress, but where your next level gets built?

You've been taught that rest is a reward. It's not. It's the infrastructure that builds your next level of wealth without push energy.

If you were to implement one thing today it would be this: before you take action, ask yourself; is this coming from urgency, or from something I consciously chose?

When urgency stops running the show, you align with the life you keep saying you want