Ep 417 – The Guilt of Growing: Why Outgrowing Your Circle Feels Like Betrayal
This is the 4th part of the Pruning Season Series.
This episode is powered by The Ascension Archetype Quiz.
Everyone tells you that it's lonely at the top. But what if that’s not true? What if the loneliness you feel right now isn’t because you’ve arrived… but because you haven’t fully left where you used to be? Because the truth is, most CEOs don’t feel isolated because people walked away. They feel isolated because they’re still sitting in rooms that no longer match who they’ve become. And if you’ve been shrinking your wins, performing connection, or staying loyal to environments that no longer stretch you, this episode is going to confront the real reason growth feels so uncomfortable. It’s not loneliness. It’s misalignment.
If you are a six- or seven-figure CEO experiencing leadership loneliness, outgrowing relationships, or feeling disconnected even while your business is growing, this episode will give you language for what is actually happening. In part four of the Pruning Season series, Dr. Darnyelle breaks down why scaling your business often requires evolving your environment, how CEO isolation is often a result of misaligned relationships, and why staying loyal to rooms that no longer fit is costing you your next level. We explore leadership loneliness, CEO identity shifts, business growth isolation, relationship misalignment, and how your environment directly impacts your ability to scale.
Here’s the truth: your next level is not waiting on better strategy… it’s waiting on a different environment. And as long as you stay where you are comfortable, you will never step into where you are called.
You’ll walk away with clarity on why your relationships feel different as you grow, how to identify the three types of relationships that shift during pruning, and what it really takes to create environments that support your next level of leadership, wealth, and identity.
Grab your Move to Millions Podcast Notebook, a pen and your favorite beverage and listen in to discover:
✔ how to recognize when your environment no longer matches your level
✔ how to release relationships without guilt or self-betrayal
✔ how to intentionally step into rooms that expand your leadership
✔ and so much more
This episode is a call to stop confusing loyalty with alignment. It challenges you to look at the rooms you’re in, the relationships you’re maintaining, and the environments you’ve outgrown and make decisions that reflect who you are becoming, not who you used to be.
This is your invitation to stop performing in rooms that no longer require your growth. To release environments that feel familiar but no longer feel expansive. To trust that the right rooms will not require you to shrink to stay connected.
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- “Performance-based relationships do not survive pruning seasons.”
- “You are not losing your people… you are outgrowing your pattern.”
- “If you have to shrink to stay connected, it’s not alignment… it’s performance.”
- “Your next level requires environments your current relationships cannot sustain.”
- The room didn’t change… you did. And now you’re feeling the gap
- “Staying out of loyalty will cost you the alignment your next level requires.”
- “You don’t feel disconnected because you’ve grown… you feel disconnected because you’re still trying to fit.”
- Where am I shrinking so others feel comfortable around me?
- Am I staying in this relationship because it’s aligned or because I feel obligated?
- Do my current environments challenge me or just celebrate me?
- What conversations am I no longer having that my next level requires?
- What would change if I chose alignment over loyalty?
- Take the Move to Millions Ascension Archetype Quiz
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Darnyelle: [00:00:00] If you cannot tell someone the truth about where you are going because you are afraid of how they will respond, that relationship is being held together by performance, not actual connection. And trust me when I tell you, performance-based relationships do not survive pruning seasons. They collapse under the weight of the truth.
Did you know that only 1.9% of women entrepreneurs, 0.9% of Black business owners, and just 0.5% of Black women entrepreneurs ever cross the seven-figure mark? That changes right here. If you are ready for high-level, high-income conversations about all things millions, your mission, your mindset, your methodologies, your mandate, your movement, your messaging, your marketing, your metrics, and of course, your money, [00:01:00] just by listening, your income is going all the way up.
Every week, you'll hear powerful stories, transformational interviews, and million-dollar business growth insights to help you scale and sustain a seven-figure business with grace and ease, not hustle and grind. I am your host, Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon, award-winning spiritual business growth strategist, eight-figure entrepreneur, and God girl on a mission to help you experience abundance in your life because of your business.
This is the Move to Millions podcast. Welcome home.
Before we dive into this week's episode, let me ask you something real quick. If this podcast has ever made you think deeper, shift something in your spirit, or take bold, bankable action in your business, would you do me a favor? Would you take a moment and scroll down and leave us a rating or review?
Listen, [00:02:00] that's how we grow this message and get it into the ears of more seven-figure CEOs and seven-figure CEOs in the making. Your words matter. Your support matters. So please take a moment to go ahead, rate, review, and then come right back because this episode is about to shift everything. What do you do when the people who were there from the beginning cannot go where you are going next?
Listen, you're in a mastermind where the conversation no longer matches your level. You're in a friendship where you have to shrink your wins so the other person feels comfortable. You are on calls where you already know the answer to every question that's being asked, and you are performing engagement so you don't seem arrogant.
And every week, you leave those rooms more drained than when you walked in. But you keep showing up because leaving feels like betrayal. If this is where you are right now, this episode is about to change how you see every relationship In your [00:03:00] life. In episode number one of this series, we talked about recognizing the pruning.
In episode number two, we talked about the cuts that come without warning. And in episode number three, we confronted the hardest decision, releasing something that is still working. But today, we are talking about the thing that happens after the decision, the thing nobody prepares you for when your circle changes.
The people who celebrated the version of you that built the last thing do not always understand the version of you that is building the next thing. The rooms that felt like home start to feel like cages. The conversations that once fed you start to feel like noise. The friendships that carried you through the early years start to feel like obligations.
And for a season, the path forward feels quieter than you expected. Here's what I really need you to hear before we go any further in this episode. [00:04:00] That quiet, it's not punishment. That quiet is pruning doing the deeper work, because pruning does not only change your business, it changes your environment.
And sometimes the loneliest season of your leadership is also the most important one. You are watching or listening to the Move to Millions podcast, and I am your host, Dr. Darnyelle, the founder and CEO of Incredible One Enterprises and the creator of several life and business changing frameworks, including the Move to Millions method that this powerful podcast is based on.
It is season number seven, and this is episode number four in our pruning season series. Now, if you are just finding us for the very first time, I highly recommend that you go back to episode number one of the series. The series is sequential. Every episode builds on the one before it, and I don't want you to miss the framework [00:05:00] that you might miss if you skip ahead.
Now, if I'm being honest, I have been in my fair share of rooms that no longer fit me. Not because there was anything wrong with the people there, and not because there was any toxic relationships present, and not because anyone did anything wrong, but because I was evolving, and I evolved at a pace that was different than the program or the room that I was in.
And if the room is not evolving at the level that you're evolving, it will feel very uncomfortable. There have been seasons in my own leadership journey where I realized that the conversations I was having no longer matched where I was going, where the questions being asked around the table no longer reflected the questions that I was living, where the advice being offered, however well-intentioned, was advice for a version of me that no longer existed.
And I, if I'm being honest, have stayed in some of those places and rooms longer than I should have, not [00:06:00] because I was confused about where I needed to be, but because leaving felt like betrayal. This is the part that no one talks about, the guilt of outgrowing, because when you are a leader who values relationships, who values loyalty, and who values the people who were there from the beginning, the idea that growth would require you to change your environment feels like an indictment of the people that were in that environment.
But let's be clear, it's not an indictment. It is an evolution, and those are not the same thing. Most of the loneliness in leadership is not from who left, it is from who you kept. Let me say that again. The loneliness that you are feeling right now is probably not because people walked away from you. It is likely because you are still sitting in the room, still showing up to the conversation, still pouring into the relationships that no longer match who you have become.[00:07:00]
And the gap between where you are going and where you are sitting right now is the loneliness that you feel. Now, I wanna tell you about a client that I worked with where we saw this pattern show up more than almost anything else that I've seen in the CEOs that I work with. She was scaling, her business was growing, her leadership was sharpening, and she was making decisions that were more aligned, more courageous, and more clear than she had ever done before.
But at the same time, she was miserable. And when we got to the bottom of it, the misery had nothing to do with her business. It had everything to do with the relationships that she was in. In addition to working with me and being inside of our mastermind, she was still in a mastermind where the conversation was about tactics that she had outgrown two years ago.
She was still in a friend circle where she had to shrink her wins so that other people would feel comfortable around her. She was not talking [00:08:00] about the money that she was making because all her friends did was complain about how they didn't have enough. Hey, I hate to interrupt the goodness that's happening right now in this episode, but I need you to do me a quick favor.
If this episode is blessing your life and business right now, will you take a few moments and rate and review the show? Your words help more millions-minded entrepreneurs find us and step into their next level. All right, thank you so much. Let's get back into the conversation, 'cause we're just getting started.
She was still on group calls where the questions that were being asked were questions she had already answered, and she was answering for her own clients, and she was performing engagement to avoid seeming arrogant. She was still in a romantic relationship with a partner that was not growing and evolving.
Now, here's the thing. She was not losing her people. She was outgrowing her pattern And the pattern was this. She equated loyalty with [00:09:00] proximity. She believed that being a good person meant staying in every room or every relationship that she had ever entered. She believed that growth should not cost her her relationships.
And so instead of letting the environment evolve with her, she kept performing a version of herself that those rooms and those relationships could hold. Now, the breakthrough came when she stopped asking, "Who am I losing?" and started asking, "Who am I being? And who am I becoming?" And the moment she answered that question honestly, she knew that she needed to leave many of the rooms and a few of the relationships, not because there was anything wrong with the people, but because that particular season in her life or her business was indeed complete.
Within months, she found herself in conversations that matched her actual level with people who did not need her to explain why she was thinking bigger, with leaders who challenged her instead of celebrating her comfort zone. And the loneliness started to [00:10:00] disappear, not because she filled it, but because she aligned with it.
There was a study that was recently conducted by Harvard Business Review and RHR International that found that half of all CEOs report experiencing significant loneliness inside of their roles. Half. And 61% say that loneliness negatively impacts their performance. Now, let me put this into perspective for you.
More than half of the leaders that are leading in companies right now are carrying some form of isolation, and the majority of them say it is making them worse at their job. Listen to me. That is not weakness. That is not character flaw. That is what happens when the role you are growing into outpaces the environment that you are growing in.
And for entrepreneurs specifically, this is amplified because at least a Fortune 500 CEO has a board, a C-suite, and a leadership team. Now, you might have a small team, a spouse who tries to [00:11:00] understand but cannot fully relate if they are not also an entrepreneur, and a social media feed full of people who look like they have it figured out.
But let's be honest, the isolation is real, and it is structural, not personal, which means that the solution is also structural. You do not fix leadership loneliness by trying harder to connect. You fix it by changing the rooms that you are in. I wanna give you a framework that I've helped many clients understand in many years in our programs.
A big part of the reason in our former programs we had three different levels was because we recognized that at every level there's a new set of work and a new set of people that you need to be around. Not every relationship in your life is shifting for the same exact reason, right? There are three types of relationships that change during a pruning season And understanding which type you are dealing with will save you months of guilt.
Let's talk about type number one, [00:12:00] seasonal relationships that completed their assignment. These are the people who were meant to walk with you for a chapter, not the whole book. They were there for the startup season. They were there for the struggle season, if that's your thing. They were there for the figuring it all out season, and they were exactly right for that particular time in your life.
But that chapter is over. It's complete. And continuing to hold the relationship at the same intensity it had during that season is not honoring the relationship. It is actually forcing it past its assignment. Now, you can still love someone and release them at the same time, right? You can still love someone and release the proximity.
I've had so many clients that I've worked with over the years who outgrew our community. I didn't feel any type of way about that. Their season inside of our community was over, and we release them with blessings and celebrate them as they continue to win. Two things can coexist at the same time.
Relationship type number [00:13:00] two, comfortable relationships that reinforce old identity. These are the ones that feel good but keep you playing small. The friend that always talks you out of the bold move, the colleague who subtly competes with you, the mentor whose advice was perfect three years ago but no longer reflects where you are going, the group where you are the most successful person in the room and everyone celebrates you for it.
These relationships aren't toxic, they're comfortable, and comfort is not the same thing as alignment. If you are always the smartest, most successful, most experienced person in your circle, your circle is not challenging you. It is applauding you, and applause will not get you to your next level.
Alignment will. And relationship type number three, misaligned relationships that are held together by the five-letter word that starts with a G, guilt. This is the hardest one because this is where loyalty becomes a trap. This is the business partner you have outgrown but feel [00:14:00] obligated to, the client who drains you but you keep serving because they were there from the beginning, the team member whose performance no longer matches your standards, but you feel guilty letting them go because they have been so loyal.
Listen, guilt is not a reason to keep a relationship. Guilt is a signal that you have tied your identity to someone else's expectations. And as long as you let guilt make your decisions, your decisions will always serve the past instead of your future. If you cannot tell someone the truth about where you are going because you are afraid of how they will respond, that relationship is being held together by performance, not actual connection And trust me when I tell you, performance-based relationships do not survive pruning seasons.
They collapse under the weight of the truth. If you've been doing all the right things, but still feel like you're carrying more weight [00:15:00] than you should, it's not your strategy, it's your pattern. There's a hidden way that you lead that's shaping your money, your success, and your peace, and until you see it, you'll keep working harder than you have to.
The Ascension Archetypes Quiz shows you in just three minutes what's been driving your business behind the scenes and what needs to shift so that you can finally experience the overflow you're desiring. It's fast, it's free, and it will give you the language for why things feel harder than they should right now.
Go now to movetomillionsquiz.com to find out which archetype is running your business today. My best-selling book, Move to Millions: The Proven Framework to Become a Million-Dollar CEO with Grace and Ease Instead of Hustle and Grind, is now available on Audible. That's right, you can listen to nugget after nugget, strategy after strategy, and chapter after chapter designed to help you to [00:16:00] position your business for seven figures with grace and ease instead of hustle and grind.
Go to Audible today to get your Audible copy of Move to Millions. If you are in a season where your relationships are shifting, here are three things that I want you to do. Number one: I want you to stop interpreting the shift as rejection. You are not being abandoned, you are not too much, and you are not difficult.
You are evolving, and evolution changes your frequency. Some people will match the new frequency, and guess what? They get to stay in your life. Some will not. This is not personal, it's physics. Number two: I want you to get intentional about the rooms that you need right now. If your vision is expanding, your environment has to expand with it.
That means seeking out rooms where your next level is normal, having conversations with people who understand where you are going without you needing to justify it. And [00:17:00] honestly, you wanna be in rooms where there's a little bit of uncomfortability on your part because you're growing in. I remember years ago when I joined the Women Presidents Organization, the businesses in my chapter were on average 85 to 135 million.
I had, like, a $2 million business, right? So when I started to reduce time in the spaces where my energy was no longer being helped, everything changed, right? Your environment is not just who you know, it is also what your nervous system experiences consistently. And your environment will either support your growth or it will slow it down.
I want you to build internal safety so you do not settle for misalignment Because if you are not internally anchored, you will be tempted to stay connected to what is familiar instead of what is aligned. You will tolerate environments that no longer fit you, and you will shrink your vision in order to maintain connection.
You will stay where you are understood instead of stepping into where you [00:18:00] are being called. Now, every CEO experiences relational pruning differently, and yours has a loyalty pattern that keeps you in rooms longer than you should be. Now, if you haven't guessed it by now, you know I'm referring to the Ascension Archetype Quiz.
I talk about it each and every episode because this quiz is the game changer you might not even realize that you need. It answers one question for you: what is really keeping you from seven figures? And when you take the quiz, it only takes three minutes, by the way, you will learn how you are divinely wired to scale, to lead, and how you relate to both money and success, as well as you'll get a glimpse into how you have been sabotaging your next level.
You'll be one of five archetypes: the Performer, the Producer, the Pathmaker, the Powerhouse, or the Prophet. And please know that there is no right or wrong archetype. It's just about knowing how you are wired and how to leverage that wiring so that you can unpack a world [00:19:00] of insights that are designed to shift the way that you live and lead every single day.
When you take the quiz, do me a favor, let me know which archetype is yours by tagging me in a story on IG. I can't wait to hear which you are, and I'd love to know which you think I am. I can't remember if I've ever told you guys what my archetype is. I try to purposely not tell you. Now, if you are a Performer, once you take the quiz, you stay in rooms where you are celebrated because celebration feels like belonging.
Your loyalty pattern is visibility. You hold onto relationships that keep your name in circulation. But visibility is not the same thing as alignment, and the rooms where everyone knows your name are not always the rooms where everyone knows your assignment. Did you catch that? Now, the question for you right now, if you are a Performer is, am I staying because this room sees me or because this room grows me?
If you are a Producer, you stay in rooms where you are [00:20:00] needed because being needed feels like purpose. Your loyalty pattern is usefulness. You hold onto relationships where you are the one who holds the things together. But being indispensable in the wrong room does not make it the right room. Just saying.
The question that you need to ask yourself is this: am I staying because they need me or because I need to be needed? If you are the Path Maker, you stay in rooms because you see potential in everyone. There's nothing wrong with that. Your loyalty pattern is possibility. You hold onto relationships because you can see what is possible, you can understand who they might become, and you can even determine when they're not becoming it.
But your gift of sight does not obligate you to stay in every room that you see potential clearly. The question you need to ask yourself is, am I staying because of what this relationship could be or because of what it [00:21:00] actually is? And for my Powerhouses, you stay in rooms because leaving feels like abandoning your post.
Your loyalty pattern is responsibility. You hold onto relationships because you feel accountable for the outcome. Take a deep breath, Powerhouses. You are not responsible for every room that you have ever entered. The question you need to ask yourself is, am I staying because this is my assignment or because I feel guilty walking away from something I started?
And if you are the Prophet, you will stay in rooms because you understand the people in them better than they understand themselves. Your loyalty pattern is empathy. You hold onto relationships because you see the pain underneath the behavior and you do not want to add to it by walking away. Yes, there is a [00:22:00] reason your strategy feels stalled, and I bet you didn't realize it's spiritual.
Discover your divine wiring, which informs how you lead, where you sabotage, and how to shift in order to scale with the Move to Millions Ascension Archetype Quiz. In less than three minutes, you'll learn what's really blocking your money, your momentum, and your mission. Take the quiz today at movetomillionsquiz.com.
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But what you need to understand is your empathy does not require you to absorb environments that are no longer aligned with your assignment. [00:23:00] The question that you need to ask yourself is, am I staying because I understand them or because I am afraid that leaving will hurt them? Woo, everybody take a deep breath in.
Here's what we know Understanding how you are wired impacts everything that is happening inside of your pruning season. And if you have not taken the quiz yet, I wanna invite you to go take it right now at movetomillionsquiz.com. It'll take you three minutes, it's completely free, and you'll have the opportunity to upgrade to learn even more about your archetype, because your loyalty pattern is the thing that is keeping you in rooms that your next level cannot afford.
Now, before we close, I wanna leave you with something really important. The rooms that hold your next level are waiting for you, but they cannot find you if you are still performing in the old ones. The relationships that will carry you into your next season are available. They're waiting on you, but they require that you stop carrying relationships that have completed their [00:24:00] assignment.
Now, this is not about being ungrateful for the people that you have met on the journey, and this is not about burning bridges. This is about having the courage to say, "This was beautiful and this is complete," and then walking forward into your next season where your next evolution is going to unfurl for you, and it will not be a threat.
That is the whole point. Now, there are three things I want you to do this week. Number one, if you haven't done so already, take the Ascension archetype quiz at movetomillionsquiz.com. If you have taken the quiz, consider upgrading to the private podcast and divine design report so you can get all the deets on your archetype and fully leverage it to your next level.
I want you to understand your loyalty pattern because it is tethered to the environments that your next level cannot afford. Number two, I want you to audit the rooms that you're in. I want you to look at the five environments where you spend the majority of your time, and for each one, I want you to ask, "Does this room challenge the version of me that is emerging, [00:25:00] or does it comfort the version of me that is leaving?"
And number three, I want you to share this episode with the CEO in your life who you know is currently being isolated. The one who has been quiet, the one who has pulled back, the one who stopped showing up. They are not pulling away because something is wrong. They are pulling away because something is growing, and they need someone to tell them that all of it is okay.
Say this with me: I trust the environments that support my growth. Every shift is making room for deeper alignment. The loneliness is not the end of the connection. It is the beginning of the right connections. In the next episode of the pruning season, oh, it's gonna be so good. We are going to go to the place that everything in this series has been building toward, identity.
Because pruning does not just change your business, and it does not just change your environment, it also changes who you are. And the version of you [00:26:00] that built everything to this point cannot carry you where you are going. At some point, you're gonna have to put her and all the things down. That is the conversation we are having in our next episode inside of our Pruning Season series.
And it's gonna be one of the most important in the entire series. I don't want you to miss it. Until next time, remember, millions are your birthright, and to access them, you need only move. I'll see you next time. Take care. Thank you for tuning in to the Move to Millions podcast. Every legacy-led CEO has a divine design and yours is waiting to be revealed.
Take the Ascension Archetype quiz at movetomillionsquiz.com to uncover how you're wired for wealth and what needs to shift to make your next move with grace and ease instead of hustle and grind. And if this episode blessed you, do me a favor, subscribe, rate, and leave us a review. And always remember, millions are your [00:27:00] birthright, and to access them, you need only move.
