How to Know if The Rules are Holding You Back?

You’re not broken. You’re not bored.
 But something feels off — and it won’t go away. 

You’re still showing up. Still performing. Still carrying the room.
 But under the surface? There’s a quiet pull. A sense of… unsomething. 

That pull? It’s not a problem.
 It’s a signal. 

And what happens next — the voice in your head that says:
“Be realistic. Don’t ruin a good thing. Now’s not the time.”
That’s the rulebook. 

In this episode, I’ll show you how to spot the invisible rules that are limiting your leadership — even if everything looks great on paper. 

If you’ve been feeling the quiet tension between the life you built and the person you actually are… this is your starting point. 

And next week, we’ll dive into Radical Clarity — the first step in the Strategic Unruliness™ framework.

Did this episode help you discover one of the rules limiting you? I'd love to hear!

Email me: kim@kimbolourtchi.com or DM me on LinkedIn

Transcript

Kim Bolourtchi: 0:11

People say to me all the time, I love this idea of getting unruly, but what are we actually talking about here? Like, how do I know if I'm following rules that are holding me back? And it's a really good question, right? Because a lot of the time, we don't see the rules that are keeping us from doing the things we're really meant to be doing. And I can tell you, even from my own life, there have been times where I thought I was building the biggest version of what I wanted to build, only to realize I wasn't because I had some lingering voice or rule that I was following that was keeping me small. So today I want to talk about how you can actually know if you're meant for more How do you know if something is holding you back that you might not even be able to name at this moment? And the first thing you really want to pay attention to is this feeling that I call "unsomething." And I call it unsomething because I've tried to define it a lot of different ways, but what I found is that it's a little bit different for everyone. It's this feeling that you get in your really quiet moments that feels like something is missing. It feels it feels like you're uninspired or you're unseen, unappreciated, unfulfilled, unhappy, unclear. what it feels like to me can be completely different for you, the most important thing is just to pay attention to the fact that it's there. If it's there for you, it's a signal. And here's where it gets really challenging, is that we're taught to ignore this feeling, especially if we're experiencing success. So if your life looks really good on paper, and you're doing all the things that everybody wants you to be doing, and you've been told is the epitome of success, or you're on the path to that, and inside you have this nagging of like, Shit, this isn't it. I think there's more. I think there's different. I think there's something else. And it's this just feeling that you have. We're taught to make that go away. We're taught to shut it up. And the messages we'll get about that are like, Oh, you're so selfish for wanting more. Oh, you're so ungrateful, because you know you have things that nobody else has, and you're not even happy, like, there's something wrong with you for not being totally excited about everything that you have and on and on. And it'll make you try to quiet the voice. And here's the thing that you need to know about that when you have the feeling of unsomething, one it's like when you're mad and you try to pretend you're not mad, it doesn't go away. You know, like if you tell yourself, I'm not mad, I'm not mad, I'm not mad. Well, you actually don't become less mad. It just builds inside of you because it doesn't have any form of expression. And the same thing is true with the feeling of feeling of unsomething. It doesn't go away. It just stays in you. It lives in you. And oftentimes it gets louder and it turns into resentment, it turns into anger, it turns into a feeling of frustration or just annoyance that you not only can't identify, but you can't quash, and so I want you to pay attention to if you have that feeling, because if you do, it doesn't mean you're broken or lost or lazy or ungrateful or any of the other things you've been told it is a signal that there is something more for you, and you need to pay attention to that. So you might be listening and thinking, Oh, actually, I do know what you're talking about. Kim, I kind of know that feeling. I've sort of had that feeling I have no idea what it is, I don't know what it means. I don't know what to do with it. And if that's you, don't worry. That's exactly how it starts. The most important thing when you have that feeling is to just listen and pay attention, and it's so much harder than it sounds you guys, because we have a lot of rules around whether that voice is even appropriate to listen to. Never mind what it says. I'm going to talk about that in a minute, but like just the fact that it exists, right? The fact that you have this desire for more, if you've had any kind of conditioning in your life that told you what you were allowed to have, what was enough for you, where the limits needed to be, who you were supposed to be stable for, you know, not to go too big, because you might fail. That voice is going to be very threatening when you first hear it and pay attention to it. And so the first thing you need to do is just look at it, listen to it, hear what it has to tell you. You might be shocked. You also might be like, Oh yeah, I've heard you. You've been saying the same thing for, like, 10 years, and I just haven't really wanted to listen. Regardless, you don't have to do anything. You can hear it and choose to do nothing. But going back to the original question, you know, are rules holding me back? Chances are very good that if you have a feeling pulling you forward towards something you know, even if you can't identify it, the answer is yes, you've got rules that are telling you who you're allowed to be, how you're allowed to be there. And you know what is too much for you, and I'm here to call bullshit on it, because you are allowed to be as big as you can possibly be, and then some the rules weren't made for you, and the ones that are holding you back are just intended to make somebody else comfortable, not in a sinister way, but truly that's kind of what the rules tend to do. And so if you can at least hear and see you know what it is that's calling you forward, you can start to evaluate whether you want to be bound by these limitations. And this is really the first step in getting strategically unruly. Is is hearing whether there is even a call toward more some of you might not have it at all. You might be like, my life is freaking amazing, and if it is, I'm so happy for you. And if you're somebody who feels that tug, listen to it. Pay attention to it. Here's what's going to happen when you do those rules, those voices, they're coming back for you. And you're going to feel that pull, a nudge towards something that's definitely more aligned, definitely going to make you feel more alive. And then your brain is going to flood with all the reasons you can't follow it. You're going to get thoughts like, Yeah, but that's not possible. That's not realistic. I have too many people counting on me. I can't risk throwing away everything that I've built. Like, this is pie in the sky kind of thinking. And these, again, are these are limits, these are rules, and they don't sound like rules. They actually sound like logic, but they're limits, and the longer you follow them, the more distant your real self starts to feel. I remember this feeling very, very clearly when I was working in law. I was doing really well on paper. I had sort of the career that everybody thought I should have, right. I had worked so hard to achieve success and was winning cases and held with respect and getting results for clients and doing everything that you know, everyone in my family and in my world thought made me really successful, really well respected, really well compensated, by the way, and I had that feeling, and it was so annoying, because honestly, I thought I was broken. I thought I was like, so fucked up. Something is wrong with me, because I can't be grateful enough for all of the wonderful things that I have in my life, and I just kept sort of pushing down this feeling of there's more, there's more, there's more. Well, eventually it just got too loud, and I just felt too miserable to not listen. And when I started listening, I realized that there was so much more I really wanted to do, and practicing law was amazing. I loved it. But for me, I was meant to do something actually that built off those skills. But there was a totally different version of thing that had never been built before. And if I had listened to all of that conditioning, that was like, Oh, who do you think you are like, really? You think you can go, you know, create a framework to help leaders and people show up in their biggest possible way. And you actually think you can speak on stages and help people change their lives and make workplaces, you know, places where people actually want to be and all of this. I mean, if I would have listened, I wouldn't be doing the work that I do, and I wouldn't have had the impact that I have. And more importantly, I wouldn't live a life that I love. I don't feel like I work ever because I love it so freaking much. And so this is what's on the other side of those rules, and why I'm so adamant about doing the hard work of not just throwing everything away. This isn't, you know, blanket rebellion. This is paying attention to what's really stopping you from doing the thing you're meant to do. In my work and in my keynotes, I help high performing leaders break the invisible rules that are holding them back so they can lead with radical clarity and build what's next from the truth of who they really are. And in the podcast, I'm going to be walking through some of these rules and how we break through these invisible limits. But for today, I really want to issue this challenge as a starting point for you. I want you to think about one rule that is holding you back. So write this down, the thing I want, the thing I want, but talk myself out of is, and then I want you to write down what your brain says next that list that is your rule book I would love for you to share. It with me. I really, really would I know? Sometimes people will say, you know, I want your feedback, or I want you to connect. I actually really mean it. So connect with me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. You can email me at Kim@Kimbolourtchi.com I really want to start naming what's actually holding you back. And next week, we're going to dive into Part One of the Strategic Unruliness framework. We're going to talk about radical clarity. Radical clarity, because before you can break the rules, you've really got to see them. Thank you for being here with me today. I look forward to hearing from you and helping you break through what is holding you back. Let's Get Unruly.