Evolving from Striving to Thriving: Reclaiming the Heart of Your Work

We live in a world that rewards busyness. The faster we move, the more plates we spin, the more “successful” we’re told we are. But what if that constant push isn’t actually bringing us the life we want?

In this conversation with Clare Hefferren, I was reminded that sometimes the most powerful growth comes when we choose to do less—and make space for what truly matters.

When the Life That Fits… Doesn’t Anymore

Clare spent decades leading brand strategy for high-profile clients. From the outside, it was the dream: a thriving agency, impressive projects, a stellar reputation.

But inside, something was off.

She was bored, frustrated, and disconnected. No matter how much she tried to “iterate” her business, it wasn’t working. She describes feeling “layered upon” by others’ expectations—a kind of tactile fog that created a bubble between her and the world. She could perform, and she was good at it, but the joy was gone.

Eventually, her health began to fail. That was the wake-up call she couldn’t ignore.

A Six-Month Pause That Changed Everything

Clare stepped away from her business for a six-month sabbatical, expecting a quick, clean career change. But instead of a neat swap, she found herself in a slow, layered process of rediscovering who she was and what she valued.

She stopped trying to “fix” herself and started realizing—she wasn’t broken in the first place.

By tuning in to her energy, setting boundaries, and choosing depth over volume, Clare began creating space for her creativity to return.

Retiring the Alpha Leader

One of my favorite moments in our conversation was when Clare shared how she “retired her alpha leader.”

She had the skills to run at an intense, nonstop pace, but she no longer wanted to live that way. Instead, she started integrating her spiritual life into her business—bringing in tools like human design, astrology, and other personal practices she’d kept separate for years.

That authenticity didn’t repel clients—it attracted the right ones.

The Myth of One Right Way

Clare’s story shatters a common myth: that there’s only one “right” way to succeed.

Too often, we follow an assumed standard we never actually chose. We take it as fact that to be successful, we must push harder, produce more, and fit a mold.

But as Clare says, that’s not the truth—you can design your own way.

Soul Fatigue: The Hidden Burnout

One of the most powerful ideas Clare shared was the concept of soul fatigue.

You’re eating well, exercising, “doing everything right,” but still feeling off. That’s often because your soul is ready to evolve—and you’re standing still.

Her advice? Get curious. Ask what’s not working. And give yourself permission to evolve, even if it means stepping away from what you’ve always known.

Daily Alignment Checks

Clare uses a simple test: “Was today spent well?”

If the answer is no, she takes that as a sign to adjust. It’s about removing unnecessary struggle—not because life will be perfect, but because we can choose how we move through it.

And sometimes, that choice means slowing down.

From Branding to Legacies

For Clare, slowing down didn’t mean stepping away from impact—it meant expanding it. She shifted from focusing solely on branding companies to helping people design spiritually coherent lives, brands, and legacies.

The result? Work that not only lights her up but also deeply serves the people she’s called to work with.

Your Turn to Choose Less

If you take one thing away from this conversation, let it be this: more is not always better.

Hustle without alignment leads to burnout, not fulfillment. But when we slow down, listen to ourselves, and build from a place of truth—less becomes so much more.

So ask yourself: Are you showing up as you—or as the expectations of others?

The courage to choose less—less noise, less pressure, less performance—just might give you more than you ever imagined.

If you’d like to hear Clare’s full story and the tools she uses to help clients step into alignment, you can watch the full episode here or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Chapters List

00:00 Introduction to Clare Hefferren and Her Journey

03:16 The Evolution of Clare's Career and Identity

06:05 Finding Clarity and Congruency in Life

09:01 Redefining Business Approaches and Personal Values

11:48 Tools for Self-Discovery and Alignment

13:09 The Importance of Authenticity in Business

15:06 Final Thoughts and Future Directions

Full Transcript

Clare Hefferren (00:00)

what I'd like to look at is, are you showing up as you or expectations of those that taught you?

Amanda Kaufman (00:25)

Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And today I am joined by Clare Heffern. And Clare is the CSO, CCO and founder of WonderPact, a strategic advisory for spiritually coherent lives, brands and legacies. She has 30 years of leading brand strategy, including working with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Rebecca Rush, Kind Bikes and Skis and DoubleTree by Hilton Vale. And now she guides

founders, teams, individuals, and communities through identity evolution rooted in resonance over performance. And I'm so excited to have you here on the show, Clare. Welcome.

Clare Hefferren (01:06)

Thank you, Amanda. Always lovely to be here.

Amanda Kaufman (01:10)

So good. So Clare and I met when we were networking through the interwebs and we've connected on some deeper conversations that I thought were just so, powerful. So when I found out that Clare would be willing to connect right here live in front of you, I was like, let's do it because you do have a tremendous amount of experience in branding and strategy. And you've had a

relaunch, it's not just any relaunch. Do you mind just catching us up on, you know, your perspective and what you're growing into now and some of the disruption that we've talked about offline?

Clare Hefferren (01:47)

Absolutely. So the way I like to describe it is my life the past five years has been a lived experience which has led me to launch a new company and help others in the way that I needed it. So I have a history of a very successful brand marketing career and purpose-driven marketing, was running an agency for 20 years and all of a sudden it started to not fit. I was bored, I was frustrated, I couldn't...

iterate the company enough, it felt like something was off and I didn't know what it was that was off. So inevitably, as sometimes the world will do to us, it took me out of the game. My health was failing and I was like, well, I can't put that to the side. I need to make room. And so in order to make room, I went on sabbatical for six months and I knew I had already been working on a lot of intellectual professional development, thinking what do I do next?

And what transpired, well, in six months I thought, I'll just unplug from that career and plug into a new one. Won't that be sweet and buttoned up? And well, no, that doesn't happen. It unfolds and unfolds and layers and you get to, I choose to roll with it. And so what has transpired is that I realized that my inner self, who I am, my values, my loves, my passions,

were no longer reflected in the agency, in the career that I had. Essentially, I had evolved beyond my company and I needed to make a decision of how do I, and I used to say fix that. I now realize that there was nothing to fixed. I'm not broken, no one is broken, no one needs to be fixed. But we are often what I call layered upon by others, othering with expectations.

Amanda Kaufman (03:16)

Hmm.

Clare Hefferren (03:38)

and burdens and shame of this is the right way to do it. With no negative will, it's just the best that we have been taught. And at a certain point as we evolve in our life, those may no longer work for us. And so the goal is to remove the othering. I feel it as a tactile fog that comes in and it feels like there's sort of a bubble between you and I and I can't see clearly.

And in this time of a lot of self-work, personal development, I started feeling. And as I started feeling and blending nice energies of masculine, feminine, of creative versus, or not versus, because you need both, creative and structural, I found my way to a me inside that is lit up and creative again and really

Amanda Kaufman (04:05)

you

Clare Hefferren (04:31)

acting as a steward with my gifts. So instead of pushing boulders uphill, trying to make things work, not being enjoyed, being fatigued, I now wake up and most days say, I can't wait to see what happens today because I really believe that my body is for me, the world is for me. It's up for me to have clarity on each day is special.

Amanda Kaufman (04:48)

Mmm.

Clare Hefferren (04:59)

And do I treat it that way? My test is always when I go to bed was today spent well.

Amanda Kaufman (05:06)

Mmm, that's a good test. And you know, one of the biggest reasons that I even became a coach myself was I Never forget it. I was I was learning from Brendan Burchard, know He he leads the High Performance Institute and I attended one of his seminars back in like 2016. So this is a little while ago But he said from the stage he told the story which he later recounted in his book the high performance habits and it was about this executive who She was in high achievement and out of alignment

Clare Hefferren (05:30)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (05:37)

And it was like the first time in my personal growth journey where I was like, feel so seen by that statement of just, because you can grind, you can show up to the expectations of others and you can appease other people. But if you at your core don't have congruency with what's happening or how things are going, that is a fast path to

a lot of difficulty and maybe even just like not just difficulty in your own experience because I think sometimes people think that they can mask or they're almost like building this husk around their discontentment. But it actually shows up everywhere. It shows up in your interactions. It shows up in how hard you're willing to work for things. It shows up in how you respond to...

life's inevitable challenges because there's going to be those disruptive moments in your life. And it's only made worse if you're living a life that's beside the one that you feel called to or that you feel like you were meant to work in. I love that. So this clarity, like, go ahead.

Clare Hefferren (06:43)

And we think that...

I was gonna say, we may think that no one is noticing, but they do. And they feel it. I remember being told like, I see you, but I don't really see you. Because there was a fog, there was a disassociation. I was performing and I was really good at it. And so you can have that. You can have that career. You can have that life, but it will begin to crumble and the crumbling will be louder.

Amanda Kaufman (06:54)

Mm-hmm.

Clare Hefferren (07:16)

and will be louder. And so I think it comes a place where always we have a choice. Am I going to be brave? Am I willing to do the work? And if you are, the other side is pretty gorgeous.

Amanda Kaufman (07:28)

of that. Yes, claiming our agency. That's so powerful. So now, now what? You know, you have learned so much about finding this alignment, about finding, you know, this way that you like to want to, desire to, to move through the world. How is that translating to how you approach business now?

Clare Hefferren (07:49)

Right. So very interesting question. The things that I think about is I am not operating at the high, fast pace that life is, that is often expected in the workplace. And that can shake people up. People that can be both offended by it can be intrigued by it.

And so that first is like, say that I have retired my alpha leader. And that means that, I have the ability to juggle 12 plates at once, do all the deadlines, run teams, have six clients. I no longer want to work in that fashion because it's not healthy. It was building for others and not caring for self. And so when I think of your audience and I think of the

ultra mode of go, go, fast, fast, fast, always on 24 seven accessible. How do we, how do I want to live inside of that world is that fortunately I do have the ability to create my schedule and I do have the ability to watch the biometrics of my energies and when I'm most focused and adjust way. So my work week looks very different than it used to. I have boundaries now I pay attention to

Amanda Kaufman (09:01)

Hmm.

Clare Hefferren (09:03)

my energy of cadence and I'm really looking for how can I go deep with fewer. Maybe the concept of less is more, but really it's an internal check-in frequently of the mix of feeling and thinking.

And it's also, I would say also.

Amanda Kaufman (09:19)

And you know,

something I noticed in...

Apologies, please go ahead.

Clare Hefferren (09:23)

That's okay. Another significant piece is that I would have an allergic reaction to the word sales. And often I think, you know, who is the best salesperson you are yourself? You know the content and your coaches are coaching. And so what I was doing was pushing a boulder up a hill because it didn't align with who I am and the way I want to bring people to come and work with me. Before it was...

Amanda Kaufman (09:44)

Mm.

Clare Hefferren (09:47)

loud launches, big campaigns, lots and lots of iterations of touch points on different channels. And really, it felt like I was selling my soul to do that. And so I had to investigate in myself, what is my style? And so one of the really cool things that happened for me was I came out of the spiritual closet in business. So my business was very business-y.

Amanda Kaufman (10:01)

Hmm.

Clare Hefferren (10:13)

And my personal life was far more vibrant around spiritual beliefs, everything from God to astrology to human design to gene keys to healing methodologies, chakras. And I'm known as a resource person. And I was pretending I didn't have all these extra resources. Now you can pick and choose what your beliefs are. What I've done is make them available in my toolkit. So now when I work with clients, I say, because I...

know my assessments, much like or just like Myers-Briggs or a disc assessment, there are assessments in these spiritual realms that can say, for me, I want to call in. I want to be soft and intimate. And that has brought a different type of clientele for me. So I find it fascinating to have the opportunity to look at really the way I do my marketing, my outreach, communication with my clients.

Is it an alignment with me or am I shifting, code shifting, based on who's in front of me?

Amanda Kaufman (11:17)

And you know, there's this myth, I think, that there's just one way to succeed. And that cannot be further from the truth. Like there are literally millions of ways that you could get attention, that you could meet new people, that you could connect. And sometimes, you know, like you said, there can be this pressure to perform.

And so that pressure can sometimes show up as like perfectionism and we're looking for this standard that frankly doesn't exist. It's not real. Like there's certain fundamentals, I suppose, in business, ⁓ you know, how you manage relationships and things like that. There's certain, you know, compliance things we got to do in business, but there's so much opportunity in, like you said, what relationships do you want to build? How do you want that relationship to unfold?

Clare Hefferren (11:48)

Thank

Amanda Kaufman (12:10)

What do what is it that that new audience actually values in you and and you know finding I almost think of it as almost like this Venn diagram between like your genius and your skill set and like what is it that they desire? What is it that they they like and it's this mutual choice. I really love having a mutual agreement that we're going to move forward with something that's really really awesome and you know, we all have different methodologies, but I just love how you really you really nailed that so

Clare Hefferren (12:39)

Thank

Amanda Kaufman (12:40)

⁓ What do you see as the biggest opportunity for a business owner who's maybe been feeling some of the things that you once felt, which was, you know, maybe they're feeling this, this stuckness, maybe they're seeing really big impacts in their health or perhaps the relationships that they are surrounded by, they feel hollow and hard and difficult. Like, what would you say to that person if they're hearing this and they're kind of going, now what? What would you tell them?

Clare Hefferren (13:06)

Exactly.

Exactly. feel like the challenges are like, I can't articulate what it is. Somethings off. I know why I want more. What is it? You know, my energy is down. I can't figure out why I'm eating while I'm exercising. That is soul fatigue. It means that your soul is ahead. You know, you're wanting to be, you have a calling to evolve and you are standing in the mud.

And so what, you know, I have a wonderful free opt-in tool called the Rhythm Map, and it's a self-diagnosis tool, a PDF, that looks at your soul at alignment. So it gives questions of, I'm feeling like this, and you can go through scenarios of, this feel like me? And it will help you to understand, like, here's what's happening on my inner body, and here's how my world looks. So it's a combination questionnaire of

feeling and looking at the pie charts of the life, relationships, work, and saying inside of those pie pieces what's happening. And once you can identify what I call some of the breakdowns, we can begin to look at, often there are contradicting thoughts. You feel an internal tension. One day the alpha clare is like, what are you waiting for? You have 15 things on your list.

And then the sole player is saying, today we're not in rhythm and instead we're going to do this. And then you'll be ready for tomorrow.

Amanda Kaufman (14:33)

I love that personification of the Mindsets of you know, like that is awesome and a very useful tool in its own right ⁓ and by the way, dear listener We'll have the links to everything that Clare is talking about here in the show notes below So it's really easy for you to go and find those ⁓ If you had like one wish for the the entrepreneurial community

⁓ in 2025 and beyond. What do you hope to see a whole lot more of?

Clare Hefferren (15:06)

opt out of the previous structures that are deemed the baseline you must do. That's, that's false. That's an assumption that we state as fact. You can have it your way. You can do it your way and don't, yeah, remove the struggle. So there is a different way of being now. Thankfully there are greater resources than our parents or grandparents had.

So really look at what I'd like to look at is, are you showing up as you or expectations of those that taught you? And if you're feeling like you are in a performative space, this is what I was told to do, to get curious, my top two values are curiosity and adventure, get curious about what's not working for me.

and how I might begin to explore loving myself for the individual. What happens is we evolve and our businesses often don't or the industry often doesn't. And you may need to segue out of an industry into another industry or, you know, sometimes folks look at me and they say, are you pivoting? No, I've actually expanded. What happened was a successful career in branding.

Amanda Kaufman (16:25)

Yeah.

Clare Hefferren (16:28)

corporate branding, entrepreneurial branding, global branding, to a point where I no longer fit inside my business. And my business could not evolve to that point. Branding was too small. So now I talk about lives instead of just a company brand. I talk about legacies, still very passionate about social impact, about community, about changing the world and taking care. Like we are designed to be in relationship.

Make sure that you're the first relationship yourself.

Amanda Kaufman (16:59)

Ooh, that is so good. I love that, you know, that wisdom. ⁓ And Clare, like if people wanted to keep up with you and see what's happening next, what's the best way for them to do that?

Amanda Kaufman (17:11)

So, know, Clare, love your take on just what to watch for, what to look for, but then also how to start to give yourself the permission to step out of line and just start testing these things and activate your own curiosity and your own sense of adventure. So how can people keep up with you? I'm really excited to see what you do next. What's the best way for them to follow you?

Clare Hefferren (17:34)

Sure. The best way to follow me is on LinkedIn. And you can also reach out to get that. Well, the link will be in your show notes for the rhythm map. So yeah. I do have one like excellent final thought based on what you just asked me is where I will go next. My tip of the day for going forward for individuals is that no longer do we have to, it's all the P's. Perform, be perfect, have everything ready perfectly.

before we begin. Something that is a big surprise to me and my work now is that I actually show up and say, guess what? I'm doing this work alongside you. I may be a few chapters ahead of you, but I don't want you to put me on a pedestal nor call me an expert because I'm human as well. But the reason I can do these offers is then I can guide people much like a midwife is that I've had this lived experience.

And so as we work together, the energy changes. As I do the work, the client does the work and both businesses rise. So I encourage to often share with clients, prospects, colleagues is that like it's never ending. We are always being invited to become more of who we are.

Amanda Kaufman (18:52)

So good, so good. Clare, thank you so much for joining us today.

Clare Hefferren (18:56)

My pleasure, it's been a treat.

Amanda Kaufman (18:58)

So good. And listener, hey, if you love this, make sure you grab the link and share it with two or three of your friends. And be sure to hit the subscribe button before you go anywhere just so you can catch the next episode or revisit this one with all of its goodies and insights. And you know what? If you're really loving the show, 30 seconds to leave an honest review makes a big, big difference because it allows people to decide whether they want to spend some time with us. And that's a huge, huge gift. We always really appreciate it when you do that.

the next time, make sure that you keep doing what matters.