When You've Outgrown the Container: Why Growth Means Letting Go

Sometimes the container that got you here is holding you back.

You know the feeling. A situation that used to energize you now leaves you drained. Work you once loved feels heavy. Decisions that used to be clear now come with mounting frustration and a nagging sense that you should be somewhere you're not.

This is what outgrowing your current container feels like.

The Signals You're Missing

Psychologists who study identity transitions have mapped what happens when someone outgrows their current role, environment, or identity. Research shows that ongoing identity uncertainty creates stress and is linked to psychological adjustment problems. Your nervous system registers the mismatch long before your conscious mind admits it.

The signals show up as increasing frustration in situations that used to be manageable. Emotional charge where there wasn't before. Physical malaise in environments that used to feel workable. A persistent feeling of unease in circumstances that should be great.

Sometimes these signals arrive wrapped in guilt or shame. You feel ungrateful. You're in a situation where you should feel satisfied, accomplished, grateful. The "shoulds" take over, which makes the unease even worse: now you're not just uncomfortable, you're uncomfortable about being uncomfortable.

Your body registers the truth before your mind catches up. Situations that used to be fine start causing physical reactions. You're tracking this data whether you realize it or not.

Why We Stay When We Should Leave

The sunk cost fallacy explains why we keep investing in situations that no longer serve us. Psychologists define it as "the tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made," even when the current costs clearly outweigh the benefits.

Research identifies several psychological factors: loss aversion (losses feel more powerful than equivalent gains), framing effects (we avoid admitting waste), personal responsibility (we stay because we chose this), and waste aversion (walking away feels like throwing away everything we've invested).

The larger your investment, the harder it is to leave. Years in a career. A degree you worked for. A business you built. A client you landed. The identity you constructed around any of these things.

Then there's the validation trap. When you realize you've outgrown your container, you need allies who can witness this transition with you. But most people seek advice from those least equipped to give it.

Parents often operate from generational paradigms where stability and tenure dictated opportunities. Today's environment is fundamentally different. When someone tries to get counsel from people operating in outdated frameworks, they often get shut down, gaslit, or shamed for wanting something different. This leaves them feeling profoundly misunderstood and alone, which makes them stop seeking help entirely.

Identity attachment compounds the problem. Research on identity transitions shows that when our whole sense of self is tied to one role or identity, changing course feels like losing ourselves. If you've been "the elite athlete" or "the successful consultant" or "the writer," stepping away from that identity means answering a terrifying question: who am I without this?

There's also the fear of external judgment. We live with tremendous pressure to constantly be "failing forward," moving up and to the right, always progressing. The reality is that progress is not a straight line. Progress is a windy road with scenic routes, doubling back, going in circles. But admitting this publicly feels like admitting failure.

The Fixed Mindset Trap

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's research on fixed versus growth mindsets reveals another layer. A fixed mindset treats your abilities, intelligence, and personality as static givens that can't change. A growth mindset recognizes these qualities can be developed through effort and experience.

Here's the critical part: Dweck's brain imaging studies show that people with fixed mindsets display no neural activity when reviewing their mistakes. Their brains literally don't process errors as learning opportunities. People with growth mindsets, meanwhile, show active processing. Their brains are working to extract lessons and adapt.

If your personality and capabilities are fixed, then outgrowing a container doesn't make sense. You are who you are. But if your worldview can and must change as you learn new things and have new experiences, then standing still becomes untenable.

In my work with Peter Diamandis, we taught something that connects directly to this: in an exponentially changing world, standing still is effectively moving backward. Humans are linear thinkers in an exponential environment. If we're fixed, and if our personalities, our approaches, our identities are frozen, we become irrelevant. Outdated. The elders people stop consulting because they know certain topics are off limits.

Your world gets smaller and smaller when you refuse to evolve.

What Outgrowing Looks Like

In my sophomore year at the University of Pennsylvania, I realized I didn't want to play varsity softball anymore. I was competing at the collegiate level, living the elite athlete identity. And after an injury took me off the field and into recovery mode, I just no longer resonated with it. I wanted to do other things. That period of my life was over.

Every contracting role I've left followed the same pattern. You have to love your client's problems and their business. Sometimes you fall out of love. Situations that used to be workable start causing physical responses that tell you something fundamental has shifted.

In my early career, all I wanted to be was a writer. I surpassed most of my goals around it and realized what I really wanted was time to write for passion and play, not to monetize it in service of my lifestyle. The container had changed.

Looking back across every major transition: client changes, career pivots, identity shifts… The same signals were present. Increasing frustration. Emotional charge. The sense that I should be somewhere I wasn't. Physical unease in situations that used to feel right.

All these signs were pointing to the same truth: I had outgrown the container.

What Comes After Recognition

Once you realize you've outgrown your current situation, ask yourself: what would you love?

If it isn't the current working arrangement, what are you craving that you're not getting? What do you wish you had more time to do that you're not doing?

By defining what you want more of, sometimes you discover you can get it in your current environment. You don't always need to quit your job or leave your industry. But you do need to make a plan.

Sometimes that plan involves designing an entirely new container and pivoting completely. Other times it's about resetting your role, your schedule, or your resource allocation. I've taken pay cuts to get paid in different currencies: freedom, time with my family. Not sacrifices. Different resource allocation.

This is where allies matter. Find people who can help you figure out the next best steps. People who understand that the world you're navigating is not the world your parents navigated, not the world the "conventional wisdom" was built for.

Tools like large language models can help here too. When you have awareness and clarity that you no longer want to live in your current reality but don't know what to do next, AI can be a thinking partner for exploring possibilities without the emotional baggage that humans sometimes bring.

Progress Is Not a Straight Line

Research on identity change shows that successful transitions require social support, behavioral changes aligned with new identities, and often a period of "identity buffering." This means creating boundaries to protect emerging identities from well-established ones.

Translation: it's messy. 

You don't just flip a switch and become the new version of yourself. You're building the plane while flying it. You're holding the old identity while testing the new one. You're navigating other people's expectations while honoring your own evolution.

Give yourself permission for scenic routes. For doubling back. For circles. Your journey doesn't have to look like anyone else's journey. The pressure to constantly progress in visible, linear ways is oppressive and unrealistic.

Some transitions take weeks. Some take years. Some happen in stages where you outgrow one aspect while other parts remain stable. There is no timeline that matters except your own.

When the Container Grows With You

Not every container has to be shed.

My marriage with Mike has persisted since 2008 because we have evolved many times together. We're not the same people we were when we started. Our individual journeys have taken us through multiple identities, careers, and approaches to life. But our shared values and principles have been timeless guiding forces.

That's what has kept us together as a couple and family even as we are individually changing many times over.

The difference between a container you outgrow and one that grows with you comes down to whether the foundation is built on timeless principles or temporary circumstances. Relationships, roles, and environments built on shared values that transcend specific identities can expand and adapt. Those built on a specific version of who you were will eventually constrain you.

Some containers are meant to be temporary. They serve a purpose, teach you what you needed to learn, and then you move on. Others are designed to evolve with you, to stretch as you grow, to hold space for multiple versions of yourself across time.

The skill is recognizing which is which.

The Permission You're Waiting For

Here it is: you are allowed to outgrow things that once fit perfectly.

You are allowed to want something different than you wanted five years ago. You are allowed to change your mind about what success looks like, what fulfillment feels like, what matters to you.

The container that got you here served its purpose. The job, the identity, the approach, the belief system formed the right container for who you were then. Gratitude for what it provided doesn't mean you have to stay in it forever.

Growth implies shedding what worked before. The skills that got you to this level won't necessarily get you to the next one. The identity that sustained you through one chapter might be what's holding you back in the next.

When you feel that friction, that frustration, that sense of being in the wrong place: your nervous system is giving you legitimate data. The unease isn't a character flaw. The desire for something different isn't ingratitude.

That discomfort is simply information. You've outgrown the container. What comes next is up to you.

Marissa Brassfield is a threshold guardian helping professionals navigate major career transitions without losing themselves in the process. Since November 2022, she's personally coached 500+ professionals through threshold moments. She co-founded CTOx, a multimillion-dollar business helping tech executives build $500K+ fractional practices—while maintaining a 3.5-day workweek for 32+ months. Book a Strategic Clarity Session to explore what's possible for your transition.