The RISE Experience

When You’ve Outgrown Your Life And Don’t Know What Comes Next.

• Shannon Denniston • Episode 55

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What if that heavy, suffocating feeling isn’t proof that you’re failing… but a quiet sign that you’ve simply outgrown the life you worked so hard to fit yourself into?


Welcome to The RISE Experience — a podcast for women who are finding their way back to themselves. This is a space to slow down when everything feels loud, to live from steadiness instead of urgency, and to finally hear yourself think again. Here we talk about identity, faith, and the quiet inner wisdom that gets buried under all the doing. A place to pause, reflect, and rise from clarity instead of pressure.


Episode Highlights
In today’s episode, I’m taking you back to a moment on the floor of my closet when I finally realized I wasn’t the problem… the container was. I share what it’s like to feel yourself performing a version of you that doesn’t feel true anymore, how pride and familiarity keep us grinding away in seasons we’ve clearly outgrown, and why silence with God can feel like a fog slowly lifting. We’ll talk about how staying too long in the wrong place doesn’t disqualify you, how God can use every step to form you, and why the shift you’re scared of might not feel like loss at all, but like finally telling the truth about where you are.



Episode Chapters

00:00 – Welcome to The RISE Experience
00:24 – When your life starts to feel like the wrong fit
01:10 – The moment in the closet that changed everything
02:05 – Realizing you’ve outgrown the container
03:10 – Pride and staying in what no longer fits
04:25 – Trying harder instead of questioning the fit
05:40 – How we outgrow roles, relationships, and versions of ourselves
07:00 – Why we stay: safety, familiarity, and the nervous system
08:24 – Finding silence with God
09:30 – Letting go of your own understanding
10:20 – Surrender, clarity, and seeing the real path
11:30 – Staying too long doesn’t disqualify you
12:25 – Your growth was real, even in the wrong container
13:10 – An invitation to honest silence with God
14:00 – Closing prayer and blessing



Conclusion
If something in you has been whispering, “This doesn’t fit anymore,” you’re not broken and you’re not behind. You’re just becoming aware of what God’s been gently showing you for a while now. The years you spent trying to make it work, the effort, the late nights, the roles you kept performing even after they stopped fitting you, they were not wasted. They shaped you. When you slow down long enough to get quiet with God and let yourself hear what you already know, the next step may still feel unknown, but it won’t feel like you’re losing yourself. It will feel like finally coming home to the truth that was there all along.



Action Taken

  • Set aside one honest, uninterrupted moment of silence with God. No noise, no “productive” quiet, just stillness.
  • In that quiet, ask yourself:
    • “Is there something I already know that I’ve been too afraid or too proud to act on?”
  • Let the truth surface without making a plan or fixing anything yet. Just tell the truth to yourself and to God.
  • If this language gives words to what you’ve been feeling, share it with a friend who might be trying harder and harder inside something that no longer fits.


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Thank you for spending this time here with me. Your willingness to be honest about where you’ve outgrown something is brave, and I believe God meets you right in that honesty with clarity, kindness, and a next step you don’t have to force.