It was scary. But it was so liberating. I thought, This is not predetermined - I get to choose. There are some days where I have to choose five times in a day. I had to make a choice when you called and the phone rang, whether I'm going to show up and be me, or whether I'm going to say what I think I'm supposed to say and get off the phone.
There's a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful.