The Wake-Up Call: The Day I Fired My “Perfect” Self

How one wake-up call turned a per­son­al cross­roads into a move­ment for “Work Made Hu­man.”

In our pre­vi­ous post, we in­tro­duced Work Made Hu­man^TM—the idea that real hu­man con­nection and au­then­tic self-ex­pres­sion mat­ter more than rigid per­for­mance or
prob­lem-ob­ses­sion. But I didn’t dis­cov­er this through only care­ful re­search or grad­ual in­sight. Some­times, the best lessons come from life’s hard­est hits. My own in­clud­ed a hos­pi­tal stay, a di­vorce, and a wake-up call that near­ly cost me every­thing—both
per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

When “Per­fect” Be­came Tox­ic

I once was a lawyer (yes, I know—cue the jokes). Even­tu­al­ly, I piv­ot­ed into train­ing and de­velop­ment, col­lect­ing cre­den­tials like they were Poké­mon cards. Fast-for­ward a
cou­ple of decades, and I found my­self in what I thought was my dream role…un­til that com­pa­ny let me go.

That blow alone would’ve rat­tled any­one, but Life (with a cap­i­tal L) de­cid­ed I need­ed a com­bo plat­ter of every­thing fall­ing apart at once. Divorce? Check. Los­ing my sense of se­cu­ri­ty? Double-check. Then in ear­ly Jan­uary 2021, I was ly­ing in a hos­pi­tal bed while my blood pres­sure tried to break some kind of record. Tubes, sen­sors, ma­chines beep­ing like a dystopi­an alarm clock—it was full melt­down ter­ri­to­ry.

The Hos­pi­tal Wake-Up Call

Pic­ture me in that hos­pi­tal bed, beep-beep re­mind­ing me time and health are pre­cious. My mind do­ing a Roy Kent (from Ted Las­so) im­pres­sion—plen­ty of ex­ple­tives, zero clar­i­ty. Meanwhile, my “per­fect self” was nowhere to be found, un­less we count the gnaw­ing fear I might not walk out alive.

In that strange haze of hos­pi­tal light­ing, I re­al­ized: I’d been so busy play­ing “per­fect” for everyone—em­ploy­ers, part­ners, even fam­i­ly—that I’d ba­si­cal­ly aban­doned the one real home I had: my body and my sense of self. I was pleas­ing every­one but me.

Then it hit me: all those rigid masks—my “I’m to­tal­ly fine” mask, my “I have it all un­der con­trol” mask, my “smile, nod, keep the peace” mask—were suf­fo­cat­ing me. Lit­er­al­ly. So right then, I de­cid­ed: I was fir­ing my “per­fect” self.

An Un­ex­pect­ed New Path

Walk­ing out of that hos­pi­tal (af­ter what turned out to be a false alarm, a sto­ry for
an­oth­er day), I made moves “per­fec­tion­ist me” nev­er would have:

1. Re­claim­ing My Health
   • I’d been ig­nor­ing my body for years, us­ing com­fort food and sti­fled re­sent­ment to cope.
   • Post-hos­pi­tal, I com­mit­ted to real change—los­ing 80 pounds and dis­cov­er­ing that ty­ing your shoes with­out los­ing your breath is ac­tu­al­ly quite nice.
2. Em­brac­ing True Pur­pose
   • An­oth­er shift in 2024 pushed me out of a con­sult­ing part­ner­ship faster than I’d planned.
   • That “hard shove” be­came a gift, forc­ing me to ful­ly em­brace my vi­sion of mak­ing work more hu­man—the seed of what would be­come Au­then­tic Un­lim­it­ed.
3. Set­ting Real Bound­aries
   • I stopped apol­o­giz­ing for say­ing “no” when some­thing felt off.
   • Ap­proval and gold stars lose their shine when you’ve seen how high the real stakes are.

Why Fire Your “Per­fect” Self?

Main­tain­ing an ide­al im­age even­tu­al­ly costs you every­thing—your health, your re­la­tion­ships, even your iden­ti­ty. “Per­fect me” looked suc­cess­ful on pa­per but left me emp­ty
in­side. Once I fi­nal­ly let im­per­fec­tion (and hu­man­i­ty) show, I found ac­tu­al free­dom:

• Tak­ing Own­er­ship: Af­ter near­ly 30 years in learn­ing & de­vel­op­ment, I quit wait­ing for the “right time” to cre­ate real change.
• Redi­rect­ing Fear: Los­ing a job, a mar­riage, and fear­ing for my life taught me that authen­tic risk beats safe mis­ery.
• Re­dis­cov­er­ing Joy: The cu­ri­ous kid who asked “why?” and loved a good laugh wasn’t gone—just buried un­der per­for­mance re­views and ex­ter­nal ex­pec­ta­tions.

The Birth of a Frame­work

This jour­ney didn’t just trans­form my per­son­al life—it re­shaped how I saw both life and work dy­nam­ics. I start­ed notic­ing how many peo­ple wore sim­i­lar masks, hid­ing their bril­liance behind per­son­al or pro­fes­sion­al fa­cades. That ob­ser­va­tion evolved into the MASK Frame­work^TM —a tool for spot­ting what holds us back from gen­uine lead­er­ship and liv­ing.

Lat­er, I re­al­ized un­mask­ing leads nat­u­ral­ly to ex­plor­ing Clar­i­ty, Con­nec­tion, and Col­lab­o­ration (the Three Cs). Each step we take away from “per­form­ing” and to­ward au­then­ti­cal­ly be­ing cre­ates the foun­da­tion for deep­er trust, cre­ativ­i­ty, and growth. Be­cause when we set aside the il­lu­sions of flaw­less­ness, we al­low real magic and gen­uine trust and re­spect—the in­gre­di­ents for psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty and a tru­ly hu­man-cen­tric
work­place.

Next Steps

1. Notice Your Patterns
   • Where do you say “yes” while your gut screams “no”?
   • When do you choose pol­ish over au­then­tic­i­ty?
2. Ques­tion “Per­fect”
   • What ver­sion of “per­fect” might you need to fire?
   • What new doors might open if you loosen that grip?
3. Pre­pare for Deep­er In­sight
   • In our next post, we’ll de­tail the MASK Frame­work^TM—four spe­cif­ic pat­terns (Mut­ing, Ap­proval-Seek­ing, Se­cu­ri­ty-Dri­ven, and Kryp­tonite) that keep us from show­ing up au­then­ti­cal­ly. You’ll learn how to spot these habits in your­self and your team, plus prac­ti­cal ways to move be­yond them.

Fir­ing my “per­fect” self let me re­claim my health, my pur­pose, and my sense of hu­mor (that part’s non-ne­go­tiable). If you feel the strain of main­tain­ing a flaw­less im­age,
con­sid­er this your per­mis­sion slip to be real. Be­cause au­then­tic­i­ty isn’t just more
sus­tain­able than per­fec­tion—it’s the key to mak­ing work tru­ly hu­man.

Thanks for read­ing,

Joe Mar­ques

Founder, Au­then­tic Un­lim­it­ed — Be real. Con­nect deeply. Make a dif­fer­ence.