Part II: The Fragmented Path (and Why It Looks So Normal)
The Sacred Business Manifesto: How the “successful but empty” path becomes your default.
Sacred Business Manifesto: Everything Is Connected — Part II of VII
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From a distance, the wheel looks complete. Up close, you see the cobwebs and missing pieces.
When you hear the word “fragmented,” you might picture something dramatic: a full-blown breakdown, a total collapse, a life in ruins.
Most of the time, fragmentation looks normal.
It often looks like the people who get praised the most.
Before Sacred Business Flow existed, both of us, Carolina and I, were living on what we now call The Fragmented Path. We just happened to be on different sides of it.
Carolina’s version looked like this:
She was climbing the ladder in the corporate world, holding big responsibilities in organizations that did meaningful work. Her days were full of meetings and deadlines. Her evenings were full of headaches and exhaustion.
On paper, she was “doing good.”
In her body, she was slowly disappearing.
Her migraines were so frequent it became her normal. She learned to push through, to disconnect from what she was feeling so she could keep performing. The world rewarded her for it. Promotions, praise, more responsibility.
Fragmentation wears a very respectable mask.
What she discovered on the other side of that collapse became the embodiment work she now brings to our clients - the nervous system piece that no strategy can bypass. But that came later.
My version was different, but built on the same foundation.
I was the “lone wolf” entrepreneur. If something needed to get done, I’d do it myself. Asking for help felt like failure. Rest felt like weakness. I built my business on adrenaline and sheer willpower.
I believed that if I just made enough money, I would finally feel safe.
Instead, the more I achieved, the more fragile everything felt. One bad month, one client leaving, one algorithm change, and the whole house of cards might fall. My nervous system lived in quiet emergency.
The world rewarded me for it too. Revenue, respect, the appearance of having it figured out.
From the outside, both of us looked successful in different ways.
From the inside, we were deeply fragmented.
We weren’t connected to our bodies.
We weren’t connected to our actual needs.
We weren’t connected to what we most wanted to create.
And here’s the part that matters for you:
The same pattern that runs “successful-but-empty” lives in corporate or high-earning entrepreneurship also runs smaller, quieter versions of stuckness.
It’s the same pattern that looks like:
Signing up for the next program because this one might finally fix you.
Always being “one tweak away” from launching.
Updating your branding again instead of inviting one person into a conversation.
Doing deep inner work everywhere except in your business.
We got rewarded for our fragmentation. You probably have, too.
Our culture celebrates overwork, constant productivity, and being “on” all the time. It praises you for being needed, for being busy, for producing. It rarely asks if you are whole.
This is The Fragmented Path:
All outer strategy, no integrated self.
All performance, no genuine presence.
All motion, little forward movement.
The Fragmented Path separates what should be connected: your body from your work, your inner knowing from your outer strategy, your values from your ability to be paid well for your work.
If you’re realizing you’ve been walking the Fragmented Path, the Sacred Business Harmony Map → will show which part of that pattern is most active in your business right now.
It looks professional. It looks responsible. It often “works” for a while.
Until something breaks.
For me, it was my body doubling down with a tumor. For Carolina, it was migraines and a deep ache she couldn’t numb anymore.
For you, it might not be that dramatic.
It might be the moment you realize you’ve been “working on your business” for years without letting it really exist.
It might be noticing that you know how to help everyone else move forward, but not yourself.
It might be waking up to the fact that you’ve built a life that doesn’t quite fit, and you’re tired of squeezing yourself into it.
It might be looking at the calendar and realizing another year passed. And another. And wondering how many more you're willing to spend circling the same territory.
The Fragmented Path is not a personal failure.
It’s the default path you were shown.
But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
And that’s where things start to change.
Because if fragmentation is the problem, the question becomes:
What would it look like to build a business where everything is connected?
This essay is Part II of VII in the Sacred Business Manifesto: Everything Is Connected series.
Next in the series:
Part III – Everything Is Connected (and Your Business Is the Mirror)
Check whether you’re still on the Fragmented Path
If you saw pieces of your own story in The Fragmented Path - overwork, “almost-launches,” deep inner work that never fully reaches your business - it can help to see the pattern clearly.
The Sacred Business Harmony Map shows which of the 9 Sacred Business Frequencies is most out of balance for you right now, and how that might be driving your version of “successful but not whole.”
