You're Not Failing. You're Just Out of Water.

Maybe you need to relocate...

Have you ever felt like you're flailing while everyone else seems to be gliding? Like you should be thriving, but everything feels awkward, exhausting, and out of sync? Maybe you’re not broken. Maybe you’re just a fish out of water.

A fish out of water looks ridiculous. It's not graceful. It's not productive. It’s not even all that likable in that moment, let’s be honest. It flops. It gasps. It’s slimy and uncomfortable to watch. But drop that same fish into a river or a reef, and suddenly—it moves like poetry.

Life is like that.

You can be brilliant, gifted, principled, creative, loyal, and all kinds of awesome—but if you're in the wrong environment, none of that shines. In fact, you might just look like you're "too extra," or "not enough," or "a bad fit." But it's not you. It's the terrain.

Imagine a beautiful Arabian horse dropped into a coral reef. It would panic. Struggle. Drown, even. But put that horse on the open desert or a rolling pasture, and it becomes a creature of power and elegance.

Neither the fish nor the horse is wrong. They’re just misplaced.

We forget that in our work, our relationships, our creative lives. We measure our worth by how well we’re fitting into environments that were possibly never designed for us. And then we wonder why we feel like we’re suffocating.

The job that didn’t appreciate your brilliance? The friend group that always made you feel a little too intense? The school, the church, the company, the club where you just couldn’t seem to “get it right”?

Maybe it wasn’t about you. Maybe you were a saltwater fish in a freshwater tank. Or a soaring hawk asked to swim laps.

Rejection isn’t always about failure. Sometimes it’s just a relocation notice.

So if you're feeling out of place right now, take a deep breath. You're not a mess. You're not falling behind. You’re not bad at life.

You might just be out of water.

Find your ocean.