How to Choose Soul Over Ego

A letter about getting to the satisfaction of understanding your own power, presence and purpose—again—after you've changed massively

This is Letters from the Creational Edge—my Wednesday series of awakenings and invitations for the high-achieving/high-functioning/high-performing woman who wants to lead, love, and live differently…from the truth of who she is.

Each week, I share one embodied insight (or personal story) from my Creational Womanhood™ Method—a body of work that helps women who have built powerful lives through performance, protection, and over-efforting…come home to their feminine expression, nervous system safety, and magnetic voice to create the life you desire, deserve, and are destined…at next level.

These letters are not about teaching you how to be more “feminine.”

It’s about guiding you back into your creational identity—the one who knows how to communicate, relate, express, CREATE, and receive all that she desires, deserves and is destined without collapsing into burnout, over-control, or disconnection from her true self.

These letters are designed to make you think differently.

To help you see what you’ve normalized…and what you’re here to reclaim.
And to invite you deeper into a lived experience of your feminine power, not as concept, but as a way of being.

If you’re ready to awaken and embody your FULL creational power for the life you’re wanting to live, click here to book a consultation for my 3-month private mentorship.

Photo by Nick Andréka on Unsplash

This is how we get got.

We speak boldly about following our dreams, repost quotes about fearlessness and alignment, and celebrate other women living out loud online—but when it comes time to pay the cost of our own evolution, to make the investment that stretches our soul or to cross the threshold that threatens our ego's grip on safety, we hesitate. We resist. We stall.

We say we’ll do anything to become the woman we were born to be—anything, that is, except let go of the financial comforts, titles, identities, or lifestyles we’ve grown attached to. That becomes the invisible line in the sand. The place where we stop short. We scream anti-capitalism and radical liberation but still bow at the altar of certainty. We won’t “sell out,” we say. And yet, we sell out our souls every day in the name of strategy. Stability. Social proof.

We avoid the price of becoming, and in doing so, we avoid becoming at all.

What I know now is this: there is always a cost.

The cost of staying safe.
The cost of not listening.
The cost of refusing the invitation to grow.
The cost of smartly avoiding the initiation.

But there’s also the barrier-breaking, paradigm-shifting cost that changes everything.

The cost of letting the old version of you die so the real one can finally live.

It’s personal story-telling time.

(if you read that in the ‘it’s peanut butter jelly time’ voice, you are my people)

In this most recent season of my life, I’ve walked into that death willingly (mostly lol).

I’ve placed polished persona of “coach” and “expert,” into its rightful, secondary position, and begun allowing my truest identity as author, speaker, woman of devotion and wild expression to rise to the surface.

And let me tell you: it has been a masterclass in next-level trust.

In truth.

In learning how to listen to the whisper inside, even when it doesn’t make sense on paper.

I’ve had to dismantle every shortcut I once leaned on. Every templated method I’d mastered. Every coaching industry code I used to stand on. The exact things that helped me build a name, make half-a-million dollars, lead sold-out launches, work with some incredibly industry-leading women, and be seen as a success—those were the very things I had to surrender.

I traded “fast and flashy” for “slow and sovereign.”

I let go of the hunger for more to listen, and got satiated by the whisper that you are enough.

Listening to that whisper, it further said:

I want deep. I want slow. I want intentional. I want joy. I want curiosity. I want to feel again. I want to create because it delights me, not because it converts.

And so I began honoring her. Every single day.

Not in theory or metaphor, but in my actual life.

I began choosing long walks and empty afternoons. I let go of urgency. I questioned why I was really doing any of it. And I watched as the fears came flooding in—fears about money, my role in the world, my ability to rebuild, how I would be perceived, if I was just being an unhealed, avoidant, immature baby.

Fear of what people would think.
Fear of being seen as less powerful or less successful because I chose to live (lead and love) differently.

Mini-free-lesson: Notice how I listed out the fears. I didn’t just say “fear” was stopping me. That’s a powerful, freedom code and practice. Get intimate and face your real, detailed and layered fears in the fucking face. Let me know and thank me when you do💗

But I also watched something beautiful take root: the unraveling of old, sick systems. The clearing of survival codes passed down and picked up. The departure of entities I didn’t know had been feeding off of my brilliance. And in that clearing, a new template began to form.

One that is deeply mine.

One where my impact is born not from proving and doing, but from presence and being. Where my legacy lives in my truth, not my metrics or my bank accounts. Where my wealth is measured in moments, not just or only money.

What I’m cultivating now is a life of unbound resonance—a life that is richly lived and fully expressed. A life where self-trust is my security system, and self-validation is my compass. A life where I serve myself first with my creations and it benefits everyone who is soul-aligned to find them out in the world. Where no amount of money, status, or attention could ever replace what I am reclaiming in myself.

This is the kind of wealth I’m building now.

Wealth not just in bank accounts but in integrity, alignment, beauty, time, breath, relationships, and radiance.

It’s not just mine, it’s me.
Within me, and flowing from being me.

And as I shed the need to do it all on my own, I’ve come home to a truth I forgot along the way: I am always in co-creation with something greater.

God, the Earth, my guides, my ancestors, the women who walk with me.
We are never alone in this.

So this is the invitation I’m bringing forward now.

As women, we have been taught to survive by efforting. By pushing. By outperforming. By becoming what the world wanted from us.

But the real power comes from choosing soul over ego.

Choosing alignment over applause. Choosing to walk away from the machines we’ve built when they no longer reflect who we are. By choosing true freedom over the perception of stability.

Yes, I’ve loved being a (rising) well-known coach (I still am her in many ways).

I’ve enjoyed the high of five-figure months and the attention of online success.

But the truth?

I love slow living more. I love my authentic, and right-paced life more. I love long lunches with soul sisters and late-night voice notes with kindred spirits. I love pool days and handwritten notes. I love moving through the world at my own rhythm, then writing about it in language that pierces and heals and frees…just because I desire to.

That’s what I’m here for now.
That’s the new wealth.
That’s the new way.

And yes—when I chose this, I was willing to go broke for it. Because I know the true riches are always waiting on the other side of surrender.

For me, that surrender looked like releasing $25K, $35K, even $50K months. It looked like returning to a few thousand dollars a month. $2,500. $3,500. $5K if the moon was feeling generous. It looked like being honest about what I was choosing, not because I failed, but because I finally succeeded at listening to myself.

And this is the moment where most people stop.
Where most women won’t go.
This is the line we’re afraid to cross.

But I crossed it. And on the other side? I’ve found everything I was truly craving.

I left behind the spreadsheets and sales funnels, the launch calendars and milestone markers.

And I came back to what I loved most: living a beautiful, rich, expressive, tender, powerful life… and documenting it so that others might remember what is also possible for them.

Going broke wasn’t the plan. Still isn’t.😏

But I’m richer now than I’ve ever been.

In clarity. In conviction. In alignment with my destiny. In peace. In purpose.

And if I built it once, I know I can build it again.

Slower. Better. Truer.

In my feminine energy, self-worth, and leadership.

So if you’re reading this, and you’re in that space between what you’ve built and what your soul is asking for—if you feel the whisper but haven’t had the courage to honor it—I want you to know: you’re not alone.

And yes, there will be a cost.

But the real question isn’t: what are you willing to lose?
The real question is: who are you willing to become?

And what if the only thing standing between you and the life you say you want…
is the version of you you’ve been too afraid to outgrow?
and the version of you still playing victim to the cultural narratives that try to tell you you’re wrong and/or delirious?

I waited. I spun. I tried to figure it all out before I both surrendered and moved. And I lost time.

Not because I wasn’t smart, or capable, or ready.
But because I was scared to release what had once worked.
I didn’t trust that what I knew deep down was calling me was enough.

But now I do. And I will never forget that lesson.

Because the number one thing I teach inside my world, whether in retreats, masterclasses, or mentorship, is this: We have to stop working against ourselves.

We have to build the self-trust, the self-leadership, the self-validation, the self-devotion, and the self-worth to follow the call even when the evidence isn’t yet here. Even when it ‘logically’ doesn’t make sense.

But I’m not here to live a logical life.
I’m here to live a creational one.

When we do? We create worlds. Real ones. Beautiful ones. Sustainable ones. Ones we’re in absolute love with.

I’m doing that now.
And I’m inviting you to do the same.

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If this letter reached you, moved you, mirrored you…

Then you already know you're standing on the edge of something big.
And the next step isn’t more information or to live vicariously through me.
It’s an initiation for your own life and leadership.

🌹 She Who Creates: The 5-Day Masterclass

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You don’t need more strategies.
You need to become the woman your dreams require.

with love, trust and devotion to my path,
Ash x

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ASHLEY JOHNS is a writer, speaker, and certified psycho-spiritual life coach whose words are a devotional body of work—designed to awaken, reclaim, and realign. With roots in transformational coaching, ancestral healing, and feminine leadership, she teaches through her lived experience and luminous expression. Her essays, speaking, and intimate containers invite high-achieving women to slow down and descend to remember who they are, reclaim the power of their hearts, and rise into their full expression—without performance, burnout, or self-abandonment. She believes your life is your message. And your words are your wealth. Learn more at ashinspires.com