When I left the company I helped build, they hired seven people to replace me.
Seven.
If I ever needed validation for my hero complex, that was is. (Note: I do not need more fuel for the hero-complex fire.) I mean, come on — how many people does it take to screw in the lightbulb that I used to do on my own? Apparently, seven. I fanned the flames of my own ego by sharing that fact with anyone who asked.
Here’s the thing: bragging about that has started to feel hollow. Were I a better person then, the first time I said it would have sounded empty, but I took a lot of pride in it.
For years, I had poured my whole self into the business — going way beyond reason, hours, and even my health. I had played every role in the drama triangle at some point. Some days I was the victim, resenting decisions I didn’t make but had to clean up. Other days, I was the not-so-reluctant hero, staying late, solving the unfixable, sacrificing sleep and time with family for “the greater good.” And, let’s be honest — there were even a few days I was the villain in someone else’s story too.
A lot gets done in the drama triangle. It’s a productive mess. That’s what makes it so hard to leave.
My wife, in her work as a health coach, talks a lot about the drama triangle — how we all crave security, approval, and control. And how, when those needs go unmet, we tend to drift, mostly automatically, into one of the three roles: villain, victim, or hero.
In my professional life, I’ve lived in that triangle more than I’d like to admit. It gave me identity. Motion. Even purpose. But it also trapped me in someone else’s narrative loop of reacting, fixing, resenting, repeating.
At its core, the drama triangle is about authorship. You’re not leading from there. You’re not directing the story. You’re just performing a role in a plot someone else is writing. The pen’s not in your hand.
Rumination is the audience seat of the drama triangle. I’ve spent entire seasons of my life replaying moments, conversations, decisions — scripting the comebacks I never gave, imagining the outcomes that never came, blaming the people who didn’t give me what I never asked for out loud.
And the whole time, I thought I was processing. Healing. Strategizing.
But really, I was waiting for someone else to hand me a better script.
It’s a strange paradox. I chose (maybe unconsciously) not to act — and then I blamed other people for the outcome. I abdicated authorship, then resented the narrative I was living in.
That realization was a bitter pill to swallow. But also a liberating one.
No one else gets to be the author of my life. Not my boss. Not my coworkers. Not even the voice in my head that keeps playing old episodes on repeat, hoping the ending will change.
At one of my old jobs, we had a sales rep who loved to say, “Less is more.”
It was usually his excuse for going to the gym instead of calling on customers, but there’s actually something to that idea.
When you step out of the drama triangle, you give up the need to be seen a certain way. You stop chasing the validation that comes from being the hero or the sympathy that comes from being the victim. You stop trying to win roles in other people’s scripts.
Less drama triangle. More freedom.
Freedom to be who you actually are and want to become.
If any of this resonates with you, I wrote a book you might appreciate.
It’s called You Don’t Have to Escape to Be Free — a collection of my reflections on identity, meaning, and building a life I don’t want to run away from.
At the time, the only way I knew how to step out of that cycle was to let go of the roles I was good at — roles that made me feel useful, important, indispensable.
In their place, I chose something better: authorship.
Authorship isn’t control. It’s not certainty. Most of life is still outside my hands. But authorship gives me something else: the freedom to choose what matters.
Where to put my energy.
What story I want to live next.
And how to shape the next sentence of my life.
That’s not a clean process. I still get pulled back in. I still want to be the hero. I still draft entire imaginary dialogues in my head that end with someone saying, “You were right all along.”
But more often now, I notice it.
I catch the old pattern and ask a better question: What’s the next right sentence I want to write? Not the next fire to put out. Not the next person to impress. Just the next line in a story I actually want to live in.
I’m still learning how to live like the author instead of the audience.
Still learning how to act without performing, how to care without controlling, and how to show up without needing to be cast as anything other than myself.
And that is enough.
Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .
I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.
If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.
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