There’s a sentence I hear echo in the background when people hesitate. 

Who do you think you are?

It’s clear as day when I’m holding space for my clients. It’s not so clear when it’s me. 

It doesn’t always sound like fear when it first hits. It sounds like someone else. A parent. A sibling. Someone in our young lives who needed us smaller so they could feel bigger.

We may never stop to ask whose voice that is. 

Standing out is risky. So we build entire identities around being useful from behind the scenes.

The good girl who performs for approval. The rule breaker who resists just to feel strong. 

I’ve watched this pattern in closet change-makers for years: the brilliant ones circling the same idea for a decade, refining it, testing it, always calling it “just something I do” instead of owning that they created something important.

That can be that brilliant seven-year-old’s genius survival strategy, still running the show decades later.

Instead of trying to argue that old voice out of existence, what if we give it something else to do? What if, instead of asking,  “how do I silence this?” we asked, “what would the bravest version of the person who built this do next?”

That’s how we evoke the courage of our warrior selves. The one underneath both the good girl and the rule-breaker. The one who isn’t following anyone’s rules or breaking them. Rules are irrelevant. She’s  listening to and trusting in her own inner signal. That’s the version of you your work is waiting for.

You already have that warrior inside. She just needs a little space to move. 🎧 This reflection was sparked by a conversation with Linda Berger on the Untamed Leader Podcast, Friction Lock: Getting Out of Your Own Way