Most of us have a version of ourselves that knows how to quietly disappear.

The shoulders that round out of habit. The instinct to take up less space in a room. The practiced art of being present without being seen.

We learned it early, and we learned it for good reason. At some point, visibility had a cost. Being noticed meant being targeted, corrected, dismissed … hurt.

Being repeatedly told we’re “too much and never enough” can make staying small feel like the only safe option.

So something in us got very good at the math of safety.

Stay small. Don’t shine too bright. Make sure the people who could hurt you have nothing to aim at.

My inner survivalist is the mangy cat version of me. Backed into a corner. Scrawny. Wet. Fighting for her life.

Here’s the thing:

The survival strategies that kept us safe as kids don’t just disappear as we age. They go underground, ready to resurface and run the show when they think we need them. When we feel vulnerable or notice something changing.

Step on a stage as a leader and those old habits we thought we’d successfully suppressed will rear their heads to protect us.

It worked. That’s the thing so many people in the personal growth space overlook. This part of us did its job brilliantly.

It kept us safe.

It kept us alive long enough to find our way back to something truer.

But our inner mangy cats don’t retire gracefully.

A Lifetime of Evidence

The part of us that learned to hide or fight isn’t just stubborn. It’s skeptical. It has decades of evidence on its side.

It’s kept us safe through things our expansive selves have never actually been tested against.

So when we show up to a moment of reckoning and say I’m ready to stop playing small, that part doesn’t immediately dissolve. It crosses its arms and says, “Prove it!

You haven’t shown me you can survive without me. What’s that “authentic” version ever actually done?

The answer isn’t to argue with it, or override it with affirmations, or push it aside with willpower.

Believe it or not, the first step to releasing its grip is to honor it.

The truth is, despite what our inner critics tell us when they’re judging the hell out of us, cowering wasn’t a weakness. It was a smart adaptation that held something precious until the danger passed.

The next step is faith.

Not blind faith. Not spiritual bypassing. The earned, embodied kind that comes from having stayed in the fire long enough to know you don’t burn.

The catch is that in order to show our mangy cat we can survive without it, we have to have just enough courage to try things another way.

The way our soul has always been guiding us to.

What the Stillness Teaches

The leaders we truly trust are not the bombastic ones that never felt the need to fight or make themselves small.

They’re the ones who did, and then integrated what the stillness taught them.

Years of watching and listening carefully. Reading rooms instead of dominating them. Waiting instead of forcing.

Those years didn’t just protect you. They made you perceptive and empathic in ways some people never had to become.

The quiet, confident you that shifts a room before a word is spoken was forged in that stillness.

Mine is a supple black panther. Steady. Agile. She moves with both power and grace. 

The Life Work

You already know what it feels like to embody that version of yourself.

There are moments, certain rooms, certain conversations, certain mornings,  when something clicks and you think: I got this.

That version isn’t earned through “fixing ourself.”

Deep down it’s already there. Running in the background. Waiting to be chosen more often.

The work isn’t to eliminate the part that shrinks.

It’s to notice which version of you is currently running the show. And then to invite your body, gently, back into the one that lifts the most boats.

🎧 Listen to the full coaching conversation with Brian Perry on the Untamed Leader podcast:

Listen to Hide No More, a coaching session with Brian Perry, on this week’s episode of the Untamed Leader Podcast.