Last week, I wrote about watching a significant milestone unfold from a hospital corridor. The reminder was simple: life doesn't wait for perfect timing. Sometimes our biggest moments happen while we're standing in the messy middle.
This week, I'd like to offer a companion thought: sometimes our inner experience is an unreliable narrator of our own growth.
Have you ever left a meeting convinced you didn't articulate your point well? Or walked away from a difficult conversation replaying every sentence in your head? Or wondered whether you're making any real progress because you still don't feel confident?
If so, you're not alone.
In workplace conciliations, I've watched capable leaders and employees leave a room believing they didn't handle themselves well. In that moment, all they can feel is the racing heart, the shaky voice, the intimidating language coming from the other side. Their internal experience becomes so loud it obscures what everyone else in the room is witnessing.
Everyone else sees something different: someone who held their ground, someone who responded with more courage than they give themselves credit for.
The gap between how we feel and how we appear can be surprisingly wide. And it doesn't just happen in conflict.
Perhaps you've dismissed a compliment because you thought someone was "just being nice." Perhaps you've been told you're calm, thoughtful, resilient, or resourceful, and quietly replied in your head, "If only you knew how uncertain I felt." Perhaps you've convinced yourself that because confidence hasn't arrived, neither has growth.
Disclosure: This image is Ai-generated.
But what if that's not true?
I've come to trust this because I've lived it. Not long ago, I found myself sitting in a waiting room to see a specialist, and it struck me that the last time I'd been forced to stop like this was the first half of 2019, when I hit a wall. That felt like it belonged to another lifetime, and yet here I was again, waiting for my body to tell me what I hadn't been willing to admit on my own.
When I witness leaders navigating workplace conflict, working long hours, and quietly wondering whether they're making a difference, I don't feel I've left leadership behind. I feel grateful that my health crisis woke me up to it.
I don't regret the years I spent striving to prove myself in systems that weren't always designed with people like me in mind. Staying in that system was a necessity, and those years shaped my discernment, resilience, and compassion. But I'm equally grateful for the portfolio career, as an HR leader and a coach, that I never planned. Without it, I wouldn't be the coach and HR Leader I am today. Nor would I have the capacity to be the wife, sister, aunt, friend, relative, peer, colleague, and thinking partner the people in my life deserve.
Sometimes we can only recognise the value of our own journey when we look at it through a different lens.
Perhaps that's why we all need people who can hold up a clearer mirror from time to time. Not to tell us who we are, but to remind us of who we're becoming.
We've already been using our own agency to make change despite imperfect systems or inadequate circumstances. It's the same way so many people keep showing up and shaping better outcomes within structures they didn't design and can't single-handedly fix.
Information is everywhere these days but seeing ourselves clearly and acting on what we see, isn't easy, especially when busyness is running the show.
And when we can't see ourselves clearly, we tend to do the same thing: wait. Wait to feel ready. Wait for more certainty. Wait for the doubt to quiet down before we move.
Three reminders for this week
1. Don't confuse discomfort with a lack of growth. Sometimes discomfort is simply your nervous system catching up with your capability.
2. Treat thoughtful feedback as data. When trusted people consistently notice the same strength in you, pause before dismissing it. They may be seeing something you've normalised or overlooked.
3. Notice the cost of waiting. How long have you been postponing a decision? A week? Six months? Two years?
Today, do a simple mental calculation. What has waiting already cost you in energy, opportunities, confidence, relationships, or peace of mind?
Sometimes the price of not deciding is higher than the risk of making one.
Until next week,
Mary
P.S. If this resonates and you'd like a confidential sounding board to think through your next step, book your Executive Sounding Board session here.