Stop Showing Up Scared

What it cost me to play small

I’m someone who’s really self-aware, sometimes to a fault. For as long as I can remember, I have always been deeply connected and self-conscious of how I move and show up in the world and how it has shaped me. As I get older, I’ve realized a pattern within me. One that brings me great discomfort to even write about, but for me writing is releasing, so I’m writing about it riddled with discomfort and anxiety. I realized that there were so many moments in my life and sometimes still, where I showed up scared and the result was never what I wanted or deserved.

Showing up scared for me included staying quiet when I should have spoken up, staying in the background at work and not wanting to be seen, not self-promoting and the great work I was doing, being afraid to tell people I’m pursuing a new project and could use support.

One area of my life where this has been most prevalent is with my career. A combination of being first-generation, Black, and a woman, coupled with some past insecurities and experiences I’ve had to work through, the weight of it shapes how you move in rooms that weren’t always built for you.

I’ve often felt like I didn’t belong, like I had to be hyperaware of what I say, how I say it. And in doing that, in making myself smaller to manage the room, I made myself invisible. It cost me promotions that I know I deserved. It cost me recognition. It cost me progress.

I can remember vividly leading one of the biggest projects at work. Losing sleep, staying late and doing things that I never bragged about or shared to ensure success of the program and in the end wasn’t even celebrated and barely acknowledged. Others who touched small aspects of the program created a narrative as though they did more than they really did and I fell to the background of my own project. Like WTF. I’m someone who works as a team and will bring everyone in on a project and ensure they feel seen, but it’s not always returned. That’s when I had a moment of clarity that it’s my fault. Not the part of people being shitty and taking credit but the fact that I didn’t step into the work confidently. I stepped into it scared. I didn’t own it and let it be known that I own it. I’m not that type of person who boasts or feels the need to be seen. Despite this, I’m a confident person and while this revelation is introspective, it’s sometimes just hurtful.

I’ve been in the corporate world for close to 30 years. And it isn’t until recently that I had both an awakening and realization that I’m the problem. Not the toxic environments I’ve worked at. Not the manager who sometimes made me doubt my decisions, but it’s about me not fully owning and trusting in who I am and not confidently stepping into the rooms that I’ve been blessed to be a part of.

But that stops now. I’m not going to say that I’ve done a complete 180 and I don’t sometimes get those feelings of wanting to hide, but I’m a work in progress and I’m leaning in closer and closer to showing up as my full self.

When I reflect and reckon with past experiences where I should’ve, would’ve and could’ve, it sometimes makes me sad that it’s taken me this long to discern where the issue was. But that’s life, we live, we learn and we move on. I’m choosing to move on and trusting me a whole lot more.

Has showing up scared ever cost you something you know you deserved?