I had coffee this week with another woman in business.
Like a lot of these conversations tend to do, it started with surface-level updates and slowly moved into the real stuff:
the things we’re questioning,
the things we’re navigating,
the things underneath the thing we thought we were originally talking about.
At one point in the conversation, she said something that completely caught me off guard.
She said:
“I can see so clearly where you’re headed. You have the potential to be so much bigger than what you are right now.”
It’s not often I’m lost for words when the introvert in me is talking 1:1 with someone. But that sentence stayed with me long after the conversation ended.
Not because they felt flattering. Who doesn’t like to hear something nice said about them every once in awhile?
But that sentence stayed with me because it felt unfamiliar.
And honestly… a little uncomfortable.
Time to Process…
On the drive home, I found myself thinking about how strange it can feel when someone reflects back a version of us that we haven’t fully allowed ourselves to believe yet.
Not a fake future version. You the one – the write-a-letter-to-future-self assignment most of us try, get inspired for an afternoon and forget about it the next day.
Not some polished, perfected version, which ends up making you feel so deflated when you realize you aren’t even going to get close to that perfection. No one will.
But a version of ourselves that maybe takes up a little more space.
A version that trusts our own voice a little more.
A version that stops minimizing our perspective, our presence, or our potential.
This is sooo common…
I think a lot of women quietly struggle with this.
Not because we lack ability. We’ve all heard those positive affirmations so much that we get the message – we are capable.
The struggle comes from years spent emotionally adjusting ourselves downward:
- staying humble
- staying safe
- staying relatable
- staying “not too much”
And after a while, that smaller version of us starts to feel normal. And when something feels normal, even when it’s uncomfortable, we tend to stay right where we are.
So when someone sees something bigger in us, it can feel surprisingly confronting.
Not because we don’t want growth.
But because some part of us is still emotionally attached to the version that plays small. Playing small is safe and we all love safe. And this small, safe version quietly wonders:
Who am I to take up that much space?
Maybe we aren’t even thinking this thought consciously. But emotionally, it’s in our body’s forefront and we just can’t name it yet.
And maybe that’s part of what keeps so many women stuck.
Not lack of talent.
Not lack of ideas.
Not lack of potential.
But the inability to fully trust the weight of their own voice.
The inability to consider that the discomfort isn’t a sign that someone sees us inaccurately. It’s the feeling of brushing up against a version of ourselves that we haven’t fully grown comfortable becoming yet.
Maybe the reason those moments stay with us is because somewhere deep down,
some part of us recognizes:
“I think she might actually see something real. Something that I’ve been too scared to make a reality.”
