How High Achievers Lose Self-Trust and How to Build It Back

Last week, I stood on the Speak Boldly Showcase stage and told a story I had never told publicly before.

Not about building a business. Not about leadership. Not even really about neuroscience… although, predictably, there was a brain in there somewhere.

I told a story about how I became extraordinarily good at figuring out what other people needed from me. And what happened when I realized I wasn't nearly as good at hearing myself.

I called the talk Coming Home.

Growing up, I was the kid who watched. I read people. I adjusted. I figured out what worked. As a teenager, I once said something that I wouldn't understand the significance of until many years later: “I always know what other people want me to say. I’m just not sure what I want.”

And then life rewarded me for exactly that skill. Because being able to read a room is useful. Being adaptable is useful. Anticipating what people need is useful.

In business? VERY useful.

So I built a successful career around being competent, responsible, fast, strategic and extremely tuned in to everything happening around me.

The titles got bigger. The responsibilities got bigger. The expectations got bigger.

And because it all looked like success, I never stopped to ask whether somewhere along the way I had started outsourcing the question:

Who am I supposed to be here?

That’s the tricky thing about our patterns. They usually aren't random flaws we need to eliminate. They often started as incredibly intelligent adaptations.

Your brain noticed:

This gets me approval.

This helps me belong.

This keeps things predictable.

This prevents conflict.

This makes me successful.

Excellent.

Keep doing it.

And then years later, that same pattern may look like overthinking every decision. Second-guessing yourself. Taking responsibility for everyone else's experience. Knowing exactly what everyone around you needs while having absolutely no idea what you need. Or being so damn capable that nobody notices you're exhausted.

Including you.

For me, eventually life got quiet enough that I had to notice.

Burnout. A divorce. Another burnout. And then, finally, actual quiet. The image I ended my talk with was simple.

Me, driving alone along the New Hampshire coast. Nobody needed anything. There was no meeting coming up. No problem to solve. No role to perform.

And for once, I wasn't trying to figure out who I needed to be.

I could just… be.

That's what “coming home” has come to mean to me. Not blowing up your life. Not abandoning ambition. ot suddenly becoming someone who doesn't care what anybody thinks. It means being able to hear your own voice in a room full of other ones. And trusting it enough that you don't immediately abandon it the moment somebody disagrees.

Interestingly, that's also become a huge part of the work I do now.

Business owners come to me believing they have a strategy problem. Sometimes they do. But very often, underneath the constant tweaking, researching, hesitating, changing direction and questioning themselves is something else: They've stopped trusting their own signal.

So we don't just work on what should you do?

We get curious about: What happens inside you once you decide?

What story appears? Whose reaction are you anticipating? What does your brain think might happen if you get this wrong? And is that actually true—or is an old pattern making a very convincing argument?

That is the work I find endlessly fascinating.

And standing on the Speak Boldly stage reminded me why.

Because using your voice isn't always about saying something louder. Sometimes it is noticing how quickly you give your voice away. And learning to come back to it.

I was also incredibly proud for Fromm Coaching to support the evening as the Believe Sponsor.

There was something wonderfully full-circle about supporting a room built around women speaking boldly while sharing a story about the years it took me to hear myself clearly enough to do exactly that.

Thank you, Speak Boldly Showcase, for the stage, the room and the invitation.

And to everyone who came up to me afterward and said some version of “I saw myself in that”:

I think that's why we tell stories in the first place. Not because every detail of our lives is the same. But because sometimes somebody else's story gives us language for something we've been experiencing quietly.

So I'll leave you with the question I left myself with for years:

When you strip away what everyone else wants, expects or needs from you… can you hear what you want?

And if the answer is “not really” …maybe that's not a problem to solve. Maybe that's simply where coming home begins.