On comparing yourself and what to do instead

For years I told myself that playing small was a form of humility. That staying quiet in meetings, deflecting compliments, and shrinking my ambitions to fit other people's comfort zones was somehow gracious. It wasn't. It was fear wearing a polite face.

The turning point wasn't dramatic. No single moment of lightning-bolt clarity. It was just a morning where I read back through my own journal and barely recognised the person writing it — someone constantly minimising herself, constantly making herself smaller, constantly asking for permission to exist fully.

What actually changed

The first thing I did was stop over-explaining myself. Not cold or dismissive — just clean. "I disagree" instead of "I might be wrong but..." "I can't do that" instead of a paragraph of apology. Small language shifts that started feeling enormous within weeks.

You are not responsible for making other people comfortable with how much space you take up.

I also started noticing who in my life made me feel like I needed to earn the right to exist fully. That was a harder audit. Some of those relationships got restructured. Some ended. And the grief of that was real — but so was the relief.

The version of me that walks into rooms differently now. Shot by [photographer].

What it meant for my business

Here's what nobody tells you: playing small is expensive. Not metaphorically — actually expensive. I had been undercharging for years. I had been deferring to clients who respected me less because I'd trained them to. I had been saying yes to projects that drained me because I didn't trust that better ones would come.

Within six months of changing my posture — literally and figuratively — my average project value went up. The right clients started finding me because I was no longer making myself invisible to them.

The personal stuff, honestly

This part is harder to write. The personal toll of years of self-minimising isn't something that reverses in a Tuesday morning decision. It's slow. Some days I still catch myself defaulting to the smaller version. But I notice it now. And noticing is everything.

If you're reading this and recognising yourself in any of it — I see you. And I want you to know that the discomfort of taking up more space is temporary. The alternative is permanent.

Three things that helped me most

• Journalling specifically about where I'd shrunk myself that day — not to punish, just to see patterns
• Finding one person in my life who'd never seen me small and spending more time with them
• Reading back through old client emails and spotting the over-apologising language I'd normalised

None of this is revolutionary. But it was revolutionary for me.