She Sounded Capable. I Didn't Believe a Word of It…

I was standing to the side of a stage, waiting to be introduced.

The host was at the podium reading my bio. The roles I'd held, the teams I'd led, the things I'd built over my first 15 years in corporate. I was listening to my own life being read back to me, and on the outside I was composed, smiling at the room, ready, professional. But inside I remember thinking, ‘Why do I give myself such a hard time?

Because the person being described by the MC, the one who had built all of those things, held all of those roles, that person sounded capable. Accomplished. Worthy of being in the room. And yet the voice that had been running underneath for a lot of my career, through every promotion, every result, every hard thing done well, hadn't moved an inch.

You're not good enough. You haven't done enough. It's only a matter of time before they work that out.

I had heard that voice for so long it had become background noise. I didn't question it anymore. I just ran faster to stay ahead of it. Standing at the side of that stage, I finally understood that no achievement was ever going to silence it. Because the voice wasn't coming from out there. What I was experiencing, and what I now recognise in so many of the women I work with, is what most people call imposter syndrome. But it goes deeper than that label suggests

When I walked out onto that stage something had shifted, almost imperceptibly. I felt something I hadn't expected, like I deserved to be there. Not because anything had changed externally. But because for a moment, just a moment, I had actually let myself see what I'd done. Stopped moving the benchmark forward before I'd even registered where I was standing.

I gave the talk. Nobody noticed anything different. Except me.

What Happened After I Walked Off That Stage

That night I wanted to call a friend and tell her what had happened. I picked up the phone and put it down again. I was embarrassed. How do you explain to someone that you'd spent years achieving things and never once let yourself feel it?

That you'd been running from a feeling your whole career and it had taken hearing your own name announced at a conference to finally stop and look at what you'd been running from? I was a confident person, I was kind of embarrassed that despite that I clearly had doubted myself.

So I didn't call. Instead for the first time in as long as I could remember, I made myself go back over what I had actually built, and rather than immediately identify what still needed to be done, I let myself to just review and actually acknowledge what I had achieved. And I have to admit, it was harder than it sounds, and I often found myself making weird ‘excuses’ for my achievements…

Where the ‘Not Enough’ Story Starts

I've thought a lot about where the voice started and where I landed was that  as one of five kids in my family, I grew up comparing myself to my siblings. That almost natural measurement that lives in families, who’s smarter, sportier, funnier. It wasn’t malicious. It rarely is. But somewhere in those years of comparison, trying to work out where I fit, I absorbed a belief that I wasn't quite enough. That I needed to prove something. That the gap between me and good enough was always just slightly out of reach.

And then I walked into a career (and let’s be honest life, just look at how advertising is geared almost completely around selling us the belief that we are not quite enough, but with the right lipstick…) that rewarded exactly that.

Why Imposter Syndrome Actually Works, Until It Doesn't

Because here's the thing about building your life on the fuel of not feeling good enough, it works. It drives you forward. It keeps you striving, proving, raising the bar before you've even crossed the last one. From the outside it can look like ambition. From the inside it feels like running.

What it looked like for me, day to day, was never being able to define what enough was. Every time I got close to a goal I'd move the benchmark. A project was delivered and before I'd taken a breath I was already focused on the next one. A good result would land and I'd immediately find what was still missing. I had no fixed point to measure myself against, because if I set one and reached it, I'd have to feel it. And feeling it meant stopping. And stopping felt dangerous.

So I kept moving. And the voice kept pace. When you operate like this, you don’t regard others as your competition, as your fiercest competitor is yourself.

What Changed When I Finally Saw the Voice for What It Was

What I didn't know then, and what that conference stage highlighted to me, was that I still had the best years of my corporate career ahead of me. And that they would feel completely different.

Because once I could see the voice for what it was, I could finally stop letting it make my decisions.

I started putting ideas forward I would have kept to myself. Going for roles I would have quietly talked myself out of. Stepping into rooms I would have found reasons to avoid. Not because I suddenly felt fearless, the voice didn't disappear overnight, but because I was no longer mistaking it for the truth.

And the thing that surprised me most wasn't the external results, though those changed too. It was how much I started to enjoy it. The work, the challenge, the pace, all the things I had always been drawn to, I could finally experience them without the constant undertow of feeling like I was one mistake away from being found out. I wasn't just performing anymore. I was actually present.

That's the part nobody tells you. That doing the internal work doesn't slow your career down. It frees it up. You stop spending energy on managing the fear and start spending it on the actual work. And the difference in what you're capable of from that place is significant.

What I See in Women in Corproate Every Day

I see this everywhere in the clients I work with.

Brilliant, capable, accomplished women who are quietly running on the same fuel I was. Who believe, consciously or not that one more achievement will finally do it. That when they get the next promotion, the bigger role, the seat at the table, they will finally feel like they belong there.

And then they get there. And they feel exactly the same.

Because the belief was never about the achievement. The achievement was just the thing they were using to try to fix the belief. And no external result, no title, no salary, no recognition, no bio read from a conference stage, can reach inside and rewrite a story that started long before your career did.

How to Start Changing the Story Underneath the Achievement

If you recognise yourself in this, if you're somewhere in your career quietly questioning whether you're good enough despite everything that says you are, I want you to consider something. It's not your achievements that need to change. It's the story underneath them.

And that starts with asking some uncomfortable questions. Where did this belief come from? When did you first decide you weren't enough, and whose voice was that, really? What would it mean to define what good enough actually looks like, and commit to letting yourself feel it when you get there?

I know these aren't easy questions. They weren't for me. But they're the ones that actually lead somewhere. The voice still shows up for me. I want to be honest about that. It still appears before a big meeting, before I put an idea forward, before I step into something new. But I can catch it now. I can see it for what it is, an old story, not a current truth, and I can choose not to follow it.

What I know, having lived on both sides of that shift while still very much in my corporate career, is this. The roles didn't change. The pace didn't change. The demands didn't change. But my experience of all of it did. Completely. I didn't call my friend that night after the conference. But I've told the story many times since. Because I think a lot of women are standing at the side of their own stage, listening to everything they've built being reflected back at them, and still not letting themselves hear it. The bio is real. The achievements are real. The capability is real. The voice that says otherwise is just a story. One you've been telling yourself for so long it feels like fact. But it isn't.

And the moment you start to see that, really see it, isn't the moment your career ends. It's the moment it finally begins.

If this resonated and you're ready to stop letting that voice make your decisions, I'd love to have a conversation. Book a free consultation here.