Get Out of Your Own Way (The Container That No Longer Fits)

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Welcome to Big Ideas Made Simple.

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I'm Jess Webber, speaker, entrepreneur, and someone who genuinely believes that the right

idea at the right time in the right hands can change everything.

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This show exists to connect you with the knowledge, the tools, the resources, the

frameworks that you actually need to live your most impactful life.

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Not the smaller or safer version, but the actual one that you feel called to.

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And every episode, I take one big idea and make it simple.

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No fluff, no filler, just the thing that I think you need to hear applied in a way that

you can actually use it immediately.

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Real quick though, before we get into this episode,

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I have been told by multiple people who know me in real life that they actually listen to

my episodes at one and a half times speed.

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And honestly, that tracks.

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In person, I am a verbal processor, and my speed resembles that of a highly caffeinated

auctioneer.

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So the podcast version of me is apparently more deliberate.

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And I want to name that as intentional and move on, my friends.

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So let's get to it.

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Here is the thing that you need to come with me on because I think that this episode might

feel a little bit uncomfortably familiar.

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So picture this.

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You are three months into something, a role, a project, a business, whatever the context

is, and you've done the work of getting rooted.

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You understand how things operate.

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You can see the landscape really clearly now.

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And because you see it clearly, you can also see how absolutely everything could be better

or simpler or whatever, right?

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So you bring it, you walk in.

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with that idea and enthusiasm because you are not trying to overstep, you're genuinely

trying to contribute

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And something happens.

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The idea gets shut down or you're quietly redirected or the person you're sharing this

with acknowledges it with that kind of polite smile that means that it's honestly going

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directly into the void.

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And without anyone saying a single word out loud, you receive that message loud and clear.

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Stay in your lane.

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Here is the part that I find the most interesting.

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If you are wired the way that I think a lot of my listeners are wired, you don't just hear

that message once and then shrug it off.

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It actually gets filed and color coded and organized like you probably do with every piece

of information.

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you add it to your growing collection of data points about what happens when you are too

much or too fast or too big for whatever container you happen to be in at the time.

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And that collection does not stay in the folder somewhere.

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It actually becomes part of your new policy of operating.

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At some point,

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Probably without realizing it, you stop waiting for someone else to do the shutting down

and you start doing it yourself.

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So preemptively, quietly, before anyone else has the chance.

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And the wild thing is...

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it doesn't feel like fear.

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It feels like wisdom or self-awareness.

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It feels like being appropriately realistic in the room that you're in.

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So today, I want to talk about where that actually comes from, because I spent a long time

calling this humility when it was something else entirely.

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Last episode, we talked about confidence as a byproduct of clarity.

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Not something you perform or borrow from somebody else's credibility, but something that

you arrive at.

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And I meant every word of it.

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But there is something sitting between clarity and between confidence that almost nobody

ever names.

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Because the moment that you get clear on something true and big about yourself,

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There's something else that shows up immediately.

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And that thing's entire job is to compress what you just found before anybody else can see

it.

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That's the space that I want to unpack today.

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So here's my reframe.

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And I want to say it as plainly as I can before we get into it, right?

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The thing keeping you small is not fear.

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It's memory.

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Your system didn't randomly decide to shrink you.

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it was conditioned to.

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It learned that being too much had consequences.

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It understood that fitting in a container was safer than exceeding it.

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It developed an idea that staying useful, staying behind somebody else, staying just

contained enough to be needed, was the smartest strategy rather than standing fully in the

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open with nothing between you and the room.

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And listen, for a season of your life, that's probably accurate.

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The box was not a trap.

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It was a vehicle.

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It got you somewhere real, and it gave you roots and experience and proximity to things

that you genuinely needed to learn.

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There's nothing wrong with living inside a container.

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But my question now is, does that container still fit?

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Now here's what makes this really hard to catch in real time.

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When you're doing it, it almost never looks like fear.

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It wears far better clothes than that.

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Sometimes it will show up as perfectionism.

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The work is not quite ready, or the offer needs one more pass.

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I will put it out when it is really done.

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And done becomes the finish line that somehow keeps moving further away the closer you get

to it.

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And it's kind of funny how that works.

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Other times, it shows up as timing.

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It's not the right moment or the market's off or you need a little more traction first.

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And timing is particularly sophisticated as an excuse because every once in a while it

actually is true, which makes it nearly impossible to argue with.

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This is honestly the perfect alibi.

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Other times, it can show up in research.

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You need one more certification, one more case study, one more year before that price

point is justified, as if competence were the destination you were eventually arriving at

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rather than a direction you keep moving in.

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And for me, one of the places that shows up the hardest in is generosity.

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So,

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You don't want to be a burden to anybody, or you care deeply about accessibility and

fairness.

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You are serving or thinking about other people, which is genuinely beautiful,

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it is also sometimes the most compassionate sounding reason to keep your ceiling exactly

where it is.

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Every single one of those is the same protective pattern in a different outfit.

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And the reason they work so well is because they feel completely legitimate on the inside.

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There's a book by one of my coaches and mentors called Be Seen by Jen Gottlieb.

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And truly, her work has shifted the way that I show up

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The idea is that staying hidden is not actually a neutral choice.

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It's something that feels safe or conservative, but every time that you dial yourself back

to something more contained or digestible, more comfortable for the room, there's a cost.

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Not just to you, but to the people who need the full version and never got access to it.

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Visibility is not vanity.

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And keeping yourself tucked back isn't humility.

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It's a different kind of cost with significantly better optics.

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So here's where Jen's work, again, got personal for me.

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I've always had the language in me.

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and a true love of teaching.

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That's never been my issue.

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But for so long, I used to use slide decks as a speaking tool in a way that had very

little to do with the audience and quite a lot to do with me personally.

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Slides keep me structured.

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They keep me from wandering down rabbit trails and they give me something to stand behind.

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when I teach.

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And honestly, I called that organized, prepared, professional even.

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But what Jen helped me see through her Stage Leaders program was that the deck had become

a container.

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The same way a title or a lane or an industry can be a container.

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It was keeping me legible while also keeping me at a safe distance from the thing that I

was actually there to do, which was connect.

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So she gave me a framework that lets me teach from the inside out, from stories and key

points and the real knowing that was already inside me, rather than from a tool I was

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using to manage myself and how visible I actually was.

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And the first time I stepped onto a stage without a deck as a safety net, here's what

happened.

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I was nervous.

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I mean, genuinely nervous, but not...

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the same kind of nervous that I had been in previous instances, because before the nerves

were about whether or not the slides would carry my point across to the audience.

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And this time, the knowing was all mine to carry.

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And there was a

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different level of confidence that comes from that.

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It wasn't performative.

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It wasn't borrowed authority.

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It was the kind that comes from being incredibly clear about what you actually know and

trusting yourself to navigate in real time.

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And that's what Jen gave me.

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It wasn't a script or a structure to hide behind.

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It was a framework I could actually stand inside of.

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So,

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the inner critic running those containment patterns isn't broken.

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It's not an enemy.

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It was built to protect you.

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And for a long time, it did exactly that.

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The problem isn't the critic.

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The problem is that the threat it was built to protect you from no longer exists in the

same form.

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And no one sent the memo.

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The protection system is still running the old programming and the old program was written

for a version of you that the world's already outgrown.

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I wanted to give you a way of thinking about this that I hope lands differently from the

standard, get out of your comfort zone conversation, because I don't think comfort zone

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actually captures what's happening here.

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Think about the containers you've lived in.

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the roles, the titles, the lanes, the versions of yourself that you put forward in rooms

when the full you feels like too much.

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Those containers are not mistakes.

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They're vehicles.

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They got you somewhere.

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They were the current container for a version of you that was still figuring out how to

exist in the world without a map.

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The box was a smart strategy for the season it was built for.

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But here's what happens over time.

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You grow.

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Ideas get bigger.

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Vision gets clearer.

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The version of you that is emerging starts to have less and less in common with the

container that you were operating from.

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And every time the version brushes up against the sides of the box, you feel it.

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I used to describe this as feeling like my oversized self was being shoved into a

Tupperware container.

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Like, I mean, seriously, like too many mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

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You know without question when you look at it, it doesn't fit, and yet you keep standing

there trying to shove it in and make the lid close anyways.

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Here's what most people do with that feeling.

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They interpret it as a problem with themselves.

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They're too much or too complicated or too layered to explain quickly.

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The container is not the issue.

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They are.

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So they work harder at fitting.

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They soften the idea before they share it.

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They sand down the title or lower their number or compress their vision until it's small

enough to be understood quickly by someone who honestly was never gonna fully understand

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it anyways.

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But the container was never the truth of you.

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It was just a vehicle.

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And...

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The pullback towards it is the gravitational force of something familiar.

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Your system's saying, we know how this works in here.

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We do not know what happens out there.

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So come back, adjust, fit.

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Getting out of your own way is not about blowing up a box or rejecting everything it gave

you.

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It's not the burn the boats moment or burn the box moment.

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It's about recognizing that that vehicle is not a destination.

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You were never meant to live in it permanently.

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You were never meant to live in it permanently.

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And the version of you that keeps folding yourself back in is not being careful.

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It's being loyal to a season of you that's already ended.

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Boxes aren't forever.

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They're vehicles.

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They're part of the journey.

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and what you are thinking or feeling or seeing from where you're standing right now, it's

completely valid.

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It is okay not to fit.

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You were never supposed to be there forever.

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You were supposed to grow until the container couldn't hold you anymore.

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And that's not a problem, that's the point.

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So here's what this looks like.

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in my own life because I think that the story makes the concept real in a way that maybe

that concept isn't landing on its own right now.

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For a long time, the box that I lived in was somebody else's integrator, someone else's

right hand, the second command at most.

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And I want to be really honest about why I chose that box, because it was on purpose and

it wasn't about the work.

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I recognized that I was afraid of leadership.

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The idea that the buck could ever stop with me.

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felt like standing on the edge of something, I was not sure that I could survive.

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So I built a career inside roles where someone else had vision or took the credit or

absorbed the exposure or carried the risk.

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And I made everything work from behind their name.

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And I'm good at it.

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I am useful.

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I'm productive.

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And I was also sheltering myself.

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because I spent so much time brushing up against the sides of containers to know exactly

what happened when I was too much.

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Ideas got redirected, enthusiasm was managed, right?

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The version of myself that walked in full got quietly handed back something smaller and

was told to be grateful for the opportunity.

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So.

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I learned to compress myself before anybody else even had the chance.

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I got so good at it that I eventually stopped being able to tell where the habit ended and

where I actually began.

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Which is a fun thing to realize about yourself, let me tell you.

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When I stepped into the coaching space and started building a brand specifically for

integrators, I brought that entire mindset, that entire system right along with me.

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And it showed up immediately starting with how I priced the work.

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Every time I sat down to name a number, the number got smaller.

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And I had a reason that sounded genuinely principled.

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Integrators were undercompensated in most organizations.

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I knew that firsthand.

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And the last thing I wanted to do was add financial pressure to anyone.

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I cared so much about accessibility and fairness and equity.

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And every single word of that was true.

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Every single word of it was also the old protection system running on autopilot, dressed

up in the most compassionate of costumes.

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It was genuinely the most expensive kindness I've ever shown myself.

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Because what I was doing was I was actually making a financial decision on behalf of

somebody else before they ever had a chance to make it for themselves.

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I was solving a problem they had not even presented yet.

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And underneath my generosity was a version of me that had not fully yet committed to what

I was actually bringing to the table.

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The real issue wasn't

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pricing.

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It was the compression.

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I had taken someone who understood both sides of the visionary integrator dynamic, who

lived in both worlds, who could see the breakdown between vision and execution, and

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actually knew how to bridge it, and squeezed all of that down into one very small lane.

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One title, one humble number that said quietly, yeah, I know my place.

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The shift

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for me didn't come because I suddenly got braver.

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It came because I got clearer.

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I stopped trying to fit the container and started looking at the pattern underneath it.

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So not titles or departments or anything like that.

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It was truly the thing that I was consistently producing across all of them, regardless of

the industry or context.

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or even who was in the room.

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I was the bridge.

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I'd always been the bridge.

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And once I could name that and point to the specific outcomes that proved it, the

conversation changed completely.

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Not because I was louder, because I stopped running the old program on something I had

already figured out.

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I let the container be the size of the thing it actually needed to hold.

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And that...

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is confidence as a byproduct of clarity.

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That's what I was talking about last episode.

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It's this that I'm talking about today is what looks like from the inside of the box when

you finally stop trying to fit in one that wasn't made for you right now.

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So here's the one thing this week.

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Do me a favor and notice where you might be making yourself smaller.

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And when you catch it, ask yourself, is this protecting me or is it protecting a version

of me that no longer exists?

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That's it.

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You don't have to have it all figured out.

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You don't have to fix anything today.

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You just have to be honest about what you find when you actually find it.

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Because here's what I know about people who find their way to this show.

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You're not holding yourself back because you're afraid of failure.

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You're probably holding yourself back because somewhere along the way you learned that the

full version of you was too much for a lot of rooms.

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It was too layered or too hard to fit in a clean container.

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You were too big for the box that somebody else handed you.

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And that lesson came from real rooms with real feedback and real consequences.

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I am not.

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asking you to pretend that it didn't happen or that the rooms were not sometimes genuinely

hard to be in.

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What I am asking you to consider is that those rooms are not the rooms that you need to be

standing in anymore.

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The container that taught you to make yourself smaller was a vehicle for a season that's

already ended.

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That version of you, right here, right now, the one whose ideas keep brushing up against

the sides of every box that you're trying to live in, was not built to fit.

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That version of you was built to grow until the container couldn't hold it anymore.

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You are not too much.

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You have just been using a container that was never built to hold all of who you actually

are.

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And

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It's okay not to fit.

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It's okay to be a bit of a unicorn.

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The goal was never to become a horse.

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The goal was to stop apologizing for your horn.

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Next episode, I want to talk about the thread, the thing that runs through every role,

room, project you've ever touched that shows up regardless of the title or industry or

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context.

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And we're going to name it so clearly that the pullback towards your old container doesn't

have any where to start.

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But before we can head there, you have to get out of your own way.

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Confidence does not get edited out.

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It gets cleared in.

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So that's it for today's episode of Big Ideas Made Simple.

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If this one landed, and I hope it did, come find me at bigideasmadesimple.com.

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It's where you can connect with me directly, see everything I'm building, and hop in my

weekly newsletter, where every week I send one idea straight to your inbox.

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It's not a content roundup or a list of links.

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It's just an idea that I'm thinking about, and probably one that's worth sitting with for

a whole week.

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And I want to ask if you know somebody who needs to hear this message today, which I have

a feeling you probably do, I would be honored if you would share it with them.

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Because I truly do believe that the right idea at the right time changes everything.

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So thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.