Stop Letting People Define Your Filter (Show Up as the Whole Version)

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Welcome back to Big Ideas Made Simple.

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I'm Jess Webber, speaker, entrepreneur, and someone who has spent a very long time being

really good at making herself easy for other people to understand.

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And it turns out that is not the same thing as being known.

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And today that's exactly what I want to get into in this episode.

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So if you've been with me, you know that every episode I take one big idea, I strip it

down to what I believe actually matters and attempt to hand you something that you can use

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before we are done.

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So no fluff, no filler, just the thing.

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So let's get going.

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I want to ask you something before we get into it, and I want you to actually sit with it

rather than just letting it pass.

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When is the last time that you walked into a room and let the whole version of yourself

show up?

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Not the edited one, not the version that you calibrated to the audience or the

relationship or the professional context you were operating in, but like the actual one,

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the full one, the one with all the edges still on.

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For most people, that question lands somewhere between uncomfortable and genuinely hard to

answer.

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Because the truth is that most of us have been filtering for so long and so automatically

that we've lost track of where the filter ends and where we actually begin.

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We call it reading the room or being professional.

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We call it self-awareness.

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And sometimes it is one of those things.

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But a lot of the time it's actually something else.

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It's the accumulated result of every room that sent us a message explicitly or implicitly

that the full version of us was a little bit too much.

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So too loud or layered or complicated or direct or too big for the container being

offered.

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And so we learned, we compressed ourselves.

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We made our

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entire being easier to digest.

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And here's what nobody tells you about doing that.

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The filter doesn't protect you from the thing you think it's protecting you from.

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Filtering yourself does not protect you from rejection.

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It actually prevents you from connection.

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And those are not the same thing.

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So today I really want to talk about what it actually costs to let other people define

which version of you is acceptable.

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And more importantly, what becomes possible the moment that you stop.

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Here's the reframe, and I need to say it carefully because there is a version of this

conversation that sounds like just be yourself all the time in every room regardless of

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the context.

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And that's not what I'm saying.

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It's honestly not great advice.

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there are two completely different kinds of filters

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And the work of this episode is learning to tell them apart in real time, because from the

inside they can feel almost identical.

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The first is a filter that comes from alignment.

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This is discernment.

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It's reading the room and making a conscious, intentional choice about what is useful and

appropriate to bring into this specific context.

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So a surgeon isn't telling jokes in the operating room.

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That's not masking, it's context.

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When you're delivering a keynote to a room of executives, you're probably not opening with

the same energy that you bring to dinner with your closest friends.

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And that's not self-erasure, that is,

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calibrating in the service of the person or the room or the relationship and I do believe

that calibration is completely different from hiding.

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Now the second filter comes from fear, and that one is sneakier because it wears the same

clothes as the first.

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It calls itself professionalism or appropriateness.

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It calls itself not wanting to make anyone else uncomfortable.

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But underneath all of that, what it is actually doing is deciding preemptively that the

whole version of you isn't safe in the room.

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So it offers

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something smaller, something more digestible or easier for the room to receive, even if

that's not true.

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And here is how you tell the difference between the two.

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The alignment filter leaves you feeling clear.

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You made a conscious choice about what to bring and it felt right.

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The fear filter on the other hand, leaves you feeling hollow.

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You made it through the room.

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Maybe even the event went well, but you came out on the other side feeling like you

weren't quite there.

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Like you watched yourself from a distance and

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most high capacity people know exactly what that hollow feeling feels like.

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They potentially have been living inside of it for years and have been calling it

something else.

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So Glennon Doyle wrote about this in her book Untamed and there's a line in the book that

stopped me cold when I read it.

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She wrote that there is no glory except through your story.

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Not a curated version of it, not the edited highlights, you know, the Instagram perfect

reel, but the actual story.

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The one with all the parts that would have ended up on the cutting room floor.

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And in her book, she talks about something she calls the knowing.

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This idea that we struggle to know ourselves because we are always going, always

performing or calibrating or managing how we are going to be received.

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And that filter keeps you moving at a pace where the signal underneath never gets loud

enough to hear.

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And so we...

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do not know, not because the knowing isn't there, but because we have never stopped long

enough to actually listen for it or to it.

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What stops us, she argues in the book, is usually pain or discomfort.

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The moment life forces a stillness that you probably couldn't create on your own.

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And in that stillness, the knowing arrives.

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So it's not, you know, some dramatic revelation.

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It's really just a

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quiet, clear signal that's been there the whole time, waiting for you to stop long enough

to hear it.

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And so I want to come back to this idea because I think it's the most important thing in

this episode.

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The filter of fear doesn't just hide you from other people, it also keeps you moving so

fast that you can't hear yourself either.

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And the moments that crack the filter open are almost never comfortable.

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they're usually the ones you would have chosen to skip.

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So how do you actually start undoing a filter that has been running so long it feels like

personality?

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Because I want to be honest that this is not a one conversation fix.

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It's practice.

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And like any practice, it starts with awareness before it gets to action.

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So...

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I would be remiss if I didn't give you something tactical this episode.

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so here is the three steps that I really want you to take in the next week.

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That first step is recognition.

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You cannot change a filter that you cannot see.

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the work starts with noticing in the moment when it activates.

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And the signal is usually physical before it's cognitive.

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So you notice that your sentences

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might get shorter or your energy drops or you start choosing more edited, safer words.

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You laugh at something that doesn't quite land because you soften the real version of what

you were thinking before it ever left your mouth.

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Or you find yourself nodding in agreement with something you don't actually agree with

because disagreeing feels like too much of a risk in the particular audience.

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Those are the tells, and once you start watching for them, you'll be genuinely amazed at

how often they show up.

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Not because you are broken, because the filter has been running for so long on automatic.

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Recognition is not judgment, it's just data.

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So you're collecting information about where and when and with whom the fear filter

activates through.

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Then the second step becomes naming the fear underneath it, because every fear filter has

a specific fear driving it.

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And that fear is usually not what it looks like on the surface.

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So it might look like you don't want to make a person uncomfortable, but underneath,

you're concerned that if they see the full version of you, they will decide that you are

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too much and you'll lose access to the relationship or the room or the opportunity

attached to them.

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It might show up like you are being appropriately professional, but underneath, you're

learning that a specific room at a specific time

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the idea of being fully yourself would have a cost you're not willing to pay again.

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Or it might look like you are reading a room and underneath you realize that you're not

trusting the whole version of yourself or risking allowing that person to be seen.

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So,

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here's what you need to do.

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You need to name the actual fear.

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Not the story, the narrative that you've been telling yourself about it, but the specific,

honest, slightly uncomfortable thing that is hiding underneath.

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Because you cannot release a fear you have not named.

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And you cannot tell the difference between discernment and self-erasure until you know

which one you are actually operating from.

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And here is where the thread becomes the most important tool that you have.

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Because the thread is your North Star.

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And when you run the fear against the thread, the question becomes, is this filter

protecting me in a way that is aligned with where I'm going?

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Or is it protecting a version of me that my thread has already surpassed and outgrown?

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And that leads me to the third step, practice.

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Intentional, incremental, not all at once practice of showing up without the fear filter

in the rooms

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where you decide the risk is worth it.

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and I want to be specific about what practice means here because the prescription is not

go be fully yourself everywhere immediately.

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That's not the move.

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The move is choosing a room, a relationship, a conversation where you can let a little

more of the whole version show up more so than you normally would and pay attention to

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what happens there.

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Because here's what the thread does in those moments.

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It will show you who is safe.

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The people who meet the fuller version of you with curiosity or recognition or genuine

warmth, those are the people the thread says yes to.

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The ones who get uncomfortable or try to redirect you back towards the smaller version,

who make you feel like...

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you are overstepping by simply being more fully yourself, those are the ones where the

thread says no.

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Not because they're bad people, but because they're not your people.

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And knowing the difference earlier saves you an enormous amount of time and energy that

you would have spent making yourself useful to somebody who was never going to fully

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choose you anyways.

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So, recognize the filter, name the fear, practice without it, and let your thread do the

sorting.

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I want to tell you two things from my own life because I think that the concept lands

differently when you can see what it actually costs and what it actually creates.

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And I want to start with the one that's probably a little bit harder to say out loud,

which also happens to be the one with the most unintentional comedy built into it.

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So for a long time across every significant uh romantic relationship I had,

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I was the mirror.

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I showed up as the version of myself that was useful for the other party, supportive,

clear enough that the other person could actually figure out what they wanted when they

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were around me.

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And I was good at it, so much so that they would break up with me because they had figured

out exactly who they wanted and then they'd go find their spouse immediately after me.

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So if you're a fan of movies, this is totally the premise of good luck chuck.

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And I didn't understand for a long time why it kept happening.

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I thought it was compatibility or timing or particularly bad luck that follows certain

people through certain seasons of their life.

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But looking back now, I see it far more clearly.

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They never saw the whole me.

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They met a mirror version of myself.

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And a mirror can't be chosen.

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It can only be used.

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there is nothing specific enough about a reflection to actually fall in love with.

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There was nothing whole enough for them to decide they needed to stay.

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And throughout all of those relationships, I was best friends with the man that is now my

husband.

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And the whole time we were not dating, everything was platonic, friendship through and

through.

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But

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there was a point where I recognized that I did the exact same thing to him.

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And when I say it out loud, it's either probably evidence that I hadn't learned anything

or evidence that the pattern wasn't the problem.

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The fit was.

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Like I said, we were friends for what felt like forever.

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I was interested in him immediately and he knew it.

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that was part of the reason it stayed so platonic because he valued what we built but also

swore that he was not interested and didn't want to risk crossing any line.

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And so we joke now, I played the long game.

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I showed up consistently, I really tried not to pressure him, and I let him see over time

that I was not gonna go anywhere and that I accepted all of him fully to the point that

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eventually, probably about eight or nine years into our friendship, he finally said, okay,

let's try dating.

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And in those couple of months, I went from, you know, the, I would call it heavy crush to

being ready to plan our wedding, right?

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And he was not matching that pace because his emotions were not uh at the same place that

mine were.

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And one or two conversations that I interpreted us being on the same page of, he did not.

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So much so that he put the gabache on the relationship because he was afraid of damaging

our friendship that we'd spent so long curating.

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And so I was wildly hurt, more so than you probably should be two months into a

relationship.

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But I didn't know how to compartmentalize everything after having done it for so many

years and then

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letting it out of the box.

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And so I honestly took several months of not talking to him so that I could work through

everything.

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Didn't spend every weekend with him like I had the previous nine years.

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And that hiatus.

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actually landed in the middle of one of the hardest seasons of my young adult life, which

was moving back from Atlanta to St.

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Louis, trying to juggle finding jobs in the teaching industry, which if y'all know, that

was really hard back then, and dealing with my mother being admitted to the ICU while

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waiting for liver transplant.

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all of those things combined created this space of stillness that Glennon Doyle was

talking about in her book.

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it's not like I chose any of that.

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I mean, it truly was forced.

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in that stillness, there are a few things that got very clear, very fast about what and

who actually mattered.

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when my mom's transplant was successful, I reached back out to him and it had been

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three months.

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But that was the catalyst for me to finally kind of let go of things and start talking to

him again and spending time together again because I did miss this man who had become my

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best friend.

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he of course made it very clear we're only friends again and I told him I understood that

I would take what I could get and I wasn't going to pressure him into anything extra.

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But I also told him

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If anything ever changes, you need to let me know because I'll operate under the

assumption that we're friends.

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if something grows, you know that I'm here.

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I'm not going anywhere.

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I'm not dating anybody else.

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I just said, tell me when you're ready.

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And he would always say, you know, go date other people.

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I'm not interested.

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it was probably two years later where we were sitting, watching a movie on a Saturday

afternoon like we did every single Saturday.

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he paused the movie.

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midway through and says, so I think I'm ready.

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I looked at my watch and I was like, um it's like three o'clock in the afternoon, ready

for what?

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We already had lunch, it's not dinner time.

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What are you talking about?

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that's when he said, I think I'm ready to get married.

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of course I was shocked.

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mean, part of me was wildly hopeful that it was me because I'd wanted this for so long and

yet terrified.

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because I'd already pushed him away once and I didn't want to make the assumption.

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So I had to ask the next logical question, married to whom?

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And he said, well, to you.

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that dichotomy of joy and fear, you know, kind of rolling through me led me to ask in a

very tentative voice, okay, when?

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he said, well, I'm thinking like this year.

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see, this was January 6th.

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I said, okay.

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he was like, yeah, I'm thinking like the fall, like October would be nice.

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And I'm like, okay.

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is this your proposal to me?" he said no, but he had a plan, but he also was trying to,

you know, tell me before he got to that point since we hadn't been dating and we were

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completely platonic friends.

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I looked at him, dead in the eye, and I said, you're proposing on May 12th.

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And he looked at me, you know, kind of confused and huffy and he was like, what are you

saying?

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No, no, I'm not.

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Why would you say that?

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I looked at him, I said, cause four months ago we bought Phantom of the Opera tickets and

the show is scheduled for May 12th.

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We both love that musical.

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Like we've always talked about how much we value it.

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And so I said, I would bet money that you were planning on proposing at Phantom of the

Opera.

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And...

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Of course he's sitting there just kind of dumbfounded and I said, you know what honey, I

love the idea and I want you to keep it.

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But here's the thing, May 12th to October is not a lot of time to plan a wedding,

especially when October is like wedding season.

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So I was like, if you want to get married this year and this fall, I'm going to need to

start planning now, which means you already know the answer, right?

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But I have to deal with venues and dresses and things like that and they take time.

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he said, okay.

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And so that's literally what happened.

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He told me in January, wedding was planned by his birthday in March.

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We got officially engaged at Phantom of the Opera right after the engagement scene in the

show during intermission.

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then we got married in October.

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I love that story, but the reason that I felt like it was necessary to tell here was

because it fits this concept of filter so well.

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Because what I did to my husband was exactly what I had done for every other person before

him.

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I, for so many years, made myself useful, patient, present, right?

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I wasn't pushy.

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I just kept reflecting back whatever I thought that he needed until he figured out what he

wanted.

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But the difference for him was not the behavior.

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The difference was that this time the person came back to me.

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So he was the first person that left and came back and found his person after breaking up

with me, just like every other boyfriend had done.

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This time the mirror wasn't enough and he wanted to meet the whole Jess, right?

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And when he did, she was the one who looked at her watch and said, well, ready for what?

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Right?

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She was the one who said, hey, I know you well enough to know you're proposing on May

12th.

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And.

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I know the wedding industry well enough that I need to start planning.

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So that Jess was specific and direct and a little bit funny and 100 % herself all the

time.

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that's the one that he chose.

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that's what made it different for me than any other time before.

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So the glory of it was not in the curated, careful, filtered, long game version of me.

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it was in the story and the whole one.

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my second story is a little bit more recent.

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And it's where the personal and the professional finally started to feel like the same

lesson for me.

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There was an event that I went to last year called the Pink Skirt Project and it's hosted

by Renee Warren, the better half of Dan Martel, in beautiful Kelowna, BC.

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And the way I ended up there matters as much as what happened inside that room.

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because every event I had attended up to that point was one that I had been sent to or

included in because of my proximity to an organization or a person.

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someone else was essentially deciding that I belonged there, which meant that I always

walked in as an extension of something.

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I was representing a role or a brand or a relationship that I didn't own.

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And the Pink Skirt Project was the

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first ticket I bought 100 % for myself.

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Nobody sent me to it.

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Nobody brought me.

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I decided that I belonged and I paid to prove it to myself.

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So before I even walked through the door, something had already shifted because the

decision to buy the ticket itself was a filter audit.

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I wasn't going as somebody's integrator or someone's right hand or a mouthpiece for

somebody else's brand.

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I was going as Jess Webber and Jess Webber, I had decided, was a coach.

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not an extension of I Love Coaching or Keller Williams or any of the other companies or

industries or methodologies, I was just someone who was genuinely able to impact and serve

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the people in front of me.

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And I was introduced while they're to somebody on the floor through a third party who

wasn't attending.

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But I was positioned specifically as a connection point uh for somebody who needed

organization of IP, their intellectual property, and helping build a community.

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Having that initial conversation in my own language, my own framing, my own words.

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gave me something to stand on for the entire rest of the event.

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I took that language and came out of that conversation and used it to start opening more

doors, have more discussions, and to show up more fully in each subsequent exchange.

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So then I saw a speaker across the room who I'd actually tried to connect with a few

months earlier at a different event.

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At the previous event though, I had completely lost my voice on the way there.

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And so my networking with him consisted of whispering and asking him what restaurants I

should eat at the next time I was in Kelowna.

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therefore, I highly recommend not going to events with laryngitis.

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But this time, you know, he was very gracious and remembered me and everything.

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And so now that I had my voice, both physically and internally,

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my language, I was able to talk to him, introduce myself again, tell him what I had been

doing, why it mattered, and how it might help serve what he is doing.

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we connected, took a business card, genuinely interested in a future conversation.

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The same person, completely different interaction, not because suddenly my credentials had

changed, my business card had changed, or anything like that, but because the version of

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me who showed up that day was not whispering.

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in any sense of the word.

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The room wasn't magic, but what was different was who walked into it and what she said to

the people when she got there.

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So here is your one thing for this week, and it's three things in sequence because this

one requires a little bit more structure than just a singular question.

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First, I really want you to catch yourself filtering.

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Not judge it, not fix it in the moment, just catch it.

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So notice when the sentences get shorter or the energy drops or you agree with something

you do not actually agree with.

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Notice when you offer the smaller version before anybody has asked for it and collect that

data.

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Where is it happening or with whom or what kind of rooms?

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That's going to be the knowing that Glennon Doyle was talking about.

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You already know where the fear filter lives, you just probably haven't

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named it yet.

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Secondly, when you catch it, name the fear underneath it.

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Not the story you've been telling yourself about, but the specific honest real thing

underneath.

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The filter is only as powerful as it is invisible.

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The moment you name it clearly, it loses some of its automatic authority over you.

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And then thirdly, pick a room, just one this week, where you let a little bit more of the

whole version of you show up more than you normally would.

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Again, not everywhere, not all at once, just a room or a conversation or a relationship.

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One moment where you choose not to compress before you know whether compression is even

necessary.

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And while you're doing that, pay attention to who meets you where you are.

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Because your thread's gonna tell you.

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The people who lean in, who get more curious, who recognize something in the better

version of you, the fuller version of you, those are your people,

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The ones who get uncomfortable and redirect you back towards your smaller version, that's

going to be information too.

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And it's not a judgment of them, but it's data about your fit.

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So I want to close with something I've been sitting on for a while.

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If I could just say one thing to the version of me that is still letting other people

write the rules for which Jess is acceptable, it would be this.

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You are enough.

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Right now, today, exactly as you are.

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You do not have to prove yourself first or stay small until you have earned the right to

take up more space or make yourself useful enough that the room decides to keep you

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around.

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You have value today.

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Not after the next credential or the next version of yourself that you feel finally is

ready to present to the world.

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Today.

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And the failure that you are running from quietly, it's not the worst thing that can

happen to you.

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Staying invisible is.

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Spending years being useful to people who were never meant to choose you because you kept

sending out the mirror instead of the whole person, that is the thing worth being afraid

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of.

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There is no glory except through your story.

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Not the edited version, not the highlights, the whole thing.

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The long game and the kibosh and the hiatus and the mid-afternoon movie pause and the

whispered networking at the moment when you finally walk in a room as yourself and someone

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meets you there.

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Stop letting other people define your filter.

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They were never qualified for the job.

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The confidence to show up whole is not something that you find after you feel ready.

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It's something that you build by showing up before you do.

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

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If something in this one cracked, something opened in you, I want to know about it.

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So come find me at bigideasmadesimple.com.

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It's where my newsletter lives and where everything I'm building is starting to take

shape.

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And it's also where you can connect with me directly.

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So one idea in your inbox every week, nothing else.

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: 00:30:52

And if you know somebody who has been sending out the mirror version for way too long,

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send this one over to them.

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The right idea at the right time changes everything.

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I'll see you in the next one.

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Thanks for listening.