Today, I Call It Fear: A Career Built on Self-Abandonment

The lane departure technology in my Toyota CHR woke me with a persistent beeping sound as I drifted into the right lane and nearly hit the 18-wheeler beside me. I was driving northbound on I-5, returning home to Sacramento from San Jose, late at night after another grueling day at work, the fifteenth in a row.

During peak hours, that stretch of highway takes up to three hours in each direction. Leaving no later than 4:30 AM and heading back after 8:00 PM was the only way to beat the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 580, if I was lucky and nothing happened on the road.

That night, I got the car into the garage and had the good sense to turn it off. I could not get out. I slept in the car until it was almost time to get up again.

The next day, I presented my resignation.

That night did not belong only to that job. It belonged to a way of working I had carried from one organization to the next, across cities, across industries, across decades.

The pattern was always the same. I arrived before the day required. I stayed after it released everyone else. I solved the problems that came with the role and the ones that did not quite belong there, but found me anyway, because I was the one who would not leave them unsolved. I said yes before the question was asked, absorbed what others put down, and filled the silences that belonged to someone else.

The track record this built was real: income, trust, and a reputation for reliability that arrived in a room before I did. I was good at my job, but also felt the need to prove myself to myself, my culture, the mainstream culture, the men in the room; I think you get the picture.

I called it professionalism, commitment, and the standard I held myself to.

Today, I call it fear. That was the engine underneath it all.

The giving was not coming from abundance. It was coming from fear. Fear of appearing insufficient. Fear of being seen as less than the reputation I had built. Fear of the moment when someone would look at what I had produced and conclude that the record had been overstated. Every yes was a small act of protection dressed as professionalism. I said yes to prove I was what they had decided I was.

The year I stopped saying yes to prove it was the year the work changed.

The understanding arrived quietly. I was describing my history to someone when I heard myself say it out loud: I had organized my professional life around other people’s needs for so long that I had mistaken the arrangement for my own design.

That sentence changed what came after it: the work I do now.

The women who come to me for coaching arrive carrying the same internal structure I once did. Their track records are real and their reputations earned. From the outside, they look exactly like what they have built: capable, committed, and delivering outstanding outcomes every time. Underneath that delivery, something has been paying a cost that no one has named.

I see it the moment they arrive at our first session.

I see it in the way they describe their work: fluently, precisely, and without hesitation, but with a fatigue that lives underneath the fluency. I see it in the yes they give before the question is finished, the overflow they absorb because they are the ones who can hold it, the standard they apply to themselves that they would never apply to anyone else. I see it in the way their own priorities appear at the bottom of the list, after everything else has been addressed.

I see it because I built it. I know the specific weight of a yes that comes from somewhere other than alignment. I know what it takes to run a career on giving without ever asking what the giving is for. And I know what it looks like when someone is ready to ask.

If you see yourself in this story, I invite you to answer these questions:

• What keeps you from consistently delivering your best capacity while carrying out your actual priorities?

• Where has your reliability become easier to access than your truth?

• Which decision would redirect your strength toward the life you say you are building?

The answers to these questions shift the conversation from performance to self-responsibility. They ask you to stop proving what you can handle and begin deciding what your strength is here to serve.

Your strength deserves a clear assignment. The problem begins when your strength keeps receiving assignments that your priorities never approved.

You might not know it yet, but you have a choice. Choose yourself. Everyone will be better served as a result.

I invite you to join Women Nexus™ and to Assess Your Readiness for Real Change.