It’s Time to Tell Yourself a New Story
We’re all self-sabotaging, and I hate that for us
Growing up, I had a friend named Catherine*, a red-head with an equally fiery personality. Catherine was one of those girls who has always been self-possessed. At 12, she was weird and wild and didn’t shy from coming undone in front of others.
I was no Catherine. As an ambitious Black girl with eclectic taste in a pre-TikTok era, I often felt that I couldn’t fit into the boxes that the world constructed. But that never stopped me from trying.
I used my intuitiveness and EQ to go out of my way to make sure others were comfortable. I watered down the weird when possible. I quieted the confidence. I thought it best to let my work, not my voice, communicate my worthiness. Unbeknownst to me, this came at a price: my power.
My story became: you’re okay playing small.
For many years, I only saw what confirmed this story. I never considered that it might be the other way around: I was picking and choosing the evidence to fit the narrative.
We all have a story that we tell ourselves. Some of us have decided that we’re the family f*ck up. Or we’re meant to struggle financially. Or that we’ll always be overweight. Or that we could never leave our hometowns. Or that we are not…
