Unperformed. Unannounced. Unbothered.
We spend years—sometimes decades—learning how to be acceptable.
How to look promotable.
How to stay likable.
How to stay small enough to be tolerated, but big enough to be useful.
And when we finally reach the edge of our own exhaustion, we think the answer is a shinier version of the same performance:
A new persona.
A rebrand.
Another round of over-explaining why we deserve to take up space.
But here’s the truth no one profits from telling you:
You don’t need an audience for your evolution.
You don’t need applause for your next move.
You don’t need to narrate your reclamation to people who never valued your presence in the first place.
You need capacity.
And the guts to recalibrate without a press release.
Because here’s the irony:
Performing is the very thing that makes your brilliance invisible.
When you’re always announcing how worthy you are, the people meant to see you can’t feel the quiet power of your clarity.
What if you stopped performing?
What if you let yourself:
— Make the next move without a 3-paragraph justification?
— Take the exit without a perfectly phrased resignation post?
— Step back without curating the optics of your decision?
What if you trusted that the most magnetic thing you can do is become unavailable for the game entirely?
If this feels tender, or like a relief you didn’t know you needed, pause here:
Where have you been over-explaining your worth to people who never really saw you?
What would you do differently if you didn’t have to narrate it to anyone?
What decision have you been delaying because you were waiting for it to be palatable to others?
Let them wonder.
Let them label you.
Let them miss the version of you that made their lives easier.
Your next chapter doesn’t need their applause.
It only needs your clarity.
This piece is part of The Edit — presence-first leadership narratives from The Co.
