You’re Not Her. You Were Never Meant To Be.(Stop comparing)

There is a voice inside you, I call him Fred, who’s been running a very specific con for a very long time.

Fred isn’t malicious. He's protective, in his own misguided way. But his favorite move is comparison. 

He finds the most polished, most credentialed, most together version of every woman in the room and holds her up like a measuring stick. 

Look how far ahead she is. Look what she has that you don't.

You watch other women and wonder what they have that you don't. The ones who seem certain. The ones who walk into rooms and don't appear to be calculating whether they belong there. The ones who seem to have cracked something you are still trying to figure out.

Fear's job is to protect you from pain. It just uses very bad data.

He curates the evidence carefully. He shows you the highlight reel of everyone else and the blooper reel of yourself. He is selective, and he has been doing this since before you had language for it.

I know this because my fear has done it to me.

I sat across from a woman not long ago and felt the familiar drop in my chest. Fred was already running the numbers.

…She has a PhD.

…She is a published author.

…She has credentials that come with their own gravity.

And what do I bring?

I had heard that question before. And I had let it make me smaller. 

But this time, I noticed it for what it was. The truth was that she is amazing. The lie, the one Fred was selling, was that her amazing somehow cancelled mine. That's the story he tells. It has never been true.

Fear's job was to protect me from pain. A past experience had left a mark, and Fred remembered it. But I am the one who gets to decide what I do next.

So I took a Tiny Brave Step: a breath. I felt the feelings.

Then another: I remembered who I was.

Then another: I remembered that we are both women with passion and something to offer. Both searching for how to touch the world in our own way.

And then I did the thing I hadn't planned: I opened my mouth and invited her to be a guest on my podcast. Booked it on the spot.

That moment did not happen because I had suddenly become more qualified. It happened because I stopped letting Fred's question be the only question in the room.

He asks: do I have what it takes to measure up?

That is a trap. 

It's designed to keep you measuring, comparing, coming up short. There’s always someone more credentialed, more polished, more certain. Fred will spot her every time.

The question worth asking is different.

Not: do I have what it takes to measure up?

But: what do I bring to this table?

Those are far from the same question. 

The first measures you against an external standard that shifts every time you get close to it. 

The second asks you to look at what is actually present: the specific shape of your tenacity, your perception, your care, your instinct. The things that have always been there. The things you have been treating as ordinary.

In the work I do with women, over 20 years of sitting with them through their scariest moments, I have never met one who was actually missing what it takes. 

What I have met, every single time, is a woman who has been looking past her own gifts while watching everyone else.

We have a name for those gifts. Strange Jewels.

Not strange as in unusual. Strange as in: she has been treating them like they don't count because they feel too natural. 

The thing she does effortlessly that costs other people significant effort. 

The capacity that showed up in the hardest chapter of her life without her having to summon it, because it was already there.

Strange Jewels are not your credentials. They are how you were made. And what you bring into the room.

You have versions of the qualities you see and admire in others. Your own versions. Shaped by your particular life and your particular losses and your particular way of moving through the world.

They have been here the whole time.

So before you decide you are behind, before you measure yourself against someone else's highlight reel, before you let Fred's question have the last word, try the other question.

What am I excited to bring? How can I contribute?

Sit with that. Let it be a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. Because the answer is not nothing. It has never been nothing.

What Tiny Brave Steps can you take?

90-second step

Name one thing you do well that you have been treating as small or ordinary. Not a skill you worked hard to acquire. Something that feels like just you. Write it down. That is a Strange Jewel. It belongs in your own highlight reel.

5-minute step

Write down three things you do well that you have been brushing past. Not your job title. Not your credentials. The actual qualities. For example:

The way you read people.

The way you stay when things get hard.

The way you know, without being told, when something is off.

Name them. Own them. This is not arrogance. This is identity.

If you want a guide for this, a real conversation, not a worksheet, the Tiny Brave Steps Generator is built for exactly this moment. Go to www.tinybravesteps.com and tell it: "I want to find my Strange Jewels. Help me look at what I've been treating as ordinary, but are actual strengths I have that I can bring to any table where I want to contribute."

Let it take you through it.

What interesting, unique insights and strengths do you bring to any table?

Go find out.