Every few weeks I have some version of the same conversation.
A woman who has spent months building something of her own sits down opposite me or calls me on the phone, and before we get very far she says some version of the same sentence.
“I think I’ve done something wrong.”
Sometimes it’s because the clients haven’t come as quickly as she expected. Sometimes it’s because people aren’t responding in the way she’d imagined. Sometimes it’s simply because the picture in her head no longer matches the one in front of her.
The details are always different.
The feeling rarely is.
What I’ve learned over the years is that those conversations are almost never about the numbers. They’re about what the numbers have quietly persuaded us to believe about ourselves. We mistake feedback for failure. We confuse slower progress with the wrong direction. Before we know it, we’ve stopped looking at information and started looking for evidence that we aren’t as capable as we thought we were.
I know that because, if I’m honest, I caught myself doing exactly the same thing last week.
I spent more time looking at my own numbers than I have in a while. Fewer comments. Slower growth. After more than thirty years of building businesses and helping other people navigate uncertainty, you’d think I would have looked at those numbers with complete objectivity.
I didn’t.
For a little while I forgot everything I would have told someone sitting opposite me.
If one of my clients had brought me those same numbers, we wouldn’t have spent the meeting questioning whether she should give up. We’d have looked at what had changed, what hadn’t, where people were engaging and what the business might be trying to teach us. We’d have been curious long before we became critical.
It’s remarkable how easily that perspective disappears when we’re standing in the middle of our own business.
The very same numbers that look like information when they belong to someone else suddenly feel like judgement when they belong to us.
That was probably my biggest reminder this past week.
Nothing fundamental had changed. I’d still written every article. Published every Note. Continued refining my offers and listening carefully to the conversations I was having with readers. The work hadn’t stopped. The direction hadn’t suddenly become wrong.
The only thing that had changed was the story I had quietly started telling myself.
The older I get, the less I believe clarity comes from pushing harder. More often than not, it comes from creating enough distance to see what’s actually there. When we’re standing in the middle of our own lives or businesses, that’s surprisingly difficult to do. Every decision feels bigger than it is. Every setback feels permanent. Every quiet week starts carrying meaning it was never meant to carry.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve spent so much of my career helping other people step back before deciding what comes next.
Not because I have all the answers.
Because it’s much easier to see patterns when you’re no longer standing on top of them.
This past week reminded me that every now and then I need to become that person for myself.
Once I did, the noise settled surprisingly quickly.
Some things simply need more time. Some things need adjusting. Some things are working better than I realised because I’d been looking in the wrong place.
Businesses are remarkably honest if we’re prepared to listen without taking everything personally. They tell us where people are leaning in, where they’re quietly drifting away and where we’re being invited to pay closer attention. That’s not failure. That’s simply how businesses grow.
Perhaps that’s also why I care so deeply about helping experienced women organise what they’ve already built instead of convincing them they need to become someone new. Most of the answers are already there. They’re simply much harder to recognise when we’re standing too close to them.
Experience doesn’t make us immune to doubt.
It simply gives us a better way back.
If any part of this feels familiar, perhaps it’s time to step back far enough to see what your own experience has been trying to tell you. That’s exactly why I created The Second Act Blueprint. Not because I believe experienced women need another framework, but because I know how difficult it is to see the whole picture when you’re standing in the middle of it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Hit reply. I read every message.
Warmly,
Pia
Great article Pia. I find it hard not to get caught up in the numbers too. The like buttons and tracking tools of all social platforms including this one have been designed to do exactly that.
I was lucky enough to have been around before these platforms so I am conscious to it. I feel for those who have only known likes and follows. I wish there was a way for people to see instead the impact they’ve had on a person beyond these buttons.