Your Boundaries Are Not Everyone Else's Instructions

When protecting your peace starts looking suspiciously like controlling someone else's behaviour.

I've been thinking about boundaries lately. Not because I believe we need fewer of them, but because I'm beginning to wonder whether we've become so enthusiastic about setting them that we've forgotten what they're actually for.

Boundaries have become part of our everyday vocabulary. We hear about them in leadership conversations, relationships, workplaces and social media feeds. We're encouraged to establish them, communicate them, defend them and, when necessary, walk away from anyone who refuses to respect them.

Much of that advice is valuable. Some of it is even liberating.

But somewhere along the way, I think we've started confusing boundaries with instructions.

And that distinction matters.

A Boundary Is About What I Will Do

Imagine someone repeatedly interrupts you during meetings. You're frustrated, understandably. You want to contribute, and you deserve the opportunity to finish a thought without being talked over.

You might say, "My boundary is that you need to stop interrupting me."

Except that's not really a boundary. That's a request about someone else's behaviour. A perfectly reasonable request, perhaps, but still a request.

A boundary sounds different.

"When I'm interrupted, I'll ask to finish my thought. If the interruptions continue, I'll raise the issue with the meeting facilitator or choose a different way to contribute."

Notice the difference?

The first statement places responsibility for your boundary entirely in someone else's hands. The second identifies what you will do to protect your ability to participate.

One attempts to direct another person's behaviour. The other establishes your own response.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't ask people to change their behaviour. Of course we should. Healthy relationships and effective teams depend on people being willing to listen, negotiate and adjust.

But asking someone to change isn't the same as setting a boundary. And calling a demand a boundary doesn't magically make it one.

When the Language of Self-Protection Becomes a Tool of Control

Here's where things get particularly interesting.

We live in a time when psychological language is increasingly accessible. Words like triggered, toxic, gaslighting, trauma and boundaries have moved from specialized conversations into everyday discourse.

Greater awareness can be a wonderful thing. Language helps us recognize experiences we may previously have struggled to describe.

But language can also give us a sense of authority we haven't necessarily earned.

When someone says, "You're violating my boundaries," the conversation can suddenly become difficult to challenge. Nobody wants to be the person accused of disrespecting someone's emotional safety.

And yet, what if the so-called boundary is actually an expectation that another person agree with us? What if it's a demand that they avoid difficult questions, suppress their opinions or organize their behaviour around our discomfort?

Discomfort isn't always evidence of harm.

Sometimes discomfort is what happens when another human being has a different perspective, a competing need or the audacity to say no.

That's not automatically a violation.

That's being human together.

Leadership Makes This Even More Complicated

In leadership, boundaries are essential. We need clarity around responsibilities, availability, decision-making authority, respectful conduct and the limits of what people can reasonably be expected to give.

But leaders also have power.

And power changes the equation.

A leader who says, "My boundary is that I won't tolerate negativity," might believe they're protecting a positive workplace culture. Their team, however, may hear something entirely different: disagreement is unwelcome, difficult feedback is dangerous and raising concerns could carry consequences.

Suddenly, a boundary becomes a convenient way to silence people.

I've seen variations of this throughout my career. I've also had to confront the ways my own certainty and expectations have influenced the people around me.

It's remarkably easy to believe we're protecting something important when we're actually protecting ourselves from being challenged.

That realization isn't particularly comfortable.

But it's useful.

A leader can establish standards for respectful communication without demanding emotional agreement. They can insist on accountability without requiring enthusiasm. They can create expectations around professional conduct while leaving room for disagreement, frustration and honest questions.

The distinction is between creating conditions for people to work together and attempting to control how everyone experiences those conditions.

One is leadership.

The other may simply be control dressed in more fashionable language.

And Sometimes a Boundary Really Does Mean Leaving

I want to be careful here because the distinction I'm making should never become an excuse to dismiss someone's need for protection.

There are circumstances where another person's behaviour is harmful, threatening, abusive or persistently disrespectful. In those situations, a boundary may involve limiting contact, reporting misconduct, ending a relationship or removing yourself from an environment altogether.

You do not have to negotiate your safety to prove you're reasonable.

Nor does setting a boundary require giving someone unlimited opportunities to demonstrate that they won't respect it.

But even then, the boundary concerns the choices available to you. It establishes what you will accept, what you will do and what consequences follow from continued behaviour.

It doesn't give you ownership over another person's decisions.

And sometimes that is the hardest part.

We can communicate clearly, act consistently and make thoughtful choices about our own participation. We cannot guarantee that someone else will understand, agree or change.

A boundary isn't a promise that other people will behave differently.

It's a commitment to how we will respond if they don't.

The Question Worth Asking

Before announcing a boundary, I wonder what might happen if we asked ourselves a few uncomfortable questions.

Am I identifying something I need to protect, or am I trying to make someone else more comfortable for me to deal with?

Am I prepared to take responsibility for my own response, or am I placing that responsibility on someone else?

Am I communicating a limit, making a request or issuing an ultimatum?

And perhaps most importantly, am I willing to extend the same respect for another person's autonomy that I'm asking them to extend to mine?

Because other people have boundaries too.

They get to disagree. They get to decline. They get to decide that the relationship, arrangement or expectation no longer works for them.

That doesn't automatically make either person the villain.

It makes them two humans navigating the complicated business of being separate people.

And I think that's where some of our most important growth happens.

Not in learning how to make everyone respect our boundaries, but in learning how to respect ourselves without attempting to manage everyone else.

Your boundaries are yours to honour. They are not everyone else's instructions to follow.

That's not an argument against boundaries.

It's an invitation to practise them with a little more clarity, humility and responsibility.

And perhaps a little more feistiness.

Forward, with purpose.

The Feisty Human

If this reflection stayed with you, explore The Feisty Human: Recipes for Becoming Someone You Don’t Have to Negotiate.

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What if you’re the problem?

I have a confession. I have spent a considerable portion of my life being right. Even when I wasn't.

It's a remarkable talent, really. And one that took me far too long to recognize wasn't quite the leadership strength I thought it was.

For years, I carried biases that narrowed my vision. I had opinions informed by experience, convictions reinforced by success, and enough confidence to make a compelling argument for almost anything I believed. I wasn't deliberately trying to be difficult. I genuinely believed I understood what was happening around me.

And sometimes, I was just plain wrong.

The uncomfortable part wasn't discovering that I could be wrong. We all know that intellectually. The uncomfortable part was recognizing how much energy I had invested in being right, how readily I could defend my position, and how little room that sometimes left for another perspective.

I had spent years learning about leadership, communication, conflict and change. I could recognize resistance in others, identify dysfunctional patterns and explain why people struggled to see beyond their assumptions.

Apparently, I was also quite capable of demonstrating those very behaviours myself.

Funny how that works.

When Confidence Becomes a Blind Spot

Experience is a wonderful teacher, but it can also make us remarkably confident in conclusions we haven't examined recently.

We develop ways of interpreting the world. We notice patterns, draw on previous experiences and make judgments about what is happening and why. Much of the time, this serves us well. Without those mental shortcuts, we'd struggle to make even ordinary decisions.

But those same shortcuts can become barriers to understanding.

We begin to see what we expect to see. We interpret someone's behaviour through the lens of what we already believe about them. We listen for confirmation rather than information. And when someone challenges our interpretation, we may become more interested in defending our position than understanding theirs.

I know I've done this.

I've walked into conversations convinced I understood the problem before everyone had finished explaining it. I've mistaken my intentions for my impact. I've believed that because I cared deeply about an outcome, my approach must surely be the right one.

And I've occasionally been so committed to making my point that I missed the point someone else was trying to make.

Here's something I've learned:

Certainty can feel like clarity when it's actually a blind spot.

The challenge is that blind spots rarely announce themselves. They feel like knowledge, experience, intuition or good judgment. Sometimes they even come dressed as principles.

What If the Problem Isn't Them?

One of the most convenient things about being human is our ability to identify what other people need to change.

The colleague who won't listen. The leader who doesn't understand. The partner who always reacts the same way. The team member who can't seem to see the bigger picture.

We can become remarkably skilled at diagnosing everyone else's contribution to a difficult situation while remaining surprisingly incurious about our own.

I certainly could.

And here's where my own development became uncomfortable. I began recognizing that some of the problems I was experiencing weren't simply happening around me. I was contributing to them.

My assumptions influenced my reactions. My reactions influenced other people's responses. My certainty sometimes closed conversations that curiosity might have opened.

I wasn't necessarily responsible for everything that happened. Other people still had agency, choices and accountability of their own.

But I was responsible for me.

And until I became willing to examine my own contribution, I couldn't make meaningful progress.

That's a difficult admission for someone who has spent much of her life helping other people navigate change.

Expertise doesn't exempt us from being the problem. Sometimes it just makes us better at explaining why we're not.

Ouch.

Being Wrong Isn't the Same as Being Worthless

There's a reason this kind of self-examination can be so difficult.

When we've built an identity around being knowledgeable, capable or dependable, admitting we're wrong can feel like surrendering something much bigger than an opinion.

It can feel like surrendering credibility, authority or even belonging.

So we defend. We rationalize. We explain our intentions. We gather evidence that supports our interpretation and quietly discount evidence that doesn't.

Not necessarily because we're arrogant or malicious, but because being wrong has become threatening.

And this is where my understanding of human worth changed how I approached personal development.

I could be wrong without being worthless.

I could recognize bias without concluding I was a terrible person. I could acknowledge that my behaviour had negatively affected someone without making my entire identity the subject of the conversation.

In fact, separating my worth from my performance made it easier to take responsibility for my performance.

I no longer needed every difficult conversation to end with evidence that I was right.

Sometimes, I needed to learn something.

The Practice of Being Wrong

I wish I could tell you that once I recognized these patterns, they disappeared.

They didn't.

I still carry biases. I still make assumptions. I still have moments when my first instinct is to defend rather than understand. And I still occasionally discover that my certainty has travelled considerably farther than the evidence supporting it.

The difference is that I'm becoming more willing to notice.

I'm learning to ask myself what I might be missing. Whether I've confused my interpretation with a fact. Whether I'm responding to what someone actually said or to the story I've constructed about what they meant.

And perhaps most importantly, whether I'm genuinely interested in understanding another perspective or simply waiting for an opportunity to explain why mine is correct.

None of this requires abandoning conviction. We can have strong opinions, make difficult decisions and stand firmly behind our values while remaining open to the possibility that our understanding is incomplete.

Being feisty doesn't require being right.

Sometimes it requires having the courage to discover that we're not.

An Uncomfortable Invitation

This week, I want to offer you a challenge.

Think about a situation in your life where you've been frustrated by someone else's behaviour. Perhaps it's a colleague, a family member, a leader or someone whose decisions seem completely unreasonable to you.

Now, instead of asking what they need to change, ask yourself three questions.

What am I assuming that I haven't actually verified?

How might my behaviour be contributing to the dynamic I'm experiencing?

And what would I have to reconsider if I discovered that my interpretation was wrong?

You may find that your original assessment was entirely reasonable. Sometimes other people really are behaving badly, and recognizing our own contribution doesn't mean accepting responsibility for theirs.

But you might also discover something that changes the conversation.

I know I have.

And I continue to.

Because the most important thing I've learned about being wrong is that it doesn't have to be the end of my credibility.

Sometimes, it's the beginning of my growth.

What if the thing standing between you and your next stage of growth isn't what you don't know, but what you're absolutely certain you do?

Forward, with purpose.

— Amber

Your performance can be evaluated. Your worth cannot.

If this reflection stayed with you, explore The Feisty Human: Recipes for Becoming Someone You Don’t Have to Negotiate.

EXPLORE THE BOOK

Enjoyed this essay? Connect with me on LinkedIn or join the email list below to receive every new edition.

You Don't Have to Negotiate Yourself

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been writing about the relationship between performance and worth.

First, I asked when doing well became evidence that we were worthy. Then I explored the bargains we make with ourselves when we discover which versions of us earn approval, belonging and recognition.

Be capable, and you'll matter.

Be useful, and you'll be needed.

Be exceptional, and you'll be noticed.

Be easy, and you'll belong.

But once we can see the bargain, another question becomes possible:

What would happen if we stopped negotiating?

The Parts of Us We Put on the Table

Negotiation usually involves an exchange. I'll give you this if you give me that.

And I think many of us learn to negotiate ourselves in remarkably similar ways.

I'll give you competence if you give me credibility. I'll give you usefulness if you give me belonging. I'll give you strength if you give me respect. I'll give you achievement if you give me evidence that I matter.

The trouble isn't that we're competent, useful, strong or ambitious. Those may be wonderful qualities.

The trouble is believing we need to keep producing them to maintain our value.

Because eventually, the negotiation becomes exhausting.

What If Nothing Had to Be Earned?

I want to be careful here because I'm not suggesting that nothing in life needs to be earned.

Trust needs to be earned. Expertise needs to be developed. Opportunities sometimes need to be competed for. Relationships require reciprocity. Leadership requires accountability.

Your worth is different.

You arrived with that.

And if that's true, we don't have to become less ambitious or stop caring about doing excellent work. We simply stop asking those things to perform a job they were never capable of doing.

Achievement can tell me I achieved something.

It cannot tell me whether I deserve to exist.

Feedback can tell me something about my performance.

It cannot measure my humanity.

Someone can decide I'm not right for an opportunity.

They do not get to decide my value.

That's a very different way of moving through the world.

Becoming Without Rejecting Who You Are

For a long time, personal development has been framed around becoming better.

Better leaders. Better communicators. Better performers. Better versions of ourselves.

I believe deeply in development. I've spent much of my career teaching it.

But I no longer believe growth has to begin with the assumption that the person standing here today is somehow insufficient.

We can learn without rejecting ourselves.

We can change without shaming who we used to be.

We can receive feedback without putting our identity on trial.

We can become without making our current humanity the problem we're trying to solve.

That's the shift I'm interested in.

The Feisty Human

It's also why I wrote The Feisty Human.

The title isn't about becoming louder, tougher or more defiant. And it certainly isn't about becoming someone who refuses feedback or accountability.

For me, becoming a Feisty Human is about learning to stand in your own humanity without constantly negotiating pieces of it away.

It's about knowing the difference between who you are and how you're performing.

It's about holding yourself accountable without making shame the price of admission.

It's about continuing to grow while refusing the idea that growth is what will finally make you worthy.

And it's about extending that same humanity to other people.

Because when we stop treating worth as something people have to earn, we don't only change our relationship with ourselves.

We change how we lead.

You don't have to stop becoming.

You just don't have to negotiate your worth along the way.

The Feisty Human launches next Friday, October 23.

And I'm very ready to share it with you.

Forward, with purpose.

— Amber

Your performance can be evaluated. Your worth cannot.

If this reflection stayed with you, explore The Feisty Human: Recipes for Becoming Someone You Don’t Have to Negotiate.

EXPLORE THE BOOK

Enjoyed this essay? Connect with me on LinkedIn or join the email list below to receive every new edition.

The Bargain We Never Meant to Make

Last week, I asked a question I've been thinking about for a long time: When did doing well become evidence that you were worthy?

It's an uncomfortable question because most of us probably can't identify the exact moment it happened. I certainly can't. I don't remember consciously deciding that competence would make me valuable, that usefulness would make me important, or that achievement would make me enough.

I think something much quieter happened.

I noticed what worked.

We Learn From What Gets Rewarded

Human beings are extraordinarily good at noticing what earns us belonging, approval, opportunity and recognition. We learn early that some behaviours open doors while others make life harder.

Maybe you were the smart one. The easy one. The funny one. The responsible one. The strong one. The achiever. The helper. The person who never caused trouble. Maybe you became exceptionally good at reading a room, solving a problem, keeping the peace or making yourself useful.

And perhaps those qualities genuinely belonged to you. That's important.

I don't believe our professional personas are necessarily fake. I don't think every strength is a trauma response or every adaptation needs to be diagnosed. Sometimes we're capable because we're capable. Sometimes we're ambitious because we enjoy accomplishing difficult things. Sometimes we're generous because we genuinely like helping people.

The trouble begins when something that works becomes something we believe we need.

The shift can be almost invisible: People value this about me becomes This is why people value me.

Those are very different statements.

The Bargain

This is what I've started thinking of as the bargain.

I'll be competent, and I get to feel credible.

I'll be useful, and I get to feel needed.

I'll achieve, and I get to feel successful.

I'll be strong, and I get to feel respected.

I'll make myself easy to work with, and I get to belong.

Nobody necessarily offered us this bargain. Most of the time, nobody even knows we've made it. We construct it ourselves from years of reinforcement and then forget that we were the ones who signed the imaginary contract.

For a while, it can work beautifully.

In fact, that's part of the problem.

Success Can Hide the Bargain

When the thing you've attached your worth to is also something you're very good at, there may be no obvious reason to question it.

If achievement helps you feel worthy and you keep achieving, the system appears to work. If being needed makes you feel valuable and people keep needing you, nothing seems wrong. If competence gives you confidence and you keep being the person with the answer, the bargain keeps paying dividends.

High performance can hide a worth problem remarkably well.

Until something changes.

You fail.

Someone else gets the opportunity.

Your expertise isn't needed.

Your body can't maintain the pace.

Your career changes.

The children grow up.

The organization moves on.

You retire.

Someone doesn't choose you.

Suddenly, the thing that had been quietly supplying evidence of your value isn't producing the evidence anymore.

And what looks from the outside like disappointment can feel on the inside like an identity crisis.

This Isn't About Blaming the World

It's tempting to look backwards and ask who taught us this. Parents? School? Workplaces? Leadership culture? Capitalism? Social media?

Probably all of them sometimes.

But I'm less interested in assigning blame than I am in noticing the bargain we're carrying now.

Because once I can see it, I have choices.

I can still be capable without asking capability to prove that I matter. I can enjoy recognition without needing applause to confirm my value. I can care deeply about doing excellent work without making excellence the entrance fee for belonging.

And I can receive feedback about my performance without hearing it as a judgment about my humanity.

That's the freedom I'm interested in.

Read the Fine Print

So here's something to sit with this week.

Think about the version of you that has been most rewarded in your life. Not necessarily financially. Think about approval, belonging, praise, trust, recognition and opportunity.

What did that version of you learn?

Maybe it was: Be useful and you'll matter.

Maybe: Be exceptional and you'll be noticed.

Don't need too much and people will stay.

Know the answer and you'll belong in the room.

Keep everyone happy and you'll be safe.

Be strong and you'll be respected.

You don't have to reject any of those qualities. You don't even have to stop doing the things that have helped you succeed.

Just read the fine print.

Ask yourself whether somewhere along the way, something you learned to do became something you believed you had to be.

I've been exploring this question deeply while writing The Feisty Human, because I don't think becoming more human requires us to become less capable, less ambitious or less accountable.

I think it requires something considerably harder.

Learning to let our performance tell us how we're doing without letting it tell us what we're worth.

Your performance can be evaluated. Your worth cannot.

Forward, with purpose.

— Amber

Your performance can be evaluated. Your worth cannot.

If this reflection stayed with you, explore The Feisty Human: Recipes for Becoming Someone You Don’t Have to Negotiate.

EXPLORE THE BOOK

Enjoyed this essay? Connect with me on LinkedIn or join the email list below to receive every new edition.

When performance becomes personal

For most of my career, I was very comfortable being evaluated. Give me the criteria. Tell me what success looks like. Show me the target, and I can work with that.

Performance is measurable. Did the project succeed? Did the team deliver? Did the organization improve? Did I meet the objective? Did I do what I said I would do? Sometimes the answer was yes. Sometimes it wasn't. That's performance, and I've never had much difficulty with the idea that it should be assessed.

But somewhere along the way, many of us learn to make those results mean something much bigger. We stop simply asking, Did I do well? and start asking, What does how well I did say about me?

That's when performance becomes personal.

When the Scorecard Moves Inside

Most of us understand intellectually that our work can be evaluated. In fact, evaluation is necessary. Leaders need feedback. Employees need accountability. Organizations need standards. Students need assessment. Businesses need results. I don't want a world where nobody is accountable because we're afraid someone's feelings might get hurt.

But there's an enormous difference between evaluating what I did and determining what I am worth, and humans are remarkably good at collapsing the two.

A great presentation doesn't simply mean I gave a great presentation; it can become evidence that I'm good at this. A promotion can become proof that I'm going somewhere. Recognition can tell me I'm important. Being needed can reassure me that I matter.

Failure can travel exactly the same road in the opposite direction. The project struggled. I made the wrong decision. I didn't get the promotion. Someone criticized my work. Something I created wasn't received the way I'd hoped.

Suddenly, we're no longer examining an outcome. We're examining ourselves.

When Did Doing Well Become Evidence That You Were Worthy?

That's the question I've been sitting with:

When did doing well become evidence that you were worthy?

I don't think most of us consciously decided this. There probably wasn't a Tuesday afternoon when you announced, “From now on, I shall determine my human value according to my professional performance.” Although, knowing me, I probably would have created a spreadsheet for it.

It happens much more quietly. We learn that good grades get celebrated, competence gets trusted, achievement gets recognized, usefulness gets appreciated, reliability gets rewarded and expertise gets invited into the room. None of those things is inherently wrong. In fact, many of them are entirely appropriate responses to good performance.

The problem isn't the reward. The problem is what we sometimes make the reward mean.

Once success becomes evidence of worth, failure becomes dangerous. It's no longer simply disappointing. It's personal.

The Problem With Making Worth Earnable

There is a logical problem with trying to earn something that should never have been conditional in the first place. If I can earn my worth through achievement, then presumably I can lose it through failure.

If being useful makes me valuable, what happens when nobody needs me? If being accomplished proves that I matter, what happens when someone else outperforms me? If knowing the answer makes me credible, what happens when I don't know? If being strong makes me worthy of respect, what happens when I fall apart?

This is why the relationship between worth and performance matters so much. It isn't because performance doesn't matter.

Performance matters enormously.

We should care about the quality of our work. We should take responsibility when we get things wrong. We should develop competence, learn from feedback, repair harm, improve our skills and honour the commitments we make.

But none of those things requires us to put our humanity on the scorecard.

Your performance can be excellent, mediocre, disappointing or in serious need of improvement. It can even be unacceptable. You can make a terrible decision, fail spectacularly or discover that you simply aren't very good at something yet.

And you can still be a human being of inherent worth.

Those truths can occupy the same room.

Worth Is Not Immunity

This distinction matters because intrinsic worth can easily be misunderstood as an excuse. If my worth cannot be evaluated, does that mean nobody gets to criticize me?

Absolutely not.

Your work can be criticized. Your decisions can be challenged. Your behaviour can have consequences. You can lose the opportunity. You can fail the course. You can be wrong. You can need to apologize. You can discover that you are nowhere near as good at something as you thought you were.

Worth doesn't protect us from consequences. It protects us from turning those consequences into a verdict on our humanity.

And strangely enough, I think that can make us more accountable, not less.

If criticism of my work doesn't threaten my fundamental value, I don't have to defend myself quite so fiercely. If failure doesn't make me a failure, I can examine what happened. If being wrong doesn't make me worthless, I can admit it. If somebody else's excellence doesn't diminish me, I can learn from them instead of competing with them simply to protect myself.

Maybe uncoupling worth from performance doesn't lower the standard at all. Maybe it gives us enough safety to look at our performance more honestly.

Two Different Questions

So the next time something goes particularly well — or particularly badly — notice which question you ask.

How did I do? is a useful question. It can teach you something. It invites reflection, feedback, learning and improvement.

But if you notice yourself drifting toward What does this say about me?, stop there for a moment.

Perhaps the answer is much smaller than you've been making it. Maybe it says you prepared well. Maybe you need more practice. Maybe you made an excellent decision or a terrible one. Maybe you're developing. Maybe you weren't ready. Maybe you absolutely nailed it.

All useful information.

None of it is a measurement of your human value.

I've spent a long time thinking and teaching about this distinction, and more recently I've been writing about it too. It sits underneath much of what I've come to understand about identity, leadership and what it means to remain human in environments that are constantly measuring us. You'll see a little more of that work appearing here over the next few weeks.

For now, this is where I want to begin:

Your performance can be evaluated. Your worth cannot.

Forward, with purpose.

— Amber

Your performance can be evaluated. Your worth cannot.

If this reflection stayed with you, explore The Feisty Human: Recipes for Becoming Someone You Don’t Have to Negotiate.

EXPLORE THE BOOK

Enjoyed this essay? Connect with me on LinkedIn or join the email list below to receive every new edition.

When your strength becomes your cage

I have spent a lot of my life being capable. Give me a problem and I'll figure it out. Put me in a messy situation and I'll organize it. Hand me responsibility and I'll carry it. Need someone to step forward? I'm probably already standing.

For a very long time, I considered this one of my greatest strengths. I still do.

But I've learned something uncomfortable about strengths:

A strength stops being a strength when you're no longer free not to use it.

That's when strength can become a cage.

The Trouble With Being Good at Something

Over the past few weeks, we've been talking about the versions of ourselves that work: the capable one, the strong one, the helper, the achiever, the peacemaker, the person who always knows what to do.

We don't develop these versions of ourselves randomly. They work. They get rewarded. And when something works particularly well, we're understandably inclined to keep using it.

But eventually, there's a question worth asking:

Can I choose not to?

Can the capable person say, “I don't know”? Can the reliable person disappoint someone? Can the helper watch somebody struggle without immediately rescuing them? Can the leader let someone else lead? Can the resilient person say, “Actually, this is too much”? Can the achiever accomplish absolutely nothing of significance today and still feel okay about themselves?

That's where strengths get interesting. Because the opposite of a strength isn't necessarily a weakness.

Sometimes it's freedom.

When Capability Becomes Compulsion

I've been thinking about the difference between being capable and needing to be capable. They're not the same thing.

One gives me options. The other removes them.

If I am capable, I can step forward when my skills are useful. If I need to be capable, I step forward because I don't know who I am if I don't.

If I'm helpful, I can offer support. If I need to be helpful, somebody else's struggle can become almost impossible for me to tolerate.

If I'm resilient, I can recover from difficult things. If I need to be resilient, I may keep enduring things I should actually leave.

If I'm independent, I can take care of myself. If I need to be independent, receiving help can feel like failure.

Same behaviour from the outside.

Very different experience on the inside.

One is capacity. The other is compulsion.

The Strength Everyone Loves

And here's where this gets particularly tricky: other people often benefit from our cages.

The employee who never says no is wonderfully dependable. The leader who carries everything makes life easier for everyone else. The peacemaker keeps uncomfortable conversations from disrupting the room. The resilient person can tolerate conditions nobody should have to tolerate. The helper is always available. The high performer keeps producing.

Of course these behaviours get rewarded. Sometimes we're even celebrated for the very patterns that are exhausting us.

That's why changing them can create friction.

The moment the reliable person says no, someone may call them difficult. When the fixer stops fixing, someone may accuse them of not caring. When the strong person finally says, “I need help,” people may not know what to do with them. When the accommodating person develops boundaries, somebody will almost certainly prefer the old version.

That doesn't automatically mean the change is healthy. Feedback still matters. Impact still matters. Self-awareness still matters.

But resistance doesn't automatically mean the change is wrong, either.

Sometimes resistance simply tells us that an old arrangement worked better for someone else.

Don't Throw Away the Strength

I'm not interested in turning our strengths into pathology.

Capability isn't a trauma response simply because you're capable. Ambition isn't unhealthy because you like accomplishing things. Helping people isn't secretly people-pleasing every time you do it. Resilience isn't dysfunction. Independence isn't avoidance. And leadership isn't ego.

Sometimes a strength is simply a strength.

The goal isn't to become suspicious of everything we're good at. The goal is to have choice.

I want to be capable without believing I must always know. I want to help without needing to be needed. I want to lead without needing to control. I want to be resilient without using resilience as an excuse to tolerate the intolerable. I want to achieve without asking achievement to prove that I matter.

I want access to my strengths.

I just don't want to live inside them.

The Freedom Test

So here's something I've started asking myself:

Can I choose the opposite?

Not forever. Not dramatically. Just sometimes.

If competence is one of my strengths, can I admit I don't know? If generosity is one of my strengths, can I decline? If independence matters to me, can I receive? If leadership comes naturally, can I follow? If achievement energizes me, can I rest? If resilience has carried me through difficult things, can I decide something isn't worth enduring?

And if doing the opposite creates disproportionate discomfort, maybe there's something worth getting curious about.

Not ashamed of.

Curious about.

Because perhaps the question isn't whether you're strong. You probably are.

The question is whether your strength belongs to you...

or whether you've started belonging to it.

Your strengths should expand the ways you can move through the world. They shouldn't reduce them.

So keep the capability. Keep the ambition. Keep the resilience. Keep the leadership. Keep whatever beautiful, hard-earned strengths have helped make you who you are.

Just make sure the door isn't locked behind you.

A strength stops being a strength when you're no longer free not to use it.

Forward, with purpose.

— Amber

Download Chapter Eleven of The Feisty Human and continue the conversation.

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The Version of You That Got Rewarded

There is a version of me who knows how to make things work. Give her a problem and she will find the gap. Give her a struggling team and she will create structure. Give her a difficult conversation and she will help everyone find the words. Give her something broken, confusing, unfinished or falling apart—and she will get to work.

That version of me has been very useful. She has also been heavily rewarded.

People trusted her. They relied on her. They described her as capable, resourceful and strong. They gave her more responsibility because she had already demonstrated that she could carry it. Somewhere along the way, a behaviour that worked became an identity I believed I had to maintain.

This worked. Therefore, this is who I need to be.

Rewarded Behaviours Become Roles

Most of our professional personas do not appear out of nowhere. They form around something that worked.

Maybe you were praised for being easygoing, so you became the person who never made things difficult. Maybe people admired your independence, so you stopped letting them see when you needed help. Maybe you were rewarded for producing exceptional work, so “excellent” quietly became the minimum you would allow yourself to deliver.

Maybe you became known as the calm one, the strong one, the smart one, the dependable one or the person who could always find a solution.

None of those qualities are bad. That is what makes these identities so difficult to notice. They often begin as real strengths.

The problem is not that you learned how to help, achieve, lead, organize, solve or endure. The problem begins when the behaviour stops being something you can choose and becomes something you believe you must perform in order to remain valuable.

The Helper Has to Be Needed

The helper/fixer version of me did not simply enjoy being useful. She learned to locate herself through usefulness.

If something needed doing, I knew where I belonged. If someone needed support, I knew what I could offer. If a problem appeared, I could move toward it with confidence. Problems gave me something concrete to solve, and other people’s needs gave me a role I understood.

Being effective in that role created its own kind of evidence: I am needed. I am contributing. I am valuable here.

There was rarely time to examine that evidence. Being needed creates its own momentum. There is always another problem, another person or another situation asking for attention. Reflection becomes something you will do later, when everything settles down.

But everything rarely settles down for a skilled helper. If one situation no longer needs you, it is remarkably easy to find another that does.

I did not spend much time evaluating who I was within all those needs. I kept placing myself in situations where I was needed instead. The next problem protected me from having to ask what remained when there was nothing for me to fix.

That is the hidden bargain of the helper/fixer persona. It gives you a clear role while quietly making stillness feel unfamiliar.

If I locate my value in being the person who helps, what happens when nobody needs my help? If I understand myself as the fixer, what happens when something cannot—or should not—be fixed by me? If usefulness becomes part of my identity, can I still feel steady when the most honest thing I can say is:

This is not mine to carry.

The Persona Is Not a Lie

It would be easy to describe these professional personas as false selves we need to discard. I do not think that is quite right.

The helper is real. The achiever is real. The dependable person, the peacemaker, the expert and the one who gets things done are all real. They reflect abilities we developed, choices we made and ways we learned to contribute.

But a real part of us can still become an exhausting role when we believe we are not allowed to step outside it.

The persona is not necessarily a lie. It is simply incomplete.

I can be helpful without being responsible for everything. I can recognize a solution without being the person who must implement it. I can care deeply about someone without taking ownership of their outcome. I can allow something to remain unfinished without treating that as evidence that I have failed.

Those distinctions sound simple. Living them is different.

What Did the Room Reward?

Think about the version of you that has been most successful in your professional life. What does that person know how to do? What do people consistently praise them for? What do others expect them to carry?

And what happens inside you when you cannot—or no longer want to—perform that role?

This is not an invitation to reject your strengths. It is an invitation to notice the agreement that may have formed underneath them:

I will be the capable one. I will keep the peace. I will find the answer. I will not need too much. I will make this easier for everyone else.

And in return, I will be valued here.

Most of us never consciously agreed to those terms. We simply noticed what worked and kept doing it.

This Week’s Practice

Complete this sentence:

I learned that people valued me when I was the one who ____________.

Do not overthink it. Notice the first answer that appears.

Then ask yourself:

Is this still something I choose—or something I believe I have to keep performing?

You do not have to stop being helpful, capable, reliable or strong. You do not have to reject the version of you that helped you build your life.

But you are allowed to become more than the behaviour that once earned the room’s approval.

The version of you that got rewarded may be real.

It was never the whole of you.

Forward, with purpose,

Amber

Download Chapter Eleven of The Feisty Human and continue the conversation.

Enjoyed this essay? Connect with me on LinkedIn or join the email list below to receive every new edition.