They Told Me My Work Is Scary. They're Not Wrong.

I was at a networking event this week. Liza was speaking; she's sharp, generous, and properly inspiring about her own entrepreneurial journey.

Before her talk, she turned to me and said that before she did work on herself, she would have run for the hills before coming anywhere near my work. She said it was scary.

Not scary like a horror film. Scary like: if I let this in, things are going to change, and I'm not sure I asked for that.

I had just been telling another group of women that I'm an interesting mix of Cassandra and Pandora. Cassandra, because I tell the truth and nobody quite wants to hear it. Pandora, because the second you open the box, you can't close it again. You've seen what's in there now. Your life starts moving in directions you didn't plan for.

That's fair. That is genuinely fair feedback. I'll take it. And Liza's by no means the first to say it. I hear some version of "scary" often enough that I've stopped being surprised by it.

But what I really want you to know, because I think the "scary" bit gets misunderstood: this isn't about grand gestures. It's not about blowing up your job, your marriage, your whole life in one dramatic weekend. It's teeny tiny. Baby steps. It starts with noticing.

There's a line often attributed to Joseph Campbell that I come back to often: "the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek." Not danger. Not something to run from. The thing that makes you want to look away is usually the exact thing worth looking at.

There's a thing in quantum physics, the observer effect, where the simple act of watching a particle changes how it behaves. Nobody can explain it. It simply happens. And I think we're the same. The moment you start noticing your own conditioning, it starts to shift. You don't have to fix anything yet. You just have to see it.

Nothing to fix. Something to notice. That's the whole starting point.

But people forget how Pandora's myth ends - the last thing left in her box, underneath everything else that got let loose, was hope. That's the bit I'm actually teaching. Hope that it doesn't have to be this way - that you get to choose better for yourself, on purpose, starting now. Cassandra didn't get a box with hope left in it. She just got to be right, eventually, whether anyone believed her or not. Which, honestly, feels like my work on occasion. It can be lonely, being the one who sees it first.

This is one of my most favourite memes - I use it at any tenuous opportunity!

Two examples from my own week, because I am, obviously, still very much in this myself.

One. At that same networking event, I had to leave fifteen minutes early for a car appointment. So there I was at quarter to, perched on the edge of my seat, cringing, not wanting to interrupt, not wanting to be rude, wrestling with whether I could just quietly slip out or whether that made me A Bad Attendee. Good girl conditioning, fully activated, over a car appointment. Clearly, I was broadcasting this indecision as Liza’s partner, John, leaned over to me and said, “Liza would have left by now”. Which was the exact nudge I needed. So I left. Feeling like a little bit of a dick, because I know this stuff, I teach it, but it still gets me. John’s small sentence felt like a nudge from the universe. You didn't need permission. You never do.

Two. A call that went sideways. In hindsight, I should have just named it plainly in the moment: we're talking at cross purposes, you're hearing this, I mean that, and that's just not what's actually happening here. I didn't, and it curdled into an email that had a proper go at my character. The person who wrote it clearly hadn't read the book, listened to the podcast, followed the newsletter, or looked at more than about four seconds of my LinkedIn. They met the fully-formed, sweary, direct version of me with zero context - and reacted to that. It stung, not going to lie. But it was also a mirror. A useful one.

Because I've been doing this work on myself since 2021, when I started writing my book. Before that, in 2020, I went into counselling terrified after my ADHD diagnosis. Terrified, if I'm honest, of being so angry. Because I had a strong belief that women are “not allowed” to be angry. Yet, I was so flipping angry about the years I had struggled, thinking I was the problem, I felt that I was completely broken and fairly useless. What would my life have looked like if I had received this information sooner? Five years later, I have spent every single one of them becoming the truest, me-est version of me I know how to be.

So when someone meets that version cold, with no context, and it reads to them as "a bit much" - I've had to ask myself: would I change it?

No. Genuinely, no. This is the first time in my actual life I have been fully me.

And if that comes across as angry sometimes - excellent. Women are trained from childhood to be quiet, agreeable, easy to be around, and “behave” (hate that word). If you look at everything that training has cost us - the boundaries we didn't set, the injustices we swallowed, the years spent thinking we were the problem. And then look at the wider world, where women are still harmed just for existing out loud. If you're not a bit angry about that, I'd gently ask what you've been avoiding noticing.

So this week, I'm not asking you to do anything dramatic. Simply: what's one small thing you've been quietly noticing about yourself lately? You don't have to fix it. You don't even have to tell anyone. Just notice it.

That's how mine started, too.

If you want a bit of company while you do that noticing, I am hosting a free webinar - What Would Your Life Look Like If You Stopped Being So Useful? - is on 30 July. Feels timely, given my car confession above. https://good-girl-deprogramming.kit.com/stop-being-so-useful

And if you're reading this on a Sunday with a cuppa, Liza, this one's for you. Big love. I also wrote a LinkedIn post about her brilliant talk, where she dropped some serious knowledge - you can read it here.

Mx

PS: If you want to explore my thoughts on anger - this is my favourite writing on the subject - https://goodgirldeprogramming.substack.com/p/rage-is-sacred-the-leadership-tool