The Day I Stopped Shrinking

I used to be very good at making myself small.

Not physically — though I did that too, the hunched shoulders, the taking up less space at the table. I mean the other kind of small. The kind where you dim your ideas so they don't outshine someone else's. Where you qualify every statement before you make it. Where you laugh off your own achievements before anyone else can.

I thought I was being humble. I thought I was being likeable. I thought I was making it easier for everyone.

What I was actually doing was disappearing.

The Shrinking Starts Early

For most women I know, the shrinking starts long before the workplace.

It starts in classrooms where you learn that being too smart makes you unpopular. In families where the boys are encouraged to take up space and the girls are praised for being quiet. In friendships where you learn that having strong opinions makes you difficult.

By the time you arrive in your first professional role, you've had years of practice. You know how to soften an idea so it doesn't threaten anyone. You know how to frame a disagreement as a question. You know how to be competent without being intimidating.

You've become an expert at being just enough — never too much.

What Shrinking Costs You

The problem with shrinking is that it works. In the short term, it makes things easier. People like you. Meetings go smoothly. You don't make enemies.

But over time, something starts to hollow out.

You stop knowing what you actually think, because you've spent so long thinking about what's safe to say. You stop trusting your own instincts, because you've spent so long second-guessing them. You stop feeling like yourself, because the self you've been presenting is a carefully edited version of the real thing.

And the imposter syndrome feeds on this. Because if you're not showing up as yourself, you're always performing. And performance always carries the risk of being found out.

The Day It Changed

I can tell you exactly when it happened.

I was in a strategy meeting — senior leadership, high stakes, the kind of room where I'd spent years being careful. Someone presented a plan that I knew, with absolute certainty, was wrong. Not just suboptimal — genuinely, demonstrably wrong. I had the data. I had the experience. I had three years of evidence sitting in my head.

And I felt the familiar pull. Soften it. Frame it as a question. Don't make it a confrontation.

And then something in me just... didn't.

I said, clearly and without qualification, "I think this approach is going to fail, and here's why."

The room went quiet. I laid out my reasoning. I cited the evidence. I didn't apologise for having a view.

There was pushback. There was discomfort. And then, slowly, the conversation shifted. By the end of the meeting, the plan had changed.

Afterwards, a colleague I respected pulled me aside and said, "That was the most useful thing anyone said in that room today. Why don't you do that more often?"

I didn't have a good answer.

What Happens When You Stop

When you stop shrinking, things get uncomfortable before they get better. People who were used to the edited version of you don't always know what to do with the real one.

But something else happens too.

You start to feel like yourself again. The hollowness fills in. You stop performing and start participating. You stop managing how you're perceived and start focusing on what you're actually there to do.

And the imposter voice — the one that's been feeding on your performance — starts to lose its grip. Because you're not pretending anymore. You're just you. And you turns out to be more than enough.

You Don't Have to Earn the Right to Take Up Space

I spent years believing that I had to prove myself before I was allowed to be fully present. That I had to earn the right to take up space.

I was wrong.

You don't have to earn it. You already have it. You've always had it.

The shrinking was never about your worth. It was about a world that told you your worth was conditional. It was a survival strategy for a system that wasn't built for you.

But you don't have to keep surviving. You can start living — fully, loudly, without apology.

Stop shrinking. The world needs what you actually have to offer.

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The full story of how I learned to stop shrinking — and what I found on the other side — is in Confessions of an Imposter. Available now on Amazon — and the audiobook is live this week too. Listen to the audiobook on Audible — narrated by the brilliant Sarah Kowalchuck.