I got this text from Gigi this week, and it made me smile for a lot of reasons. Partly because it’s fun watching your kids slowly step toward who they’re becoming, but also because there was something unexpectedly hopeful about seeing someone excited to move toward an industry so many people my age are currently questioning, rethinking, or trying to rediscover their place inside of.
What struck me most was how natural it all felt to her. There was no overthinking, no strategic five-year plan, no need to fully understand where it was all leading before allowing herself to feel excited about it. Just curiosity, energy, and movement toward something that felt interesting and alive.
And I think that’s something many of us lose touch with over time.
When we’re younger, there’s an understanding that we’re figuring things out as we go. You try things on. You move toward opportunities before you fully understand them. You imagine yourself into future versions of your life before you’ve completely earned your place there. But somewhere along the way, especially in career transition, we start believing we need certainty before movement. We convince ourselves we should already know exactly who we are, where we’re headed, and how it’s all going to work before we allow ourselves to step into something new.
So we wait to feel more qualified, more certain, more confident.
But looking back, I’m not sure that’s actually how confidence works.
Most of the meaningful moments in my career happened before I felt fully prepared for them. The leadership roles that felt slightly too large, the opportunities where I said yes before I fully understood how I was going to deliver, the moments where I stepped into rooms before I completely believed I belonged there. At the time, I thought confidence came first and action followed, but most of the time it was the opposite. The confidence showed up because I moved before I completely believed in myself.
And maybe that’s part of what growth actually is.
Not pretending to be someone else or performing certainty you don’t feel, but acting slightly ahead of your current certainty and allowing experience to close the gap. Because the future version of you usually appears long before you fully trust it.
It shows up in the conversations you’re drawn toward, the instincts you already trust, the work that energizes you, and the questions you keep asking. It exists in the version of yourself you can almost picture, even if you’re not fully there yet.
Sometimes confidence isn’t something you build first.
Sometimes you borrow a little of it from the person you’re becoming.
“Your 50” is a 50-week reflection series about realigning, activating, and expressing what comes next.