The Courage to Be Yourself

9/15/2025 • 12 min read

I’ve spent the past 10 years working as a consultant across many different industries and countries, helping teams build products, scale systems, and navigate complexity. And if there’s one pattern that has never failed to show up, it’s this:

The biggest obstacles to success are almost never technical. They are interpersonal.

Most of the time, what derails progress isn’t a lack of know-how, process, or tooling. It’s the quiet interpersonal tension no one names. The unresolved conflict behind the scenes. The fragile egos, unspoken rivalries, and subtle acts of self-preservation that break down trust before any roadmap can deliver.

There are many similar challenging forces in the workplace today that wear people down over time. You show up with integrity but the loudest person takes the credit. You try to keep things real but fake alignment and shallow performance are rewarded. You want to do meaningful work but half your energy is spent managing tensions that no one dares to name. Slowly it becomes harder to tell what is genuine and what is just a performance.

Moreover, it is so easy to confuse virtue signalling with actual virtue, the right language, the right causes, the right image, all of it often presented without substance. Watching this unfold again and again makes it tempting to shut down, grow cynical, or slowly become the same, demanding your piece of the pie and playing the game you once despised.

And sooner or later you might also face direct attack. I have many times. There are always people who, for reasons outside your control, will try to put you down, discredit you, or quietly undermine your place. Often this happens because they unconsciously unload their emotional garbage on whoever is closest, simply because they do not have the resources to deal with the very challenges described above. Sometimes it happens even though you never provoked it. Sometimes it is simply because your presence, your progress, or your competence makes someone else feel small.

That is normal! It happens everywhere. But it’s dangerous if you’re not ready for it. Because if you don’t have the skills and inner posture to deal with it, these people will drain you, distort you, and sometimes even take the achievements that should have been yours.

That is how people lose themselves. Not all at once but inch by inch. I have seen many talented people slowly torn down until they break, burn out, and the spark that once made them brilliant fades into mere survival. I have also seen others lose their way by adapting too much, joining whatever trend seemed necessary to belong or move forward, which is a sad reflection of the pressures people face.

This article is about another way. I want to encourage those who want to grow, lead, and contribute without becoming bitter, fake, or performative. It is about ambition that is not built on compensation or self preservation but on clarity, courage, and real value. My background in psychology has given me the resources and resilience to cope with these challenges, and I am sharing this and other reflections to help people navigate the same pressures without losing themselves. What follows is only a small subset of ideas that come to mind, practical things you can begin to use today. There is much more to say, and this is merely scratching the surface. Over the years I have come to believe that staying mentally healthy in ambitious environments is its own kind of expertise. Not because the work is hard but because the people part is so much harder.

1. Build inner anchors instead of external armour

One of the fastest ways to lose yourself in ambitious environments is to let your sense of worth get hijacked by recognition. If the only time you feel valuable is when someone praises you, promotes you, or applauds you in public, then you’re already playing a game you can’t win. Because no matter how good you are, there will always be people who don’t see it, who don't want to see it, don’t care, or would rather take you down than lift you up.

I’ve been attacked many times for no reason other than being there, doing my work, or being visible in a space where someone else felt insecure. At first it’s confusing, even enraging. You start asking yourself: What did I do wrong? Why do they have a problem with me? How do I fix this? And many peoples first reaction and instinct is often to double down on being accommodating, to smooth things over, to prove you’re not a threat.

But here’s what I eventually learned: when people treat you badly, it says far more about them than it does about you. Their hostility is often just the surface of something deeper. Their own insecurity, jealousy, or unresolved struggle. It’s not a mirror of your worth. It’s a projection of theirs.

That is why you need inner anchors. Armour is brittle. It cracks the moment you are not recognised, or worse, when you are attacked. And if your armour makes you react with aggression, you often give people exactly what they were looking for in the first place, even if they are not fully aware of it themselves. Anchors are different. They hold no matter the storm.

Anchors are built from contribution, not compensation. You remind yourself: I’m not here to be admired. I’m here to be useful! You stop measuring your worth against who claps for you, and start measuring it against whether the work is moving forward, whether people grow around you, whether the thing you’re building actually matters.

This shift is not about lowering ambition. It’s about cleaning it. If your ambition is fuelled by compensation - proving yourself, silencing critics, chasing applause - it will eventually hollow you out. But if it’s fuelled by contribution, it becomes a source of stability. You can take risks. You can face disapproval. You can even be disliked, and still stand tall.

Practical anchors you can build:

1. Allow yourself to be imperfect. You do not need to win every argument or every 'battle'. Accepting imperfection makes you stronger, not weaker, because it keeps you moving instead of armouring up against every small criticism.

2. Stop wasting energy and time trying to control other people’s opinions. What others think, feel, or say about you is their task, not yours. The moment you stop trying to manage it, you free up the energy to stay calm and effective.

3. Separate what is truly your task from what belongs to others. Your task is to contribute and act with clarity. Their reactions, emotions, or agendas are not yours to carry.

4. Encourage yourself instead of chasing praise. Recognition will always be unstable. Encouragement is what keeps your anchor inside you, reminding you of your own progress and effort, even when no one else notices.

2. Practice Horizontal Relationships

Ambitious environments are full of vertical games. Someone is always trying to look bigger by making others look smaller. Titles, org charts, cliques, hidden competitions. All of it creates a constant background noise of better and worse, above and below. If you are not careful, you get pulled into it without even noticing.

The danger of vertical thinking is that it turns every interaction into a measurement. You are either above someone or below them. You are winning or you are losing. I know this because I have been there myself. I caught myself falling into that mindset and it almost drained the joy out of the work. Pulling myself out of it was not easy, but it was the only way to stay sane and keep growing professionally.

I have seen this dynamic poison entire organisations. Meetings stop being about solving problems and become stages for subtle status plays. People with sharp ideas go quiet because they are tired of fighting invisible battles. Leaders surround themselves with 'the flatterers' because it feels safer than hearing the truth. In the end, no one is really talking to each other. Everyone is just talking up or talking down.

The alternative is to practice horizontal relationships. It sounds simple, but it really takes discipline and attention. You treat people at eye level and you mean it! Not as threats you need to outshine, not as superiors you need to flatter, and not as subordinates you need to control. Just people, on the same ground, each with something to contribute.

Please don't misunderstand me. This does not mean ignoring real differences in responsibility or authority. It means refusing to let those differences corrupt your mind and the way you relate to human beings. When you hold that posture, something changes. You stop overreacting to criticism because it no longer threatens your professional identity. You stop putting certain people on pedestals and others in boxes. You create a space where actual collaboration can happen.

Practical anchors for horizontal relationships:

1. Practice to listen for substance, not status. Ask yourself: is this idea useful, no matter who it comes from?

2. Respond without competing. When someone shares an achievement, resist the urge to top it. Offer recognition, not one-upmanship.

3. Snap out of the ranking game. Notice when you feel the urge to compare yourself. Redirect it into contribution: how can I add value here?

4. Hold steady eye level, even with power. Respect authority, but do not worship it. Respect juniors, but do not patronise them!

3. Choose Contribution Over Performance

All of you know that modern workplaces are noisy. Everyone is 'performing' in some way. On stage in meetings, in carefully curated Slack threads, on LinkedIn with the perfect thought-leadership posts and comments. Some of this is harmless, but when performance becomes the main driver, the actual work suffers. The surface looks polished while the substance underneath is neglected.

I have seen talented people waste years trying to keep up appearances instead of doing the thing they were actually hired to do. They perfected the show, but not the contribution. From the outside they looked strong and inspirational, but inside they were exhausted, hollow, and terrified of being found out.

The temptation is real. When you see recognition flowing toward performance, you start to wonder if you should play along too. Maybe you should say less of what you really think, and more of what sounds good. Maybe you should package every small task as a big achievement. Maybe you should ride the same trends as everyone else, just to show that you belong.

But performance can be a trap. It gets you attention in the short term, but it erodes trust in the long term. People eventually notice when there is no substance behind the show. And by then, you might have built a career on something that no longer feels like you. I have also seen people in this position lose connection with those around them, especially with the people below them in the organisation. Unable to contribute in a meaningful way, they slowly lose the trust and respect that once gave them influence. Over time their practical ability faded or it never had the chance to fully develop because all their energy went into 'climbing the ladder'. This in itself makes everything else harder, the tensions, the conflicts, the constant need to protect status, and it often becomes a direct path to burnout.

The alternative is contribution. I believe you should try to keep your focus on what is useful and to ask yourself: what can I bring that moves this forward? What will still matter six months from now? How can I make life easier for the people I work with, or better for the customers we serve? Contribution does not always get the loudest applause, but it builds something that performance never can: credibility!

Practical anchors for choosing contribution:

1. Track outcomes, not optics. What actually changed because of my work, not how it looked?

2. Let actions speak before words. Share progress, but make sure it is grounded in substance.

3. Resist the bandwagon. Focus your energy on the skills, passions, and perspectives that make you you.

4. Align ambition with usefulness. Aim high, but tie your goals to contributions that matter beyond your own status.

Closing Thoughts

Ambitious careers will always test you. The higher you aim, the more pressure, politics, and hidden dynamics you will face. You cannot control that. What you can control is how you show up inside it. The choice is whether you let the environment shape you into something bitter and performative, or whether you use it as a daily training ground to build clarity, courage, and resilience.

Anchoring yourself instead of armouring up, relating to people at eye level instead of in endless rankings, and focusing on contribution instead of performance. These are not theories dreamed up. They are practices that actually work, and I know this because I have applied them myself and coached others to do the same. It is like going to the gym: you work on it every day, and you cannot expect to become strong just by reading this article or any book on the subject. Practice builds strength, and setbacks are part of the process. It can be incredibly painful at times, but the key is to notice when you slip, snap out of it, and remind yourself of the path you are choosing.

At its core, ambition is not about proving anything to others, it is about having the courage to be yourself, to protect your mental health, and to build a career that is both lasting and truly your own.