Why You're Still Performing For People Who Don't Care

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, most of us learn to hide.

Not from anything real. From imagined judgment.

From who we imagineother people think we are.

I learned this thanks to my daughter.

I forgot to turn the sprinklers back on after winter.

By the time I noticed, half my front lawn was dead — brown, patchy, embarrassing. Every time I pulled into the driveway I felt a small sting of shame. What do the neighbors think? I started watering at odd hours, hoping no one would see me out there tending to my failure.

I was hiding.

One afternoon my four-year-old daughter ran out onto that dead grass and through the water from the hose with bare feet, arms out, completely unbothered. Having the time of her life.

She didn't see a dead lawn. She saw a yard. She bounced on her trampoline, helped me water the lawn, and spoke to the neighbors from our backyard when they came out to theirs.

I stood there with the hose and watched her, trying to hide behind the stream of water so that I wouldn't be seen watering my shameful grass.

And I realized something.

She has no idea the grass is "wrong."

That's when I realized: the shame wasn't about the grass. It was about an inner four-year-old inside me.

One who learned somewhere along the way that if I didn't do things the "right" way, I'd be rejected.

My actual four-year-old daughter never got that memo.

She was just playing. In her yard. On her terms.

CONSIDER

• What are you hiding from right now, and whose opinion are you actually afraid of?
• Where in your life are you more concerned with what others think or might think about of you? What would it be like to be 10% more in your own business?
• What would it be like to set a boundary around imagining what others think of you, and simply keeping your attention on what you actually enjoy having it on?

If these questions resonate, consider taking the 2 min clarity assessment to identify where you might be out of alignment, and what to do about it.

👉 Take the free 2 min quiz ​

-Alex