When Professional Feels Like a Performance
If you've built a career on being what other people need, this one's for you.You're the one who always shows up. The calm one. The capable one. The one who never drops the ball (even when you're quietly falling apart behind the scenes). You've mastered the "I've got it together" tone. You know how to write the perfect follow-up email. You anticipate what people need before they ask. And maybe you even take pride in how unflappable you seem. But that polished version of you is tired. Because it's not all of you. It's the work persona you built to survive and succeed in systems that didn't leave much room for messiness. Or emotion. Or nuance. Or rest. And while your work persona may have helped you earn your place at the table, it's now costing you something much bigger... yourself. You start to notice it when...
You’re tired because you’ve been performing a version of yourself that no longer fits. And the longer you stay in performance mode, the harder it becomes to remember what authenticity even feels like. In this week’s episode of The Balanced Badass Podcast™, I’m breaking down what a work persona really is, where it comes from, how to recognize when yours is running the show—and most importantly, how to start coming back to yourself without setting your whole career on fire.
This one is close to home for me, and probably for you, too. We were never meant to build a career by slowly abandoning ourselves. You don’t have to fake it to be taken seriously. You don’t have to smile through your own resentment to be seen as a leader. You don’t have to keep performing to be worthy of rest, recognition, or real connection. You just have to start telling the truth about how you feel—first to yourself. Then, when you’re ready, to everyone else. You in? Tara |
