The Relief Is in Hitting Send

I posted a picture of myself in middle school on LinkedIn.

Not a professional headshot. Not the good angle from a conference stage. A photo from the bad bangs and perm era, sitting right next to a caption meant for grown adults who read quarterly reports and buy industrial ceramics for a living.

I hit post and waited for the floor to open.

It didn't. No cringing replies. No polite silence. Not even the slow-motion horror I'd rehearsed the night before. A few people said something kind. Then the internet moved on, the way it always does.

Here's what I actually learned from a middle school photo: the embarrassment I'd been bracing for had already happened. It happened the night before, at 11 p.m., staring at my phone and running every bad outcome on a loop. It happened in the version of me who'd already lived through the reactions of people who hadn't even seen the post yet. By the time I hit send, the hard part was over. I just hadn't noticed.

I'd felt this before. My first cold calls in sales were dreadful — the kind where you rehearse the opening line four times and still stumble on it live. I was sure the person on the other end could hear exactly how unsure I was. Then the calls started getting answered. Some people said no. Some said yes. Nobody hung up laughing. Slowly, and a little late, I realized the entire performance of humiliation I'd been running had an audience of one. Me.

The embarrassment lives in the anticipation. It is almost never in the act.

I wish I could tell you I learned that once and it stuck. It didn't. It's a muscle, and like any muscle, it forgets itself the second I stop using it. So these days, when I feel that specific flavor of dread — the kind where I can't name what I'm afraid of except that it might make me look foolish — I've learned to treat the feeling as information, not instruction. It's telling me where the growth is. It is not telling me to stop.

So I dive in. I don't wait for the fear to leave first, because it won't. I don't wait to feel ready, because readiness was never what stood between me and the send button. I just send it.

This shows up constantly in leadership, maybe more than anywhere else. The hard conversation you've rehearsed forty ways and still don't want to have. The idea you're not sure will land in the room. The apology you owe someone and have been quietly avoiding all week. It's all the same feeling, dressed up as risk, when it's really just discomfort wearing a costume.

You are not required to feel ready. You are only required to hit send.

And here's the part nobody tells you going in: the relief you're waiting for was never going to come from how people responded. It doesn't live in the good reaction. It doesn't die in the bad one either. It lives one moment earlier — the moment you stop negotiating with yourself and just do the thing.

The relief isn't in the feedback. It's in the moment you hit send.

If you're sitting on something right now — the email, the post, the hard conversation, the idea you've been polishing instead of sharing — that's your nudge. Not from me. From every version of this that's already been true, for me, first.

If this is the kind of honest, unfinished leadership talk you want more of, I send a short note most weeks — no polish, just what's actually true. Join the list.

And if you're leading alone right now and could use a thinking partner who's been in the room, that's the work I do. Let's talk.