You’ve Spent Years Proving You Can Handle It. Maybe This Season Is About Proving You Don’t Have To.

Last week, I saw the statement “You’ve spent years proving you can handle it; maybe this season is about proving you don’t have to” and said, “yeah, I need to blog about this.” It came at the perfect time, considering I am presenting a workshop with Stanford University next week on this exact topic: taking up space in performance-based, competition-driven work environments. 

Full disclosure, I’ve been sitting with this topic for a while, intentionally discerning the best way to deliver it in a 60-minute interactive, relationship-building, virtual workshop. Thanks to my autoethnographic dissertation on achievement and years of hard work, I have recalibrated my life to where I no longer feel obligated to overextend myself to prove I am an asset. I am actively in my season of proving “I don’t have to.” However, it’s not lost on me that I entered this season after having earned two terminal degrees, clinical licensure, and tenure. I worked hard, I mean HARD, to earn the freedom to be selective with the opportunities I pursue and accept. I am privileged to be in a position where it is a lot easier for me to say “no” without retaliation or retribution. But how do I approach this topic with others, including high-achieving professionals, students, faculty, and staff who may not have this luxury?

It feels inappropriate for me to say, “I’ve made it, so you can too!” So instead, let’s use my 4-part Critical Self-Reflection Framework (CSRF) to explore this topic and what it means for you. Wherever you are in the process-just getting started, entrenched in your journey of career stability, or reaping the benefits of your hard work-using my CSRF, you can identify where you are and assess your next steps. Let’s get started. 

Step One: Create Space

For most of my life, achievement was my currency. I measured my worth by my productivity, my success, and how much I could handle without breaking. If someone needed something, I was (and many times still am) the one they called, and I took pride in that. Being the person everyone depended on meant I was reliable, capable, respected, trustworthy, resilient, creative, resourceful, and strong. It defined my identity and boosted my self-esteem. Being a hard worker and a high achiever opened doors I never even dreamed of. It’s part (or likely most) of the reason why I’m here as an entrepreneur writing this blog.

Over time, I created the life I wanted: the degrees, the career, the reputation, the opportunities… but I didn’t learn to enjoy it. I was always bouncing from one opportunity to the next, from one responsibility to another. My worth became tied to how well I performed, and that mindset led to burnout, trust issues, and emotional exhaustion.

The shift came when I asked myself a simple but uncomfortable question: “Why?” Why do I always take on so much, all the time, all at once? If I’ve spent years proving I can handle it, when will I allow myself to rest in the success I’ve built? That moment of pause, that decision to breathe and reflect, was fundamental to the next stages of the journey, and it’s what I’m going to ask you to do now. 

Take a couple of moments to really reflect on all that you have accomplished and overcome. Then, as you continue to read this blog post, sit with it. Reflect on it. What challenges you? What excites you? What do you want to know more about? Allow yourself to create space for curiosity, inquisitiveness, and discovery. You don’t need to have all the answers and, honestly, the goal is for you to leave with more questions than you started with. This motivates us to create space again as we continue exploring how we want to live our lives with more intention.

Step Two: Challenge Assumptions and Constructs

Once you create space to breathe and reflect, the next step is to challenge the assumptions and constructs that have shaped your relationship with work, success, and value.

In a world obsessed with performance, competition, and productivity, it’s easy to focus on what we owe our organizations, clients, and colleagues. Job postings often focus on job responsibilities, work demands, and the required and preferred qualifications of the applicant. We innately start to ask ourselves if we measure up. Can we meet the needs of the organization or agency? Are we a good fit for providing the services required of the position? 

What would happen if the roles were reversed? If instead we put out a description of the agencies we would want to work for? If we put more emphasis on why the job needs us compared to why we need them?

In workplace dynamics, you are not just a contributor. You are the culture, the innovation, and the sustainability of the spaces you occupy. Instead of believing that if you work harder, you can prove you belong, recognize that you have already proven it. You were hired. You got the job, and you show up every day. They saw something in you that they needed. If your employer can see it in you, it’s time you focused on seeing it for yourself. 

Said differently, proving yourself may be less about demanding an intense work ethic and more about nurturing a different mindset. For example, only 8.53% of full-time faculty across over 3,300 degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States are Black. As part of this 8.53%, I felt mounting pressure to prove myself; that is, until I took time to realize that I was thriving already. I had the performance evaluations and professional portfolio to prove that I wasn’t just meeting expectations, I was vastly exceeding them! I met all tenure requirements within the first two years of my position, so when I went up for tenure a couple of years later, I playfully (yet somewhat seriously) joked that by the end of the academic year I would either have tenure or a lawsuit. (Ha!) What needed to change wasn’t my work ethic, but my mindset.

So, what if, instead of asking “What do I owe this company?” we asked “What would this company lose if I stopped showing up?” That question alone can shift how you see your power. It reframes your role from one of constant proving to one of reciprocal value. When we challenge those constructs, we begin to see that our worth doesn’t need permission or validation because it already exists.

Step Three: Honor Complexities

It’s not always easy to let go of the need to prove ourselves, and that’s okay. To truly honor that tension, we have to understand why it’s there.

One of the most useful lenses for this is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a psychological framework that helps us understand human motivation. It starts with basic needs like food and safety and moves up through belonging, esteem, and finally, self-actualization.

In the professional world, many of us are operating in the lower levels of that hierarchy without realizing it. We chase security, stability, and acceptance, and we overextend ourselves to keep those needs met. Even when we achieve higher levels like esteem, influence, and success, we can still find ourselves afraid to lose what we’ve worked so hard for. That’s where control starts to feel external. We begin to believe that our safety or success depends on how much we can prove rather than on how much we have earned.

When we honor the complexity of this, we stop blaming ourselves for overworking or overperforming. We can say, “I understand why I’ve been doing this, but now I can choose differently.” That understanding, that grace, is growth and leads us to the final step of my CSRF.

Step Four: Make a Choice

Awareness means little without action. The final step in my Critical Self-Reflection Framework (and perhaps the most liberating one) is to make a choice.

You don’t have to overhaul your life overnight. I definitely don’t recommend it! Instead, practice making little choices incrementally. Here are a few small mindset shifts to help you reclaim your power and peace:

• Redefine hard work. Hard work does not mean coming in early and staying late. Hard work can mean maximizing productivity and progress, recognizing that building in intentional rest gives us the resources to produce and progress more efficiently.

• Practice gratitude for your impact. Instead of apologizing for what you can’t do, appreciate what you have already done. Instead of questioning if you did something “correctly” or “the right way,” celebrate yourself for what went well and reflect on opportunities to do things differently next time.

• Validate yourself. Before looking outward for recognition, remember to give it to yourself. Witnesses may only see the end product, the what. Only you know the “how;” how you invested your resources (time, energy, focus, ideas, etc.) into making the outcome a reality. 

• Honor your limits as boundaries, not flaws. Burnout is not a sign of commitment; it’s a signal that you misused your resources. Saying no is not weakness; it’s wisdom.

When we learn to view rest, boundaries, and reflection as part of the work, we reclaim our autonomy, power, and internal locus of control. We stop letting systems and expectations dictate our worth, and we instead define it for ourselves.

You’ve already proven you can handle it. Now it’s time to live in what you’ve built.

In Closing

Proving you don’t have to handle it isn’t about doing less; it’s about doing differently. It’s about grounding your power in who you are, not in how much you can do. These four steps (creating space, challenging constructs, honoring complexities, and making a choice) aren’t one-time actions. They are lifelong practices of self-preservation and empowerment.

If this reflection resonated with you, imagine the transformation that can happen when you start putting it into practice. Then consider the waves of change that can ripple through when entire teams and organizations embrace this mindset. This topic is one I explore in my Stanford University workshop series and in my other professional development and leadership sessions designed for high-achieving professionals who want to thrive without burning out.

Regardless of who you are, what you do, and who you do it for, remember that you have worked hard to be in the position you are in. You worked for it, you earned it. This season should be about enjoying it.

🌿 Call to Action

• Bring this message to your organization—book me to speak about rest, leadership, and self-preservation.

• Or, if you’re on your own journey of redefining success, join my email list below for quarterly reflections, resources, and reminders to rest in the success you’ve already built.
  
  

FAQ

1. What does it mean to “create space” in my professional life?
It means slowing down enough to reflect on your experiences, needs, and emotions before reacting to them. It’s not about doing less; it’s about thinking more intentionally about what you’re doing and why.

2. How can I tell if I’m over-identifying with my performance?
If you feel anxious or unworthy when you’re not producing, or if praise feels like permission to rest, you may be defining your worth through achievement.

3. What if my workplace doesn’t support rest or reflection?
You can’t always change the system, but you can change your approach within it. Boundaries, self-awareness, and self-validation are forms of quiet rebellion and powerful self-preservation.

4. I want to learn more about this topic. Do you have any additional resources you would recommend?

I highly recommend reading I Am My Brand by Kubi Springer. While the book is geared towards entrepreneurship, it has valuable lessons on recognizing the value you bring to work environments.

5. How can Dr. Shayla Élise Walker’s workshops help?
My workshops, keynotes, and continuing education courses help professionals and organizations integrate rest, reflection, and restoration into their leadership practices. To learn more, click here.