When did you start believing you had to earn your place?
I don’t know when it starts, but somewhere along the way, many of us begin living like we’re in an audition.
We audition for friendships by trying to be more agreeable. We audition for relationships by wondering if we’re interesting enough, attractive enough, successful enough, or easy enough to love. We audition at work by believing our value comes from how much we produce. We even audition on social media, carefully deciding which parts of ourselves deserve to be seen.
The problem is, auditions are exhausting because they assume one thing: you still have to earn your place.
Lately, I’ve been wondering how much of my life I’ve spent trying to convince people to choose me instead of asking a much more important question: Do I even want to choose them?
Take a second and think about your own life.
Where are you still trying to earn your place? Is it at work? In a friendship? In your family? In a relationship? Or have you become so used to performing that you don’t even notice you’re doing it anymore?
Maybe you’ve never thought about it this way before. But I want you to imagine something. Imagine an actor walking into an audition. They memorize every line. They worry about what the casting director wants. They analyze every facial expression, every piece of feedback, every silence. Then they leave wondering whether they were enough.
Now imagine finding out after all of that, they already had the role. How differently would they have walked into the room?
That’s what so many of us are doing with our lives. We’re performing for positions we’ve already earned. We’re proving our worth to people who should simply be getting to know us. We’re shrinking parts of ourselves because we’re afraid authenticity won’t get us cast.
I know this because I spent years doing exactly that. For a long time, I thought if I accomplished enough, someone would finally look at me and say, I’m proud of you. So I kept going.
I graduated with my master’s degree while spending those same two and a half years flying across the country weekly on red eyes, balancing being both a student and a caregiver. During that time, I started a national nonprofit, built a career in public speaking, and eventually became an international speaker.
I was twenty-six. And yet, the person whose approval I wanted most didn’t come to my graduation. I wasn’t far enough along and they were disappointed that this was all I had done by that point in my life.
Looking back, I realized that somewhere along the way, my goals stopped being about growth and started becoming performances. I was auditioning. Every achievement felt like another line I had to memorize, another performance that might finally earn the standing ovation I was waiting for.
But no accomplishment ever feels like enough when you’re trying to earn love, approval, or belonging through achievement. The truth is, no amount of success can fill a role that was never yours to perform in the first place.
Instead, I started asking a different question: Why am I giving someone else the role of deciding my worth?
The truth is, the right people aren’t looking for your performance. They’re looking for your presence.
I think about this a lot because auditions create a strange relationship with yourself. Your attention is always focused outward. You’re constantly reading the room instead of listening to yourself. You become so focused on being chosen that you stop asking whether the environment actually feels like home.
When was the last time you asked yourself, “Do I actually like who I become around these people?”
Not whether they like you. Whether you like you.
Sometimes the greatest red flag isn’t how someone treats you. It’s how much you abandon yourself to keep them.
I don’t think confidence is walking into every room believing everyone will like you. I think confidence is walking into a room knowing you don’t need everyone to. For me, that performance didn’t just show up in achievement. It showed up in who I believed I had to be.
I spent most of my childhood and teenage years performing. I was the bubbly blonde cheerleader. The one who smiled. The one who seemed okay. The one people probably assumed was doing just fine. Meanwhile, I was falling apart.
Eventually, I ended up in a psych unit after trying to end my life. And when I got out, I realized I couldn’t keep living two separate lives. I couldn’t keep performing happiness while privately fighting for survival.
So I posted a blog sharing with the world that I had been placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold after my suicide attempt.
I stopped hiding. For the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t auditioning for acceptance. I wasn’t trying to be inspirational or impressive or put together. I was just telling the truth. And there was something incredibly freeing about realizing the real me was enough all along.
And in the responses from others, I learned that when you stop performing, the people who love you no longer love the character you created. Instead, they get to love you. And the people who don’t? They were never connecting with you in the first place. They were connecting with the performance.
Some of the healthiest relationships in my life have one thing in common: I never felt like I had to convince those people that I belonged. I could disagree. I could change my mind. I could celebrate my wins without feeling guilty. I could struggle without feeling like I was becoming a burden.
I wasn’t performing. I was participating. And I’m just now realizing those are two completely different ways to move through life.
The older I get, the less interested I am in being impressive and the more interested I am in being authentic. Impressing people creates pressure to keep performing. Authenticity creates space to breathe.
Who in your life gives you permission to exhale? Who makes you feel more like yourself instead of less?
Spend more time with those people. Maybe that’s why peace feels so different than approval. Approval depends on someone else’s scorecard. Peace comes from no longer grading yourself against it.
For years, people told me I should speak for free because it would lead to exposure.
They told me to keep giving my time, my energy, and my resources away because it would eventually open doors. I poured so much into helping other organizations grow that I rarely stopped to ask whether I was investing in myself with the same level of commitment.
I kept saying yes because I wanted to help. But if I’m honest, I also wanted to be chosen. I wanted to prove I belonged in the room.
So I made a decision to stop speaking for free, even if it meant speaking less and there were fewer opportunities. Some people were vocally disappointed. For the first time, I stopped waiting for someone else to offer me a seat and started building my own table.
I invested in my work. I invested in my work. I invested in my business. Most importantly, I invested in believing that my work had value before anyone else confirmed it.
So here’s one final question I want you to sit with:
If you stopped trying to earn your place, what would change tomorrow?
Would you speak up? Would you set a boundary? Would you apply for the job? Would you stop apologizing for taking up space? Would you finally let people meet the real you?
Because here’s what I’ve learned: The people who are meant to be in your life aren’t waiting for a flawless performance. They aren’t keeping score of every awkward conversation or every imperfect moment. They aren’t asking you to become someone else before you’re worthy of belonging.
They just want you. Not the edited version, the impressive version, or the version constantly trying to earn a standing ovation. Just YOU.
So maybe this month isn’t about trying harder, it’s about retiring from the audition altogether.
Walk into your relationships as yourself. Walk into your work as yourself. Walk into your purpose as yourself. Life was never meant to be one long audition.
You were never auditioning for the lead role. You’ve been the main character of your own life all along.
