I was chatting with my older sister a few months ago.  She came to visit with her son for spring break.

In this conversation, we settled upon the topic of work ethic, both its virtues and demise.

Certain backgrounds have been instrumental in developing and honing a work ethic for the professional world—specifically, sports and agriculture.

The latter, my sister and I both shared and lamented.  Yes, a tremendous virtue, but also a demise when our work ethic becomes the crutch to prove and validate oneself.

What's great can also bar our development.

She shared how she has found herself positionally stuck because she is such an expert, so efficient, and so valuable in her role.

Yet it has kept her in a role where she feels overworked, underappreciated, and “stuck”.

There is a question she is trying to answer every day she works.

Do I actually belong here? Or am I just outworking the doubt?

For a long time, I thought the cure was more output. More credentials, more hours, more doing. If I could just stack enough proof, the question would close itself.

It never closed.

That’s what most people never tell you about achievement. It doesn’t answer the question. It just delays it.

It delays dealing with the real why we work so hard to prove our worth.

The Things We Hide — Moment

In The Things We Hide, I write about the four walls leaders hide behind. Intensity is the one I lived inside for most of my life.

Intensity is not just hard work. It’s hard work weaponized against an unspoken question. The harder you push, the less you have to hear what you’d be hearing if you stopped.

The belief underneath my intensity was simple: who I am isn’t enough on its own. I have to justify my presence in every room I walk into.

That belief produced a thought. If I just produce more, the question will get answered.

So I produced. I delivered. I collected evidence.

Here is what I now know about the belief cycle. Beliefs drive thoughts. Thoughts drive actions. Actions drive results. Most of us try to fix the results. We add credentials. We take on more.

The belief underneath stays intact. And the belief underneath is the one running the show.

The wall I built behind intensity didn’t stop me from succeeding. In some ways, it drove the success. But it made every setback feel like a referendum on my worth.

The questions kept coming. The achievements kept not answering them.

The only way out wasn’t to earn more proof. It was to go back and change the belief. To decide that who I am is already enough to be in the room.

That isn’t arrogance. That’s the starting line.

When we stop trying hard to be seen, we stop working to prove ourselves and instead work at including and serving others.

That's true leadership.  Not outworking others, but rather working more with others to make everyone's work worth more.

PRE ORDERS NOW AVAILABLE - RELEASE DATE JUNE 9

Podcast

Dr. Sheila Gujrathi is a physician, entrepreneur, board director, and co-founder of the Biotech CEO Sisterhood. She trained at Northwestern, Harvard, UCSF, and Stanford, worked at McKinsey and Genentech, and reached the highest levels of biotech leadership before asking herself why it still didn’t feel like enough. Her book, The Mirror Effect, lays out the framework she built to break free from the internal fears, insecurities, doubts, and shame that quietly shape how leaders show up.

Here are three takeaways from my conversation with Sheila.

1. The FIDs Are Running the Show Until You Name Them — Sheila calls them FIDs: fear, insecurity, doubt, and shame. They are not unique to any gender or background. They show up in boardrooms, on boards of directors, and at the highest levels of every organization. What makes them dangerous is that they operate invisibly. You don’t know fear is driving the decision. You don’t know insecurity is behind the reaction. You just act. The first step isn’t solving the fear. It is seeing it. “When the FIDs are ruling us, the fear is driving us, and we don’t even understand what’s going on.”

2. Self-Compassion Is Not Soft. It Is the Unlock. — Sheila spent years extending grace to everyone around her while the voice inside her own head ran its own committee. Critical. Relentless. Never satisfied. The turning point was asking one question: Can I offer myself what I give to others? That question created space. It started to break the grip of perfectionism. It let her see the thought patterns that were keeping her stuck. Self-compassion isn’t a reward for getting it right. It is the tool you use to see clearly enough to begin.

3. You Have to Do the Work Alone, but You Don’t Have to Do It Alone — Sheila felt lonely at the top of her career while she was surrounded by accomplished people. That loneliness wasn’t about proximity. It was about belonging. She had peers but not mirrors. When she helped build the Biotech CEO Sisterhood, she walked into a room where she didn’t have to prove herself. She called that feeling transformative. Not because the problems disappeared, but because she was no longer on the island by herself. You still have to do the inner work. Nobody else can do that part. But the people around you determine whether you can see yourself clearly. Build the room where you belong.

11 DAYS away - June 9

Sheila’s book asks the question I have been circling for years.

What are we hiding, and why?

The Things We Hide comes out June 9. It is built on the same premise. The fears and insecurities we carry don’t disappear when we succeed. They go underground. They shape how we lead, how we respond, and how we show up, without us realizing it.

Sheila’s mirror. My four walls. Different language for the same truth: the work is on the inside.

Individual copies and bulk bundles are available now at thethingswehidebook.com.

If you are ordering for a team or organization, bundles start at five copies and go up from there. Every bulk order comes with resources to make this a shared experience, not just a book on a shelf.

DAYS UNTIL RELEASE

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