There’s a phrase I’ve apparently been saying for years without ever really questioning it.

“I want to do it properly.”

If I’m going to do something, I want to do it properly.

I don’t want the shortcut.

I don’t want the quick fix.

I want to do the work. Put the effort in. Do it really bloody well.

Do it properly.

It sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?

High standards. Commitment. Thoroughness.

Except recently, during a conversation with one of my mentors, I started to wonder whether “doing it properly” has actually meant something very different to me for a very long time.

What if somewhere along the way… doing it properly became doing it the hard way?

And what if doing things the hard way became one of the ways I learned to prove my worth?

Well, fuck.

That was slightly inconvenient.

When achievement becomes attached to self-worth

I’ve always been an achiever. I was bright at school and I remember being very aware of where I sat academically compared with other children.

There was one boy in particular called Graham.

Graham was clever too and although I don’t remember either of us formally declaring some sort of intellectual battle for primary-school supremacy, there was absolutely a competition between us.

Who got the best mark?

Who came top?

Who did better?

But looking back, I can see something important.

When Graham beat me, I didn’t just feel disappointed because I wanted to win.

I felt bad about myself.

Those are two completely different things.

Because once that happens, achievement isn’t simply something you do.

It starts telling you something about who you are.

If I achieve, I’m clever.

If I win, I’m good.

If I’m top, I’m valuable.

And if I’m not?

What does that say about me?

I’m now questioning how deeply I’ve carried that equation into adulthood.

What if it only counts when it’s hard?

I’ve had plenty of genuinely difficult things happen in my life.

Death. Divorce. Poor health. Toxic relationships. Financial difficulties. Career changes. Starting again. More than one reinvention.

I know how to survive.

I know how to rebuild.

And I’m sort of proud of that too.

Resilience is a strength and I’m not interested in turning every positive characteristic we have into another bloody pathology.

But there’s also a question I can’t stop thinking about:

What happens when being the woman who survives hard things becomes such an important part of your identity that you unconsciously keep choosing the hard thing?

Because I know who I am on the mountain.

Dig in.

Work harder.

Find another route.

Keep going.

Survive it.

Rebuild.

Prove I can do it.

But what happens when there’s no mountain?

What happens when there’s a perfectly decent flat road that could get me to exactly the same place?

Would I take it?

Or would some part of me think:

That’s too easy.

Surely that doesn’t count.

I haven’t earned it.

I didn’t do it properly.

And that’s where this gets really damn uncomfortable.

Because if achievement has become evidence of my worth, perhaps the achievement needs to be sufficiently difficult for the evidence to count.

Purpose versus proof

This has left me thinking about the difference between purpose and proof.

From the outside, they can look almost identical.

I’m ambitious.

I want to write books.

I want stages.

I want to create amazing bougie rooms and experiences.

I want to make money.

I want to make an impact.

I want freedom and choice.

I like beautiful clothes, gorgeous hotels and lovely things. I have absolutely no intention of discovering intrinsic motivation and moving into a fucking yurt.

But I’m starting to ask myself different questions about the things I want.

Do I want to write books because there are things I desperately want to say?

Or because being a published author proves something about me?

Do I want stages because I love communicating ideas and creating moments where someone suddenly sees herself differently?

Or because standing on the stage tells me I’ve made it?

Do I want money because of the freedom, security, experiences and choices it gives me?

Or because the number in the bank becomes another scoreboard for whether I’m succeeding?

And perhaps most importantly…

How do you know the difference?

I’m not sure we always can.

Your motives don’t need to be pure

One thing I’m very wary of doing with this new awareness is interrogating every ambition until I don’t trust myself anymore.

Maybe I genuinely want to write books and enjoy being able to call myself an author.

Maybe I genuinely love speaking and enjoy applause.

Maybe I want money for freedom and occasionally allow the numbers to validate me.

Maybe I love creating something and enjoy the ego hit when other people love it too.

We’re human. Our motivations are messy.

The objective isn’t to remove every trace of ego, achievement or external validation from our lives.

The more useful question might be:

Who’s driving?

Is achievement something you enjoy?

Or has achievement been given the enormous responsibility of proving that you’re enough?

Because those are very different things.

Identity work is never one and done

There’s another reason this particular revelation has fascinated me.

Identity is literally my work.

I teach this stuff. I have a book being published on it in a couple of months.

I help people recognise the beliefs, patterns and behaviours that have become so familiar they no longer realise they’re there.

And somebody else had to show me this one in myself.

I couldn’t see it.

Which is precisely why I don’t believe identity work is something we ever finish.

You don’t do an Identity Audit, uncover some childhood conditioning, journal about it, light a candle and announce:

Lovely. Identity sorted.

Different circumstances reveal different parts of us.

More money can expose something that wasn’t visible when you had less.

Greater visibility can reveal something that wasn’t there when nobody was watching.

A bigger business can introduce you to patterns that never appeared when you were trying to find your first client.

A healthy relationship can expose parts of you that remained hidden while you were surviving unhealthy ones.

Sometimes getting what you say you want introduces you to the part of yourself that doesn’t yet know how to have it.

New level, new devil?

I prefer:

New level. New Queen.

What does “properly” actually mean?

I haven’t solved this by the way; I’m still catching it in real time.

But now I can hear the word.

Properly.

Every time I hear myself saying:

“If I’m going to do it, I want to do it properly…”

I have a new question available to me.

What does properly mean here?

Does it mean well?

Does it mean with care?

Does it mean to a high standard?

Or does it secretly mean…hard?

Because those aren’t the same thing.

And there are some other questions I’m sitting with too:

If nobody knew I’d done this, would I still want some version of it?

If I could achieve the same result much more easily, would I allow myself to?

When I imagine failing, am I disappointed because I really wanted something, or devastated because of what I think the failure says about me?

And perhaps the biggest one:

If I already knew, absolutely fucking knew, that I was enough, what would I still choose?

No leaderboard.

No comparison.

No imaginary panel deciding whether you’ve finally achieved enough.

Nothing left to prove.

What remains?

Maybe you don’t need another mountain

Perhaps this is changing the way I think about reinvention too.

So many of us give ourselves permission to change only when staying where we are becomes unbearable.

The divorce.

The redundancy.

The diagnosis.

The financial disaster.

The burnout.

The breakdown.

Rock bottom gives us a reason to rebuild doesn’t it?

But maybe reinvention doesn’t have to begin with destruction.

Maybe you don’t need a sufficiently dramatic justification for wanting something different.

Maybe desire is enough.

Maybe curiosity is enough.

Maybe: “I’d quite like something different now” is enough.

Instead of: crisis → survive → rebuild → prove

Maybe reinvention can look like: desire → choose → change → receive.

For someone who knows how to survive a mountain, that second version might actually feel more frightening.

Because perhaps the next version of you doesn’t need to become even better at climbing.

Maybe she needs to learn that the flat road counts too.