Hi Friend,
What would you do if you knew you were enough?
I can’t stop thinking about this question, and I wanted to bring it to you this month because I think a lot of you are carrying something heavy right now.
Open LinkedIn and the message is everywhere:
Get certified.
Move up to chief of staff.
You should be at this level by now, not the one you’re in.
Each of those is reasonable advice on its own.
But stacked up, day after day, it starts saying something different.
The internal dialogue sounds like: “Where you are isn’t quite enough.”
And here’s what I’ve noticed in my coaching sessions. The pressure starts outside. Then your own inner voice picks it up and keeps going.
Am I doing enough?
Why don’t I want the thing everyone says I should want?
Call that what it is. Anxiety.
So I want to set all of that down for a minute.
Instead of focusing on what’s next, let’s go back to my question.
What would you do if you knew you were enough?
Rock Stars and Superstars
A couple of weeks ago, I was on a call with my EA, Adel. We were working through calendar logistics and CRM notes, the kind of unglamorous work nobody sees.
Then the conversation turned, and she brought up something she’d read years ago in Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor.
Strong teams are built with two kinds of people.
Superstars love the climb. They conquer one thing and immediately want the next. A new challenge, a new problem, new territory. Staying in one place too long makes them restless.
Rock stars are just as ambitious, but they aim it differently. They hunker down in the work they’re already doing and keep getting better at it, year after year, until they’re the person everyone else comes to.
One is on a steep trajectory. The other is on a steady one.
Both are excellent at what they do. A good team needs both.
The climb is one kind of success. The depth is another.
That stayed with me, because most of the people I coach have heard the exact opposite their whole careers.
Twenty Years In and Still Feeling Behind
I coach a variety of administrative professionals. Some new to the role. And some EAs who have been in the role fifteen or twenty years. They’re sharp. They’re still learning. They add real value every single day.
And many of them still tell me they’re falling short.
The reasons are always the same. No certification. No chief of staff title. Whatever this year’s standard happens to be, they’re measuring themselves against it and coming up short.
That feeling is real. It’s also borrowed.
Somewhere along the way, someone handed you a scoreboard and you started keeping score.
If you knew you were enough, you wouldn’t need anyone else to confirm it.
And I understand how that pressure works, because I lived it.
Nobody Knows the Right Time But You
For years, I worked full-time and spoke on the side. I wrote my books while still working full-time as a chief executive assistant.
I built my speaking and coaching business one weekend and one lunch break at a time.
And people kept asking me the same question:
“When are you going to leave the day job and go full-time?”
The first time, it felt like a compliment. Like someone believed in me enough to picture it.
By the tenth time, it felt like something else.
Like I was behind schedule on my own life.
Like there was a version of me out there, further along, and I hadn’t caught up to her yet.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit to see what was actually true:
Nobody knows the right time to make a leap.
Except the person making it.
Not the people asking. Not the people cheering. Some days, not even me.
I just had to trust I’d know it when I got there.
Growth Doesn’t Always Look Like a Promotion
Maybe you’re still deciding whether you want the next title.
Maybe you’ve already decided you don’t. Not this year.
You’re raising kids and that’s using everything you’ve got.
Or an elderly parent needs you more than they used to.
Or the extra energy you do have goes into something you care about in your community, not a promotion track.
I’ve been in that first season. All those years raising my children, I wasn’t doing deep professional development or chasing the next role. I was focused on being a mom and staying steady in my role as an administrative professional. And that counted.
You’re still growing through all of it.
Technology alone guarantees you’re learning something new every year, whether you’re climbing or not.
Managers change.
Tools change.
Priorities shift underneath you.
The job reshapes itself around you even when your title stays exactly the same.
Growth happens sideways more often than it happens up.
Sometimes it looks like showing up to the job you already have and getting better at it.
Before You Ask What’s Next
Here’s what I’d offer instead of the question everyone else keeps asking.
Wherever you’ve landed, you made choices to get here. That’s worth noticing.
So before you ask whether you should be doing something more, ask whether this is where you want to be.
If it isn’t, that’s useful information. Start there.
But if it is, embrace it. Staying is a decision too, and it’s yours to make.
By the end of that call, Adel told me the conversation had stuck with her too. She’d been carrying the same feeling.
I think that’s usually how it works. Most of us hold this quietly, waiting for someone else to say it out loud.
So here it is, out loud.
You don’t have to be chasing the next thing this month.
What would you do if you knew you were enough?
Maybe nothing different at all.
Warmly,
Peggy
Speaker | Bestselling Author | Empowerment Coach