Latest / The Talent Brief / You've Outgrown the Script
Transcript
- Jeff Ganter: Growth often feels like betrayal. Before it feels like freedom, you can be grateful for what something gave you and still know you've outgrown it. A job, a relationship, a friendship, a role you've played in your family, a definition of success, maybe even a version of yourself. And sometimes the hardest thing to leave. Aren't the things that were bad for us. They're the things that were once right for us. I'm Jeff Ganter, and thanks for listening to the talent brief. I've been thinking about what happens when we outgrow something, because we tend to think growth should feel good, like progress, confidence, clarity. But sometimes growth feels like guilt. It feels like you're disappointing someone. Like you're being ungrateful. Like you're abandoning something you worked incredibly hard to build. And sometimes it can feel like betrayal. Maybe you've spent years building a career. People invested in you. You built relationships. You earned the title. You became the person everyone could count on. And then one day something feels different. Nothing terrible happened. Nobody did anything wrong. You just notice this doesn't fit me anymore. That's a difficult signal to trust, because almost immediately the script shows up. You should be grateful. You've invested too much to walk away. People would kill for what you have. What will everyone think? Maybe you're just going through something. Stay a little longer. Here's where I think we get stuck. We start believing that changing our mind somehow invalidates the choices we've already made. It doesn't. Something can have been absolutely right for you ten years ago and completely wrong for who you are today. That doesn't mean you made a mistake. It means you changed, you learned, you experienced You grew. And growth has an interesting way of making two seemingly contradictory things true at exactly the same time. That was right for me then. This is no longer right no longer right for me now. Both can be true. I think this becomes especially difficult when other people still recognize the version of us we're beginning to outgrow. They know you as the executive, the entrepreneur. The caretaker, the responsible one, the successful one, the person who always says yes, the person who holds everything together. And when you start changing, it can make other people uncomfortable. Not necessarily because they're against your growth. Sometimes they simply haven't met this version of you yet. And sometimes neither have you. That's the part we don't talk about enough. There's often a strange space between realizing you've outgrown who you were and knowing exactly who you're becoming. And that space can feel incredibly uncomfortable because the old script doesn't fit anymore. But the new one hasn't been written. So we reach for what we know, we stay, we perform. We explain. We convince ourselves that familiarity must mean alignment. But familiarity isn't always a signal to stay. Sometimes it's simply evidence that you've been there too long. So maybe the work isn't immediately figuring out what comes next. Maybe it starts smaller. Notice what's feeling different, main what you're actually experiencing. question the story you're telling yourself about what changing would mean. And then ask, if I weren't worried about disappointing anyone, what would I admit I've already outgrown? You don't have to hate your past to choose your future. You don't have to regret who you were to become somebody different. And you don't have to turn yesterday into a mistake just because you're making a different choice today. Sometimes growth asks us to think an old version of our life without continuing to live it. But here's my challenge this week. Look at your work, your relationships, your responsibilities, your definition of success. Even the expectations you have of yourself and ask. What am I still honoring because it once fit? Even though I already know I've outgrown it. Don't rush to change it. Just notice what came up. Because that may be the signal you've been trying hard not to hear. Trust the signal, question the script. See you soon. Bye.