Bold Enough to Own Your Story: The OWN Framework for Career Identity

Last September, I was sitting in the audience at the Speak and Shine Summit in London, and I watched these incredible women get up on stage and share their stories. What was different, though, was that they were just normal women, people just like me and you, who took the leap to get up on stage to get visible and vulnerable. And they inspired me to do something that I'd been wanting to do for years to get up on stage. So at the end of the summit, when they announced the next one on the seventh of May twenty twenty six, I made a diary entry that said Speak and Shine summit.

I'm speaking. And yesterday I did it. So many people have been supporting me through this process, and I'm so grateful for that. And many have messaged me to say, how did it go? What did you talk about? So I decided that that was going to be today's episode, because this really was a courage loading moment for me, and I would love to share that story with all of you too. Hello and welcome to Courage Loading. I'm your host, Alicia Noble, leadership coach and career transition strategist. And I help women navigate the messy middle of career transitions. Because real change isn't just about what you do next. It's about who you're becoming in the process, the identities you shedding, the beliefs you rewriting, and the courage it takes to lead yourself through it all. I believe every story of change begins with a single moment of courage. And this is where I help you find yours. So let's dive in. So yesterday was the Speaking Shine Summit, a day that was dedicated to empowering women to be bold. Twelve women got up on stage to share eight minute talks on that theme. And this is my talk. It's called Bold enough to own your story. My body said stop. Not slow down, not take a break or a few deep breaths. She said, stop. And for the first time in years, I had no choice but to listen. It was in that forced stillness I came across these words from Nelson Mandela. There is no passion to be found in playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. Ever notice how you can hear something so many times and one day it just lands differently, like it's speaking directly to you. And for the first time, you really listen. You feel truly seen and you just get it. Reading those words finally made me see the truth. The version of me that was quietly settling on paper. I was successful, but in reality, I was living a B-plus life, telling myself, one day, One day I'll pursue the things I really wanted to do, and then I'll start living. But right now, I needed to focus on the plan. Paying off the mortgage, building a healthy pension pot, saving for more than just a rainy day. You know the adulting league table stuff because there was nothing wrong with my life or my career and complaining about it. That just felt ungrateful. After all, I had so much going for me, but I just couldn't shake that voice in my head, the one that I'd been trying to silence for years. You know, the one that says this, isn't it? This is not you. There's something missing. With every new role and every promotion in my corporate career, the novelty soon wore off. And I found myself searching for the next thing. And each time that voice grew louder. And on that day, when my body told me in no uncertain terms to stop. Nelson Mandela's words made me ask a different question. What if I'm playing the wrong game because I didn't think I was playing small, but I knew I was playing safe, and there's a difference. I had a plan, I had ambition, but I had limited appetite for taking risks. And I suddenly realized that my plan, the one that kept me safe, also kept me chasing the next role, the next promotion, the next challenge. And somewhere along the line, I stopped asking whether I still wanted what I was chasing. Because without my ambition, without the plan, without the constant challenges, who was I? At forty five, it felt strange asking who am I? What do I really want? And even stranger to admit that I didn't really know. Deep down I had an idea of what I really wanted. The one day list I'd created in my mind every time I had that feeling of envy when I saw someone start their own business, launch a podcast, get up on stage. But I stuck to the plan until now because in that forced stillness, the years of misalignment caught up with me. I felt stuck physically, mentally, and emotionally, and I knew I needed to approach this differently. And so I started to question everything because I could no longer separate what I wanted from what I believed I should want. And that was the start of my own journey. A journey of rebuilding. Starting at the beginning, but not building from scratch. OWN. O.W.N. Those letters stand for origin worth narrative. To start rebuilding, I had to understand what shaped me. My origin from the seven year old growing up in apartheid South Africa, where limitations were imposed on people who looked like me, and I was discouraged from dreaming too big. To the thirteen year old who got to attend an Unsegregated school. Learning to navigate a world that was changing intellectually, understanding the possibilities, but still clinging on to inherited scripts to the bold twenty one year old who boarded a flight to London in search of adventure, unafraid, believing she could figure out whatever came next. To the thirty year old chartered accountant who learned to wear masks to fit the corporate mould while reframing exhaustion as the cost of ambition and success. To the forty five year old, whose body kept score of the cycles of burnout, the all nighters and the chronic stress that kept her living in fight or flight. Here's the question when did I stop being bold? Those inherited scripts shaped where I sourced my worth. I'd outsourced my validation to others. Every result, every review, every piece of feedback felt like a verdict on whether I was good enough or not. So I collected evidence. The companies I worked for, the qualifications I achieved, the exceeds expectations ratings, all receipts to prove that I belonged. But when you're worth loves in your performance, your nervous system never gets to rest. You stop trusting yourself. And one misstep is all it takes. For everything you've built to come crashing down. Or at least that's the story I told myself. Which brings us to narrative. The stories I wrapped around it all. Stories about what success should look like. That one perfect version. Stories about why I couldn't or shouldn't. Stories I used to build my own glass ceilings. Keeping me safe from failure and opportunity alike. and they all sounded so reasonable. It's not the right time. I'm not the right person. I'll just get one more qualification first. That narrative kept me stuck and chasing a life that no longer felt like mine. And here I am nearly three years later. These last three years have stretched me in ways I didn't see coming, and it's allowed me to grow in ways that I couldn't have planned. I'm no longer hiding. I'm finally present in my own life, making intentional decisions from a new script, a script that is truly mine, a script that trusts my worth. A script that I own. When I finally walked away from my corporate role, it came from a place of trust. Yes, I was scared, but I was also ready. Because here's what I've learned. Working through OWN. Our origins shape us. Everything from our families, our cultures, our lived experience. But we get to choose what we carry forward. Our worth. Our worth doesn't have to live in our performance. We get to decide whether we outsource it or trust it. And the narrative we inherited, the stories about what's possible. We get to take back the pen. I now know that my identity was never fixed. I always had the power to rewrite it. I just needed to be bold enough to take the first step. There is no passion to be found in playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living some way inside you. You already know that's true. The only question is, are you bold enough to own it? And that's what I shared on stage at Speak and Shine yesterday. I'm really proud of myself and all the women who got onto the stage and was willing to give it a shot. It wasn't about perfection. It was. I was not perfect by any means, but it was all about the showing up. And I think it's just really important that we realize we all have a story to share, and our voices matter. And we are so conditioned to measure ourselves by outcome, the applause or the reaction. And I realized that that was never what this talk was all about. This was all about the journey. It was all about that experience, the small decisions that I made along the way to keep showing up and to follow through, despite all the fears and the doubts that came along the way. And believe me, there were many. So to close off today, my question to you or my action for you for the week is what's that one thing you've been putting off that you really want to do? Um, write it down. Make a decision. Do you really want to do it? If you do, set yourself a target date and then you can figure out how you're going to do it, there's always going to be doubts. There's always going to be fears. Sometimes you've just got to get out in front of it and do it anyway. So that's it for today. Thank you for spending the time with me. If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review. I would greatly appreciate that or send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. This is courage loading… I'm Alicia Noble. And remember, every story of change begins with a single moment of courage. So what's yours going to be?