What I’ve learned about worth, identity, and choosing myself, without needing to prove a thing.
As I sit to write to you this morning, there is so much I want to share, and honestly, I don’t know where to start.
I’ve been riding an emotional wave over the past few days. Following a powerful kinesiology session with Kasey on Friday afternoon, I’ve been going through a big emotional release.
Tears, and more tears, keep flowing as I practise feeling what I need to feel and letting those feelings go.
I know what I’m feeling is grief. I’m shedding yet more layers of my ego and letting go of the predictable proving and performing that Nayla (my ego) has been attached to.
I’ve resigned from both of my board roles, and I’m noticing how much guilt I feel in choosing myself. I’m not the same person I was when I joined those boards, and I no longer have the capacity to give in the way I once intended.
Lately, I’ve realised I’ve been using my own sense of integrity and commitment against myself. I’ve stayed longer than I should, not wanting to let others down, continuing to show up for everyone but me.
And even now, as I complete my notice period, I need to be mindful not to stay simply because I’m being encouraged to. It’s easy to slip back into the pattern of earning the 'good girl' badge, the one I’ve spent a lifetime proving and performing for.
It’s brutal to see how deep this conditioning runs. That I’m still, in someways, willing to betray myself and abandon my own needs in exchange for external validation.
It sucks. I know this. I speak often about negotiating your worth and tell others that their worth is never on the table to be negotiated. Yet I’ve clearly been blind to the ways I’ve negotiated with my own self-worth.
Since pressing the go live button on SimplyGlin, I’ve been in the process of integrating all the fragments of me that were scattered across different business identities and social media accounts. I hadn’t anticipated how much emotion this would stir.
In moving towards wholeness, towards being present with myself, not for performance or proving, but to create simplicity, I’ve had the opportunity to witness all the expressions of who I was on the way to who I am now.
This weekend, I deactivated The Value Negotiator Instagram and spent time archiving most of my posts on Heart of Human. I found myself caught in a mental loop trying to figure out the most elegant way to integrate everything. But the truth is, there is no elegant way to bring the fragments of me together. The fact that my growth has been messy and nonlinear is part of the story.
And still, there was grief. Grief for the time and energy I gave to performing. Grief for the woman I thought I needed to be. I watched old reels of myself dancing and felt both happiness and sadness. I could see real lightness there, and I wanted to preserve those memories, to bring them across to one place, but I can’t. Not fully.
Even now, as I revisit my SimplyGlin Instagram, the one I made private and stopped posting on nearly three years ago because life felt too performative, I see how I stopped sharing my journey and joy. Somewhere along the way, I got so busy trying to make a living that I forgot I was still making a life.
And my life, day by day, if shared from true presence, would have been an ode to my becoming.
Gary Vee once said, “Document, don’t create,” and I remember how deeply that landed. Like many entrepreneurs, I got caught in creating for content’s sake. As I archived the Heart of Human posts, I could see all the ways I’d hustled for my worth where it didn’t feel aligned.
What I’m realising now is that all I’ve ever wanted is to create. And when I create from presence and truth, it feels good to document and share, whether that’s a life, a relationship, a business, a home, a philosophy.
I lost my joy for sharing not because I didn’t love the platforms but because I didn’t love the performance. My actions, in some ways, were guided by intuition. I thought I didn’t want to post because I didn’t enjoy social media, but what I really didn’t enjoy was posting for approval.
This weekly heart to heart isn’t really about social media. It’s about the realisation that the rules we follow in life aren’t always the ones that are most aligned. And sometimes we hold on, not because it’s working, but because we fear what we’ll lose by letting go.
In integrating myself online, I’ve feared losing my history and the witnessing of my own becoming. But choosing complexity and clinging to the past won’t serve me. Whether it’s material things, digital memories, or the energy we’ve invested in something, our freedom is limited by whatever we are attached to.
Letting go is hard, but the journey of transcending our egoic selves asks for it.
What are you holding on to that you need to let go?
Where are you scattering fragments of yourself that are asking to be made whole?
A Gift For Those Who Want To Understand How They're Wired (Free for a Limted Time)
Keep going and keep growing.
Love Glin x
P.S. Three wins from my week:
1. Scheduled my kinesiology session while John's away
After the last four kinesiology sessions, the energy shifts have always led to an argument with John. It’s a pattern I didn’t want to repeat. Thankfully, with him being in Adelaide this weekend, I’ve had time to process all the feels without him needing to witness the journey or be in the middle of the emotional release.
2. Quality Catch Ups.
This weekend I’ve enjoyed time both solo and with friends and neighbours. While I’ve cried several times, it’s been powerful to have others gently hold space for me as I continue this journey of inner transformation.
3. Presenting to an Executive Roundtable
On Friday, I presented to a small roundtable group of senior corporate execs on negotiation. It felt great to talk about the role identity plays in our negotiation effectiveness. What felt even more amazing was being fully present with them, without trying to prove or perform.
Responses