There is a particular kind of moment you face in business, and in life, when someone who hasn’t yet reached the place they dreamed of reaching looks for someone to blame. Someone to point the finger at. Someone to make responsible for the distance between where they are and where they wanted to be.
I have faced that moment more times than I can count. And for a long time, for too long, I let it shake me.
Not anymore.
I started my business making $15,000 a year. Then $30,000. Then, with the help of the right people and the right mindset, I grew it. I 10X’d it and kept going. And somewhere along that journey, somewhere between the grind and the growth, I realized something that changed everything.
It was never about what other people thought of me. It was about what I thought of myself.
The People Pleaser I Used to Be
I think most of us begin our lives as people pleasers. We want to be accepted. We want to be liked. We want to make everyone comfortable, even at the expense of our own comfort. I was no different.
I worked hard. I helped people. I gave everything I had to every person who came into my world. And when someone was unhappy, when someone pointed the finger, I turned it on myself first. I wondered what I had done wrong. I questioned my value. I shrank.
That was phase one of my life. Phase two looks very different.
What Epilepsy Taught Me About Courage
I have lived with epilepsy since I was five years old. An ear infection became encephalitis and left me in a coma, and the doctors told my parents I might never walk again. Everything I have built since then, every book, every podcast, every client, every milestone, was built inside a body that sometimes worked against me.
When I lost mobility in my arms, one question kept running through my head: When is this going to stop?
When your quality of life is taken from you, when the thing you cannot control keeps pulling you down right when you are trying to rise, you face a choice. You can stay in that dark place, or you can pull yourself out and keep moving forward.
I chose forward. Every single time. And if I could choose forward through that, I could choose forward through anything.
The Day I Stopped Taking It Personally
After years in this business, I learned something important. When someone is frustrated with their results, the frustration is rarely about you. It is usually about the gap between the dream and the reality, and that gap is one of the most painful places a person can stand.
I know that gap. I have stood in it.
Visibility opens a door. But walking through that door takes its own kind of courage. It takes believing your talent is worth paying for. It takes a plan for what happens when people finally start paying attention. Many brilliant people have never been taught that part, and when the door opens, they freeze.
Once I understood that, everything shifted. I stopped absorbing other people’s frustration as proof that I wasn’t enough. I could hold compassion for them and confidence in myself at the same time.
I gave people exactly what I promised. And I learned that the most loving thing I could do was keep showing up with integrity and let them walk through the door in their own time.
The Thick Skin I Grew on Purpose
I went from thin skin to very thick skin. It did not happen overnight. It happened through years of choosing to stay in the game when leaving would have been easier, through years of helping people who sometimes did not appreciate the help, and through years of building something real in a world that does not always recognize real things right away.
I believe in karma. I have seen it work in my life too many times to doubt it. Every time something difficult happened, every time I wanted to back down and didn’t, something good appeared. The world gave back what I put in.
Today I know who I am and what I am capable of. I know how many people I have helped along the way: people with disabilities, people rebuilding after loss, people who needed someone to tell them their story mattered. Nobody gets to take that away from me.
I have boundaries now. I know how to say no. I help because I genuinely want to, not because I am afraid of what happens if I don’t.
As Mel Robbins says: let them. Let them blame you. Let them point the finger. Your job is not to carry their story for them. Your job is to keep building yours.
Three Ways to Stop Apologizing for Your Worth
If you are still letting other people’s opinions shape how you see yourself, here are three things that changed everything for me.
- Separate the frustration from the facts. When someone is upset, ask yourself one question: did I deliver what I promised? If the answer is yes, their frustration belongs to them, not to you.
- Build your boundaries before you need them. Decide in advance what you will and will not accept, from clients, colleagues, and even friends. Boundaries are much easier to keep when you have set them calmly, not in the middle of a conflict.
- Keep a record of the lives you have touched. Save the thank-you notes, the kind emails, and the messages from people you have helped. On the hard days, read them. They are proof of who you really are.
The Courage That Comes With Time
Courage is not something you are born with. It is something you earn, through every obstacle you refused to surrender to and every moment you chose to get back up instead of staying down.
I have more courage today than I have ever had in my life. And I am just getting started.
If you are in the early phase of your journey, I want you to hear this: their opinion of you is not your identity. Your resilience is. Your consistency is. Your refusal to give up, especially when everything in you wanted to- that is who you are.
The world does not always celebrate the people who keep going quietly. But the people who keep going quietly are the ones who build something that lasts.
Stacey Chillemi is a 20-time bestselling author, epilepsy advocate, award-winning podcast host, and founder of Advisor Global Media. She hosts The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi and The Authority Business Show, ranked in the top 0.1% of podcasts globally, with an ecosystem of 1.3M+ listeners and followers worldwide. She has testified before the United States Congress on disability rights and won the NYC Podcast Award for Best Host.