A diamond does not dim its light to make others comfortable

Let me tell you about one of the best nights of my career and the man who tried to ruin it.

My first-ever Cisco Partner Conference in San Francisco. The UK Awards dinner. Big room, big lights, the who's who of the channel in one place. We had gone from an unknown partner to winning our first-ever Cisco award, and the business I had worked tirelessly to build was now the fastest-growing commercial partner in the whole of the UK.

I went up to collect my award. A senior director from a competitor walked over, looked at me, looked at the award, and said, "F off, you hobbit."

I can appreciate that I am vertically challenged. Still, there was no need to swear.

You would like to hope that was a one-off. One man, too much wine, forget about it. Except a while later I won another award, the most prestigious one at our company kickoff, and a sales director came over and asked if it was actually the "kiss arse award."

Two awards. Two of the proudest moments of my career. And two people who could not let me have the moment.

Here is what I want you to notice. Neither man said, "you are not good enough." They did not have to. The message was clearer than that. Who do you think you are? Get back in your box. Shine a little less brightly. You are making the rest of us uncomfortable.

And I would love to tell you it bounced straight off. It did not. Because for a while, this stuff works on you. You start celebrating quietly. You shrink your wins in conversation. Someone congratulates you, and before they have finished the sentence, you are saying, "Oh, it was a team effort. It was nothing."

Sound familiar?

That is conditioning. And conditioning does not always sound like criticism. Sometimes it is a joke at your expense on the best night of your career. Sometimes it is a teacher writing you off at 15. Sometimes it is someone you love telling you to be realistic.

Somewhere along the way, somebody handed you a story about who you are and what you are capable of, and you've carried it ever since. Most of us never check whether the story was even true.

Here is the one sentence I want you to take from this.

A diamond does not dim its light to make others comfortable. Neither should you.

And here is why I love diamonds as an idea. It is not the sparkle; it is the science. A diamond and a lump of coal are exactly the same element. Carbon. Identical ingredient. The only difference between what we burn and what we treasure is pressure and time.

Now think about your own story. The doubt, the knockbacks, the people who underestimated you, the rooms where you felt you did not belong. You were told to treat all of that as evidence that you are not quite enough. It was never evidence. It was the formation process. You have been becoming a diamond all along. The problem is, nobody told you.

So consider yourself told.

This week's one thing

Notice one moment where you dimmed your own light. You do not have to change it. You do not have to fix anything. Just catch yourself doing it. The deflected compliment. The idea you let someone else say first. The win you did not mention at dinner because you did not want to make a thing of it.

Just notice it. Because you cannot change what you cannot see.

Next week, in Lesson Two, we look at where all of this came from in the first place. The weight you never chose.

See your worth, know your value, and always, always be a diamond.

Yvonne x