Competence Feels Safe. Being a Beginner Again Is Where I Grew.
How stepping away from expertise and embracing being a beginner expanded my understanding of identity and belonging.
What a physically demanding job during my sabbatical taught me about ego, identity, and the size of the box we live in.
By Lynn Cirillo
We spend years building expertise.
Then, without quite noticing, we build our lives around never having to be without it.
That is not a criticism. Competence creates emotional safety. When you know what you are doing, you know where you stand. People look to you. You have answers.
The trouble is that a life organized around feeling competent can quietly become very small.
The Decision Nobody Thought Was Smart
After decades in the corporate world, most recently as an Executive Vice President, I stepped away and took a sabbatical. Not because I had a master reinvention plan. I needed silence badly enough to hear myself think again.
At one point during that sabbatical, I did something that many people around me thought was completely irrational. Even the people closest to me questioned whether it was a good idea.
I took a physically demanding job.
Truthfully, part of the decision came from ego. Something local was being poorly managed, and part of me believed I could help fix it if I worked from within the environment instead of criticizing it from the outside.
That mindset felt familiar. High achievers often believe they can outwork dysfunction if they care enough.
I walked in thinking I understood exactly what I was doing.
I was wrong.
What the Work Stripped Away
The experience humbled me in ways I never expected. I pushed myself physically in ways I had been told I was not capable of.
More importantly, I found connection.
The people I worked alongside came from very different walks of life. The environment stripped away titles, status, corporate hierarchy, and expectations. People simply showed up and worked.
Somewhere inside that experience, I realized how much of my previous life had been organized around an identity attached to achievement, responsibility, and executive leadership.
This was different.
Humbling. Simple. Human.
"That Isn't Me"
Most of us carry a list of things we have quietly ruled out.
I don't do that.
That isn't me.
Sometimes those statements reflect real preferences. Sometimes we have been repeating them so long that we no longer remember whether we ever gave ourselves the chance to find out.
Over time, the familiar starts feeling permanent. The career becomes the identity. The schedule becomes the identity. The pressure becomes the identity.
Once we have adapted, we often make choices that keep the familiar in place. We accept another responsibility because it fits the person everyone knows us to be. We dismiss an unfamiliar opportunity before exploring it.
Each decision seems reasonable on its own. Together, they can keep us inside a life we no longer enjoy.
I had to consider my own part in that. The expectations around me were real. So were the times I reinforced them by continuing to show up as though that version of life was all I wanted.
The Gift of Not Being the Expert
When you learn a task you cannot talk your way into knowing, something shifts.
Your attention settles on what is in front of you. You ask questions. Someone else knows more, and you get to listen. Your previous accomplishments remain part of your history, but they do not answer every question in this new setting.
You have room to be a beginner.
That can bruise the ego, particularly when you are used to being the person others turn to. It can also be a relief to discover that you can belong somewhere while you are still figuring things out.
There is something grounding about finishing a physical job with a result you can actually see. Even something as simple as mowing your own lawn for the first time can feel strangely cathartic.
Not because mowing a lawn is life-changing.
Because presence is.
You Don't Need a Sabbatical to Start
I want to be honest about this part. Stepping away from work entirely is not available to everyone, and beginning honestly does not require an extended sabbatical or the ability to step away from every responsibility.
Sometimes the space you can make is a walk, an hour alone, or a conversation in which you finally stop saying everything is fine.
Expanding your life does not require making it busier, either. It might mean replacing a habitual activity, learning something within your abilities and circumstances, or listening to someone whose priorities look nothing like yours.
Some people prioritize peace. Some prioritize family. Some prioritize creativity, flexibility, simplicity, or adventure. None of those choices are wrong. The problem begins when we unconsciously believe there is only one respectable way to build a life.
For Leaders: Your Relationship With Not Knowing Is Contagious
If you lead people, how you handle being a beginner sets the tone for everyone around you.
When your usual expertise does not apply, can you ask questions comfortably? Or do you feel pressure to establish your credibility first?
Your team is watching either way. A leader who must look competent before she can learn anything teaches people that not knowing is unsafe. A leader who can ask the person closest to the work to show her how it is done makes learning normal and makes it easier for everyone else to admit what they have not figured out yet.
That is not a loss of authority. It is a more honest use of it.
Questions to Carry With You
- What have you ruled out with the words "That isn't me"? Is that conclusion based on experience or on an old understanding of yourself?
- When did you last feel fully involved in an experience rather than responsible for managing it?
- How do you respond when someone else knows more than you do?
- Would you offer another beginner more patience than you offer yourself?
- When have you felt connected to people without your title or accomplishments being part of the conversation?
The world turned out to be bigger than the box I had been living in. Realizing that did not feel like abandoning my life.
It felt like expanding it.
Growth does not erase previous chapters. It expands the story.
I write about that job, the sabbatical, and what came after in Reinvention Outside the Realm of Expectation, Book 2 in my Musings of a Recovering Executive series. Each chapter closes with Questions for Reflection to help you look at your own box and what might exist beyond it. You can learn more at https://MusingsOfaRecoveringExecutive.com/books/reinvention-outside-the-realm-of-expectation/.
About the Author
Lynn Cirillo is an author, leadership mentor, and founder of Grounded Leadership LLC, based in Cheyenne, Wyoming. A former Executive Vice President who oversaw people, technology, data, research, systems, and organizational change, she spent more than three decades in commercial real estate and executive leadership before stepping away for a sabbatical that changed her definition of success. She writes the Musings of a Recovering Executive series about leadership, identity, boundaries, reinvention, and neurodiversity. Learn more at https://MusingsOfaRecoveringExecutive.com/.
