00:00:00
Picture the woman who walks into the room and owns it. The big personality, the beautiful feathers all on display like a peacock. The accolades, the impressive life, the perfect exterior, not a hair out of place. You know exactly who I’m talking about. Maybe you’ve admired her. Maybe you’ve wanted to be her. Or maybe… you are her. And everybody in that room looks at this woman and thinks the same thing. She’s got it all figured out. Well, I’m here to tell you something that most people would be shocked hear, but I know this is true and it’s a real thing because I hear it every single day.That woman who appears to be the strongest, most polished, most put together woman in the room is often very the most invisible person there and the loneliest one in the building.
00:00:46
Nobody in that room actually sees her. And the crazy thing is that she’s doing it to herself. Hi, it’s Hillary. Welcome to the Ready for Love podcast. If you’re new here, I’m Hillary Silver, former psychotherapist turned master coach and founder of Ready for Love. I’m flipping the script on mainstream self-help and showing you to look, feel, and be your best so you can get anything that you want in this life.If that sounds good, the best way to support the show is to follow and subscribe to our YouTube channel and on your podcast app. So let’s start with how this actually feels. Walking into a room and turning heads, commanding the space, being the one everyone gravitates toward, there is a… real high to that. I am not going to pretend there isn’t.
00:01:33
It feels good to be liked and admired. But let me ask you something. When was the last time you let someone see you cry? Not the pretty, single tear kind, the real messy, ugly cry kind. When did you last say out loud, I have no idea what I’m doing?did you last let someone watch you fail at something and not rush in to explain it away or make excuses for yourself? When was the last time you dropped your wall, let your hair down, and shared all of you, the imperfect parts, the messy parts, the quirky weirdo parts? The answer is probably never, or at least not very often. And at the very same time, I hear from strong, successful, accomplished women every single day this.
00:02:17
They say this to me, Hillary, I have never once felt truly seen, not for all of who I am. And guess what? That makes perfect sense when I lay it out like that, right? It’s because you are not revealing yourself. to anyone.I had a woman once tell me not long ago that she threw herself a big, beautiful birthday party. Everyone she knew was there. And she stood in the middle of her own living room, surrounded by people, and realized that not one person in that room actually knew her. at her own party. That is the loneliness I’m talking about and has nothing to do with how many people are all around you. Because people can’t connect with someone they’ve never actually met.
00:02:58
And if what I’m talking about feels familiar, then it’s because all these people, your friends, the people in your life, your family even, they’ve never met you. Not the real you. It’s just because you’ve made sure of that.So let me give you a picture. You’re at a dinner party telling everyone about an incredible trip you just took. The five-star everything, the wine, the food, the whole highlight reel. And what you leave out is that you actually spent half that trip sick with guilt about leaving your kids or checking your phone under the table, wondering if you should have even gone. you don’t mention that part because that part doesn’t fit the image. And the real tragedy of all of that is sitting at that very table is another mom who felt the exact same thing on her last trip, who would have grabbed your hand and said, oh my God, me too.
00:03:44
The real connection was right there.And you walked right past it because you were caught up in performing or hiding. so that everybody goes home from a perfectly lovely dinner, having connected with no one, the same room, the same feelings, the same underlying longing, all of you completely alone. So here is what is actually happening. Every single time you walk into a room and show them the version they will admire instead of the version that’s true. you are betraying yourself. That’s the word, self-betrayal, self-abandoning. You are abandoning the real woman a little at a time. to keep a persona alive that everybody will clap for and that everyone will like. And all of this comes at a cost.You’re sad, you’re lonely, you feel isolated or alienated, and the sheer mental load of all of this is exhausting.
00:04:37
The curating and performing is not free. Think about everything your brain is doing in every room that you walk into. Reading the energy, scanning the faces, calculating what this person wants from you and what that one expects from you and which version of you will keep the approval flowing. Editing yourself in real time, contorting yourself and jumping through mental hoops, deciding what is safe to show and what has to stay locked away. you’re not just managing the conversation, you’re managing everyone’s perception of you every second that you’re in that room.That is an enormous mental load, the invisible kind that never shows up on your calendar, but is there underneath it all, all day long, draining you dry. We talk all the time about the mental load of running a household, the appointments, the logistics, and everybody else’s lives, right?
00:05:31
We do. We talk about that a lot. But the mental load of managing your own mask, of being someone that you’re not on demand in every room, no matter who you’re with, is way heavier. And that is the tax that you pay for betraying yourself. So why do we do it? Why hide? Why perform? Why keep everyone at arm’s length?Because to show all of you, the messy, imperfect parts, the human parts, you would have to be very vulnerable to do that. You’d have to risk someone seeing the real you and not liking what they see. And that terrifies you. It is terrifying. I hear it literally every single day. And it makes complete sense that it does because maybe somewhere long ago you got rejected and it gutted you.
00:06:17
Maybe you were teased or judged or left out or made to feel like too much or not enough. And some part of you, a young, smart, protective part made a decision. Never again. I will never be exposed like that ever again.So you built these walls and these gates, these big iron gates of protection and put on all your armor. and the logic is airtight. Nobody can hurt me if nobody can see me. And listen, this is your brain doing its job. Your nervous system logged all of that early pain as danger, and it’s been treating being truly seen like a threat to your survival ever since. Opening yourself up could be like emotional suicide. Why would you do it? You just won’t.
00:07:03
In the Ready for Love program, I share the three ways that women are operating in this protection mode, the three personas I call them. The first is the perfectionist. She thinks, if I’m flawless, I’m untouchable. There’s the pleaser.She thinks, if everybody likes me. I’m safe. And then there’s the pusher. She thinks, I’ll keep you at arm’s length before you can get close enough to hurt me. Three different strategies, same exact result. nobody gets in. And the real woman behind the wall is in there pounding on the door, longing to be seen and longing for connection. It’s this push pull inside of us. And you are the only one holding the key here. So how do we let her out and be free and seen and known and even loved?
00:07:50
It starts with something I say to women all the time.Because they come to me saying, Hillary, I just want to find someone who will let me be me, partner, friend, my people, someone who finally lets me be myself. And if you’ve ever thought those words or spoken those words or written them in your journal. Listen to me right now. It is not up to them whether you can be your true self or not. That is something only you can decide for yourself. Let me say that again, because it is everything. It is not their job to decide if you can be you. That is a promise only you can make to yourself.You get to decide if you’re going to be truly, genuinely, authentically you, or if you’re going to shapeshift or hide or present some pleasant alternate version of yourself.
00:08:39
You’ve been standing around waiting for permission that was always yours to give. So you stop gatekeeping. You stop locking the truest, most interesting, most alive parts of you away from the world and then wondering why you feel invisible. Of course you feel invisible. You’ve been hiding or lying about who you are or misrepresenting who you are. And I know it may feel really scary because you might be thinking, if I drop the act, I put it all at risk. Maybe I lose everything I’ve created. But no, that is not the case.not how it works. This is not about losing your edge or feigning softness. You can still walk into any room, polished, dynamic, impressive as hell, the powerhouse that you are. You don’t sacrifice being liked or admired or respected.
00:09:29
You don’t have to choose between being strong and being real. You get to have it all. You get to be both authentic, vulnerable, real, and powerful, dynamic, and all the other fabulous things that you are. The payoff is that you become even more magnetic because it’s all real. There’s no faking it here anymore. So here’s the actual work that ends the self-betrayal for good. You give yourself permission to make mistakes, to be fallible, to not have all the answers.You give yourself permission to say the wrong thing, to put your foot in your mouth, to be disliked, to be perfectly, gloriously imperfect, and let people see it. Be strange. be weird, be you in every way. Because the second you give yourself that permission, everything changes about who you are becoming.
00:10:22
You stop being the woman who needs to be liked and you become the woman who values being real. over being approved of. You stop performing and you stop auditioning and waiting for approval. It’s authenticity over approval. Authenticity over acceptance. Authenticity above all, no matter what. And you don’t have to throw the gates wide open all at once either. Start with one little crack.one real thing to one safe person and then see how it goes. The next time someone asks you how you’re doing and you’re about to go on autopilot and say, I’m great, so busy, all good. Tell one piece of the truth instead. You know what? I’m running on empty this week. That’s it. That is the whole practice. One true thing. I want to give you a perfect example.
00:11:10
When my kids were young, I was taking my son to the bus for summer camp and we were all the moms were waiting around. And one of the moms asked me, how are you? How’s it going? And it was just small chit chat. We didn’t even know each other.And instead of saying it’s all good and pretending everything is fine, I actually told her the truth. Oh my God. This is hard. This sucks. We had a shitty morning or whatever it was that was going on. I tipped my hand and I revealed my true self. I said something honest about what it was really like to have two young kids in the summer. Maybe they were up early and I’ve been up since 4 a.m. I don’t really know what I said.
00:11:48
I can’t remember. It was so long ago now. But the memory of this connection with this woman was so profound. I will always remember it. And she literally said, thank you for saying that. Thank you for telling the truth.Thank you for being honest. Me too. When you are courageous and brave enough to be. honest about who you really are and what your life experience is and the truth about what’s going on because nothing is perfect. Life is messy. And when you share that with people, that is when you are. adored, admired. People are drawn to you. You are alluring. You are magnetic. People want to be near you. That messy stuff about you is the good stuff. That’s the stuff that draws people to you. It gives them something to cling on to.
00:12:36
Another example from a client.a woman who looked the part and had it all together, she finally let her closest friends see that she was falling apart in her marriage. She was terrified. Convinced that they’d think less of her and that the whole image would crack. But instead, every single one of them leaned in. Two of them said, me too. And she told me later, she’d had those friends for 15 years. And that was the first time she actually felt like she had these friends. 15 years. That is what you’ve been missing out on. The connection that happens when you open up. and reveal what’s behind the wall. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it. At first, it might feel uncomfortable.
00:13:18
The first time you let someone see a crack in the armor, your whole nervous system might scream that you’re in danger. That’s normal, but you have to do it anyway. Because on the other hand, side of that discomfort, you finally drop the performance and let the real you be seen. If you want to be seen and known for who you really are, you must share who you really are, not the facade, not the perfect polished version of you. And when you do that, you become the most alluring, formidable, enchanting version of you, truly. I promise, because now there is an actual human being standing there to connect with. Your people who will get you can finally find you because you’re not hiding anymore.And the wrong ones fall away.
00:14:05
And I say to them, good riddance. And you walk into the room, the strong, successful, badass woman you’ve always been, and now you are the most magnetic version of yourself you have ever been. Because the very first time, for the very first time, it’s actually you in that room. And that, my friends, is the whole fucking point. So quick recap. The strongest woman in the room goes invisible because she’s performing instead of living. And that performance… is a slow self-betrayal carrying a heavy load. You’ve been hiding because being seen feels dangerous. The perfectionist, the pleaser, and the pusher are all mechanisms of self-protection and self-preservation that you no longer need.The solution is to give yourself the permission you’ve been waiting on somebody else to hand you, to just drop the wall, be all of you, all the parts of you that make you who you are.
00:15:01
Nobody else gets to decide whether you get to be you. This is just all up to you and it always has been. Imagine how good it is going to feel to drop the mask, to quit the bullshit and to just walk into any room and just… be exactly who you are. No out thinking or over-performing or pleasing or earning. I’m telling you from experience, there is no better feeling in this life than not giving a damn what people think of you.Because we are not here to be perfect. We are not here to please everyone. We are not here to lock ourselves away behind iron gates and call it strength. We are here to be unapologetically ourselves, all the flaws and all, and to take risks and to fall flat on our faces sometimes and to let other people in on all of that.
00:15:47
That is how you connect. That is how you go deeper. That is how you finally feel seen. And that is how the right people find you. If this episode landed for you, I’ve got an episode that goes hand in hand with it. why you can’t be yourself in your relationships.It picks up exactly where this one leaves off, and I think you’re going to love it. So I’ll put the link right here in the show notes and in the description. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
