Last week I wrote about the excitement of shared vision and how that excitement can make the signals of what’s really going on harder to see and hear.
And today I’m going to take you further with walking you through three specific moments, or scenes, from my own life that’ll showcase perfectly how the excitement can blind us, and make us reach for the generous interpretation in order to keep the hope intact.
The signals I’m describing have a way of arriving that I think you’ll recognize from your own experience, too.
And I invite you to notice, as we move through them, how early the information was present. How visible it was, if I had chosen to look directly at it rather than past it.
The proposal that wasn’t equal
Years ago a collaboration was proposed to me and the language around it was generous and expansive: shared vision, shared direction, two people building something together toward a common goal. It felt real, like something I had been hoping for.
I took it seriously, sat down with the proposed structure, looked at the details. And what I found was that the structure wasn’t equal, foundationally. The ownership wasn’t equal. The control wasn’t equal. The share of the profits wasn’t equal (although the input was supposed to be equal). The decision-making power wasn’t equal. None of the structure reflected what the language had been describing.
So I proposed something that would actually create equality. A structure where both parties would hold equivalent stakes, equivalent voice, equivalent skin in the game. A structure that would make the partnership real in the way the language had been promising it was.
The answer was no.
And then the other person still wanted to know if I was interested. As if the no to equality hadn’t just answered that question clearly. As if what was being offered was still a real partnership. As if the structure and the language were two separate things that could coexist without the gap between them meaning anything.
I felt the confusion of things not quite adding up. The gap between what was being said and what was actually being proposed was right there in front of me, visible and clear. And I was not supposed to care about it?
Right behind that thought, the explanation arrived. Perhaps this was just the starting point. Structures take time to evolve. The vision is real even if everything isn’t in place yet. I’m probably expecting too much too soon.
The signal was clear. Someone who genuinely wants an equal partnership says yes to equality when it’s offered directly. The no told me something about how equality was actually valued in this dynamic, not how it was talked about, but how it was actually valued when it came to the concrete structure of what was being built.
But I filed it away. Accepted the generous interpretation I made of the situation. And continued with the hope that it’ll find its balance over time.
The joke in front of everyone
We were in a professional setting with my colleague, in a shared event we had built together that represented both of our work and we were both invested in. There were people in the room whose respect we were working to earn. Clients, peers, people who mattered to our professional reputations.
During the day, someone asked about our history. How long had we known each other? Had we always worked together?
And the answer that came — delivered in front of everyone, in the professional context we had both worked to create — was a joke. At my expense. One that had been made before, privately, between the two of us, in a way that feels like intimacy rather than diminishment and I had absorbed it telling myself it was just humor.
But this time it was public. In front of the clients whose respect we were both working to earn. And the joke, although framed as warmth, delivered with a smile, and received with laughter by everyone in the room, efficiently and precisely made me smaller. In a setting that we needed to be seen as equals.
I said nothing. I smiled the way you do when you’re absorbing something in public that you don’t yet have the language to name. And afterward, I told myself she didn’t mean it the way it landed. That I was being too sensitive. That reading too much into a joke was its own kind of problem.
But here’s what I know now that I didn’t fully allow myself to know then: the private joke and the public joke are not the same thing. What gets said between two people in the intimacy of a close relationship carries a different weight than what gets said in front of a shared professional audience. The move from private to public, without checking, without any apparent awareness of the impact and consideration that what was funny between the two of us might land differently in a public setting, that move itself was the signal.
Not showing that she was a bad person or that the relationship was worthless. But that something about how she saw me, and how comfortable she was with others seeing me that way, was different from how I had understood it to be.
But I explained it away. And continued. Because after all, we were building something meaningful. Right?
The preparation that kept not happening
This one is different from the other two as it wasn’t a single moment. It was the same signal arriving repeatedly, in different forms, across multiple points of contact over time.
First it was a commitment made to review something before a conversation. Then to prepare something before a meeting. Then to show up having done the work that had been agreed upon. But none of that quite happened. There was a general familiarity with the material rather than genuine engagement with it, or a glance rather than a thorough read. The sense that the preparation that was supposed to happen hadn’t quite happened, arrived early in each conversation.
And each time, there was a reason. A busy week. A competing priority. Something that had come up unexpectedly. And each reason, taken individually, was entirely understandable. Life gets busy. Priorities compete. Things come up. Life throws curve balls at us.
But here’s the thing: the individual reasons and the pattern are two different things. The reasons explain any single instance. The pattern explains something about where this actually sits, not in the words used to describe it, but in the lived reality of how time and attention and preparation are actually distributed.
Because preparation is a form of care. One of the most concrete, least performable forms of care available in a professional relationship. You can say that something matters. You can describe how much you value it, how committed you are to it, how seriously you take it. But preparation — actual time given, attention brought, thought invested before the conversation begins — that’s harder to fake. And its consistent absence is harder to explain away.
I noticed the pattern. I felt the confusion of the growing gap between what was being said about how much this mattered and what the behavior was consistently showing. And I did what I had learned to do with confusion: I focused on the individual reasons rather than the pattern they were forming. I told myself that preparation styles differ. That I was holding an unfair standard. That I was, once again, expecting too much.
The signal wasn’t in any single instance. It was in the accumulation. In what the pattern, read honestly, was telling me about where this collaboration actually sat for the other person, not just in the language of shared vision, but in the allocation of actual time and care.
But I explained it away. And continued. In the name of the hope that next time it will be different.
What these three moments are showing
Three different situations and forms the signal took. Three different ways the information was present clearly, visibly, from early on. And three different ways I chose to look past it in favor of the generous interpretation.
And here’s what I want to name clearly, and invite you to take with you from this:
First. The signals are always there. From the beginning, if we choose to see them.
But they’re not always pointing toward problems, that’s important to say clearly. Signals can point toward green flags as much as yellow or red ones. Toward someone who shows up with more genuine care than you expected. Toward a dynamic that is more equal in practice than the language suggested. Toward a pattern of behavior that consistently confirms rather than contradicts the vision.
Second. The signals don’t lie. They just ask to be noticed.
To be held as information rather than immediately filtered through the hope of what we need them to mean. To be given the same generous attention we so readily extend outward to the other person, the relationship, or the possibility of what could be. And so rarely extend inward. To our own perception. Our own confusion. Our own quiet noticing that something doesn’t quite add up.
That’s the good girl conditioning at work. Endlessly generous toward others. Far less generous toward ourselves. Extending the most charitable interpretation outward while turning the doubt inward and making ourselves the problem for having noticed.
No more abandoning ourselves in order to belong
The signals were always there. In all three of these moments, and in countless others like them across many years and many relationships. What I kept choosing was to make myself the problem for having noticed rather than to let the noticing be what it was.
Information. Asking for my presence.
And what kept me explaining was the fear that if I stopped, I would have to give up the hope that this person, collaboration, or relationship would be different. Would meet me where I was. Would see me fully and show up with equivalent care.
That hope is real, but it should not live in the abandonment of our own noticing in order to keep the possibility alive.
No more abandoning ourselves in order to belong.
Now is time for us to fully show up for ourselves and meet ourselves with the equivalent care we’ve been giving to others.
The signals are asking for our presence. They were always asking for our presence. And then to act from self worthiness, not abandonment.
The Rapid Reset for Hesitation Loops is a practical toolkit for returning to yourself in moments that matter. Your guide in keeping the promise to no longer abandon yourself in order to belong.
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Paula Immo works with founders and leaders navigating the gap between knowing and doing. Her focus is on fear of visibility, hesitation patterns, and the inner work that supports sustainable leadership.