True story: the first time I posted my revenue online, I literally threw my phone across the room.

5 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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A first-person YouTube reflection by Carly Hill about belonging, identity, and the fear of revealing one’s true success to friends and family. The speaker questions whether belonging requires staying a smaller version of oneself and describes the risk of embracing a larger identity — including worrying about how relationships will change if one shares true achievements.

Chapters

If belonging means staying in a smaller version of you, is it really belonging? Like what? Right? Is it really even belonging if belonging means staying small? Because when you allow yourself to embody a bigger identity, you're forced to rethink what belonging means. And that can feel really risky. But is the risk worth it? Sometimes it's not even other people holding us back. It's our story. And about how they'll react when we outgrow them or not even when we outgrow them. Really? How they'll react when I mean, outgrow them as like, I was referring to kind of maybe outgrowing some friend groups. But how they'll react when you share the true you. Like, that's what I was afraid of. How my friends and family would react if I were to share my true success.