It’s a survival tactic; how else would one cope, once the age of tantrums and slammed doors had passed?

Still, something about this way of being started to wear thin for me. There was no big moment of epiphany. No sudden breakthrough. The unease came quietly, like a slow unfurling. Like realising one day that the shoes one had been wearing for years don’t fit right any more.

Nothing changed. And yet everything feels different.

Part of it has to do with emotional clarity. I’ve been thinking a lot about how difficult it is to know what one really feels about something when one is constantly adjusting the outward appearance of how one feels.

Who am I, when I’m not trying to “manage” myself (or others)?

What do I actually think about something, outside the filters of politeness, political correctness and professional neutrality?

It isn’t easy to admit to this, but for a long time I operated like someone stuck in a low-grade performance loop. I didn’t lie, but I softened truths. I didn’t actively pretend. I just left out parts of myself that didn’t fit a setting.

I told myself this was necessary. It helped move things along, helped me move forward. But, after a point, it started to feel like I was split in half. Not in a dramatic way, as some sort of crisis. But as a slow, persistent sense of disconnection. From myself. From others.

I’d say something in a room and later think, “That’s not exactly how I feel.” Or I’d listen to someone speak and agree out loud, but walk away uneasy.

I realised I was spending too much time editing myself, and too little time just sitting with what I actually felt. Not the polished version. Or the acceptable version. The raw one. The uncertain one. The one that sometimes doesn’t make sense or fit neatly into a conversation, or even into a personal philosophy.

I didn’t want that version of me — in many ways, the most genuine one — relegated to a shelf and marked “not helpful right now”.

So, I started doing something I never thought I’d do. I started saying less. If I didn’t know how I felt about a subject, I stopped pretending I did. If I didn’t want to take a call, I didn’t. If I was unsure about something, I said so. If something upset me, I sat with it instead of rerouting it into something more digestible.

Slowly, things got quieter. Not easier. Just quieter. And in that quiet, I see something new arriving. A different kind of clarity. Not the kind where everything makes sense, but the kind where you stop arguing with yourself. Stop remastering feelings to fit a situation.

I have reached the point now where I don’t want to be “impressive” all the time. I don’t want to be the most useful person in every room. Or the best listener, or the most evolved responder. I want to be someone who can sit in a room and just be. Not as an act of defiance. Just as an act of honesty.

So, when the old patterns return and I feel the urge to polish, deflect, and say what sounds good, more often than not, I catch myself. I pause; breathe; and remember I don’t need to perform. I can just be.

I don’t have a grand insight to close with here. Only a quiet thought that’s been sitting with me for a while: The older I get, the less I want to manage who I am.

I don’t want to be different people in different places. I want to be more whole.

I want to be this whole self when I wake up. When I’m in traffic. When I’m in a meeting. When I’m at home. When I’m alone.

It’s work in progress.

(Charles Assisi is co-founder of Founding Fuel. He can be reached on assisi@foundingfuel.com)