This morning, while listening to a short video, I had a small shock.
Not a dramatic one—more like the quiet kind of jolt that feels like clarity suddenly appearing from nowhere.
I realised that my fears don’t necessarily come from a lack of confidence, but from something more subtle: expectations.
The expectation that if I don’t get the perfect result I’m working for, then… maybe that old story in my head is actually true.
The one that says, “I’m not good enough.”
And when you believe that—even quietly, in the background—every step forward becomes just “luck,” not something earned.
Every success gets diminished, doubted, sabotaged with thoughts like:
“It was a fluke.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Anyone could’ve done it.”
That’s how joy gets lost.
That’s how we deny our own abilities.
And then, comes that moment of waking up.
In the video, they talked about “how to train a flea”—how a flea learns to jump only as high as the lid of a jar, even after the lid is removed.
The most shocking thing? Apparently, even future generations of that first trained flea inherit the same invisible ceiling—passed down without question, as if it were real.
Where did my lid come from? I’m not entirely sure.
One clear source, though, could be all those times I told myself I couldn’t do something—for one reason or another.
Or maybe it was the quiet way my mother made it clear she didn’t expect much of me, and seemed to see more potential in my younger brothers.
I’m not blaming her. She had her own lid.
But I see now—it was me who kept reinforcing that invisible barrier.
Today, I felt—with every part of me—that the lid isn’t there anymore.
Maybe it never was.
I was the only one holding it in place.
And if that’s true… what do I choose to do now?
I choose to retrain myself.
And I choose to raise my children to know, deeply and truly, that the lid does not exist.
—Sharon🙂