Tune In to Who You're Becoming

A Becoming Her reflection

It had only been about two years since I moved to the United States when a friend invited me to a women's luncheon.

She was a realtor from England, and she told me, "You should come. It will be good for your business. You'll meet people and they can get to know you."

At that point, I was still very shy about speaking English with people outside of the Persian community. My English wasn't fluent. I had an accent. I worried about making grammar mistakes. And somewhere in my mind, I had already decided that all of those things made me less confident, less capable, and somehow less than the people who had grown up here. But I went.

There were probably twenty or thirty women at the luncheon. It was a networking event, and throughout the afternoon different women would take the microphone and share their stories.

I sat there listening. And cheering. I was perfectly happy doing exactly that.

Then suddenly my friend handed me the microphone. "Amy, why don't you tell everyone how you started your business?"

I wanted to disappear.

I had never spoken publicly before - not even in my first language, let alone in English. I hadn't prepared anything. I didn't know what I was going to say. I remember sweating.

But there I was, standing in front of a room full of women with a microphone in my hand, so I started talking.

With my broken English. With my accent. With my grammar mistakes.

I told them my story.

When I finished, everyone clapped and cheered. I was relieved. Thank God that's over. I talked with a few women afterward, and just before we were leaving, an American woman came over to me.

She told me how much my story had inspired her. She told me she had been thinking about starting her own business, and after listening to me, she was going to do it.

I was shocked. I remember thinking, She was inspired by me?

I had spent that entire speech worrying about my English. She hadn't. I was thinking about my accent.

She was hearing my story. I was noticing every grammar mistake. She was feeling inspired enough to change something in her own life.

That conversation changed something in me.

There was also another immigrant woman who spoke that day. Her accent was much stronger than mine, and yet there she was - standing in front of everyone and telling her story. Nobody cared about her accent either.

People don't need you to be perfect. They need you to be real.

If you are genuine, if you're authentic, and if you speak from your heart, people feel it. For years afterward, people would even tell me something I never expected to hear: my accent made me more memorable.

The thing I had considered a flaw was actually part of what made me different.

Today, I don't think of my accent as something I need to overcome. I think of it as a privilege.

I speak two languages. My accent carries part of my story. It tells you that I came from somewhere else, started over, learned another language, built a life in a different country, and kept going even when I didn't feel completely comfortable.

But my accent wasn't the only ceiling I had created for myself.

For years, I thought there was a limit to how far I could go.

I didn't grow up in America. I didn't go to school here. English wasn't my first language. And somewhere along the way, I turned those facts about my life into limitations.

I remember thinking many times, I wish I had come to America earlier. Maybe then I could have gone to school here. Maybe my English would have been better. Maybe I could reach a different level of success.

What I didn't understand was that I was creating the ceiling myself.

Looking back now, I realize that so much of becoming who we want to be comes down to what we choose to tune into.

For a long time, I was tuned into everything I thought I was missing: my education, my English, my accent, what I didn't know, and what other people seemed to know that I didn't.

I was constantly collecting evidence for why someone else might be more capable than me. But what happens when you change what you're tuning into?

What happens when, instead of focusing on all the reasons you can't become the person you imagine, you start tuning into the possibility that you can? That's what slowly started happening to me.

Little by little, I changed the station.

I started a business. I learned things I didn't know how to do. I made mistakes. I figured things out. I pushed myself outside my comfort zone. And every time I did something I once thought I couldn't do, I gained a little more evidence that perhaps the limits I believed in weren't actually there.

I wish I could say one luncheon magically eliminated all of my self-doubt. It didn't.

I would break one ceiling and eventually discover another one above it. But each time, I became a little more willing to challenge it.

Belief made me willing to try. Trying gave me evidence. Evidence gave me confidence.

Confidence made me willing to try something bigger.

And somewhere along that journey, the question in my head changed.

Instead of asking, Am I capable of becoming that woman? I started thinking: Why not me?

Today, when I hear people talk about manifestation, mindset, consistency, believing in yourself, or the power of your thoughts, I understand why sometimes it can sound cliché.

It's easy to scroll past those words on Instagram. It's different when you've lived them. For me, manifestation isn't sitting somewhere wishing for a different life.

It's allowing yourself to see a version of you that doesn't exist yet - and believing in her enough to start behaving like her.

You tune into her.

You start making decisions from that place. You take the meeting. You walk into the room. You start the business. You speak even when your English isn't perfect. You try something before you feel completely ready.

Sometimes you fail. You learn. You try again.

And slowly, the woman you once imagined becoming isn't somewhere in the future anymore. You're becoming her.

I don't wish anymore that I had come to America earlier.

Because today I understand that the woman who arrived here when she did - with an accent, without an American education, and with so much she still had to learn - is an important part of the woman Ibecame. I needed her. I just didn't need to let her fears determine how far I could go.

We can honor who we've been without allowing that identity to limit who we're becoming.

There is a version of you beyond the limitations you've accepted about yourself.

Maybe she's more confident. Maybe she starts the business. Maybe she walks away from something. Maybe she walks into a room she once thought she didn't belong in. Maybe she speaks. Maybe she finally stops waiting for someone else to give her permission.

Tune into her.

Give yourself permission to believe she's possible. Then do the work. Be persistent. Keep showing up.

And the next time life hands you the microphone before you feel ready - take it.

You might discover that the thing you've been trying so hard to hide is part of the story someone elsenneeds to hear.

And maybe that's what Becoming Her really is.

Not becoming someone else.

Becoming the version of yourself you finally stopped believing was out of reach.