Growth Doesn’t Announce Itself

This morning I was digging through my backpack looking for a charger.

Instead, I found a folded scrap of paper. Creased. Smudged. Written hard enough that the ink bled through.

I had completely forgotten about it.

A few weeks ago, I flew to Chicago in twenty degree weather. I spent about a thousand dollars on last minute tickets, a mediocre Holiday Inn, a Hertz rental, and a burnt deep dish pizza, all to close a prospect.

As I boarded the flight back, I did not have the agreement signed.

Somewhere between the gate and my seat, I funneled my anger and disappointment into that scrap of paper I had torn from the hotel room desk.

It read:

“It’s not really about the close but more so my approach.
It wasn’t good enough.

I wasn’t a leader.
I wasn’t focused.”

Wow.

I am sitting here on January 11th, 2026, holding this note, noticing how rigid the lines are, how hard I pressed the pen into the paper. And I cannot shake the feeling that there is more here than I saw at the time.

That flight was December 17th, 2025.

A week later, the same prospect who I was convinced had rejected me in his office emailed asking for a contract.

As I stare at this note now, I laugh and shake my head, almost like a wise elder character saying “there, there.” At the same time, I am puzzled by how certain I was that I had lost.

I try to return to my mindset on that flight. The rage seemed to end once I wrote those few lines. Part of me wishes I kept going.

Would I have gotten more emotional or more analytical.
Would I have spiraled or stayed neutral.
Would I have learned something faster.

Instead, I am here now, feeling like a detective in an HBO series, trying to unravel a few sentences written in frustration.

So let’s dig in.

I notice something interesting. I was detached from the result. “It’s not really about the close.” That part feels healthy. I was focused on my actions, not the outcome.

But what followed is where rational thinking left the room.

I labeled myself in absolute terms. Black and white. Leader or not. Focused or not.

That kind of self talk is rarely productive. We all know that.

But here is where it gets uncomfortable.

In our effort to avoid negative self talk, we often swing too far in the opposite direction. Overconfidence quietly compounds. We assume competence without revisiting it. Worse, we stop noticing our blind spots.

Hearing that you are not good enough at a specific skill should not translate into “I am not good enough as a person.” Yet that is exactly what many of us fear, so we avoid the language entirely.

And when we avoid it, we avoid the work.

We maintain a false sense of confidence. A belief that we do not need to revisit that arena. That nothing needs sharpening.

The ripple effects are obvious once you see them.

Looking back on that freezing trip to the Windy City, the truth is simple. I was not as focused as I needed to be. I did not prepare the way the leader I aspire to be would have.

Oddly enough, I am glad I did not write more on that scrap of paper. If I had expanded on it in that moment, the raw truth might not have made it through.

I needed to sit with the feeling first.

Knowing how the story ends, you might ask if it was all in my head. But even then, I knew it was not about the close. The result amplified the emotion, but my frustration was rooted in my approach.

It was not meant to be negative. But it did not need to be positive either.

It could be neutral. Or both.

We struggle to let dualities exist. I am no exception.

Since that trip, I have made countless adjustments. I have replayed the scenario and thought deeply about how I would approach it differently next time.

As the emotions cooled, I was also able to acknowledge what I did well. I did not drop the ball entirely.

That matters too.

The lesson here is not a simple tweak. It has forced me to rethink how I process moments like this altogether.

I have trained myself to avoid knee jerk reactions. To pause. To soften the edges.

But maybe there is something valuable in the rawness of the moment. A kind of truth that only shows itself before the story hardens into something convenient.

In sales, I tend to throw a heavy blanket of victory over closed deals. I rarely stop to examine everything that went into them. In doing so, I rob myself of the lesson. Worse, I curate a facade of confidence.

The real work, at least for me, is letting two ideas coexist.

Something can be good and bad at the same time.

As simple as that sounds, I struggle with it.

I want the story to be written one way. One clean narrative.

And frankly, I malfunction when it is not.

I folded the paper back up and put it where I found it.

Some lessons don’t arrive with applause. They arrive scribbled on hotel stationery, written in frustration, and only make sense once the noise fades.

I’m learning to listen to those more closely.