Hi Reader,

I'm just returning from a retreat with Paula Short, who has been on the workshops work podcast. A facilitator I deeply respect.

By the end of day two, a sudden insight made me almost laugh out loud.

I am actually here.

In the past — at workshops, retreats, anything that overlapped with my professional world — I would have had my facilitator hat glued on. I'd be observing the design, taking notes on the process, reading the room at the meta level. From a safe distance, carefully keeping one foot out of the arena.

I always had a very respectable reason for it: I'm doing this for the work. For the podcast. For research.

What I'm only now letting myself see is that it was also, maybe mostly, a way of not fully showing up for myself. A professional mask so familiar I'd stopped noticing I was wearing it. If I stayed at the observer level, I could remain safe. Useful. Competent. A person there to give, not to need.

No retreat was never going to hurt me. I have known that but to my body and animal brain it had felt like a life's threat. That's where the note-taking comes from.

I only realised when I looked at my notes and couldn't find a single reflection on process. All words were personal and real. And so were my spoken words which changed the dynamics and the impact for me.

I've been thinking about what it actually costs to keep that mask on, in the day-to-day, slightly embarrassing, ordinary way.

It costs the experience we're in. It costs the people across from us, who can sense when they're being observed instead of met. And it costs something in us — some small but real closing-off that accumulates over years.

The question isn't whether we're professional enough. It's whether we're using professionalism to protect ourself from something we could just as easily walk towards.

🎤 Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:

Thirty years ago, Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit, walked into a room full of blue suits and pearls — competing for one of the most prestigious academic scholarships in the world — wearing long blonde hair, earrings, and a pink tie-dye tie. His logic was simple: if he tried to beat them on their terms, he'd lose. So he placed a different bet. He'd either come last by a long way, or come first.

He came first.

Years later, a CEO fired his company Box of Crayons from a $300,000-a-year contract — simply because he hated the name. Michael didn't change it. He went looking for clients who loved it instead.

We talked about what it costs to hold that line. About the strange freedom of realising that almost nobody is tracking the reputation we've been so carefully managing. And about what happens when we stop making decisions in service of a version of ourself that was never quite real.

🎧 Click here to listen to the interview

📥 Download my 1-page summary

​UP_014_Summary.pdf​

🎧 The workshops work Podcast Club

The workshops work podcast has retired and I am devoted to preventing the old episodes from gathering digital dust in the archives. The Podcast Club keeps the conversations alive. Joining me on Substack to stay updated about the free monthly gatherings: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

In our next gathering we'll be talking about Play and whether it's a designed experience or living condition! I hope to see you there

​Click here to find out more and sign up for free.​

That's it from my side. I hope to see you next week!

Myriam