The Secret to Getting What You Really WANT (and Stop Playing SMALL)

Our culture tends to hand us two conflicting messages about how to find happiness: either you must make everything happen yourself, or you should avoid trying too hard because being certain and pushy feels unspiritual — instead, just drift along. I’m here to say that both extremes can keep you playing small. Welcome back to the second installment in my “playing small” series; if you missed the first episode, you can watch it later — the order doesn’t matter. Neither forcing outcomes nor passively going with the flow is the best route. Escaping the habit of playing small means enlarging your life into something fuller, brighter, and more joyful than either of those approaches allows. If this series speaks to you, please hit subscribe — I’m doing this series for you, so if you haven’t yet subscribed, why not? Help push us toward a million subscribers. Playing small isn’t about asking for subscribes — it’s a defensive posture. Often unconsciously, it keeps us from speaking up, taking risks, or pursuing what we truly want, because we hope that by blending in and not asking for anything we can dodge criticism and the pain of failure. That strategy is common among people who experienced abuse or neglect in childhood — maybe that’s your story, as it was mine. But is avoiding every critique and every failure really the life you want? For many years that’s how I lived: untrained in social codes, surrounded by a kind of diffuse shame and financial hardship, it was easy to feel invisible and excluded. I failed at lots of attempts — as everyone does — but often I didn’t even try because I simply hadn’t been shown how. I watched others who seemed to understand the unwritten rules for getting ahead — what clubs to join, how to apply to school — but I never received those instructions. I left home at 17, worked cleaning houses, enrolled in community college, and even though I was bright and finished high school early, I turned up at a university one August saying I was ready to start and was told, “Did you apply? You need to take the SAT.” I literally didn’t know. My mother was a school administrator, but alcoholism swallowed up her ability to parent, and that kind of neglect leaves you scrappy and resourceful in some ways, but clueless in others. At 17 I bought a terrible car, moved to San Francisco to attend acting school, did every exercise the teachers assigned, but didn’t know how to get a career as an actor — I could follow course instructions, yet lacked the network, the roadmap, and the internal vision that connects practice to an intended outcome. Many traumatized people recognize that pattern: we can imitate the motions we observe, but we weren’t given the chance to feel, name, and structure our lives around a clear goal. So lots of us drift from bad job to bad relationship to another bad job, wondering how everyone else seemed to assemble a life while we were still being bounced around. People who showed up for me later felt like saints — their guidance mattered. I kept going through the motions for years and when I finally finished college, I didn’t know how to find work in my field or even what I wanted to do. Much later, grad school in public policy clarified what I didn’t want — I was being trained to be a government analyst and realized that wasn’t for me. That degree was valuable in unexpected ways — it helped me spot flawed research, analyze studies, and understand economics — but it wasn’t directly useful to Crappy Childhood Fairy, at least not yet. Everything else I ever did — telemarketing, waiting tables, babysitting, teaching customer service at a big healthcare chain, developing medical education materials — contributed skills I would eventually need. The pattern repeated in my relationships: if someone showed attraction or shared intensity, I went along, rarely asking whether their goals matched mine or what the future might look like. I didn’t even know what I wanted, and by the time those questions mattered to me, I felt hurt when people weren’t serious because I hadn’t set any expectations. Going with the flow meant I suppressed doubts, deferred to others’ directions, and hoped not to be alone or judged. I’ve always admired people with clear passions — great teachers in my youth changed my life — and neglected kids often look to others to supply an identity they missed getting at home. That longing is normal, but it can calcify into a pattern where you lose your own direction: you give away your will, your vision, and sovereignty over your life, waiting for someone else to assemble it for you. They won’t — unless they control you like a parent controls a child. The reason I no longer feel despair about years spent playing small is that all those experiences eventually became useful when I finally broke out with Crappy Childhood Fairy in my fifties. My agency awakened late but decisively; the messy, scattered years turned out to be part of my curriculum. Your past can be useful too. It’s never too late. Dwelling in shame and regret is wasted energy; what matters is learning and using those lessons to clarify your vision and take action now. Forcing things into being — “I will make this happen” — can also be a kind of playing small if it becomes rigid and frantic. Change, innovation, and recovery are iterative; they unfold step by step, and you learn the next move by taking the previous one. Very few people have a completely formed destination from the start. When you have a sense of direction — that animating thing that gives you energy — notice the feedback people give you: if they repeatedly say, “When you do X, that really helps me,” that’s a clue. Try one small action aligned with that direction and see where it leads. Once, I launched a startup: a simple platform for assembling links, videos, PDFs and images into an email that looked like a course and tracked who took it. I pitched it, raised a little money, but I wasn’t in love with the project and couldn’t pour myself into it. Investors hinted I came across as a typical “mom” and weren’t sure I was fully committed. Later, when Crappy Childhood Fairy surfaced, everything changed — that work fit me so fully that I was already doing it for free for half my waking hours, teaching a daily practice and learning about trauma. My motivation and reward system were wired to keep giving it away, teaching family and friends even when most people didn’t want it. That relentless sharing—my machine-like persistence—was exactly what made the eventual public version possible. From that startup experience I adopted a crucial concept: MVP, minimum viable product. If I’d tried to build everything I imagined for Crappy Childhood Fairy at the outset — a membership site, multiple courses, monthly webinars, two books, a massive online community — it would have been impractical and lifeless. I didn’t yet have the vision that existed later. So I began small: a free blog where my early posts were clinical and brochure-like because of my background writing public health materials; they were useful but dry. I drew crude illustrations, posted anyway, boosted a few posts on Facebook, and slowly gained a small readership. When I realized blog posts alone weren’t sparking action, I produced a video teaching the practice of writing fears and resentments — a tricky thing to film because it requires authenticity and showing the work. That early video, the oldest one on my YouTube channel, shows me stiff and formal; over time I learned to be more natural. I also joined Toastmasters, took singing lessons, and practiced holding still and speaking without filler words — skills that improved my presence. From those small experiments I discovered what medium mattered most: YouTube. I found I had a surprising number of subscribers from just a couple of early videos, and that realization shaped everything. Minimum viable product was the structure that allowed me to experiment cheaply and learn what resonated — blog posts, then a video demonstrating techniques, then more videos and fewer long-form posts. My writing shifted from clinical brochures to personal stories — about poverty, feeling feral as a child, and odd family moments — and readers began to relate and respond. That initial video teaching the technique drew people in and, as followers grew from a handful to dozens, it felt like real traction. Discovering video as my medium changed the trajectory. Over time I kept iterating: making more videos, refining my voice, and learning to lead with a bold opinion in the first seconds so people don’t scroll away — a tactic taught to me by mentors in the platform world. That directness felt uncomfortable at first, like breaking an unwritten rule, but on YouTube it’s necessary to capture attention; you can always qualify your statements afterward. I was careful, though, to avoid slander and to make clear I’m not a therapist — these are practical tools for people recovering from trauma. Many of my students are therapists and doctors who now refer others to the work, which has helped it spread. What truly connected with people was honesty about the raw, embarrassing realities of trauma symptoms; viewers often write that my work is the first time they felt really understood — that recognition matters far more than pastel brochure language. It wasn’t about slick production values at first: during the pandemic I filmed with a laptop camera and fuzzy footage, and those imperfect videos still carried the inner power and helped put the channel on the map. Around 2022 my gear improved — autofocus made newer videos crisper — but the substance always mattered more than polish. Committing fully to this path was a turning point: I shut down my video production business, closed the client work, and risked everything to build this channel. My husband, who had worked in software until a mid-pandemic career shift, started working with me, and our family’s livelihood depended on making this sustainable. We made the commitment together. Not everything I’ve made has the right energy; sometimes videos were produced in exhaustion, grief, or illness and show it. The best work comes when a simple outline lets me riff naturally. The essential practice is taking one action at a time: careers and relationships don’t materialize in a single instant. But actions only matter if you have a sense of what you want — you don’t need a perfect, fully-detailed plan, but you need a direction. For me, the idea of creating Crappy Childhood Fairy existed for decades; the daily practice changed my life so much I longed to teach it full time. I kept telling myself I’d write a book “this year” for years before it actually happened. The work built cumulatively: a thousand videos, a growing following, and then a book deal. Publishers want authors with audiences these days; your platform makes those opportunities possible. Before my book came out, supporters bought 5,000 pre-sale copies, which signaled to Amazon and the publisher that there was demand. You helped make that happen, and we’ll do it again with the next book, Connectability. Small actions from many people add up and support the vision. The path to what you want is rarely immediate. For example, when I was single and done with dead-end relationships, I wrote a detailed list of qualities I wanted in a partner: someone who loved me, loved my children, wouldn’t be ambivalent or abusive, wouldn’t have a drug problem, and who would be monogamous — and many negotiable preferences too. That clarity wasn’t magic — writing it down didn’t guarantee anything by itself — but it taught me not to settle. Once those standards were clear, I stopped accepting unsuitable people, and ultimately dated only one person who became my husband after a long courtship; we’ve now been married for more than a decade. Your clarity empowers steady actions that make you the kind of person who can attract what you want and who will require it of yourself. That is the core of the work I teach in my courses for people with childhood PTSD: we begin by clarifying what you want, because traumatized people often struggle to state their desires. You don’t force outcomes; you hold a picture of what matters, take a step, and the next bit of the path becomes visible. One step reveals the next until the fog clears. Going with the flow is useful in certain situations, but not when you’re operating from trauma-driven habits and getting stuck. If you want change, identify what you want and begin moving toward it. More videos about the many ways we play small are on the way; I’ll share how I learned these lessons and practical steps to break the patterns. One more ask: please subscribe — we’re moving toward a million subscribers and this is no time to quit. Why a million? Partly because it would be an exciting milestone and I’d love to show you the gold plaque when it arrives. Before the next video, I’m leaving something helpful for you to click on right here. See you very soon.