Getting It Wrong

There is a version of me who has been waiting.

Waiting until I know enough.

Waiting until I’ve read more.

Waiting until I’ve attended the right conferences, earned the right letters after my name, lived a few more decades, and accumulated a more acceptable résumé.

Waiting until I can finally step forward and say, with authority, Now I deserve to take up space.

The trouble is, that moment never comes.

Recently, someone told me I seemed naïve. That I came across like someone ten years younger. That some of my business ideas were too “capitalistic.” My work was referred to as “shit like that.” It wasn’t a stranger on the internet. It was a friend.

The words landed harder than I expected. Not because I believe they are fully true, but because they brushed up against an old fear I’ve carried quietly for most of my life: that I grew up under a rock. That my worldview is off. That I somehow missed the memo everyone else received about how to think, how to speak, how to be credible.

In the hours after that conversation, I felt like a child who had been scolded in front of the class. My chest tightened. My thoughts raced. I replayed every recent article I’d written, every workshop I’d led, every opinion I’d shared publicly. I wanted to pull it all back. To retreat. To go silent until I had it more figured out.

Shame is efficient like that. It doesn’t argue. It collapses.

But here is what I’ve learned over time — especially in my work on live radio — shame only sticks when I am clinging to ego.

On air, I often say things just to see what happens. I’ll float a thought or interpretation and watch how the guest responds. Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they gently correct me. Sometimes they take the conversation in a direction I never anticipated. And in those moments — those live, unscripted, potentially awkward moments — I feel more alive than when I’m “right.”

There is something deeply liberating about being wrong in public.

When I am willing to say, “Oh, that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way,” the air clears. The conversation deepens. My understanding expands in real time. There is no performance to maintain. No fragile identity to protect.

Curiosity feels better than certainty ever has.

And yet, in my writing and in marketing my work, I’ve been quieter. I’ve hesitated. I’ve waited for a level of knowing that would make me untouchable. As if one day I would arrive at a version of myself that could not be critiqued, misunderstood, or dismissed.

That version does not exist.

None of us know everything. None of us have all the answers. Even the most seasoned leaders are learning in real time. The difference is not in how much they know. The difference is in whether they are willing to show up anyway.

What hurt most about the recent critique was not the content of it. It was the implication that I was somehow behind. Less developed. Less sophisticated. As if there is a correct timeline for becoming wise.

But wisdom is not linear. It is lived.

I may not have attended elite schools. I may not share the same ideological framework as everyone in the room. I may, at times, see the world with a kind of openness that reads as naïveté to someone who has been hardened by different experiences.

But that openness is not a deficit. It is my superpower.

I grew up in ways that required me to observe closely. To listen carefully. To navigate complexity without a map. That perspective may not fit neatly into academic language, but it is real. It is earned. It is valuable.

Business, I’ve come to realize, is deeply personal. The way we build, the way we sell, the way we speak about value — it all reflects what we believe about worth, contribution, and community. When someone dismisses your work, they are not just critiquing a strategy. They are brushing up against your identity.

No wonder it hurt.

But somewhere in the middle of that discomfort, a different realization began to form.

I do not need to wait.

I do not need to become a future, more polished version of myself before I am allowed to be visible. I do not need to earn permission to take up space by accumulating more credentials or sanding down the edges that make me distinct.

I am whole right now.

Not finished. Not perfected. But whole.

There is a quiet violence we do to ourselves when we treat our current selves as insufficient drafts. As if we are always in rehearsal for the real performance. As if life begins once we are beyond critique.

But growth does not require self-erasure. Learning does not require self-doubt. In fact, the most rapid learning I’ve ever experienced has come from being willing to get it wrong.

Sometimes that wrongness unfolds in a single conversation. Sometimes it stretches across years — a belief about a person, an organization, even myself that slowly unravels under new information. Those longer arcs are harder. They ask for humility. They ask for the courage to say, “I was mistaken,” even after investing time and identity into being right.

And yet, every time I allow that shift, something expands. My world gets bigger. My understanding becomes more nuanced. I become less rigid, less defensive, more open.

Being wrong is not a failure of intelligence. It is evidence of participation.

The only people who never get it wrong are the ones who never step forward.

When I look back at the shame I felt after that critique, I can see now that it was tied to ego — the part of me that wanted to be seen as competent, seasoned, unimpeachable. The moment I released that grip, the shame dissolved.

If I am allowed to be learning, then no one can embarrass me.

If I am allowed to be evolving, then no one can disqualify me.

If I am allowed to be exactly where I am, then no critique can collapse me.

Humility is not smallness. It is armor.

It says, “Yes, I have more to learn. And I am still worthy of being here.”

There is a younger version of me who learned early to make herself small. To listen more than speak. To observe rather than assert. She believed that safety lived in invisibility.

When that recent critique landed, she was the first to retreat. I could feel her pulling inward, arms crossed over her chest.

But as the days passed, something shifted. Instead of shrinking, I felt a steadiness rise up. A quiet clarity. The understanding that waiting to know everything is a lifetime sentence. And I am no longer interested in serving it.

At some point, that little girl stepped forward again. She opened her arms wide, lifted her chin, and said, “Here I am, world.”

Not because she has it all figured out.

Not because she cannot be challenged.

But because she understands now that showing up is the point.

I will, someday, look back at this very essay and smile. I will see the gaps in my thinking, the places where my understanding was still forming. I will probably cringe at a sentence or two. That is the nature of growth.

But I will not regret speaking.

The best gift we can give ourselves today is permission — permission to show up as the version of ourselves that exists right now. Not the future expert. Not the fully formed authority. Just this human, with this lived experience, this curiosity, this imperfect but sincere contribution.

Confidence is not certainty. It is the willingness to participate.

So I will keep writing. I will keep hosting conversations where I risk misunderstanding and correction. I will keep building businesses in ways that reflect what I believe to be good and generative and human.

And when I get it wrong — because I will — I will listen. I will adjust. I will grow.

What I will not do anymore is wait.

If you have been holding back, waiting to feel more qualified, more educated, more bulletproof before stepping into your voice, I hope you reconsider. The world does not need a perfected version of you. It needs the honest one.

You are allowed to learn in public.

You are allowed to evolve out loud.

You are allowed to take up space before you feel completely ready.

In fact, that might be the only way growth ever happens.

So here we are.

Not finished.

Not flawless.

But fully here.

And that, my dear friend, is exactly enough.

-Amanda