How my lowest professional moment became the doorway to everything I’ve since become
“You may not be able to control someone’s negative behaviour — but you can control how long you participate in it.”
I did not choose to begin my self-development journey.
It chose me — the way most important things do — through pain, and at the worst possible moment.
Before what I now call the incident, I had never heard the phrase self-development. I wasn’t looking for growth. I wasn’t asking deep questions about who I was or what I was allowing into my life. I was simply working, quietly, doing my best, and trying to be seen well by the people above me.
What happened instead cracked something open in me that I am now, years later, profoundly grateful for. Not because the experience wasn’t painful — it was. But because of what crawled out from the rubble.
I. THE WOMAN I WANTED TO BECOME
Roxie Rock
My manager — I’ll call her Roxie Rock — was, on the surface, everything I wanted to be.
She was eloquent. In meetings, in emails, in casual conversation — her words were always precise, always confident, always carrying the particular authority of someone who had never questioned whether she deserved to be in the room. She could think on her feet, read a situation quickly, and walk into any environment holding herself with a composure I found genuinely magnetic.
I looked up to her. I studied her. I wanted to absorb whatever it was that made her the way she was.
But Roxie Rock was also unpredictable in ways I chose, for too long, not to examine. Her moods arrived before she did. You could read the day in her face the moment she walked through the office door — and the whole room quietly adjusted accordingly. The sarcasm came and went. The sharp words were followed by warmth, then by coldness again. She could cut you down and compliment you in the same breath, and somehow you were grateful for the compliment and filed the cut away somewhere you didn’t intend to look at.
I ignored every signal. I was too busy admiring the parts of her I wanted for myself to pay attention to what the relationship was actually costing me.
Like a puppy, I was happy when she was happy, and I rolled with it as long as the good mood lasted. I was completely blind to what was happening.
II. THE BREAKING POINT
The Afternoon Everything Broke
Everyone has a threshold. A point past which they simply cannot absorb any more and remain intact. I reached mine on a late afternoon that I remember with uncomfortable clarity.
There was a situation at work that needed addressing. At the same time, Roxie Rock was navigating something personal — her boyfriend was leaving the country for good. She was in pain. And I, without knowing it, had positioned myself close enough that I became the most available target.
In the meeting that followed, she did not hold back. The sarcasm was precise and deliberate. The words were harsh. And then, to make certain the humiliation was complete, she announced in front of others that I would be handing the task over to a new joiner.
I sat there and absorbed it.
(The footnote, which I mention only because it tells its own story: a few days later, the task came back to me. I was the only one who could handle that market. But Roxie Rock never acknowledged that. Of course she didn’t.)
I walked out of that meeting and made myself a quiet promise: never again.
But promises made in hurt don’t automatically become freedom. I drove home that evening and the hatred came with me. I carried it into the night, into the next day, into the day after that. I was physically ill with it. I could not look at her face without the anger rising. And all the while, she was living rent-free in my head — occupying space, consuming energy, taking up room I didn’t even know I had given her.
I was punishing myself trying to punish her.
III. THE AHA MOMENT
Seven Words That Changed Everything
Months into this spiral, I was on YouTube on day — not looking for anything in particular, the way you scroll when your mind is too loud to do anything deliberate. A video appeared. A woman named Lisa Nichols, whose screen presence stopped me mid-scroll.
I pressed play.
And then she said it.
“We are the ones who show people how to treat us. People only follow our example.”
Seven words that rearranged everything.
I sat with them. And then, very slowly, I began to understand what they meant for me specifically — not as a general truth, but as a precise description of what I had been doing for years without realizing it.
I had shown Roxie Rock how to treat me. With every boundary I left unspoken. With every sharp word I absorbed in silence and filed away. With every mood swing I accommodated and every sarcastic comment I laughed off to keep the peace. I had been teaching her, consistently and patiently, that I was available for whatever she needed to place on me.
She was not the problem. I was my own problem — and that was the most liberating thing I had ever been told.
Not because it removed her responsibility. But because it returned mine. If I had been the one teaching her how to treat me, then I was also the one who could stop.
IV. THE PRACTICE THAT SAVED ME
The Relationship Autopsy
I grabbed my journal. And I did something I had never done before— something I now believe everyone who has ever found themselves in a painful dynamic should do.
I performed what I called a relationship autopsy.
I went all the way back to the beginning of my relationship with Roxie Rock — the very first days, when the admiration was fresh and the red flags were just colours I hadn’t learned to name yet. And I walked forward through every significant moment, honestly, without defending myself or prosecuting her. Just looking. Just seeing.
What I found was not comfortable. But it was true. And truth, even uncomfortable truth, is a relief after a long season of avoidance.
I saw exactly where I had given ground I shouldn’t have. I saw the moments I had laughed off what should have been addressed. I saw the pattern: every boundary I quietly surrendered made the next one easier for her to cross, until there were no boundaries left and she had grown comfortable in the space where my self-respect used to be.
Taking full responsibility for my role in that dynamic was not the same as excusing her behaviour. It was something more powerful: it meant I no longer needed her to change in order for me to be free. I could simply choose differently, starting now.
Sitting in front of that piece of paper, with that new knowledge, was the first time in weeks I could breathe properly.
V. YOUR TURN
How to Conduct Your Own Relationship Autopsy
If you are carrying a relationship — past or present — that has left you feeling diminished, confused, or exhausted, I want to offer you the same tool that freed me. You don’t need a therapist or a course. You need a quiet hour, a journal, and the willingness to look honestly.
Here is how to begin:
1. Go back to the beginning.
When did this relationship start? What did you admire or want from this person? What drew you to them, professionally or personally?
2. Walk forward through the significant moments.
Where were the first signs that something was off? What did you notice — and what did you choose to do with that noticing? Did you address it, minimise it, or file it away?
3. Find your yes moments.
Where did you say yes when you should have said no? Where did you stay silent when you should have spoken? Where did you accommodate behaviour that didn’t deserve accommodation?
4. Name the pattern without blame.
Not to condemn yourself, and not to excuse the other person — but simply to see clearly. What dynamic did you participate in creating? What were you hoping to receive in return for the tolerance you were offering?
5. Ask the key question.
What would I do differently, knowing what I know now? What boundary, spoken clearly and early, might have changed the entire shape of this relationship?
The goal of this exercise is not to assign blame — to them or to yourself. It is to reclaim your agency. To move from feeling like something that happened to you, into understanding yourself as someone with choices, even in difficult dynamics. Especially in difficult dynamics.
THE LESSON
Your lowest moment is not the end of your story.
I entered that meeting room as someone who had been absorbing pain and calling it loyalty. I walked out of it on a path — though I didn’t know it yet — that would lead me to Lisa Nichols, to journaling, to self-discovery, to the version of myself I am still in the process of becoming.
The humiliation was real. The pain was real. And both of them were necessary.
Because the question that pain finally forced me to answer — why do I keep accepting this? — was the most important question I had ever been asked. And the answer changed the entire direction of my life.
Pay attention to how people make you feel. Not occasionally, not in the dramatic moments, but consistently — in the ordinary texture of your daily interactions. If the energy coming toward you is neither uplifting nor nurturing, that is information. It is not a verdict on your worth. It is simply a signal that you are not with your person, in that role, in that space.
And you are always allowed to choose again.
“The moment you take responsibility for the dynamic, you take back the power to change it.”
I am grateful for Roxie Rock. I mean that genuinely, without irony. She did not know she was doing it, but she handed me the key to a door I had been standing outside for years.
Sometimes a blessing really does come in disguise. Sometimes it arrives in the form of someone who pushes you past your limit — and in doing so, shows you exactly where your limit should have been all along.
With love, from one work in progress to another.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here