"The most terrifying people aren’t the ones who cry. They’re the ones who keep going — without stopping, without breaking."
1. The Ones Who Smile to Prove Themselves Cry Alone at Night
You fill every moment of your day with productivity, planning your life down to the minute in Notion, making it look like discipline, like excellence. From the outside, you look like a “self-mastery genius.”
But deep down, you don’t even dare look at your own fragility.
You believe that as long as you keep moving, keep achieving, the darkness won’t catch up to you. But it does. Every night.
In your dreams, in that heavy silence just before sleep, it knocks.
I asked myself that question for the first time in the fall of 2017. That September, I had just been selected as Taiwan’s delegate to the World Technology Conference. By October, I was featured as one of Taiwan’s top five internet startups in a leading tech journal. On paper, I was a rising star. But in reality, I was a runaway train.
A week after those accolades, I walked into a room I never imagined myself entering—a university counseling office. The contrast couldn’t have been starker. Just days before, I’d been standing in front of international investors, exuding the charisma of a young founder on fire. Now, I found myself seated across from an elderly Mediterranean man in a yellow-black checkered shirt and khakis, who smiled gently and asked me to take a seat.
2. Proving Yourself Is Just a Sophisticated Disguise for Pain
Humans are brilliant at one thing: turning pain into performance.You say you’re transforming, growing, evolving.But what you’re really doing is:
- Avoiding the fear of being ignored.
- Avoiding the shame of being truly seen.
- Avoiding that unseen, unheard child inside you who never felt enough.
Your ambition isn’t always driven by vision — sometimes it’s driven by unresolved wounds. And “achievement” is the perfect mask.
It took me back to a moment from October 2015—two years before.
I was 19, attending the Global Trends Forum at the Grand Marriott Hotel in Taipei, hosted by CommonWealth Magazine. The speaker was Jamie Lin, founder of AppWorks, who spoke about building one of Asia’s largest startup accelerators after returning from Silicon Valley. His story lit a fire inside me. When the host, Wang Wenhua, asked the audience, “Who here wants to share their dream of starting a business?”—my hand shot up before I could think.
I stood, walked toward the stage, and shared my vision. Then, as instructed, I posted it on Facebook for the world to see.
The applause I received from a room of seasoned professionals—most of them twice my age—should’ve made me feel proud. But deep down, I knew that moment wasn’t born from inspiration. It was born from pain. The truth was, I had just left my college club, AIESEC, after only a few months. Despite my enthusiasm and bold ideas, I lacked the interpersonal finesse and patience to earn trust. I had failed to lead, and that humiliation haunted me.
That moment on stage? It was my way of rewriting the script. I wasn’t chasing a dream. I was running from shame.
3. Stop Proving — Start Seeing Who You Really Are
True healing doesn’t look like doing more. It looks like daring to stop.
- Stop to cry.
- Stop to admit you’re scared.
- Stop to finally see — that after everything you’ve done, no one has ever truly embraced the part of you that’s been trying so hard.
Because you’ve been caught in a cycle of compensation. And you deserve a way out.
My major was International Trade, but my obsession was technology. When VR started to trend, I taught myself to code. I devoured startup competitions and hackathons, often skipping classes to stay in the campus library until closing time. I knew nothing about logic or debugging, but I was addicted to creating. Fueled by the belief that innovation could prove my worth, I pushed my limits day and night.
But I never once stopped to ask, “What am I really chasing?”
The applause. The prize money. The moment of standing on stage. I thought I was becoming someone better. But really, I was compensating. Psychologists call this “compensatory motivation”—when you overperform in one area to make up for emotional deficits in another. I call it what it really is:
Fear of not being enough. Fear of being unloved. Fear of being unnecessary.
In 2017, I qualified for the final round of an international startup competition in Hangzhou, China—Taiwan’s sole representative. I stood among 12 teams pitching on a grand stage before thousands. That moment should’ve been triumphant. But as I listened to the resources and vision of the other teams, I was struck not by pride—but by powerlessness. I was outmatched.
Yet, I didn’t slow down. I pivoted our product into multiple verticals just to match shifting market trends. I participated in three domestic startup competitions, a Silicon Valley funding challenge, and an international accelerator—all at once—repackaging the same base technology to meet each panel’s preferences. I learned to wear many masks, each tailored to what people wanted to hear.
Just like I had on campus. I wasn’t building a startup. I was building versions of myself that I hoped someone would finally applaud without condition.
Every pitch I gave, every deck I revised, every smile I wore—it all boiled down to one thing:
“Please tell me I’m enough.” But the truth is, no external victory can fill an internal void.
Breaking the Loop: Reclaiming Your Right to Choose
Yes, you can keep proving, keep pushing, keep perfecting. The world won’t punish you for that.
But if one day you wake up exhausted — unable to move, questioning whether you’ve become lazy, useless, or a failure
Please remember: It’s not because you’re weak. It’s because you’ve gone too long without admitting the truth:
All you ever really wanted… was to be seen.
This Week’s Challenge: Let Go of the Urge to Prove
Practice asking yourself — honestly — before every action:
“Do I truly want to do this? Or am I just terrified that if I stop, I’ll feel worthless?”
If you’re ready, come join us this Saturday for a live session.
We’ll talk — openly, vulnerably — about the truths we never dared to speak out loud:
The truth behind our drive to ‘try so hard.
