Growth Doesn’t Feel Like Growth When You’re In It. Trust Me, I’m Living Proof.

June 9, 2026

By Poppy Tamberella

The Uncomfortable Truth About Growth

Four months ago I walked away from a six figure job. No backup plan, no next offer lined up — just the clear and terrifying knowledge that staying was no longer an option. My boss was unpredictable and volatile, the kind of person who thought screaming and cursing at people was leadership. Every time my phone rang I felt it in my body before I even answered. I want to be clear about something though — he was not a bad human. In fact he was a wonderful man who I genuinely respected and cared about deeply, him and his family both. He taught me an enormous amount, and I am grateful for that. But caring about someone and accepting how they treat you are two very different things, and that line was one I could no longer stay on the wrong side of. A member of his executive team once pulled me aside and told me not to take it personally, that I just needed to toughen up. I’m 60 years old. I am as tough as I am ever going to get. What he actually taught me — maybe the most valuable lesson of all — is exactly what I will no longer accept. I want to be clear — I didn’t walk away recklessly either. I had spent years building an emergency fund with about six months of living expenses saved for exactly a moment like this, because somewhere deep down I think I always knew a day would come when I would need to choose myself. I have spent the last four months second-guessing that decision more times than I can count — until I talk to my family, who are quick to remind me of two things: how peaceful, joy-filled and just plain happy I am now, and that they genuinely believe staying would have killed me. It has been a long time since I could say those things about myself. So was it worth walking away? For sure. Sometimes the most courageous professional decision you can make isn’t a leap toward something. It’s the refusal to keep destroying yourself for something that was never worth it.

We’ve Been Sold a Comfortable Lie

Somewhere along the way, professional culture decided that growth should feel empowering — that if you just find the right mindset, the right morning routine, the right framework, the journey upward will feel as good as the destination. It won’t, and pretending otherwise is doing people a serious disservice. Real growth — the kind that expands your capacity, your perspective, and your actual impact — is almost always uncomfortable in real time. The muscles that matter don’t develop without resistance. The skills that set you apart don’t come without the long, frustrating hours of not being good at them yet. The confidence that others admire from the outside was built on a foundation of private moments where confidence was nowhere to be found. Discomfort isn’t a sign that something is going wrong. It’s the tuition you pay for becoming someone new.

The Gap Nobody Talks About

There’s a gap between who you are right now and who you’re trying to become, and it has a very specific texture to it. It feels like incompetence, like awkwardness, like the particular exhaustion of operating at the outer edge of your ability for extended periods of time. Most people do one of two things when they hit that gap — they retreat back to the comfortable territory of what they already know how to do well and call it being strategic, staying busy with familiar tasks while wondering quietly why they feel stuck. Or they push through, not because it feels good, but because they’ve made a decision that becoming something more matters more than staying comfortable. They tolerate the gap, they stay inside it, and eventually — without always noticing the exact moment it happened — they look back and realize it closed. The people who consistently grow aren’t the ones who found a way to make discomfort disappear. They’re the ones who stopped waiting for it to.

What High Performers Actually Do Differently

It’s not that successful people are immune to self-doubt, fear of failure, or the disorientation of operating in unfamiliar territory. Talk to any of them honestly and they’ll tell you those feelings never fully go away — what changes is the relationship with them. Instead of interpreting discomfort as a stop sign, they’ve learned to read it as a signal that they’re outside their existing competence, which is precisely where growth lives. They’ve also learned to shrink the window — not the discomfort itself, but the delay between feeling it and acting anyway. That gap between hesitation and motion is where most opportunities quietly expire, and the people at the top of their fields have simply gotten faster at closing it.

A Question Worth Sitting With

Where in your professional life right now are you choosing comfort over growth — not because the opportunity isn’t there, but because saying yes to it would mean tolerating the feeling of not being ready, not being certain, not being the most polished version of yourself in the room? I’m four months into my own uncomfortable gap right now, actively looking for the right next opportunity, and I won’t pretend it’s easy. But I know without any doubt that I am on the right side of the hardest decision I’ve made in years. That discomfort you’ve been quietly avoiding might be the most important thing on your calendar. The version of you that exists on the other side of it is already waiting.

What’s one uncomfortable step you’ve been putting off? Drop it in the comments — sometimes naming it out loud is the first move.