Currencies: Progressive overloading my self-perception
How to train yourself into shifting your self-assured identity: a Founder's guide
It’s happened four times this week and counting. Twice with weight and gravitas by women who walk the walk themselves, the two other times more fleeting, an abbreviation in passing. I was called a Founder, I was included in the club’s definition. And I recoiled. I shrunk inside myself, unworthy of the title and its meaning.
The first time was last weekend. A legitimate female founder, who has built her company over the past 3.5yrs, was introduced to me at a party as someone else who’s founded her own business. We discussed all manner of things: operations, scaling, tax optimisation, accountancy, and she persistently repeated “us founders,” as if we could possibly be experiencing the same levels of success, growth, grandiosity. I am 3 months into founding A Considered Curiosity, she’s 3.5yrs in. I’m still consciously uncoupling from my ex-corporate identity, and now with my A Considered Curiosity pivot, a business plan and an alpha testing website, I’m already included in the Founders discourse?
The second time was online, where a friend from home was promoting me on Instagram, referring to me as a female founder. She too is a successful founder, working in Canadian politics. The delicious irony of wanting to be seen online, of building a social media presence for exactly this reason, only to recoil when someone has the audacity to see you and promote you, encouraging others to see you too. I was equal parts grateful for the cheerleading and embarrassed by the attention.
This isn’t imposter syndrome, which is seriously overplayed. Imposter syndrome is doubting your competence. This is something more disorientating: the shattering realisation that my incredibly self-assured identity needs to shift, because the way I perceive myself needs to catch up to how others already perceive me. Peer recognition before self-recognition. I know exactly who I am. But now I have been completely disarmed.
At the beginning of 2026, I had an existential realisation, nothing to do with corporate life or my identity inside of work. I turned 41 last December. I am, as previously mentioned, experiencing perimenopause. I realised the threats of losing muscle mass and bone density were all too alarming, to my strength, my mortality, my drive to live a healthy life (for my child primarily, for my quality of life secondarily). It’s not looksmaxxing or longevity, not wellness in its current austere guise but simply I am driven to be strong and healthy for my child.
Self-knowledge in its truest form: I’ve always been athletic, come from a family who loves sport, I could easily pick-up exercise or athletics and build endurance and strength quickly. I’ve done pilates off and on since I was a teenager, again easily building strength and flexibility after long absences. That was until pregnancy, and a C-section, which depleted any vestiges of core strength I had left. In January this year, for the first time in thirty years, I couldn’t do a single roll-up. Decades of muscle memory reduced to nothing. I had to start again from the very beginning.
It took about three months. Starting from the absolute basics, and incrementally working back up to an advanced class. Regular discipline, exposure therapy, 1lb weights, then 2lb. That leap felt insurmountable. The progressive overload. Then this summer I pushed it even further, 5lb weights during a 6wk challenge. The progressive overload. The best way to build strength, tone and mass is progressive overload - increase the dosage to enable transformation. Your muscles get used to the weights you’re lifting, the exercise you’re doing, you need to continuously up the ante if you want any kind of transformation. You need to shock your muscles. My results are on a continuum, but I’ve never felt stronger, and been more able to endure the burn.
Being out of the corporate world, my own identity so deeply connected to what I do requires progressive overloading as well. The term founder is the equivalent of a 5lb weight in a routine I’ve worked up to. The progressive overload.
So in the interest of building and acquiring muscle mass, strength and tone, my ambition is to have a live service by the end of the summer, a live website by the beginning of August. To self-actualise as a founder, to self-perceive and feel deserving of the role’s inclusion because it’s been earned, having endured the burn over the past 3 months starting-up, and the past 17yrs of public service. Be seen, feel deserving to be seen, know deeply it’s been earned.
