The Cost of Wanting It: How the pursuit of a seat can quietly disqualify you from it — and what to do instead
Isaac recounts how chasing a specific role through relentless proof and feedback left him dependent on shifting standards and others’ approval, which can undermine credibility in assurance. He concludes the fix is not caring less but building genuine optionality, so the role is desired rather than essential, replacing visible wanting with independence and leverage.
This began with a sentence I said to myself on an ordinary morning, after a long stretch of doing everything correctly and getting nowhere.
The obsession with the position may be the thing holding me back.
I had spent years assembling evidence. Every engagement delivered. Every recommendation driven to closure. Every piece of feedback logged, considered, acted upon. I had done what I was taught to do, what worked at every previous stage of my career, and what I would advise anyone else to do: when they doubt you, bury the doubt in proof.
And the doubt did not move. It relocated. Each time I met a standard, the standard turned out to have been somewhere else. Each piece of feedback arrived without examples attached, which meant it could never be closed out — only carried. I was preparing for one audience, calibrating for another, and gradually becoming a person organized entirely around other people's assessments of him.
If the price of a seat at the table is quietly signalling that you need it, how can African and diaspora professionals build genuine optionality—so the role becomes a choice, not a lifeline—without becoming indifferent to the doors that remain closed?