Last week I talked to two founders from our community. They were struggling to keep going — not because they wanted overnight success, but because the distance between where they are and where they know they're going felt unbearable. And I didn’t need them to explain further. I knew exactly what they meant!!
This is something almost every woman in this community knows. The photographer already sees her work in Vogue. The artist already feels what it's like to walk into her own opening somewhere in Paris or SoHo. As a founder, I already know exactly who will acquire my company one day (I just need to build this company))))
Dreams, vision are sooo reeeeel!!! I’m literally closing my eyes and seeing myself sitting next to Oprah, but then I open them and a homeless person in the NYC subway is asking me for money)))
After a big dreaming process, you sit down on Monday morning and you're still writing emails nobody is answering, still pitching people who aren’t ready, still learning things you had absolutely no idea you would need to learn when you started. And somewhere between that big clear picture in your head and the very ordinary Tuesday in front of you, doubt starts doing its thing (I even have a group chat with my girls where, on the most frustrating days, I ask if they still think I’m doing great and should keep going).
Psychologists call this an identity gap — the moment your future self becomes completely real in your mind, but your current circumstances have not caught up yet. Research from Stanford and Columbia found that when this gap exists, the brain reads it as failure — even when you are actually moving forward. Even when progress is real and happening every single day.
Which is a very inconvenient design flaw in human psychology.
Harvard researchers spent years going through thousands of work journals from professionals across different industries trying to understand what actually keeps people motivated. Their conclusion was almost irritatingly simple (not money, big milestones, or even recognition!! — which works for me from time to time): the feeling of making progress. Small, daily, real progress.
The problem is that when your vision is big enough, small progress becomes invisible to you. You stop counting the email you finally sent, the skill you got better at, the conversation that opened a door slightly wider than before. You are so focused on how far you still need to go that you forget you are actually moving.
Even when it feels like no one is watching, people are watching!!!
You can be posting, building, showing up, and seeing almost no reaction, and it is very easy to assume it means nothing is happening. But a lot of things are happening quietly, or when you are not really expecting them to happen.
One of Aliiiens’ clients followed my Instagram for almost a year without ever engaging (not a single like on my stories). And then one Sunday evening he reached out with a project that needed to be done immediately. By Monday morning we had a signed contract.
So no, it is not always as visible as you want it to be. But it can turn out in a very exciting way!!
This is the phase where most people quit. Not because they lack talent or they dream wrong, but because they genuinely thought this part would be shorter.
Carol Dweck, who spent her career studying how people sustain long-term success, found that the ones who actually build something real don’t measure themselves by speed. They measure themselves by direction. Not how far, but which way!!
Are you still moving toward the person you can already see so clearly?
Because if yes — even on the days when it is a tired, reluctant, barely-there yes — then the gap between your vision and your reality is not proof that something is wrong. It is just what growth looks like from the inside. And from the inside it almost never looks impressive. It looks like ordinary days, unglamorous decisions, and a lot of showing up before anyone is paying attention.
So instead of asking yourself why you are not there yet, try asking something simpler.
Because almost every woman who built something real got there by simply refusing to stop long enough for doubt to settle in and get comfortable.
If you are in that uncomfortable in-between right now, it does not mean something is broken. It usually just means your imagination got there before the rest of you did.
Enjoy the process of the long game. I wish we all do.