At the height of my social media addiction, I regularly updated my Twitter bio with vanishingly trivial tweaks. I obsessed over my professional bios as if they represented my one shot at telling my story to the world.

The real issue was that I didn’t believe in myself. I felt impostor syndrome despite my accomplishments, and I tried to fix this by optimizing minutiae. Look at how amazing I am! Can anyone see me…?

The real work was getting alone with myself and to the root of the issue. I didn’t need a better bio, I needed a better story to tell myself about myself.

My most talented colleagues spend little time advertising how great they are, they’re instead getting on with the business of living their best lives. Their websites are outdated, they have a mountain of unprocessed LinkedIn requests, and they are completely unfazed.

Of course we’re brilliant and accomplished and capable. But if that’s not how we feel inside, no amount of window dressing will fix it.