Turn Pain Into Progress: from imposter syndrome to self worth
Devin Reed turned imposter syndrome into a million dollar sales year, but it took missing his baby's first rollover to learn the importance of boundaries.
Devin Reed is an English major who went into sales at Gong. He told me his secret was turning pain into progress. He took all the feelings of being an imposter, a fraud, and radically unqualified and channeled them into ambition. That's how he had more career success than he ever anticipated, starting on day one.
But that ambition had a cost. He told me about a time he was working late, just trying to finish one more thing. He heard his family laughing in the next room and then got a text from his wife: his daughter Rumi just rolled over for the first time. That was the moment he realized he needed to set some real boundaries.
Lately, the work has been more internal. He admitted that self compassion was never his strong suit and that he only started learning how to genuinely love himself in the last year. He's working on believing that he is enough, that his family loves him for who he is, not what he achieves. His mantra now is about accepting that being present is enough.
“I want to look back and remember all the moments I made, not all the moments I missed.”
Notes
- As an English major in sales, he channeled feelings of being an imposter and a fraud into career ambition.
- He closed over one million dollars in annual recurring revenue in his first year in sales.
- He missed his daughter rolling over for the first time because he stayed late at work to finish “one more thing”.
- He only began to learn genuine self compassion and how to love himself within the last year.