Rule No. 9: BE TRUE TO YOURSELF
The quiet steps shape the loud life.
Photo by Luana Seu
The Quiet Act of Becoming
“To be a leader, you have to be brave. Make hard decisions. People tell you how to fake it, but the very best learn to build their own playbook by staying true to themselves, their convictions, their loves.”
The Midnight Realization
I start today’s piece with a realization that found me in the midnight hours when sleep escaped me:
“I didn’t know how much of me I was hiding until life asked me to lead.”
Not the visible kind of leadership. Not accolades or applause. Not platforms or social media numbers. I’m talking about the quiet kind. The moments when no one else is watching. The rooms where nobody claps. The decisions that nobody but God sees.
I’ve sat on the edge of my bed in those moments, phone turned off, silence all around me and the questions came.
Who am I without the mask?
Who am I without the performance?
Who am I—when it’s just me, myself, and I?
Where the soul wrestles, the hands remember.
Photo by Luana Seu
Defining Lead and Leader
As always, I return to the framework that has grounded me through every season and the one I’ve taught my kids: Look it up. Read it again. Let it settle in your bones. Process it not just with your mind, but with your spirit.
Lead (verb):
To go before or with to show the way. To guide in direction, course, action, or opinion.
Leadership begins with movement. With presence. With going first.
You cannot lead where you are unwilling to go. You certainly cannot guide anyone else into truth if you have abandoned your own. That’s why the first and hardest work of leadership is inner work.
You must lead yourself before you lead anyone else. You must guide your own soul before you guide others.
“The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him.” — Psalm 37:23
Leader (noun):
One who goes first.
A person who guides or directs by influence — not just instruction.
A leader isn’t always the loudest voice in the room. Often, it’s the most anchored one.
Influence without integrity is just manipulation.
Guidance without authenticity is just performance.
True leadership in the Kingdom flows from surrender, not strategy.
From conviction that stands when convenience fails and from wholeness, not hurry.
I Grew Up Learning How to Adapt
Maybe it started in Guyana before I knew words like “identity” or “legacy.” I was just a boy trying to make sense of belonging in a world that felt so ambiguous. Where afternoons were spent catching grasshoppers in the backyard in Ogle before jumping the fence of my grandmother’s house in Charlestown and marauding with cousins who knew the ways of latchkey kids.
Maybe it continued in high school, where natural talent and athletic gifting led the way in the 8th grade when an entire school chanted my name and applauded as I broke records. This solidified as I grew older and captained cricket teams, basketball teams, and led my peers.
Maybe it continued as I searched to make meaning of a world around me that often felt receptive to my charm, my gifts, my good looks, but not the needs of my soul crying out for watering.
I’ve learned that migration sharpens that need. Especially when migrating solo to a world you’ve only seen in popular media. You learn to scan a room: to read tone, posture, and of course silence. You learn how to be palatable. How to fit. How to stay safe.
And it worked or a while. The chameleon (as I was called by close friends) got good at becoming who people needed. Well, that was embedded in my psyche from the time I knew spoken word.
I learned how to speak in ways that earned approval. I could blend like paint on a canvas. I could disarm with a smile..
But over time I learned a truth I could no longer ignore:
Blending is not becoming.
And survival is not living.
The Cost of Not Being Yourself
I’ve lost rooms because I told the truth. I’ve lost friends because I stood on conviction. I’ve lost relationships because I refused to abandon myself to be loved on someone else’s terms.
I’ve walked away from opportunities. I’ve had doors slam shut because they asked me to shrink in ways my soul could no longer survive. Not out of anger or out of arrogance; but from the quiet humility that only comes after years of exhausting self-betrayal.
Because here’s what nobody tells you until it’s too late:
If you keep betraying your truest self, the fracture always shows.
You Lose Joy. You Lose Peace. You Lose You.
It shows up in the way you show up for people. In the way you show up for yourself. In the way you regulate and in the way you honor your own needs.
Becoming is lonely work
And all the applause in the world can’t patch what your spirit knows is missing.
In the last year especially, I’ve come to fully understand what I already knew: The ones closest to you? They don’t care about your curated self. They respect real.
And God? He never asked for your curated self in the first place.
“Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” — 1 Samuel 16:7
I Made a Promise to Myself
I remember sitting on the LIRR. Headphones in. Notes app open. Heart exhausted. And I knew I was tired.
Tired of measuring every word like I was on trial.
Tired of asking for permission to be whole.
Tired of leaving the best parts of me at the door.
That day I promised myself:
I would write for real.
I would speak for real.
I would love for real.
I would build for real.
Even if it cost me visibility.
Even if it made the journey slower.
Even if the rooms grew smaller before they expanded again.
There’s A Quiet Freedom In Being Yourself
The most dangerous person in any room is not the loudest. It’s the one who doesn’t need to perform. The one who has mastered himself. The one who has faced the chaos inside and learned to harness it.
That’s freedom.
Freedom from comparison. Freedom from manipulation, especially the self-made kind Because the most dangerous lies we tell aren’t the ones we tell others. They’re the ones we whisper to ourselves.
Yet authenticity attracts what imitation never could
When I leaned into who I really am my voice sharpened. The rooms changed and the work—my work, deepened. And the people who found me there? They were looking for the real thing too.
Being true to yourself is about spiritual survival.It’s about remembering:
God didn’t make you to be liked, He made you to be light.
And light? It doesn’t ask the darkness for permission to shine. It just does.
Five Scriptures I Carry With Me When I Forget Who I Am
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”
Jeremiah 1:5
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”
Ephesians 2:10
“Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.”
Proverbs 19:1
“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Galatians 1:10
“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
Matthew 5:16
Final Thoughts
Stay true. Not because it’s trendy. Not because it’s easy. (It certainly isn’t.)
But because God made you a masterpiece, not a copy.
Write your story in truth.
Lead from love, not fear.
Lead from fullness, not performance.
Because true leadership will cost you something. It will cost you false peace. It will cost you borrowed identity. It will cost you rooms that only ever wanted a fraction of you.
But it will give you back your soul.
And the rooms that were built for you? They will recognize you.
And the ones that don’t? You were never meant to stay in them anyway.
So as you finish reading this piece, ask yourself:
Where in my life have I been blending when God has called me to become?
What parts of me have I been leaving at the door out of fear they won’t be received?
What room — what relationship, space, or assignment — is waiting for the truest version of me to finally arrive?
