What a lifetime of gold stars, one raise conversation, and a CEO’s question taught me about the audience I was working for

This article is the companion to Episode 20 of The Comeback Show with Claire Rainford, founder of The Flower Power Company and the woman on a mission to grow one billion wildflowers around the world. I wrote about her rainbow and her wildflower patch in The Comeback Letter. This piece is about one quiet thing she said early in our conversation that I recognized a little too well.

The best part of my work year

Every year at my last corporate job, I had a compensation conversation with my boss.

And every year, he was wonderful at the first part.

He told me how much I mattered. How smoothly things ran because of me. How much the executives relied on me. I sat in that chair and soaked it up, because it was the closest thing to a gold star an adult woman gets at work.

Then came the second part.

A raise of three to five percent, which did not cover the rising cost of living in Seattle. And a list of everything I still needed to do to earn the promotion that always seemed to arrive faster for my peers than it did for me.

I walked out of those meetings feeling proud and falling behind at the same time. And the next year I came back and did it again, because the praise was the part I was really there for.

It took me a long time to see that clearly.

What Claire was really chasing

Before she ever planted a wildflower, Claire Rainford built a career that looked like winning. A first-class degree, a master’s in marketing, years managing consumer brands with Disney, leading marketing for an iconic British soft drink, then her own agency.

When I asked her what she was trying to prove, and who she was trying to prove it to, she did not hesitate for long.

“I think a lot of it I was trying to prove, or I was trying to get praise from my mum and dad, because they always praised me. They were amazing parents. I got addicted to the praise.”

She said the tick-box jobs gave her something tangible for them to celebrate. But it never reached the part of her that needed it. “You just keep trying harder and think that at some point you will feel enough.”

Then, within a couple of years, she lost her dad and then her mum.

The two people she had been performing for were gone. And what she built afterward looks nothing like what came before. No spreadsheets. No scripted strategy. She told me that for the first time in her life, the journey matters as much as the goal.

Her audience left the building, and she had to find out what the work was for without them.

My first audience

I recognized that story in my bones, even though my version is different. My parents are still living. But they were my first audience, and I performed for them until I moved away from the East Coast at twenty.

I grew up with a message that did not quite add up. Be humble. Be seen and not heard. Do not take up too much space.

And achieve. The education. The high-paying, prestigious job. The marriage, the kids, the white picket fence.

Take up less room, but win. I tried to do both for decades.

When I moved away, the audience did not disappear. It multiplied. I went into the workforce while finishing my business degrees, and at the same time became a wife and a mother. Every one of those roles came with its own stage. Bosses, parents, friends, my husband, the other parents at school.

And any time I veered off the expected path in any of those roles, I could feel the disapproval coming from every seat in the house.

The day the lights came up

My last straw at that same job did not come from a performance review. It came from a lunch.

I had been an integral part of the organization’s big annual fundraiser. The months of work, the details nobody sees, the thousand small things that make an event feel effortless.

At the celebration lunch afterward, the CEO questioned why I was even there.

That was the moment something cracked. Not because one comment was so terrible, but because it showed me the whole arrangement. I had been working for applause from people who did not see me as part of the show. I was the stagehand, and I had been taking the praise at my annual review as proof that I was one of the cast.

Here is what I want you to take from that, and from Claire’s story.

Your audience does not have to die for it to be gone. Sometimes it is a boss who will praise you right up to the moment the raise is decided. Sometimes it is a parent who loves you and is simply not interested in the life you are building now. Sometimes it is a room full of people who were never going to clap.

Claire lost her audience all at once, to grief. Most of us lose ours more slowly, and keep performing for an empty room for years before we notice.

Pause here for a second. Who was your first audience? The person whose approval you were working for before you even had words for it? If you feel like telling me, I would love to hear it. Leave a comment below.

Why praise hit my ADHD brain so hard

I have ADHD, and I want to name this part plainly, because I know I am not the only one.

Praise was fuel. Real, chemical, dopamine fuel. Other people’s deadlines got me moving when nothing else would. Someone else’s expectations were the engine I ran on for most of my adult life.

It worked, until it did not.

Those same deadlines and timelines became a weight. The stress built. The anxiety built. And the fuel never lasted. The glow of a good review faded in days. What was left underneath was dread, a deep dissatisfaction with my life, and the feeling that I had no control over it at all. I kept wondering when I would finally get to pursue my own dreams.

If that sounds familiar, I want you to hear this. The drive in you is not the problem. That drive is one of the best things about a brain like ours. The problem is who is holding the switch. When the fuel only comes from outside, someone else decides when you run, and someone else decides when you run out.

How I check who something is for now

These days I do not hand out an automatic yes. Too much of my life ran on autopilot approval for that.

So before I say yes to something, I run it through a handful of questions.

Where is this coming from? Is this my idea, or is it a should I picked up from someone whose approval I used to need?

Does this fit my goals? My actual goals, for this season, not the ones that would look impressive.

How much will this ask of me? Time, energy, and the recovery afterward.

Do I feel like doing this? Do I want to? This one used to feel childish to ask. Now it is the question I trust most.

When a decision is bigger, or there is a lot at stake, I use the two-door test, a practice my therapist taught me that I wrote about in Your Body Sends the Bill. I make the yes decision in my head, as if it is already done, and notice what shows up in my body and my feelings. Then I make the no decision the same way. Then I compare the two and go with the one that feels best.

It works on small things too. I use it for whether to go to a networking event, which is exactly the kind of invitation I used to accept because I thought I was supposed to.

None of these questions ask what anyone else will think. That is the point.

The new audience

Here is the honest part. I have not stopped wanting to be seen. I do not think that is the goal, and I do not think it is a flaw.

What changed is who I am showing my work to.

When I talk with fellow coaches and entrepreneurs, some of them admit that they still reach for their parents’ approval sometimes. I understand that completely. But more and more, I hear women in midlife saying they have stopped giving a f*ck what anyone thinks, and loving that about this season of their lives.

I am somewhere in between, and I am okay with that.

I have built a new community around me, people who understand what I am making, who encourage me when it is hard and celebrate with me when something works. And I have made my peace with the fact that my own family may not understand my work, and often is not interested in it. I used to find that painful. I no longer need them to be.

That is not a sad sentence. It is a free one.

This is the heart of what I teach in The Rewrite, especially the second step, The Clearing, where you put down the shoulds that were never yours and find out what is left when nobody is grading you. No rush. The door is open whenever you are ready.

Where to start

Do not overhaul your life this week. Pick one thing on your list.

One commitment, one project, one yes you already gave. And ask the simplest version of the question: who is this for?

Name the actual person. Not “everyone” or “work.” A name, or a face.

If the answer is someone who is not watching anymore, or who was never going to give you the thing you really needed from them, you do not have to quit the thing today. You just get to know. And knowing is where the choosing starts.

If you look at that list and cannot even tell where to begin, because everything feels tangled together and too heavy to sort, I made something for exactly that moment. It is a free on-demand workshop called How to Find Clarity and Confidence When Life Feels Like Too Much, and you can watch it tonight.

Wildflowers do not bloom for an audience

It is fall here, and I am waiting until spring to plant my wildflowers.

But I notice them now in a way I never used to. On my daily walks, I see them growing in places nobody planted and nobody tends, along a fence line or at the edge of a path. Every time I see one, I think of Claire and her billion.

A wildflower does not bloom for applause. Most of them are never admired by anyone. They bloom because that is what they are.

Fall is when a lot of wildflowers drop their seed. It sits in the ground all winter looking like nothing at all, and then shows up in spring. If you are in a season of letting go of an old audience, that is what this can feel like. Quiet. Like nothing is happening. It is.

If you want to be part of what Claire is growing, you can join her Billion Wildflower Mission at The Flower Power Company. Whether you sow this fall or wait for spring with me, even one pot counts.

Sit with this one

If nobody ever praised you for it again, which parts of your life would you still choose?

Resources

• Listen to Episode 20 of The Comeback Show with Claire Rainford

• Free workshop: How to Find Clarity and Confidence When Life Feels Like Too Much

• Do the work at your own pace: The Rewrite, or walk it with company in The Rewrite Room

• Join Claire’s Billion Wildflower Mission at theflowerpowercompany.com, and follow @TheFlowerPowerCompany on Instagram

• Related: Your Body Sends the Bill

• Related: 9 Self-Trust Exercises for Women Who Keep Second-Guessing Themselves

• The Comeback Letter on Substack