We talk a lot about confidence.

Be more confident. Take up space. Stop making yourself smaller.

But maybe confidence is actually the problem.

I’ve never struggled to believe I’m capable. I’ve competed at the highest level of my sport, built a career, started businesses, and figured out plenty of things people once told me were unlikely.

So confidence? I’ve got that. What I’ve struggled with is value, self-worth.

Do I believe I’m worthy of what I want?

There’s a difference between knowing what you’re capable of and believing you deserve the life you’re capable of building.

I think I learned to play small in ways I didn’t recognize for a long time. I grew up with a very specific idea of what a woman was supposed to be, and it took me years to separate what was actually me from what I had learned to be.

I see the same thing in dating.

I can know exactly what I bring to a relationship and still wonder if it will be enough. I can know what I want in a partner and still wonder if someone will choose me.

And disability adds another layer to that.

Last week in New York, I was reminded that there are some opportunities I simply cannot access in the same way other people can. No amount of confidence or work ethic will change that. And I hate that.

Sometimes a limitation is just a limitation and knowing your worth isn’t about believing you can have everything you want. Maybe it’s knowing that when you don’t get it, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.

I’m still learning that. Especially as I make peace with being single.

I can want marriage. I can want a partner. I can hope that person exists. And I can also accept that none of it is guaranteed. I’m trying not to wait for someone else to arrive before I start becoming the person I want to be.

I’m still becoming.

Maybe confidence was never the problem.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lookwhoitis.nicoleroundy.com

My intuition told me I shouldn’t marry him. I saw the signs. I had doubts. I had that persistent feeling that something wasn’t right.

And I chose to do it anyway. That’s the part I’ve thought about the most.

Not Why did I marry the wrong person? But Why didn’t I listen to myself?

It’s easy to look backward at a decision that didn’t work and see that it was obvious. The red flags were there. The signs were there. But knowing something and being willing to act on it are two very different things.

And this isn’t just about relationships.

Maybe you’ve stayed in a job longer than you should have.

Maybe you’ve stayed in a friendship that ran its course.

Maybe you’ve lived somewhere you’ve outgrown because leaving meant starting over.

Or maybe you’ve kept trying to make something work because you’ve already invested so much into it.

I’ve done all of these in different ways.

Familiarity can look a lot like compatibility.

When something becomes familiar enough, it can be surprisingly difficult to tell the difference between something that is right for you and something that you’ve simply gotten used to.

Sometimes you can’t just leave.

This is where I think a lot of advice about making big life changes falls short.

We love simple advice: If you know it’s wrong, leave.

But life isn’t always simple. Sometimes it required patience in order to protect something we value. And sometimes staying is simply based in fear and obligation.

Sometimes the thing we’re afraid to leave isn’t even the thing we’re holding onto.

For me, leaving my marriage meant admitting that I had been wrong. It meant grieving a second family I’d become part of. It meant untangling a life we’d built together. And it meant accepting that loving someone wasn’t enough to make us compatible.

I wish I’d understood that sooner.

Listen to Episode 4 of Look Who It Is: Why We Stay When We Know It’s Time to Leave.

And then think about your own life.

What have you stayed in longer than you should have?

And what were you really afraid of losing?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lookwhoitis.nicoleroundy.com

We all develop ways of coping with difficult things. Sometimes those skills become part of who we are: being independent, pushing through, avoiding conflict, staying busy, not asking for help, being the strong one.

And sometimes, the very things that helped us get through one version of our lives follow us into the next.

Lets talk about what happens when survival becomes a way of living. I’ll break down the coping mechanisms I developed through cancer, athletics, trauma, and simply learning how to navigate the world…and what happened when I started questioning whether I still needed to cope.

Because there’s a difference between being shaped by your past and being controlled by it.

And maybe strength isn’t always about handling more. Maybe sometimes it’s recognizing that you don’t have to keep doing something just because you’ve done it before. Look Who It Is — Episode 3 is out now.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lookwhoitis.nicoleroundy.com

I was eight years old when I was diagnosed with cancer. I lost my leg. I spent 18 months in treatment. My childhood became hospital rooms, chemotherapy, infections, surgeries, and things no eight-year-old should have to understand.

And then I survived.

Eventually, I became an athlete and competed at the highest level of my sport. I built a career. I became very good at doing the very thing I was expected to do: overcoming

There was just one problem.

I didn’t realize how much my identity depended on it.

I thought the story began with the diagnosis. It didn’t.

It started in 1953, to my mother growing up in southern Utah. She was just five years old when the United States detonated a nuclear bomb in Nevada.

The government knew radioactive fallout would reach surrounding communities. They told people there was nothing to worry about.

Then the sheep started dying.

Thousands of them and my mother was one of the children exposed to that fallout.

And because women are born with the eggs they will carry throughout their lives, the cell my body was eventually built from existed inside my mother’s ovary in 1953.

I’d thought cancer was just something that happened but what if the story you believe about yourself isn’t true? Or at least, only half true?

Look Who It Is — Episode 2 is out now.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lookwhoitis.nicoleroundy.com

The younger version of me thought that if I worked hard enough, achieved enough, and proved myself enough, that I started believing that being accomplish enough would help me feel like I belonged.

The funny thing is, I did accomplished, well, all the things.

I survived cancer. I became an amputee. I learned to snowboard when people told me amputees couldn’t snowboard. I became a professional athlete. I won 24 World Cup medals. I earned a master’s degree. I built a career outside of sports.

And somehow, winning still didn’t make me feel like enough.

In the first episode of Look Who It Is we introduce achievement, self-worth, belonging, and the identity I build around being the person who can overcome anything.What happens when the life we’ve worked so hard to build no longer fits the person we’ve become?

That’s where we’re starting.

Listen to Episode 1: Why Isn’t Winning Enough?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lookwhoitis.nicoleroundy.com

I’ve spent a lot of my life becoming different versions of myself.

Cancer survivor.Snowboarder.World Champion.2x Paralympian.Business owner.

And somewhere along the way, I started asking deeper questions.

Why do we keep chasing goals that don’t make us happy?

Why do we stay in relationships we’ve already outgrown?

Why does belonging sometimes require us to become less of ourselves?

And why do we keep trying to prove something we don’t need to prove?

That’s what this podcast is about.

Every episode starts with an idea I’m curious about, a story I’ve lived, or a question I can’t quite shake. We’ll talk about ambition, relationships, identity, worth, belonging, success, change, grief, and the invisible beliefs that shape the lives we build.

I’m not here because I have life figured out.

I’m here because I’ve noticed that the biggest changes in our lives have a way of revealing things we didn’t know we believed about ourselves.

And I think that’s where the interesting stuff starts.

So, this is the beginning.

Look who it is.

[Watch the podcast introduction video above.]

If this sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe to the podcast here on Substack. Launching August 25th.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lookwhoitis.nicoleroundy.com