The first time I ever felt proud

What separates true awe from surface-level accomplishment

Five days ago, I ugly cried in a Staples.

Just to be clear: I wasn’t crying because I was in a Staples—though honestly, that would’ve been fair. There’s something about the ghostly hum of fluorescent lights and the graveyard of abandoned office chairs that naturally invites a touch of existential despair.

But no—that wasn’t the reason for this particular outburst.

Rather, I was crying because after nearly five years of slogging, spiraling, abandoning and returning, again and again, to an unwieldy Google Doc, a young man behind the print desk of a Staples handed me a hefty brown paper sleeve.

Inside: the very first copy of my book.

And the moment it touched my hands — all 130,000 words of it — I unraveled.

Not a tasteful, single-tear, mascara-commercial kind of cry either. I mean a red-faced, hiccuping, mucus-forward, feral kind of sobbing. Just one snort away from becoming a full-blown puddle on the linoleum floor — blubbering, slippery, and in urgent need of a mop.

In that moment, the Staple’s print guy — whose name tag said “Kyle” — froze.

He was clearly trying to calculate whether or not he’d committed some unspeakable formatting crime. Did he print it upside down? Did he trigger some repressed trauma by using the wrong cardstock? Was Comic Sans somehow involved? Or — was I merely allergic to whatever dust mites circulate in office supply shops?

To his credit, Kyle did not flee the scene.

Instead, he stammered something about spiral bindings as I wiped my nose on the ruffled cuff of my shirt sleeve like a Victorian orphan child, trembling and tearful. I delicately fanned through the 300 pages, and released one final sniffle with tragic dignity before returning it to its closed resting state. Then, in the steadiest voice I could muster, I whispered:

“Do you know where the sticky notes are?”

“Aisle 3,” he gently replied, voice soft, eyes wide with reverie.

Like a man who had just witnessed a birth, a death and one-thousand fragile lives lived in between. He looked as though he might go home later that night and write sad poetry about it.

I scurried off.

I wove my way towards Aisle 3, clutching that brown bag like a newborn. It weighed at least eight pounds. But also, something more. It weighed every choice I’d made to keep going. Every abandoned draft. Every time I’d stared at the ceiling and wondered what the hell I was doing. Every lonely moment of writing into the void with no roadmap, no finish line, and no applause.

And then — somewhere between the ink cartridges and accordion folders— it hit me just how different this flavor of crying was. This wasn’t triggered by the usual culprits: heartbreak, loss, hormones, or recklessly chopped onions. These tears were wildly different.

They weren’t knotted up in sorrow or fear. They didn’t sting.

They glowed.

They moved through me like a rush of warm light — like joy too big to stay inside my body, exploding out of the nearest exit which just so happened to be my eyeballs. I was crying happy tears.

Like actual, honest-to-God, first-of-my-life happy tears.

I found myself standing there—dazed and damp-faced in front of a wall of neon Post-Its, clutching my manuscript—quietly stunned by a question rising in my chest:

Why had none of my other accomplishments ever moved me to tears like this?

And how could something so private, so unseen by the world, feel like the most meaningful thing I’d ever done?

When internal resonance beats external rewards

I always wondered what it might take to make me cry happy tears. I wondered if I would ever know. What kind of joy could be so real — so richly earned — that it would overflow?

The birth of my first child? The winning of a Nobel Prize?

Being moved to tears surely requires something monumental — something witnessed, grande and full of applause!

But I’ve accomplished many things in my life. I’ve even gotten some applause. And yet — none of them ever delivered anything remotely close to this feeling.

They never cracked me open. They never took over my whole body in emotional outburst. They were hard, but they didn’t feel sacred.

For most of my life, I felt logically proud of my achievements. But, the satisfaction never settled in my bones. The applause skimmed the surface, but never echoed inwards.

It left me with a hollow ache. “Accomplished” —and yet— feeling like I had done nothing of consequence at all.

That’s what made this pursuit — writing a book — so oddly different from anything else I had ever done in my life.

I went into it knowing that there was no eagerly waiting audience. No signed publisher. No advance check in the mail. And when the first draft was finally printed, there were no fireworks, no champagne, and no slow-motion montage.

Just a quiet exchange—between me and Kyle at Staples.

And yet — I overflowed.

This private, invisible pursuit, made me explode with more sense of meaning than I’d ever known. And through that, what I’ve come to realize is this:

Accomplishment is correlated with what we want. But, it’s not the essence of it. We want something quieter, deeper, and more disorienting.

Something that doesn’t just say, “I did that.”

But instead, whispers, “I can’t believe I did that.”

So maybe it’s not applause from the world that we’re after. Maybe it’s not even the satisfaction of the accomplishments themselves.

What we actually want — what we deeply long for — is awe.

We long for that hushed sense of wonder with ourselves.

The difference between “awe” and “achievement”

Nearly every milestone I’ve ever worked towards—whether it was the elite college acceptance! or the big promotion at the big Tech job! —I chased with a sense of self-assurance. A deep knowing that I could get there.

Those pursuits seemed “hard” — yes. But a kind of “hard” that I also knew I could handle.

Writing a book was not.

It was a long, quiet pilgrimage with no roadmap, written mostly in the margins of my life—early mornings and late nights in pajamas. Just me, a blinking cursor, and a gnawing suspicion that I was delusional for pouring this much time into something the world might completely ignore.

I was scared of my own secret longing. To be a New York Time’s Bestselling author.

It still makes me squirm to say it aloud.

This pursuit didn’t just stretch my skills—it rattled my sense of self. It made me feel tangled in a dream so impossibly foreign to me, that I often wondered if it would be easier to bail early. I didn’t want to find the ceiling of my abilities. Nobody does.

And yet, somehow, I wrote on.

I wrote in strange bursts of inspiration and long droughts of it. I wrote when it flowed and when it didn’t. I wrote even when I despaired at how bad it was. And trust me — I despaired often.

So when Kyle handed me my first printed manuscript—I didn’t cry because I was holding something impressive. I cried from the sheer shock of standing there at all.

I barely recognized myself. I was in awe of the woman who made it this far.

And that—that intimate reckoning—is what we’re really chasing.

Accomplishment is about being recognized by others, but awe is about being changed by the experience itself.

We only find that sacred feeling of awe when we’re not merely proud of what we’ve done, but also who we’ve become to do it.

So the question is: how do we choose the pursuits that lead to that kind of pride? To that beautiful feeling of awe?

I think it starts with my oldest, most reliable guide.

My dear old friend: self-doubt.

3 Questions to suss out the promise of “awe”

We all long to be called to something—drawn toward a fulfilling pursuit. But too often, we filter pursuits incorrectly. We choose what we already believe we can achieve, and intentionally avoid those riddled with doubt.

In fact, we treat self-doubt like a stop sign.

We hit it. We freeze. And then we back away slowly.

But self-doubt isn’t the stop sign. It’s the on-ramp to the most meaningful pursuits.

The right “accomplishments” with awe waiting for us at the end, are found only by looking within and asking ourselves the most uncomfortable question:

What’s the thing that tickles my deepest self-doubts?

While any accomplishment will fill your résumé, only those accomplishments that have you wading into self-doubt will fill your soul.

And I have a few thoughts on how to find those pursuits. A few more concrete questions to ask yourself.

And yes — they might make you squirm.

1. Does this pursuit scare me in a way that makes me feel “exposed,” not just overwhelmed?

The right kind of fear is a quiet clue that something matters. And for meaningful pursuits, we’re not talking about the fear of being too busy in your to-do list, or overbooked in your calendar. We’re talking about something more tender.

The kind that pokes at your identity and whispers:

Who do you think you are?

The right kind of pursuit should make you feel fragile and foolish. And that fear is often the gateway to awe. If your doubt feels too raw to joke about at dinner, or your dream too bold to say out loud—pay attention. Start there.

With the flinch. With the quiet recoil in your mind that says, Nope nope nope, let’s not embarrass ourselves.

Because that instinct to shrink? That’s a sign that you’ve hit gold.

It might be public speaking. Sharing your writing. Launching a business no one asked for but your soul won’t shut up about. Whatever it is—notice what makes you squirm. The things that feel the most exposing, are often the ones we most secretly long for.

2. Has curiosity lingered in this realm for a while and do I repeatedly talk myself out of it?

Meaningful pursuits rarely arrive with certainty— instead, they annoyingly linger.

You might dismiss the idea a dozen times, and tell yourself it’s silly, impractical, or too late. And yet somehow, it keeps resurfacing. In quiet moments. In passing envy. In flashes. In daydreams. In fantasies that you keep to yourself.

If something keeps tugging at you, despite your logical attempts to shelve it, that’s a sign it carries personal weight. Because those lingering ideas—the ones that haunt your peripheral vision—aren’t accidents. They’re invitations. And if you ignore them for too long, they don’t vanish.

They harden into regret.

The key isn’t to chase every passing whim though. It’s to notice and focus on the ones that won’t leave you alone. The ones that keep asking, quietly but insistently: What if you just tried?

Pay attention to what you can't seem to forget.

3. Does this require something from me that I don’t yet know how to do or give?

Awe-inducing pursuits live at the edge of who you are and who you might become. If a pursuit feels like it demands a version of you that doesn’t quite exist yet—more courageous, more honest, more expansive, more bold, and probably more cringe—that’s a powerful clue.

And as soon as you inch toward something meaningful, your brain will panic and feel like it’s malfunctioning. But in reality, it’s preparing for an identity shift. It will hiss:

This is dumb. Someone’s already done this better. You’re not special, and you’ll never be famous. And honestly, you should probably just stop.

But this is not a sign to stop. It’s a sign you’re getting close to the eye of the storm. It’s the inflection point you just need to push through. Awe comes from choosing to persist through the clumsy, uncertain and unpolished. The willingness to look like a beginner is a spiritual prerequisite for anything that might truly fulfill you.

If the pursuit doesn’t just feel like it will produce something, but will indeed also change you — change how others see you, and even how you see yourself — you’re in the right territory. So pay attention to what unnerves you, and go after the things that feel like a detour from the bounds of who you currently think you are.

Conclusion: Stick with your lonely bravery

The book still has many rounds ahead with an editor. And once it’s out, it may still vanish quietly into the ether, going entirely un-praised :)

But strangely, I don’t mind.

Because the moment I held my printed manuscript, I wasn’t just holding a product for sale! I was holding every lonely hour. Every discarded page. Every moment I thought about quitting and didn’t. I was holding definitive proof that I was stronger than I felt.

And that lonely bravery emerged, not all at once as a grande force, but through one small promise I kept showing up for.

It was an act of devotion—not powered by confidence or courage, but by a quiet promise I kept returning to:

I will keep following my self-doubt.

So if you’re in the middle of something hard—something quiet, unglamorous, and achingly personal—keep going. And if you haven’t found that thing yet, start by noticing what stirs your self-doubt.

Because one day, without fanfare or warning, you’ll look up and realize: you didn’t just finish something. You became someone.

And though your victory lap may have an audience of one—just you, breathless and blinking—it will taste like something unexpected.

A little salty. A little sweet. A little tearful.

And like the quiet triumph of evolving into someone you always hoped you would become.