Many of us grow up believing that opportunity belongs to a specific type of person. The person who is smarter, prettier, thinner, richer, more charismatic, and/or more connected. Somewhere along the way we begin to quietly remove ourselves from consideration before life even has the chance to.

We see the job posting and assume someone else is a better, more qualified fit.
We meet someone interesting and assume they prefer someone prettier, more petite, or polished.
We consider starting something new and immediately think someone else could do it better.

So, we step aside before finding out. We say ‘no’ to ourselves before the world has a chance to even part its lips.

The First Lesson I Learned About Access

One of my earliest professional roles was an administrative assistant position. It was part time, salaried, and came with benefits. To some, I was simply the assistant. I was the person answering phones, managing calendars, and sitting at the front of the workflow. Many people overlooked me entirely. Some spoke to me in ways that were subtly condescending. Others assumed I was complacent and incompetent.

But, something fascinating happens when you sit at the intersection of information. Nothing gets past you.

What many people didn’t realize was that I was quietly becoming the gatekeeper to opportunity. I knew who needed meetings. I knew which projects were moving forward and which were not. I knew who had true influence and who had empty titles. I knew which decisions had been finalized and which were reverse right before they became official.

And more importantly, I saw how people behaved when they believed they were speaking to someone with no power.

That role taught me how to navigate systems. It taught me the importance of understanding the small details: the logistics, the timing, the quiet mechanics that keep organizations running. It taught me how to read rooms and understand dynamics that others missed. But, perhaps most importantly, it taught me a great deal about people and how to see past their masks.

How People Treat You When They Don’t Know Your Title

Working in that role gave me a front-row seat to human behavior. Some people treated everyone with respect, regardless of title. They spoke kindly, acknowledged the work being done around them, and understood that every role contributes to the larger machine. These were the people who didn’t need to know your title to value you.

Those kinds of people are top tier.

Then there were others—the ones who treated support staff like ghosts. The ones who spoke downward and believed respect should flow only upward and in one direction. Privately, I started calling them pawns with plastic capes.

It was hard to take them seriously because their entire identity hinged on what other people thought of them. And that’s sad. When your worth is built on external approval, you’re constantly handing your power to people who can take it away for the smallest reason. Their opinions begin to matter more than your own understanding of who you are and what you’ve accomplished.

At that point, you’re no longer living as the unique person you were meant to be. You’re just a pawn pretending to be powerful, clutching a plastic cape like a security blanket that does nothing. It can’t even keep you warm. At best, it gets caught on something—a flimsy costume mistaken for strength.

The people who treated everyone with respect understood a simple truth: you never know who someone will become, and you never know what someone already is.

The Love Life Version of the Same Lesson

This mindset shift applies just as much to our personal lives, and I learned that lesson the hard way.

For years, I had a quiet habit of disqualifying myself from romantic possibilities before they had the chance to unfold. I assumed someone would prefer someone else—someone shorter, thinner, prettier, more petite, or otherwise more desirable.

So instead of allowing interest to develop naturally, I would exit the situation in my own mind first, deciding the outcome before the other person had the opportunity to do so.

But connection rarely follows those assumptions. Attraction is not governed by a single universal standard. What one person overlooks, another may value deeply. And often the greatest obstacle to forming a connection is not rejection, but self-elimination.

I share this because I did not fully stop doing this until recently. Despite what people may think, learning new lessons about ourselves does not expire with age. Sometimes it requires the humility to recognize a pattern and the discipline to correct it.

When you stop assuming someone else must be the better option, you begin participating in life instead of observing it from the sidelines.

In many ways, it mirrors the decision to apply for a role you believe you may not yet be fully qualified for. Even if you are underqualified, you may possess the judgment, work ethic, or interpersonal skill necessary to grow into the position. And at minimum, the experience prepares you for the next opportunity.

The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Say it with me: “Why…not…me?”

Once you adopt this mindset, life stops feeling like something happening around you and starts becoming something you actively step into. You take the meeting. You pursue the idea. You allow yourself to be seen. And more often than you’d expect, doors that once felt closed reveal themselves to have been open to you the entire time.

You will still encounter rejection. Everyone does. But rejection stops feeling like a verdict and begins to look more like direction. The goal is not to force your way into every space, but to recognize the ones that are meant to meet you halfway.

Because at some point, you realize something freeing: there is no dignity in removing yourself from the running before life even has the chance to consider you.

One of the earliest lessons my administrative assistant role taught me is that systems only function because every piece of them matters. The people some overlook often sit closest to the flow of information, the movement of decisions, and the opening of doors.

It also taught me that power comes in many forms. Society tends to celebrate the most visible kinds—titles, status, influence—but quieter forms of power exist everywhere: proximity to information, the ability to read a room, the judgment to understand how systems actually move. Just because a particular kind of power is celebrated doesn’t mean it’s the only kind that matters.

And when you move through life remembering that, you stop asking whether you belong and start recognizing something far more important: the only person who can truly count you out is you.