Cindy Cannon joined Toastmasters because she wanted to hide.

That sounds backward, so let me explain. She had spent much of her life making herself small. She had learned to hide pain, hide illness and look strong no matter what was going on underneath. "I always had to prove myself," she told me, "so I had to look like I wasn't sick, and act like I wasn't sick." Hiding wasn't a choice anymore. It was simply the mode she knew.

So she walked into that first meeting not quite sure what she had signed up for. She thought it might be the corniest thing in the world. Then she watched the people on stage. "I was in awe, with my mouth open," she said. "And that's who I wanted to be."

She didn't walk in with a plan to become a leader. She kept showing up, though, and the club gave her a place to practice. Over time she opened dozens of new corporate clubs and went on to lead a region of more than six thousand members, in an organization she described as "a man's world" back then. She brought her district to fourth in the world, out of eleven hundred.

Here's how she described the change: "I didn't know I was a good leader. Now I know I'm a great leader."

Not knowing is different from not having

I keep coming back to that sentence because of the gap it describes. She didn't lack the ability to lead. She lacked information about herself. The ability was there the whole time, sitting under years of practiced invisibility, until she found a room safe enough and structured enough for it to come out.

I see the same gap in so many women coaches, authors and speakers. They are waiting to feel confident before they take the next visible step. But confidence rarely shows up first. In my experience, it shows up after you've collected enough proof that your body starts to believe it.

A business coach I interviewed teaches her clients a version of this. When a client is stuck in self-doubt, she asks them to stop seeing their next business task as something they have to do. She encourages them to see it as a way to grow. "When you take those actions in your business," she told me, "it actually helps you grow on a personal level." She described a client taking one small action despite not feeling ready, seeing that it worked and thinking, I did it. "It builds your confidence that you can do this," she said. "It takes a lot of the pressure off."

That's how the nervous system learns. One woman I interviewed, who teaches self-efficacy, described it as "the ability to succeed and to be able to be with challenges, but it's based on evidence." She suggested keeping a record of your successes so you can see "how each success actually lands on top of the next one." Your body doesn't trust pep talks. It trusts experience.

Making the evidence count

Here's where a lot of women get stuck. They do the brave thing and then move on so quickly that it never registers. The podcast episode airs, the workshop goes well or the client sends a glowing note, and they're already looking at the next item on the list.

So try this. Pick one visible step you've been putting off because you don't feel ready. Make it small. Send the pitch, post the video or say yes to the panel. Then stop and write down what you did and what happened. Notice how your body feels when you read it back.

That pause is the step most people skip, and it's the one that turns an action into evidence. If writing it down feels silly, do it anyway. Read the list back the next time the old doubt shows up. It gives your nervous system something solid to lean on when your memory goes straight to everything that went wrong.

Impact grows from here. Cindy now wants to help others tell their stories. "Everybody has a story," she told me, "and everybody deserves to tell the story." Her own story only started reaching people once she stopped hiding it. Your expertise is the same. It can't help anyone while it stays tucked away, waiting for you to feel ready.

You might already be the leader you're waiting to become. You may just need the room, the repetition and the record that finally prove it to you.

What keeps that wait going is a big part of my free guide, Why Talented Women Stay Invisible: 3 Subconscious Patterns Keeping You Small.