What if the suit you worked so hard for was never really yours?
Maybe that’s what you’ve been carrying without naming it.
For years I carried a quiet guilt.
The guilt of not having finished certain studies. Of not reaching the professional role my family expected of me.
So I did what many of us do: I studied.
One degree after another. Courses, expensive certifications, diplomas to hang on the wall. I was looking, without saying it out loud, for a suit that would finally make me feel enough.
And each new suit fit me for a while. Until it stopped fitting.
There was a day when I saw it clearly.
I was looking at what other professionals were studying —lawyers, psychologists, doctors— and something stopped me: they were learning the same things I was. The same ideas, the same authors, the same questions.
And then I understood that the strange one was never me.
It was the labels. The roles that make us believe there’s only one correct way to be professional, to dress, to speak, to stand in front of the world.
It wasn’t the suit. It wasn’t how I wore it.
It was when I chose it.
In psychology, this is studied as self-concordance,
a concept developed by researchers like Kennon Sheldon, who observed something simple and at the same time enormous: when what we pursue comes from who we authentically are, it sustains itself with vitality; when we pursue it out of outside pressure or duty, it feels foreign, even when we achieve it.
In everyday life, it’s simpler.
You can have the title, the position, the recognition. And still feel like you’re wearing something that doesn’t belong to you.
Or you can put on something you chose from within, and feel that you can finally breathe.
The difference isn’t in the suit. It’s in who chose it.
Let me tell you something small, one of those things life arranges when you’re ready.
Years ago, on a trip through Europe, I bought a seal with the initials SF. I didn’t know what for. I bought it on intuition, thinking that someday it would mean something. I believed it would be “Saskia and Frank.”
Years later, preparing the cards for my wedding, I took that seal in my hands and saw it differently.
It didn’t say Saskia and Frank.
It said Saskia Fulco.
I had bought it before knowing that would be my name. My identity was already waiting for me. I only had to be ready to arrive at it.
Because there are decisions that can’t be forced from the head.
They fall into place when you’re already ready. Sometimes through paths you bought without knowing why.
And when the role I did choose arrived —that of consultant, this one I build together with Frank— I put it on and for the first time I didn’t feel like I was in costume.
I never stopped being professional for not fitting a mold. Freedom and professionalism fit together. In me.
That is deciding from who you are.
It’s not a heroic act. Sometimes it’s simply letting go of what no longer represents you, and allowing what is yours to fall into place.
My name is Saskia Fulco.
And this space is for that: for you to stop searching for the suit that makes you enough, and start recognizing the one that is already yours.
No pressure. At your own pace.
If you’d like to continue from here, I wrote a book about this — about deciding from your identity, not from what’s expected of you. It’s called Learning to Be, and you can find it on Amazon, in case you’d like to keep it close.
For today, just one question:
What suit are you wearing that, deep down, you never chose?