Letter to Sopha: On Job Searching, Not Feeling Enough, and The Inner Game

Hi Sopha,

Happy New Year! Wow, I was delighted to see that you actually wrote me a letter, mere hours after I texted you about my new interest in writing public letters.

First of all, I’m happy to hear that meeting the ‘BER Crew’ in Lagos last May/Jun 2025 was a highlight for you.

Getting to know you and spending more time with you was a highlight for me as well. You brought such great energy, humor, and stories. It is so rare to meet someone who has all that! I still remember your joke about how you can be spontaneous, you just need to know what time we are planning to be spontaneous 😂

We do plan to have a summer trip again in 2026, we already said that we’d be delighted to have you as a guest of honor again.

Second, thank you for sharing so honestly about your struggles with feeling like you're not doing enough, not earning enough, not being enough.

It is a universal human experience. The more we talk about and normalize it, the less personal it feels, and the less power it will have over us.

Job searching just has such a way of making us feel that way, or at least having those thoughts of “not enoughness” arise. The last time I job searched was Nov/Dec 2021, and despite job searching being one of my strongest skills, I remember having repeated thoughts that I wouldn’t be able to get a job in 3 months, and surely I will be getting kicked out of Germany soon…

In the job search book Never Search Alone, the author Phyl Terry distills “decades of research”. His conclusion is that everyone — from fresh grad to CEOs — feels anxious and insecure during the job search.

He writes:

The most important insight from decades of research for this book is this: no matter who are you, no matter how qualified you are, you will feel anxious and insecure in the job search.

This is true for public company CEOs, for Director or VP-level executives, for early-career job seekers, and, of course, for college students looking for their first professional job.

Third, related to these intrusive thoughts. I’ve been obsessed with padel recently and started reading the book, The Inner Game of Tennis.

The core idea is we have two selves: Self 1 (the thinking/judging self) and Self 2 (the experiencing self). How I explain this to myself is this: Self 1 works through logic and language. But Self 2 doesn’t even speak English! It only understands what it can sense and experience.

So we can think we “know” that we’re (more than) good enough to get a job and change careers, and that it’s normal for Paco to be naughty from time to time, Self 1 knows this, but Self 2 doesn’t really get it yet.

In padel, it looks like this: I hit a ball into the net → the thought “that was a bad shot” arises. Normal. Just cause & effect. Nothing to do there. What I can do is not pile the story of being a bad padel player. Instead, I’m practicing replacing judgments with saying “interesting”. That has prevented negative emotional spirals and therefore made games much more enjoyable. I still lose a lot of games though 😂

Anyway, thank you again for writing your lovely letter to me. I had a lot of fun reading it and writing this one back to you.

I hope this year bring you more life, deeper friendships, and if not career clarity, then at least trust that it’s unfolding ❤️

Chiara