Okay, let’s talk about having guts. Not the flashy kind you see in movies, but the real, quiet kind you need sometimes just to get through the day, especially at work.
I remember this specific situation quite vividly. It wasn’t about running into a burning building or anything dramatic. It was about facing something I was genuinely terrified of doing, something that felt like professional suicide at the time.
The Setup
We’d been working on this software module for, I dunno, maybe six months. Felt longer. It was one of those projects that just fought back every step of the way. We coded, we tested, we debugged, we refactored. We threw everything we had at it. But it just wasn’t solid. You know the type? Works fine ninety percent of the time, but that last ten percent… man, it could crash the whole system.
The problem was, we had this huge demo scheduled. Like, the demo. All the higher-ups, the stakeholders, everyone who mattered was going to be there. And my team lead basically pointed at me and said, “You’re up. You built most of this part, you present it.”
The Dread
My stomach just dropped. Present this? This rickety pile of code held together with digital duct tape and hope? I knew its flaws inside out. I knew exactly where to click to make it explode. The thought of standing up there, pretending this thing was ready for prime time… it made my palms sweat just thinking about it.
I spent the next few days in a state of low-key panic. Seriously considered faking a sudden illness. Maybe food poisoning? A migraine? Anything to get out of it. I rehearsed what I’d say, trying to polish the rough edges, trying to find ways to demo the few bits that did work reliably without accidentally straying into the danger zones.
It felt dishonest. It felt like I was setting myself up for a massive public failure. Failure didn’t scare me usually, but failure while pretending everything was fine? That felt worse.
The Decision and The Act
The night before, I barely slept. Just kept turning it over in my head. Then, somewhere around 3 AM, I just decided. Screw it. I wasn’t going to lie. I wasn’t going to pretend.
So, I went into that meeting room the next day. Plugged in my laptop. Took a deep breath. And I started the presentation. But instead of just showing the shiny parts, I addressed the elephant in the room right away.
- I showed them what we aimed for.
- I showed them what we achieved.
- Then, I showed them where it was still falling short. Pointed out the specific issues, the instability.
- I explained why it was difficult, the challenges we hit.
- I owned it. Our team’s work, warts and all.
I braced myself for the fallout. Expected shouting, maybe getting pulled off the project, who knows.
The Aftermath
But it didn’t happen like that. There was silence for a moment. Then, the main stakeholder, this senior VP guy, just nodded slowly. He asked some tough questions, sure. But they weren’t angry questions. They were clarifying questions. They appreciated the honesty. Because I was upfront, they didn’t feel blindsided. We ended up having a real discussion about the problems and what resources we actually needed to fix them properly.
It wasn’t a victory presentation. The project wasn’t magically fixed. But walking out of that room, I felt… lighter. Like I’d faced the scary thing and survived. More than survived, actually. We got the understanding and support we needed precisely because I didn’t try to bullshit them.
That feeling, that sense of “I did the hard thing, the scary thing, and I was honest, and it turned out okay”… that felt like a reward. Like an internal medal. Not for being perfect, but for having the courage to be real when it would have been easier to hide. That’s my little “medal courage” story. Sometimes just facing the music takes more guts than anything else.
