Play To Your Strength

I’ve tried to take the Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala path.

Three times.

The first was through climate change. I figured I could use my degree to enter that space, work on global sustainability, maybe shape a few policies.

The second time, I tried to reposition The Digitalist,  from a tech for business and innovation platform into a tech-for-good think tank, focused on systems change and tech governance.

The third time was after I consulted for the ILO. I went all in, studying AI governance, exploring tech diplomacy, thinking maybe this was it. The path to impact and the way to contribute meaningfully to the future of technology and society.

Each time, I found myself in those rooms with brilliant people, powerful ideas, and necessary conversations, and something inside me would go quiet. I didn’t feel in my zone.

I didn’t feel stuck either.

Unlike entrepreneurship, where you see a problem and move fast to solve it, policy and diplomacy are layered, slow, and consensus-driven. There are multiple national interests to be balanced. Every view matters, and decisions take months.

It dragged my brain.

It’s not that I wasn’t qualified or capable. I liked reading and working on policy frameworks and documents.

It was just something I could do, but not my core strength.

I missed the agility of entrepreneurship.

I missed the clarity that comes with owning the product and making the decisions.

I missed momentum.

After the third time, I had to say to myself out loud: Lisa, this is not your path.

That was hard to admit because I had committed money, time, attention, and energy.

Also, I admired the people in those spaces. I still do.

Amina J. Mohammed. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Women with deep wisdom and global reach. Women who shaped systems with their voices.

In being brutally honest with myself, I admitted that I admired that path, but I didn’t want to live or work in it.

Admiration is not the same thing as alignment.

We fall in love with someone else’s fire, someone else’s light, and assume it must be our own.

We commit to development, corporate, or entrepreneurial paths without ever asking, Is this my path?

If you’ve never done the deep work of self-awareness, you’ll mistake someone else’s path for your calling, and spend years in rooms that make you feel small for reasons that have nothing to do with your actual potential.

We love to talk about self-awareness, but what most people are calling self-awareness is really just self-optimization. They’ve skipped the necessary steps.

True self-awareness isn’t just noticing you’re a good communicator or that you’re introverted or bold. That’s the surface.

Real self-awareness is:

• Knowing your light and your shadows

• Owning the things you admire about yourself and the things you hide

• Admitting what drains you, even if the world claps for it

• Seeing what energizes you, even if it doesn’t look powerful from the outside

There’s a self-love gap we rarely talk about. It lies in:

• Self-Awareness – seeing the truth of who you are

• Self-Acceptance – not rejecting it, not resenting it, not trying to force-fit it to match another person

• Self-Development – learning the skills, positioning, and tools to grow within your actual shape

• Self-Mastery – using that alignment to build real results, freedom, wealth, and impact

The journey to this kind of self-awareness isn’t instant.

To jump from a surface self-awareness straight into performance is trying to master what they haven’t accepted.

It takes time to figure out who you really are.

You will take detours.

You will try on other people’s dreams and realize they don’t fit.

It’s okay, because that’s part of the journey of becoming.

But the earlier you understand how you operate, the sooner you can build a life that actually works for you.

You can have ambition, but if it’s not aligned with your strengths, it will eventually become a burden.

And you’ll start doubting your own power, not because you don’t have it, but because you were playing someone else’s game.

So here’s what I’ll leave you with:

If you’re drawn to diplomacy or development, your wealth path will look different.

You might not build a company, but you can build access.

You might not raise funds, but you’ll be entrusted with influence.

That access and influence will pave the way for you to legally and ethically own assets, invest your income, set up a trust, and shape generational wealth from inside a system.

If you’re a career professional, you can rise into equity, profit-sharing, leadership, and do it all without ever launching a business.

There are career professionals who hold more wealth and power than entrepreneurs because they understand how to play the long game within a structure. They’re called intrapreneurs.

If you’re wired for entrepreneurship, you can build boldly and honestly.

If you’re a systems person, you might find your freedom not in starting things, but in optimizing them. In climbing to the top of an institution and owning your power from within.

Just like Tim Cook didn’t start Apple, but now leads it. Or finance execs who’ve spent decades in one firm, rising into equity, decision-making, and legacy.

Every path has its own rules, its own gates, and ways to win.

If you choose the development path, ask:

What’s the wealth play in this ecosystem?

If you choose the entrepreneurship path, ask:

How do I create assets and scale them?

If you choose the corporate ladder, ask:

How do top performers secure ownership, not just salary, in this system?

The lane is not the problem. The problem lies in not knowing or doing the work to rise within it.

It’s disempowering to believe that if you only lead when you’re leading people or organizations.

The most powerful leaders aren’t just leaders of companies. They are leaders of their own lives.

They knew themselves and designed their lives with intention.

Whatever your ambition is, let it be yours.

And if you’re unsure of where to start, here’s a tool to begin with:

Take the 16 Personalities Test - answer the questions with honesty. All the answers may not apply, but some will ring true.

The earlier you know who you are, the faster you’ll stop wasting time in rooms that dilute your power.

You have to pick your game. And you have to play it well.

If you just want peace and a decent income, that’s okay.

But if you want the top, if you want power, impact, and legacy, you need to stop copying the most visible people and start studying the people at the top of your game.

Every industry has a pyramid.

Every pyramid has a top.

That top has its own gatekeepers, games, strategies, and rewards.

A question I’d like you to think on is:

Are you climbing the right one?

You can be a powerful operator.

You can be a bold founder

You can be an architect of global change.

Play to your strength!

Ebere Lisa