The List I Wrote When I Was 12 Still Runs My Business Today

I was 12 years old, standing behind a chair in my parents' bedroom, gripping the back of it so hard my knuckles were white.

My bat mitzvah was coming. And the way I see it now, my mother treated the whole thing as the Jewish version of being presented at court. This was a production. A 20 minute speech that she made me memorize (yes, 20 minutes, yes, the whole thing memorized). I was shy of 13 years old, and the pressure, intended or otherwise, was enormous.

I was terrified. Physically sick over it.

And my mother did something I've carried with me for decades. She said:

"Go upstairs. Sit at your desk. Write down every single thing you're afraid of. What is the worst thing that can happen?"

So I did.

I still have that piece of paper. It's been in my scrapbook for as long as I can remember.

Here's what 12 year old me wrote:

The worst things that could happen at my bat mitzvah are:

1. The people would laugh at me.

2. I would forget everything in my speech.

3. I would get nervous and lose my voice.

4. I would get sick.

5. I could forget my haftorah and maftir.

6. Everyone that had a part would mess up completely.

7. I would trip and fall with the Torah.

That's all folks. I'm so scared.

Read that list again. Look at what actually frightened a 12 year old.

People laughing. Forgetting what to say. Losing her voice. Getting sick. Failing publicly. Other people failing because of her. And a physical catastrophe involving a sacred object.

Now let me tell you what I hear every single week from CEOs, CHROs, and senior leaders when I ask them what's keeping them up at night:

"What if we spend $2 million on this platform and nobody uses it?"

"What if we restructure and lose our best people?"

"What if we roll out this change initiative and it falls flat?"

"What if the board sees this as a failure?"

"What if we're the ones who made the wrong call?"

Same list. Different vocabulary.

People will laugh at me became "the board will lose confidence."

I would forget everything became "we don't have the right strategy."

I would get nervous and lose my voice became "we can't articulate the vision clearly enough."

Everyone that had a part would mess up became "our teams aren't aligned."

I would trip and fall with the Torah became "this whole thing could collapse publicly."

The fears don't change. We just dress them up in business language and pretend they're strategic concerns instead of deeply human ones.

Here's what my mother understood that most organizations still haven't figured out.

You cannot move through fear you haven't named.

She didn't say "don't be scared." She didn't say "you'll be fine." She didn't hand me a motivational quote or a framework. She said, write it down. All of it. The real stuff. The embarrassing stuff. The stuff you don't want to say out loud.

And then we went through every single one.

The first one. "The people would laugh at me."

She looked at me and said: "Shera, these are your friends and your family. They would never laugh at you. They came to see you. They came to celebrate you."

I don't remember what she said about the rest of the list. I'm sure we went through every one. But that response is the one that stayed with me for decades, and I think it's because she did something so simple and so profound at the same time. She didn't tell me not to be scared. She reframed who was in the room.

The people in that room were not my critics. They were my people. And they showed up for me.

Once I understood that, every other fear on the list got smaller. Not gone. Just smaller. Manageable. Survivable.

I did my bat mitzvah. I didn't trip. I didn't forget. Nobody laughed. But honestly? Even if any of those things had happened, the list had already done its job. I walked in knowing exactly what I was afraid of, and I did it anyway.

I didn't realize until very recently that this moment shaped the way I work with organizations today.

I call myself "The Why Detective" because I've spent my career asking leaders to do what my mother asked me to do at that desk. Name it. Before you invest. Before you restructure. Before you buy the platform, merge the teams, or launch the initiative.

Sit down and write the list.

What are you actually afraid of? Not the polished board deck version. The real version. The "people will laugh at me" version.

And then let someone reframe who's in the room.

Because here's what I see over and over again. Leaders are afraid their people will resist the change. They're afraid of pushback, low adoption, quiet quitting, losing their best talent. And because they never name that fear out loud, they never get to hear the truth: the people in the room are not the enemy. Most of them showed up because they want it to work. They want to be included. They want to be part of something that matters. Leadership just misread who was in the room.

That's the friction I help organizations find. That's the gap between what's embedded in a business and what's actually embodied by its people. It almost always comes down to unnamed fear on one side and unrecognized willingness on the other.

I work with organizations now to do exactly what my mother did at that table. I call it diagnosing before prescribing. Some people call it pre-investment clarity. I've built an entire methodology around it called Change Embodiment.

But the truth is, it all started with a terrified kid, a pen, and a piece of notebook paper.

So here's my question for you.

Whether you're a CEO facing a major investment, a leader navigating a restructure, or someone standing at the edge of a career change you're not sure about: when was the last time you sat down and wrote the list?

Not the strategic risk assessment. Not the SWOT analysis. The real list. The "people will laugh at me" list.

Because I promise you, whatever is on it is smaller than the fear of not writing it at all.

Shera L. Haliczer is the Founder and Chief Momentum Officer of Engage3P, a strategic transformation partner that helps organizations move from stuck to unstoppable. Known as "The Why Detective," she helps leaders diagnose hidden friction across People, Process, and Platform before investing time and money in surface-level fixes. She co-hosts "The Glass House" podcast, exploring the gap between what organizations embed and what they actually embody.

If your organization is gripping the chair right now, let's write the list together. Connect with Shera at engage3p.com or reach out directly on LinkedIn.