The Year I Stopped Playing Small by Award-Winning Experiential Producer, Entrepreneur, and Author - Sasha Perelman

The Year I Stopped Playing Small by Entrepreneur and Author - Sasha Perelman

Last June, I walked into the Mastery in Transformational Training basic course guarded, a little judgmental, and silently doubtful. After nearly twenty years of personal growth work, I figured I had already mined this territory. What could three days possibly offer me that I hadn't already done, read, journaled, or processed?

The answer, as it turned out, was a mirror I hadn't been willing to hold up to myself.

Basic: The Mirror I'd Been Avoiding

Within the first day, I caught myself in a pattern I thought I had long outgrown. A quiet, subconscious victim mindset, dressed up as humility. I had been playing small. Not letting others see or experience my gifts. Not stepping fully into the legacy I knew was mine to live.

So I made a declaration. By the end of the year, I would finish the book I had been dragging my feet on for a full decade.

I did.

Advanced: Calibrating the Superpowers

If Basic cracked me open, Advanced is where I learned how to stand inside what was now visible.

I started showing up in my power, in my light, facing the parts of myself I had been hiding from and dismantling the limiting beliefs and inner conversations that no longer served me. Something steady settled into me. This is my one and only life, and I get to start living it now. Not when the conditions are perfect. Not when I feel ready. Now.

I remember thinking, if three days could turn a room of strangers into family and create that much impact, what would five days in Advanced look like?

It was, in my own words at the time: WOAH.

Legacy: Living the Work

After Advanced, I knew I wanted more than insight. I wanted a container, a real, sustained practice, to live the work, not just learn it.

That is why I pursued the Legacy program. And it gave me exactly what I needed: the space to keep showing up, keep practicing, keep being accountable to the version of myself I was becoming.

I finished my book. I published it. And a meaningful part of that wasn't just willpower or talent. It was the encouragement and accountability of a community that refused to let me shrink back.

I came to MITT looking for community. I found it. But I also found so much more than that.

Who I Am Now

I came in carrying twenty years of personal growth work like a credential. I am walking away with something I didn't know I was missing.

I show up in support instead of self-protection. I lead with love instead of judgement. I have language now, powerful, precise language, that helps me name what I'm feeling and ask for what I need. I have an awareness I didn't have before. A clearer view of myself, of the people around me, of what is actually happening in a room.

I am transformed. Not in a polished, marketing-friendly way, but in the quiet, unmistakable way you only recognize when you catch yourself doing something you couldn't have done a year ago.

If You're Where I Was

If you are standing where I was standing last June, arms crossed, half-curious, wondering what could possibly be left to learn, I'll just say this.

There is always more. And it is waiting for you on the other side of the version of yourself you have been protecting.

MITT didn't hand me a new identity. It handed me the tools, the mirror, and the family to step more fully into the one that was already mine.

Sasha Perelman Founder, CEO, Award-winning Experiential Producer // Rooted Design Collective (designbyrooted.com)

Author, The Longest Road: Healing Across Generations (sashaperelman.com)

‍