APX-IV-0076
“I asked for the raise I deserved and held the number through the silence.”
You walked in with the case made and the number set, and when the silence came you didn't cave and discount yourself. That hold is the whole skill. Strength is not the asking, it's not retreating the instant it gets uncomfortable. You earned the number. You held it. Let that be the new normal.
Your Practice
- Write the case in evidence, not feelings, what you've delivered.
- State the number and then stop talking. Let silence do its work.
- If pushed, restate, don't reduce. The first number is the real one.
- Whatever the outcome, log that you held. That's the win you keep.
The Architects
“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2.40 (Pericles' Funeral Oration), free rendering by Alfred Zimmern in The Greek Commonwealth (Oxford, 1911), p. 200; not Crawley, whose literal version at 2.40.3 reads 'But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger.'