I am competent, smart, and able.

Ask a nurse to describe a handover and she'll tell you it's nothing. Twelve patients, drug charts, three things that could go wrong before lunch, summarised in four minutes to somebody she trusts. Nothing.

Competence goes invisible to whoever owns it. The moment something becomes easy it stops registering as a skill, which means your own abilities are the hardest ones for you to see.

Try describing one part of your work to somebody who doesn't do it. Watch their face. The gap between how hard it sounds and how ordinary it feels is roughly the size of what you aren't crediting yourself with.