Proving is expensive. It converts your competence into performance, and your presence into effort.
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being good at your job and still feeling you must demonstrate it daily. It is not insecurity. It is conditioning — years of being overlooked in the room, of having contributions attributed elsewhere, of learning that visibility had to be earned twice.
The cost shows up in over-preparation, in explaining decisions that need no explanation, in the extra 20% of effort added to every deliverable as insurance.
Authority is not louder. It is quieter. It is the willingness to make a decision and let it stand without a defence attached.
Practise one thing this week: state a decision in a single sentence with no justification appended. Notice the discomfort. That discomfort is the old pattern, not the truth.