Watching a room adjust when you speak explains most of this
You say little and it carries. A Scorpio Moon in the 10th house produces authority that has nothing to do with rank or volume: people take you seriously because you are evidently not performing and evidently not to be manoeuvred.
That standing is built on what you can handle rather than on what you display. The crisis dealt with, the confidence kept, the difficult decision taken without drama: these accumulate into a position that is very difficult to dislodge.
You are given what nobody else will take on
The failing department, the situation involving a person nobody can manage, the matter that requires discretion: these arrive at your door because you are competent and because you do not flinch. It is a compliment with a considerable weight attached, and it is worth asking what the assignment is actually worth before accepting it.
Your ambition is real and mostly unadvertised
You know what you want professionally and you rarely say it, preferring to be in a position before anybody notices you were seeking one. That works and it is slow, since some opportunities are given to whoever asked. Consider stating an intention once, since the strategy of arriving unannounced has never been compared with the alternative.
A slight is not forgotten
The manager who overlooked you, the colleague who took the credit, the decision that was made about you in your absence: these are recorded accurately and permanently, and they shape your professional conduct for years afterwards. Decide which entries are still earning their place, since carrying all of them costs more than any of them did.
Be visible on purpose, occasionally
Say what you did, in public, once a quarter. It runs against everything in you and it corrects the one real weakness of this arrangement, which is that a person who never claims anything is eventually assumed not to have done it. The record does not maintain itself. Somebody else describing your contribution is easier for you to tolerate than doing it yourself, and it counts for exactly as much.
Work where the stakes are actually real
Fields with consequences suit you: crisis management, investigation, restructuring, anything where the difficulty is the job rather than an obstacle to it. Comfortable roles with nothing at stake will bore you into leaving inside two years. Choose by the seriousness of the problems rather than by the conditions attached. Anywhere the difficulty has been made safe by procedure, the interest goes out of it for you within about a year of arriving.
You carry a bad year without any sign of it
The public position is held steady whatever it costs, so a difficult year at work is invisible to colleagues and entirely present in your body. What accumulates is vigilance rather than tiredness: a readiness that does not switch off in the evening and gradually stops being noticed at all. Something physically demanding, done regularly, discharges it where rest cannot, and it is the only measure that reliably works here.
You were going to do it without their help
What the household thought of your working life was never up for discussion, and you made sure of that early. Advice was not sought, help was not accepted, and the account given at family gatherings has always been partial. That was probably necessary at the time. Consider giving one relative the real version now, since the privacy has outlasted whatever it was originally protecting.
A small number of powerful allies
In your field a few people know exactly what you are capable of and would act on it without needing to be asked twice. That is worth more than a wide acquaintance and it carries no redundancy at all. Retirements, moves and the occasional falling-out remove members, and nothing arrives to replace them, so the group thins quietly across a decade. Add somebody by decision every few years, choosing for what they can actually do rather than for how agreeable they are.
What the position is actually for
Real influence accumulates around you whether or not you sought it, and influence with nothing behind it turns into an operation for holding on to influence. What is it for: that is the question worth settling early rather than after twenty years. An answer changes which appointments are worth taking, which battles are worth having, and how much of the accumulated standing you are willing to spend.