Tag Archives: authenticity

The Great Equalizer

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I can’t believe how fast the summer has gone.  All of a sudden, I only have on week left in Seattle, then a week in eastern Washington before I fly to the east coast to see my family in Maine and North Carolina.  And then I leave the country. Where did the time go?

I have been surprised by the responses to this blog.  I get emails and messages on a weekly basis from people both known and unknown to me. One of the common threads in all of them is to thank me for sharing my story and then to tell me how courageous I am.  I always chuckle at that. If I give off the impression of courage, it must be because my terror isn’t coming across via the interwebz.

One reader told me that she always thought that people who are more well-traveled or intelligent than she was are unapproachable, that surely they have never been insecure or vulnerable.  She told me she would try not to carry on a conversation with people like that because she might be seen as a “dunce”.  All I could think of when reading her letter is that she is depriving all those people of the unique beauty and life perspective that she alone has.  Because all of us, every single human being, has a unique story, outlook on life, pearl of wisdom, etc.  And the only way to figure out who will connect to us is to risk vulnerability and share our stories.

I spent the last week doing professional development for teachers in a very rural place.  In that time, I had the privilege to have dinner with three other women.  The only thing we all had in common was that we were all teachers and we were all within 15 years apart in age.  We came from very different backgrounds, ethnicity, lifestyles, etc. We spent four hours sharing our stories of joy, heartbreak, betrayal, mistakes, success.  We laughed at the unpredictable nature of life and the blessings that come from unexpected places.  It was wonderful and I have a greater appreciation for each of these women because I understand their struggles, the risks they have taken, the overwhelming courage they have shown to carve the lives they wanted for themselves.  They were spectacular.  I look forward to seeing them again.

When I first started writing this blog, I debated making it personal. I was just going to make it a travel blog.  Then I realized that if someone wanted to travel to a place and find generic details they could just use Wikipedia or Lonely Planet.  Those details mean nothing without the emotion and insight of my travels attached to them.   Sharing those personal details are difficult for me, I struggle every time I hit the Publish button.  But I always come to the same conclusion, let the readers take away what they need. If there is nothing there, they they can delete.  Simple.

When I started, I figured I would be the only one reading this blog.  So to have a reader tell me that one of the things they have learned from reading it is that “human emotion is the great equalizer.  We all laugh, cry, feel joy, get scared no matter how smart, wise, famous, or wealthy we are.”  If putting my feelings out there in this blog helped one person get to the understanding that all of us have a commonality of human emotions, then the discomfort of pushing the Publish button and letting myself be vulnerable is worth it.

Many people write and ask me for advice.  For someone whose life has been so out of control for so long, I still am amazed that anyone would want my advice.  People ask me how to get the courage to try new things, how to take risks, how to make decisions without worrying, and how to handle when someone laughs at you. Well here is what I know so far that worked for me:

1. Although hiding would feel good and safe, fear is where the fun starts. Changing my life started with facing my fears, one at a time.  You have to do something you think you can’t do. Anything, just try something new.  And then do it again. You gain confidence as you experience success.

2. Keep a journal.  We have to believe our thoughts are important enough to write down. I keep a handwritten journal, I have kept it for the last 7 years.  Those journals contain all my fears, desires, thanks, joy, anger, my crazy moments…all of it.  Sometimes I have typed my handwritten thoughts out, like in this blog for example, but that isn’t the same as keeping a journal for just myself.  I have to believe that my thoughts are important, even if no one else ever reads them.

3. Get laughed at.  One of the things I know about confident people is that they realize that getting laughed at doesn’t matter.  My amazingly confident son is a great example.  He would be at the mall on an escalator and just not get off and fall. He did it on purpose just to get a reaction out of people.  The trick is to laugh at yourself with people as they are laughing at you. You have to OWN it, whatever you did that made them laugh at you. It is all about confidence. One of my favorite TED videos: The shared experience of aburdity.  My advice: be absurd and own it.

4. Go to a bar, restaurant, park or coffee shop (anywhere in public) by yourself. Yes, in public, alone. After a lifetime of being married and having kids and lots of friends, I didn’t know how to be alone in public.  So I just stayed inside all the time.  Finally, I realized I needed to get out because I was sad and lonely.  When I first started dining alone, I would bring a book, sit at the bar, get a beverage and a nice meal and read.  Now I can go anywhere alone, it doesn’t bother me at all. I love to sit and watch people.  I remember those first times, it was scary.  So here is the tip, if you are sad and lonely at home, go be sad and lonely out in a park where you are in the sunshine and there are people around.  Watch people. Just sit, put a book in your hands and pretend to read, and watch people.  You will realize they are just as insecure as you are.  Or go and actually read or write in your journal, but get outside your house.

5. Tell someone something you don’t want them to know.  Start with someone you trust. When  I am getting to know someone, I always ask them two questions, one of those questions is “what don’t you want me to know about you?”.  If that person can risk and tell me something that they think is a dark secret, the thing that they think would make me want to reject them, then I am interested in knowing them.  Because it means I can risk the same back with them and that I don’t have to hide who I am.  People who can’t do that with me are the superficial people I keep on the outer circle of my friends. I know them, I see them at parties or gatherings, but they aren’t someone I am going to be invested in keeping up a relationship with.  I learned this lesson the hard way, by giving my trust to someone who was superficial.  It was the worst mistake I have ever made.

If you want to be inspired to risk vulnerability, watch The Power of Vulnerability.  Yeah…I know, I have a slight TED video addiction.

In the awkward intersections…

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Until I was about 44 years old, I was proper.  I conformed to the conventions of whatever group I happened to be with in an effort to blend in, adhere to the norms, and to not be singled out.  Our society and culture, as well as the social groups we belong to, put norms on what we can talk about, how we should act, how we should dress, what we should look like and who we should be friends with. And for all of our bravado of saying we don’t conform, this is something all of us do.  For example, there are few heterosexual men that will wear an evening gown, high heels, and makeup in public. We get embarrassed when someone is walking down the street wailing at the top of their lungs because public displays of emotions are frowned upon.  To be a “hipster” you have to look, act, and dress a certain way.  All of those things are examples of conforming.  I just have to say…screw that.

Dirty-FilterInstead of being proper, I have become a believer in filters.  Filters keep out what you don’t want and let in the parts that you do. For example, coffee filters keep the grounds out yet still let in the delicious coffee.  One day I was having a conversation with Matt about a ski meetup I had joined while he was travelling abroad. I was telling him that the challenging part was when driving to the mountain with a new carload of people each week and having the first superficial conversation over and over, i.e. what do you do, where are you from, etc.  I complained that it didn’t allow you to really get to know anyone more in-depth because you never got to any “meatier” discussions.  Matt’s response was “so just start with the 4th conversation”.  HUH, I don’t understand?  He said, “when they get in the car just start talking about poop, or your last sexual encounter, or your stand on women’s rights. If they ride with you again, they will be your friends.  If they jump out of the car, you’ll know they really aren’t people you want to hang around anyway.  It’s a filter.”

That made me think about all the really great friends I have and what attracted me to them.  In each case, the people I am closest to moved into my inner circle of friends by saying or doing something totally outrageous.  I love outrageous, unrestrained people. Who to hell wants to hang around boring, superficial, predictable people?  Oh yeah, other boring, superficial, predictable people do.  I want to be unpredictable so I look for other people to mirror that for me.

One of my favorite stories of a friend who is unrestrained and who I love dearly is my friend Jenny.  Jenny, Tracy and I all went skiing one Saturday morning. Tracy and I were friends but we didn’t really know Jenny that well.  When we got in the car, we all had a story we wanted to share about how great our week was. Tracy had something good happen at work, I got a new grant, but Jenny wanted to tell her story first.  Jenny said, “I had the best week. I met up with this guy I haven’t seen since I moved here. We made out at the bar, I brought him home, we had sex all night, then in the morning, we woke up, made bloody mary’s and stayed naked on the couch all day.”  Silence. Tracy and I looked at each other and, as one, said, “my news isn’t that interesting after all.”   How could we not fall in love and be friends with a person like Jenny?  She has this fantastic sense of self, of her needs, and of what is really important in life.  She is fabulous.  And most of the women who hear me tell that story all say “I want to do that” but very few ever will even attempt anything so bold.

Relationships take lots of work and honest, open communication. We all want to be seen in a good light, but you have to willing to be real and authentic with people always, from day one.  Even when it is hard and you don’t want people to know that you have made a mistake, done something stupid, or are having a crazy moment, you have to just put yourself out there anyway.  You will enjoy life a lot more if you can just be your unrestrained self with people that can be that way with you in return.  And that means in all your crazy glory, even wailing at the top of your lungs while walking down the street. The people who are truly your friends won’t shy away from that.  If they can’t handle the authentic you…well why would you even care what they think?  Authenticity is a filter, it filters out those who we want to keep in our lives from those who we need to let go so that they can find what they are looking for in someone else.

I believe that we are pretty spectacular people and that if we know ourselves, we can then introduce ourselves to others in an honest, fun, specifically quirky way as individuals who are comfortable with our awkwardness… and that’s usually where we connect with people– the awkward intersections. ~ Rachel

If you plant peas, you are going to get peas… ~Ella

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I am not sure why it is so hard for me to recognize that fact. It is a pretty simple thing to understand. We reap what we sow, so if we sow pea seeds, we can’t expect strawberries to pop up.

Like attracts like. Isn’t that the universal law of attraction? The people who are closest to us and the people who we are attracted to mirror who we are.  They reflect back our inner selves and we also act as mirrors to them.  You can tell a lot about a person when you look at the people who they value, the people who are closest to them.

I have said it before, I have the best friends ever. They are all men and women of courage, integrity, humor, compassion, thoughtfulness, deep feelings, and authenticity.  I admire them greatly and feel like I am always striving to be like them. They challenge me to be my best.

What I tend to forget is that I act as their mirror also, it isn’t a one-way thing.  They are attracted to me for the qualities they see in me.  That is the hard part for me to accept because it blows all my inner doubts and issues of self-esteem out of the water.  Those self-doubts are of my own making.  I am planting peas.  If all I do is put out my fears, insecurities, self-doubts, I will cultivate people in my life that have those same doubts.  I will cultivate friends who don’t reflect my values.

The problem is, I am not living up to my end of the relationship bargain. I am expecting these incredible people to be supportive of my struggles and they are.  But in my insecurity and self-doubt, what I am not doing is supporting them in their struggles in return. I have to ask myself, when they need me to mirror back to them those same incredible qualities, am I doing my job?

Part of developing a new identity is deciding who I want to be. I have chosen these people to be my friends, so I am choosing those attributes as characteristics I want to mirror.  So it is time to step up and accept that is who I am.  I am a woman of courage, integrity, humor, compassion, thoughtfulness, deep feelings, and authenticity. I have been planting my crops and I will harvest what I have sown.  It is time to act like a grown woman and be the friend I need to be.

Marianne Williamson said it better than I ever could, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? … Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do…. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

It is harvest time.