“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” ~ Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha
Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. ~ Winston Churchill
March’s theme is courage…inspired a bit by the “in like a lion…out like a lamb” weather idiom. (Which I suppose is the case in Boston where we are actually getting some snow today – one of the few time this unseasonably mild winter.)
COURAGE
It’s such an important concept in being your authentic self, in pursuing your dreams, in building a life you love.
It takes a lotof courage to do this…
…courage to…
…make the difficult choices to pursue your dreams
…chose an untraveled path
…do what you want to do even if it doesn’t align with others’ expectations
…put yourself out there and be vulnerable
…face criticism
…be resilient in the face of criticism
…believe in yourself even when it feels like no one else does
…have faith in your dreams when you encounter obstacles
This month we are going to look at courage from every angle and help you get a whole lot of it.
Start now! The world is waiting for your gifts.
Do something that scares you every day.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Today’s Sunday Quote is a preview of March’s theme of Courage. I’m writing it from the top of Whistler mountain in Whistler, B.C., gazing in awe at the stunning snow-covered mountains and watching skiers and snowboarders whoosh down what appears to be completely sheer snow-covered rock faces. I’m torn between unmitigated admiration for them and abject terror at the idea of actually doing it.
I grew up the daughter of a reliability engineer (job = analyzing and trying to prevent anything that could go wrong) and an operating room nurse – an environmental combination ripe for risk avoidance. Or, should I say, an environment that could instill in anyone an unhealthy fear of the inherent lack of safety in everything. It conflicted with my natural curiosity for the new and different. And it has created an internal incongruity – a cognitive dissonance – that I’ve fought against my entire life. On the one hand, I love to try new things, but at the same time, most of them scare the shit out of me. (Ask my sister about the snowboarding/tree well incident when we were here last year.) So while I’m eager to try new things, the practical side of me holds me back. I have to be ever vigilant against this because it would be so easy to lapse into complacency and a “comfortable” space.
We all have to be careful of that “comfortable” place as its usually a place where you aren’t growing or stretching. It is easier than you realize to end up in this place. This is why I love Eleanor’s quote. Developing a habit of doing that one thing that scares you every day will help ensure that you aren’t stagnating. Sometimes this can be as cerebral as doing the tough emotional work to resolve a difficult situation at the office to something very physical, like sitting your ass on the Whistler-Blackcomb peak-to-peak gondola when you are scared of heights.
I challenge you and encourage you to embrace this mantra. The confidence you gain from it will open doors to accessing your potential and your gifts unlike anything else. When your mind and body conspire to make you believe you can do anything – which is the feeling you get when you conquered something that scares you – you gain a confidence like no other. And it opens up so many possibilities.
Do something every day that scares you. Start now! The world is waiting for your gifts!
It should be a simple thing really, but yet we struggle with it. Particularly we women, I think.
People who make us feel bad about ourselves are not worth our time or energy. Period.
Now I’m not talking about the people who push us to stretch and grow. This can make us feel uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is different than bad. It’s sort of an ok bad, like when your muscles are sore after a good work out.
Instead I’m talking about those people who, after spending time with them, makes your self esteem feels bruised and battered. A bit like they smacked it, or in more extreme cases, like they whacked it with a 2″ x 4″. Part of it is our responsibility; we shouldn’t let people make us feel any way. How we feel is our own choice.
Yet sometimes, there are those people who know how to hit at that raw insecurity. And we sometimes indulge them. We let them make us feel bad, and then let them continue to sap our energy when we obsess over it, when we pick at it like a scab, allowing that hurt to continue.
Stop. Just stop.
Not everyone is going to appreciate you. Not everyone is going to like you. (If they do, you’re probably not putting yourself out there enough.) Whether it’s genetics or culture, we women seem to have an especially tough time accepting this. We are programmed to want to be accepted. So we push and chase and try to win this person over.
Why? If they are enough of a jerk to intentionally make us feel bad about ourselves or if they are simply too obtuse to see the unique gifts we have to offer, move on! They don’t deserve one more ounce of your precious energy. Use your energy to cultivate your gifts and to find those who will appreciate them!
Start now! The world is waiting for your gifts! (And it’s hard to focus on developing them if you’re wasting your energy on people who make you feel bad.)
Have you found your tribe?
It was only few years ago that I learned the contemporary meaning of the word tribe. Back when I owned the agency, if someone had asked me about my tribe, I would have likely looked at them strangely until they explained it. And even then, I’d probablyhave given them an analytical answer about the breadth and quality of my professional network, still not grasping the concept that…
…your TRIBE is that fantastic, wonderful set of people who know, understand, and appreciate the real you. The ones who see your unique gifts, possibly better than you can even see them, and who encourage you and challenge you to use them.
Having an expansive professional network, while great for business, doesn’t necessarily equate to a tribe. Neither does a large group of friends. A tribe isn’t defined by size, but rather by the nature of the relationship. It comes down to whether you are really sharing yourself with the group and if they, in turn, are accepting you for the real you. If you have to ask yourself if you’ve found your tribe, you probably haven’t. You’ll know when you are in it – you finally feel like ‘hey, these people get me!” But they can’t really get you unless you’re really sharing yourself and your unique gifts.
For a long time, I mistakenly thought that the key to success was to focus only on those skills and talents which helped me to fit the mold of what I wanted to do, rather than developing what makes me unique. I neglected my entrepreneurial side, as well as my art and my writing. I also was very cautious about how I interacted with people, mirroring more of what I thought was expected of me rather than really being me. And as the years went by, despite the goals that I achieved, I began to feel more and more like something was missing.
When I sold my agency, I decided to take some time to see if I could figure out the missing piece, and to begin painting and writing again – something I hadn’t done in many years. As I did, I also started to show people more of the real me. I told people what I was working on, what my hopes were for it, and I shared it with them. And the most amazing thing happened, I began to find fellow tribe members both within my professional and friend circles as well as outside them.
If you feel like you are still looking for your tribe, here are some things you can start doing now to aid in your discovery:
These should start to help you find your fellow tribe members. Start now! The world is waiting for your gifts!
“If it’s true that who you are now and who you will be in five years depend on what books you read and which people you meet, then you need to think more aggressively about those you invite into your creative life. New collaborators bring vectors of energy into your static world – and they can be combustible. When people say they have good chemistry with others, they’re not using the lab metaphor loosely. Their molecules bounce off your molecules.”
~ Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
*if you haven’t yet read this book, I highly recommend it! I’ll be reviewing it April, which has the theme of Create.
The lizard brain isn’t always in love with you pursuing your true gifts, because the lizard would often like for us to play it ‘safe’. So we have to tame that lizard, shut it up, stop it from holding you back. One of the simplest ways to do that is to stop saying you can’t. The lizard brain loves when you talk like that. Adores it. Is like “Thank freaking God s/he’s going to play it ‘safe’!”
Muzzle the lizard. Because there’s not much you can’t do.
When you find yourself saying “I can’t,” ask yourself if you really mean…
…and after you say these things, ask yourself if it’s an excuse that the lizard brain is throwing out there so you avoid doing something that you should be doing. The more honest you can be with yourself about why you aren’t doing something, the more you quiet the lizard brain. But if it’s an excuse and you really want to shut the lizard up? Do it anyway.
The world is waiting for your gifts!
It’s Friday, and here are some great links to check out.
The Holstee Manifesto – So that’s what it’s called!
You’ve probably seen this image of this ‘life is short/do what you love” a lot on the web recently. It seems like it’s everywhere.
I love it for its message, it’s simplicity and because it encompasses so much of the BYAS philosophy. But I had no idea where it came from – and all of the places I’ve seen it haven’t credited it. Well, thank you, blogger Sarah Wilson, for sharing the background, in a great post on doing what you love. (I think it’s hilarious that an Australian blogger clued me into something that was made in Brooklyn!)
I think I like the video almost as much as the poster. Maybe more. It’s like a little movie.
How to Crowd Fund Your Next Big Idea
Do you need financial backing to make one of your dreams a reality – starting a business? Bringing a creative project to fruition like recording an album or producing a movie? Crowd sourced funding is an option to consider.
Under current business models, creators can only make educated guesses as to what consumers will buy and how much. By letting shoppers fund only ideas they like best, you know exactly what to create, and in what quantities. Repositioning up-front spends more heavily around development vs. marketing, crowdsourcing allows you to deliver a high-quality product that essentially sells itself. Better still, pre-orders provide working capital to fuel production, and donors feel more emotionally invested in the end result. ~ Scott Steinberg on Mashable
Our power to create is what sets us apart from other animals. (OK, the opposable thumb—which allows us to hold a paintbrush!—gets some credit, too.) And it’s important to be reminded of that power, she says. After all, you created your own business, right? Your ability to create—whether it’s a product, a business plan, a website, a piece of art—is infinite and only limited by the rules you impose upon yourself.
But for most of us, creativity has become cut off from our regular lives. Maybe we paint or journal or write songs as a hobby, but that seems to be where creativity—or at least our idea of it—stays. In today’s marketplace, however, “anyone who works with their mind is required to be creative on a daily basis,” says Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s notice. ~ Author, “Getting Unstuck,” Success.com
Happy Friday!
Sometimes one of the biggest challenges to being your authentic self is working with the icky bits – the difficult experiences, mistakes, and failures in our past or bad habits and/or behavior patterns that we aren’t proud of. It’s natural to want to shy away from these aspects of ourselves, ignore them, pretend that they don’t exist. And sometimes, we do something even worse – we beat ourselves up for them.
I’m guilty of that. While I consider myself a compassionate, forgiving person towards those who are close to me, I have rarely exhibited the same towards myself. I expect a level of perfection from myself that I would never expect in another person. This is something I struggle with on a daily basis.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
There are lots of contributing factors that cause us to get into these habits of avoiding or beating ourselves up for the icky bits - personality, birth order, the way you were raised. It’s also just human nature to want to fit in to the group, and whenever we do something that deviates from the norm, we get concerned that it will make us not fit in. I’m the oldest, by nature a perfectionist, and raised by strict parents. It’s a combination ripe for these habits.
To be our authentic selves, we have to think differently about the icky bits
Regardless of why we beat ourselves up or avoid our past mistakes, we need to stop. To truly share our unique gifts with the world, we need to accept and integrate these experiences. We are all human. Every one of us has done stupid stuff and been through difficult times. They help shape who we are just as much as the good things we have done, and help us grow when we learn from them.
5 ways to better handle the icky bits of ourselves
1) Break the negative talk habit – If you are one of those people (like me) who is constantly self-critical, you need to stop. You can’t share your gifts with the world when they are under a constant barrage of criticism and bashing. That elicits more fear, dilutes your self confidence, and holds you back.
I will tell you, this is not an easy thing to do. If you have the habit, you probably do it more than you even realize. The best thing to do is break it down into chunks:
2) Practice Loving-Kindness Meditation - For those of us who struggle with difficult past experiences, this is an incredibly effective practice. I highly recommend attending a class if you are unfamiliar with how to do it. Sharon Salzburg’s book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness is also an excellent resource for doing this. One of the guide meditations in it deals specifically with forgiveness, inistructing you to meditate on ‘forgiving those who have hurt me intentionally and unintentionally, asking for forgiveness from those who I have hurt intentionally or unintentionally, and forgiving myself for all the ways I have hurt myself intentionally or unintentionally.’ (Apologies if these aren’t the exact right words. I gave away my book and still have to replace it.)
3) Use journaling to reframe your experiences – As you are journaling, write about the aspects of your past that you are struggling with and objectively examine what you have learned from them, and what patterns have caused them. By focusing on the learning, you are celebrating them and what you have gained from them. And by identifying patterns, you are helping prevent similar mis-steps in the future.
4) See at therapist – I’m a huge proponent of talk therapy for helping process your experiences and learnings from them. Having a professional, objective support resource to help you process and integrate these experiences effectively is invaluable. And sometimes it’s just what we need to get out of our own way and stop the self-sabatoge.
5) Focus on your fabulousness - If you are going through a period of feeling particularly bad about a failure or misstep, do everything you can to highlight just how unique and fabulous you are. Wear outfits you feel fantastic in; get your hair done; spend time with your biggest fans; write yourself a love letter reminding you of all of your fabulous qualities; take inventory of all of your achievements. Taking these positive steps will help you refocus and prevent you from spiraling into a self-perpetuating mode of negativity.
We are all a sum of our experiences, positive and negative. To bring your unique gifts to the world, you need to work with both effectively. Start reworking how you handle the icky bits, and you’ll have even more to offer. Start now! The world is waiting for your gifts!
Wednesday is book day, and today’s book review is Linchpin by Seth Godin.
I highly recommend Linchpin. It is an excellent read for anyone on on the quest to being your authentic self, particularly in your career. It’s a manifesto on finding and using your genius to create “art that matters, “ and to “stand[ing] up and choose[ing] to make a difference” – two important tenants in BYAS.
Godin spends a good part of his book exploring the revolutionary way industry and work has changed – how the model of the obedient worker being taken care of by the benevolent corporation (or ‘factory’ as he terms it) has disintegrated. While many people see these changes as negative, Godin highlights the tremendous opportunity that lies within. An opportunity, as he describes it “to actually enjoy what you do, to make a difference to your colleagues and your customers, and to unlock the genius that you’ve been hiding all these years.” He helps readers see the possibility in what many see as a broken, hopeless system. And the possibility lies with those who are willing to “…stop complying with the system and draw your own map.”
I share Godin’s viewpoint. The idea that we all have something unique and special to contribute was one of the core reasons I started the BYAS blog. Godin illustrates this idea by extending Chris Anderson’s concept of the Long Tail beyond CDs and books stating that there is “also reom for everyone who wants to make a difference.” I completely agree.
Godin also delves deeply into the importance of and need to be constantly be creating- as he calls it “ship now” – and the role that fear and resistance, the “lizard brain” as he calls it, play in holding us back from “shipping”. These concepts are exceptionally important because creation is critical to our success in doing work that matters, and resistance is usually our number one obstacle to doing it. As Godin says “The lizard hates your genius, and tries to stamp it out. When you hear this dialogue, don’t listen to it. Remember it serves as proof of the resistance, and guard yourself even more diligently to ignore it.”
He also addresses the emotional labor that is necessary to make one’s own map and be a linchpin. As he describes it, emotional labor is “the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity.” His expanded definition of the concept captures very well the unique effort that is needed in being a linchpin, or in being your authentic self. And he approaches it from a very practical standpoint:
“Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, especially if you need to make a living at it. Go find a job you commit to, a career or business you can fall in love with.”
What Godin doesn’t offer is a road map or a detailed plan on how to do all of this. What he does offer is conceptual advice, explanations, and a lot of encouragement on the theory and necessity of becoming a linchpin, and how to fight against that which may hold you back. Without the specific recommendations, and with a limited number of illustrative examples that lack depth, it is more of a manifesto than a how-to book. But therein lies its value. It is incredibly inspirational. His ideas and theories are grounded and balanced enough to enable you to envision how the concepts can apply to your life even in the absence of planning tools.
If you are interested in knowing and being your authentic self; in identifying and sharing your unique gifts with the world; and doing something that makes a difference, this is an important book to read, not once, but multiple times. It will definitely motivate you.
