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Thing Finding Thursday with Kate Swoboda
Kate Swoboda is one serious force of nature.
Her gifts are many, but what I’m always struck by in our conversations is her ability to simultaneously listen at a very deep/heart level AND have her mind pick away at the situation and survey it with care from every angle. Curiosity, compassion and courage are a fierce combination.
That’s my Kate.
She’s quite simply a brilliant coach who recognizes that being a brilliant coach doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy to build a brilliant business. (Word.)
And so, for the brilliant coaches of the world, she has created The Coaching Blueprint (aff link). It’s an e-program as hella-smart and hella-generous as she is.
In this interview, she shares how she found her THING and how she has parlayed it into a business that people care about. She also shares some big learnings about undertaking massive projects as well as signposts to look for along your own path.
Interview with Kate Swoboda for Thing Finding Thursday
Tweetworthy Kate-isms (for your sharing pleasure)
What does trusting your body have to do with finding your thing? @katecourageous tells @TanyaGeisler (TWEET IT)
Justifications create a lot of mediocrity. via @katecourageous (TWEET IT)
I can be totally afraid and it doesn’t make me weak. via @katecourageous (TWEET IT)
Cultivating trust in your body’s feelings will help you find YOUR path. via @katecourageous (TWEET IT)
Transformation happens whenever we choose to dive into something even though fear is along for the ride. via @katecourageous (TWEET IT)
Transcript of edited interview (for your reading pleasure)
Kate: Thank you so much for having me. I’m crazy excited to be on your interview series.
Tanya: What’s your thing?
Kate: My thing, we can go in technical titles, we can go what the titles are about. The technical titles are I’m a life coach, speaker, and writer. But, I really feel like working with fear in my own life and then how that translates to what shows up in my writing, my coaching, and my speaking, and specifically how we just beautifully practice courage is my vocation – it’s my calling, it’s that thing that I get really jazzed about.
Tanya: How did you land there or is there a way in which you’re still landing, how from here to there, what was your process?
Kate: I love that you say there’s a way in which you’re still landing, because I think that especially in our more materialistically oriented culture we tend to think there’s a place “over there” that we’re supposed to land. Part of my “landing process” you could say was the discovery that there is no landing, that the suffering in the world and in one’s personal life is about thinking that there’s a place to land, that there’s this thing out there, this day out there where if I just do enough work I won’t be afraid.
One of the things I talk about on my website and in my work is that the practice of courage is about feeling afraid, because you’re never going to get out of that part as long as you’re a human being trying new things and diving in anyway. What would you want to do otherwise? Stay stuck? That isn’t a recipe for fully alive living for most people.
Then transforming, because that’s always what happens whenever we choose to dive into something even though fear is along for the ride. The transformation doesn’t necessarily look like always that the heavens part and life is perfect there ever after.
Actually, that 1 inch of freedom is a really valuable inch to have gained. We always have some kind of transformation just by the process of saying, “This thing scared me, this thing that I wanted and I decided to go for it anyway.”
For a long time it was sort of a dysfunctional thing. It was like white-knuckling my way through fear. What that has blossomed into and what I’ve transformed is the realization that I didn’t need to white-knuckle or defend against but this was actually something that I could flow with and I could be with.
In fact, it was the essence of my power to say, “I can be with this. I can be totally afraid and it doesn’t make me weak. It actually makes me incredibly on my edge to be with this fear that’s coming up from me.”
Kate: I actually really believe that one of the most powerful choices I can make where I’m afraid is to lay down on my bed and just cry it out. That is actually a conscious choice to work with fear right there. I don’t have to go get a business license, hang out my shingle, or do all the big things like start a blog that feels so scary if I wanted to start a business.
(Tell us about The Coaching Blueprint, will ya?)
In 2011, I had gotten to a point in my business where a lot of coaches were emailing me and saying, “Okay, Kate how are you doing this? How are you getting the guest posts booked and how are you booking interviews with best selling authors like SARK or TED talk researchers like Brené Brown. How are you doing the marketing thing and not going crazy?”
All these questions were coming up and I said, “Well, I’m going to create a program for you to teach you everything I need to know.” Along the way, I’m going to interview other coaches who are amazing and get their wisdom too. Especially, because we’re all coming from different perspectives and somebody probably wants the business coaching perspective of Tara Gentile, if they’re a business coach. They might want the creative coaching perspective of Jamie Ridler if they’re a creativity coach.
I interviewed 12 coaches and counselors and put that out. Now, in the past year, things change. Facebook has changed in the past year. Technology has changed in the past year. Pinterest has become big in the past year.
Basically, I’m re-launching the Coaching Blueprint. I shouldn’t even say re-launch. I’m updating the Coaching Blueprint. I’m adding more content and more interviews with Leonie Dawson who is a rock star who made $100,000 in 3 months. I’m like I want to talk to a coach who knows how to do that because I want to know how to do that. It’s going to be live on October 4, 2012. I’m completely and totally excited.
Tanya: I’m completely and totally excited for you too. What fears, obstacles, or shit showed up as you were creating this?
Kate: I learned that when you launch something, more is going come up then you ever think is going to come up. That’s something that I’m going to be talking about in the Coaching Blueprint 2.0.
So much stuff came up in the last launch. Like last minute things. Things people were requesting. Suddenly remembering at 10:30 at night just as I was about to nod off to sleep. Oh my God, I didn’t get that email to that person.
I have really set an intention for myself with this launch that I’m going to be working out, getting my salad, making my green smoothie in the morning, and drinking lots of water. My practice of courage is really being attuned to and releasing the thought that if it’s not done in a certain way it’s wrong, or it won’t be successful, or that’s its bad, and all of that.
Really, where’s the priority? That’s the take-away for when you take on a massive project and it’s scary and shit’s coming up. Is it worth doing if you drive yourself into the ground? I don’t think it’s worth doing if you drive yourself into the ground.
Tanya: Is there anything you want the viewers who are in the process of looking for their thing, maybe they feel like they’re on edge, it’s not quite fitting, but there in a process. Is there anything that you have, any questions, or sign posts that you would love for them to see on their own journey?
Kate: What I would say is really start to notice the sensations in your body. Justifications create a lot of mediocrity. I don’t mean mediocrity in the way that people typically banter about the term like don’t be mediocre, be better than that. I mean like mediocrity as in things that don’t really rise you to your truest calling or your purpose. Like really rise you to that place.
When you’re doing too much up here the justifications can convince you to go a certain direction. When I sit down to write something for the Coaching Blueprint or when I was sitting down to write something for the Courageous Living Program or when I’m sitting down to write for my blog, it’s like if I’m sitting down and I’m going ten ways to practice courage, oh, okay well what is what one way. It’s thinking. It’s just not going to be a successful post.
When I have that thought, when I run across an amazing quote and I think oh that’s a great idea and I scribble it down. I feel it in my body. I feel it down here. I feel it everywhere. The more you can cultivate trusting that feeling, the more you’re going to really find yourself on your path, not somebody else’s path, not the path you think you should be on.
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Go find Kate and her courageous self at her site and on Twitter.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Thank you. Again.
Last Friday was a complete and utter whirlwind of loveliness.
It was my 40th birthday and it was Pay What You Choose Day for Board of Your Life. Which meant for the vast majority of the day, I was receiving Facebook messages, tweets, phone calls, emails and every other manner of missive. Every last piece of digital love went into my “YAY” folder and notes went into my actual “YUM + YAY” folder. (Blues-busters…both of them: highly recommend.) My folders and my heart are bursting at the seams.
I spent much of the weekend in a bit of a dazed afterglow and kept feeling the tug to create some meaningful “lessons” for you, my readers. (I want everyone to have such a day.)
And it’s kind of a challenge to tease out the learnings because I collapsed two events people seem to care about (my birthday + Pay What You Choose Day) into one day. I mean, the fine folks at Facebook made sure my FB world knew it was my birthday with their handy-dandy side bar. But as far as the Board of Your Life offer that I wanted to reach many many people, well, that was up to me.
There are two things I want you to know:
1) If you want to throw a party, you have to invite some people. You have to ASK THEM TO SHOW UP. If you live in any social media space, there is a decent chance you came across a mention of my birthday or offer from someone other than me. It’s important for me that you know that I ASKED friends for help in spreading the word so that:
a) you don’t have some belief that I am just lucky enough to have people falling all over themselves to help me (triggering any sort of: “why don’t people do that for me” story line.)
b) you know that I walk my talk. I make asks. I send heart-in-my-throat requests that make me feel like I am asking for too much. (But knowing that the ask was reasonable, specific, brief, and respectful, I felt pretty confident pressing “send”.)
2) People are generous. In particular, YOUR people. Yes, they are generous and kind and want what you have to offer. I have said this time and time again. And while this is a fundamental belief that I hold, I hold it LIGHTLY in my hands so that I don’t crush it, leaving space for the wonder when it reveals itself. In that way, and like the smell of crisp fall air, it never ceases to amaze and thrill me.
There is much, MUCH more for me to crystallize from the day (in particular, the Pay What You Choose experience), but I have a ton of thank you notes to write, so for now let me just say, once again, THANK YOU. For being here, for showing up, for YOUR generosity, for asking for what you want and for helping me to grow.
With full heart,
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Pay What You Choose Board of Your Life Birthday-ness!!!!!!
Sale is over
40 years ago today, Paul Henderson scored “the goal of the century”, CityTV opened its doors and I was born.
To most Canadians, the first event was pretty noteworthy. It was the final game of the Canada-Soviet Union Summit Series at the height of the Cold War. It was a scrappy fight for both hockey supremacy AND (ahem) democracy. So, you know, a ginormous international peeing match.
So, on September 28 1972, the patients and staff of a hospital in Toronto, like pretty much everyone across the nation, were fixed to the tube, watching the puck careen across the ice in fuzzy black and white.
My mother had taken the pain-relieving meds on offer in the 70’s (good ‘n heavy ones, so I’m told), and was oblivious to the scene beyond her labour experience.
Upon delivering me with success (YAY!), she was wheeled back to her room. It was in that moment that Paul Henderson made THE GOAL. The hospital exploded with cheers and hoots and celebration.
My mother, holding my swaddled self to her chest, looked up beatifically to my father and said, in her elegant but wonder-filled way: how marvelous, but really, she’s just a baby.
God, I love that story.
I love the vision of my stunning Mama, in her own world, bathed in love and in the belief that the world was cheering her (and me) on.
Maybe they were.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
I know you mean well, but please don't tell me to relax
Using “Calm down” and “Relax” as an imperative command has about a 100% failure rate. I know, I know…you TOTALLY mean well. You really believe that if that person who is majorly stressed could calm down then they’d see the fullness of the situation. That breathing would allow fresh perspective. That by slowing their heart rate, they are taking care of their overtaxed selves. And so on.
Got it. And so do they.
But it doesn’t quite work like that, does it? In fact, it typically has the OPPOSITE effect, right? That’s because you are dismissing the gravity of what they are experiencing. You are condescending them by telling them how they should feel. Attempting to alter their experience in a moment is suggesting that they are not to be trusted with their emotions. Ugh. Unhelpful and frankly, annoying (but seriously, bless you for caring).
So stop doing it.
Part of the charge is that some people don’t know HOW to relax, exacerbating the tension and compounding their feelings of inadequacy, which were probably the source of stress to begin with (most stress is related to a sense of inadequacy). But unfortunately for you, you well-intentioned Zen Master, telling them HOW to relax isn’t going to make anything much better.
In Gretchen Rubin’s Happier At Home (LOVE), she bristles at the woman who tries to ram meditation down her throat, saying pointedly:
“I often remind myself that just because something makes me happy doesn’t mean it makes other people happy, and vice versa”.
We each need to find our own way into this.
For many, the very idea of relaxation is synonymous with boredom. They feel that it’s a waste of time, a dreaded “should”, foreign and uncomfortable. For most of my life, that was my truth.
“Relaxing” takes effort. Willpower. Force. Kinda like barreling through yellow lights to get to yoga class so you can get your zen on. Exceptionally counterintuitive.
Here’s what I’m finding works much, MUCH better.
Find out what the endpoint of relaxation is to you. Or another way in: how do you want to feel when you are relaxed? Refreshed? Recharged? Clearer? Prepared?
Now think about what engenders that feeling for you. Is it your yoga practice? Is it the way you feel when you are in a hot bubble bath with a glass of wine and some James Taylor? Is it wandering aimlessly in a museum? Is it surfing? Is it creating a new soup? Or is it how you feel in lotus position on your meditation pillow?
And now, notice what’s going on when you’re in that space, when you’re in flow and all is right with the world. Like, say you picked creating a new soup…notice what’s here: sensuality, creativity, delight, focus, wonder. Can you feel that? How much more yummy is that than sitting quietly trying to beat your monkey brain into submission?
Uh huh.
So, next time you are trying to relax, or, heaven forbid, someone TELLS you to relax, pause, take a breath and conjure your scenario, inviting in those attributes of sensuality, creativity, delight, focus or wonder (or whatever they are). You can do it. Ease into it, relishing and savouring what’s here…in THIS moment. That’s YOUR brand of relaxation. Wholly unique and utterly sacred.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Thing Finding Thursday with Ophira Edut
A couple of months ago, I treated myself to an astrological reading with Ophira Edut, one half of the powerhouse combo: The Astro Twins. I had been receiving their weekly newsletter for quite a while (it’s one of the few things I read the moment it pops into my inbox) and have known that working with them has been a not-so-secret weapon in my friend Danielle’s wickedly packed arsenal.
So, it was my time. Oh. My. Word. I was blown away. Now, let me be clear…I don’t exactly have a super solid in with, you know, stars. Any of them. I knew that I was a Libra, but that was about it (really). Now I know that I’m a Libra, Gemini moon, Sagittarius rising. I know about my nodes, my houses. (Boy, do I know about my nodes ‘n houses).
The intensity of the 90 minutes is hard to describe…it’s like I was struck by a lightning bolt of recognition about where I’ve been, where I’m going, why oh why that place is so painful and WHAT OH WHAT that hunger is really all about. Me. But mapped out.
I honestly reflect on that session daily. In fact, several times daily. I've moved products and projects around...my office too. I've refined strategies, made hires and decisions (good ones) based on that hour and a half. I've made peace with aspects of my personal life and started fires in dead spaces.
So when Ophira told me about the new course that she and Tali, her sister, had created called “Become Your Own Astrologer” I knew it was time to introduce her to you crazy cats.
In this video, we talk about Ophi's path, the tele-class, and how astrology may be a boffo tool for you, the Thing-Finding crowd.
{Three things I want you to know: 1) I AM an affiliate for this course, absolutely. 2)Early bird pricing ends Sept 15th. 3) Not sure if Mercury was being his saucy self and being in retrograde and all (I’ll have to ask Ophi) but for reasons known only to my Call Recorder and the stars, I was cut out of this video. Alas.}
Interview with Ophira Edut for Thing Finding Thursday
Tweetworthy Ophira-isms (for your sharing pleasure)
Astrology is like an instruction manual to understanding yourself. (TWEET IT)
When something isn’t easy it carves out a new dimension of your soul. (TWEET IT)
When u know that s.t. may not be easy, u can adjust your expect'ns. (TWEET IT)
Astrology is a tool to give u peace + help u AND people u love make great choices. (TWEET IT)
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AND...
On the topic of things I'd love for you to know, Jennifer Louden + Michele Christensen, two gorgeous beings of heart and light and mad, mad wisdom are offering TeachNow (aff link). 'Cause, Love? You may be a seeker, but you're also a Teacher. They want you to Teach from where you are. They want you to Teach from here. They want you to Teach the lessons that you've learned and are learning. And so do I. Info call is on September 19th.
ANNNND...
Tara Sophia Mohr's Playing Big is just about to open (aff link). This is a heart-opening, game-growing, calling-forth kind of experience that invites you to go deep, held with love and care. Precisely how Tara rolls.
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Transcript of edited interview (for your reading pleasure)
Tanya: So you know what we’re here to talk about today. We’re here to talk about your thing.
Ophira: Yes, my thing which is astrology, but it’s actually empowering people through the lens of astrology.
Tanya: Yeah. How did you find it?
Ophira: Well, my college boyfriend actually did a chart for me as a gift about 20 years ago. I didn’t even really know what it was, but it was this map based on the time, date, and place I was born that showed where all the planets were when I was born.
It was like this instruction manual to understanding myself, it turned out. It made so much sense that I was like, “Okay, there must be something to this.” I started doing them for people and learning how to do them myself.
Tanya: I love that, an instruction manual for understanding yourself which is so clearly where the empowerment piece comes in. Say more about that, please.
Ophira: There are a lot of different types of astrology. Some is more of the doomsday type that’s like scary predictions that you don’t want to know. I don’t like that type of astrology.
Tanya: Not so much.
Ophira: No, but when it’s done right it’s like all the planets were in a specific place at the moment you were born and they each represent a different energy. Some represent the challenges you’ll have, some represent how you are in love, what you were in a past life and what your destiny is, how you communicate, where you’re lucky and where things come easily.
It’s like putting together the puzzle of yourself and having this guide. Of course, there’s free will in there and you get to color in between these lines however you want, but I found it to be very validating and very empowering and enlightening to understand, “Okay, I have four planets in Scorpio, but I’m a Sagittarius so I have this intense Scorpio way about me as well as a fun, happy go lucky side.”
You understand all the sometimes contradictory parts of your personality and there’s some freedom from that.
Tanya: I love that, and that was my experience, too. We had a reading a couple of months back that still just sits right here because it was like you said. There’s a way in which you have this ability – you know what the lines are, but you get to color within.
You mentioned ease and one of the many, many, many parts of our conversation that I keep coming back to is where things are super easy, I’m always all about, “How can this be easier? Let there be ease. Invite in the ease.” It was fascinating for me to hear from you why certain things were just really easy for me. I found that very fascinating and where the places of challenge are truly areas of growth and what I’m here to do.
Ophira: Absolutely. Even when something isn’t designed to be easy because it carves out a new dimension of your soul and your personality by how you face those challenges – it builds character, I guess you could say. When you know that something may not be easy, you can adjust your expectations and then you’re not always swimming upstream. You can be like, “Alright, this is going to take me five years to learn instead of five seconds. If I apply myself,” blah, blah, blah.
Or, “Maybe this isn’t even something I need to be spending my energy on in this lifetime. Maybe I’ll put my best energies elsewhere.” It’s very freeing to understand your chart, as well as understanding other people’s.
I find that probably the people who read or work with both of us aren’t only interested in themselves, but they’re really interested in the people around them having a great life. While I was sold on doing my own chart, what really made me fall in love with astrology was how easily I was able to help my friends and loved ones - if they were hung up on a guy or unsure about a job opportunity or what to do next or how to figure out a child.
I just got into a random conversation with a woman at a café today. She asked me what I was doing. I was working on my book and she started opening up about her difficult Gemini daughter and she’s an Aquarius. I was able to give her some peace just in a five minute conversation. She was like, “I want to cry,” and she started by saying she didn’t believe in astrology, really. It’s this tool to give you peace in your heart and help you make choices and help the people you love make great choices in their own best interests.
Tanya: I love that. I have that conversation, too. It usually starts out with a, “I don’t believe all that self development shit you’re talking about."
It’s usually like, “Well, here’s why this is going on in your life.” I love that. It gives them some peace, and again there’s that quality of empowerment.
I know a little bit about your back story. This isn’t where you started. It started with that chart, you were in university. What was going on for you as you decided to zig when maybe you were thinking you probably should have zagged? What was that process like for you when you decided this is it?
Ophira: I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I studied graphic design. I worked as a web designer and a graphic and print designer for a long time, as well as published my own magazine. All very Sagittarian things as it turns out, I learned in hindsight.
I even worked at Ms. Magazine and with women’s empowerment issues, and I still do work on that sort of stuff now – humanitarian things. I found that astrology was the best and fastest way to empower people. It’s really important that we obviously know about the politics and sociology and all the things that are going on in the –isms and all of that.
When you start to talk about those issues, people don’t always want to talk about it. Politics and religion are not always favorite party topics, and I’m the daughter of a very political father and a rabbi mother, so we have two of the taboos in one household. With astrology, it’s a way of giving people advice or even addressing things that they don’t necessarily want to talk about normally in a way that they can still dismiss it as bullshit, so they’re open to it because they might hear something useful but they can still be, “Oh, I don’t believe it.”
Tanya: Awesome, great stuff. I wanted to ask you because I know you have a really exciting teleclass coming up. That sounds very cool. Five weeks. Say more, say more.
Ophira: Five weeks – every Monday in October for an hour and a half we are going to be teaching people how to read their own birth charts, my twin sister and I. We write as The AstroTwins and we’ll be giving that course. It’s called “Become Your Own Astrologer: How to Use Your Chart to Create a Life You Love”.
We’re going to go week by week in looking at what’s your life destiny, how are you wired, compatibility, and we’re going to spend a couple of weeks in all of your relationships. What’s the best career path – really answering those questions that keep you up at night, but not just answering them for you, but teaching you in a very practical, simple way.
No math, no pencils and papers or anything like that. In a simple way you can keep forever how to interpret your and other people’s astrological charts to really understand what’s happening there.
Tanya: Again, I’m just holding that vision of, “Here it is, and you get to color it in however you’d like. Here are the lines that have been drawn by forces beyond you.”
Ophira: Why not have another tool from the toolbox that can come in handy for the rest of your life?
Tanya: Absolutely. Love it, love it, love it. Just hearing your story about how you have this underlying, deep desire for empowerment for others, and then you have this delivery mechanism that totally rocks and you’re so incredibly brilliant at it. I can say that absolutely, it’s just one of the most powerful hours and a half of my life. I’ve been married and had a kid and all that stuff, so it was really an awesome hour and a half.
People who are watching this are in the process of looking for their thing or things and I always invite people to say what is one thing that you would love for people to know who are in the process of looking for their thing? What’s something that you can leave with them?
Ophira: I think that if you’re in a process, you don’t want to get stuck in analysis paralysis. There’s a time to be in the process and a time when you’re spinning your wheels in the mud. You have to know the difference.
I think gaining tools like astrology if that’s the one that speaks to you or coaching helps you get unstuck and make clear choices with peace around those choices and really moving forward. The more you know yourself too, the more you have something to go back to when things get a little confusing.
Tanya: Holla!
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Go find Ophira at her site and on Twitter. Sign up for the AstroTwins newsletter (it comes on Sunday and you really want it to help plan your week...honestly)
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
It's all relative
It’s easy for him, he has a trust fund.
It’s easy for her, she doesn’t have a newborn.
It’s easy for her, she has a massive Twitter following.
It’s easy for him, he’s backed by the industry’s SUPERSTAR.
It’s easy for him, he has the Midas touch.
It’s easy for her, she has a perfect body.
It’s easy for him, he has the perfect marriage.
No. It’s not.
That trust fund may come with strings that feel like shackles. That childlessness may come with deep sadness. That marriage may be shrouded in mistrust. That backing may come with a sense of unworthiness. That Twitter following may come with years of hard work and untold costs. That perfect body may come with self-loathing. That “charmed life” may come with alcohol or drugs or insomnia.
Or not. You just don’t know.
Many years ago, I was sitting at the dining room table with my parents, unsuccessfully sniffing back the tears precipitated by an unrequited crush on a boy whose name I’ve long forgotten. They invited me to clear every last injustice bruising my teenaged heart. I remember their eyes brimming with compassion and understanding. When my tears resolved to sobs, I turned my thoughts to them. These two holding my sadness lightly and lovingly. And within an instant, every last trial that they’ve endured in their lives, too many and personal to share here, flooded into my heart.
How can I be so selfish? How can I be so insensitive? The boy will be meaningless in a matter of days. THEY are the ones who have endured real pain. Real loss. Real sadness. Mine is hormonally-derived horseshit.
Which is what I said. To which, my father reached across the table and took my hand in his large and calloused fingers and said: “Kid? It’s all relative.”
Impossible to wrap my head around at the time, but it was his enduring truth.
It’s all relative.
Yes.
Pain is relative. Ease is relative.
When next you meet someone and find yourself reciting the “it’s easy for them” story, take pause.
You don’t know what their fight has been. What demons they’ve wrestled to show up. Which parts have been shut down so that others may thrive.
No. You don’t know. No one really does.
Try this:
With your big beautiful brain and massive capacity for creativity, imagine that another’s apparent ease has come at a price. Will you dare to hold them with your infinite supply of kindness, empathy and compassion, diffusing the stifling toxicity that makes you feel so small?
And then will you trek down to your heart and listen from there? What is it that you are coveting in their story? That desire, right there, is your destination. Set your course for it. Make it happen, in gratitude for the clarity.
Remembering that everything is relative can keep smallness in check and give you a big liberating perspective. It can help you create a new story. A better story. YOUR story.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.