Articles
Read (beyond) the label.
We want to be received for the fullness of who we are. There can be no doubt. Never is this more palpable than when we are complimented for a certain way of being. In the moment and at our best, we receive it and feel appreciated. (Even as we may squirm a little in discomfort. Yeah, it’s what we do.) But how many times have you gone back to the compliment and felt a pang of longing for a more panoramic view of your being? A pang of “but I’m so much more than just ______, aren’t I?” A desire to be seen for the whole being that you are.
There’s an excellent chance that that very compliment is one of the formative labels that you were assigned when you were very, very young. (There may have been more, but it’s the one you heard the most often.) You wore it with intention as a way of being understood and seen in the world.
“Little Miss Sunshine”? Check.
It’s been a home base of sorts. When you go to a party, you know how you’re supposed to act. What’s expected of you. Bring the lampshade, Wild One.
But the compliment feels incomplete because it IS incomplete. It is but one shining facet of the brilliance that you are.
No, no, please don’t disown it. It’s the stock base of the soup that is your deliciousness. But it’s just ONE part of the soup. It’s the other ingredients that give it depth and substance. The otherselves that you keep high on the shelf for fear that people won’t like the taste.
Yes.
Take some time to consider the following::
What label were you given when you were younger?
Where do you still default to it?
What praise do you seek?
What criticism do you avoid?
How are they related?
And one final place to look: what assumptions are you making about what people expect of you?
Next time, see what happens when you leave the lampshade at home.
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.
When the desire for connection backfires.
Most of my clients are reticent to take action that will run the risk of compromising their strong value(s) of connection.
It’s really the basis of our fear of success.
I get it.
Fully and completely. So when they feel called forth to step into their starring roles, they tend to look at a belief that when they start to gain a bigger audience -- a wider platform or generally become more successful (in whatever metrics that support their vision) -- their time will be strained, they’ll be required to be less accessible and they’ll become more disconnected. This can be an unsettling place to look. Because their fear isn’t JUST about losing connection with others (which is more than weighty enough, thank you very much.) It’s also about what happens when people disconnect from us. Take the following narrative, played out on the cover of any tabloid, at any time, in any grocery store.
A Hollywood starlet begins her ascent as her talents are noticed and appreciated. Then she starts to become revered. Maybe even adored. Possibly worshipped. And then, something begins to shift. The tides turn and she becomes the target of mean-spirited gossips. Fat-shaming. Lies and scandal. The bigger the star, the more vitriolic the attacks. Mean sells, after all.
The message is clear. The greater the heights, the more popular you become, the greater the risk of being cut down to size.
In the blink of an eye, you can go from revered to reviled.
From worshiped to condemned.
And the fulcrum point between canonization and demonization may well be disconnection.
Who wants that? It’s not just the fate of Hollywood stars, though, is it? Academics, entrepreneurs, blog stars, artists…we see it all the time. Pushed off of the stage that they have earned, or shoved off of the pedestals onto which they were forced. They become too popular and then they are attacked by the critics who fling their assaults from the safety of anonymity. For their weight. For going mainstream. For not staying in a box. For evolving. For celebrating. Like Brené Brown shares with Oprah about her experience with reading the comments about her transformative TED talk (on VULNERABILITY, no less)::
People were saying things like "Less research, more Botox" and "Maybe you'll be 'worthy' in 20 pounds." And they all were anonymous, which is such—well, crapola! I'm not going to cuss, but it's chicken. So one day I sent my husband, Steve, to work, I sent my kids to school, and I sat on the couch in my pajamas and watched ten hours of Downton Abbey. I ate some peanut butter. I was like, This is not worth it, man. I'm not doing this anymore. I didn't want to go back to my world, where all that hurt was. So instead I started googling to find out what was happening in the United States during the Downton Abbey period. That's when I found the Theodore Roosevelt quote. He said, "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs.... [And] if he fails, at least fails while Daring Greatly." In that moment, my life changed. You know when you hear something and you're just ready?
Yes. Yes I do. (You too?) (BTW:: Alexandra Franzen has done the most magnificent job of smacking down hate-blogging cyber-bullies.)
But you and I, we’re NOT those anonymous insult-slingers…how does this relate to us?
Well, if you’ve read this post, you may have seen yourself where you disconnect from those you admired. Part of the reason this happens is due to the fact that we may have projected our desires onto them. We see someone doing something that we admire we may feel an affinity towards them, possibly because they are so relatable. And they model something that we deeply want. Mastery, excellence, authority, or talent. And we may feel a gap from where we are to where they are. A gap that wants to be filled by connection and proximity. But when that’s not available to us, we try to fill the gap with projections. Beliefs about that person. Stories. “What would ______ do?” can be a powerful question to hotlink you to the value that the person represents for you, but it’s not TRUTH. It’s still story. And it’s not connection. It’s projection. Which is the genesis of disconnection. The very antithesis of what we were trying to achieve in the first place. Because somewhere along the line, we start to believe that story. And rest assured that said story won’t align with the subject of our admiration’s actions. So, the bloom falls off of the rose. What happens next depends on the cast of characters involved.
So if we see tabloids doing it to stars, and we see ourselves doing it, then it stands to reason that we can expect our people to disconnect from us too, non?
Ah. Connecting the dots between how we can perceive and treat others and how we expect we’ll be perceived and treated is the objective here. Once we can see that clearly, then we are free to see and heal the fears we have about stepping into our own starring roles.
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.
A new year...every day. From here.
Everywhere you look, here, there, everyone’s talking about the New Year. Word of the year. Scent of the year. Intention of the year. Goals and resolutions.
It’s easy to see why it’s such a fecund topic. It’s (mostly) universally accepted as the time to set our sights on getting “it” right.
Intellectually, we know that there are actually 365 days in a year to get it right, but until we replace “Happy New Year” shouts to the neighbours with “Happy new day to make it all happen in the next 364 days” greetings, we’ve got what we’ve got.
And as though we all hold each other in a set of collective agreements::
We agree to put a period on the sentence of the outgoing year (in theory) and a reverential capital letter on the sentence that begins the new year.
We agree to release the past (in theory) and to heed the call to chart a new course towards our desires.
We agree (in theory) to recalibrate.
What I see most often though, is how our new goals are set in the past.
We call forth new, but draw from another time.
I want to be able run a half marathon like I used to. I want to feel what I used to feel for my partner. I want my work to get the same attention it used to get.
While there is huge value in recognizing the emotions attached to those desires - accomplishment, passion, recognition - the goals themselves have us headed the wrong way.
“Used to” isn’t aspirational. It’s dissonance and “used up”. It’s an old Kleenex. It’s the jeans in the back of the closet for when you hit that ideal weight…only to discover that things have shifted and they no longer fit—no matter what the scale says.
You can’t go back. And that’s good.
You evolve. It’s what you’re doing this very second.
Make sure your goals and desires reflect THIS new way of being, feeling, seeing and loving. That’s where your goals will meet you.
Create from here, now.
With deep roots in the experiences of our past, feet planted firmly on the ground in the present and arms outstretched towards to sky, expanding fully into what’s to come, create.
From here.
Now.
Happy new day to make it all happen in the next 364 days.
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.
Blessings for 2014
I've felt this forecast in my bones for some time now.
And may it also be filled with::
kindness love play forgiveness grace joy delight purpose peace meaning hope light expansion freedom and the unwavering knowledge that you can make this year precisely what you desire. And then some.
Yes. Oh yes.
Bless,
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.
Buckling carpets and raising the kindness quotient
The most acute physical pain I’ve ever experienced was dropping a plate, edge-side down, on the nail of my big toe last June. It was a screaming, searing, raging HOT pain that wouldn’t allow me to find tears. Only expletives. Eventually it subsided. And with it, the memory. I’d completely forgotten about it until this morning, when I tripped on the rug in the living room and noticed that the toe nail has broken and is peeling off at the site of impact. Which is just above the cuticle. Lovely.
The most acute emotional pain I’ve ever endured was losing my Mama. Period.
My big toe is a pretty inelegant but apt metaphor for the grief I (still) feel about my mother. Up until yesterday, if I'd have thought about it, I would have said it was healing and looking perfectly fine. We go about our days, my toe and I, but then out of the blue, the carpet buckles and the toe reminds me that it’s neither completely nor perfectly fine. No, not really. It still needs tending to. And I can get mad at the toe and tell it that it’s unreasonable that it should act up so long after the plate incident. The big toe don’t care. It’s going to come apart when it’s going to come apart.
For many around me, this year has felt heavy with loss and grief and departures.
Maybe even for you personally. The holidays are like that carpet. Beautiful to look at, but a veritable minefield of emotional tripping hazards. Recipes, songs, ornaments, traditions, cards. Every last one a reminder about where the healing is still a work in progress.
No matter how much time has elapsed.
My wishes:
If you are in pain, please take this time to reach out to those around you. Swaddle yourself with the warmth and care that is available to you, if you only ask for what you need. Yes, your people are indeed busy. AND they will take time for you. (And no, you are not a burden.) Please tread lightly on the carpet.
As for the rest of us, let’s ramp up our kindness quotient. As queues are long and patience is thin, let’s imagine that everyone is in some kind of pain, which accounts for short tempers and irritability. Let’s be outrageous with gratitude and generosity and kindness. Let’s smile wider, tip bigger, let someone in, pay it forward.
You never know who has just tripped or is about to trip on the rug.
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.
How you feel about the role you want may be keeping you from the role you want.
My life’s work is about helping people step into their starring role. (Perhaps you’ve noticed.) The first challenge (and it’s no small feat) is naming what that role IS. Writer? Entrepreneur? Leader? Expert?
For those who are clear about the role they want to step into, I see two places where they may stop short and not move towards stepping in.
1) They want to step into their starring roles BUT they doubt that they have the ability or the RIGHT to do so.
Which sounds like:
I’m not a “Writer”. Writers are…smart. Accomplished. ACTUAL Artists. Me? I’ve just got decent ideas and can kinda string ‘em together. I’m not an “Expert”. I know what I know, but it’s not very much. “Experts” have 10,000 hours under their belt and legitimacy and credentials and degrees. Me, not so much. Imposter Complex 101 stuff right here.
You want to be known as a Writer? Do you write? Then, Love…you are a Writer. Keep doing it. You have the right to write. Proceed.
You want to be known as an Authority? An Expert? Yes, that’s available to you too. Check out my TEDx talk that guides you through a process. You’re way, WAY closer than you think.
2) They want to step into their starring role, but the very thing they want to claim is supercharged and spring-loaded with their own judgment.
Which sounds like:
I can’t want to be an “Expert”. Experts are…stuffy and stodgy. That’s not me. Sure I’d love to BE an Authority, but I would never call myself an “Authority”. Anyone who calls themselves that is a fake and a phony. It’s a fabricated construct. “Star”? Pfft. That’s fluffy and silly and selfish and pointless and pure ego-driven BS. Only an overinflated gasbag would call themselves a “Thought Leader”.
And, I suspect that there is a part of you that reads those words, feels their familiarity and still wants…THAT. If so, then lean in nice and close.
Here’s what I want you to know.
1) You are allowed to want what you want. In fact, it’s your job. Without apology, shame or embarrassment. 2) You are safe here. I won’t tell anyone that you want to be a Star. An Expert. An Authority. I promise (Until you’re ready for me to, and then I shall sing it from the mountaintops.)
3) Your discomfort with that title is the very thing that is holding you back from allowing yourself to step into it.
But because it’s just you and me, will you whisper the title that you want. Authority? Expert? Star? Muse? Thought Leader?
That wasn’t so bad, was it?
Can you now try to say it a little louder?
Mm hmm.
Now, can you proclaim in a statement, from the depths of your belly?
I WANT TO BE A _______!!!
There. Infinitely better.
But even as you sit there, a little breathless for what you’ve just named, the familiar voices are creeping in.
It’s selfish. That’s stupid. It’s for someone else. Not yet.
Yes. Yours is clearly a complicated relationship with that label.
So let’s have a look at what’s sitting under this tension you’re feeling. The tender yearning to be known as an Expert and the discomfort you feel with what it represents.
Typically, we experience this tension because our relationship with authority has been informed by witnessing the behaviour or impact we’ve felt by someone else in that role.
Let’s try this out, super quick.
Think about someone in your sphere (or beyond) who embodies (pick the label that lands with you): Expert, Authority, Star. How do you feel about them, in general? Notice what you admire about them (that’s a mirror, by the way). AND notice when you disconnect from them. Notice what feelings come up that cause you to disconnect (disappointment, anger, frustration). Notice what you would “do differently” if you were them.
Do you see the correlation between how you feel about that person and how that may be well be holding you back from claiming that title for yourself? From stepping into your starring role?
Right-o.
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.