It’s time for my own little reality check/gauge of where I’m at-and the reasons why.  I’ll skip to the latter part first, the why.  It’s me.  I’m why I’m here.  I’ve been stuck in the past for years because I kept looking backward.  I kept looking at a time when I felt safe in my life, younger, protected by my parents.  And I craved that protection because felt I was born on the outside and didn’t have a lot of people in my court.  I won’t deny I was born with a certain level of stick up my ass, thinking I knew how to run the world—no one has the confidence of a kid who knows nothing of how we operate in this society.  But at that time I still felt a certain level of acceptance by people who could protect me.  It seemed they accepted me and perhaps, as a kid so far separated from my siblings, I think acceptance is what I was looking for.  This isn’t revelatory information, I’ve shared about that plenty of times.  But I never looked into why I wanted to stay there.  Sure there are facets of my life that make me uncomfortable now.  I still don’t feel like I fit in and it’s because I’m trying to fit into places not designed for me.  The other issue is control and fear—I wanted to be perceived a certain way and I got all too familiar with being the victim, real or imagined.  I became incredibly familiar and comfortable with those ideas of victimhood.  That taught no one has the confidence of a person stuck in a specific space who has been there so long they actually do know everything about a topic.   

The work I’ve done and the stories I’ve shared are true, and the fact that I’ve been redundant at times, trite at times, perhaps melancholy and boring, doesn’t minimize that truth.  Nor does it minimize the truth of the experience and the actual trauma that came with it.  It just took me a really long time to realize that I’m choosing to stay stuck there so I can keep spouting the same lessons I’ve shared before.  I’m proud of the work even if it is a bit redundant because I know people have come in and read this at different times for different reasons and maybe some new spins on the work caught the eye. I genuinely feel like I’ve been able to help some people.  But I know I’ve been lacking lately because….I’ve been lacking.  I’ve been missing the energy, the excitement, the effort to create because the message felt stale, even to me.  It was never intentional, of course, but I allowed myself to stop prioritizing what mattered which was to refine the message and STICK with the real message and the how of helping people become their best.  The holidays hit hard this year because the end of the year snuck up on me like a freight train and, as a family, we were faced with some significant challenges with our parents.  Challenges that made us deal with mortality, our own mortality specifically and it felt like the world was moving too fast.  But was that because I’ve stubbornly persisted in trying to stop it from moving?  Maybe.  But it was also because all I had to work with was old information in new circumstances—a wake up call to practice what I preach every day.    

My support system has systematically been removed from my life and I can say it serves the point to help me realize my own strength but the truth is, when you lose the truest sense of safety at key points in life, it creates fear and anxiety.  It’s living under the constant tension of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve lived in anticipation of crisis nearly my entire life, always prepared to handle it on my own.  I’m great with crisis, terrible with minor inconvenience.  Regardless, that level of readiness has caused its share of issues including a fear to move forward and break out into something actually new.  Something relevant.  Again, the work I’ve done stands, but I don’t want to continue looking for ways to share the same message.  I’m cool with finding new ways to share those lessons, but the world is moving forward quickly and there is no stopping what’s coming.  No matter how much I feel I’ve progressed, there is still more to do—and more productive things to do—to encourage real progress.  I fought like hell to hang onto the past because it felt safe, it was real, I knew what happened there, and I honestly thought the people around me felt the same way.  That’s hard for me because I’m a stick-with-it-if-it-works type girl so it was also about my comfort.  If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.  Well.  There are things that needed to be fixed that recycling the same issues wasn’t going to resolve.  And it still won’t.  Seeing how quickly people can drop from our lives and for whatever reason, has made me acutely aware that confidence, security, clarity only comes from ourselves.  We need support, yes, but that can and will change.  So, bear with me as I start the process of the 1% shift every day.         

Your thoughts are not in permanent marker—erase and edit accordingly.  After our mid month check in, I figured we’d need a reminder that, if we aren’t where we want to be, all it takes is a shift in mindset.  This isn’t a race by any means, this is a pulse check and sometimes we need a nudge to see if we’ve been true to ourselves.  They say something like 90% of people have already given up on their resolutions. That’s scary enough but the truth is I’m not talking about resolutions—I’m talking about our life dreams.  We need to serious about them.  We need to make sure we create space for them.  We need to make sure we prioritize them now or we will continue to put them off until we are saying we will do it next year.  That is how thoughts become habits and habits become who we are and then we convince ourselves this is just who we are.  We just stuck ourselves.  We are still so early in the year that there is absolutely NO reason that we can’t give ourselves a little reality check/kick in the butt and get started again.  It’s never too late to start again or to remind ourselves that we still got this—because we do!    

The key is to remember that the goal is change that serves our purpose.  Sure if we’re working for something specific, the steps we take will be geared toward that and we make room for surprises.  Habits are tough to kick and to ensure lasting change, we have to go where it starts: our mind.  We spend the most time with ourselves and we need to make sure it’s a good place to be.  Our job is to make sure we set ourselves up for success with clarity and adaptability.  Nothing is permanent unless we make it so.  The more we repeat a thought, the more likely it is to become a habit.  So work on repeating the thoughts that support those new habits.  If we’ve already started to revert and aren’t making the progress we want to see, stop.  Just take a pause and readjust.  EDIT those thoughts, edit the actions that come with it.  It takes a good  amount of time to reshape habits—be patient.  Edit as much as needed, as often, as many times as it takes.  We are human and we make mistakes so accept them, re-route them, edit, fix, try again until we are seeing the progress we want.

We’re already half-way through January.  Are we still power-housing through our goals like our lives depend on them?  Have we given up because it’s overwhelming already?  Truth is, it doesn’t matter.  The timeline doesn’t have any impact on us—although I will fully admit I felt a few twinges of the anxiety telling me how fast this is already going.  The brain is a tough cookie to break when it comes to habits and thoughts and fears etc., etc. so I figured it was time for a little check in—something we need to do early and often to keep ourselves on track (or at least near it).  We need a reminder that we are right on time, right on track, right where we are supposed to be.  I know this because THIS IS WHERE WE ARE.  If we were meant to be somewhere else, we’d be there right now.  But we are on this journey together and this is where we are.  And that is perfectly fine.  I lived by schedules and deadlines and expectations on how and when things would be done and how I would behave and let me tell you, I had no clue who the hell I was for a HUGE majority of my life.  I had FOMO, a sense of loss for the things I wanted to do but couldn’t, for the things I didn’t even know I wanted to do.  The panic made me want to do everything at once and then I’d get overwhelmed and do nothing because I didn’t know WHAT to do.  The time came to say “screw that.”

I’ve done nothing better or worse than most people on this planet so there is no reason my brain should hold itself to higher standards than anyone who has lived before me.  That isn’t to say I don’t have high expectations of myself—I do.  It is to say I can’t go beyond where I’m at now.  None of us can.  It’s ok to have to take the baby steps into that vision, toward the idea, the answer to the call we feel.  When we set deadlines on things we have no control over we create unnecessary drama and stress in our lives.  We can’t plan for every contingency in this world and sometimes what we thought we wanted turns out to be awful.  We can’t predict that.  So we can’t put any type of timeline on things we can’t see.  Sure we can plan a little bit, we can make a best guess at how things will go.  But we can’t predict and demand that life adhere to our timeline in any way.  I always found it so funny because time management was one of my greatest skills as both a worker and leader and I used to hold that as a mark of success-how my team never missed a deadline and we always delivered what was asked.  After time, that life wasn’t sustainable and I began to crack.  I saw the stress in the people around me and how they seemed to forget that I was human too.  And I realized I wasn’t showing them my human side.  Then life hit me and I had no choice but to go with what life threw at me.  We are not in control of everything.

So we are halfway through January and I still think it’s appropriate to do a check in.  Check in with the mind and heart and see how we really feel about the goals we have set for the year.  Do they still resonate?  Do we still feel good about them?  Are we adapting to what it takes to allow those goals to come to fruition?  We can never emphasize enough that it’s ok if things don’t go according to plan.  Most things in life don’t if we’re really honest.  Things happen we aren’t ready for, the things we thought we wanted so desperately never happen.  And we still live, we still go on.  So this early in the year, if we are feeling a little down and discouraged, just remember that the deadline we set was set in our minds.  No one is judging us for what we have and have not done this early in the year.  No one is judging that we haven’t lost 20 pounds in 15 days, or that we haven’t made $1,000,000 already, or that we don’t have that raise, that new role, that starring position, the book published.  That’s all in our head.  So take a deep breath.  Remember this is just the beginning and we are all just starting in so many ways.  Take the pressure off and begin again—we get to do that every day, not just some arbitrary day in the middle of winter we decided was “the beginning.”  Start where we are.  THIS is where we are.  But this is not where we are staying.  Keep going.       

I don’t eat sea food, I grew up in the mid-west so I have no familiarity with fishing or crabbing traditions (and I don’t pretend to), but I heard a story that caught my ear the other day.  It said that when you catch the first few blue crabs and put them in the bushel, you need to put a wet towel over the bushel or they will climb out.  When you get a few dozen more crabs in there, you can remove the cover because they pull any crab back that tries to climb out.  They compared this to our relationships with those closest to us and continued stating these are some of the closest people around us—they aren’t against you, they just don’t want you to be so successful that they look bad so they find a way to keep you with them.  It makes them uncomfortable to see you doing anything that looks like you’re out of reach or doing something they aren’t familiar with.  The people who truly support us won’t pull us back.  They encourage and push us up and out and over the edge into whatever we’re trying to accomplish.

It can be tricky identifying the crabs in our lives because they always start out on our side.  They always start off seeming like they understand us and want what’s best for us.  They might spike little fear into our conversations or a little doubt but they don’t do anything to suggest they’d pull us back in.  But as we get closer to the edge, the tone of the conversation changes.  They insinuate things like we couldn’t do this(whatever we’re trying to do) without them or that we’re changing and they don’t know us anymore.  They place guilt in place of praise disguised as concern.  We all have a natural aversion to change in varying degrees, that is natural, it’s a defense mechanism.  When people start showing other interests or finding new people, it can lead to some feelings of abandonment.  But those who truly love and support us don’t hold us back for fear of their abandonment.  They understand our growth means their growth as well.  They have an opportunity to discover something new about themselves as well, whether in the same vein or not.

I’ve been through enough in my relationships with friends and people I considered friends over the last year to fully understand this behavior.  And here’s the thing, I ran both ends of the spectrum from allowing myself to be pulled back down into the crowd to being fully ostracized.  I’ve seen what it looks like when someone else’s fear of abandonment turns into ostracism of someone who truly cared for them.  I watched friendships be torched for the sake of someone’s opinion on the matter, for an inability to discuss what was really happening.  It bothered me for over 6 months and there are still twinges of it every now and then but hearing this story of the crabs and their behavior put it into perspective for me.  If you absolutely refuse to stay in the pot, even if you’re the one trying to bring everyone with you, they will push you out when they can’t pull you back in before they willingly walk with you.  Doesn’t matter how close they are either.  Be aware of the crabs in our lives and if we upset the bushel, don’t be afraid to walk or even crawl away when they decide we no longer serve their purpose.  Consider it a blessing that we missed getting caught in the net or snare set by people who said they loved us.  Their fate is not up to us—we get to save ourselves.        

“The fastest way to become the person you want to be is to put yourself in situations where the hard way is the only way,” Leila Hormozi.  With the topics the last few days, I don’t intend to suggest that this year is going to weigh us down more than others like we have a battle to fight or something.  These discussions are meant to provide the tools to guide us through the work we face now.  We have to look at the purpose of hard in a new way.  Challenge promotes growth as well as teaches us our limits.  It reframes our mindset around limits and capacity to keep going.  We need to challenge the brain to look at things in multiple ways so we see all options available to us.  Challenge keeps our mind sharp and agile.  If we tackle the hard then the little things will be a piece of cake.  In terms of becoming the person we want to be this means putting away the habits we know and learning new ones aligned with what we say we want.  If we take no action, we see no change, so we must act accordingly.  We all play characters every day whether at work, home, with friends for so many reasons.  We’re taught that the world won’t accept us as we are, we’re taught that what people think of us matters, we’re taught it’s easier to let the world think we are a certain way versus being a certain way.  I feel we’ve created a certain amount of animosity toward authenticity even though we know that’s what we’re all craving.  We all want the truth but the truth comes with repercussions including some hard paths. 

In regards to the roles we play, those who are most successful are those who refuse to play multiple roles.  They can still serve multiple purposes but they are always who they are.  They maintain their sense of integrity because they know their values—and they know THEIR value.  I was recently told that every act of integrity builds trust and it’s true.  The more aligned we are, the more consistent we are with all those around us regardless of the circumstance, the easier it is to behave in accordance with our values.  This means knowing our values but also maintaining that integrity to ourselves and practicing those values.  We need to recognize when we aren’t acting in alignment and know how to pivot.  That’s more difficult for some than others because of the characters we are taught to play.  Integrity starts with being honest with ourselves.  Get familiar with how we feel so we recognize when something is or isn’t right for us—when it isn’t a good fit or when we’re right where we should be.  Build integrity by sticking with the hard until we can handle it.  Build integrity by following through.  Sure we need to know when to quit but that doesn’t mean quit just because it got hard.  Staying aligned shows us what we’re really made of, especially when times get tough.  Face that and welcome the version of ourselves we’ve been waiting for.     

“Hard seasons separate the comfortable from the committed,” Leila Hormozi followed by “Business is hard.  So is being broke.  So is working for a shit boss.  Pick your hard,” also Leila Hormozi.  In a year that demands action, not preparation, the truth of what we want comes to the surface.  We can’t deny what we feel we are driven to do.  We can’t deny the repeating thoughts telling us we need something more or the persistent draw to something specific or the FEELING we get thinking of that thing.  None of this means it’s easy.  Just because something is destined doesn’t mean it’s easy.  The concept is simple (see my piece on easy v. simple) but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  The simple part is the knowing, understanding the feeling and getting there.  But the work it takes to get there can be difficult.  The distraction of events and other people can be difficult.  Life changes.  But when we hit those moments, we achieve a certain clarity about what we really want.  If it’s something for us and it feels right, those types of obstacles won’t phase us.  We will adapt and continue on.  If we’re struggling in those moments and fight to stay the same, that’s an indication we want comfort more than growth.  Growth takes commitment and pain may be involved in various facets.  Until we find the magic key to our personal path, we can choose to sit in the things that make life hard or we can double down and refocus our energy toward what matters.

There’s a saying from Dr. Robert H. Schuller, “Tough times don’t last—tough people do”.  When we are committed to creating we have to step out of our comfort zone and that’s where the change happens—that’s where the results come from.  It’s a skill to learn to keep going.  To build that resilience means being committed to the vision.  Nothing is perfect so we can’t get stuck with the idea that the grass is greener on the other side—everything we seek to do will come with some THING we have to face.  As Brene Brown says, “Everything is a shit sandwich, we just have to decide what shit sandwich we are willing to eat.”  So, it’s all hard in some way.  Hormozi is right when she says pick your hard.  She isn’t alone in that sentiment.  When it gets hard, when it gets uncomfortable it’s a reminder to recommit to the vision because it’s something we are willing to take on.  I will repeat that it’s only when we are at our best that we can do our best and we find our best when we follow our authentic identity.  When we stop the habits that blur and interfere with the goal, we see clearly and understand that no one is keeping us where we are.  We get to choose, and we can choose again, and again.  Stay driven and stay focused so we don’t get stuck.  Pick the hard that benefits the goal—not someone else’s.  Pick the hard that serves our purpose.  Pick the hard that drives. Pick the hard that feels good even when it gets hard because we know it’s worth it.

Today I am grateful for acknowledgement.  I grew up in an environment that rarely celebrated accomplishments or milestones.  It was always “Nice, what’s next?”  Perhaps that’s a bit of the entrepreneurial spirit because if you slow down or rest on your laurels you get in trouble and miss what’s needed to adapt, evolve, and remain successful.  By that logic, part of that reaction is appropriate.  However, it created a deep separation from the moment.  Forward thinking is a survival skill—we need to be able to plan ahead—but when ALL we look for is what’s next, we completely lose the moment. We forget the value of presence.  Constantly pushing minimizes the now.  The other habit we learned (again possibly from the entrepreneurial side) was an inability to trust that when people did something it wasn’t with strings attached.  We rarely accepted help because it always came at a price.  Those lessons coupled created an environment with little praise and high expectation with no real pause to appreciate the work that was done.  It also led to a lot of people pleasing and working beyond our means to make other people happy.  I put in a lot of energy keeping certain people above water with not so much as a “thanks.”  And I’d keep doing it because I wanted someone to see the value I was bringing.  Sure, that’s a little bit of ego but I’ve learned it’s important to acknowledge what people have done.  It isn’t about satisfying ego, it’s about letting someone know their effort is noticed and appreciated.  I recently had someone tell me they were grateful for my actions from nearly a decade ago.  I had let it go at the time and didn’t think the person thought anything of it but they acknowledged how important what I tried to do was.  It was a shock to have this person say it meant anything to them because at the time it felt clear that it didn’t.  So take the time to appreciate those around us and let them know. Take the time to be proud of what we’ve done.  Acknowledge our own effort and energy and be grateful if someone else acknowledges it as well.  Let’s stop taking each other for granted. 

Today I am grateful for setting a boundary.  My car has been on a trickle charger for months now because there is a draw somewhere in the system. It won’t have the energy to start if it isn’t charged once we turn it off.  We’re taking care of it, but we still haven’t found the cause of the issue and I recently realized that my energy has been depleted just like that battery.  I recently finished my on-call, which for us is 7-days, 24 hours a day.  This time around was exhausting.  Even if little effort was needed to resolve the issue, it was constant.  That constant draw of energy can eventually suck us dry—and it nearly did for me.  It’s the mental strain of constantly being on alert for something to go wrong.  Some people are fine with that but as a naturally highly anxious person, it’s a struggle.  So my battery has been drained and I haven’t been fully able to recharge in a while.  So I had to set the boundary and realize when there was simply too much stimulation and I needed to disconnect from all that was gong on around me and I needed to find a way to plug in.  Truth be told, I’m still a bit on edge and working to come back down because there is a never-ending list of crap to do around the house as well.  But my boundary is with myself to stop engaging in every little distraction and to learn to turn down the sensitivity to what is a problem.  Take a minute to breathe and relax.  The world isn’t ending and it will not end if so and so doesn’t have a response in 30 seconds.   

Today I am grateful for switching up the brain.  Mental health and different brain diseases are a topic very close to my heart.  Both my maternal and paternal sides suffer from various forms of dementia and they both have their struggles with mental health.  We have to find ways to keep the brain from cycling through icky thoughts and habits, even the little things.  Like this weekend we shopped at a new store.  It took far longer than normal to find what we needed because we were in an entirely different environment and had no clue where things were.  But the act of walking through a new store for our daily essentials drove us to cooperate as a family and we got to see new things that aren’t normally offered in our regular store.  Working from home has limited my interaction with people and I often find myself being really socially awkward or resisting being with people or trying new things. Knowing my family history, I know this is something I have to keep an eye out for.  So changing up a routine is more meaningful in keeping my mind in balance.

Today I am grateful for the ability to help.  As mentioned above my family struggles with certain facets of mental health.  Along with that, my mother has an injury that limits her mobility at this time so we are facing multiple issues with seasonal factors, mental health, and physical health.  We’ve had to come together as a family to find a way to help them through this.  We’ve all had to adapt to the shift in roles and accept the caregiving position.  I’m grateful that I get to help my parents because, frankly, it’s what they are owed.  I’ve helped my parents well before this as well, but this time is different.  Now we are all witness to the changes in them as they age and we all have varying degrees of acceptance to work through.  It’s a change in dynamic but it isn’t a change in the feelings for them.  It’s nice to see my siblings helping as well and even nicer to work with them.  We all have a common goal so we can stop competing with each other and simply work together.  We all love our parents so we can direct that toward their care and it is a gift.    

Today I am grateful for health, wealth, and abundance.  There is no denying the abundance in my life.  We are abundant and wealthy in things like health and love and drive.  We work to focus on the joy and when we look at how much joy there is, we see how wealthy we are.  We are abundant with life and the ability to create what we want.  We are truly blessed to experience life and we can find joy in anything.  We find that abundance in health is the greatest thing we have because without health, we see how poor we really are.  Wealth comes in so many ways beyond just financial or material and we need to recognize what is truly important.    

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

I need to advocate for sharing of stories for a moment here.  It’s in sharing stories of truth and experience that we learn and find connection but there is so much we discover about ourselves in the process as well.  Truth finds us in stories.  So I want to share a truth of my own.  There are some details that I need to curb because they are not mine to tell but I will share this for the sake of encouraging everyone to continue sharing.

I’ve had the same best friend going on 36 years now and we have been through EVERYTHING together.  When she moved out of state to pursue her career I was admittedly devastated.  I’ve never been good at keeping up with anyone—it’s nothing personal, it truly is an attention thing.  I get wrapped up and distracted SO easily that I way too often forget to reach out to people, even those I love with all my heart.  The other part of me is way too independent for my own good and I often don’t share what’s happening.  Over the last several months, we’ve decided to make a concentrated effort on talking with each other and it has changed so much.  We knew it was beneficial for both of us but we are both in that same boat of either hyper-independence or total squirrel…and there are times we’re both flat out tired.  However, we know we aren’t getting any younger and making this a priority has softened us both and brought us back to when we were younger, it helps us feel not so alone. That’s where this conversation comes into play. 

Specific events happened this past summer that I alluded to but didn’t want to discuss for so many reasons.  I was protecting someone close to me as well as myself and it was such a multi-layered situation that explaining sounded awful no matter how we looked at it—and at the end of the day, we got through it.  However, I’m not going to pretend that there weren’t mental ramifications for it.  But I STILL kept that story to myself—I didn’t even share it with my best friend of 36 years who already knows everything about me anyway.  I’m not sure if it was the emotion of the season and the things happening with my family, but those events from this summer started to play back in my mind recently, and it got heavy.  During one of our conversations, there was something in her voice that made me tell her what happened.  I shook while telling her what happened because I didn’t fully know how she was going to take it but getting it out felt good.  She empathized with what I said and then slowly alluded to having the exact same thing happen—and I could tell she had the same fears I did about being judged or judging the other party involved.  I had NO idea she went through it.  I want to be clear that not sharing earlier had nothing to do with trust, it mainly had to do with the other person involved and we both felt that way.  But in sharing those stories, the weight immediately dropped from both of us.

This is a testament to several things: 1. The mind is so powerful it can convince us that even those closest to us can’t handle what/who we are or what happened 2. Connection and communication is key to maintaining our own sanity 3. People understand far more than we give them credit for and it may surprise us how well they understand 4. I don’t advocate for sharing openly with everyone because trauma bonding isn’t a real bond, however, I fully advocate for taking the leap and sharing whatever is needed with those we trust the most.  Had we shared these things earlier, we would have been saved of carrying this weight and loneliness (from dealing with it alone) for YEARS.  This is coming from someone who has advocated for sharing all along—and I still couldn’t bring myself to do it so I needed this reminder.  I needed to remember that sense of security from trusting.  Those we love and who truly love us don’t run from the things we choose to hide.  They bring the flashlight for us as we face the dark and show us that it isn’t as bad as we think or that they share a piece of those fears as well.  Together we can take down whatever we need to and we can build each other up.  And how much easier those battles may be when we see what unites us—and what unites us can be surprising.                

“Sometimes the healed version of you is meaner,” via She’s Magic and Midnight Lace.  I would amend the statement to, “Sometimes the healed version of you seems meaner.”  Perhaps it’s a bit of both.  The people who never hesitated to take advantage of kindness would say we’re meaner for setting boundaries.  It can be a shock to the system when we’re no longer available for what benefitted others.  Perhaps a shock for both their system and ours—they aren’t used to hearing “no” and we aren’t used to having that energy; transitioning into that healed version can feel a little unsettling at first.  We might even feel mean and question if we are doing the right thing.  That’s one of the biggest boundaries we have to set: the ability to say no to ourselves when we try to talk ourselves into old habits.  Identifying those dangerous thought patterns sooner gets easier with practice.  The reality is, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a genuinely caring person claim someone taking care of themselves by dealing with their crap was mean.  Those who really care will be thrilled to see us healing and maybe even excited at the prospect of that new version showing up. 

Healing runs an entire spectrum of emotions because we have to process everything that happened in order to actually heal.  That includes acknowledging what we actually feel.  Everything from sadness to betrayal to denial to bargaining to anger and acceptance.  Sometimes we go back and feel these things multiple times.  But one thing I’ve noticed in the healing process is, while people often say we change and sometimes even say that we are meaner, the reality of the emotion is entirely different.  When healing is complete, we hold a firmer boundary but feel softer inside.  We aren’t as hardened in protecting ourselves or as resentful because we’ve learned to maintain our space and express clearly what we will and will not tolerate.  We are softer because we’ve created a sense of safety  from within rather than relying on others to create it for us—we are softer because we have accepted all those parts of ourselves and we understand it’s that softness that gives us strength.  Authentic expression of self is key and, more often than not, that authentic version of ourselves isn’t on the same frequency they used to be so they don’t have space for the things and behaviors they used to accept.  That isn’t mean, that’s honest.  If my healing means sacrificing my space, sanity, or self-respect for your comfort, then we are not on the same wavelength   

Here’s the thing: people will always have an opinion about what we do and learning the lesson that what people think of us is none of our business is invaluable in this day and age.  It doesn’t matter what it’s about, people will always have something to say, and the fact that so many people have social media, everyone feels they’re entitled to share that opinion with no regard for others.  I mean, truth be told, it is their right to share as such, but that doesn’t make it true.  I’d also add that I spoke at length about people being entitled to an informed opinion rather than spewing garbage.  In either case, our healing is more important than their opinion of our healing.  That healing may create a new reality for other people and how they respond to that isn’t our responsibility. And whether we are meaner, perhaps firmer, it isn’t our responsibility to make them feel better about what’s good for us.  No one walks in our shoes to understand the extent of what pushed us to behave how we do and to understand what and how we need to heal—no one has the right to tell us what we need.  I would never encourage being mean for the sake of it but I will fully embrace doing whatever it takes to heal regardless of what people THINK about it—we get one life, do not feel guilty or ashamed for doing what we need to.

One time someone told me I was intimidating.

My friend looked at them and said, “Is she intimidating or are you intimidated?”

And from that moment on I refuse to take responsibility for how others react to my presence. (via Word P***)

I spent nearly my entire life trying to manage how people received me and how they perceived me.  I carefully curated what I looked like and how I behaved with those around me.  I thought I could show my power in those situations because I was demonstrating I could be whatever they wanted me to be—that I could do whatever needed to be done no matter what it was.  It took me a long time to realize that, not only was it exhausting, it was the furthest thing from claiming my power.  Being a chameleon is a cool trait and it’s cool to be comfortable with adaptation—even if it means tweaking our behavior every now and then.  But to think I’m in control by becoming what others expected me to be was ludicrous.  Reading that back right now makes me cringe.  Becoming what others “needed” me to be was giving those people my power entirely.  There wasn’t a trace of me in there while I did what they needed me to do.  And the moments when those little bits did eek out, I was cut off from those people, the same people who I helped.  So all that energy was used to become something I wasn’t thinking I would be “allowed” to claim my real power sometime. 

I’m not alone in this and I know this is in the same vein as people pleasing and yes, I can even see where some might think what I described above is manipulative.  I don’t deny that in some ways it was manipulative—I wanted a specific result/reaction from people so I behaved a certain way to get it.  That wasn’t for nefarious purposes by any means, it was out of self-preservation and a need for acceptance. Instead of discovering real power, I settled for drops of what could have been available.  I’ve noticed that it’s often people who have adaptive powers who have the power to shift a lot of things around them and people don’t always know how to react to that.  They try to stifle that because they are scared of that power and like to make it our problem.  But reframing the perception of power and accountability changes that dynamic.  It isn’t anyone’s job to make themselves palatable for everyone.  It isn’t anyone’s job to be liked by everyone.  No one is entitled to expect us to manage their feelings about us. 

So the key is simple: be who we are.  Completely and entirely free because we don’t need to traumatize ourselves by being more concerned about how we are perceived than living our own lives.  How someone feels is their business and what they do with those feelings isn’t our responsibility.  Release the weight of being accountable for how people feel about us.   We already have enough crap to deal with.