“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
I’m coming to you live with a B- blog.
For anybody that’s new here, I try to get this blog out once a week. It flies in the face of my inner perfectionist that says “Only write when you have really good ideas! Make sure people always think you’re insightful, witty, and grammatically correct!” I used to live by that mantra and it meant I’d eek out a blog once a month if I was lucky – then eventually stopped writing publicly for nearly a year.
I decided that I was writing to you guys weekly (come hell or high water) and have done so for quite a while now. Sometimes I feel great about what I have to say, other times I know its solid B- work and I press send anyway. Sometimes I write something I find totally subpar and people reach out with praise; other times I put out work I feel great about and see that a bunch of people unsubscribed afterward. Though I don’t take the honor of your inbox lightly, my work is in the act of writing/creating (not the response or lack thereof) and this dedication to consistent output feels really good.
Why am I going into all this? For a few reasons:
1.) You should be showing up imperfectly too.
You do not have to be ready, an expert, or always be sure in order to share yourself or your ideas with the world. Imperfect selves and work are how we get to be the people (and have the lives) that we want. You’re going to get things wrong sometimes. You’re going to stumble, screw up, or just generally look like an amateur. I am too, and that’s the only really brave way to live life. By showing up anyway.
2.) The response people have to you is not your business.
Actual footage of imperfection - LOL
Though I’m the first to admit I LOVE praise and LOATHE rejection, neither of those things are what drive me to write, create, coach, or dream anymore. Resting my value on other people’s opinions of me is like building a house made of sand that could blow away at any moment; what really matters is how I feel about myself and my life. This does NOT mean I don’t still take things personally – it just means I check in with myself and my thoughts about what other people think.
3.) You can check in with yourself and decide what thoughts you want to leave or keep too. Here’s how:
When I experience a perceived rejection, I might have a thought like: “I must have been too much and this person abandoning me means that something is wrong with me.”
I used a big word like “abandon” on purpose: these tiny slights are often linked to bigger stories that have been running our lives – bigger beliefs that have to do with value, worth, and our place in the overall tapestry of humanity. If I don’t recognize a small event is triggering this bigger story, I might just shove on past it and not dig out the painful and infected underlying belief. Because I‘ve done some work around this “worthiness” story in my life, I can hear a thought like this and ask…
- Do I truly think that I’m “too much?” (For some people, yes – for MY people, a resounding no.)
- If I DO agree with a thought (for example, a thought like “you are way too much for people”) I then ask…is this thought serving me?
o The way we know a thought is serving us (or not) is by checking in with how it makes us feel. That thought makes me feel frozen and fearful – afraid of being too extra or weird. When I’m frozen and fearful I don’t create, connect, or generally do things that bring me joy. So the short answer is that no, that thought is NOT serving me. Which brings me to the biggest question…
- What thought (belief) do I WANT to have? (This one: “I am exactly enough who I am and as I am. If I am too much for some people, those aren’t my people.”) This thought makes me feel relaxed and creative, and it’s in that state that my best life is lived – and I do things like make the video below.
And finally, again…
What other people are thinking is none of our business.
Humans are driven by all sorts of thoughts – just ask your own brain, one that at any given moment could either be making a grocery list or wondering why Thomas J had to die in My Girl.
Ya know what IS our business, though?
Our OWN brains.
Our OWN thoughts.
The proverbial “hula hoop” that we all stand in during this time we’re blessed with being alive.
It is your job to grow into the biggest, bravest, wildest, and most authentic version of you. It is your job to live a beautiful and truthful life. And it is your job to show up imperfectly and full of uncertainty because you are human, flawed, and that’s part of what makes you incredible.
My job as a human is to do that too; my job as a coach is to help you see your brain and do the same. I’m like a net that sweeps out the muck clouding your beautiful inner pool of confidence, purpose, direction, and truth. We examine the scary blobs that we find in your belief systems and I remind you that you didn’t put them there – these thoughts and beliefs were acquired through being human, living life, and gaining some protective layers.
But just because we find scary muck does not mean you have to keep it. In doing away with what doesn’t serve you and finding exactly what does, the life you’ve always wanted to live is revealed. The life that already exists inside of you, if you’re willing to do the work of pulling back layers.
Stay healthy, take care of yourselves, and have a great week, my loves.
Xo
Melissa
***
Speaking of living a true and beautiful life, you should check out the latest Follow Your Fire podcast here.
In the second installment of the short term “resilience” series, I interview mother, love warrior, and all-around incredible human, Cindi Soliz.
Cindi is the mother of five kids, one of whom was my childhood friend Vanessa Dawn Soliz, an insightful and beautiful person who died at the age of twenty in a motorcycle accident.
Losing a child is arguably one of the most difficult things one could experience, but Cindi’s story is not just one of pain, loss, and unending grief - it’s also a story of transformation, beauty, and the deep love of life that’s only possible when life’s preciousness is accepted alongside the risk.
Tune into our conversation to hear us discuss things like:
-How do you “let go” of what you can’t control about life? (Which is most of it?)
-What do you do with grief that is too big to carry?
-How can we go through deeply painful things and come out the other side more loving, alive, and fully human?
I am so grateful to have spent this hour with a woman I’m lucky enough to love and learn from in real life. May her story remind us all that the human spirit is capable of incredible resilience, transformation, and overcoming.
And may Vanessa’s freebird spirit remind us that no life, however short, is insignificant: that however difficult our circumstances may sometimes be, to remember that “love is the song over the wrong.”
This episode is dedicated to Vanessa Butterfly Dawn Soliz (December 15th 1985-June 25th 2006)
“If I could fly today,
I would die anyway,
If I could fly today,
I could find the words to say,
If I could fly today,
I would fly far away,
If I could fly today.”
(Vanessa Dawn Soliz)
**
The usual podcast theme (where people explore how they answered the question of “what should I do with my life?”) will be back soon. But as we navigate this difficult time of the Corona virus pandemic, join Cindi Soliz and I as we explore just how much the human spirit has gotten through before.
Keep going, my loves.
-Melissa