Your Courageous Life

My beautiful friend, Diana.

So we were at yoga this morning, chit-chatting about how–oof–5am just comes rolling in like a freight train, and how we’ve both needed to make lifestyle adjustments in order to make it to bed earlier in order to wake up earlier. Suddenly, I found myself able to verbalize something that I had been thinking about for days, weeks, months: being disheveled. For awhile now I’ve felt some feeling that something wasn’t quite right sometimes when I’d read a blog post on the subject , or I’d feel particularly satisfied with some aspect of my life and then some inner critic voice would rise up that I understood yet did not understand, such that I felt almost…guilty. You know, for doing things like getting up really early to go to yoga, or for getting my taxes done on time.

This thing that had been sifting around for awhile gained more clarity when a Courageous Year participant posted last week that she held a particular kind of Story around what it would mean for her to have her life in order, and it hit me that I had been carrying a Story that there is something “stick in the mud-ish” about things like regular bedtime schedules or healthy eating. I’ve picked up on that attitude for some time, especially in my early 20′s, but hadn’t really thought much of it because the “stick in the mud” vibes were coming from people who, you know, had yet to realize that spending all of one’s money on alcohol and dragging your ass home from the umpteenth walk of shame isn’t sexy! sassy! Carrie Bradshaw the redux! or daring! It is, simply, dragging your ass home after drinking. No reinventing the wheel, there. But still getting that vibe even as I get older and we’re all supposed to be adults is something that I confess I find a little unsettling.

Yvonne from Challenge Day relays a story both in Be the Hero as well as at Next Step workshops, and it is this–that there was a point in high school when she was overweight and unpopular, and then she lost the weight and managed to become popular. For awhile things were fine, until then, suddenly, the other girls turned on her. People started spreading rumors that she was stuck-up and conceited. It was at that point, she relates, that she realized: “No one is winning at this game.”

It was this morning that I was finally able to articulate what was bothering me when I was talking to Diana–it bothers me to see people displaying “disheveled” as a credential, as if it is somehow more authentic. I think that there is beauty in all of the rough places of our lives, and I feel under no illusions what.so.ever. that there is anyone–not anyone–who has things all perfectly together, all of the time (and while I don’t get a vibe that anyone thinks I have it all together, it goes without saying that I myself am included in that statement).

Though, with that said, I should clarify. I think that there is something really powerful in declaring where our vulnerabilities and weaknesses are. What I hear people say most often about when others expose their rough patches is that it makes it easier to accept their own–and that’s true for me, too. Where I think the line gets blurred is when it starts to either directly or energetically create divisions, with the “people who have it all together” on one side getting labeled as conceited or arrogant, while the crowd who views themselves as “more real because we don’t have it all together” on the other, using “disheveled” as some kind of credential for authenticity.

No one is winning at that game.

I mean, isn’t it ridiculous! (I’m sort of laughing as I type this, because it is). Who has anything, ever, all totally wrapped up? What if we stopped with the comparisons and relaxed into this simple fact, and instead of beating ourselves up over what someone else is able to create for themselves (especially when we don’t know the whole story by the time it’s filtered through a blog post), what if we were to see our craving of a particular way of being as a gift? Someone else is doing it and you’re not? Fantastic. They are proving that it can be done. What if you joined them in what they are trying to create?

I know that a big booming inner critic voice might pop up that says, “THEY WOULDN’T WANT ME!”

But you know what? If someone is really living an authentic and big vision that is a match for your vision, they will want you. Maybe they won’t have the space in their lives to make you their new best friend, but they will have some kind of interest in what you uniquely have to offer. Speaking for myself, I genuinely treasure every comment to this site, every email, every tweet or post to facebook. I view it as someone participating in my life and what I want to create, and I appreciate that! If someone doesn’t respond with wanting you, avoid the Story of not-enoughness. Skip it entirely (unless you believe it serves you in some way). Step instead over to the one that is about you creating your life, doing the best you can with what you’ve got among a sea of people who are all doing the best they can with the skills that they have. The so-called perfect bloggers, the advice columnists, the woman down the street who looks like a Stepford Wife…we do them a collective disservice when we do not fully “see” them for who they are.

We do ourselves a collective disservice if, in response to the insecurity that arises from all of those comparisons, we decide to play small by taking on “disheveled” as a new identity.

Authentic is living your vision for your life, and that’s what you make it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 2:25 pm |