What the universe keeps trying to tell me.
2020 has been a doozy–but it’s just the cherry on top to the last 40 years of my (pretty chaotic) life. Coronavirus and its effects haven’t rocked me as much as maybe it has for others. I’d already been working at home–alone. I had already closed my business (very recently beforehand), I was already facing some really overwhelming financial obstacles.
But this year I did face some unique-to-me-challenges (as we all have). One was that I was publicly shamed and humiliated and attacked online. It’s what I knew would happen when I began to set boundaries and make decisions that worked for me and maybe didn’t work for others. I’d been avoiding making decisions that would be good for me because I figured that would happen. And it did. And it was one of the most emotionally traumatic situations I’ve ever gone through. Not because I don’t have resilience, but because I have a deep wound that I’d never healed around being humiliated and left. Around watching my mother be savagely humiliated right in front of me repeatedly. It’s a visceral reaction that is absolutely warranted, whether people know that intimate detail or not.
But, when the thing you’re most terrified of actually happens to you and you survive, your brain gets to learn something new. Something life-altering, usually.
And here is what the universe has been trying to tell me.
Lesson 1–You are amazing–and you are worthy of love and kindness. Not everyone will agree with you, and that’s ok.
This lesson is real hard for me. But every time I find myself hustling for my self worth I regret it. It’s inevitable that some people will not like you or appreciate you. And that doesn’t mean anything about you.
Lesson 2–You don’t need other people to validate your experience (or even agree with you about if it happened) for it to be true
Those lessons are tied into some other ones, like my desire to make people happy and over-explain my decisions to those who criticize me. The desire for me is always to be like, “You just don’t know the full story…” and that’s probably true but spending time convincing others instead of just accepting my own experience (and dealing with it, whatever that looks like) is just an expense of energy that gets me nothing back.
Lesson 3–a lot of who I am and what I do is just plain different than what people are used to.
I am visionary. I know it. I am brave. I do a lot of things that others wouldn’t do. I have a pretty high tolerance for instability and change and taking chances. When I make decisions, they’re almost 100% from my heart and I do take extraordinary care to think about others (remember I’m a recovering people pleaser).
Lesson 4–Stop trying to please everyone, really, just stop it.
Seriously. I think I get taught this lesson over and over and over again. I catch myself. Even when writing this, I lost my breath for a second. I thought, “But what will _____________say about this?” and it almost stopped me. I’m excited to talk about this and I am validating my own experience and thoughts by sharing them.
Lesson 5–It’s ok for you to go.
I was really terrible at this when I decided to end my marriage. Well, mostly I just sabotaged it as a way of ending it. I couldn’t fathom how I could rationally leave something so stable and hurt another human. Well, I definitely succeeded in hurting him anyway because I didn’t really commit to my decision openly. I just committed to it privately and then acted on it. It’s not loving and it’s not the way I operate any longer, however I do stay in things way too long. I kept running my business even though it was killing me. Because I’m a fixer I thought I could fix everything. But not everything can (or should) be fixed. Also, it’s ok to go if you want. It doesn’t need to be inhabitable for you to go. It doesn’t have to burn down for you to leave. Love where you are, and still choose to go. Sure, it might be sad, and there might be sadness to work through. But that is so much better than destroying something in order to justify going. Toward the end of 2019 I decided to pause my business, and then as 2020 continued it became clear that I most likely wouldn’t bring it back. It’s hard leaving something you love so much. But I’m excited for it to live on in another way for another team.
Lesson 6–You had a fucked up childhood and that effects your emotional experience today and it’s also ok to acknowledge that and work toward healing.
I won’t go into details, but I’m so sure many of you can relate. I experienced some really catasrophic losses as a child and my reaction was to hustle hustle hustle to try to fix it. Do you see a theme? I couldn’t leave as a child, because I was a kid, but a fundamental lesson I taught myself back then was that if you lost something so so so dear to you that you could work to bring it back instead of accept it and process it. And you stay and change things, rather than just accept the new reality. I just never wanted to accept that my family was gone. There was so much fuel added to that fire–losing our home, not wanting people to know who we ‘really’ were, not accepting myself, distracting myself with creative. projects, etc.
Lesson 7–It’s hard to show up for others if you’re not showing up for yourself.
If you’re focused on fixing yourself and managing your own pain, you might miss out on a lot of connection to other people. I can also see how focusing on my own healing in intentional ways, getting sleep, saying YES to the things that make me happy allow me to show up fully for others. I have historically been so used to sacrificing my own health and happiness in favor of keeping others happy that I didn’t know how bad that actually was for all of us. Choosing myself seemed luxurious and selfish, but I think that the opposite it true.
Lesson 8–Creativity is healing to you and you should prioritize having a creative career where you spend your time in the way that reflects your genius.
I LOVE creativity. I have a really unique and special way of seeing the world and creating within it. Building a life that allows me to spend the majority of my time being creative is exactly what I’m meant to do and making sure that I’m doing that is my challenge–it’s a challenge to solve for this but it’s worth it.
Lesson 9–you can ALWAYS change your mind about anything.
I am giving myself permission to commit to things and then decide to do something different. I’m giving myself permission to believe one thing today and then adjust my beliefs when I learn new information. I’m not going to just stick with things for the sake of not wanting to be judged.
I’m keeping these lessons close as I continue to grow and evolve. I hope I remember to choose myself each time.
ALSO–WHY I AM SO LUCKY TO HAVE A COACH DURING THIS:
I am so lucky to have my coach along the ride for this learning. She helps me see my life more clearly. She helps me identify challenges and lessons that bring relief and growth. I had just hustled and hustled and hustled to prove the world (ie, myself) wrong about me and that takes so much energy.
So, the root problem, not believing how amazing I am, can also be fixed by seeing how amazing I am. By choosing myself at times when it might be easy to abandon myself. Such HUGE growth can come from really triggering situations–if you let it. Big emotional risk = big emotional reward.
Having a coach during this time assures me that I will always have a nonjudgemental person along for the ride who is committed to my health and healing. All of her training is helping me on that path. It’s immeasurably helpful and I definitely recommend a coach as you’re growing and changing (which will be all the time, if you’re a female founder).
HERE’S WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING ON INSTAGRAM
