Showing up
“We are constantly invited to be who we are.” – Henry David Thoreau
How do you show up in the world? To your loved ones? To your kids? To your friends? To your co-workers?
Are you game-face on, armored up, to everyone, like I was most of my life? How about times when being vulnerable would have served you – can you relax into yourself or does that little voice in your head yell, “Don’t do it, you’ll get hurt!”, “Be careful.” or “Danger, escape now!”
You may be saying, “Damn right LDub, that’s how I’ve survived!”
Most of us are familiar with our primal brain as the area that controls fight or flight responses, responsible for survival. This part of us is sort of like computer software that runs in the background. Since we no longer have to flee wild animals and hunt for our food, this primal brain attaches fear to modern things we feel may be dangerous and can include pretty much anything.
Think about it. Scared of spiders? How about intimate relationships? Even public speaking terrifies some.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The question is, how do you handle things in life that you’re afraid of? Do you lean into the fear like some? Perhaps you like the challenge of staring fear in the face and overcoming challenges?
Or perhaps you avoid things that make you afraid. Do you ask that person out, even though it may mean rejection? Do you push back at work or with authority figures when you know something is wrong, or do you just go with the flow and be compliant so you don’t bother anyone?
If you dig deep, do you find you’re sacrificing yourself or your beliefs or what’s truly in your heart, just so you don’t make waves?
Or maybe you do the opposite and fight much of life, so that you don’t feel consumed by fear?
The Battle Within
As many of you know, I embrace life’s journey as one of adventure and progress. I recall a few years back, when I discovered the Hoffman Process, which is a week of unbelievable soul-searching, growth and healing from one’s childhood.
I was thrilled to be going, but also anxious to dredge up all the crap we carry around in that invisible bag on our backs. I was more motivated by the thought of how much pain I could get rid of, cleaning out this damn invisible bag, than I was fearful of how difficult the process would be.
That is, until I began the course pre-work.
OMG.
Now you may be wondering, “LDub, what happened?”
Well, I get we ALL have histories. Childhoods. Adulthoods. Traumas big and small. To me, my traumatic childhood was a story I carefully guarded as a horrible dirty little secret.
I found the weeks of writing about my childhood experiences, many that I had blocked out, brought tears, pain and fear, but I knew this was the way to move through it.
“The only way out is through.” – Robert Frost
Next time you’re in a situation that instantly feels frightening, slow down. Stop if you can. Take some deep breaths. Ask yourself what is actually frightening you? Peel the layers back.
In Control
“The reason many people in our society are miserable, sick, and highly stressed, is because of an unhealthy attachment to things they have no control over.”
– Steve Marabol
Think about the adage that one can never be too rich or too thin, originally quoted by the Duchess of Windsor Wallis Warfield. Really?
What does this actually mean? It means we might be more comfortable conforming to someone else’s ideals of what is good, worthy or lovable, than being our true selves.
How about you?
Think about it for a moment. When you look at yourself in the mirror and are honest with yourself, what do you find?
Perhaps you find a need for control. Maybe you measure your self worth by how much money you make, or how prestigious your job is, or where you went to college.
What makes you feel good about yourself, could be your carefully constructed image you show to others. For some, how well our children are doing in life, is the way we judge ourselves and others.
Many of us don’t consciously think about how much control we attempt to exert over other people, places and situations in our lives, to create some semblance of order, in what is an unorderly existence.
You may be saying, “hold on LDub, this is deep…”
Ever consider that all this control results in expectations. When our expectations don’t turn out as we like, then we’re disappointed.
For example, let’s say you hate taking out the trash and your partner, out of love and caring for you and your relationship, has taken over that task. So you are happy you no longer are saddled with this thing you don’t like to do, you’re happy with your partner and your partner is happy you’re happy. Sounds ideal, right?
One day you come home and you’ve had one of those days. Maybe it started with you not sleeping well the night before. Or you didn’t get any self care in before you launched into your day. Or your kids or your boss or your pet were all over you with their own issues.
You’re now in what can be called the danger zone: hungry/angry/lonely/tired. Many of us, myself included, are not at our best when we’re in one of these states.
So you’re in this state and after your crappy day, you notice the trash is overflowing. It hasn’t been taken out.
There are times when the tiniest thing like this will be the last straw. Your partner gets home and lights up with happiness to see you, only to be greeted with your welcome, “I can’t believe you didn’t take the damn trash out! OMG I need help around here! I can’t do everything myself!”
Sound familiar? Maybe a little?
Replace taking out the trash with any number of things you expect your partner, your kid, your boss, your bestie, to do, because that’s what they’ve always done.
Now you may be saying, “well what’s wrong with that LDub? We all have stuff we havta do!”
The thing that is not serving you well in this situation, is that you developed the expectation for your partner to take the trash out. Then the one time they did not take the trash out, you had a choice whether to react or not. You chose to react (whether you think you reacted out of choice or simply out of a pattern of behavior), you chose to be disappointed and thereby chose to make yourself suffer.
And all of this happens when we have the need to control things that we have no control over. Make sense?
“Pain in life is inevitable, suffering is not. Pain is what the world does to you; suffering is what you do to yourself by the way you think about the pain you receive. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
– Buddha
Do you feel me?! Or do you now want to argue your point that, “damn LDub, I do not choose to make myself suffer!”
Well my friend, I’m gonna push back on you, because almost everything we do and the ways we react are our own choices.
Mic drop.
You still with me? If so, trust me that getting to a place of awareness about the illusion of control, how we set up expectations, which set us up for disappointment, has taken me a lifetime of self-reflection and growth to understand.
What if, in this instance, you chose to not react when your partner didn’t take out the trash. Maybe they had a rough day too. Maybe they simply forgot. Maybe they are no longer down with this task, because you only seem to be happy if they behave the way you want and if they don’t, then you’re unhappy and then they’re unhappy.
Grab a hold of the head of this snake and look it in the eyes. See the situation for what it really is – your need to control things you have no control over.
The magic is in getting to this point of awareness, which will allow you to make a different choice how you want to react or not.
Try it! Do an experiment with something you expect your partner, kids, co-worker to do. When they don’t do it, how do you react? Can you choose to react differently, or not at all? Instead of being pissed off, perhaps show some compassion and see what may be going on with them?
We each have the power to turn potentially shitty moments into moments of understanding that we are all only human. And this understanding my friends, is some of what the world truly needs now. Allowing ourselves and others to be our real selves, can be profound.
Drop me a line here and let me know how this works out in your life and remember every day is a new day to LIVE LIFE FULL OUT!
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