What I’ve Learned About Myself This Week

This week has been a fascinating study of my SELF, which is kind of ironic considering that the name of the course this week is SELF. I invited my mom and sister to come stay at the house in Mexico for a week while I had class because we had some extra room and I figured they could use a vacation. What I didn’t anticipate was just how nervous I would be that they would see me in my element where I am 100% my best self. You see, this place in Mexico isn’t just a beautiful house - it has become a magical oasis where people are free to be themselves no matter how silly, goofy, or unpredictable that might be. It’s what I wish for the world on a larger scale, but know it’s hard out there: particularly when those close to us have ideas and perceptions about who we are. So this week, I had to be incredibly vulnerable and let my family see and hear the ways that I have felt in the past, the impacts that certain things had on my development, and remember that I don’t need to change who I am to be around them, but rather, if they don’t like who I am then they can reshape their ideas or just not spend time with me. AND THAT IS SO SCARY.

But also….so freeing.

One of the things our brains fear the most is the idea that we will be alone, abandoned, and left out in the cold. Our evolutionary processes have really set into stone this idea that if we are alone, we will die because we aren’t protected. While there’s always a chance of that, the reality is we no longer live in a world that means actual death if we are ousted from our communities. It usually means we find ourselves with a crew of other weirdos that embrace our specialness and they become our community. Or we create what we wished we had. However, our brain still likes shake nervously when we do something that could potentially put us in the harm’s way, so when it comes to fearing rejection, being authentic and vulnerable is….hard and real.

But this week showed me that I can be this version of myself and my family (at least these 2) won’t leave. In fact, they might take a few notes and apply a few things to their own lives (if they know what’s good for them hahahah!). So, this week was an amazing learning lesson:

#1: I learned to hear what it sounds like when I am going to be showing my true self to those I care about.
#2: I learned to focus on who I was serving and be okay if my family doesn’t think it’s cool or they believe me to be weird.
#3: How other people interpret me is less about me and more about them and their fears - seeing someone being authentic can be hard for someone who feels they have to keep their mask on. As my friend Beth tells the story: Imagine there is a lineup for a bank teller (the bank teller is love/acceptance/etc.) The lineup is long because we assume there’s only one way (masking our true selves, making ourselves small, hiding bits of ourselves, etc.) but if we lean over out of the line a wee bit, we will see that there are other bank tellers and we can step out of line and get right to love and acceptance. This can make people VERY angry - but the hope is that they will see that they, too, can leave the line and go to another one. They just have to take the risk.