Brene Brown

Holy Crap!
I came upon this essay by Brene Brown, whom I LOVE, and although I am familiar with the fact that she is a researcher, speaker and author – I didn’t realize her other talent – she is also a mind reader.
Read this and tell me she’s not thinking and doing EXACTLY what we’re all attempting to accomplish during the holidays.

Ohhhh Brene,
As a fellow (but now retired) perfectionist, over achieving ringmaster, I feel your pain.
xoxJ

The Show Must Go On But At What Cost?
by Brene Brown

BB

Cool Is An Emotional Straightjacket. I’m Going To Take It Off.
Brene Brown

Why do we play it so cool?

I am at my long awaited, kick ass writing retreat/workshop in Carmel as I write this.

This is my tribe. I could tell by the peals of laughter that met me at the driveway, and guided me inside this lovely house, to sit with these lovely people.
I’ve come to work hard, with a side of laughter.
If I were to write down my recipe for a happy life, that’s what it would be.
Hard work – with a side of laughter.

A good belly laugh is the anecdote to “cool”.

Anyway, I decided in the car on the way up, that I would be as authentic and vulnerable as I had the courage to be, otherwise…why bother?
It’s like the people who go into psychotherapy and pretend that their world is round when it’s actually square. It’s not doing them any good and it’s a colossal waste of time.

I will be and act excited when I’m excited (which was all day yesterday) lost if I feel lost ( mid morning) happy when that occurs (dinner last night) and cry if the mood strikes me (today when it was my turn to read).

I will not pretend that this is not the once in a lifetime experience that I know in my heart it is.

I have done that in similar social situations where I’ve felt intimidated or out of my league. It is my virtual armor, and it has repeatedly short changed me.

I know I’m not the only one, I see it all the time.

So…what if we show people exactly how we feel? Would they laugh or sneer or run away? If you can believe it, none of the above. They’d feel relieved.

I was born in LA, which is the Capitol of Cool.

Not if you’re born here – that’s just winning the weather lottery.
It’s where all the cool people that stand outside clubs and check out their reflections in the shop windows on Robertson Boulevard or Rodeo Drive have ended up. The earth is literally tilted in such a way that the “too cool for school crowd” rolls into California via every mode of transpiration imaginable; and Los Angeles in particular.

There is an air of abject “so what” that hangs over this city as thick as smog.

You feel proud of a promotion, raise, engagement ring, new house or car?
SO WHAT. BIG DEAL. BE COOL.
You can throw a rock and hit someone with a better job, bigger diamond, fancier car and more square footage.

When I worked in the jewelry business and celebrities would saunter in, we, the shop girls, all had to act like it was just another day at the office, lest we frighten those fragile, skittish, individuals away.

But a couple of us decided to be real.

We cracked jokes, fetched them vodka from the fridge and encouraged self deprecation, and you know what? They came back again and again.
They wanted a real connection. Not ooglie eyed, start struck, adoration, and not indifference. They ARE, contrary to popular belief, human beings after all. They wanted to laugh and kid around and eat cookies and talk smack about the paparazzi.
We were happy to supply that for them.

I look back and realize that we would have missed some really great moments, with some amazing people if we had played it cool, and I think that’s the moral of this whole story.

Like Brene Brown says, it IS and emotional straightjacket, and one that I’m no longer willing to wear.

In which situations do you put on your “cool.” What would it take to remove the straightjacket?
Much love, 
The writing Queen 😉 
Xox

This past Wednesday night, at the women’s group that I so dearly love, the topic was intimacy, and the fact that, as Brene Brown has found in her over twenty years of research:

Vulnerability is essential for intimacy.

According to BB there can be no emotional, spiritual, or physical intimacy without vulnerability. 

Well…then…… shit.

Vulnerability is haaaaaard (said in a teenage whiney voice)

It leaves you open to emotional annihilation.

We’ve all been there. You’re completely and totally won over by someone who seems to meet you at the steps of intimacy. They hold your heart with their slippery hands and you give that unreliable soul the keys to the kingdom, or as Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Friday on Facebook, the keys to a small hidden lockbox.

She writes:
My girlfriends and I were talking about how all of us have a small lockbox hidden deep inside our souls, in which we keep the most fragile, frightened, innocent parts of ourselves.

If somebody loves you (and loves you WELL) they will come to learn what’s inside that secret lockbox of vulnerability, and they will be so careful to never use that information against you — to never manipulate your vulnerabilities, or mock them, or use the knowledge of your frailty as a weapon of power or diminishment.

My friends and I were talking about times in the past when we have opened ourselves up in love (or even friendship) to the wrong sorts of people — to people who found our most secret vulnerabilities and — instead of saying, “Oh, dear one, now that I know this about you, I will always protect you so carefully” — they said, “Aha! Now that I know this, I can really start messing with you!”

Then the betrayal happens, which along with the breach of trust and connection, is one of the major blocks to vulnerability. 

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that we talked about it this week and she posted her amazing post about it today.

In living rooms, yoga classes and cafe’s all over the world right now, women especially, are craving intimacy and learning the role that vulnerability plays.

Society and certain jobs (military, law enforcement, hospitals) discourage it.

But we women are getting courageous. And we realize that we are desperately in need of more human connection.

We are ALL in this together, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Here’s another great piece of wisdom from Brene Brown:

When we loose our tolerance for vulnerability, we loose our tolerance for joy.

Because; we loose our courage to be joyful.
It is such a daring act, because it is so fleeting.
It is over in a minute or it can be taken away just as fast.

Think about that. We will sacrifice joy, in order to keep safe, the secrets in our lockboxes.

Bottom line…..life is fuckin’ risky.

It’s ALL a risk. Love, intimacy, vulnerability, connection, joy.

The whole shebang.

But it’s a risk I think we all should be willing to take.

Be kind to yourselves this lovely weekend.
Xox

“When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of the soul, that is authentic power,”
~Gary Zukav~ “Seat of The Soul”

Do you dare to be original? To show your TRUE self to the world? To fly your freak flag?
Good for you. Most people wouldn’t dare. They’re too afraid of being judged and ridiculed.
So, they don’t start with a joke at their presentation speech, propose the “out of the box” idea at the meeting, wear red socks with the tux or joke with a client during a sale.
They dim their light. They blend in.

Most amazing, authentically powerful people started off on the fringe. Far from the numbing embrace of the center.
They tried the center. It was a bad fit.
Think Martin Luther King Jr., Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Lady Gaga.
Their actions and ideas seem crazy, they don’t act like the rest of us.
They are authentically, unapologetically themselves.
To. The. Bone.
The energy of their soul has a purpose. And they make damn sure it is fully served by their personality.
They wield incredible power.
They’ve never heard of the phrase: dial it down.
It wouldn’t occur to them to “blend in.” Lucky for us.

Being authentically yourself kills competition. It renders the concept obsolete.
There is only one Gaga, Apple or Virgin Air. There is only ONE you. YOU cannot be duplicated. You can be copied, and although that is supposedly the highest form of flattery, it sets off the BS detectors. We can sniff out the inauthentic impostor over the real thing ANY day.

“God is the water, You are the faucet.”
~Marianne Williamson~

I Iike to say God or the Universe is the electricity, I am the toaster.
When I first started the blog, the writing was very serious. Dry toast.
Serious spiritual writing. How original.
But I was just the toaster, determined to get the word out, so I kept on writing/ toasting. At one point last year, the electricity decided to amp it up, to tap into more of my personality. That must have been interesting, searching in there for the language. I curse like a sailor, tell funny stories, and I love me some sick humor. I assume it knew what it was getting into, but I was scared to death when I wrote it.
Spiritual humor? What’s that?
All that being said, it has made for a better, much more relatable blog.
I’ve said it before; and I’ll say it again. When you are fully yourself, and come from the heart, people dig that shit.

I encourage you to let your soul use your personality. See what happens when you remove the constraints. When you disable the dimmer switch from your light. When you dial it UP instead of down.
To steal from Brene Brown, who was quoting Roosevelt, it is DARING GREATLY. After you’re done throwing up from fear, it will feel empowering. I promise.
Dare to be an original. Your power lies there.

What ways is your soul using YOUR personality? I’d love to hear about it.

Xox

Enough said…Happy Sunday!

“Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame,judgment, and blame.”

― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

After reading this book and hearing this woman, whom I deem A gift from God speak,
I had an “ah ha” moment about that torturous, addictive, up in the middle of the night, thing called perfectionism.

What Brene helped me to understand, was that perfectionism comes from that deep well of shame and inadequacy that we immediately go to when we feel we must impress. But who are we impressing?
That well has been filled by all our negative self talk, and is fed by the very thing that we feel we lack the most.

So we will overextend ourselves, often to the point of exhaustion, to overcompensate. That starts more shame and self judgement, and now those negative voices, they have formed a choir…. A very loud choir, and the well gets deeper and deeper.

Here is the question I’ve had to ask myself. Am I striving for excellence?
wanting to be the best ME I can be? Is that what fuels the desire to be perfect?
Or…is all this tail chasing going on because of what I want “THEM” to think of me?
AH HA! Right?!

I was often under the false illusion that I was just striving for excellence.
But your demons are great bullshitters. They’ll tell you anything to keep the game going, those rascals.

So , “who am I trying to impress”‘ is always the first question I ask myself
When I get that twinge toward perfectionism.

Because you know what?
The peanut gallery,
“THEY”
Are never satisfied.
If they are as judgmental as I am…I’m doomed!

I have to say that age has set me free.
Perfectionism was my judge and jailer much more when I was younger, and age has brought me a certain ability to relax into the fact that things are never going to be perfect, most certainly, myself.

Whew!! What a relief!!

XoxJanet