I am a recovering people pleaser.
And a recovering perfectionist.
Decades ago, before I knew about these traits, I was quite blissfully and naively content; until I wasn’t.
After all, part of our social skills training as girls and women was about politeness, being helpful, saying yes ad nauseam. This list goes on:
- being told how we should look and act
- being warned about airing dirty laundry in public
- instructed to just smile, even when we were broken inside
In other words, discount our feelings, and look good. Messiness will not be tolerated!
As a woman less than a year from 60, I am writing a new story.
Recently at an On Purpose Woman Global Community gathering on Zoom, each attendee had the opportunity to say why they chose to attend. My reply was, “I am showing up messy because that is my truest response today. In doing so, I am honoring my life, my experience, and myself.”
And I survived!
My “showing up messy” response resonated with others. There was a collective sigh!
When we show up fully present to our embodied truth, it allows us to hold ourselves with that extra bit of tenderness, even if only for a short amount of time.
When we show up less than “polished” or “all put together” or “perfect” and own it fully, it helps create a break in circuitry. It changes our default mode and challenges the inner critic who says, “You won’t be accepted just as you are!”
The more we fully embody all of ourselves, including our hot mess selves, and the more we challenge our inner dialogue, the FREER we become.
If we choose not to show up at all, nothing changes.
When we are witnessed sincerely by others, even in our mess, we carve out a space to relax, and our hearts and souls are nurtured. It opens a doorway for others. It invites them toward their truth, their tenderness, their wholeness, leading each of us to truly honor our humanness.
Many of us have worn multiple masks since childhood. We have molded and contains ourselves inwardly and outwardly to fit in. There was a point where we learned that adaptation, but before that, we were just unabashedly our true selves, in connection to our beingness.
Let’s start a little revolution, to remove self-imposed, societal, and generational labels that no longer serve. It is time to deeply meet and greet ourselves just as we are, even if we show up messy.
Yes, there will be a ripple effect.
As you show up messy, raw, vulnerable, and real, you build trust in yourself as a multidimensional, multifaceted, multi-emotional, expansive, divine-human being. Whole, not fragmented.
My youngest daughter has a saying, “I did (such and such), and I didn’t die!” Stepping out of our comfort zone always has risks. Survival is part of our DNA. Survival for many has come to mean always doing the right thing, looking right, speaking right, not ruffling feathers, because if we don’t adhere, we may die!
Our inner critic is our judge and jury, reminding us not to expose ourselves to the enemy and stay safe. Small. Silent. Tidy. This reflects the age-old limiting thought that children should be seen and not heard. Or women should just look pretty and leave the important stuff to men.
After all, emotions and feelings are messy. Yep, messy.
Society learns towards modeling everyone in sameness. Yet, we also like to celebrate the underdog: we rally behind a story of challenge to triumph. It gives us hope. It acknowledges differences. It frees us from the fear of not fitting in and the fear that if I am different, I will be excommunicated or cast out from the tribe.
Belonging is a human core value.
I want to be in the tribe that celebrates belonging with wholehearted realness – freedom to be yourself. Showing up messy means I see all of you, and I recognize all of me.
