Hello, my beautiful friends! Welcome to episode 32. If you’re new, I’m so glad you’re here and I hope you find some really useful tips that’ll help you start making things happen for you in your life and to finding a deeper connection with yourself and others around you. If you’re not new, thanks for hanging in there with me. Hopefully you’re finding little nuggets of wisdom here and there and are applying them to really start making your life more amazing.
Now, I think a lot of you think that because I’m a life coach and because I’ve been taught so many wonderful tools, that my life is amazing all the time. And even my life is pretty amazing, that doesn’t mean that I have it all figured out yet. I know that I talk about life being 50-50 with 50% of the time you’ll be feeling all the wonderful, positive emotions and 50% of the time, you’ll have the negative emotions to wrestle with. And it’s the same with how we are as humans too. I think we’re all 50% a mess and 50% amazing.
So yes, I still struggle right along with you and I’m still figuring out the best ways to steer myself through the ups and downs of life, but I admit that my life has been a more enriching experience and when I use the tools I’ve been taught, I get a lot more traction out of life. During this episode, I want you to get to know me a little better and give examples of how I am 50% a mess and 50% amazing. I think when we share parts of ourselves with others, it helps us to connect better.
And I’m not going to lie, part of this will be hard for me, because I feel like maybe I’m exposing myself and it’s taking a lot to allow myself to be vulnerable and open up with you, but that’s the main point of connection. To allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to let others in and see our messiness and then hope they don’t use it in some negative way against us. Now I’m going to give a caveat to that. There are certain levels of vulnerability that we should allow ourselves to have with certain people. I’m probably not going to tell you my deepest, darkest messes because that wouldn’t be appropriate here. Your deepest, darkest messes are reserved for those special people who you are closest to and who you know will take your vulnerability and treat it with the upmost care, out of love for you.
Ok, so I’m going to tell you stuff about me and tell you how I’m 50% a mess with it and 50% amazing. So first, part of my messiness is that I don’t always use the tools I’ve been taught. I know, why wouldn’t I? Well, sometimes I’m just mentally exhausted and I don’t have the capacity to be my best self every moment of the day. In fact, 50% of the time, my best self doesn’t show up and it depends on how practiced I am with those tools if I even show up at all. I think life coaching is a lot like learning a sport. At first you may get the basic hang of it, but when you want to go from amateur to pro, you’ve got to start getting more refined and detailed in your training. And then you practice, practice, practice. And even then, the best players have bad games. It’s the same for life coaches, it’s the same for all of us as we continue to grow and build a brilliant life. That’s just the experience of life, with the ups and downs.
A while back a friend was talking to me about how she knows another health coach who’s gained some weight. From my perspective, it was like my friend was saying that maybe she should know better and shouldn’t have gained anything back. I mean she’s been given all the tools she needs, right? But, my friends, if you don’t work the program, the program won’t work for you. And sometimes, our lives get turned upside down and sometimes we allow our thoughts to get the best of us and sometimes our years and years of habits that didn’t serve us slowly start to sneak back in again. Change is a constant process and sometimes we have to go back a few steps before we decide to move forward again. Sometimes, our messy side comes out and we don’t show up for ourselves in the best ways.
Now I’m not saying that I’m using the messy side as an excuse for not showing up for myself in the moment. You can go back and listen to my episode where I talked about Grace vs Tough Love. We don’t use our messiness as an excuse to purposely show up in a reckless, messy way that we know we’ll regret later. We use the knowledge of our messy side when we notice, after the fact, that we didn’t show up as our best self. It’s what allows me the space to have a little compassion for myself and instead of getting stuck in the shame-blame downward cycle of self-loathing and beating myself up, I notice that I didn’t show up how I would’ve liked, I’m going to give myself space and compassion for doing that, and now how do I want to proceed? So when I’m saying I’m 50% a mess, I don’t use it as a free pass to behave poorly in the moment. Make sense?
What I am amazing at is when I believe in something or want to make something happen, I put my whole heart into it. Like landscaping my yard. I see things done with other yards that I like and then draw up this entire plan of how I want to do mine. It’s a project that requires building walls, laying pavers, making sure I get a variety of plants and laying sod. And also like planning my daughter’s wedding. Going over all the decorations and making sure I see her vision and making it come to life. It’s my overall vision of how I want the finished product to look that keeps me motivated.
The messy side to that though is, sometimes I go too far. I spend too much money or I spend too much time. I don’t always know how to do what I want so I research it and learn how to do it and go through the typical learning curves. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I know how I want it to look and when it doesn’t, I want to redo it. And I know this is the part of my perfectionist side yelling in my head that it needs to be better so I keep putting more time and more money and I can get exhausted to the point where I end up wanting to just be done with it. So I have to really watch myself as I do it so I can continue to strive for excellence but not kill myself over reaching an idea that I have in my head and that it has to be a certain way.
I’m amazing at making friends really easily. I think it’s because I find people’s lives so interesting and I always want to know more about them. We have fun when we’re together, but where I’m messy is, I don’t do a good job at staying in touch with my friends and reaching out to them all the time. It’s something I’d like to be better at because I genuinely love them and their friendship. Sometimes I think I’m the last to know what’s happening in their lives because I’m so sporadic about being on social media where everyone posts their news now. I’ll recommit for a while and then I start focusing on what’s right in front of me again and lose touch.
I think it’s amazing that I’m not scared to just go up and talk to people. Like I said, I love hearing about other people’s lives and interests. I always learn so much. Where I’m messy is sometimes I can get overly excited when I’m talking about something that I’m passionate about, and I say things that come out completely wrong and some people have been really offended and sometimes it hurts my relationships with them. It’s not my intention, but sometimes I just don’t think before I speak. And sometimes, when I’m right in the middle of it, I try to backtrack as a knee jerk reaction instead of just owning it because I’m in shame shock and I haven’t practiced accepting my own messiness enough and accepting that this is part of my learning as a human. I know how they think and feel about it is ultimately up to them, but when I recognize that I didn’t show up as my best self there, then that’s definitely me being messy and that’s on me.
I am amazing at pretending a certain way. So if I have to go into a room and act confident because this is something that will affect the results I’m looking for, I’m amazing at telling myself, this is something I need to do. I can put all my insecurities aside, pull up my big girl pants, and just be in the moment. For example, years ago, when I was teaching a youth group, I got a tooth infection the night before one of our classes. The entire side of my face was swollen and I did not want to go and teach because I was so embarrassed by how I looked. But I forced myself to go because I wanted them to realize that they are more important to me then how I look. And when I started a new job in business development. I had no previous knowledge of how to do this job and I knew very little about the industry, but I decided that for this job, I’m going to do my best, muddling along the way and just show up with a smile. So I guess I’m good at pretending at something that I’ve convinced myself to be a greater cause. Well, at least 50% of time, right? It actually took me two years before I said that I’d move positions in my company and start business development.
And that’s because my messy side is full of insecurities. I’m insecure about the way I look and I don’t like that I’m getting wrinkles, I don’t like that I still have extra fat on my body, and I probably worry too much about what other people will think of me. I also worry if people will think I’m not smart enough or not adding enough value to their lives. Now these are just beliefs about myself so they are just thoughts, not facts, but I’m working on changing that because I know that ultimately they don’t serve me. Some days I can be good with myself and not worry too much about my looks and what others think, and some days, I can’t get it out of my head so, when I can or feel like I have to, I trick myself into believing something else.
I’m pretty amazing about loving other people and accepting them where they are. I love doing things for them and making the connections. What I’m still pretty messy about is my ability to love and accept myself. I’ve made a lot of progress in the past couple years, but I still have some moments where I get stuck in the what’s wrong with me merry-go-round mind loop. And sometimes it will last for days and sometimes it’s just moments, but it’s still a real thing for me however I’m making progress on it. My biggest homework with this is to look at myself, without judging me and all my flaws and being okay that I’m not for everyone. I just need to be okay with myself.
Who knows, maybe I’m just fooling myself about the things that I think I’m amazing at because that’s all this is. It’s me sharing my beliefs about myself. But maybe the things that I’m messy about, others would disagree with too. And because we know that the way we think ends up in our results, there’s no upside for me to think I’m anything but 50-50. A yin and yang to create a perfect balance.
I came up with the idea of 50% a mess and 50% amazing as a way for me to be able to find space and compassion for myself and all my messiness and space and compassion for others and all their messiness. It reminds me that even though I have a lot of things I might not care for about myself, there is still a lot about me that’s quite amazing. And, my friends, it’s the same for you too. We’re all perfectly imperfect humans doing the best we can.
So that means that we won’t always be content and we won’t always be choosing the best thoughts that serve us. There will be times when we think, “I’ve totally got this!” and times when we’ll think “I don’t have much figured out.” And that’s okay. Because guess what, you’re 50% a mess and 50% a-mazing! Remember that the next time you come down hard yourself and can’t find the space for self-love. Just notice that you didn’t show up how you would’ve liked, and give yourself space and compassion for doing that, and then decide how do I want to proceed. Because, you are an amazing person and you’re worth all the love and compassion in the world.
Have a brilliant week! Bye!
