‘Where there is perfection there is no story to tell,’ Ben Okri.
There is no need to be perfect but there is a need to show up for yourself.
When I talk to clients they tend to be obsessed with becoming more productive – the idea that they must be seen to be doing something or being someone 24/7.
I can relate to this as I used to work on a publication whose production cycle was based on three continents – Europe, Africa and Asia. It wasn’t unusual for me to work until 10pm so I could get up at 7am and then Skype with the other side of the world. Then I realised, after my first holiday with my future partner, when I took a work phone call from the top of a Spanish mountain, also my first holiday in six years, that ‘that’s inhuman.’
We are cyclical creatures and the best expression of thriving is a spiral dance, an image that feminist scholars Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway came up with to talk about the need for scientists to start ‘thinking with’ rather than ‘thinking for’ or worse ‘thinking over’ the people and things they study.
Who are you dancing and thinking with right now? Are you feeling in tune or in some way off-kilter or even rejected by them? If you are feeling rejected, don’t hang on to it. Rather than looking for, or seeking external approval and gratification, zoom in on what you want a bit more. Reflecting more deeply on what you are striving for will help you stay anchored and ensure you are less swayed by the fickle winds of circumstance.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘Don’t waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Set down nothing that will help somebody.’
It’s taken me years to understand that every experience I have had and perhaps especially, the bad ones – will encourage me or at least give me insight later on.
Perhaps it isn’t someone else rejecting you; perhaps you are secretly rejecting yourself. One of my clients recently pointed out to me that we are often our own worst enemies – rushing around chasing after the far-off dream/activity and in the process likely tripping ourselves up, especially at this time of year.
I am currently working on the biggest and most challenging project I have ever worked on and the strange thing is, I feel completely confident about it. At every stage in the lead up to it, I have been running around convinced that I have to make even more efforts to make it work – but right now I feel confident every stage of it will work out and I’m going to enjoy it all.
This new state of mind has come about at least in part, through coaching myself out of the what Thomas Harris calls the OK CORRAL, the ‘I’m not OK; You’re Ok’ mode of thinking. This is a way of thinking that sees everyone else as in a better position to oneself. Seeing the world this way is inherently disempowering – if you are thinking the other person is more Ok then you, they will definitely use that position that you have given them. For me, this way of thinking was the powerful mindset I learnt as a child (I attended nine different schools and boarding schools); surrounded by guardians and caregivers who found it incredibly difficult to praise and thank their charges and were (unconsciously perhaps) very emotionally hungry. While I used to think that ‘I’m OK, You’re OK,’ was a recipe for self-satisfaction, I now see how important Thomas Harris’s insight was.
Around 90 percent of our thoughts come in repeat mode; if your internal conversation is set to thoughts instilled in you by a parent or teacher which say things like: ‘Watch Your Step,’ or ‘You Should Do…./You Shouldn’t Do’ or ‘If Only You Were…’ you will likely see the world in a judgemental way, constantly comparing yourself with others and thus, inadvertently perhaps, rejecting yourself – with all your incredibly valuable imperfections.
The state of life we should all be trying to achieve is: ‘I’m OK. You’re OK.’ Without that balance of ‘I’m OK, You’re OK,’ we find that, whether on social media or in other spheres of life, we build up a tsunami of self-castigation and rejection. The more you tell yourself a story of rejection, the more it will grow. The feeling might be: ‘I never get what I want’ or ‘I am not good enough’. If we deny ourselves the space and time to overturn these negative thoughts, we could end up losing our sense of inner power to change the narrative.
My recommendation for your gift stocking this festive season is to gift yourself the space and time to discover something about yourself that you didn’t know, to open a door that you may feel you have closed on yourself or that someone else has closed on you in terms of a holiday, a friendship, a career or a relationship. The feeling of rejection you are experiencing right now could end up being your greatest gift.
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