One of my greatest strengths …
… and one of my biggest struggles …
… is that I am very good at reading the room.
This works for me, most notably, when I am interviewing someone for my podcast. It can also be a useful quality to have when I am being interviewed for a job, networking in a professional setting, or (dare I say) advocating veganism.
For better or for worse, I have decades of experience catching onto signals that point to how the other person is reacting, what is putting them off, and what might be interesting to them. I’m definitely not always right, but when I am, I can count on my superpower intuition to hopefully get me closer to the end goal.
On the flip side, I have an unfortunate tendency to sometimes set aside my needs in favor of pleasing the other person. Sometimes I do this intentionally, such as if I am trying to manage the longevity of a professional relationship. An example of this might look like showing real interest in a co-worker’s child beyond the reasonable expected time frame of such silly chit-chat. I know the benefit of occasionally acting as if I care more than I do, even if I am on a pressing deadline and just really don’t have time for a long discussion of how wiggly their kid’s front tooth is. But I nod anyway, because sometimes, that’s what you need to do. (And I have no doubt others act as if they care about my life sometimes, when they don’t.)
Step aside, self
But along those same lines, my kryptonite can take the form of self-abandonment. Mind you, I am very well aware of this possibility and I have worked hard to try to keep it at bay. This urge to people-please has, at its worst, resulted in my dating the wrong people (I am baffled by how I even got through my twenties).
Actually, no. At its worst, this urge to people-please resulted in my getting arrested for shoplifting when I was 15 and was trying to prove to my “cool friend” that I, too, was cool. It resulted in an afternoon full of trauma that haunted me for decades.
This kind of behavior is easier to contextualize when it’s a teenager you’re talking about. Most kids push the boundaries, trying to figure out what they can get away with and what they can’t. Mixed up in there is that inability to speak our minds for fear of being seen as uncool.
Add into that mix the difficulty that so many of us who grew up as little girls were forced to grapple with: baked-in inequities. Struggling to count as equal when (for Gen-Xers like me, anyway, and the generations that came before) the world was set up as a boy’s show. A man’s show. Let’s be more specific: A white man’s show. A cisgender white man’s show. A cisgender straight white man’s show.
Burning bras and misperceptions
When my mother (who was born in 1950) was a little girl and would visit her grandparents, they would give her brother a dollar just for being a little boy. They’d give my mother a quarter and pat her on the head.
Flash-forward to when she was a young professional in her early twenties and was told by her boss to wear a mini-skirt to the holiday party or else. She defiantly wore pants and was promptly let go.
I was born at the tail end of the 1970s when things were still sepia-toned and Kool and the Gang was topping the charts with “Ladies Night.” And though my mother’s bra-burning hippie days paved the way for a new era (my brother and I were always treated equally, for one), the inequities were still in my generation’s muscle memory, passed down from the generations that came before.
So even though I believed firmly in liberation and social justice from the time I was a little kid, I nonetheless always felt that I didn’t matter quite as much. And that it was my duty to make space for the needs of others, usually above my own.
Me and my gut
So, not surprisingly, it took me a long time to really connect with my gut feeling. Though I did have a monomaniacal focus and drive—when I wanted to accomplish something, nothing on earth could get in the way—it was those steps to my goal that sometimes became slippery. Looking back, I sometimes lacked the self-protection that would have served me during vulnerable moments.
In short, I lost track of my gut feeling. I didn’t grasp tightly enough to my instincts, nonchalantly trading them for others’ needs or desires. If I went into a store because I needed a work shirt, but my shopping buddy felt strongly that I needed a pair of shoes instead, I’d too easily allow myself to get influenced. If I made a difficult phone call with the intent to leave a toxic employment situation and was met with someone on the other end suggesting a pivot in my job instead, I’d agree to it a bit too fast.
Though this is certainly not true across the board for me (most people who know me know that I’m a very opinionated, strong person), it pains me to think of the times it has played out this way. Despite myself, I can be too trusting and too quick to shrink. Cue the people-pleaser who wants to avoid confrontation above all else. (And don’t even get me started on the times I have dealt with unfair confrontation simply by leaving meaningful work and relationships instead of dealing with the issue head-on, and self-advocating.)
Screw authenticity, amiright?
Recently, I feel I have lost touch with this part of me: let’s just go ahead and call it my authentic self. I have spent too much money because I’ve succumbed to seductive ads. I’ve followed the lead of others just because they can be louder than me. And I’ve set aside some of my biggest needs in favor of the easier way forward.
Though I want to be gentle with myself here, the truth is, I should know better. The times in my life when I’ve self-advocated, or let go of situations that were clearly toxic, have almost always resulted in accomplishments and a deeper sense of both pride and peace.
When I am my best self, I am confident, I am kind, I hold things lightly, and I practice having boundaries with ease and focus.
When I am suffering, I opt for the easiest way forward, and I lose sight of those things that keep me balanced in terms of my health, wealth, and schedule. I agree to take on projects that I don’t have time to do, I lead people on by acting like I’m available when I’m not, and I ignore my better instincts to, for example, get a permit for attic renovations because the contractor says I don’t need it (yes, this is a real-life example, and no, it’s not playing out very well).
Gut instincts. Following them can, on occasion, be a revolutionary act. For those of us who grew up feeling like we needed to assimilate into a society that didn’t quite get us, nor have the proper space for us to fit in comfortably, getting in touch with our gut instincts can be painful.
It requires strengthening muscles that we sometimes haven’t used in years, muscles that maybe our ancestors haven’t used in generations. Finally understanding our gut instincts can contradict the entire landscape of our lives, or at least, corners of our lives: Our work. Our friend circles. Our patterns.
Most frighteningly, it can contradict our relationship with ourselves.
A feeling in my gut
I wanted to write this as a call to action—for you and for me. What would life look like if we followed our gut more often (or at all)? What would we let go of? What would we embrace?
How would we move forward differently in this world that relentlessly demands assimilation?
Often in this newsletter, I lay out specific steps for everything from how to budget to how to calendar our weeks. But today, I am doing things a little differently. I am asking you to join me in reconnecting with our gut instincts and giving ourselves the respect to trust it … to trust ourselves.
And then, just maybe, to let that self-trust ignite the power we each have to show up more authentically, more consistently, and more comfortably.
Then, just maybe—and I’m not sure here, but I have a gut feeling—life can feel a little lighter.
xo,
jazz