You are a Badass (18 page)
4. CUT OFF THE STREAM OF CRAP
Be more conscious of the information you absorb. What blogs do you read? What shows do you watch? What books do you read? What stories do you read in the paper? What movies do you go to? Whose opinion do you ask? What do you focus on in your day-to-day life? This isn’t about being in denial or out of touch with what’s going on in the world, it’s about how much of this information you really need. Are you staring at a car accident or are you gathering information that will allow you to contribute to positive change?
Wallowing in the pain and suffering isn’t going to help anyone, yourself included, any more than starving yourself will help the hungry. If you want to help the world and yourself, keep your frequency high and do your work from a place of power and joy.
5. DON’T THINK OF ANYTHING UPSETTING IN BED AT NIGHT
Our minds turn into gigantic magnifying glasses that make all our fears 100 percent bigger when we’re lying there as a captive audience at 3 a.m., in bed, with nothing to distract us. Unless you’re going to get out of bed right then and there and take some sort of action, don’t waste your precious time thinking about your problems. Every time you do this, it’s never as bad the next morning when you get up. You know this and yet . . . Use your meditative powers to move troubling thoughts out of your mind; focus on relaxing every single muscle in your body one by one, slowly and intentionally, so that it takes up all the room in your brain that you were using to freak out with. Breathe deeply and think about all the incredible things in your life, listen to a guided meditation, do whatever you can to get a good night’s sleep and deal with whatever it is in the morning. Because the only thing worse than staying up all night freaking out about something is then being too exhausted the next day to deal with it either.
6. LOVE YOURSELF
And you will be invincible.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
—Eleanor Roosevelt; activist, feminist, superhero, longest-serving First Lady of the United States evah
One of the most staggering things about other people is that they provide us with valuable, and often alarmingly intimate, information about who they are as soon as we meet them. If we pay attention, we can pick up on the major clues they’re sending out through their body language, their appearance, their lifestyle, their actions, their interests, their words, how they treat their dogs, the waitress, themselves, etc. Some people let it all hang out for everyone to see right away, others let it seep out in little spurts: “I love water skiing,” “I admire how confident you are about your weight problem,” “I just got out of prison,” etc. With the exception of the sociopath or the skilled pathological liar, the
majority of humanity gives us plenty to chew on right out of the gate.
All of this information then goes through the filter of who
we
are, and depending on our perceptions and judgments and hang ups and number of years spent in therapy, we decide if the person is someone we want to get to know better or not.
We’re all attracted to, as well as turned off by, various things about other people. And the things that stand out the most to us are the things that remind us the most of ourselves. This is because other people are like mirrors for us: If somebody bugs you, you’re projecting onto them something that you don’t like about yourself, and if you think they’re awesome, they’re reflecting back something that you see in yourself that you like (even if it’s not developed in you yet). I know this sounds like I’m making a massive generalization, but just stay with me here.
Your reality is created by what you focus on and how you choose to interpret it. This goes for everything, including the things you focus on about the people in your world. For example, depending on who you are, you could react in myriad ways to your new boyfriend or girlfriend constantly referring to you as “The Giant Dumbass.” You could A) See this as a red flag and think they’re a bully B) See this as a red flag and think they’re nervous or insecure and have terrible manners C) See this as a green light because “they are in so much pain that they need to abuse other people. They really need someone as understanding as I am” D) See this as a green light because you believe that you are, in fact, a giant dumbass or E.) Think it’s hilarious because it doesn’t resonate with you.
The people you surround yourself with are excellent mirrors for who you are and how much, or how little, you love yourself.
We attract people into our lives for a reason, just as they attract us into theirs. We all help each other grow and figure out our issues,
if
we seize the opportunity to learn from, instead of just react to (by getting defensive or justifying our actions or whining about), the highly irritating things other people do. It’s our annoying friends or family members or clients or neighbors or lady on the train with the voice like a bullhorn who help us grow and see who we truly are even more than our beloved BFFs do (unless they’re being momentarily annoying, and then we can thank them, too). Don’t miss the glorious opportunity to learn that’s being handed to you by the person whose mouth you’d really love to stick your fist in.
The things that bother us about other people bother us because they remind us of something that we don’t like about ourselves. Or their behavior triggers a fear or insecurity that we have, but may not realize we have. For the longest time, one of my big stories was that being feminine was weak and annoying. Somewhere along the way I decided that it wasn’t cool or powerful to act like (or be) a girl, and my femininity became a part of me that I was ashamed of. Hence, I was much less threatened by women who came at me with a power drill than women who came at me with an eyebrow pencil, which is why it’s pretty hilarious to me still that one of my best friends is as girly as they get. I met her when we were working together in New York City and was instantly drawn to her because she’s hilariously brilliant and sweet and did a flawless impression of one of our coworkers walking down the hall with his ass sticking out that always left me doubled over, clinging to furniture. Unlike me, however, she’s a lover of girls’ nights out and mani-pedi dates, an eager ogler of engagement rings when summoned by the fluttering hand of a soon-to-be bride, and a pro at the girly-girl gang greeting: Arms raised high in the air, head back, eyes squeezed shut, high-pitched Oh-my-Gods for all to hear. For this, we call her Pink.
A decade later, I’m living in Los Angeles and Pink is living outside
New York City— married with a bunch of kids, natch. When she decides to take her first solo vacation since becoming a mom, and heads to San Diego to see her best friend from college, she calls and begs me to drive down to see her. I agree, somewhat begrudgingly. It wasn’t the two-hour drive that bothered me, but the best friend from college, who I’d never met but was sure was pinker than Pink. I imagined a full-on sorority scene, complete with painting our toenails while having a Meg Ryan movie fest and talking about how fat we’d gotten. But I love Pink, so off I went.
Meanwhile, down in San Diego, Pink’s best friend from college is less than thrilled at the prospect of Pink’s best gal pal from her New York City days driving down from L.A. Her eyes were also rolling at the potential estrogen bomb, so imagine our delight when we discovered that we were both equally as macho. Once we realized that the playing field wasn’t as overwhelmingly pink as we feared it would be, however, we got the biggest surprise of all: our inner, neglected girls felt safe to come out hiding. All three of us lost our voices that weekend, cackling and screaming, “Oh my God,” for all to hear. I wouldn’t be surprised if a toenail or two even got painted. Don’t remember. Was too drunk on wine spritzers.
I’m still not the most enthused member of a bridal shower, and I’m not saying that you have to come around and like everything in this world that bothers you, but I am saying that if you
actively
don’t like something, it’s because it resonates with you on some level, it has meaning to you.
When you find yourself dealing with someone who irritates you (and you find yourself getting gossipy, fingerpointy, judgy, complainey), rising up and confronting the situation can do a hell of a lot more than just making your life more pleasant in the long run; it can help you heal and grow and get out of victim mode. Because it forces you to deal with the gnarlier aspects of yourself, the parts that make you not
so proud. None of us care to admit that we’re dishonest, conceited, insecure, unethical, mean, bossy, stupid, lazy, etc., but that’s what attracted you to the people you notice it in, and them to you, in the first place. And admitting it is the first step in letting it go—wheeee!
If people are annoying in a way that has nothing to do with us, we either don’t notice it or we don’t get that hung up on it. For example, say there’s someone in your life who you find to be an insufferable know-it-all. Every time you open your mouth to talk about something you did, she says she’s already done it. Anything you know, she already knows. And knows much more about. And she has to make sure you, and everyone within a ten mile radius, knows how much more she knows about it. While you find yourself entertaining fantasies about putting her head through the wall every time you’re around her, someone else might be hanging on her every word, unable to get enough of her fascinating and brilliant conversation.
The reason she makes you crazy is because you most likely are a know-it-all yourself, or you worry that you are one, or you have insecurities about people thinking that you know nothing.
Our reality is a mirror of our thoughts, the people in our reality included.
Same thing goes with what people throw at us. Would you be offended if someone kept making fun of how short you were if you were six feet tall? It most likely wouldn’t even register, or if it did, you’d just think they were kind of strange. But if they teased you about being bossy, and deep down you feared you were, it would definitely get your attention. (It would also mean they have energy around their own bossiness if they’re recognizing it in you, but that’s not your problem.)
What you focus on you create more of in your life. If you’re consciously
or subconsciously focused on certain beliefs about who you are, or who you want to be or who you do not want to be, you will attract people who mirror those traits right back at you.
This is why, when you’re dealing with a backstabbing “friend” or some sort of toxic person that you need to stand up to or kick out of your life, you get caught in this self-inflicted trap of not wanting to hurt the other person or latching on to their finer qualities or fearing the worst if you don’t put up with their crap. I don’t care how long you’ve been friends with someone or how sorry you feel for them or how they really helped you those eight million times or how hilarious, successful, hot, inspiring, desperate, scary, connected, brilliant, or helpless they are, because the reason you’re having trouble standing up to them isn’t about any of that.
What’s really going on is you’re being faced with rewiring your limited beliefs about
yourself
. And you’re using these excuses for these other people to avoid facing your own issues—your own issues around sticking up for yourself.
At the end of the day, it’s not about them, it’s about you believing you’re worthy of being loved and seen for who you really are.
When we agree to let ourselves down in favor of supporting the bad behavior of others, it often stems from the same impulse:
We’re unwilling to make other people more uncomfortable than they just made us
. Not terribly studly in the old self-love department, is it? By making them uncomfortable I mean
declining to participate in their drama
, by the way, not by being equally abusive back. This isn’t about getting an eye for an eye and sinking to a lower level, it’s about standing up for your
highest self no matter if the person you’re dealing with should choose to have the experience of:
• Feeling disappointed
• Feeling hurt
• Feeling inconvenienced
• Seeing you as a crazy person
It’s about respecting yourself, instead of catering to your insecure need to be liked.
This is incredibly powerful, because
when you love yourself enough to stand in your truth no matter what the cost, everyone benefits
. You start attracting the kinds of things, people, and opportunities, that are in alignment with who you truly are, which is way more fun than hanging out with a bunch of irritating energy suckers. And by declining to participate in other people’s drama, (i.e. refusing to rip people to shreds, to complain about how unfair the world is, etc.) you not only raise your own frequency, but you offer the drama queens the chance to rise up too, instead of everyone continuing to play a low, lame game.
Never apologize for who you are. It lets the whole world down.
We all know someone who does not take shit from anyone. Ever. We look upon these types of people with wide-eyed reverence, and
would never dream of being stupid enough to present them with any of our BS or try to make them wrong. Why? Because we respect them and, um, are usually kind of terrified of them (in a healthy way). And why do we respect them?
Because they respect themselves.
So how can you get rid of your lame-o projections and judgments and grace the world with your highest, most unapologetic self?
1. OWN YOUR UGLY
Start noticing the things that drive you nuts about other people, and, instead of complaining or judging or getting defensive about them, use them as a mirror.
Especially if you find yourself getting really worked up
. Get mighty real with yourself—is this quality something you have yourself? Or is there a certain aspect to it that you’re loath to admit is just like you? Or does it remind you of something you’re actively trying to suppress? Or avoid? Or that you’re actively doing just the opposite of? Or that you’re threatened by? Become fascinated by, instead of furious about, the irritants surrounding you and get yer learnin’ on.