QUOTE FOR THE DAY: Never explain-your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
--Elbert Hubbard
Here's what I love about giving advice to other people:
It always turns out it's advice I need to take myself.
A good friend is in agony about her job. It's tearing her apart, emotionally and spiritually. In fact, it's killing her. She needs to leave—NOW--but she "can't".
Can't?? Why not?
Because, she explains, it would feel like failure. Like she was a quitter. Like it had defeated her.
Hmmm....quitting vs. dying. Seems like an easy decision to me. But it obviously was not that easy for my friend.
If I could stand outside my own life for a minute and look in, what would strike ME as a no-brainer?
I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days. Because I've found myself enmeshed in a dozen commitments, projects, and situations that truly demand I disentangle myself and move on—situations that do NOT support my core mission statement for my art and business, projects that are taking up too much time and effort for not enough return, and doing things for people who are turning into energy vampires. (You know who you are!)
It's obvious I've taken on too much. I need to put some things back on their shelf. I need to say no. But I've waffled and baffled, tossed and turned for months at night in bed, fretting that people will think badly of me if I do.
I've been afraid they'll think I'm "unprofessional". I've been afraid they'll think I'm "not nice". That I'm "incompetent".
In short, I've been afraid to be imperfect.
I've been afraid to admit I'm human.
To paraphrase a quote from the fabulous hit British comedy "ABsolutely FABulous", "I have made myself a prisoner of other people's eyes."
Well, I AM human. I am a one-of-a-kind—but that doesn't mean I'm perfect. It only means I am unique....
I am a work in progress! As such, it means it is not my goal to be "perfect". It is my goal to become a complete human being. And I cannot do that by constantly measuring my progress by what "other people" think--only by following my heart and being the very most authentic Luann Udell I can be. (I almost wrote "very best" but realized that was striving for perfection again. What a hard habit to break!)
Maybe our goal is to define what "authentic" will mean to us.
Seeing the absolute misery my friend has locked herself into, worrying about what other people might think, took the blinders off my own eyes.
Who ARE these people, whose opinion we care so much for, anyway?
I believe if we thought hard about who these people are, would rejoice in our mistakes, who would enjoy seeing us fall flat on our faces, who would snicker at our downfall, we would care a helluva lot less about structuring our lives for their benefit...
Thanks today to Alisha Vincent, for walking me through a painful professional decision yesterday. I wrote a difficult letter.
How do I know it was the right decision?
Last night, for the first time in two years, I slept through the night.
