Tag: life

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Start Dating Failure

“Start Dating Failure”…what in the metaphor does that mean? *cue the rewind sound effect*

I started my therapy journey (well, restarted for the 5th time) last summer. Not because I was living through a crisis, going through depression, or anything externally tangible, just wanting to get rid of some self-sabotaging tendencies I had.

I “discovered” a few things that I probably already knew about myself. (That’s no dig to my therapists at all) but when you’re at best, self-aware and at worst, self-conscious, you analyze yourself pretty consistently. I knew I was a person that based my self-worth in my performance. I knew I had struggled in the past with feelings of rejection and abandonment…who hasn’t? But as I started to work through some of the scenarios in my upbringing, I actually found something I had never considered; growing up we are taught to win, to do our best, to achieve everything we’ve ever dreamed of and go after it! But what we need to be more intentional about, is teaching others and ourselves to have a healthy relationship with failure. If not (and this is what happened to me) failure becomes this big, taunting, horrifying figure that we will do anything to try to avoid. Even at the expense of potential blessings. 

This perspective of failure causes us to over emphasize the fear of a painful loss, and therefore prevent us from taking any risks. And here’s the tricky part-even if we think we are great risk takers in one area (like business) often times the fear of failure could show up in another area (like relationships). No one is exempt! And if that’s still not your story, maybe the fear of failure doesn’t prevent you from trying, but it prevents you from giving it your all, just in case it doesn’t work out. The thought is, “if I don’t put all my cards on the table, I’ll still have something left over just in case it flops”. But the reality is- for any dream, great achievement, or even a relationship to work-you have to give it your all, win or lose. This isn’t to negate the fact that failure is painful, sometimes it can be excruciating! But if I may pose a different train of thought…what could be more excruciating is living beneath your potential, and seeing someone else live out the life that you made the choice to forfeit.

I’m currently working through this in one particular area of my life. From a young age, I was always passionate about music and singing. One of my most vivid memories is me being about 5-6 years old, jumping into my parents bed early on a Saturday morning because I had an idea for a song. I sang it to them with all the joy and confidence in the world. As I grew older, after my father planted a church, I grew to love playing the piano. I took lessons for a few years as a child, but afterwards I learned to play by ear. There were a total of 3 private rooms in the church that had a piano, and I would find myself behind one of those pianos every time we went to church-which was all the time. When I entered into my moody teenage years, I got my own keyboard at home and I played my heart out every single day. All throughout this time I consistently sang on my church’s worship team, started vocal lessons, and became really invested in my music up until about 16 years of age. I was ready to take on the world! I took 3-4 of my favorite self-written songs and I was prepared to start producing an E.P. I was on my way to becoming the next Adele (this was my thinking). But somewhere along the way, my little girl passion started shrinking behind my young woman feelings of inadequacy. How good was I really? Okay…maybe I was good but I wasn’t as good as (fill in the blank). And this was my biggest self sabotaging thought-everybody wants to be an artist, what makes you any different from the others who have tried and failed?

You may not have a dream or a passion like mine, but I’d say if you’re alive and a human, you’ve likely struggled with these types of thoughts. Then, once we do have those thoughts, we camouflage them with the excuse of “I’m just too busy”, “I don’t have the money”, or “I’m just waiting on my moment to be recognized”. Could that be true? Maybe. But here’s the other truth-we’ve seen countless examples of people who have no business being at the top of their game, coming from the least expected of places. Ask Oprah Winfrey, or Viola Davis how many excuses they could have made to not take a chance on themselves. But somehow we convince ourselves that we are exempt from the favor they received. And was it purely favor? Or was it their patience, belief, innovation, and refusal to accept less than what they dreamed of? Instead of seeing those beacons of hope as the exception-we need to start to see ourselves in them. I bet they had to learn to cope with their failures, and see them as opportunities of learning rather than a permanent rejection. I bet somewhere along the way they probably thought about quitting on a rough day. I bet when they look back at all the hell they had to go through to get to where they are, they would choose to do it all over again. How many other Oprahs or even Bill Gates’ are living in this world with the potential to be great, but just couldn’t cope properly with failure, and they became stagnant? I don’t want that for me, and I don’t want that for you.

Greatness belongs to those who are not afraid to fail, and are resilient enough to fail forward.

Putting myself back in the hot seat again…when I think of my reason for not wanting to fail, it was not even the fear of what others might say or think, but what I might think of myself if I failed. Similar to rejection, it is hard to sometimes disassociate something being a failure, from you being a failure. But here’s the key-we must recognize that failure is absolutely inevitable. I don’t care how irrevocably perfect you may be, one of these days, one of these tries, you will fail at something. And it’s not because you as a human being are the problem, it’s because maybe the people, place/context, or timing wasn’t right. It could be something you overlooked or didn’t have knowledge about. No one is the best at something on their first try. And when those moments happen, don’t get stuck on the fact that it happened, start planning how to fix it for your next attempt. Be resilient! As long as you keep shooting at the target, and you keep getting better each time, eventually one of those shots will hit the bullseye. The only way you won’t hit the target is if you don’t take the shot. Some things are worth the heartache of failure. Some things you will have to fight for. And the biggest fight could be against your ego.

I’m learning that it takes humility to succeed. I wish I could be the best at everything, but I’m not. I wish I could crush everything I ever tried for the first time, but I won’t. And that’s not only okay, that is everyone’s journey. But you know what we should still do? Show up. Try again. Be vulnerable enough to go after what God has placed in your heart. Because after learning a few things and going through the fire a few times, you’ll be a champion. A beast. A baddie. But more importantly, you’ll be resilient, you’ll be less afraid of failure, and you’ll go after even greater things! So start dating failure…aka…go after the things you could possibly fail at that are worth the risk. Get familiar with it until it’s no longer a foreign, scary figure. Just don’t marry failure-because you and I? We’re still in it to win it.

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None of Your Business

If you haven’t noticed by now, I often start my blogs by filling you in on things that God woke me up out of my sleep to tell me. If it’s getting old for you, trust me, it’s getting old for me too! Like can’t we pick another time of day for deep life perspective shifts? Well a couple months ago, it happened again…a Sunday morning, sky still dark and starry, my mind not fully awake…and then I heard this question, “why do you need people to like you?”

At first, it seemed a bit random because that wasn’t anything that was currently on my mind. But I knew instinctively that He didn’t just ask a question like that for a quick response. He wanted me to go deep, to look within…at 4:30AM (womp womp). So I decided to do a self-assessment; why do I need people to like me? What is that longing that’s inside of me that wants people to see me in a certain light? Then I realized something, my desire to be liked is really based out of the fear of rejection. The idea of not being liked by the people around me is frightening because it implies that I would be rejected, isolated, and ultimately-alone. Feeling accepted, even if there is a lack of integrity attached to it, is to feel a sense of belonging and safety. How deceiving is that? The lie of “if I ensure that I’m doing everything in my power to be what someone else wants me to be, I’ll be seen, known, and loved”. But who are they seeing? How much do they really know you? And the scariest question of all-how real is that love? Love can only be as real as the people involved in it.

Then there was another thought that came to mind- basing your identity on other people’s opinions of you will never work out long term, because people and circumstances change. For example; we live in a culture now where even the most successful and celebrated people in one season can become “cancelled” in another season. However, on the flip side, no matter what people may think of you in the moment, you are the one who ultimately determines who you are, and who you’ll become. And you are the one who controls your own thoughts. If you’re currently in a mentality that believes “I don’t know who I am until somebody tells me who I am”, unfortunately, that somebody’s opinion of you can change on the drop of a dime. But even when people don’t like you, or may even have a false opinion about you, at the end of the day when you lay your head on your pillow-you still are who you are. The truth about you will not change, it always shows up. That being the case, your focus should not be on what people think about you, your focus should be on what you think about yourself. Ask yourself- “who am I?” “What is the truest version of me?” Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to say you should completely rule out people’s opinions of you when investigating yourself. For example; if the closest people in your life are all saying you’re kind of…a jerk…you probably are. Don’t worry, God and therapy can fix that. However, it is to say that we must be careful not to entirely base our beliefs about our identity on the fleeting opinions of other people.

I know in my case, there’s probably been countless times where I misjudged someone initially. Anyone else been there? And then when you actually got to experience the person and know them better, you realized you were wrong about them. Even the best of us can be wrong sometimes. That’s a clear indicator that a person’s opinion of you can change, but the truth always comes to the surface. Have you ever embarrassed yourself badly, or put yourself out there and got rejected, and never thought you would recover? Didn’t you always somehow recover with time? When we have an embarrassing moment, or experience a moment of rejection, we have to remember that they are simply just that-moments. It is the collective of many moments that make us who we are, not just one moment. We have to understand the crucial truth that rejection is an action-not an identity. How we respond to that rejection is what shapes our mindset. I’ve been guilty of allowing some rejections or perceived failures to define me-but not anymore. I challenge you to join me in daring to be all of you whether or not that brings rejection or embarrassment. Why? Because I’d rather be free and rejected than bound to the approval of others. Who we are at our highest potential as humans is remarkable. Marked for greatness. Full of power.

My husband and I are currently serving in ministry at our church, and in full transparency, I definitely want those who we serve to like me. And at the end of the day, I think it is normal for you to want people to like you. Here’s the problem; becoming a leader is literally signing yourself up to be met with either admiration or scrutiny. We’d all prefer the former. However, we have to remember that people’s opinions are so complex because people have complex lives, backgrounds, and experiences. There could be a plethora of reasons a person may or may not like you because of situations you would never even think to consider. A lot of times those opinions have absolutely nothing to do with you and absolutely everything to do with someone else or something else. Even so, opinions are so futile that they can always change. That’s why it’s better to let people’s opinions of you be their business-not yours. 

I remember when I was starting to take classes at a film school in LA. I was still a teenager, I didn’t know anyone at the school, and it was my first real footstep into the “entertainment industry”. Wrapping my head around it all on my first day, my heart beating fast and my palms sweaty, I paused outside on my way to the car for a moment. In that pause, I took a deep breath and let the sunshine caress my skin, and let my heart feel warm and full again. I realized-all that I needed or wanted, was inside of me. I knew I was loved deeply. I was seen. I had joy and laughter in my soul. After realizing those things-it was not a matter of me needing something from anyone anymore, it was about what I could bring. To that school. To those people. To the world around me. Because when you stop focusing on people’s opinions of you, and wanting their validation, you begin to not want something from them, but want something for them. 

I invite you to take the same pause whenever you feel anxious or self-conscious. Breathe. Feel your heart beat. Hug yourself. Remember the love that is already yours. Remember the God in heaven that has an incredible plan for your life. Remember that you must first be a safe space for yourself. When I did this for myself, I realized I was creating a home, a safe place, inside of me that I could always come back to no matter what happened outside of me. Starting from this foundational place of safety has made me a better sister, friend, daughter, and wife. When we can focus less on what we want people to see and more on the quality of who we really are-we will have better, deeper relationships, and therefore feel less alone. If everyone on the planet could do the work of finding validation internally-through love-imagine what a better world it would be. We would go from greedy to giving. Judging to understanding. And no one would be alone.

Will you be apart of that number?

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Leave Me Alone

“Leave me alone,” are the words that I imagine echo in the inner chasms of the modern day woman’s mind when asked for anything. I’m not saying men aren’t as busy as women, that wouldn’t be fair, I’m just speaking from my experience. There are some extra mental and emotional stresses that women in particular carry. That might get me in a little bit of trouble, but I think I’ll stand by it anyway. Allow me to give you some context surrounding my thoughts: I was finishing up my hair one day (which for a black girl with curly hair means after about 3 hours of labor) when I realized I made the mistake of promising to make dinner directly afterwards. My day had already consisted of spiritual devotion in the morning, a physical workout, mental exertion (work and life responsibilities), relational responsibilities (I have a husband and a puppy), and then I had to commence my dreaded 3 hour “hair wash day”. Not to mention, the unspoken expectation on me as a woman to be nice, and look nice in the midst of it all. Safe to say, we laid our burdens on to Doordash that night. 

Then I thought about something, something deep, something profound, something striking; if my life is busy now, imagine what it would be like with kids! I cringed at the thought of it, but after a while I challenged this narrative and idea that children are what/who to blame when your life starts to spiral out of control. I don’t think it’s exclusively a kid problem, I don’t even know if it’s more responsibilities that lead your life to spiral out of control. If you find yourself constantly stressed-and I’m not talking about occasional or normal stress, I’m talking about chronic and constant stress that causes you to gradually lose your taste for life (I’ve been there)-I want you to consider two things: 

  1. What are the external and internal expectations that you currently live with? 
  2. Are you taking advantage of the help that is available, or are you only reliant or trusting of yourself?

A wise man (my father) once told me stress is found where there is a lack of clear structure. If we are to build a sustainable life, we must first establish a sustainable structure for our lives. I  want to start with breaking down unrealistic societal expectations first. Spoiler alert: this breakdown will focus on the female experience as I feel ill equipped to speak to the male experience. However, men, please continue to read on to better understand your other halves.

From the beginning of time, the sole purpose of being a woman was thought to be: to serve her family. That meant while your husband was outside working, you were at home cooking, cleaning, and bearing and caring for the children. While the men were working, women were at home working just as hard. However, that all changed during the age of feminism. There were some women who were brave enough to be the minority by posing a new way of thinking; women are just as valuable in the workplace as men are. Women joined the workforce, became CEOs and entrepreneurs, joined the military, and more, and proved that they could be both a boss and a homemaker. If we’re keeping track, that’s two expectations, and two jobs; one full-time job as the homemaker, and now another full-time job on top of that as a breadwinner. Nothing wrong with being both, but I want us to paint a clear picture of what expectations we’re actually living with.

Now here’s the best part, currently in today’s society we have been awakened  to the idea of self-care. You may be wondering how I am about to make self care out to be a “bad” thing. It’s not that it is a bad thing, it’s that when taken out of context, it has become yet another societal pressure. The pressure is to look good, feel good, and be good all the time. It’s not enough to cook meals; you have to cook healthy. We try pescetarianism, veganism, and workout 5 days a week to maintain a 20 year old’s figure. You must keep your nail, hair, and wax appointments around the clock. You have to find a hobby to stay interesting, and you have to go to brunch with your girlfriends once a month. If you don’t do all of this, clearly you’re not living your best life. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s job number 3!

Here’s what I think makes a difference: self care is not about what’s good for everyone, it’s about what’s good for you. If getting groomed isn’t your thing, but nature is, ditch the excessive beauty appointments and spend time outdoors. If going out to brunch with friends doesn’t appeal to you, start reading a book with your friend group and have a virtual book club. I still think you should eat as healthy as you can and exercise, but you don’t have to be on Kim Kardashian’s diet and workout routine to be healthy. Look for recipes for healthier versions of the foods you like. I live in Texas so this may get me cancelled-but quit frying and start baking that chicken! If it’s seasoned and juicy, what’s the actual problem? If you hate the gym, find a way to move your body multiple times a week that is more enjoyable for you (I like long walks, dancing, and at home workouts). My point is-I think what ties us up is the unrealistic expectation that what works for another woman has to work for us. Our mothers were homemakers, so we should be able to do it without help too. Or our role models are bosses and CEO’s that still have families, so we should be able to do it all too (not realizing that they usually have a support system or even support staff in their daily lives). When we get caught up in comparison to others, we lose the joy in what works for us because we see it as less than. It’s time to let go of the unhealthy expectations of ourselves and others, and start rebuilding a more meaningful and sustainable lifestyle. But we can do none of this without the second part, which is asking for help.

This is the moment where we start to cringe. “Help? Who is that? I don’t know her,” is typically the reaction we humorously give when people ask us if we’ve asked for help when we’re overwhelmed. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the day to day busyness that “asking for help” just seems like an additional task to add to our to-do lists. It feels like a chore because of the level of strategy it takes when thinking of what would make sense for who to do what when, and the vulnerability it takes to then ask that person for the help. Not to mention the potential disappointment you’d feel if the person says no. After all of that mental and emotional exertion we become so tired considering asking for help that we never do it. The fear of rejection or “being looked down on” if we ask for help is far too common. We must also make sure that we are not looking down on others who ask for help, just because we are honestly upset with ourselves for not asking for help. It is a vicious cycle that only boomerangs around to hurt ourselves. It’s better to ask for help and be rejected until we find the right support, than to not ask at all and risk stretching ourselves too thin.

There’s a saying “it takes a village to raise a child”, well I believe it takes a village to simply be a human. At some point, whether we like it or not, we are going to have to ask someone for help on our level. For some people, help may look like hiring child care, or a cleaning company. For others it may look like asking a trusted family member or friend to watch your kids, or asking your husband to evenly split the household chores. I’ll give you one more example-on the journey of fitness, I’ve found that it is much more fun and rewarding to take on a fitness challenge with a friend group. You laugh through the pain together, encourage each other, bounce ideas off each other, and can celebrate victories. Life is much sweeter when you let people in and ask for the kind of support you need. How else can we allow ourselves to be fully seen? I encourage you today to first identify the unrealistic internal and societal pressures that are placed on you so that you can rebuild your ideal life, and then include a support system. My hope is that this new train of thought will help turn our “leave me alone” moments into “welcome to the village” moments.