You Are Already Worthy
I am reading a really great book right now called The Gifts of Imperfection. I recently moved the South Shore Team to Compass Realty and joined a group called the “Compass 6AMERS” for accountability and to provide some motivation. We have to get up each day before 6 and complete some tasks, including reading a book selected by the group each month, attend some virtual 6am meetings, track our goals, suffer some accountability from the group and so on.
Do you feel constantly pressured to be “Perfect” even though you know that, rationally, no one is perfect. You are fully aware you are holding yourself to a higher standard than is scientifically possible but you do it anyway? The book discusses the root cause of this feeling being SHAME. Most of us suffer from some sort of shame but we perfectionists manifest it by using it as motivation for doing some really impressive things. Things that most people would look to from the outside as incredible accomplishments on their own, but to the person doing these things they need to be seen for what they are: A manifestation of shame.
Shame needs to be re-defined. It is not something you feel after doing something wrong. That is guilt. You should feel guilt if you do something wrong. Shame is a feeling of unworthiness. It is the feeling that you are not adequate or worthy of belonging or accomplishing things just because you are you.
I will tell my own story here. I came from a childhood of parents who I believed loved my siblings and I but did not know how to love themselves. There was constant conflict, arguing, trouble with money and this contributed to what I can now describe as just a constant feeling of chaos and instability.
Shame, as it has manifested in my life, means that I need to show others that I am not like my family. I am worthy. I can serve in the military, go to war, not only attend college but get multiple graduate degrees and certificates. I can do crazy things that I ultimately realized I had no real interest in such as become a police officer, then quit that and launch a successful real estate business.
Again, to the outsider, these can all be seen as good things. “LOCAL BOY SERVES COUNTRY AND USES GI BILL TO OBTAIN HIGHEST LEVEL OF EDUCATION IN HIS FAMILY.” The headlines almost write themselves. But these things are not done from a place of goal setting and accomplishment, they are done from a place of running from my past, fear and shame. I am simply trying to prove to all of you, and to myself, and to what is now only a caricature in my mind of my parents that I am worthy, though if they were still around would most certainly tell me I was completely imagining the pressure they were putting on me and that they were proud of me. My rational brain tells me they would be speaking their truth and that they would have been proud of me and supportive of me no matter what path I took and that these feelings are simply a manifestation of the instability I felt in my younger years, but the feelings still exist.
I have spoken to many people like me, who by all accounts are successful at what they do. The real estate industry has a failure rate of near 90% so the level of business we do is an accomplishment in our industry. These are some of the highest performers around. One thing that I constantly hear about (and feel myself) is impostor syndrome. This is just another name for what I am describing.
The thing that I must learn to embrace and that my fellow shame based perfectionists must embrace is that we are already worthy. We do not need to close that next big deal, get that next degree, win the next game, earn our first, second or third million…those things are not going to create worthiness…because we were worthy when we took our first breath. Worthiness is just something you have, not something you earn.
As I move forward in life I intend to adopt a higher level understanding of where the desire to achieve comes from. Sometimes it is coming from a healthy place, a legitimate desire to improve my life and my family’s lives. But, in a sinister way, it is sometimes shame that is driving the work. How do you know which is which? You have to be able to ask yourself, “If I meet this goal, is this something I really want?” “Will my life be better if I succeed at this?” If you really want it, great, if you can’t answer these questions unequivocally, then it might be shame driving your actions.
The author Brene Brown suggests we ask the following questions to determine whether or not it is shame motivating us:
1. Who do you become when you’re backed into that shame corner?
2. How do you protect yourself?
3. Who do you call to work through the mean-nasties or the cry-n-hides or the people-pleasing?
4. What’s the most courageous thing you could do for yourself when you feel small and hurt?
Can you answer these questions when confronted with the uncertainty you likely often feel (I know this because I feel that too)? I challenge you to accept the refined definition of shame above and apply it to parts of your life where you feel pressured to be perfect. Does any of this apply to you?
