A Take on Showing Up
I was recently listening to a story about the power of showing up.
The story was being told by Michelle Obama in her book, “Becoming,” which I – months after most people – am listening to. She recalls the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses when her hometown people started showing up to support the Obamas. She describes family, friends, and colleagues making the trek to do what they could, to say with their presence: You got this. I felt how moved she was by the people she cared about turning out for something that mattered. As I listened, I got the image of a powerful force field created by their love and support, by their decision to show up. It brought tears to my eyes, and I thought, more of THAT, please.
Many of us do a good job showing up for others: we go to kids’ sports and choir events, visit family on important holidays, call friends on their birthdays or when they’re struggling.
But I feel compelled to ask: how well do we show up for ourselves? When you do things that matter in your life, do you activate your own force field?
When I take an action or consider speaking up, do I bring that positive energy of it mattering and believing along with me? Sometimes, yes. But often, I bring a team of hecklers along too – you know, the ones that live in our minds, at the ready with messages of doubt and staying quiet and fitting in.
We say to others: you’re either with me or against me. And I get that is sometimes overly simplistic. But what if that were true internally: you are either with yourself – or you’re operating against you. If you aren’t showing up with love and empathy for yourself, when the hecklers take over – it’s the equivalent of going it alone. As alone as it gets – because you’re abandoning yourself.
What would it feel like if we could generate within ourselves a force field of positive support and believing? What if we could take a sword to the hecklers and banish them from the room?
What if your inner voice ALWAYS said, You got this.
That would be a powerful place to live. I want more of THAT.
If you’d like to learn how to quiet your hecklers through coaching, please contact me.