What I Am Learning from the Three Bears
The fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears seems to promise somehow that we’ll get it right on the third try. (There may also be lessons in there about breaking and entering and playing with bears, but that’s not for today).
I don’t know about the third try, but there is something there about calibration and identifying your “too hot!” and “too cold” as it relates to porridge as well as life. It came up for me recently with a skill I am striving to build: learning how to ouch out loud.
Yesterday, I got stuck while writing an email. It should have been a simple response to someone I know who wanted to connect with me about the nonprofit world. But something about her invitation pinged me based on a recent interaction that hurt my feelings. I want to meet with her, but I also want not to step over my “ouch.”
I tried composing something. I really didn’t want to sound victim-y, an energy that can flow generously in my life and through the world at large these days as we constantly sit with all we can’t do. How not to evoke the impotent energy of my 5th grade, you didn’t invite me to your birthday party, self? It almost seemed preferable to say nothing. That would be the equivalent of Goldilocks in the “too soft” bed or “too cold” porridge.
But I really didn’t want to step over it. So, I wrote a draft email. It felt off, so I showed it to a friend who told me it was solidly in the “too hard!” place. In my quest not to sound too wounded, I ended up instead with a tone of punishing, almost mean. I didn’t hit send, but had we been live, it would have felt a lot like starting an argument.
If “too soft” is silence and “too hard” is mean, then how can we find our “just right” when we try to speak our anger or pain?
Calibration is hard.
A couple starting points for me as I look for my “just right”:
1. This goes better when I don’t take things personally. This person certainly hadn’t set out to hurt me and wasn’t actually in my 5th grade class. Remembering that helps.
2. If I open with vulnerability, it’s going to go better.
3. Respond in real time when possible. I didn’t, and that made the email complicated instead of clean.
Interested in calibrating towards your “just right”? Reach out for some support in your journey towards calibration.