So today I was finding things to avoid writing. The fear of committing ideas that sound great in your head down on paper is sometimes too much.
I’d already done,”It’s Monday – you are never fresh enough to write your best things on Mondays”
and
“No point starting now, kids are back in an hour”
So after a call from my great and wise friend Sally, in a final act of desperate uber-avoidance, I even found time for “tele…during the day”…and watched a bit of TED.
To give you a bit of background another of my great and wise friends Nikki had sent me a link to this TED talk this morning. Brene Brown. You may have heard of it as 32.7M people have seen it!
Then when I spoke to Sally this afternoon, I remembered she had sent me the same link. In 2015.
And then when avoiding writing and instead doing a “To Do” list (those of you who know me personally will know that I was really scraping the bottom of that avoidance barrel!) I wrote down “Contact Alison for feedback”. And then remembered that my great and wise friend Alison had also recommend the same TED talk, Last Year. It felt like FATE.
So as a result, I watched Brene Brown’s TED talk on Vulnerability right the way through. And forgive me, but I then binged and watched the next one on Shame too.
I know how brilliant TED talks are. I recommend them all the time. But I still feel guilty about watching them “in work time”.
Yes I know. Even though I run my own Company. Bonkers. But that’s for another day.
Anyway I “made time” to actually watch the whole 20 minutes – I’d always been “too busy – and told myself “I’m sure I have got the jist of it anyway from the bit I have read/watched/picked up…” And then another 20 minutes. Television. In broad daylight. Shocking!!
And here is what happened.
My first and second reactions were fascinating…
Reaction 1 – Oh my god, this is so brilliant. I so love it that I am learning to be vulnerable too. This is all the stuff I talk about all the time. Made real by another proper scientific researcher. Brilliant.
Reaction 2 – Oh no. Any of the millions of people who have seen this already will think I have just been ripping off her stuff all this time – they will think I have seen it already and have just been recycling someone’s ideas and style.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
My third reaction interesting and shows how much I have come on in terms of vulnerability and shame – thanks to friends like Nikki, Sally and Alison. I thought…Wow – there is a good story in those reactions. I ought to share it!
So rather than be ashamed of those reactions, I thought I’d write about them right now instead.
Please don’t do what I did and don’t watch these talks because you think you know this already. They are a real joy by a real person. But here is what I got from my TV binge.
1) If you don’t feel Vulnerable sometimes, you can’t really feel anything – joy, happiness etc.
2) If you don’t feel a sense of “not being good enough”, then you are probably a sociopath. So don’t worry about the Imposter thing – I’ve done blogs and a book chapter on “IT” as I call if if you want more info.
3) Sharing and talking about your experiences is not something to hold back on until you are “good enough” or “ready” – people want to see and hear from you as a human being – BEFORE you become a professional expert – because we all know that however much you study/do/rehearse you will never feel like a professional expert – even if you are one!
So here is my go at sharing my vulnerability, shame, imposter thinking, my suppression of my “who do you think you are” thinking that someone will want to hear your take on it Dulcie.
And finally my hope. That in sharing it, you might watch and share it too.
A final thought. I would have gone and have some wine so as not to think about my shame, vulnerability and imposter thinking, if the first video didn’t expressly talk about that being a really good way to numb and avoid those feeling.
Bollocks. Some people really do know what they are talking about!!
