Welcome back, friends. You're tuned into Weirdos in the Workplace. The podcast that celebrates authenticity, passion, and purpose in our world of work.
I'm your host, Erin Patchell, and today we embark on the journey, exploring how we become who we need to be in order to reach our goals. Are you willing to get addicted to discomfort in progress?
Stay tuned.
Imagine a world where we possess the power to transform ourselves into the person we aspire to be. It's an exhilarating prospect. And for many of us.
In the personal development space, it is reality, and for most of us in the personal development space, before we made that jump, it was an impossibility.
So how do we navigate the intricate psychology of change and personal change?
Today we're going to dive into the nuances and uncover some secrets that will help both of us continue our transformations.
First, let's get personal. Have you ever had an aha moment?
I really hope the answer is yes.
So let me start by saying that my memory is terrible. Honestly, it's so terrible that it is nearly legendary, and it took me until my 30s to really understand how I was wired enough to start making real progress instead of treading water and to build the systems, structure, and discipline around me to make that happen. So, it took a significant amount of work to even get to that point where I was not just treading water but making progress. But once I did, it was finally like the stone, the stone was rolling downhill rather than me trying to carry it uphill, I was finally working with my strengths rather than against them.
Long story short, the discomfort of forward personal development is only sometimes comfortable. Still, it is infinitely more satisfying than the discomfort of being in that vicious circle of self-loathing, shame, and self-sabotage.
Each critical “aha” moment in my journey leaves an indelible mark on my identity, guiding me toward the person I need to become to make a positive and increasingly positive impact on the world around me.
Let me tell you a little story.
By the time I was 11 or 12 years old, it became very evident to the people around me that I was either naturally numb to my feelings and the feelings of the people around me. Or I had dissociated so much that there was a total block, and I had no idea how to respond to emotional situations.
It was becoming a really big social problem.
And one day, my best friend's mom sat me down, and she told me Erin, as long as you can logically understand how you should react in these situations, then you can pretend you can fake it till you make it. Essentially is what she was telling me and making that OK for me. And to clarify, these are situations where I was being bullied. They were not good; I wouldn't know how to react when someone was upset like they were.
They were traumatic situations, and I just sort of completely dissociated, and so it was actually an unhealthy way of adopting. It was a maladaptation, and I did need to figure out a way to hack myself out of that because at that age, you know, and back then, this was, you know, how old am I? This was 30 years ago, almost.
Back then, you know, kids didn't really see psychologists and things like that. It's changed dramatically in the last 30 years.
So really, we were on our own. And so, my friend's mom essentially taught me how to fake it till I made it, and that day was one of the 1st extremely clear aha moments of my life. From that day forward, my obsession became understanding myself and other people to change myself back into a person who could be engaging and worthy of a community because that was something I really desired for myself.
Do you think it's strange that for all my preaching about authenticity, my personal journey started with acting, which doesn't seem very authentic?
The thing is, authenticity isn't about who you are right now. On the surface, it's about who you are deep down inside yourself. It's the secret kernel of possibility, hope and potential that you have buried down so deeply that you barely even want to admit that those desires exist. We might bury that potential for many reasons, but it often comes down to cultural or family values.
The illusion of practicality. Some defiance within us, not having the right support systems around us to grow that spark into a raging fire. The person whom we become by accident.
Through our experiences, for better or worse, I don't think that's our authentic selves at all. I imagine my old self before I began to really try and continue to try before and over again and fail and try and fail and try.
That person was sort of like a boat adrift on the sea with no captain navigation, no sails, no letter, no tiller, nothing, just an empty hull drifting from place to place.
Place, you know, feeling just lucky to be staying afloat.
And The thing is, almost everything that comes with actualizing your potential can either be cultivated or learned. You can build and rebuild yourself as you see fit, and it won't happen overnight, but each tiny step in the right direction accumulates compound interest.
All we got to do is get over the barriers. You know it's simple, no, it's not simple, but you know it is worthwhile, and that's the point.
Those external factors and expectations that, over time, become internal factors and expectations conform to societal pressures, cultural norms, and expectations of others—eventually, the expectations of ourselves.
We may have been born with more limited resources and possibilities, and that's a real barrier for a lot of people.
But what I say is that ideas are free. Let yourself dream in a public way and start with small, consistent steps and keep going forward. If you're public about your dreams, you'll find the allies that you need.
Along the way, I can tell you that from personal experience.
Staying inside the comfort zone because it feels safe and familiar, fear of failure, and maybe even more often, sometimes fear of success. It can be overwhelming to think about the energy successful people need to spend on maintaining that success. That gap is even more of a chasm that that idea, that fear of success, is even more dramatic if you're in survival mode. Because right now, if you're in survival mode.
You can barely sustain your current energy level at your current level of success.
The idea of expanding, being successful and expending much more energy is, like, impossibly exhausting.
So, for many of us, the clarity of purpose comes from experience, built gradually over time. Two things overcome almost every obstacle, discipline and time.
With enough discipline and enough time, anyone can do anything they want. I'm a fan of the incremental approach, taking things down to the smallest possible useful steps and slowly building. And I'm constantly preaching this because sometimes that new identity, as I said, the new identity you're imagining, is so far removed from your current identity that that transformation seems almost impossible.
Have you ever had a dream at night that you were totally a different person? And then, one day, you wake up and have an intense deja vu?
So, when I was around 18 years old, right out of high school, I dreamed I was a mom and had many kids running around. I lived in a nice house with a big backyard and a fence around it, and we were hosting some parties.
In my dream, my life felt completely normal, joyful, and peaceful, even with the kids laughing and running around like lunatics. The BBQ fired up, you know, burgers on the barbecue and that smell. When I woke back up to my life at 18 years old, not even out of high school, it seemed completely preposterous.
It was.
It was ridiculous. I had no plan in the book of my life—literally just never-ending blank pages. I didn't have a partner at the time. I didn't even like kids.
At 18, there was. I had like this dark, overwhelming darkness and a weight on my soul that it never felt like I'd feel that hope, comfort, or success.
So Fast forward to 8 years later, I was in my real life. After eight years of sitting in my backyard of our second home, an older house in town with five bedrooms and a big backyard, and our family and friends laughing and telling stories. And my three kids and their cousins and friends were running around like crazy lunatics, and the moment my husband fired up that barbecue and the smell of that BBQ hit.
It was all of a sudden, like in the movies. When time slowed, and I took a moment to observe my reality, I suddenly had the most powerful sense of deja vu.
So was my dream of premonition, or did I cultivate this? Maybe we'll never know. But I can tell you that my life changed so quickly and dramatically in only eight years.
Yet as I lived through it, it felt very incremental and slow, and many challenges had ups and downs.
I lived those eight years almost exclusively outside my comfort zone, through college, navigating complex relationships, and depression, through the pregnancy of birth of three kids, marriage, home ownership, and uncovering and detangling my identity. Who am I as a person, mother, and friend?
As a wife through illness, I was also quite ill in my 20s. My journey to discovering my purpose outside of my family only started after all of this when I began working with professionals seeking leadership development when I was 30. I realized that healthy people are looking for something to belong to that makes them feel safe but challenges them.
That gives us hope and helps us realize our potential; we're holding these two ideas simultaneously. The idea is that I can look at the everyday beauty of my life and how wondrous it truly is.
While some simultaneously want something more profound and to bring the people around me whom I love on this journey at whatever speed is right for them. So I'm here to tell you, you weirdo.
That the courage to become fuller is something that you can cultivate over time that we're all cultivating over time.
So, listening to podcasts, reading books, and researching the path that you're thinking about, not everything has to be a revolution. Don't let it be a revolution. Revolutions start and tend to stop and fizzle out. Let it be an evolution. Start cultivating the people around you who will support you. Don't isolate yourself. Reach out all of a sudden. One day you'll realize you're ready to shed that old identity, and it'll feel like a rebirth.
So how do we reframe fear as excitement? I challenge you to notice those sensations in your body and explore them when you feel resistance or anger.
See if you can play a game with yourself to do the opposite of what your body is telling you to do.
Of course, there's that fine line between legitimately protecting yourself from harm and the grained instincts to avoid emotional discomfort.
So that's important to recognize one from the other like, you know, recognizing the difference between those uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty, unease and ingrained. Biases versus the important frameworks we've created, probably to protect ourselves from harm.
Practicing self-compassion and seeking support and accountability, reflecting and celebrating progress, reflecting and celebrating progress, something we all forget to do. Make sure that even if it's a small milestone, you recognize that it's a milestone. Look back, and it is, you know, look back at the progress and celebrate it if you can. At the heart of personal transformation lies goal setting and strategic planning. But it's not the kind of thing I mean.
You can set goals and try to reach them earlier in this process, but you'll find that you may not reach them, and that's OK. Setting very, very tiny incremental goals is the key. If you need to reach your goals, make them smaller.
It does provide direction, acts as a powerful compass, and helps us tune-up that noise. So clear objectives grant us that focus and clarity, but if you find that you need to hit those goals, make them tinier—tiny, tiny, tiny goals.
As Socrates once said, an unexamined life is not worth living. By reflecting on our experiences and understanding our nature on a deep and profound level, we can chart a course that aligns with our authentic selves.
If you've experienced a remarkable journey in your life, I'd love to share your story. Connect with me at erin@positivist.ca.
As we knew by the end of today's episode, I want to express my utmost gratitude to all of you seeking personal growth and leaning into this uncomfortable process. And remember, you possess the power to become the person you need to be. Let me leave you with an inspiring quote from the renowned entrepreneur and inventor, Thomas Edison: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
Thanks for joining us on episode 17 of Weirdos in the Workplace.
Stay curious, stay authentic, and most of all, don’t stay out of trouble.
