I think that, to some degree, we all have a love/hate relationship with being seen — with letting another person see all the parts that make up who we are, whether it’s our joy, anger, grief, ambition, or something else.

On the downside, if we show the other person parts we usually keep hidden, and they leave, we’ll feel hurt.  The more of ourselves we let them see, the more pain we’ll experience if they decide not to be with us.

On the plus side, the more of ourselves we allow others to see, the more it’s possible for them to “love us for who we are” — for them to embrace all of our parts, no matter how unique or socially unacceptable those parts may seem.  I think most of us crave this kind of love, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.

The “Unvarnished You” Is a Gift

So, being seen is both risky and potentially rewarding — that much, I think most of us understand.  What we don’t grasp as often, I think, is that letting ourselves be seen can also be rewarding for the person we’re with.  Giving them a glimpse of who we are, beneath the polite, competent “social mask,” can be a gift in itself.

I know that, when I’m with another person, and they become willing to show me a part of themselves they usually conceal, my body suddenly feels relaxed and alive.  It’s as if they satisfy a yearning I didn’t even know I harbored until that moment.

This happens even if the part they show me is typically seen as “negative” or unwelcome in our culture.  For instance, although we tend to see anger as a “negative emotion,” it’s such a relief for me when someone who normally holds up a pleasant and even-tempered façade gives me a blast of their fierceness.  When I’m with a woman who does this, it’s often a turn-on. 

The Pain of “Relationships” Without Relating

Of course, the idea that just letting someone deeply see us can be a gift flies in the face of the conventional wisdom.  In our society, the “value” we offer each other depends on our accomplishments, possessions and appearance — how much money we make, how “hot” our bodies are, and so on.  Conversation isn’t about seeing and being seen — it’s about communicating our “selling points.”

I suspect this way of thinking is the reason so many of us are dissatisfied with the relationships — “intimate” and otherwise — in our lives, no matter how “successful” our peers say we are.  Of course we feel unloved and unappreciated — because we aren’t letting anyone see us, we aren’t allowing anyone to love us for who we are.

We think working on our credentials, possessions and looks will make us “stand out” and get noticed, but there are plenty of people with all of those things (many of whom are unhappy).  What’s rare, in my experience, is a person who’s willing to give me the gift of who they truly are.

Yes, it feels vulnerable to let someone see us — “negative” and “unacceptable” parts and all.  But opening ourselves in this way, I think, allows us to be genuinely appreciated, and can be a liberating experience for people we’re with as well.

I didn’t predict that I’d write a third part in this series, but as I continue thinking about this book (Robert Masters’ Spiritual Bypassing), more and more important awareness comes up that I want to share.

I think one of the most important points Robert makes is that we suffer a lot less in life when we stop “expecting spirituality to make us feel better.”  But spirituality isn’t the only area where it’s helpful to drop that expectation, Robert says.  We’ll also reduce our suffering when we release our careers, relationships, and basically everything else from the obligation to “pick us up when we’re down.”

The Painful Pursuit of Pick-Me-Ups

This way of looking at life was hard for me to wrap my mind around when I first came across it.  It’s very alien to the way we live in our culture.  I think most of us learned, practically from birth, that life is all about looking for “pick-me-ups.”

You “feel bad,” we’re taught, when you aren’t making enough money, you haven’t “found the one,” you haven’t “obeyed” “Rule #1 for a flat stomach,” or you don’t have some other person or thing.  But if you try hard enough, the story goes, you’ll acquire the “right” people and things, and you’ll never “feel bad” again.

This isn’t true only when it comes to jobs and relationships.  Most of us also think this way when it comes to “minor” pursuits.  Take blogging.  How many of us are in the habit of surfing blogs looking for a “pick me up” — for inspiring words, snark, or grammatically challenged kittens to “make us feel better”?

To many of us, I think, this model of “life as a perpetual quest for pick-me-ups” seems like the only possible way to live.  It doesn’t occur to us that anything else is available.  But what Robert, and spiritual practice at its best, offer us is a radical challenge to the conventional wisdom.

A “Veggie Connoisseur” Approach to Living

What if, instead of scouring the blogosphere for pick-me-ups whenever we’re “feeling bad” — tense, sluggish, sad, or something else — we chose to sit and get intimate with that feeling?  What if we got in the habit of turning our attention toward those unwelcome sensations, rather than seeing them as a problem and frantically grasping for the mouse when they arise?

This practice, I think, is somewhat like becoming a “connoisseur” of emotions and sensations, as if they were different kinds of wine.  Each feeling that comes up in the body has its own unique “bouquet” — whether it’s tart, sweet, sharp, “dusky,” or something else.  Of course, it’s a little different from wine tasting, because we don’t get to choose the sensations we feel.  But that’s all part of the variety.

Another good analogy would be Patricia’s story about getting random baskets of vegetables from her agriculture co-op.  Sometimes, she can’t even tell what kinds of veggies they are.  But being an adventurous spirit, she eats them anyway.

This sounds more fun to me than eating asparagus, or even something exotic-sounding like bok choy or jicama, every week.  What if we did the same when it comes to our emotions — welcoming each of them as if it were an intriguing new veggie that just arrived on the doorstep?

When we let go of our need to “fix” our “bad feelings,” I think, and instead learn to savor every experience that comes our way, we’re doing spiritual work in its highest form.  As Robert puts it, “spirituality ultimately means no escape, no need for escape, and utter freedom through limitation and every sort of difficulty.”

(This is Part 2 of my review of Spiritual Bypassing by Robert Augustus Masters.  You can view Part 1 here, and you can also buy it through this pure-as-driven-snow non-affiliate link.)

For a long time, I harbored a belief that came from reading and listening to spiritual teachers.  The belief was that, when I feel upset, the best practice is to just “sit with the feeling” — to tune into the sensations in my body, and just let them pass away.  Don’t “react” to the upset by immediately lashing out at someone.

This kind of practice has done wonders for me when I’ve used it in meditation.  It’s helped me understand that, when I’m doing something solitary, I don’t need to run away from my task whenever a difficult thought or feeling comes up.  However, it was actually harmful for me to practice this while talking to another person.

Why?  Because my natural tendency, since long before I did any spiritual practice, has been to hold back my hurt or anger when I’m with someone, and try instead to understand what they’re going through. 

I’d tell myself I was doing this out of concern for the other person, and sometimes this was true.  But sometimes it wasn’t — instead, it was because I was afraid of how they’d react if I told them how I felt.

When I discovered the spiritual practice of “not reacting,” I started using it as an excuse for my habit of avoiding conflict.  “Oh, it’s not because I’m afraid of hurting them or making them mad,” I’d tell myself.  “I’m just ’sitting with the feeling,’ like I would in meditation.”

In other words, spirituality — at least, in this case — actually enabled my immature way of relating to the world, instead of helping me let go of it.

Anger Can Be Compassionate

A major theme of Spiritual Bypassing is how spiritual practice can sometimes enable unhealthy behaviors, and actually retard our personal growth.  The story I just told is a good example of what Robert calls “blind compassion.”

“Those of us who practice blind compassion,” writes Robert, “generally spiritualize our misguided tolerance and aversion to confrontation, confusing being loving with putting up with whatever anyone does and never judging them, no matter what.”  Not only does this allow others to abuse us, but more importantly, it isn’t really compassionate toward them.

Sometimes, as Robert points out, we need our anger to get a compassionate message across.  If I’m yelling at you and putting you down, for example, it may not help me for you to respond in a soft, understanding way.  If you tell me “it sounds like you’re angry, and I get where you’re coming from,” I may decide — in my self-righteous rage — that I’m “winning,” and press the attack.

But suppose, says Robert, that you instead “meet me with a force of equivalent intensity, stopping me in my tracks with a ‘Stop!’ that is as fiery as it is caring.”  If you do this, “you might not appear caring,” but “I can feel it as you interrupt my neurotic ritual.” 

In other words, the intensity you bring can actually help me see how much you care, and snap me out of my old habit of being mean to control my environment.

So What’s Left?

This isn’t to say that spiritual practice is always harmful.  In my view, spirituality, and maybe personal development generally, are really about getting intimate with, and getting access to, all parts of ourselves – what Robert calls “the cultivation of intimacy with all that we are.”

If we’re afraid of our anger, for instance, our spiritual practices can help us to fully allow that fear and speak our truth, rather than fleeing from the fear as we usually would.  Some people, on the other hand, have no trouble getting angry, but expressing affection feels “weak” or “cheesy” to them — and spiritual practice can help them to fully allow that feeling of cheesiness and give somebody a hug. 

I’d definitely recommend this book, especially if you’ve wondered (as I have) how to integrate your spiritual practice into the rest of your life in a healthy way.

You may recall I wrote a while back about my recurring “critic fantasy,” which involved a man getting up while I was giving a talk, and yelling that my book had nothing to offer. 

Well, last week, a man actually did approach me after a speaking engagement and tell me my work had nothing to offer!  Oops — perhaps I attracted this situation by “putting it out to the universe” on my blog!  (More on the law of attraction in a moment.)

I didn’t find myself freaked out by the odd synchronicity, although I did feel a mild irritation at being misunderstood.  This was because the man’s rant didn’t seem to deal with what I actually said, but instead with his preconceived notions of what people who talk about “spiritual” stuff say.

Roughly, his complaints went like “all this stuff about ‘making yourself happy’ and ‘creating a Rolls-Royce by thinking about it’ and so on is garbage.”  However, I didn’t talk about either of those.  First of all, I only teach about manifesting Lamborghinis — if you want a Rolls, you need a different guru.

No “Magical Manifesting Mastery” Here

Just kidding — I don’t talk about “manifesting” anything.  In fact, I later realized I was, in a (limited) way, thankful to the man for helping me clarify what my work is really about.  The work I do is about relating to the thoughts and sensations that are already there in our experience, not attracting or creating something to take their place.

One of my biggest inspirations in following this path has been the work of psychotherapist Robert Augustus Masters.  Some might say this inspiration borders on obsession — I even flew from California to Boulder, CO to take Robert’s workshop.  Robert, if you’re reading this, don’t worry — I don’t have your home address.

But here I am joking around, when I’m actually here to review Robert’s latest book, Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters (not an affiliate link).

What Is Spiritual Bypassing?

Spiritual bypassing, to Masters, means “the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs.”  Basically, when we learn that getting the “right” job, relationship, car, or something else isn’t going to heal our pain, we turn to spiritual practices, hoping they’ll quell our “bad feelings” at last.

Often, unfortunately, we don’t find the relief we’re looking for.  For example, some people (as I used to do) think meditation is supposed to involve feeling peaceful and perhaps even blissful.

But if they get deeply into it, they discover that it isn’t like that at all — in fact, when we switch off all the noise we’re usually surrounded by, and sit quietly, the pain we’ve been shutting out often comes through loud and clear.  And that’s when we start griping that meditation “doesn’t work.”

Spiritual Sedation

On the other hand, some of us do find tranquility in meditation and similar practices, but then we start using those practices to shut out emotions and sensations we don’t want to be with – as Masters puts it, to “find a safety from the more brutal dimensions of life that we crave.”  If we feel angry, for instance, and we see anger as a “negative emotion” we “shouldn’t be having,” perhaps we’ll meditate to numb the feeling.

The trouble is that feeling angry can serve us at times in life.  If we need to protect ourselves against an attacker, or say a firm “no” to someone who’s demanding a lot of our time and energy, anger can fuel us to take decisive, effective action.  Thus, sedating our anger and other “bad feelings” with spirituality (or anything else) can be harmful.

What’s Spirituality Good For?

This isn’t to say that spiritual practice has no benefits.  In fact, says Masters, spiritual practice can serve us by helping us get more comfortable and familiar with our pain, rather than running from it.  “Contrary to what we tend to believe,” he writes, “the more intimate we are with our pain, the less we suffer.”

This kind of statement was hard for me to believe before I experienced the truth of it myself.  Like many people, when I began meditating, I felt really bored, and when the boredom got intense enough I’d simply stop.  Eventually, inspired by teachers like Robert, I focused my attention on the boredom and just allowed it to arise.

As I did this, the boredom became easier and easier to be with — and, as I often describe, this had practical benefits in my life, such as helping me focus on a project I was doing for a long period of time even if I felt bored.

And on that note, look at the word count!  Looks like I’d best put the rest of my review of this important book into a second post.  Stay tuned!

Do you ever notice yourself doing “spiritual bypassing”?  What feelings do you use spiritual practice to get away from?

I’ve been doing a lot of speaking recently to groups of job-seeking professionals (one reason I’ve been MIA on the internet for two weeks), and predictably I tend to get questions about dealing with job interview anxiety.

But if I get the chance to explore the issue more deeply with people, I often find that they’re not really interested in reducing their anxiety.  Instead, they want to convince the interviewer they aren’t anxious.

I usually discover this when someone asks a question about interview anxiety, and I respond with some ideas from meditation and yoga, like bringing your attention into the body, noticing where you’re restricting your breathing, and so on.  They then give me a puzzled look, and say “but don’t you have any practical advice?”

When I ask what they mean by practical advice, they’ll reply “you know, things like how I should spin bad stuff on my resume, how long I should spend answering a question,” and so on.  In other words, what they really want to know is how to look like a confident, competent person.  Their own feelings aren’t important — only the interviewer’s view of them matters.

Image Obsession Creates Anxiety

I think this attitude is in keeping with the conventional wisdom in our culture.  For any situation in life involving “selling yourself” — marketing, interviewing for jobs, dating, or something else — most advice out there is about “making” people have the “right” thoughts and feelings about you.

The trouble is, in my experience, this attitude is actually a big source of anxiety.  The more deeply we’re concerned about our image, the more scary and exhausting relating with people becomes.

For example, suppose you went into a job interview having memorized ten questions you’re “supposed” to ask, five “confident body language” tips, seven “interview mistakes” to avoid, and so on.  Wouldn’t trying to remember and follow all these rules create stress for you?

But that’s not all — suppose you also went into the interview believing that “how I feel doesn’t matter — only this interviewer’s feelings about me are important.”  In other words, your sense of self-worth is riding on the interviewer’s opinion of you.  Don’t you think that might cause some freak-out as well?

What Do You Want?

So, if memorizing a lot of interviewing tips and obsessing over your image isn’t the key to overcoming interview anxiety, what is?  I think all the techniques I usually talk about regarding breathing, focusing your attention, and so on are wonderful, but here’s an even more basic starting point:  try focusing on what you feel and want.

That is, instead of going into the interview worrying about what the interviewer will think, see if you can get curious about questions like:  is this job in keeping with my career goals?  Does this seem like the kind of working environment I’d enjoy?  What would I need to know to feel comfortable taking this job?

If you’re in the job market, one thing I think you’ll immediately notice about this attitude is that it actually allows you to have an informative, and even enjoyable, dialogue with the interviewer.  Focusing on what you want out of the job helps you to ask questions you’re actually curious about, rather than parroting canned questions from some interviewing book that don’t really matter to you.

Although I’ve been talking about job interviewing, I think the attitude I’ve discussed is useful for any “selling yourself” situation.  I’ve found that focusing on our own wants and feelings, rather than getting caught up in strategies for manipulating others’ experience, can help make these situations easier to endure, and maybe even fun.

In the last post in this series, we talked about how developing the ability to say “no,” and protect our time, is important for making the kind of progress we want in our creative work.

In this post, I’ll discuss how it can help our creativity to set another kind of boundary — to stop blaming ourselves for how others experience the world.

As I’m sure you’ve learned firsthand, when we let people see our creative work, we risk getting criticized.  But criticism by itself, I think, isn’t a problem.  It only becomes problematic when we take responsibility for the critic’s suffering and anger.

My Criticism Fantasy

I’ll give you an example from my own life.  While I was writing my book, I had a nagging tendency to imagine ways people might attack it.  A very specific “worst-case scenario” kept coming to mind.

The scenario involved me speaking at a bookstore.  During the question and answer period, a man stands up and launches into a tirade.  “This book doesn’t solve any real problems,” he shouts.  “I’ve got two kids, a wife and a mortgage, and no job — how does this book help me with that?”

I thought for a while about why I kept imagining this situation, and why it seemed troubling to me.  Eventually, I realized the problem was that I was taking responsibility for my fictitious critic’s suffering.

In other words, this man was basically blaming me for his situation and his emotional distress, and I was buying into his story.  But in “reality,” I didn’t create his financial problems, abuse him as a child, or do anything except tell him about my book.  When I recognized that, my body suddenly relaxed — tension I hadn’t noticed before melted away — and the fantasy no longer seemed so worrisome.

Releasing Your Responsibility

I’ve found that this kind of fantasizing is common among people who are having trouble putting their creative work “out there.”  Often, these are compassionate, empathic people.  They want to heal others’ suffering — not bring more into the world.

Unfortunately, people with this mentality (myself included, sometimes) also tend to have an exaggerated sense of responsibility for how others feel.  If someone else is hurt, they assume, I must have hurt them, and it’s my job to make it better.

The paradox is that this attitude actually prevents people from playing the healing role they desire.  Their fear of hurting others causes them to shrink away from giving their gifts to the world.  If they wrote that book or started that business, they think, somebody might get mad, and then the world would be worse off.

The key, I think, is to recognize that it’s possible to care about people without “merging” with them – without taking all of their hurt, suffering and fear upon ourselves.  Breathing deeply, and sensing the pressure of our feet against the ground, I think, is a helpful way to remember our separateness from others, and our solidity in the face of their upset and distress.

I know this was a liberating realization for me, and I hope it also helps you find the sense of ease and flow you may be seeking in your work.

I’ve just published a guest post at The Change Blog called “Letting Go Of Your Ego At Work,” which addresses the puzzling question:  why is it that, when we’re doing something that’s deeply important to us, we actually tend to procrastinate the most?

I hope you enjoy it and that you had a great weekend.

Human beings exist on at least two levels, and I think we’re happiest and most fulfilled when we stay conscious of both of them.  The two levels I’m talking about are:

1.  Everything Matters.  On one level of reality, lots of things in life matter a lot.  You are a body that needs constant care and feeding.  It’s extremely important that you succeed in your career, relationships and so on.  You have a nearly infinite number of wants and needs.

2.  Nothing Matters.  At another level, nothing is important.  You are not simply a body, because the distinction between “you” and “the rest of the world” is arbitrary and artificial.  You are everything that is, and you are changeless and eternal.  The idea that you could “need” or “want” anything is meaningless.

Most of Us Live at Level 1

I suspect we’ve all experienced, at one point or another, these two levels of reality.  However, most of us feel uneasy acknowledging that Level 2 — where nothing matters — exists, so we shut it out.

After all, if we admitted there’s a sense in which nothing matters, what would that do to our work ethic?  Perhaps we’d kick back on the couch with a beer and the remote, and never get up again except to buy more beer.  Or maybe we’d take a more “spiritual” tack, and spend the rest of our lives handing out flowers in airports.

There certainly are people who live this way.  In many cultures, people who live entirely in the changeless, eternal realm, where nothing matters, are common and accepted.

If you travel in India, you’ll likely see saints who have freely chosen to give up their belongings and live as beggars.  Russia has a long tradition of “holy fools” in deep communion with God but incapable of basic daily tasks.  Unless you want this kind of existence, living entirely at Level 2 probably isn’t for you.

The Laments of Level 1 Living

On the other hand, going through life as if Level 2 doesn’t exist also has a cost.  Spending our whole lives feeling incomplete, constantly wanting this and needing that, keeps us exhausted and fearful.

The most painful part of this way of living is that, because there’s always more we can have, we’re never satisfied.  I’m reminded of some wealthy ex-neighbors whose house was under constant remodeling, and whose yard was eternally full of bulldozers and mounds of dirt — yet no amount of landscaping seemed to please them.

It’s All Good

I see my work as meant to help people stay conscious of both levels of reality as they walk through the world.  Because most people in the U.S., I think it’s safe to say, are wrapped up in the level where everything is a huge, stressful deal all the time, I tend to focus on helping people acknowledge the level where nothing’s that important.

For instance, if someone feels paralyzed with anxiety each time they sit down to work on an important project, I may invite them to do exercises to get back in touch with the level where nothing, including the project, is important.  Perhaps I’ll have them breathe deeply, and sense the pressure of their feet against the ground, and the feeling of stability that sensation can bring.

The paradox is that, when we keep ourselves aware of both levels, we actually function better in the day-to-day, humdrum, routine world.  If we see a project as a matter of life and death, it makes sense that working on it will be a scary experience.  But if we stay conscious that a mistake or setback in the project won’t destroy us, we find more ease and even joy in our work.

So, yes, there’s a way in which nothing really matters — and I think that’s a wonderful thing.

Just wanted to keep you all updated on the state of play here at Edgar HQ and on Edgar Force One — I can’t say which one I’m at right now for national security reasons: 

New Bay Area Meetup

I’ve started a Meetup group in San Jose, California, which I’m using to offer free evening events on finding focus, motivation and peace in your work.  I’m excited about the next meeting, which will be on Monday, June 28, because yoga teacher Rosy Moon, who co-leads my full-day intensive workshop, will be joining me.

We’ll be talking about how yoga can help us accept and even embrace the tension, frustration, fatigue and so on we feel in our work — and, of course, doing some yoga with participants.  We’ll also demonstrate how the deep inner work we do in our workshop can help people let go of the blocks that have them avoid truly giving their gifts to the world.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I encourage you to drop by — you’ll definitely learn a lot and have fun!

Inner Productivity Intensive

I think I’m still digesting how powerful an experience the last Inner Productivity Intensive was.  My friends are like “okay, time to finish processing and feel happy about it already!”    Not only did Rosy and I have a blast, but we got some incredible feedback — here’s a sample:

“I wanted to let you both know how much I enjoyed the workshop.  It was a great experience – I learned a lot and actually enjoyed most of it!  It may be the best single day workshop I have attended in my professional career.”

- Aidan C., San Francisco, California

“The Inner Productivity Intensive Workshop was amazing, maybe even transformational.  I’ll use some of the practical techniques I learned pretty much every day for the rest of my life.  At the same time, I also gained deeper insights into myself and my relationships that were incredibly valuable.”

- B.P., San Francisco, California

Almost as soon as the last participant left, Rosy and I were talking about scheduling another one.  If I procrastinated about putting it together, that would make me a big hypocrite, and I didn’t want that.  So, I wasted no time in setting up the next workshop for August 15, 2010.

If you’re ready to get conscious, and let go, of patterns of thinking and behavior holding you back from giving your deepest gifts to the world, this is the workshop for you.  You can find out more about it and register here.

Some Great Recent Interviews

I had the privilege of appearing on two wonderful radio shows recently — both hosts had read and deeply appreciated the book, which led to discussions that were educational and fun.  I’ll post the links to them below.

* Welcome Changes Radio with Velma Gallant, June 2010

* Good Vibrations Radio with Solarzar and Kyralani, May 2010

I hope I get the chance to meet more of you in person, and I’m looking forward to more opportunities to help the world make working enjoyable and meaningful.

In gratitude,
Chris

“I teach people how to use mindfulness practices, like meditation and yoga, to focus while they work.  I help them bring these practices into their in-the-moment experience of working — to go beyond just using them on the yoga mat or the meditation cushion.”

This is a correct description of what I do.  Unfortunately, it also tends to make people’s eyes roll and/or glaze over.

I know this all too well, because I delivered this “elevator pitch” many times.  What’s more, for many months, I kept describing what I do in this way, even though I knew it was boring and confusing people.

Why did I keep saying this to people, despite its obvious soporific effect?  The answer is that lots of resistance came up inside when I thought about changing it.  Because I found the resistance uncomfortable, I left my pitch unchanged so I wouldn’t have to feel it.

Welcoming My Resistance

I finally started getting traction around this issue when I decided to re-read my book and take my own medicine.  Rather than fleeing from the resistance, I chose to sit with it.  I got intimately familiar with its contours — where I felt it in my body, whether it manifested as a tingling, pulsing, tension, or something else, and so on.

As I’ve experienced so many times, putting my full attention on the tightness in my body actually dissolved it.  My solar plexus, where the most tension was, relaxed, and I sighed with relief.  And, as usual, with that relaxation came helpful insight.  What I saw was that I was clinging to this dull description of my services because, in my mind, it made me sound intelligent and unique.

After all, even if people didn’t buy my book or take my workshop, at least they wouldn’t see me as just another rah-rah jump-up-and-down-to-”Simply-The-Best” motivational speaker.  At least they’d know I don’t spout self-help cliches like “take action!  Think happy thoughts!  Like attracts like!”  You see, I use sophisticated words like “mindfulness,” and that makes me different!

In other words, I recognized through self-exploration that I was afraid of looking average — and, most importantly, that I was allowing that fear to control my business decisions.  I was letting concerns about my image get in the way of actually delivering value to people.

Allowing My Averageness

Getting conscious of this fear also helped to liberate me from it.  After all, I realized, what’s really going to happen if someone sees me as average?  Will I disintegrate or spontaneously combust or something?  Probably not.

What’s more, I recognized that, no matter what I accomplish, there are many ways in which I’m forever doomed to be average.  Studies have shown, for example, that I share approximately 99.999999% of my DNA not only with you, Dear Readers, but also with orangutans and mandrills.  Why go to such lengths to conceal my built-in averageness?

Armed with this new awareness, I came up with a much more clear and concise summary of what I do.  It goes a little something like this:

“I help people get focused and motivated at work.”

I’ve noticed that this produces a lot less nodding off, and a lot more purchasing of my stuff, among potential customers.

What about you, Dear Reader?  How are you letting image-consciousness get in the way of giving your gifts to the world?