I have a good friend-client-boss-collaborator (it’s a small town -- what do you do?) whose most enthusiastic, ringing endorsement of a job well done is to exclaim: “Damn, girl! You should do this for a living!” (The irony kicks in when he’s paying me for the work.)
The other day, he passed a project to me for editing, or writing, or whatever it is that I do, and I knew I’d hit the mark when I received a solid “Damn, girl!” email in return. So, when I told him I was setting up this blog and struggling to figure out how to say what I wanted to say, his reply was, “Did you ever think that maybe if you gave yourself a good, solid “Damn, girl!” once in a while, maybe it would be easier to write for you?”
...Uh yyyyyyeah. Busted (he’s known me a while).
Looking back, I could not name the last time I’d given myself a good, solid “Damn, girl!” -- or anything like it -- for something I’d accomplished. Sad, right? Not really, which is the worst part. It didn’t feel tragic. In a better, saner world, it would be tragic to realize that yours isn’t the first and most important “Damn, girl!” you get. So much of the time, yours is the only “Damn, girl!” you’ll ever get.
I’ve actually thought about this a lot -- it’s not often he says something that makes me think this much; I don’t know whether it’ll make him laugh or cry -- but he hit on something pretty fundamental for me. I’ve got a bad habit of outsourcing my appreciation for myself. Which is a fool’s game. It goes something like this, see if it sounds at all familiar: “Nobody said what I did was amazing; I must suck.” Or, “This project is not taking off; I’m a failure.” Well, come on! I’m telling you straight-up; that’s just no way to live.
Think about it: How many people actually know how amazing you are? (Besides your mom. Hi, Mom!) How can they know? They’re not living your life. They don’t have your crazy amazing curiosity. Your way of seeing things -- your gifts, your talents, your passion for stinky cheeses. Basically, they’re sitting around, waiting for you to tell them how amazing they are. (And who has time for that??)
We just can’t keep doing this.
Giving others the power to define how amazing you are is A) insane, 2) waaay too much responsibility for someone else to carry, and iii) delaying an instant gratification that would actually be good for you. So let’s break it down: why aren’t you telling yourself how amazing you are, as a daily practice?
Well, I don’t know about you, but for a really long time I thought I wasn’t good enough. I thought amazing was reserved for other people, people who had their shit together, or something -- I was dead wrong, of course. And so are you, if you gave me even a teensy nod of recognition on that. So let’s try this: It’s not true. Period. You are amazing. It doesn’t matter where you learned the “undeserving” garbage (and somehow, we’ve all learned it). You can stop believing it. It’s possible to know -- like, down in your guts, where it matters -- that you’re actually amazing.
One way to start is by inserting a good, solid “Damn, girl!” in all those places you’re tempted to undermine yourself; all those vicious little I’m not enough’s that sneak into your self-talk. So give it a shot. And maybe you try it for a while, & it’s not sticking, & you end up needing a little help. Well, that’s what I’m here for. ;)
Oscar Wilde is often credited with saying, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” (I don’t know whether he actually said that or not. Which, in a weird way, makes it even more awesome.) But I’m going to take the adage to heart.
And so, let’s all commit to easing off the relentless pursuit of what we think someone else thinks we should be doing. To acknowledging that, sometimes, what needs healing is that thing inside of us that tells us we’re good enough. That it’s okay to appreciate ourselves as we are. That it’s okay to live. To love. To breathe. To dance. To fail. To succeed. To put in a half-assed effort every now and then because powder days are more important. That thing that tells you you’ve got Amazing in spades.
So come on, say it with me -- Oscar (or whoever), here’s to you -- “Damn, girl!”