Coming OUT – It’s Not Just for Gays

I’ve been thinking a lot about living with transparency in a world that judges those who don’t fit-in.  That’s because nearly a year ago, I set a stretch goal of living and working with audacious authenticity.

As I reflect upon my big “coming out” I bask in the acceptance I felt when others were validating the 360 degree me but feel the sting of rejection by those who don’t accept me simply because I’m not just like them.  The bonus is that I’m really not all that different! That’s my big ah ha – how daunting it is to live in audacious authenticity in a harsh world.  I’m awestruck when I consider how my experience is dwarfed by the bravery of those who take the real leap of coming out. The concept of “coming out” is intended to “out” the violence of “judging” that encourages some to fear and hate those who are different and forces others to live a lie of fitting-in.

When I felt push-back for being me I became keenly aware of the harsh rejection of those who differ from the mainstream.

So I’m pushing back. Posturing and posing are often a suffocating mask – why do we feel forced to wear them? Do we even acknowledge wearing the mask of the totally together, cool kid to hide our perceived blemishes as well as our beauty?

• How much of your real self do you stuff in the closet because you fear being judged or rejected?
• What percentage of your day and life are you wearing your mask?
• How much energy does it take to maintain “the act”?

So here’s my proposition – come out, come out, whoever you are:

The brave service to our children and the evolution of the world is to live in audacious authenticity.  We need to be role models – to stop teaching our children how to “act” and begin showing them how to “be”.

Instead of teaching them to judge others and pose for acceptance through a veneer of labels, lets help them to see individuals.  When we do, we free our children to learn from the best of humanity and we free ourselves from the self-imposed prison that binds us from living authentically.

It’s not an understatement to say that the world can profoundly benefit if we reveal our genuine spirit – how else can we learn from our collective greatness and frailties in a way that unites and elevates everyone? The more I write about this topic the more emboldened I become.  In part 3 of “Fitting-in” I made an argument that I’m feeling more each day…I have to be completely myself if I hope to fully realize myself.

By celebrating our differences and letting go of fear, we allow the inner peace of releasing superficial limitations and the ability to reach our potential . It’s time to let all of the facets of humanity shine with transparency. All of it – the good, the bad and the ugly…but who’s judging?

So what do you think? Do you dislike being labeled, judged and/or wearing a mask or do you think they are necessary elements of society?

Is Your Objectivity Jacked? Everyday bias in bad decisions

If you’re like most people, you like to think of yourself as someone who thinks clearly and objectively.  Me too, until an recent event served as a lightening rod for appreciating our inability to think without bias.

Recently, a former colleague and friend of my husband posted a FaceBook link to a newsletter that caused an uproar in our house. The newsletter cited the 1964 Civil Rights Act as and example of federal government intrusion into restaurants and movie houses – even creating an inability for people to decide who could be their neighbor.

With no doubt in his mind, my husband questioned his friend and was shocked when his colleague replied that he couldn’t see anything wrong with the article.

Here’s where it gets interesting…and creates huge potential for divided camps:

while he saw nothing wrong, I was profoundly upset by it! In 1939 the five-year old girl who would become my mother learned that she not allowed to swim in the community pool. Being told, “No Spics Allowed” haunted her and created devastating ripple effects.  So it makes sense that  I was offended but what I  couldn’t fathom was that my husband’s colleague (the bright, kind, southern Christian man who posted it) reported reading the article three times and couldn’t see anything wrong with it. I shared how my bias caused such a negative reaction to the article but wondered, what’s his story…how can I understand his perspective just as I wish he understood  mine?

Out of respect for me, this lovely man told my husband that he took the offending post down but: I don’t think that’s the answer…nor do I want to debate whether the article or our friend was a victim of bigoted bias or not – let’s simply use this real-life  situation as a springboard for understanding.

The answer is to intercept our brains’ auto-pilot for bias.

Here’s How Objectivity Gets Jacked:

Hi-jacking: (reacting before thinking brain)

The amygdala or unevolved brain processes our perception and feelings as good or bad within milliseconds. This can cause a regrettable knee-jerk response cover in the previous post,  “When Smart People Make JackAss Moves”. During an amygdala hi-jacking the emotions are so strong that our unevolved brain (the amygdala) takes over before the evolved executive brain (the prefrontal cortex) can process the information to regulate our response.

Example: My initial reaction to reading the offending post was shock and anger.  I don’t think that I could have maintained a poker-face had we been face-to-face so the virtual exchange may have spared me from an amygdala hi-jacking and jackass move.

Even if we are able to hit the un-evolved brain “pause” button to allow our executive brain to analyze, our thinking may be jacked a second time!

Low-jacking: (interpretive bias brain)

After the amygdala does the initial good/bad processing,  the executive brain (pre-frontal cortex) uses intelligence, data and previous experiences to assess whether the initial feelings and perception were accurate.  Our executive brain’s thinking can be “low-jacked” (to access by an alternate means) by our sub-conscious tendency to latch-on to information that validates our initial perception and to filter out what doesn’t support it.

Examples:

• good or bad first impressions or prejudices (pre-judging) and how we may be more or less willing to give others a pass
• placebo effect and how we often get what we expect
• how remarkably bright people are unable to see the diverse perspectives of social, political, or religious issues
• how physicians’ training/time limitations add interpretive bias to a patient types and cause mis-diagnoses
• why a juror’s personal experience (aka bias) can impede their ability to impartially judge factual evidence.

The truth of our reality is that we don’t see things as they are – we see things as we are.

Sadly, our knee-jerk reactions and our filtered reasoning means that we access knowledge more selectively than objectively which often results in thinking that is, umm.. jacked.

The important discussion becomes, how does it hurt all of us and what can we do about it?

- When have you been on the receiving end of a jacked idea or decision?

- What can we do to prevent or minimize our the brain low-jackings that create interpretive bias?

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• Gladstone: A Taxonomy of Bias: The Cognitive Miser (lesswrong.com)

Write, Produce and Direct Your Own Destiny Program(ming)

I counted down the days in anticipation of my first appointment with the junior high school guidance counselor…only fourteen days before the secrets to achieving my goal of gaining admission to medical school would be revealed.

As outlet for my enthusiasm during what seemed like an eternity before meeting with “the wise one”,  I kept busy compiling a portfolio of clippings to demonstrate my credibility and abilities.

When the appointed day f-i-n-a-l-l-y came, I could barely breathe from excitement.  I counted the hours, waited in line and had barely planted myself in the seat before pronouncing that I really, truly wanted to be a doctor.  The counselor was silent and just cocked his head the way a dog might when confused or curious.  He leaned in and broke the pregnant pause with thunderous laughter.  Not the mocking laughter that might just  take the wind out of my sails – a laugh that created the sickening suffocation feeling that you may recall as a kid when you got the wind knocked out of you from rough-housing.

Despite reeling from shock and confusion, it only took moments before I begin peppering him with questions in hopes of understanding.  His reply then was, “Well, kiddo, pretty girls don’t need to work”… while he leaned in and literally patted me on the head!  Ignoring his crass compliment, I continued to press for an answer.  I talked about being an honor student, showed him my portfolio of A+ science essays and the bibliography of healthcare books that I had voraciously read as a hobby.  After this round of pestering and proof he said, “Well… if you HAVE to work, you might consider being a secretary or a nurse”.  He glanced at his watch -  I realized that I was running out of time and panicked.  That’s when I blurted out, “I just don’t understand why what’s between my legs counts more than what’s between my ears”!

The experience may help explain some fierce feminism on my part but to this day, I don’t know where the words came from or who was more shocked; I still marvel that at 13 (or any age) I uttered them;  I vividly recall that this was the first time my ears burned with indignation and embarrassment.  We both stared at the floor – he cleared his throat and rose to his feet.  There was a long and awkward silence as the “wise one” led the “wise mouth” to the door.

It took years before I realized that my counselor was more classist than sexist.  It never occurred to me that my parent’s divorce and my subsequent move to a public housing project was virtually a life sentence.  But I, like so many of us (especially children) had allowed his judgment to “program” my beliefs, self-esteem, goals, and limitations.

A burning desire to learn, stretch, and grow made me too restless to stay tuned to my counselor’s program.  I began to change the channel and eventually tuned in a “station in life” and a program that I owned.  Here, I could be the writer, producer, director, and lead actor in a program called, “Your Lot in Life”.  This melodrama and occasional sitcom is about an underprivileged kid who refused to park on her lot in life and instead, became a JobLife Architect determined to excavate, renovate, and build on her lot.  In fact, this slice of my life helped me begin to create the JobLife Architect philosophy.

We alone must define and design our own success

Or life may happen TO us

Instead of THROUGH us.

You cannot “choose” to change the channel until you identify the programming preventing you from building on “Your Lot In Life”.

What limiting ideas have you gotten from parents, teachers, friends, lovers, family?  They are often off-handed comments stated in frustration by those we trust when we are so young that we cannot filter or analyze their veracity -so, they become a part of our subconscious script.  They often sound like: “You can’t do anything right” – “You’re stupid or bad at math” – You’re lazy or You’ll never amount to anything”. They may be more innocent or far worse but that’s not as important as how we continue to allow the messages to auto-loop in our heads.  We become victims of the unwanted messages like the frequent commercials that we find irritating yet cannot help but recall – argh, like the 1-800- Empire carpets jingle just sprang to mind!  Only with maturity and experience can we examine and question them:  Is every one of the judgments and beliefs about you, your character, abilities or limitations based in fact or reality?  Which have a kernel of truth but became your reality program because they were repeated so much that you lived down to the expectation?  Which still haunt you as negative,  “I told you so” self-talk just waiting for you to trip up? 

Which of these negative beliefs…

• Are not true at all or any longer?
• Inhibit your self-confidence?
• Limit your hopes, dreams or goals?
• Have become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
• Drive you to gain promotions and titles or material success to prove them wrong?
• Need to be censored before they do harm (like an F-bomb or Janet’s wardrobe malfunction)? Do you have a delay mechanism like meditation to allow you to consider before acting on your thoughts?
• Should be edited or re-scripted?

Will you share examples of when you junked the program, wrote your own program, or when you took control of the remote and changed the channel?

Fitting-in vs Being Authentic (part 2)

Freud dismissed the very idea of “normality” as “an ideal fiction” – and of course it is!

When we consider the vast diversity of human beings,  we see a kaleidoscope of complexity rather than conformity from the time of birth.  Ask parents of more than two children how different each was and you will most often hear that they arrived with differing temperaments, personalities, tastes and talents.

Normal is predicated by our environment:  families,  schools,  social and spiritual, each creates overt and subvert pressure to conform. The published and unwritten rules are reinforced with the selection of those who are popular from those who generate gossip or are ostracized.  Even children who don’t fit in the family norm are dubbed the “black sheep”.

A recent example of not fitting “the norm” came from a former employee who called me requesting a reference.  She said that after a year in a new job, she was not a good fit in a corporate culture that was suffocating her so she was actively interviewing for a new job. Our conversation reminded me of a time (1990) when as the only female corporate sales director,  I wore short hair, boxy suits, and put on a no-nonsense facade in order to be taken seriously – I was convincing, but I couldn’t maintain it;  it withered my soul.

So I started to ask myself these questions and invite you to do the same:

• How important is it for me to to fit in?  To myself, my family, my job, my community?
• What aspects of my true self do I need to suppress or hide in order to fit in?
• To what degree can I really be myself at work, with friends, or even at home?
• Do I sometimes feel like an imposter or actor?
• Am I  exhausted at day’s end from “acting” my role or wearing my “game-face” all day?
• Am I affected by the need to “stuff” a part of who I am for such a big part of my day and life?
• Do I value social approval over self-actualization?
• Do I prevent others from knowing me and benefiting from all that I have to offer?
• If I don’t allow others to really see me, how will I ever find my “right people” – those that get me?

I was so grateful for the many comments to this week’s launch post on this topic.  In the comments to part 1 of the series, John Reddish provided an excellent frame of reference for why many of us are grappling with authenticity and transparency and struck a chord:

The fact is that more and more, we realize that the old model, requiring self-containment and following traditional paths, just doesn’t work. Blame Joseph Campbell, blame a permissive society, blame the “me” generation, blame the New Age, but more and more of us are seeking to “follow our bliss” and because the old model isn’t working, more and more traditionalists are paying attention, even making allowances.

Over the years, I’ve become less willing to sublimate the silly and spiritual aspects of my true Self and to trust that others will still be able to see my polished professional facets, too.  How about you?

Please consider the following and read part 3.

Have you ever found yourself miscast in a job, relationship, or culture?

Have you ever made job or life changes by asking some of the above questions to yourself?

Are you becoming (or have you become) more daring or vulnerable about sharing your authentic self?