“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

- Anna Quindlen

I’m part of Elizabethpw’s #18daystoLYT program (I’m kind of addicted to her whole “Live Your Truth” mantra, in honesty). At one point in the course, she talks about how the thing we’re still learning is the thing we are most expert in.

Wha…?

My imperfection is my source of expertise?

I need to chew on that a bit more – care to join me?

That thing I’m hiding behind, struggling with – that’s pulling me around from day-to-day… THAT is my expertise?

Hooboy… It makes so much sense, but it’s also pretty scary.

If you’ve been here more than a day, you’ve probably picked up on my notion that, given enough time, there is ALWAYS a way to make something “impossible” become very possible.

My faith, my willingness – maybe even penchant – to have faith that there is a way – has brought me to this place.

The paradox is that I’m a huge skeptic. I’m cynical, doubt-filled, and often come to a faith-filled position after a LOT of struggle. Because while I believe that enough time will always make a way, I’m not always convinced I, personally, have enough time to accomplish whatever needs accomplishing.

And yet, time and again, I’m taken aback by the comments people make about my positive attitude, patience, my faithfulness, and my willingness to endure and see things through to the end.

… Me?

…Really?

Boy, I feel like I’ve got a lot of people fooled – sometimes.

When a few people say it, it’s a rumor. When a lot of people say it it’s a conspiracy. When your trusted friends and colleagues say it, there’s probably more than a bit of truth to it.

So I’m looking at this faith-struggle I’ve got, and realize that, while I feel like I don’t have it deciphered, I’m a bit farther along on the journey than other people. My own lessons-learned are paving the way for those behind me. And as my friend often chides – as I point out the direction of the journey that’s still in front of me, I’m following right behind and learning myself as I go – just like everyone else (Thanks, Jen. You’re brilliant, as usual.).

The surprising thing is that this is a life-long lesson for me. As my friend and colleague Teresa Romain likes to point out, we often teach the thing we most need to learn. But at the same time, I struggle with recognizing that I’ve already come a long way, at least far enough to be able to teach in the first place.

The lesson? You may just surprise yourself at how awesome you already are.

Particularly as it relates to your greatest “imperfection”.

Seriously. If it wasn’t important to you in the first place, most of you wouldn’t give that “flaw” a second thought.

It simply isn’t a priority – until you decide to do something about it. Until you decide to master it.

Mastery requires a deep-level understanding of the issue at hand. You can’t master anything with surface knowledge.

You dig in, root around, and try to find causes, contributing factors, ways to ameliorate the dreaded thing and “solve” the problem.

Ah! Now it clicks. Now I see it. I’ve spent so much time working on my own faith, how it manifests, what it really means, that to some people I am a “master” of it.

Personally, I still see the very long road ahead of me (which I view as continued imperfection), and I forget about how far I’ve come.

Maybe you have that same issue, too?

In this #Trust30 Prompt by Ashley Ambirge, she asks:

“Think of a time when you didn’t think you were capable of doing something, but then surprised yourself.  How will you surprise yourself this week?”

We are already awesome. Even in our “imperfection” – which is a judgement and comparative statement that has no foundation in universal truth. We are perfectly poised in this perfect moment to be exactly where (and who) we are. That statement is always true. Circumstances may change, but it’s our judgments that strain the perfection of any moment in time.

And yes, I know it’s easier to say it than to believe it. Remember, I’m all about faith, so work with me here. One of my life-long areas of improvement has been my weight. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read, plans I’ve studied (or “tried”), experts I’ve researched, and “stuff” I’ve done in the name of “trying to lose weight”. I know how chemicals in our food can disrupt our endocrine and immune systems, how our emotions can trigger eating disorders, what exercises will help me see results faster (they also hurt more!), and how to make home-made organic yogurt.

I “know” a CRAP TON about it. And yet, here I sit a good 100 pounds over what any reasonable person considers a “healthy” weight. Yes, there’s also a difference between knowing and doing, but that’s another topic for another day.

“Once you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence.”

- Rosalynn Carter

How will you choose to view your so-called imperfections now? I think of Cindy Crawford’s now famous mole, and how she changed the minds of the masses when she decided to embrace her perfection and stop judging it.

6 Ideas to help you see “Imperfection” as “Expertise”

1. Recognize that you’ve been “working on” this area for a while. Countless hours of on-the-job experience have been your teacher.
2. Applaud your determination to keep at it. You could have just resigned yourself to always being lousy in that area, yet you persist at overcoming.
3. Even Thomas Edison made over 50,000 experiments (he refused to call anything a failure) before he had a functional dry cell battery. 50,000 days of “experimenting” equates to 136 years – you’re probably nowhere near that level of persistence yet.
4. 10,000 hours of study is considered “expert” status. How many hours have you put in?
5. Recognize that your awareness is often more than most folks have. Anything beyond awareness (including study), counts you as an authority over at least some group of people.
6. Could it be that part of your life lesson is to teach what you most need to learn?

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The scariest thing in the world to me is to stop doing. I’m compelled to be doing something all the time. Like, if I don’t do something, I’m not doing anything, which makes me a drain on society, instead of contributing to the greater good.

Don’t get me started on self-care and the guilt/necessity circle that rages in my head from time to time. I know self-care is an act of doing. I have a client that likes to say “taking care of yourself is taking care of business.”

But when Mary Jaksch asked what’s scary to write about, I got to thinking how much I “do” because of that fear, and how many people have the opposite problem. They are paralyzed by fear.

Building a business can be scary stuff.

Do it anyway.

Facing the comments and reactions from well-meaning family and friends – when they ask you what you’re up to and just don’t “get it” – can be scary.

Do it anyway.

Charting your own course is scary.

Do it anyway.

Facing financial uncertainty and taking big risks is scary.

Do. It. Anyway.

The fear you feel is real. I don’t care what any rah-rah motivational speaker will tell you. The “false expectations appearing real” stuff doesn’t overcome the anxiety you feel in the fear moment.

Instead, be the fear inside you.

Embrace it. Acknowledge it. Stop trying to pretend it’s not there, because it’s a very real part of you, and from what I’ve heard from dozens of entrepreneurs (much farther along than I am), it does not go away.

It subsides from time to time. It mutates, and takes different forms to fit the occasion. But every time you’re up to something big, it’s there.

Sometimes you’ve got to do the scary stuff first. Okay, MOST of the time, you’ve got to do the scary stuff first. But very often, you can take the big, scary thing, and find the smaller, less scary piece of it that’s very doable right now.

Take the step. Do it.

“That’s the secret — the moment you are inspired with an amazing, horribly scary idea, take the very first action step. Even if you don’t know the second action step. Especially if you don’t know the second action step.”

- Elizabeth Potts Weinstein

If you don’t, you’re not being your heroic self. You’re hiding in the shadows, most likely still staring at the door. If you’re not ready to be yourself, what business do you have trying to build a business to serve others?

Another #Trust30 author, Lachlan Cotter, put said it better: “Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are?”

The best way to combat fear is with clarity. Once you can clearly see a thing, it loses the mystery. Magic tricks are no longer so awe-inspiring. The Rubik’s Cube becomes less daunting.

In the MacGyver episode “Hell Week“, each of the students in the contest has a “barricade”  - some secret way of unlocking a door. Each puzzle looks – well, puzzling – until you figure out the solution. Even the most intricate barricade (a miniature model of the dorm room) was easy to solve when there was clarity around how it worked (okay, the kid cheated to get that clarity, but the point is it wasn’t hard to solve once he had the answer).

“I am not afraid. I was born for this.”

- Joan of Arc

When you stop being victimized by your fear, you see more clearly.

It takes small acting and big visioning to vanquish fear. When fear subsides, you can breathe, move more freely, and make better choices. You get to be your heroic self.

8 Questions to Vanquish Fear And Be Your Heroic Self

1. What’s that “big scary thing” looming in your shadows?
2. What makes it so scary? Write it down.
3. What one thing could you change to make it less scary? Just pick ONE thing.
4. What would happen if you made that change? Get clear.
5. What’s stopping you from making that change? Be specific.
6. What can you do to remove the roadblock to change? If it’s still too scary, go back to Question 2.
7. When will you make the change? Give yourself a timeline and honor it.
8. What’s the next one thing you could change to make it less scary? Then go back to Question 4.

My ship docked on Wednesday, and what a whirlwind it’s been since then. All doused with kerosene, I lit the match, and stood on the shore for the last couple of days making SURE it was cinders and ashes.

I’ve been sort of dreading this post, and sort of looking forward to it, because so much has happened in the last 60 days, but I wasn’t really sure how to best articulate it. While this blog talks a lot about my personal journey, I also mean for it to be a tool that you can use to live and grow by.

Then this morning, my youngest climbed into our bed and promptly pulled the covers off me. I took it as a sign to get moving.

I did my morning PEACE System practice, and as I opened my laptop, my eyes fell on an email from my first coach, EPW, with an assignment for an upcoming class. She encouraged us to watch a video she created outlining a process to help us determine our four words.

Meh. I already have my theme for the year, and was planning on sharing it in an upcoming post. But since it was only 25 minutes, it was too early to really do anything else, and I figured the noise might get my husband out of bed, too, I acquiesced.

Now, I can frame this post in a way that’s meaningful to you.

This 60 day journey has been about trying to figure out what in the world I’m really supposed to be up to on this rock we call Earth. I know many of you resonate with the “jack of all trades, master of none” concept, and I’ve grappled with that identity myself for years. People still ask me “what do you do?” and I have a horrible time painting a complete picture.

Then there’s the marriage. What the French? How can you stay married to a person who shows little emotional presence, claims to love you, and feels like he’s bending over backwards to serve your needs because he did a load of laundry and changed a diaper? I was at an incredible crossroads in my marriage. Part of this 60 day journey was spent working through The Love Dare – and meeting with frustration after frustration. Ultimately, it wasn’t about “fixing” our marriage. It was about coming to terms with who I am, and how to make a marriage work in light of that revelation.

And, of course, there’s the family, the business, and a litany of other “stuff” that came up during the past two months.

One blog post seemed almost ineffective, until EPW’s email today.

See, I’ve done the “theme words” thing before: Pick a few words that lay the foundation for the year ahead, and build your life/business on those qualities. It works, but I figured I already had it down for the year.

This wasn’t that kind of exercise.

One of the questions in the exercise was this:

“If you were a fairy godmother and could bestow states of being on the people you love most in the world, what  qualities would you grant them?”

Then, as the exercise ended, she asked us to prioritize everything and select only 4 words from the list of qualities we had created.

That wasn’t too hard.

Then the revelation: You ARE those four words. These are not aspirations, but you actually live and breathe them. They are your being. Not core values, mind you, but the very essence of you. Your birthright.

And suddenly, I knew how to translate this 60 day experience to you.

I am Faith. It paves the way to everything. I’m not talking about thumping a bible in someone’s face. I’m not necessarily even talking about God, although that’s my personal faith vehicle. I’m talking about the willingness in your spirit to take the next step on your own journey – without knowing the end game. Cheryl Richardson once said that “faith is doing without knowing the outcome first.”

I’ve struggled with wanting to know the end game from time to time, and yet I do a LOT of stuff without knowing for sure where it will take me, just trusting that everything will work out. On this journey, I’ve explored what faith really is – and what it’s not. I made some huge discoveries – well, huge to me – that I’ll be sharing in the coming weeks. The biggest is that faith pervades all I am.

It’s one of my 5 Key Areas of Success in The PEACE System. It’s one of the most populated categories on this blog. It underpins so much of who I am and what I do, that it never dawned on me that one of my reasons for being is to actually BRING faith to the world – or at least my part of it.

I am Enthusiasm. This was the theme I had selected for the year. It was a hard-won word. I wanted to find something that would encapsulate “going all in” and not “going through the motions” of my existence. It also resonates happiness, joy, mirth. And yes, there’s that whole “God inside” definition, and the zeal that goes with it.

For me, enthusiasm is about doing anything you do with vibrancy and commitment. Not being half-hearted, and being willing to burn the ships – with a smile, grit, determination, and a bit of duct tape for good measure. Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean you have to do it begrudgingly. Some of the sweetest rewards come from the most difficult harvest. To that end, my marriage is no longer a negotiable piece of my life. It IS. And I choose to be married with enthusiasm!

I am Clarity. Which sounds exceedingly antithetical to being Faith, I will confess. Yet, one of the things I am best known for is my ability to ask difficult questions and bring clarity to a situation that once seemed too foggy to navigate. I’ve been asking “why?” since I was a toddler, trying to get a grip on what the truth of a situation is. With my clients, I demand transparency and full disclosure so that I can make the best possible decisions for suggested courses of action. In as much as I know I can’t predict the future, I can get as clear as I possibly can, and step out in faith to see what comes next.

Asking questions has never been a big deal to me. I was taught to question and seek truth at a young age. Little did I know that seeking that kind of clarity was not only a part of who I am, but sharing and “bestowing” that kind of clarity for others is part of my mission in this world.

I am Passion. Believe it or not, this was the easiest for me to grasp. To me, passion and enthusiasm are not the same – nor are they mutually exclusive. They feed one another. Passion is a fuel, a fire, an intensity, a deep desire or love for something. It’s a modifier to life. It magnifies the moment. Sometimes we need a magnifier, sometimes not. Thus, it’s not my primary word, but it’s still a very necessary one.

When I was in high school, our swim team’s shirts read “Go Hard or Go Home!” That phrase has stuck with me ever since (even though I was NEVER on the swim team). To me, the idea of having an intense love or desire for the thing you’re about in the world makes it addictive – not just for you, but for the people around you. It becomes intoxicating. It starts movements. It incites people to action. This world would be far less interesting without the passionate people of the world. But if all you have is passion, you end up bumping into a lot of walls along the way.

So the last 60 days have been about connecting (or re-connecting) with who Lisa really is – at her core, as her birthright. I am what I am, and now, I have a better understanding of what that means. I also have a clearer view of what I do for my clients, and how I’m meant to bring that vision to a larger audience. I’m hard at work on a new business project that will serve that audience. More details to follow.

What say you? What are you about in this world? Where do you find yourself being called to serve? I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments!