A Coaching Power Tool By Kristen Webb, Decisions Coach, AUSTRALIA
You Do Not Have To Be Good: Fitting In vs. Belonging
I’ve moved so much, new rooms, apartments, and homes in foreign cities, in distant countries, and on isolated continents. I have lived them all and each geographic shift ripped a piece of me off and caused a shatter of separation. The loneliness. The fear. The starting over. The redesigning of my life and recreating who I am. I have been so many versions of myself. So many personal chapters have been written and so many of them have been based on the unstable ground of me trying to be good.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
Who, and what defined the good I was chasing? The acceptance into a country, a culture, a community, a household where I lived, my needs and desires, where I wanted to spend time, and with whom I wanted to share my adventures. There were group conversations that led to coffee dates and some of those evolved into friends, but many just fizzled into a passing hello or never seen again. Every new interaction started with me wondering – consciously and unconsciously – how much of me should I share. Then afterward, back home, manically critiquing what I wore and remembering the awkwardness of my interactions. The comments that did not land as expected, the joke that did not get a laugh, the story that ended the conversation instead of engaging it, the too-long silences and not-sure-what-to-do-next moments that left me feeling so tired and utterly spent.
A client that I was working with was switching industries and struggled, in her view, to be taken seriously by her new peers. She did not have the contacts, the business language, or the experience to fit in. She had been spending her time worrying and justifying to herself why she should be at a specific conference and making excuses about why people might not meet with her. All her energy was reinforcing her story of why and how she did not belong and the negative consequences of being an outsider. She was anxious and doubtful about her future success.
Another client was disappointed that years after becoming a stepmother to her husband’s children, she was still not meeting the expectations she had set for herself within the family. She was disappointed as both wife and stepmother and not fit into either of the roles as she had hoped. She had created a new life with a man she loved who shrank her energy. She felt disconnected and hurt.
Oh the doubts, the what-have-I-done and how-the-%^$!-have-I-ended-up-here-moments where the path that was laid out in front of you by other people’s expectations has taken you to a place in your life that you don’t even recognize. How do you find your way back?
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Fitting In vs. Belonging Power Tool
The power tool of fitting in versus belonging helps clients find their way. By listening to how a client discusses their discomfort we can, with the client’s permission, apply the FlipIt Framework to support them on their journey and to understand how they are currently viewing their issue and what, if anything, they would like to change.
If someone is seeing their issue from the perspective of fitting in, their words will reveal an emphasis on otherness. Other people will hold the power. Other people will make the decisions. Other people’s expectations will weigh heavily on the client and have them feeling tired, anxious, and disconnected.
When using the FlipIt process, a client is given the opportunity to choose a random card with a picture on it and describe how that picture resonates with them and the situation they are trying to resolve. The client finds new ways to describe and connect to their situation.
They are then invited to feel it, to connect to their emotions and values and how their current view of this situation is affecting their lives. The deeper and more profound this step, the feeling step, the more potential they have to create their own long-lasting and effective solutions for the future. Feelings are so often squished and avoided and unfortunately, the more they are ignored, the more stuck the client can become. This is sometimes where the client can get emotional and break down as they say things that have been unacknowledged or buried for a long time. This moment needs to be felt and witnessed and held with sacredness.
To bear witness to something this deep and soulful the coach must be both completely present and completely removed. We must have no agenda and no goal. We must be with the clients and yet allow them the space to be completely with themselves. We must hear their feelings and allow their feelings to pass through our hearts before they are lovingly caught and held in the hearts of our clients. Before moving on, we must wait for them to honor the question, How does fitting in make you feel about yourself?
An invitation to see the situation from its opposite perspective can be incredibly confronting and freeing. It too must not be rushed as every client will process the new perspective according to their own being. Again, it is the client that sets the pace and intensity of the exploration of the final FlipIt stage, When coming from a place of belonging, what changes in you?
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
True belonging, as described in Brene Brown’s 2017 book, Braving The Wilderness, states:
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone…true belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are, it requires you to be who you are.
When we sit back and interpret our life from the fitting-in perspective, we are helpless. There is no control, there is no personal agency, and there is blaming and jealousy for those who have what we do not. There is envy and sadness and wishing we could be better and striving for good as defined by others.
I find it amazing how powerful external expectations can be, and how subtle. That one comment, made by a stranger when I was a teenager adhered to my heart so strongly and for so long that I believed it to be mine long after my identity had evolved. When these underlying beliefs resurface in our lives, when we are unsettled and unhappy and searching for a missing piece, the discomfort presents an opportunity for us to ask ourselves, “Is this really true?”
And if the answer is, “no,” then we are given the opportunity to change our story.
When we create our life from the belonging perspective, we are empowered. We make choices that create joy and align with who we really are. We are happy for others and their successes because we are happy for ourselves and our success. We trust our ability to make decisions that reflect who we are and evolve to define our own, internal good.
As a coach, we have the privilege our experiencing our clients’ growth as they decide how they want to address their future. We invite them to reflect with questions that encourage them to inquire about their own beliefs and give them opportunities to decide what they want to do with them.
Meanwhile the wild geese,
high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
You have mentioned how lonely and uncomfortable you felt. What, if anything, did those feelings teach you?
You have listed many reasons about how this conference will challenge you. How would your reasons change if you pretend that you belong?
When describing your routine this morning, you touched your heart with your hand. What happened in your body when you did this?
If you continue to let others define how you fit in, what kind of future will you create?
When you imagine believing in yourself deeply and truly, what opportunities appear?
When you release yourself from being someone else’s good, what opens?
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I have learned to hug myself during lonely and uncomfortable moments and know they will pass. I have learned that my laughter and energy are most inspiring when exposed to the wilderness. I have learned to take deep breaths during silence and let others speak. I have learned that I trust the path of others as much as I trust the path I make for myself. I have learned that there is enough darkness in the world and that my only remedy is to be light. I have learned I no longer strive to be good, I strive to belong.