4 Myths of Having It All

Six Steps to Change How You Show Up

Are you proud of how you show up in your day? If you’ve ever acted in a way you later regretted, you know how bad that can feel - you cringe inwardly and hope everyone has conveniently forgotten that you were a total a$$. Or perhaps you're sick of NOT speaking up and letting others walk all over you.

And then you lay awake at 2am replaying the situation in your head, promising yourself you'll act differently next time. Well it's time to stop that cycle.

Oscar Wilde wisely tells us to: ‘Be Yourself; everyone else is already taken.’

The question is: are you the self you want to be? Are you the person you expect yourself to be? Are you consistently and persistently proud of yourself?

While I'm a strong advocate of just being you (after all, you are perfect and fabulous just the way you are), we all have patterns of behavior that, despite your best of intentions, seem to repeat more frequently than we'd like. The good news is that we get to recreate ourselves every single day. It's just a matter of choosing to.

Here are some tips to develop the skills to show up as the person you are proud to be:

Aim for better than yesterday. Give yourself a break and embrace the fact that you are an imperfect human being. You are not perfect and you never will be - and that's OK. Hold yourself accountable to your own standards and go easy on yourself when you don’t get it right every time. You aren't aiming for perfect, you're just aiming for better than yesterday.
Know your hero. If you are going to hold yourself accountable to your own standards, you have to know what those standards are. Who do you want to be? How do you want to show up in the world? If you ask a child who they want to be when they grow up they will tell you instantly - Superman, doctor, firefighter. It might change on a daily (or hourly) basis, but in any given moment they know whose behavior they wish to copy. At some point when we grow up we lose sight of our heroes and role models. Know who you want to be when you grow up - it can be a real person, an alter-ego, a movie or book character, your imaginary friend. The point is to know how you'd like to act in situations that press your buttons.
Get honest with yourself. Once you know how you want to show up, it's time to look at where you need to make changes. Be honest with yourself. We all have ways we'd like to think we'd act in certain situations but know we do something different in reality (anyone else show impatience rather than tolerance when thing are taking waaaayyyyy toooooo looooong???)
Turn off the autopilot and consciously decide how you want to respond. A huge part of your behavior is habit. Many you learned in childhood. Some you learned in your relationships past and present. Some you learned at work. When you act in a way that makes you less than proud, ask yourself if that behavior is a habit – does it keep on showing up? When you learned that habit it probably served you well. But as your life changes, so you need to update those habits. The good news is that you are in control here. You can do the work and make the changes.
Apologize to others if necessary. Do it NOW. Today. Leave a voicemail if you have to. Don’t be a coward and send an email. Apologies should be heard and need to be sincere. Do not get into justifying or explaining your actions. Keep it short and sweet. ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me.’ They may, they may not. That’s their choice. And that’s OK. Apologies only mean anything if you change your actions. An apology followed by the very same action is worthless and does nothing but destroy trust and your credibility and I'm sure that's not how you want to show up.
Start practicing. You may not get it right the first time. That’s OK. That’s how you know you’re doing something new and different. Do not give up – keep going and the more you practice, the more the new behavior becomes an unconscious response. The good thing about changing habits is that it gets easier the more you do it.