Showing up

Growing compassion, processing pain, and the truth hidden in the invitations we ignore.

Compassion

A few months before I decided I didn't want to build my marketing company anymore, I drove an hour to Boulder for a coffee meeting. It was spring and a friend of mine had introduced me to someone for networking. Maybe there would be some potential clients he could connect me with.

I remember the lump I kept choking down in my throat. With every question he asked, I was holding back this well of tears. There they were, just sitting patiently, waiting for release. There they were, just sitting underneath all the fear and the hard truth that I was done. I couldn't yet voice it out loud because I was still lying to myself about how my only successful career path in life would be as the CEO of this company.

By the time summer came, I had made the choice to step away from something I had spent 14 years building. Turns out the generous human I had coffee with was a seasoned executive coach. What I was too scared to put into words that day, he could sense. He didn't introduce me to any new clients. He spent the next many months supporting me with my transition.

The first thing he taught me was how to build the muscle of compassion. I had none of it. The fear and doubt I was experiencing in the uncertainty was so thick that my negative self-talk was relentless. He suggested I practice meeting every cruel and critical thought I heard with compassion:

[Critical voice] What are you doing? This will never work.
[Compassion] This is hard. It's OK to be scared. Keep going.

[Critical voice] You're a failure. You should feel humiliated.
[Compassion] You're being so brave. I'm so proud of you.

It took me four months. Thousands and thousands of critical thoughts crossed my mind and I reluctantly faced every single one of them with compassion. Then finally, one day, when that critical voice showed up as usual, out of the blue — without any effort at all — a beautiful, wise, calm, loving voice met it. After months of work, I finally experienced what compassion felt like.

I didn't know that compassion is a muscle I have to work to build. All. The. Time. I have this story that everyone else is better at it than me. That, for whatever reason, everyone else already has that muscle built in, they don't have to effort to experience it, and I am sentenced to work at it forever and ever without end.

I've learned that the work to experience compassion is not as much of a chore as it is a necessary practice. This hard work has given me a loving companion that shows up during the challenging and brave things I choose to do in my life, no matter how they turn out. And working at compassion means I get to experience the softening that comes to the hard edges of things that can often feel so scary, hard, and insurmountable — like choosing not to build a company anymore.

Because I've grown my self-compassion, I know what it feels like to trust myself. I know that I can count on myself — every time, in every emotion, and every struggle — to show up before, during, and after, and be the one to say, Mack, I see you. I love you. You're amazing. And when something is really hard, and my self-compassion isn't enough, I can trust myself to reach out and get the exact support I need from the humans I know will show up for me.

Because I've built self-compassion, I know what it feels like to value myself. Especially when the pressure and uncertainty is high, I know I will stop myself when I'm hustling to prove myself and convince others of my worth. I know I will slow down and breathe because the relentless pace and pressure is driven by story. I know my worth and my gifts and I will make space to listen to my wisdom and sensing because that is my guide. 

This has been years of work, and I may need years more. But it's just part of showing up — for myself and the life I really want.

Pain

"we do not realize that our reactions to life's difficulties
stop us from seeing things clearly and place limits
on our ability to produce more creative solutions.

we do not understand how powerfully our past grips our present."

- Yung Pueblo

I am lucky that my work is both a playground and an arena where I get to experiment with — and be challenged by — who I want to be in my life. It is in my work that I choose to practice being more of who I am because I'm supporting other humans in learning how to do the same.

What I've learned while being in so many different organizations — watching and experiencing all the humans engage with systems, cultures, ways of being, leading and working — is that there is pain in each of us. We come with it. We collect it. We hold onto it. We add to it. We offload it onto others.

When we don't figure out how to process it, this pain becomes how we see the world. It becomes how we engage with the people we lead and really love. We think it's just the way it is, but we choose this pain every day.

Unprocessed pain keeps us from being the bravest version of ourselves. It distills the joy, connection, and meaning in our relationships. It diminishes our capacity to reach the places we dream of going in our leadership and our companies.

This pain holds us back from showing up in our lives. It keeps us from showing up for ourselves.

I didn't really know that I had pain to process, but what I did know was that something wasn't right about how I was handling stress and struggle. For many, many years in my adult life, my tired protocol for managing my emotions through challenging or stressful situations was really the same as a much younger version of myself.

Every time I had difficult feelings — fear, disappointment, anger, frustration, sadness, I would abandon myself and melt down. I would be agitated, irritable, and push people away. Or I would retreat, hide, avoid asking for what I needed, and blame someone for not getting it. Every single time I was in struggle I repeated this process.

I became very tired of this cycle. As did my family.

So I started to sit.

Processing my pain was an invitation to have a different relationship with my emotions. When I had feelings, instead of pushing them away — which I usually did with blame — I made space to name them and just let them come up. If I was at work, I made time to allow the feelings to come up after work. Sometimes I would sit in a chair outside, close my eyes, put my hand over my heart, and breathe. Sometimes I would lay on the floor. Sometimes I would sit and listen to a meditation and cry. Other times I would journal.

Any time I noticed I was heading into that familiar well-worn path of avoiding responsibility for my emotions or pain, I would just go find a place to sit. Over and over again, for over a year.

I just kept showing up.

Then, last summer when the economy was imploding, a large contract I had been working on was dissolving. With it came an enormous amount of sadness, loss, fear, and doubt. But for the first time ever, instead of completely crumbling in the uncertainty, I showed up with incredible fierceness. All the work I had done to show up for myself over the last year was showing up for me. I knew how to move through the struggle.

Every day — sometimes twice a day — I showed up for myself by sitting under a tree. All the feelings. All the fear. All the stories. I let them come.

This time, there was something in me that said:

I can be with this.
I can sit here in this and let it come through.
I can listen to what this is trying to share with me.
I know this will help me find my way.

Many times when I sat, there was no release. No resolution. The emotions were too big. The angst was so heavy. And the critical voices got worse:

What's the point of doing this? This does nothing.

And every time, compassion would follow:

For as long as it takes. I will sit here and show up for you for as long as it takes.

But so many times when I sat, I felt incredible grace. I could exhale. I felt held and heard. I felt release.

I thought that in order to be free of the pain I was carrying that I had to go back to all of my experiences, all of the events — like when I was a kid or when I ran my company — and rehash the hard things that had happened. I thought I had to live through them again to process the pain. I thought I had to forgive people. I thought I had to forgive myself.

But what I've learned about my pain is that there is a part of me that just wants to hear:

I understand.
I see you.
I'm so sorry.
That was hard.
You didn't deserve that.
I'm so proud of you.
You're so strong.
You're not alone.
I'm right here.
I love you.

For me, beginning to heal the pain I've carried around is about showing up for myself so that I can be the person who's there when I need someone the most. This is the person I needed when I was younger. This is the person I needed when I was running my company. This is the person I need now so I can be the bravest version of myself.

Learning to show up for myself in this way has given me the capacity to acknowledge my reactions — that may very well come from my past — and choose a more compassionate, intentional response that's more like me and who I want to be. This has helped me to stop blaming other people for what I am responsible for feeling.

This practice of sitting in pain and discomfort has started to unlock a level of clear seeing that feels like effortless wisdom. I have increased my capacity to really hear what leaders are telling me and discern where the struggle and tension is actually coming from in their leadership, teams, systems, and organizations.

Learning to feel my feelings and process pain has also given me access to a much deeper well of compassion and love for myself. It has unlocked more of who I want to be with my kids. When I choose to, I can really listen to them. Connect with them. See them. Be in the hard emotions with them and be able to control my reaction to the discomfort of their pain, rather than centering around my own.

Just like when I was initially building the muscle of compassion, I've had to literally force myself to show up and be in the discomfort of pain. To sit. To feel. To let the emotions come in and pass through. This is hard. And I'm still reluctant and scared every time, but now I know how to show up for myself in a way that makes me proud.

Truth

"Showing up consistently requires confronting the edges of our comfort and taking deliberate steps through the discomfort of reconfiguring ourselves."

- Sarah Blondin

In our leadership — and in our lives — we will come to this place in our journey, more than once, where we are stuck. Where we are repeating old patterns, habits that don't serve us, or neglecting what is required to show up for ourselves. If we are honest, these stuck times keep coming because — every time — we are being asked to look closer, go deeper, and explore and expand our capacity to be who we are in a way that scares the shit out of us. So we continue to ignore and avoid these invitations.

What I have learned is that we have to pay attention to the invitations that are pulling us toward the version of ourselves that we really, deeply want to become, but don't know how. Sometimes these invitations come — like they did for me — in the form of emotional reactions that don't really feel fit for a grown up.

But many times these invitations come from our stories and excuses where we've convinced ourselves that we're not worth it, it will be too hard, or we don't have the time.

In the many phases of my journey, I have been given so many invitations to show up and grow. It has really only been in the last decade that I've been brave enough to accept them.

When Jon and I were both out of work at the same time, and I was suffocating under the immense fear that we would not be OK, I dove head first into learning how to navigate uncertainty. This became my next company and has been the ride of my life. I'm still on that journey.

When I realized I was gripping and controlling in an attempt to architect the perfect path for myself so I could avoid any level of failure or discomfort, I forced myself to practice experimenting with a different way of making decisions. It has helped me reduce my dependency on perfectionism and get better at trusting myself. This has also helped my 13 year old son. We're both still on that journey.

When I noticed fear was still the primary lens I was using to steer my life. When I got tired of picking up the recurring sadness at the beginning of my days. Whatever shows me I’m holding myself back from experiencing the vastness of my life. I accept those invitations, too.

It is so much easier to be overcome and overwhelmed by the responsibility of our lives that we slip into the passenger seat. We stop showing up.

There is work in learning how to show up for ourselves. Work that requires us to be honest. Work that points us toward the pain. Work that is scary, nebulous, and undefined. Work that asks us to be braver than we've ever been.

But choosing this path — in whatever way is real and true to each of us in our own individual journeys — is what unlocks the stuck parts of our leadership, and our entire lives.

When you're ready to start showing up in a different way than you have been, you can:

1. Meet every critical thought you have with compassion.

2. Go outside and be in nature. Breathe vs. think.

3. Surround yourself with people who can teach you to become more heart-centered.

4. Read things that encourage you to be honest about the patterns you're repeating.

5. Write letters from love to yourself every day.

6. Get a coach who is also showing up for themselves.

7. Find a therapist who has somatic experience.

8. Eat more nutrient dense food and drink more water.

9. Make space to be by yourself.

10. Protect your rest.

11. Move your body on a daily basis.

12. Play.

13. Become friends with more humans who are also practicing showing up for themselves.

14. Work at a company that is practicing human-centric ways of working.

15. Learn how to be a more vulnerable and courageous leader.

And let me know how it goes.