I’d like to share with you what I did this morning. It took some courage but left me feeling uplifted, inspired and sure of myself. After resisting the experience sharply, I eventually surrendered and took what I think is a big leap towards creating my dream self. Truly, it was nothing less than pure transformation.
I went to have my hair done.
Hopefully for most of you this is a relatively normal activity. But, for me, committing time, energy and money to having my hair done requires surrender, risk and a leap out my comfort zone to the extent that I can call it a spiritual experience. Not because I got high on the peroxide fumes or braved Sandton City on a Saturday morning, but because my story about who I am has excluded beauty for a long time.
For reasons that are too complex to mention beauty is an aspect of divinity that has never seemed to belong to me. I have an uncanny (and certainly not coincidental) knack of being surrounded by beautiful family, friends, and even my own sons, but I’ve never managed to own what was being reflected to me. So for a long time, I reacted to beauty the way many of us react to what we secretly want but think we can’t have. We make it wrong! It was much easier for me to call beautiful people superficial than to face my own sense of lack and much more convenient to label those girls who did embrace their beauty, sluts, rather than begin the sticky, scary journey of embracing my own.
So I worked hard to carve an identity that positioned itself as somewhat opposite to beautiful. I developed the serious, intellectual, spiritual side of myself so that beauty in relation would look frivolous and meaningless. But, of course, that lack of wholeness repeatedly comes back to bite me on the bum! In a reading this weekend, it was gently suggested to me that my struggle with marketing myself and my work is a direct reflection of my own firm belief that the content (the inner) is far more important than the packaging (the outer). Ouch! But, in the practical, playful tone that is characteristic of the readings, I was advised not to judge myself for that (mis)belief but instead to do something I’d secretly wanted to do for ages – and without guilt! That’s why I found myself spending the morning with my head under a dryer rather than under a book.
There are many ways to look at what aspects of yourself you’re suppressing. An obvious one is to observe the labels you most often put on yourself and consider what the opposite of that might be. Do you think of yourself as clever, middle-aged or spiritual? Perhaps you’re missing out on the benefits of being a little silly, youthful in your thinking, or commercially minded? A friend of mine exemplified this to me when she took some time out from her two-year-old to shop for shoes. She consciously looked for the pair of boots that seemed the most UNmother-like and she feels wild and sexy each time she puts them on. Just for the sake of feeling that it was a good thing to do, but the value goes even beyond the feeling. Being in touch with that side of herself is going to be extremely useful as she embraces her fledgling career and needs a sense of toughness to draw on, or when she has to muster up the self esteem to speak out. Most often, it is our repressed selves that hold the key to our next step in business, relationships or personal growth.
What small choice can you make this month to express who you think you are not? I guarantee you learning, liberation and a great deal of fun!
