We live in a world where neurodivergence is treated like a disability, high sensitivity is considered a weakness, introversion is a challenge worth conquering and trauma doesn’t count unless you’ve experienced more of it than anyone else.
We live in a world where “fake it ‘til you make it” is sanctioned career advice and wonder why “imposter syndrome” feels so pervasive.
Put simply, we live in a world that works really well for a select few who grew up in almost pristine conditions, possess unnatural levels of charisma and refuse to think too deeply about anything that isn’t connected to profit – and outsource their thinking once they find it.
For most of us, the world doesn’t work at all. But we say, “that’s just how it is,” and we power through it at great personal cost.
How I worked to be someone I’m not
Growing up, I tried to be perfect at everything and was rewarded greatly for it, so I began defining a lot of who I was through external metrics. I wanted what others wanted. I sought what others sought. I lived my life according to everyone else’s rules without caring about who I really was, and I wondered why the life I wanted most kept getting further and further away – a life of freedom, creativity and nature.
I thought money would buy me freedom, but the higher my salary, the less freedom I had. I thought love would provide a secure foundation on which I could blossom until one night, I found myself homeless when my then-husband threw me out on the street. I thought I found the perfect job only to end up in a traumatizing workplace saga that left me so consumed by self-doubt that I quit every leadership opportunity that came my way afterward.
By the time I burned out catastrophically in my late-thirties, I had no idea who I was, what I wanted or even how to start finding answers to such questions. I felt like a major failure, even as I was checking all the boxes for how to live a successful life.
Thank goodness, then, for that crash. It was my wake-up call.
Waking up to the rules
After the burnout, and thanks in large part to the pandemic shutdowns, I started to question why things had to be the way they were. One question gave way to the next in a cascade of realizations that:
I am not like anyone else I know.
My needs are more important than my successes.
And the hyper-connected internet age has sharply narrowed the definition of what it means to live "well."
Three years into my questioning came my autism diagnosis, and with it, the urgent recognition that I couldn’t define my life according to others’ standards because I am inherently different.
“Faking it” made me mask myself so deeply that I lost all sense of who I really was. There would be no “making it” without reconnecting to my fundamental needs, wants and dreams, so I’m done with the faking. I’m ready to live authentically in spite of the mess.
My introversion is not an inconvenient personality trait that needs to be overcome. It’s a crucial element of health, like getting enough sleep and eating a balanced diet. To deny my introversion by playing the part of an extrovert will cut my life short, and I refuse to do it anymore.
And my high sensitivity? I believed its purpose was to serve others by processing their emotions for them or shielding them from other emotions in the environment around us. Now I know how to turn my empathy on myself instead and leverage it toward my own healing and intuitive capacities. I can finally own it for what it is – a powerful force for self-protection.
Make life work for you
What parts of yourself are you denying in an effort to live a “successful life?” For what are you being rewarded that’s actually taking your further away from what you know you want most? By whose rules are you living?
When I started taking notice of how much I’d internalized other people’s definitions of success, I at first felt ashamed for abandoning myself. But on the other side of that shame was freedom, the very thing I wanted most. And that’s when I began to make peace with my life.
If you sense that you’re missing key truths about who you want to be or how you want to live, I’m here to tell you: There’s a better way. You can carve the path to the life you want. It isn’t too late, nor is it too soon. And it doesn’t need to take as long or be as hard as it might seem. The key is to bring your nervous system into alignment with your vision as early as possible – before it can get in your way.
That’s what I’m here to do. In the next two weeks, I will begin offering services to give independent thinkers like you the neural resources you need to reach for a more centered, aligned and energized version of your life. There’s no way to overstate how transformative nervous system work has been for me – for my capacity to write my own rules. And I know it can be true for you too.
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