So this has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time: How a celebrity culture actually silences the voices of the many.
We are trained to look outside ourselves, listen to the latest podcast, the latest celebrity author or teacher.
I’m am not saying others cannot be teachers, but a celebrity culture takes it further. It promotes people by giving them humongous platforms which just keep getting bigger and bigger.
My point is this: more information is not the answer. You must claim your own worth, your own value and your own Voice.
If you keep listening to the experts and the latest popular person ‘out there’, you reinforce your conditioned beliefs that there is something missing within you, that you need to fill a hole of some sort. The paradox of this is that even those who tell you that their method actually does ‘fill the hole’ are part of the problem!
Only you can do that.
Here’s an example from a mentorship client’s recent experience:
She was telling me that she didn’t like to feel vulnerable. We talked about her history with this feeling, of course, but we wanted to go deeper than that, to really get in touch with her own vertical-plane truth about it. (She had read all the Brene Brown books on vulnerability–the ‘expert’ on this.) So as homework I gave her the assignment to ask her Inner Old Person about vulnerability. (Her Inner Old Person is a part my client has designated to represent her deeper wisdom on life.)
I suggested that she ask: “What does vulnerability give us the opportunity to experience that without it we would miss?”
Here’s my client’s email after she did this!
Awesome interaction with my Inner Old Person! Here’s the gist of what she said when I posed to her the questions about vulnerability:
“The real Big Picture includes everything—emotions, uncertainties, the many opposites inherent in human life, all the ups and downs in everyone’s journey, all the differences between people, and so on. The ‘Big Picture’ you have been going to as an escape hatch from emotions is simply Abstraction. But that is only a part of the real Big Picture—abstraction being one of the many vantage points from which to view life. True and beautiful vulnerability is openness to the real Big Picture that includes ALL of life–the vertical and the horizontal and all the many features of each day, inner and outer. That vulnerability is where peace resides—the ‘peace that passeth understanding.’ It resides amidst the uncertainties, ups and downs, successes and failures, joys and sorrows, and all the rest. Far from being a weakness, it is the peace and surrender of the heart, fearlessly embracing everything (even fear itself) in love. A grand paradox, but Big Truth.”
Her response brought tears to my eyes and warmth to my heart! Thank you for the prompt that led to this!
You see, reading ‘about’ vulnerability in some book or listening to some podcast about it won’t EVER give you the wisdom that resides within you. My client connected to her own wisdom and truth and definition of vulnerability.
Thus, my pet peeve: celebrity culture. It silences.
Stop listening to all the others and go within.
It’s harder because you have to confront all that comes between you and YOU.
This is where I come in to support you, inside The Find Your Voice Women’s Club.
