PERSONAL ESSAY - Speaking with Integrity

Speaking with Integrity

There’s a post on David Wolfe’s website of six things about which women in their 40s should be able to advise women in their 20s.  According to the list, self-love comes first.  Have I sufficiently learned to love myself enough that I can guide younger women on how to achieve this?  At 47, my answer is yes and no.  Yes, because I have a measure of love for whom I’ve become; and no, because there is always opportunity for that love to either fade or blossom.  Even now, I don’t always choose responses to life’s situations that let it blossom.  However, even in those moments of personal failure, the next moment opens to a new opportunity to try again.

In the interest of developing more self-love in order to blossom more and more often, I set a goal: to improve my communication skills.  The goal is to respectfully express the full range of my emotions with my integrity intact.  Even with this one simple goal, my inner critic piped up.  She said I’d fail.  She said I’d give up.  She said I was stupid for trying.  I hadn’t even taken the first step and was at risk of shutting myself down.  Clearly, the first thing I needed to do was get past my own hurdle: make the inner critic go into a coma.  It all came down to a simple question that I could ask the critic every time she bared her fangs at me: what if you’re wrong?  Just allowing myself to wonder if the inner critic was wrong opened me up to a long string of what if questions about the possibilities of success.  The inner critic never goes away.  She lingers and mutters.  Having at least one pithy response to quiet her down is most helpful.  Sometimes the pithy response is simply to tell her, “SHUT UP! I’m going to try anyway.”

Once my critic cringed in a corner, I could take the next step toward improved communication skills.  Sticking with this one overriding goal made a major difference in the quality of relationship I have with one brother.  According to my niece, he and I are very alike in some ways.  According to me, we have nothing in common.  Only one of these attitudes had any potential to yield positive results.

Case in point, my brother has a gruff way with words that tends to trigger my insecurities and when that happens, I clam up in self-defense, unable to articulate myself.  As the saying goes, it’s better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you’re a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. But living with my mouth closed was no longer a viable option.

Said brother relentlessly advised me to buy a bigger, better replacement television.  To this I said every time that I don’t watch enough television to warrant a purchase.  On the flip side, I encouraged him to upgrade his dinosaur cell phone to a smartphone, and listed all the benefits he’d enjoy.  He said he had internet access from home and work, and had no use for a smartphone.  I said that I’d felt the same way he did, but once I did upgrade, I found the features indispensable.  His reaction quickly escalated to anger and frustration, and voila! I was triggered.

This particular time though, I remembered what I’d been learning about assertiveness.  Instead of clamming up or lashing out, I noticed my physical reaction.  My chest had clenched.  I took a deep breath and realized I had a choice. If I was truly committed to stop vanishing into the shadows of bullies, I had to respond with intention, rather than react mindlessly. I could reach for my higher self and stay calm.  Not silent, but calm.  This may seem easy to some, but doing something different after 40+ years of reacting out of habit was a challenge.  I said, “I don’t understand why you’re escalating.  This is a normal conversation.  I’m not attacking you.  I’m just saying that I felt the same way you do, so there’s a chance you’ll change your mind also.”

His tone shifted back towards neutral.  He stopped shouting.

Taking my relationship with my brother down a new path was a side effect of sticking to my intention, which was borne of a desire to improve my life because I love myself enough to want better.  By remaining true to my commitment, I got to turn a corner with my brother. Having this one singular victory fed my self-confidence to stay with the process.

Emotions are multiplicative.  Love of self gives rise to more and more love, and the love itself matures and gets stronger.  Everything else goes off in the right direction from the starting point of self-love.  Developing it, nurturing it, affirming it, and believing in its power help it blossom.  When that happens, I blossom too.