Becoming an Underachiever
Last night I was watching Netflix late. I knew I should go to bed but one of my “guilty pleasure” shows, “A Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce” had released it’s final season and I couldn’t stop watching! I was awake at midnight watching the second to last episode when I found myself crying uncontrollably. The scene was Abby (the main character) pitching an executive group and trying to win advertising dollars for her website. She was putting them all to sleep when suddenly she switched lanes. She put her head in her hands and just sighed. Then the tears started. She began describing how stressful her life was with four kids.
She said, “Confidence. I wish I had a little bit more of it right now. No, really, I really wish I had more confidence. Because I feel like I am failing. I have four kids at home and one of them is leaving soon and I’m missing that. And then this opportunity to be here with you guys pitching, and I’m missing that too. I’m trying to steal time to work on my pitch in between lice checks. Which by the way don’t worry about it because nobody has it! Uggggh. Women. I mean some of us….we feel like we can expand infinitely; that our energy is just limitless but it is not. It has limits. And so, you have to make choices. And then you disappoint people because how can you not? There are no short cuts through this. And there is all this guilt and shame about not being EV-E-RY-THING!”
The tears were streaming down my face. How I could relate to this notion of thinking I can expand infinitely; feeling like I can ‘do it all’ and honestly believing that if I just push harder, just push longer, I can MAKE IT ALL HAPPEN. It made me weep for all the people know who push themselves to the limit; for their kids, for their families, for their communities….women and men who are masters at being there for everyone and for pulling off schedules that would make the average person cry. Then they crucify themselves for not doing it perfectly or for missing a beat.
I sat with my close friend on Monday who almost died giving birth to a baby girl six weeks ago. She was crying at the kitchen table because inside she knows she can’t breast feed and be the best mom she can be yet she can’t quite shake the feeling of guilt and shame because she believes that breast milk is the best and formula is a bad choice.
Last week I stood at a birthday party with a woman who confided in me that her husband travels almost every day of the week and she is exhausted. She said she yells at her kids and even yelled at her sister who was in town from India the week before and she was devastated at he own behavior. She said, “I just want to do it all and do it perfectly.”
And oh how I relate. Because I lived it. For years. The running tirelessly. The pretending everything was ok. The making sure my house was perfect, my kids diet was perfect, my friendships were perfect. Everything was so damn perfect. Except it wasn’t. And I wanted to scream the same question that the girl at the birthday party asked me after she found out I was a life coach. She said, “Can you just tell me a quick fix for making it all ok? Just like one or two things you did to change your ways?”
Maybe you don’t relate to this and frankly, you are lucky and far healthier than me! But if you do, just know you are not alone. And when we slow down long enough to where we can get vulnerable enough to touch this place inside; we usually end up crying like I did last night. I was crying because despite knowing how to get off my own hamster wheel and endless years of therapy and coaching to stop trying to “do it all right and be everything to everyone,” my nature took over and I’m back in that “infinitely expanding” place one month into summer!
As I reflected today, I realized that I haven’t been taking my own advice. When parents ask me, “how do you do it as a single parent?” My answer is always, I’m an underachiever!” And I mean it. A reformed perfectionist and complete fake, I now claim this title with pride! Underachieving for me means that I am REAL (not a different version of myself depending on the audience). I no longer pretend everything is ok when it’s not. It means that my kids eat eggs and toast for DINNER sometimes and some nights it’s just cereal and milk! It means I don’t entertain my kids and don’t feel guilty. I don’t sign up for every school activity at my kids school because I use the free time that they are in school to grow my business or do something fun for ME! It means I cuss (a lot.) Underachieving means I do a lot of things for myself; I play tennis, I go to the Asian foot spa once a week, I workout an hour every day, and I sometimes lock my door to my room and read for hours while the kids are watching TV! I give myself permission to be human and REAL. No more perfect. No more caring what other moms think of me. No more striving for people to like me or relate to me. I am surrounded by badasses everywhere because I stopped the insanity of being perfect or at the very least of pretending they were!
If you struggle with guilt and shame over not being able to ‘do it all,” join the club. If you struggle with perfectionism, join the club. Maybe it’s part of being a parent; maybe it’s part of our genetic make up. Whatever it is, there is something you can do right now to make it stop. That is, make a decision. Decide that it is ok to let some stuff slide; to say no; to stop pretending even if it’s just to one person. Decide that just because “everyone else is (fill in the blank)” doesn’t mean that you have to, too (this goes for your kids and their activities as well.)”. In the meantime, just make sure to know that you deserve a break; a minute; a beat. You deserve to take the pressure off and just give it all a rest. The journey to becoming an underachiever is a long one. It did not come easily to me. But then again, nothing in my life worth having has ever come easily!
