Working on Being Seen

Looking back, I can recall feeling uncomfortable being seen and taking up space over the last few years. I can remember the feeling in my body when I was faced with being seen. I might have become anxious or even shaky, my mind would go blank or it would be hard to express my true feelings and thoughts.

A few moments in particular come to mind. The first being the moment my partner and I were introduced to  Mr. Money Mustache  (the coach we had in the  Netflix film ). The second being when I did my first recording with  Alan Donegan  about podcasting.

Both of these moments had several things in common:

• I was speaking with men that had an expertise I did not as well as a significant following

• I was stepping into a new level of being seen

Working on being seen - yelling in the middle of the crowded Rino area of downtown Denver

For me, being seen in my authority and vulnerability is much harder with men. I know this has everything to do with my elementary and middle school experiences, being involuntarily placed into the outcast clique in my very small (30 person) class for 9 years. I didn’t have much social experience and was not able to successfully navigate the tricky social waters of elementary and middle school. Which meant I was considered undesirable to boys. My formative years were spent believing that I was not good enough to receive attention from those I was interested in having romantic relationships with and also not good enough to have friends. I didn’t have the opportunity to engage with the boys in my class.

As mild as that wounding was, I still have a part of me that gets triggered when first meeting a man. My first assumption is that a man will think I am not smart enough, not interesting enough and not socially savvy enough to be connected - that I will be made fun of and rejected.

Despite having done tons of internal work on this wounding, my body still holds the memories of the experiences from my childhood. It still takes an hour or so for my nervous system to settle down and feel safe to build emotional trust with a man.

In those moments, I continually provide my inner child and body with comforting touch, soft clothes, smiles and positive messages. I remind my inner child that it is safe, I am totally amazing and that anyone that doesn’t think so can hit the road.

I can remember driving to meet Mr. Money Mustache (Pete) and the film crew. The crew wanted our meeting to be a surprise, so we didn’t get to meet Pete until the cameras were rolling. As you can imagine, this just amplified the anticipatory anxiety I was feeling leading up to the moment where I would be meeting a man with a certain perceived amount of societal power. While there was no rational reason for anxiety, my body was remembering childhood trauma - being outcast by those deemed societally powerful.

By the time we arrived, my body was exhausted. My mind was blank and my body crashed into a state of slight dissociation to compensate for the anxiety I had been feeling. I barely spoke during the first 10 or so minutes of the filming. And during the remainder, my body was shaking in response to the activation I had been feeling prior.

The reality was that I was surpassing my growth edge. I was choosing to meet live on camera, someone that triggered me and letting my authentic self be seen. We would be talking about my excessive spending habits with someone who was known to have a biting, critical and rigid perspective on spending. I would be facing my own money habits, an old trigger around men not accepting me and also being seen, not just by the crew, but by all of the world.

I can say that if I had been invited to be part of this film a year or two earlier, I would not have been able to do it. There was no way I would have been solid enough inside of myself to be seen in that way. None of the film was scripted, it was all real and live conversations.

These moments, where you face your fears and choose to be seen are wildly powerful and expansive. Being part of that film changed my in so many ways - improving my relationship with money, meeting people that were caliber of compassion I didn't know existed, bringing me closer to my partner and family, connecting me with so many like-minded souls across the planet, bringing in an effortless flow of new highly aligned clients, building my confidence to be authentically seen and the list goes on. Not only did I have the potential to help others by being vulnerable and seen, but I also had the chance to move into the next level of confidence - my comfort with being seen. And with each new level of confidence, of allowing myself to be seen authentically, I break down those old fears in my body and also organically attract what I value and desire in life - more connection, more ease, more money, more love, more joy.

So I share this story with you so you might potentially see the possibilities in your own life of being seen and taking leaps into the next level of your confidence. So you may also organically attract more of what you value and desire in life.

Let me tell you about the methods I have used and use with my clients to take those leaps forward into being seen.

• Get to know what it feels like to be seen versus be unseen - understanding what it feels like in your body to be seen and to not be seen is a very important part of building awareness and taking steps towards choosing to be seen. Sometimes just moving your body from the state of being small and unseen to what it would be like to be seen, in the moment, can change how an experience plays out. When you put on the body language of “I will be seen” you will get very different reactions than “I will be invisible.”

• Knowing your triggers - take the time to gain clarity about what triggers you into feeling small and not being seen. When you know your triggers, you can anticipate them and prepare to challenge your reaction as it comes up in the moment.

• Love your inner child - Just like me, you likely have experiences from childhood where you were hurt as a child. These inner child experiences get frozen in time in our psyche. When you can connect with that frozen in time inner child to help her feel okay in the now when faced with situations that remind you and she of pain she felt as a kid, you have a lot more power to respond differently. Love on her when she gets triggered into fear that the same thing will play out. Just like I did when meeting MMM for the first time - I said to her, “this isn’t like those boys at school, I am an adult and I am awesome. If he is not kind or judgmental, that is on him. There is nothing to be afraid of, he can’t affect your worth.”

• Doing the hard and scary thing to expand - take the action and then work through the feelings. I always tell clients, don’t wait until you are ready if you are someone that takes a long time to be ready to make a leap, you are delaying your potential. Instead, if you know that you need to take a leap to expand and fear or logistics are the only things holding you back, then go for it.

• Deepen trust that you are worthy - The more you deepen your trust in your own worth, the more you are unshakable to others behaviors, judgments or opinions. If you believe you are amazing, like believe it down to your bones, no one will be able to change that. AND you will attract those that also believe that and repel those that do not.

• Doing the work to break through any blocks that are getting in the way of the above - if you find yourself getting stuck at any of the above action items, that means there is some stuff that needs to be cleared out in your system. I am a huge proponent of always having a therapist, coach or other healer to work with. Your personal development is the only path to meeting your potential in life, so shouldn’t it also be something you always budget into your life above all the other stuff??

Try these out one at a time. Set aside sacred time to explore each one. They are all powerful tools.

And choose to be seen more and more. I am still and always will be on the journey to be seen. I know that the more I let others see, the more I am truly seeing and respecting in myself. It isn’t about others, it is about building my own confidence. And with confidence comes wealth in all of its forms - a wealth of love, connection, money, ease, pleasure, meaning, purpose and joy.

I hope this inspires you and supports you in being seen.

Please share this with the women in your life that deserve to be seen. We as women must work together to dismantle the internalized oppression of our voices and bodies.

I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share your thoughts anytime by simply replying to this email.