Dear Jessica Brennan,
Recently I stumbled on a podcast in Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations with Iyanla Vanzant. Now, I must have been living under a rock because I had never heard of Iyanla until that day. Maybe it is because I don’t have cable TV, or maybe it is because this was the day I needed to hear from her.
You can read Iyanla’s remarkable story here. I’m not going to share it in this post, because it isn’t my story to tell.
Because I live in a home full of music, I often give it a break in the car and fill my time with podcasts that can be everything from audiobooks to Ted Talks. Usually they are interesting, I mean who doesn’t want to learn more about How I Built a First Aid Kit for Astronauts, or Growing Food in South Central LA? I truly find it all fascinating.
But this particular morning as I was driving to work, I was feeling a bit down, and sorry for myself. My mother had just died and it was a stressful and peculiar time. It is sort of strange that I chose an Oprah podcast because honestly, I was quite content in my temporary misery. In fact, it is surprising that I didn’t switch on Apple Music for some emotional ballads to give me a good foundation of self-pity for the day. Thankfully I didn’t, because something profound happened.
As Iyanla was speaking I realized she was talking to me. But instead of having the perhaps typical reaction of, “Oh no, I can’t deal with this much inspiration when I’m trying to be in a bad mood,” I heard myself saying:
“Yes!”
“Oh absolutely, yes 100%!”
“Right? Why do I do that? Thank you!”
I was spontaneously crying out like I was back in a Southern Baptist revival meeting on a Sunday night. Preach.
Making a joyful noise as I drive through the streets of my city, isn’t really my style, but that day I felt fortunate that we are in a time with hands-free phones so I didn’t get carted off to the special doctor for shouting out to myself in the car.
Iyanla was speaking right to my heart, like she had heard what was going on in my head and she was going to straighten me out, and so she did. She seemed to cover every inch of what I needed to hear in that moment.
She talked about how we need to stop being wounded, and stop dwelling on bad experiences we’ve had. Stop making these hardships who we are, instead of something we went through.
We are not our wounds. We are not our failures. We are not our disappointments. (You might want to read that again).
That very morning I had posted a blog that touched people’s hearts about bringing your own light to the world, but in truth I wasn’t feeling it myself that day. My light had all but gone out. Then in this podcast I heard Oprah preface a question stating that we often teach what we most need to learn. Bingo! That got me right where I live.
The book Iyanla was promoting is called, The Four Essentials of Trust, and the first thing she talked about was trusting yourself. This took me back to being a child.
I was born with a connection to the universe (or God, if you like) that was solid. I knew intrinsically that I had everything I needed right inside me and that if I had my inner world healthy and intact, I could figure everything else out. I didn’t have the words to say this when I was little, but I also didn’t need anyone to tell me it existed. By the time I got to my twenties I knew this well enough to actually tell people that this was the case. I knew when to ask for help, when to plough forward and when to stop, because I could hear the voice inside me, guiding me. Then I grew up, and started to have a harder and harder time cutting through the static and connecting back to that quiet centre of myself. I couldn’t hear my own voice in the every-moment like I used to. That morning in the car, I realized how much I was missing that still small voice.
As I listened to the stories in this podcast, I thought of my journal and how my writing had slowly turned into, “This happened to me, and that happened to me”, but I wasn’t writing, “This is what my gut is telling me. This is where the universe is nudging me. This is what I made happen”. My journal entries changed that day.
Iyanla talked about how our inner struggle comes from the parts of us that want to grow, fighting with the parts of us that are more happy to stay moping in the familiarity of brokeness and mediocrity. The message being, stop fighting with yourself. Nothing external is attacking you. You are attacking you.
And guess what? She told me that there’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with you. Remember that. Hear your own voice. Follow the compass that you were born with. Too old, too poor, too late – that all exists only in your head.
Trust people, she told me. We need to trust people and love people, with all their imperfections, but trust yourself first. I started realizing that my husband and family cannot be my everything. I need to stop putting that pressure on them. My friends cannot fill me up if I’m empty. “Fill yourself up Sharon!”
I heard her words talking about the need for vulnerability in trust. There is no question that at times, you will be disappointed. People will let you down. That’s how you learn, and that’s how they learn. This reminded me of the courageous work of Brene Brown and all I have learned from her over the years. (She doesn’t know me either.)
Often we convince ourselves that we are not enough. We start to look outside ourselves and we lose our internal compass. Iyanla said that if you silence your inner compass, “You are on the road in the dark with one shoe, heading to the edge of the cliff”. I knew then that I needed to look for my other shoe.
Living in fear is a drag, so trust yourself, was the message, but there was more to this thought, because being full of fear, and being a little jittery or a little scared are very different things. We all try to hide or flee from any sort of fear yet performers will tell you that getting the jitters before a concert means you still care. You’re still open to learning and you’re still pushing yourself to be greater.
So, the one thing that really resonated with me – yes, because we’re talking Oprah, I will say it – The big aha moment for me was when Iyanla said this:
If you aren’t a little uneasy, you aren’t living big enough.
Thank you Iyanla.
Stay scared,
Love Mum, xo
