12. The Importance of Accepting Your Flaws
For women with ambitious goals in high-achieving environments, our perceived flaws are liabilities. We think of our flaws as signs of weakness, incompetence, and inadequacy that could result in us being cast aside. Admitting that we're wrong, owning our flaws, and even apologizing can feel genuinely painful. But practicing humility is both the key to resilience and kryptonite for your self-criticism and fear of failure.
This pain and discomfort of owning our flaws comes up because doing so means challenging all of the pretending we do in our lives. Admitting our flaws means admitting we aren't perfect. But once you understand this, you can start showing up with more resilience and less self-criticism.
Tune in this week to discover how to stop your flaws, weaknesses, and your fear of failure from holding you back. You'll learn why accepting your perceived flaws means nobody can hold them against you, and how to create a sense of belonging by accepting and owning the things you're trying to hide from others.
Want to start ramping up your self-awareness so you’re on to yourself before Burnout fully takes over? Click here to get your free Burnout Alarm Bell Study Guide!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
The value in identifying the parts of yourself you don't love, that stop you from growing and changing.
Why, once you accept your flaws, nobody can hold them against you.
How we outsource our sense of self-worth to our achievements, and why we need to stop.
The important difference between acceptance and approval.
Why self-acceptance is not conceding, and this is where the healing begins.
How to start accepting your flaws and cultivate a new level of resilience.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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In Just-Spring - poem by E.E. Cummings
Full Episode Transcript:
For women with ambitious goals in high achieving environments our perceived flaws are liabilities, signs of weakness, incompetence, inadequacy, not enough-ness. We could potentially be cast aside by the tribe if anyone noticed or found out about us. Admitting that we’re wrong and owning our flaws, even apologizing can feel really painful. Are we right? Is this landing? I mean my heart sort of skipped a beat in a bad way just thinking about how stubborn I can be or short or oh, my God, my control, enthusiasm.
This pain and discomfort come in because when we own our flaws, the parts of ourselves we don’t like, we sort of challenge all of the pretending we’re doing in our lives. Said in another way, when we admit our flaws, we unwittingly admit we are not perfect, and this is gold. Join us today as we talk about how practicing humility is both the key to resilience and kryptonite for your self-criticism and fear of failure. Are your wheels turning here? This is going to be a fun one. Let’s get started. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Hey, it’s Nina here solo on the pod today. Kelle will be back next episode. I’m coming to you from just barely spring here in Park City, Utah. You know that E. E. Cummings poem, In Just-Spring? That’s where we are here in our mud luscious mountain town. I’m laughing because a week ago today we had three feet of snow in the yard, and it was still coming down. And thank goodness today it’s 70, sunny and the snow has melted away. And all the little crocuses and daffodils are popping out of the just barely spring dirt.
I love this time of year, but spring is kind of a joke in the mountains. It’s really just one day of winter then one day of spring, one step forward, one step back, March, April, May and into June. All of our kids’ sports, their spring sports should be half price. I mean, I’m just going to say it. Anyway, let’s jump into today’s show.
I recently took a pretty big inventory of my strengths and weaknesses. Have you ever listed your strengths and weaknesses? If you haven’t, I’d suggest starting with your strengths. That just makes the whole process easier. But what I uncovered here was really useful and helpful because I think there are parts of myself I don’t really like, that hold me back from opportunities to grow and change. Does that make sense? Let’s back up for a second.
We talked about awareness and self-awareness in episode five and how becoming aware of your thoughts and feelings and actions is the first step in any change process. If you haven’t listened to that episode, go back, and check it out, episode five. Awareness is the first step in our coaching process too. We spend a lot of time in awareness with clients sort of taking inventory, if you will. That’s a lot like what awareness is. It’s taking inventory and paying attention to yourself in a way that maybe you haven’t before.
We can’t change what we don’t notice. And when we pay attention to ourselves from the inside out, not just the outside in, we can start to create change from the inside out, from the root cause of your challenges, which is typically a thought error or a limiting belief that’s holding you back.
So, this inventory concept reminds me of the actual inventory a friend of mine used to take when she was a pharmacist at CVS. She worked in the pharmacy and used to love stocking the meds and pills on her shift. She’d open the boxes and see what was missing on the shelves, where she needed more of or less of what. She straightened the bottles and made sure everything was evenly stocked. She just loved this. You know that brain.
But then when she was done with that part of the inventory, she had to break the big cardboard boxes down and take them out the back door to the back alley and try to fit all of the cardboard into a dumpster in the stinky back alley. Not her favorite part about the job of taking inventory, but a necessary part, nonetheless. I mean, I can smell that back alley right now. It reminds me of early morning walks to work through Chinatown.
I dated a guy who lived in Russian Hill, and I’d have to walk through Chinatown some mornings on my way to the office in the financial district. And man, oh man, Chinatown in the morning is a thing. Where I’m going with this is taking inventory can be fun and interesting and productive. And there are also kind of shitty back alley parts of taking inventory. You know what I mean? This is sort of what it’s like when we start to identify and own our flaws, our weaknesses, when we take inventory, the parts of yourself you don’t like, your shadow parts as some like to call them.
And here’s the gold. Once we accept our flaws, no one can hold them against us. I have to pause there. I don’t know how to be more emphatic about this statement because isn’t that what we’re all hiding from, all of us? We’re afraid to be seen and heard and rejected by the tribe so we hide our weaknesses the same way my kids might hide something they mistakenly broke, in all kinds of crazy, unsustainable ways that are bound to bring light to the truth at some point. It’s this hiding that causes so much suffering though.
When we compensate for our insecurities by overing, when we hustle and bark at our AE, instead of asking for help. When we choose not to raise our hand instead of learning and getting clarity. When we’re the queen of yes, instead of saying, “No, I can’t today.” When we make peace with our broken pieces we start to poke holes in the pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect. Embracing our imperfections actually feels pretty good. It slowly but surely lets us make self-kindness and mental well-being a priority over the unattainable and unreasonable standards and expectations we have of ourselves.
Who’s raising their hands here? Right here. Because listen, we’re all born worthy. For all of you parents out there, think about your kids. They were born lovable and whole and worthy of all their dreams and desires. Are we right? But along the way, we all lose this sense of self-worth by outsourcing it to our achievements. At least this is what our clients do, and this is what our experience has been. As high achievers we’ve lost that inherent sense of self-worth we are born with when we over-identify with achieving. And it makes complete sense.
Society and our families of origin reward productivity and achievement. And so, we learned that’s how to matter in the world back in the day, at school, in sport and at work. And that’s okay, but not at the expense of your own inherent self-worth, the worthiness you were born with. This is when we question our ambitions. We become ambitious-ish. We decide to find another way.
So back to taking inventory. When we can accept everything we uncover in the inventory no one can hold that against us. And when we say accept, this means accepting that, yeah, I can be stubborn and a control enthusiast and that’s okay. And we don’t beat the shit out of ourselves for having these parts that we don’t like. This acceptance is an opportunity to be with these parts of yourself you don’t like and feel worthy. To give yourself permission to not be everything to everyone and everything always to feel worthy. Yeah, you can change what you want to change and leave what you don’t want to change.
For example, this is kind of funny, one of our clients decided just last week she wasn’t nice. This was a funny discovery and we laughed when she accepted, yeah, I’m kind and generous, but I’m not nice. I can be kind of bitchy and that’s okay. We love that modifier and that’s okay. I too can be grumpy and spicy and scared and angry, all of the things. But when I accept these parts of myself, I can be in relationship with them in a way that’s loving and maybe even playful, just not judgmental and I can change them if I wish.
Yeah, I can almost wink at these parts of myself now. I can be like, “Ooh, there’s that bossy pants, she’s out.” I can own these parts, these perceived flaws, instead of getting defensive about them. I don’t have to like them. I just have to accept them and be with them. We can smile at our humanness when we do this. We can let go of the unreasonable expectations we have of ourselves. And when shit hits the fan, when we lapse, when we fall down, we’re better equipped to take care of ourselves in that painful moment because we’ve accepted ourselves, all of ourselves, the parts of ourselves that are difficult to love.
Taking a look at the parts of ourselves we don’t like, like I’ve mentioned, this is big time self-care. It helps us take the focus off of the circumstance around us that we can’t control, to stop blaming them and instead take the time to pay attention to ourselves, see where we’re responsible and then grow. So, by choosing to radically accept the things we don’t like about ourselves, we prevent ourselves from becoming stuck in unhappiness, bitterness, anger and sadness and we can stop suffering.
And like we said, acceptance isn’t approval. It’s completely and totally accepting with our mind, body, and spirit that we can’t currently change the present facts, this is what it is. We allow it all to be there and consider, now what, what do I want to do with this data? That’s really all inventory is. It doesn’t have to be good or bad, it’s just data and we stop arguing with reality. When we’re in denial about our truths, who we really are, we fall into really disempowered thinking. We think thoughts like, it shouldn’t be this way or why me?
This reminds me of a story one of our coaches, her name is Brooke, told, this was years ago. But she was on a dating app, and she was messaging with someone she thought was cute and asked, “How tall are you?” It became clear that this other person, this other human, had not accepted their height, whatever it was. They could have been six foot ten or five foot one. The response she got was, “I find you very rude. How dare you ask that? Good day.”
Had this person accepted their height, whatever it was, it might have sounded like, yeah, this is me, I’m blah, blah feet tall and this is what I’m into. But instead, this person was creating a lot of suffering for themselves by not accepting this part of themself. And Brooke was like, “Alright, I guess that conversation’s over.” And knowing Brooke, it was probably more like, “Bye.” But just imagine all of the pretending this human was doing in their life by not accepting their height. It must be exhausting.
Again, we’re not saying accepting the parts of you, you don’t like isn’t challenging or painful, but it helps us focus on what we can control versus what we can’t. I can relate to having that I don’t want to raise my hand and ask a stupid question energy, know what I mean? On one hand, this has shown me how to hustle, to figure things out, mostly on my own and perhaps to a fault. That’s where I created a lot of suffering for myself, though.
Instead of asking for clarity or explanation and getting on with it, I hid my questions and judged myself for being ‘stupid,’ because growing up my sister, Jen, was the smart one in our family. I was the athlete. She was the brainiac. And oh my God, Jen made school look so easy, college especially. I think she was Magna cum laude and also queen of the keg stands. I don’t know how she did it, and I love her for it. But I sort of took on this story that I wasn’t smart and that asking for help or asking questions would only bring more attention to that story, attention I really didn’t want or wasn’t comfortable getting. A story I’ve personally started poking holes in with my coaches, I tend to sit quietly in the back because that was totally me.
Another story, some of you know Kelle and I both have degenerative chronic diseases. Kelle has pulmonary hypertension and I have primary lymphedema in my left leg. This is chronic swelling due to dysfunctional circulation in my lymphatic system. It’s rare, doesn’t have a cure, and both Kelle and I have been told by doctors our conditions will only get worse.
For me, at one point my left leg was 30% larger than my right. It was extremely uncomfortable, like when you get sausage fingers on a big hike but larger scale and there was just no relief. At first when I was just barely diagnosed, I pushed through. But as the swelling got worse, my self-pity and shame did too, and I treated my leg as a disgusting deformity. My inner mean girl was telling me to just suck it up, cover up and the swelling only got worse. I put on a happy face. I pretended I had it all under control. I covered up my distress and stuffed the negative emotions away. In reality I felt completely ungrounded and insecure.
The sports and activities that fulfilled me so much were fading away, especially my love for running, it just became too painful. My jeans no longer fit. I replaced all of my short cocktail dresses with long ones. My shoes stopped fitting and my tall winter boots wouldn’t zip up over my leg. And it wasn’t just my wardrobe, though, life just seemed to tighten and compress around me, and I felt completely out of control. My patience with myself and my disease grew shorter and shorter and extended into all of the other parts of my life.
I was lashing out at my kids. It took effort to participate in their playfulness and respond to their curiosity. I just simply felt bossy all the time. I was evasive and pushy, unpredictable, and sad. The relief I used to get from that workout or fresh air wasn’t enough anymore. I was isolating myself by pushing everyone else away. I was completely consumed by the losses, they eclipsed all of the loveliness that still existed in my beautiful life, and I didn’t know what to do or where to start to get back on the rails. This was a really dark time.
One night we were out to dinner and the long dress I was wearing to conceal the medical grade compression I have to wear all the time. The dress flew up in the breeze and when I looked up, my oldest son was standing in front of me, he was probably five at the time. And he goes, “Mom, cover up, no one wants to see your fat leg.” To say I was stunned is just a BS understatement. I took a sec and pretty quickly realized those weren’t his words. Those were my words. He was just reflecting what he’d heard me say and feel time and time again. I had no idea what I had been showing him.
Despite all of my self-discipline, willpower, and attempts to just muscle through, I wasn’t getting anywhere. I wasn’t being honest with myself. I didn’t recognize myself. And what kind of example was I setting for my kids? My God, I thought I’d look weak if I opened up and got vulnerable. I was afraid to be seen and heard, to simply say, “This is hard, I need help,” to give myself that permission. When I finally did stop hiding, accepted my leg and my diagnosis, admitting that this is what it is, it’s tough and a burden. And I decided to work with the swelling instead of resist it.
I got on Instagram and started looking for people like me and I found them. There are thousands of us, oh my gosh, I was so surprised. And thanks to my lymphedema tribe, I actually found a surgeon who helps people like me. I’ll undergo one more surgery this summer to help address both the size and circulation in my leg, just game changer stuff. I’m so eternally grateful to Dr. Granzow and his team in Florida.
So, this is all just to say that yes, self-acceptance is like looking into a mirror you’ve been avoiding or opening a closet that’s been locked for a long time. It is not conceding. This is where the healing begins, by taking a look at everything we’ve stuffed in the back of the closet, laying it out and allowing it all to be there and reminding ourself, it all belongs. When we can learn to belong to ourselves first, we can create belonging anywhere, flaws and all. Acceptance is the second step in our coaching process. It’s right after awareness. We call this second step, allowing and accepting.
Sometimes it helps to have a partner, a friend, a coach or even a sponsor when you decide to take inventory like this to learn to accept yourself. Because they help you give yourself permission to be imperfect, they are imperfect, too, we all are. We see you, every part of you, it all belongs. This is how I found coaching and learned to accept all the parts of myself I used to call ugly and unworthy.
I learned to quiet that inner critic, my inner mean girl and instead, welcome in the parts of myself I was ashamed of, that I was hiding and pretending weren’t there, to give them a home, somewhere to belong, to understand them and appreciate them. I’m such a kinder, gentler human to myself and to everyone else in my life, thanks to this really important work.
Alright, everyone, that’s all for today but before we go, can we make a suggestion? Hop on our email list. If you want more live access to me and Kelle, you can ask us questions, get clarity, and get coached. We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events, and other free coaching opportunities. We’ll put a link in the show notes. Okay, again, that’s all for today. Thanks for being here. We’ll see you next time.
Nina: If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to worry about missing an episode, you can follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you haven’t already, we would really appreciate it if you share the podcast with others who you think would benefit from it, and leave a rating and review to let us know what you think.
Kelle: It doesn’t have to be a 5-star rating, although we sure hope you love the show. We want your honest feedback so we can create an awesome podcast that provides tons of value. Visit ambitious-ish.com/podcastlaunch for step-by-step instructions on how to follow, rate, and review.
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
This pain and discomfort come in because when we own our flaws, the parts of ourselves we don’t like, we sort of challenge all of the pretending we’re doing in our lives. Said in another way, when we admit our flaws, we unwittingly admit we are not perfect, and this is gold. Join us today as we talk about how practicing humility is both the key to resilience and kryptonite for your self-criticism and fear of failure. Are your wheels turning here? This is going to be a fun one. Let’s get started. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Hey, it’s Nina here solo on the pod today. Kelle will be back next episode. I’m coming to you from just barely spring here in Park City, Utah. You know that E. E. Cummings poem, In Just-Spring? That’s where we are here in our mud luscious mountain town. I’m laughing because a week ago today we had three feet of snow in the yard, and it was still coming down. And thank goodness today it’s 70, sunny and the snow has melted away. And all the little crocuses and daffodils are popping out of the just barely spring dirt.
I love this time of year, but spring is kind of a joke in the mountains. It’s really just one day of winter then one day of spring, one step forward, one step back, March, April, May and into June. All of our kids’ sports, their spring sports should be half price. I mean, I’m just going to say it. Anyway, let’s jump into today’s show.
I recently took a pretty big inventory of my strengths and weaknesses. Have you ever listed your strengths and weaknesses? If you haven’t, I’d suggest starting with your strengths. That just makes the whole process easier. But what I uncovered here was really useful and helpful because I think there are parts of myself I don’t really like, that hold me back from opportunities to grow and change. Does that make sense? Let’s back up for a second.
We talked about awareness and self-awareness in episode five and how becoming aware of your thoughts and feelings and actions is the first step in any change process. If you haven’t listened to that episode, go back, and check it out, episode five. Awareness is the first step in our coaching process too. We spend a lot of time in awareness with clients sort of taking inventory, if you will. That’s a lot like what awareness is. It’s taking inventory and paying attention to yourself in a way that maybe you haven’t before.
We can’t change what we don’t notice. And when we pay attention to ourselves from the inside out, not just the outside in, we can start to create change from the inside out, from the root cause of your challenges, which is typically a thought error or a limiting belief that’s holding you back.
So, this inventory concept reminds me of the actual inventory a friend of mine used to take when she was a pharmacist at CVS. She worked in the pharmacy and used to love stocking the meds and pills on her shift. She’d open the boxes and see what was missing on the shelves, where she needed more of or less of what. She straightened the bottles and made sure everything was evenly stocked. She just loved this. You know that brain.
But then when she was done with that part of the inventory, she had to break the big cardboard boxes down and take them out the back door to the back alley and try to fit all of the cardboard into a dumpster in the stinky back alley. Not her favorite part about the job of taking inventory, but a necessary part, nonetheless. I mean, I can smell that back alley right now. It reminds me of early morning walks to work through Chinatown.
I dated a guy who lived in Russian Hill, and I’d have to walk through Chinatown some mornings on my way to the office in the financial district. And man, oh man, Chinatown in the morning is a thing. Where I’m going with this is taking inventory can be fun and interesting and productive. And there are also kind of shitty back alley parts of taking inventory. You know what I mean? This is sort of what it’s like when we start to identify and own our flaws, our weaknesses, when we take inventory, the parts of yourself you don’t like, your shadow parts as some like to call them.
And here’s the gold. Once we accept our flaws, no one can hold them against us. I have to pause there. I don’t know how to be more emphatic about this statement because isn’t that what we’re all hiding from, all of us? We’re afraid to be seen and heard and rejected by the tribe so we hide our weaknesses the same way my kids might hide something they mistakenly broke, in all kinds of crazy, unsustainable ways that are bound to bring light to the truth at some point. It’s this hiding that causes so much suffering though.
When we compensate for our insecurities by overing, when we hustle and bark at our AE, instead of asking for help. When we choose not to raise our hand instead of learning and getting clarity. When we’re the queen of yes, instead of saying, “No, I can’t today.” When we make peace with our broken pieces we start to poke holes in the pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect. Embracing our imperfections actually feels pretty good. It slowly but surely lets us make self-kindness and mental well-being a priority over the unattainable and unreasonable standards and expectations we have of ourselves.
Who’s raising their hands here? Right here. Because listen, we’re all born worthy. For all of you parents out there, think about your kids. They were born lovable and whole and worthy of all their dreams and desires. Are we right? But along the way, we all lose this sense of self-worth by outsourcing it to our achievements. At least this is what our clients do, and this is what our experience has been. As high achievers we’ve lost that inherent sense of self-worth we are born with when we over-identify with achieving. And it makes complete sense.
Society and our families of origin reward productivity and achievement. And so, we learned that’s how to matter in the world back in the day, at school, in sport and at work. And that’s okay, but not at the expense of your own inherent self-worth, the worthiness you were born with. This is when we question our ambitions. We become ambitious-ish. We decide to find another way.
So back to taking inventory. When we can accept everything we uncover in the inventory no one can hold that against us. And when we say accept, this means accepting that, yeah, I can be stubborn and a control enthusiast and that’s okay. And we don’t beat the shit out of ourselves for having these parts that we don’t like. This acceptance is an opportunity to be with these parts of yourself you don’t like and feel worthy. To give yourself permission to not be everything to everyone and everything always to feel worthy. Yeah, you can change what you want to change and leave what you don’t want to change.
For example, this is kind of funny, one of our clients decided just last week she wasn’t nice. This was a funny discovery and we laughed when she accepted, yeah, I’m kind and generous, but I’m not nice. I can be kind of bitchy and that’s okay. We love that modifier and that’s okay. I too can be grumpy and spicy and scared and angry, all of the things. But when I accept these parts of myself, I can be in relationship with them in a way that’s loving and maybe even playful, just not judgmental and I can change them if I wish.
Yeah, I can almost wink at these parts of myself now. I can be like, “Ooh, there’s that bossy pants, she’s out.” I can own these parts, these perceived flaws, instead of getting defensive about them. I don’t have to like them. I just have to accept them and be with them. We can smile at our humanness when we do this. We can let go of the unreasonable expectations we have of ourselves. And when shit hits the fan, when we lapse, when we fall down, we’re better equipped to take care of ourselves in that painful moment because we’ve accepted ourselves, all of ourselves, the parts of ourselves that are difficult to love.
Taking a look at the parts of ourselves we don’t like, like I’ve mentioned, this is big time self-care. It helps us take the focus off of the circumstance around us that we can’t control, to stop blaming them and instead take the time to pay attention to ourselves, see where we’re responsible and then grow. So, by choosing to radically accept the things we don’t like about ourselves, we prevent ourselves from becoming stuck in unhappiness, bitterness, anger and sadness and we can stop suffering.
And like we said, acceptance isn’t approval. It’s completely and totally accepting with our mind, body, and spirit that we can’t currently change the present facts, this is what it is. We allow it all to be there and consider, now what, what do I want to do with this data? That’s really all inventory is. It doesn’t have to be good or bad, it’s just data and we stop arguing with reality. When we’re in denial about our truths, who we really are, we fall into really disempowered thinking. We think thoughts like, it shouldn’t be this way or why me?
This reminds me of a story one of our coaches, her name is Brooke, told, this was years ago. But she was on a dating app, and she was messaging with someone she thought was cute and asked, “How tall are you?” It became clear that this other person, this other human, had not accepted their height, whatever it was. They could have been six foot ten or five foot one. The response she got was, “I find you very rude. How dare you ask that? Good day.”
Had this person accepted their height, whatever it was, it might have sounded like, yeah, this is me, I’m blah, blah feet tall and this is what I’m into. But instead, this person was creating a lot of suffering for themselves by not accepting this part of themself. And Brooke was like, “Alright, I guess that conversation’s over.” And knowing Brooke, it was probably more like, “Bye.” But just imagine all of the pretending this human was doing in their life by not accepting their height. It must be exhausting.
Again, we’re not saying accepting the parts of you, you don’t like isn’t challenging or painful, but it helps us focus on what we can control versus what we can’t. I can relate to having that I don’t want to raise my hand and ask a stupid question energy, know what I mean? On one hand, this has shown me how to hustle, to figure things out, mostly on my own and perhaps to a fault. That’s where I created a lot of suffering for myself, though.
Instead of asking for clarity or explanation and getting on with it, I hid my questions and judged myself for being ‘stupid,’ because growing up my sister, Jen, was the smart one in our family. I was the athlete. She was the brainiac. And oh my God, Jen made school look so easy, college especially. I think she was Magna cum laude and also queen of the keg stands. I don’t know how she did it, and I love her for it. But I sort of took on this story that I wasn’t smart and that asking for help or asking questions would only bring more attention to that story, attention I really didn’t want or wasn’t comfortable getting. A story I’ve personally started poking holes in with my coaches, I tend to sit quietly in the back because that was totally me.
Another story, some of you know Kelle and I both have degenerative chronic diseases. Kelle has pulmonary hypertension and I have primary lymphedema in my left leg. This is chronic swelling due to dysfunctional circulation in my lymphatic system. It’s rare, doesn’t have a cure, and both Kelle and I have been told by doctors our conditions will only get worse.
For me, at one point my left leg was 30% larger than my right. It was extremely uncomfortable, like when you get sausage fingers on a big hike but larger scale and there was just no relief. At first when I was just barely diagnosed, I pushed through. But as the swelling got worse, my self-pity and shame did too, and I treated my leg as a disgusting deformity. My inner mean girl was telling me to just suck it up, cover up and the swelling only got worse. I put on a happy face. I pretended I had it all under control. I covered up my distress and stuffed the negative emotions away. In reality I felt completely ungrounded and insecure.
The sports and activities that fulfilled me so much were fading away, especially my love for running, it just became too painful. My jeans no longer fit. I replaced all of my short cocktail dresses with long ones. My shoes stopped fitting and my tall winter boots wouldn’t zip up over my leg. And it wasn’t just my wardrobe, though, life just seemed to tighten and compress around me, and I felt completely out of control. My patience with myself and my disease grew shorter and shorter and extended into all of the other parts of my life.
I was lashing out at my kids. It took effort to participate in their playfulness and respond to their curiosity. I just simply felt bossy all the time. I was evasive and pushy, unpredictable, and sad. The relief I used to get from that workout or fresh air wasn’t enough anymore. I was isolating myself by pushing everyone else away. I was completely consumed by the losses, they eclipsed all of the loveliness that still existed in my beautiful life, and I didn’t know what to do or where to start to get back on the rails. This was a really dark time.
One night we were out to dinner and the long dress I was wearing to conceal the medical grade compression I have to wear all the time. The dress flew up in the breeze and when I looked up, my oldest son was standing in front of me, he was probably five at the time. And he goes, “Mom, cover up, no one wants to see your fat leg.” To say I was stunned is just a BS understatement. I took a sec and pretty quickly realized those weren’t his words. Those were my words. He was just reflecting what he’d heard me say and feel time and time again. I had no idea what I had been showing him.
Despite all of my self-discipline, willpower, and attempts to just muscle through, I wasn’t getting anywhere. I wasn’t being honest with myself. I didn’t recognize myself. And what kind of example was I setting for my kids? My God, I thought I’d look weak if I opened up and got vulnerable. I was afraid to be seen and heard, to simply say, “This is hard, I need help,” to give myself that permission. When I finally did stop hiding, accepted my leg and my diagnosis, admitting that this is what it is, it’s tough and a burden. And I decided to work with the swelling instead of resist it.
I got on Instagram and started looking for people like me and I found them. There are thousands of us, oh my gosh, I was so surprised. And thanks to my lymphedema tribe, I actually found a surgeon who helps people like me. I’ll undergo one more surgery this summer to help address both the size and circulation in my leg, just game changer stuff. I’m so eternally grateful to Dr. Granzow and his team in Florida.
So, this is all just to say that yes, self-acceptance is like looking into a mirror you’ve been avoiding or opening a closet that’s been locked for a long time. It is not conceding. This is where the healing begins, by taking a look at everything we’ve stuffed in the back of the closet, laying it out and allowing it all to be there and reminding ourself, it all belongs. When we can learn to belong to ourselves first, we can create belonging anywhere, flaws and all. Acceptance is the second step in our coaching process. It’s right after awareness. We call this second step, allowing and accepting.
Sometimes it helps to have a partner, a friend, a coach or even a sponsor when you decide to take inventory like this to learn to accept yourself. Because they help you give yourself permission to be imperfect, they are imperfect, too, we all are. We see you, every part of you, it all belongs. This is how I found coaching and learned to accept all the parts of myself I used to call ugly and unworthy.
I learned to quiet that inner critic, my inner mean girl and instead, welcome in the parts of myself I was ashamed of, that I was hiding and pretending weren’t there, to give them a home, somewhere to belong, to understand them and appreciate them. I’m such a kinder, gentler human to myself and to everyone else in my life, thanks to this really important work.
Alright, everyone, that’s all for today but before we go, can we make a suggestion? Hop on our email list. If you want more live access to me and Kelle, you can ask us questions, get clarity, and get coached. We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events, and other free coaching opportunities. We’ll put a link in the show notes. Okay, again, that’s all for today. Thanks for being here. We’ll see you next time.
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Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
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