The Myth of “Togetherness”

The Myth of "Togetherness"

Earlier this week I was chatting with a friend about my upcoming Stop Spinning Your Wheels group and she said, “you really have it together.” I had to laugh because the last thing I think about myself is that I’m “together.”

Bev Webb wrote a great article recently on puttylike.com called Help! It Feels like Everyone Else is more “Together” than Me. In that article she says, “Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.” I believe that this is a very important thing to keep in mind.

One of my best friends always seemed so socially assured that I was surprised when we started to get to know each other better and she mentioned times when she was “intimidated” by people.  Another gorgeous friend of mine seemed more together at ten years younger than I feel now.  If you were to ask her though, gorgeous and together are not words she would ever use to describe herself.

Honestly though, if you were to introduce me to someone who was 100% together, I’m not sure I’d have any idea how to relate to them.  Who would really? Does such a person exist?

There’s another challenge we face as dynamic and excitable people, and that is that we not only compare ourselves to others, but we also compare ourselves to the idealized version of ourselves.  We know we have the potential to do so much it can sometimes be challenging to even know where to begin.

We suffer not from lack, but from paralyzing abundance.  Our vast array of interests make it difficult to choose just one thing and give it the attention to detail our idealistic standards feel it deserves.

So how am I pulling my own shit together?

Well it isn’t always pretty, but it is a whole lot of fun!

If you told me a few years ago that I’d be starting my own business, I might not have believed you.  That’s because I always thought that I needed the structure and routine of a “day job” to keep me on track.  I learned though that over the years, I had put systems in place to keep myself going.

And most importantly…

I invoked the Panic Monster! 

In Tim Urban’s blog post on Why Procrastinators Procrastinate (a fantastic post by the way), he talks about the fact that the only thing that scares the “instant gratification monkey” that distracts us from what we need to be doing is the “panic monster.”

My original plan a year and a half or so ago was work on building my business on my extra free nights off that I would have since my son started school.  I would put dating on hold and use all of my extra time on business.  Well, life happened and so did a new relationship.

I decided at the end of last school year to go part time at my school psychologist job so that I would have time to devote to my business. The panic monster kicked in with the decrease in my salary.  I joined several marketing groups, kept up consistent blog posts and slowly built up my e-mail list.

Now, I’ve created my free Stop Spinning Your Wheels program to help get the message out there to other women like me who have been challenged by the abundance in their lives by sharing the things that have worked for me. You can access the program in my Embracing Intensity Membership.

Comments (3)

  1. “We suffer not from lack, but from paralyzing abundance.”
    So profound, and so very true. Someone recently told me, “You should be rich and famous. There isn’t anything I haven’t seen you be able to do!” Let’s ignore, for the moment, that I could think of several things. At least twice a day, I see or hear about someone else’s job and think I could have fun doing that. Lately, I’ve been fantasizing about winning the lottery, because that seems more realistic than my making a career choice in order to pay for food, clothing, and shelter.

  2. auroraremember

    Thanks Stacie! Sounds like you are definitely a multipotentialite! That puttylike.com website I referred to has some great resources on bridging together multiple interests into an “overarching theme.”

    • Thanks Aurora, I enjoyed the procrastination post, and will be checking out puttylike.com next.

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