All of Me

I know that my best self lives in a layer of the world that is calm. I see her there when I tap into that version of me that I call “my successful self”. The image of this woman is very clear, has been for years and years, but how she looks is not a part of my external identity. She’s the me if I were corporate. Grey tweed skirt. Black pumps. Crisp white collared shirt. Hair in a French roll. Closed.

At the core I identify with her more than I do  with what I consider the “real me”. Leather jacket. Explosive smile. Ultra comfortable leather ankle boots so I can walk fast. Funky. Open.

I think about this a lot. These women are both me. Culturally, we reject duplicity, yet only because it is the truth and the reality of what we cannot understand about ourselves. This is certainly true for me also. In conversations, the energy of people’s thoughts are more often than not, the exact opposite to the words they are speaking to me. Yes. Madness. And yet how powerful if both voices can be considered.

This is probably my biggest issue relationally. It’s my achilles heel perhaps. My greatest strength is my greatest weakness. I do see both sides of people at the same time, and I feel both sides of me at the same time too.

I am going into my day having to make some changes in my schedule. The customer doesn’t like the colour! How do these thoughts relate? The calm of my successful self accepted the text without a ruffle. I saw the big picture value of the immediate extra time today while I wait for them to choose another colour. The open, freewheeling, positive me answered the text cheerfully, offering to help choose another colour, and then confirmed the new schedule for the job’s completion.

It felt great to experience both parts of me come together to negotiate these changes. Suddenly I am seeing how the calm “successful” me drives the ship and the “real” me happily does the heavy lifting. I am going out into the world today seeing the value of including the images of both those women as a collaborative image of my best self. When I am one without the other, I feel like something is missing, or that I need a wardrobe change!

I love how being my best self includes both these parts of me – in fact demands it. I don’t need to choose one expression of me at a time. I’m all of it.