Hidden Brilliance

by Katie Rasoul

  I like kids (and adult kids) because there is just the purest zest for life about them. If you are ever unsure, watch a bunch of children when a bubble machine starts up or go see a cartoon movie on a Saturday matinee. It is pure, unbridled joy. I want to live that way, too!

  Since I have worked hard to let go of fear, ditch work that isn’t a “hell yes,” and allow myself the permission to live an awesome life, the one thing missing was adding back in the things that bring me joy. I certainly love much of the way I spend my personal time now as an adult. I value that I have taken up running and that I have a three-year-old who reminds me to play every day. These are whole new sources of joy for me. But a little tap dancing now and then wouldn’t hurt.

  I have found that when I am stressed or feeling immense pressure, there is no room in my brain for anything extra, and that means all of the fun gets cataloged in the back. I become quick-tempered, distracted, and boring. When I allow myself the space to release the pressure, suddenly my brain has extra capacity to no longer rush to the next thing but to savor the moment. I read an extra book to my son before bedtime, am more available for hugs, and look for ways to fill time with joy.

  The lesson learned is to stay friends with your inner child. Go back and identify the things that brought you joy or allowed you to be in the flow in your younger years before you adulted them to death. See how you can recreate or revisit those feelings of fun and flow, and how those can then, in turn, inform the rest of your work and life. Creative time is not wasted time, and having time for enjoyment is not irresponsible (I have learned). It actually feeds energy into the rest of our lives.

  If we think only of managing our lives by managing time, it is a zero-sum game that never seems to add up. We are always trying to fit ten pounds in a five-pound bag. But if we look instead at managing our energy, energy can be limitless, and instead of time always passing, energy can be gained or lost depending on how we spend time. You could spend one hour of time checking more email (joy suck) or you could spend that same hour at a dance class (energy feeder). If you manage your energy instead of time, then you will make sure that you have activities that fuel your soul and give you energy to be able to fund the other parts of your day that require an energy expenditure. I found that staying friends with my inner child was just what I needed to stay grounded in joy and manage my energy more effectively.

  

  Try It: Inner Child Activity

  Think back to a time when you were younger and you were totally in the flow of what you were doing. Hours could pass when you were doing this without you noticing, and you were in a place of total enjoyment without concern for what the rest of the world was doing or thinking. You were “dancing like nobody’s watching,” so to speak.

  Pick one or two things that come to mind for you, and go do them. Get excited before you go, by quietly reflecting on how you felt in that younger time and how you want to feel today. Put a name to that feeling. Go do it, and have fun! Find that mental place where you don’t worry about anyone else in the moment.

  Afterward, reflect on how it felt. Did it bring you energy? If so, go again, and if not, understand why not. Keep searching until you can find joy and your inner child in a way that feeds your energy bank.

  Activity 12: The Action Plan

  “Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.” – Mignon McLaughlin

  Toward the end of my existential crisis, I realized I was ready to move forward. After taking in the newfound awareness about myself both past and present, I had to pause for a minute to map out my next moves. This was a place I had never been before, and I was headed toward uncharted territory. It was time for an action plan.

  This could be no ordinary action plan. It wasn’t the time to set goals that I was firmly sure I could achieve, or to set SMART objectives that followed a plan. It was the moment to do this differently and to break the cycle of attachment to the outcome. The action plan had to be all about the journey rather than the end goal. This would mean truly focusing on changing behavior, and the importance would be in making hundreds of tiny moves and decisions to build some new muscles, rather than one big goal or event to work toward. I could already tell this was out of my comfort zone.

  From the Lemon Pancake Monologue (my existential crisis conversation in Chapter 9), here were the specific steps I had chosen to start making a change in my life.

  What specific steps could I take to unburden myself from these intense pressures when I feel or experience them?

  Recognize them, say, that’s interesting, and then study it like a scientist who is not attached to the outcome of the experiment (judgement free).

  Practice a higher “hell yes” threshold.

  Build out my manifesto – what I stand for privately and publicly.

  Experiments in bold moves (living with purpose, being larger, overcoming fear).

  These felt like small changes for big problems. Could this possibly be all that it took? The answer was yes.

  Study It Like a Scientist

  Let’s say that you were invited to watch a psychology experiment at the local university, and you had the chance to sit behind the two-way mirror room to watch the human subjects act all human with a bucket of popcorn and enjoy the show. Would you do it? You better believe it! That’s better than television.

  Now, let’s say you were the subject of the study, and you had the opportunity to watch the behavior unfold as if it were an out-of-body experience, but you made no judgements, good or bad, about what you were doing. You were just there to examine and dictate notes on your observations, like, “Hmmmm, that is interesting. Subject appears to show angst with an increase in blood pressure when she makes large-scale goals for herself.”

  That is how you study it like a scientist. If you can detach yourself from the outcome of the experiment, you can be open-minded to what you see and how things turn out. Quality experiments are not set up so they get the conclusion they think they should, but rather to confirm or discredit a hypothesis. In my case, I would first recognize a negative physical reaction, or how I was feeling. I would then say to myself, “Hmmm, that is interesting,” and try to determine from a neutral position what caused that negative reaction. I could trace back my feelings to the stress or intense pressures I was putting on myself. By not adding additional judgement to the pressure I was already feeling, I kept the problem from getting so big that it was unmanageable. Breaking the cycle of self-judgement allowed me to think rationally, about consciously choosing a different thought that did not apply pressure to myself.

  Practice a Higher “Hell Yes” Threshold

  Sometimes I can feel overwhelmed by the growing “To Do” list of stuff that needs to be done. The first step to releasing this pressure is to just start taking things off the list. Less stuff, fewer shoulds, less pressure. Now, this is not a quick and easy fix when it is something you have attached your worth to for a long time. I have always been a list maker and a list slayer, but never a list minimizer. I began going down the list, line by line, asking myself these questions:

  Is this important/urgent? (And if so, who says it is? Is it REALLY?)

  Is this a “hell yes?”

  Is this a necessary insurance policy?

  First, if it doesn’t fit into the important or urgent buckets, it just goes away. I also check myself on who thinks it is urgent or important, and if that is really true. I even ferreted out a few things that were posing as important because Bridget, the inner critic, thought they were. In her new job assignment, she is not authorized to make those decisions.

  Second, it either needed to be deemed a “hell yes” or a necessary insurance policy to proceed. A “hell yes” are those things that you are genuinely excited for, that you don’t put off and that set your soul on fire. They are the reason you bother doing anything. They are also the things where you are playing bigger, living your purpose, and checking things off the bucket l
ist. These are not hard to identify. I once listed out some goals and planning for the next six months, and my own coach said to me, “Katie, I am pretty sure you didn’t leave your corporate job to quote, ‘find a graphic designer.’” Damn it, she was right. Finding a graphic designer was a task, but not a goal that brought my passions alive.

  While doing only “hell yes” things sounds glorious, I also recognized that my life and my business could not run on love alone, so there is some work that is necessary and doesn’t spark joy in me. These are all of the things that I have determined that I do really need to do, even if they don’t excite me, because they enable the “hell yes” list. But if I compartmentalize them here in the “insurance” list, they don’t creep into my “hell yes” list and act as if that is all I have time to complete. This keeps me out of the trap of pushing paper around all day, never accomplishing anything big or scary or great. I make sure that I reserve time on my calendar that reflects both “hell yes” and “insurance” work, as well as all of the other time I mentioned earlier in the book, like exercising and Curiosity Hour.

  Build Out My Manifesto

  There are a few ways to look at this that might sound familiar to you: find your why (Simon Sinek-style), write your personal mission statement, or define your truth. Because it can be so easy to pile on things that don’t matter or don’t contribute to the overarching goal, it was critical for me to understand exactly what I was doing, why I was doing it, and measure everything against that. If I couldn’t justify something in my life as part of my own manifesto, then why the hell was I doing it? Enough already.

  I have done versions of all of these different methods to the same end, where it boils down to why you do what you do. But my idea behind building out my manifesto was bigger than that. It was the opposite of distilling my purpose down to one word or phrase; it was getting clear on where I stood across a lot of different opinions and areas of my life. Without a clear opinion on something, I often did nothing in response. By building out my manifesto and consciously deciding what I stood for in my life and work, I could do more to act accordingly, fight for what I believed in, or recognize when I was going against my beliefs.

  I thought about, decided on, and solidified my belief system as the foundation for taking action. This meant assuming I know the answer, not waiting for someone else to provide it. This meant deciding my stance on political or social issues and speaking about them (while reserving the right to change). This meant no longer putting myself in situations where I was going against the grain of my values and what I stood for. This meant being vulnerable and having an opinion even when it wasn’t popular.

  This was all in the name of getting off the fence. I could no longer sit in the neutral zone, living with inaction. Building out what I stood for personally and professionally (and let’s be honest, that is all of the same thing) was a critical step in taking more action, and acted as a personal compass as I navigated the uncharted waters of releasing self-inflicted pressure and expectations, and putting an end to attaching my value to achievement. Here is how that began to look differently:

  Instead of looking for a non-profit board to be a part of, I removed myself from committees and leadership roles. I took on one new thing: being a coach for one underprivileged girl.

  I did less “networking” and instead spent that time having conversations on how to change education, economics, or housing for poor areas of my city.

  I began spending my time with purpose, rather than achievement, in mind. It was freeing, and living in my newfound definition of success felt real.

  Experiments in Bold Moves

  This was so big that I spent a whole chapter already to cover it. By far, this required the most ongoing maintenance, and resulted in some serious growth and flexing of resiliency muscles over the course of months. This was the emotional equivalent to doing hundreds of sprints over time as a training regimen. The bold moves made my heart pound and my palms sweat, but the deliberate practice, at first uncomfortable, became easier over time. Pushing myself to think bigger and act as if those things were already happening, led me further than I could have imagined. It pushed dreams and ideas into reality.

  The old version of me would have been crushed by an edifice of judgment and self-inflicted pressure and the weight of my rising expectations. It would have felt unbearable and impossible. Because I lit a flame thrower to my old way of thinking, I could find new ways to make my big dreams and ideas a reality, but without the weight (most of the time, nobody’s perfect). This is being a high-achiever without the weight, and it is, in fact, easy, free, and without walls or boundaries.

  

  Try It: Action Plan Activity

  Wait and do this until you find a day when you feel inclined to slash and burn your To Do List, and make some bold decisions. Take a look at your calendar bookings and your To Do list. Go through with a very discerning eye and decide if it is a “hell yes,” a critical “insurance” item that enables the “hell yes” list, or it is something that can just go away. Clean house, y’all. If you find you don’t have any “hell yes” items, it is time to put your dreaming hat on and write on paper the things you want to do but have been too scared to admit to yourself, until now.

  Look at your calendar, you’re going to need to make room for all of this cool stuff you want to do. Get rid of stuff that pertained to the list you crossed off and things other people think you “should” do that don’t match with your goals, your “hell yes” list, or your insurance. Plan the time in to your week that you need. If you have to prioritize and not do everything all at once, that is normal and human. If you try and do everything all at once, that is your shit-talking inner critic acting as your secretary.

  Repeat this as often as you have to. It might be as often as weekly, perhaps quarterly. Regular maintenance is key and will reinvigorate you on how excited you are to accomplish the “hell yes” list.

  The Ending (or, Commencement)

  “Don’t be willing to accept an ordinary life.”

  – Salle Merrill Bedfield

  I share these stories and tools with you with one purpose: to share and feel love and understanding. That is the why behind all of my work. I believe that if we all felt loved, understood, and a sense of belonging, then the world would be the exact place that we are hoping to make it. Hell, if 10% of us got there, that would be a critical tipping point. It makes the work worth doing.

  The minute we are no longer willing to accept and tolerate the things in our life that are holding us back from our true greatness, we can start to see the path forward into living a life in technicolor. When I imagine myself on my deathbed, I can see fireworks and bright colors, and my heart bursting with meaning, purpose, and love. There is not an email or a conference call in sight.

  This is not the end, but the beginning. Your beginning. Make it count.

  References & Recommended Reading

  Chapter 1: The Weight

  Rasoul, Katie. Uncovering the High-Achieving Introvert. TEDxUWMilwaukee, September 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zV1Y8IShds.

  Chapter 2: The High-Achieving Introvert

  Aron, Elaine. The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You. New York: Broadway Books, 1997.

  Cain, Susan. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. New York: Broadway Books, 2012.

  Chandler, Steve and Rich Litvin. The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients. Anna Maria, FL: Maurice Bassett, 2013.

  Granneman, Jenn. The Secret Life of Introverts: Inside Our Hidden World. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2017.

  Chapter 3: Growing Up

  Gendler, J. Ruth. The Book of Qualities. New York: HarperPerennial, 1988.

  Activity 1: Values and Value

  Byron, Katie. Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life. New York: Harmony Books, 2002.

  Gilbert, Elizabeth. Your Elusive Creative Genius. TED Confere
nce 2009. https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.

  Petriglieri, Jennifer and Gianpiero Petriglieri. The Talent Curse, Harvard Business Review. From the May-June 2017 Issue. https://hbr.org/2017/05/the-talent-curse.

  Activity 2: Definition of Success

  Dudley, Drew. Everyday Leadership. TEDxToronto, September 2010. https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership.

  Halvorson, Heidi Grant. How to Keep Happiness From Fading. Psychology Today, posted August 15, 2012. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-success/201208/how-keep-happiness-fading.

  Sull, Donald and Dominic Houlder. Do Your Commitments Match Your Convictions? Havard Business Review, January 2005. https://hbr.org/2005/01/do-your-commitments-match-your-convictions.

  Activity 3: What to Do, and What to Give Up

  Kondo, Marie. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2014.

  McKeown, Greg. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. New York: Crown Business, 2014.

  Activity 5: Feeling “Enough”

  Brown, Brené. The Power of Vulnerability. TEDxHouston, June 2010. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.