Because here’s the thing: whether we’re staring inside at our own selves or we’re looking outside to see how we’re received by others, we’re still looking at the wrong thing entirely—and that is precisely what’s torturing us.
Last night I went to dinner with friends. As we slathered butter on sourdough, we each talked about we were excited for in this new year, and also what we were hoping to work on. We had our various hurts and wants, aspirations and confessions, but as we sipped wine and overshared (like good friends do), together we came to the same conclusion:
This needs to be the year we stop people-pleasing, navel-gazing, and languishing in the throes of imposter syndrome.
At first glance, those appear to be very different issues. People-pleasing seems to be a matter of making others happy, while navel-gazing is an issue of spending too much time dwelling on ourselves. And imposter syndrome is just a strange combination of the two: we think far too much of others and of ourselves…at the same time.
But there’s a common thread that runs through all of them, and if there’s a common thread, that means there’s a single stitch we can pull to undo them, too.
The stitch we need to undo?
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