Fairytales

People are complicated. That’s the understatement of a lifetime. And yet, for the most part, I’m not sure it’s something we internalize and process in a realistic manner.

Growing up my life seemed like an idyllic fairy tale. I’m from a small wealthy suburban town where getting a car for your 16th birthday is expected. I was thin, pretty, an athlete, an A student and I had two involved parents who provided me with everything I ever needed and more.

Yet everyone has a story. In fact I’d say everyone has a few stories that intertwine to create a choose your own adventure of complications.

I am certainly not immune to that. My story is made up of traumas and joys and rock bottom and everything in between. Having all the things, the idyllic life, does not make for an actual fairy tale.

In 2020, when the world is overrun by a pandemic, civil unrest, an election year, and who could forget - murder hornets, I think reminding everyone that everyone you meet has a whole bunch of stories to tell is how we will survive.

I will credit 2020 with a lot of things and making me more empathetic is the greatest one.

As I am challenging friends to rethink political and social views, I’m also reminding myself that their story before this time has shaped who they are now. So be patient when demanding change.

When I am frustrated with the people at work who just don’t get that life isn’t worth the 24/7 hustle, I remember that some people turn to overwork to survive. I detach myself from those people and wish them well.

The point is, everyone has an intricate set of stories and experiences that make up who they are. These life learnings are what guide their reactions, opinions, words and overall make them who they are when they are with others.

Have a moment of patience more when your first instinct is rage, or judgment or fear. Remind yourself that you have no idea what this person has endured. Or not endured. Both ends of the spectrum shape the way a person experiences life.

I don’t always get it right when it comes to engaging with people in 2020, and I realistically won’t ever get it right 100% of the time. But I am committed to being 1% better so that I can hopefully be a more impactful person for the causes I am passionate about.

We all want to matter and feel heard. We also all want to be able to create meaningful connections and leave lasting impressions on this Earth for the short time we walk it. The best way to do those things is to lead with empathy. And to remember, everyone has a story. Perhaps 100 stories. It’s not your job to understand them, read them, or even author them. And yet, wouldn’t it be cool if one of their stories included the way in which you chose to show them they matter?

Mental Health May

May is mental health awareness month and while in general I don’t subscribe to this whole one month out of the year awareness situation, I do want to highlight the discussion around mental health.

It seems everywhere we turn in the media, celebrities, athletes, and authority figures are talking about their own experiences with mental health. And it’s about time. But I want to make sure that we are mindful not to sensationalize mental illness.

There’s sort of been this way the media talks about mental health in a way that showcases the struggles as a true Hollywood story, a tale of sadness and drugs and broken relationships that takes away from the ‘normalness’ that is mental health. Certainly there are some very real and very dramatic end of the spectrum mental health stories but being that 1 in 5 Americans suffers from some sort of mental health disorder, it’s more common to have middle of the road experiences.

I’m talking high functioning anxiety, depression, bipolar - the people around you who suffer everyday and work hard to just exist and get through the day. That’s what I want to see highlighted and talked about in the media.

I do not want to belittle the very real addiction struggles as well as the suicide we see in the world. Those stories are real and important too. But until we are able to openly talk about the in between before those things occur, we are not going to be able to openly combat these issues.

I want to see companies, doctors, friends and family talking about anxiety, fear, depression, pain everyday so that we are able to treat mental health like we would physical health. Where there’s a constant check in, check up, and monitoring of your mind every single day.

I want mental health to be considered health. There shouldn’t be a separation, loop it into overall health and well being. Insurance should offer coverage like they do for your physical health.

For mental health May I challenge you to talk to the people around you about their mental health in a really open positive way. Ask questions, be supportive, normalize the conversation. Stop the stigma, the fear, the judgment around what being mentally ill means. Most of all, I challenge you to dig into your own mental health journey and figure out what it looks like and where you’d like it to go. You can’t help others until you figure out how to help yourself.

Namaste

At pretty much every job I’ve worked at, there has been a high intensity on edge feeling. I’ve always felt stressed, worried, and have a really hard time stepping away from constantly thinking about work. It was a never ending worry about being fired, being in trouble, or being so overworked I could barely survive.

Obviously that greatly affected my personal life. I was constantly exhausted, irritable, antisocial, even depressed. My entire life revolved around my work and the people in it. It was all consuming. And I honestly thought that would be my life forever. I didn’t know any different in my 11 years of being a professional.

I’ve been in my new role for about 3 months. The other day I was sitting on my couch and I realized how calm I felt. I wasn’t thinking about work. Not an overwhelming project, not a difficult coworker, not an unreasonable boss. I was truly existing in the moment I was in.

Now I understand that the first few months, even years of a job can feel like the honeymoon stages. I’ve had that briefly in other roles so I’ve taken these feelings with a grain of salt. However, the culture I’m in and the people I’m surrounded by who embody that culture have given me hope that this will last.

During the week I have flexibility, independence, and people who care about how I’m doing both professionally and personally. I have the freedom to craft my own schedule (within reason), to say I’m overwhelmed without being told “that’s just how it works,” and I’ve got the time and energy to get out and have a thriving personal life.

I can breathe.

There’s time in my life to regroup, take a moment, and reconnect with my center.

In the 11+ years I’ve been a grown up in the working world, I’ve never experienced that. I’ve never had all the pieces fall together. I experimented with what I could tolerate. Could I endure harassment for my dream job? No. Could I work 24/7 for a company I loved? No. Could I put up with a bad boss for good pay? No.

Not everything aligns all the time. I don’t think all the parts have aligned for my current job, but the pieces that have aligned create a puzzle that I fit into. I love the company, the people, the boss - all those things make anything else extremely minuscule on the negative scale. I feel calm. I feel happy. I feel content. And while it all doesn’t create my “perfect” dream job I built up in my mind, it’s redefined what I define as working long term for me.

I cannot emphasize enough how important the feeling calm is to me. It seems so simple and many of you very well may experience it every day. But I haven’t. I haven’t felt that level of content with a career. Where you feel happy, challenged, like you matter, just all the pieces FIT.

Sure, we all complain about our jobs. I’m highly skeptical when folks don’t have one single complaint about their job. I don’t think the whole every single day is perfect life really exists. But if you truly feel happy and the good days outnumber the bad, that’s a huge win.

If you’re like me and your career journey is nontraditional, feeling calm is honestly the biggest win of them all. I encourage you to continue to look for that win. Continue to sacrifice, dream, work, and motivate yourself to stay positive. It’s not easy. It’s ups and downs and anything but simple. People will tell you that you’re stupid. They’ll laugh. They’ll question everything about you as a professional. But they are not you. They don’t live with the journey or the experience. What works for them, it’s not for you.

I don’t know if the calm will last. What I think is most important to remember while I am here is that it’s possible. It’s not a pipe dream. It’s not a decade of taking risks for nothing. It’s real and I’m holding it in front of me. Nobody can take the dream away from me because I know it’s there. And even if it doesn’t workout every time, it’s there. It’s real. And I can make it mine.

Can I borrow your charger?

When I moved from Texas to California, I spent a lot of time around people. By the time I got to my new place, I realized I had been on the go, surrounded by humans for about a month straight. No alone time, no chill.

I am one of those introverted extroverts so while I dig being around humans and socializing, if I don’t have alone time every few days, I immediately have a meltdown. I’m irritable, cranky, I hate everything and everyone. My anxiety shoots through the roof. I’m a danger to society.

I’m obviously not the only person who feels this way. There’s a whole tribe of us who need a good night by ourselves in order to function. It’s like having that phone charger that only works when you hold it at a 45 degree angle when its 47 degrees and sunny.

So how do you manage in a world that’s super demanding on your time and energy? How do you balance the need to get out and be social and hole up to recharge?

First, I think it’s critical to accept your ambiguous self for who you are. I need time to myself. And if its too much time, I get depressed and need to be around people. I know that about myself. Instead of trying to justify it, explain it, or change it, I’m owning it. I don’t have to make sense to anyone, that’s not my purpose in life.

Along these lines, don’t apologize. Don’t explain. You need to take care of yourself. There’s no reason to make yourself more anxious and exhausted by attempting to explain the way you feel to someone who isn’t understanding. It’s really okay to say, this is what I’m doing. No, I can’t go. Quit providing a reason. The people who belong in your life, they don’t need one.

Next you need to be aware. It’s really easy to get busy and not manage your time nor yourself well. You make too many plans, you make no plans, you’re extra busy at work, traveling, all the things. Life comes at you fast. If you’re not pausing to check in with your calendar and yourself, you’re going to get in the danger zone. As someone who traditionally travels a lot for work, is in a job that forces me to be around people 24/7, and who involves herself in fitness classes with people - I often forget that’s a lot of time with other people. On the flip though, I’ll get overwhelmed from those things and say I’m not doing anything during the week/this weekend and then I’ve done the opposite, I’ve hermitted myself in my apartment with no social time.

I like to apply my 5/5 rule that I use at work to my personal life. Take 5 minutes in the morning to see what your day is going to look like and where you need to adjust and then take 5 minutes at the end of the day to see where you landed. When you check in with yourself, you can take inventory of what needs to change before you get in a bad place. And that’s the goal, stay as even as you possibly can with the knowledge that life is weird, that doesn’t always occur.

I’m a list girl. Lists are beautiful. I like to keep a list on hand (seriously, in my phone, what a nerd) of quick ways to feed whatever I need. If I’m feeling really overwhelmed and exhausted, I can take 10 minutes for a face mask when I get home, take a hot shower, put my headphones in and go for a run. And equally if I’m feeling lonely or sad, I’ve got my go to squad to reach out to for a text, call, or dinner.

With that being said, you have to put in the work. Just like keeping yourself physically healthy is a lot of planning, acting, and then reacting, so is mental health. It also means doing a lot of experimenting. What works for me might not work for you. And what you might have done two years ago, might not work now. There’s no magical formula for how to recharge and realign your world. There’s also no good formula that lasts forever, just like there’s no bad formula that’s permanent.

Tough as Nails

This one is for the introspective folks. The ones who are hard on themselves to the point of emotional abuse. The people who are constantly evaluating themselves. The folks who put themselves down in a way they’d never ever take from anyone else.

I’m type A. Like if there’s an A+, I’m that. I’m a born and bred athlete. An overachiever. A perfectionist. I’m all these things and more. And while I am such a cheerleader for everyone else - I am such a bully to myself.

I’ve got this thing I say to friends when they’re hard on themselves:

“HEY! Stop being mean to my friend!”

But as I’ve been in therapy, the more I’ve discovered, I am the exact opposite to myself. I’m seriously kind of an asshole to myself.

I call myself not good enough. I’m not smart enough. Funny enough. Wealthy enough. Thin enough. Muscular enough. Driven enough. Achieved enough.

And I’ve had enough.

I’m sure we’ve all heard this:

You are deserving of the love and respect you give to others.

And we are. But breaking a cycle of abuse is not easy. When you’re in your head abusing yourself, there’s nobody else in there to stand up for you. It’s literally you vs you. I think self abuse is the hardest to break. Most of the time, we don’t realize the extent to which we do it.

I’m not even the one who noticed how abusive I was to myself. My therapist started to take note of how I spoke about myself. How I qualified any positive attributes and highlighted negative ones. How qualities I portrayed as negative in fact were anything but.

It turns out, I don’t think that highly of myself.

And that’s kind of sad because I’m a pretty dope person. I’m kind, caring, loyal to an extreme degree, and you know what? The list goes on and on.

Women especially are bred to downplay our qualities. At work, at home, we are taught to be humble. To give credit to the group. To put ourselves second.

I’m a strong independent feminist and I am still the biggest victim of this lifestyle.

I want it to stop though. Because I am worthy of the intense amount of love and support I give to other people. I deserve to say I’m smart. I had a really good idea. I crushed that project. I’m a good person. I’m beautiful - both inside and out. And I deserve to say those things out loud with no qualifications.

I have bad days where I hate everything about me. And sometimes I have to fight myself to stop doing that. I have to distract myself. It’s a constant internal battle not to let internal Ashley be an asshole to the Ashley in the world who is pretty damn great.

I think at the end of the day, I’m type A+. I’m always going to struggle with this. And I’m grateful for that. Because the qualities that are bad, they also allow me to achieve all the great things I have. You don’t get to be a Division One athlete by being easy on yourself.

But it’s acknowledging when those things are healthy and when they’re unhealthy. It’s healthy to say Ashley, stop being lazy, get outside and get your workout in because you know fitness makes you happy. And it’s not ok to say Ashley you’re fat, you’re ugly. That’s not only wrong, its not helpful.

Start to identify the language that’s not helpful. Write it down. Tell yourself to stop. And keep practicing that. Ask your friends to stop you when you’re bashing yourself. It’s possible to train yourself to change. Eventually, you even start to believe the positive things you tell yourself.

Being tough as nails is awesome. Part of being tough is learning to say no to the bully that lives inside of you. There are enough people in the world who are going to tell you no. Who will criticize you and put you down. You cannot control those people. You can control yourself.

Be tough enough to love yourself more than you hate yourself.