authenticity>approval

I think I’ve had a vulnerability hangover since I last wrote to you. I feel this sudden urge to push myself to be transparent and healthily vulnerable across all venues of my life, and yet I’m struggling to figure out how to do that in a way that feels unforced or fluid. 

Here’s my example for today. I’m notoriously the least athletic sibling in my family. One of my brothers played Division 1 football and the other was a Varsity star/all-around athlete. So, I grew up watching my brothers play sports. Baseball, basketball, football, soccer, karate, golf, track, you name it. I dabbled in sports myself but none of my athletic pursuits stuck very long. My attention span for things that require a great deal of practice in which I have a minimal amount of talent have never captured my interest for long. Thus, the reason why I have a very expensive guitar propped up two feet away from me that rarely finds itself out the case. And when it does, I play four chords with no strum progression or any kind of skill whatsoever. I’d like you to think that I’m super athletic and that I just casually play the guitar really well. I’d like you to think that I’m good at everything really, but that’s so very far from the truth. 

Being the least athletic child in the family took a toll on my self-esteem. People would tell me I was the “smart one,” which was great, but when I would hear people say, “oh, you’re the smart one,” all I heard was, “oh, you’re not the athletic one.” I didn’t hear a compliment; I heard a deficit. A place where I just didn’t perform as well as my brothers did, and that bothered me. Don’t get me wrong, I tried at a lot of athletic things. I was a gymnast, a figure skater, a cheerleader, a soccer player, a dancer, a karate kid, a horseback rider, I basically just tried everything, but I never truly excelled at any of those things. I quit figure skating after a year and a half, and never got very good. But you know when you go ice skating and there’s that one guy who brings his own skates and does everything he can to show off all his polished ice-skating moves? Well, that’s basically me, except not a dude. When the opportunity to go skating presents itself, I jump in two feet running, eager to impress everyone with how well I can skate backwards lol. It sounds dumb even as I type it, but it’s true. I want you to think I’m just casually a great ice skater. I was actually pretty good at Karate for a while. I even competed some. I was an unusually aggressive little girl, so it was a productive place to channel that energy. I did Karate for a couple of years and then grew tired of it and traded in my karate belt for a cheer skirt. I only got to a green belt, but can I let you in on an embarrassing secret? For years after I competed in Karate, I would tell people, friends even, that I had gotten my black belt. It wasn’t true, it isn’t true, I quit at a green belt, but I wanted you to believe it was true. Being a black belt meant you had succeeded in Karate, there was no social badge of honor given for people who quit at a green belt. At the time it seemed like a harmless little lie, which obviously no lie is harmless, but go with me here. 

 …

You know when you go on a first date, or even when you’re first getting to know a new friend, that period when for the first time that person is learning about who you are, and what you like, and what you’ve accomplished in your life. Well, that period for me feels like a lot like an interview. I want to present to you my very best self, the ideal candidate for your selection as best friend or future wife. I casually slip my qualifications into conversation. I’m hoping it’s nonchalant enough that you won’t catch on, but impressive enough that you’ll like me a lot. I do this because I’m a people pleaser and I want to win your affection and approval. I want you to think that I’m down to earth and kind while also being simultaneously good at pretty much everything. 

 I’m writing a book right now and I wrote the first Chapter in January. This is an excerpt from that Chapter. 

“I want to be effortlessly confident but never in a way that would make anyone else insecure. I want to be the most fun person you know and yet somehow never truly reckless. I want to be smart and sharp and quick, but never arrogant. I want to be sexy and attractive and yet somehow approachable and sweet. I want to be strong and yet I want that strength to be matched in kindness. I want to be honest and vulnerable and always willing to dive into other people’s real stories. I want to be the most Jesus-loving girl you know and yet somehow still be the girl who will go to that night club with you and laugh and have a good time and generally just not be a weirdo. I want to be the best dichotomy between every world of good things. But more than that, I want YOU to think that I’m the best dichotomy between every world of good things. I want you to think that I’m perfect.” 

I told people, maybe even you that I was a black belt in Karate because I wanted you to think that I was great. I wanted to impress you, and so I lied. I don’t make a habit of lying, but this was the one long standing lie I told. I mean, I kept up the charade of it for years. I was terrified that you would meet my parents and make a casual comment about me, “being a black belt,” and that it would somehow come out that I had been lying all along. You know the weird thing about lying about yourself, once you tell the lie, it’s hard to know how to take it back. How do you say, “hey I’m sorry I lied to you about this, I just really wanted to impress you,” without entirely severing all trust? I think sometimes we tell the world a story about ourselves and our lives that aren’t a complete truth. And when we do, something really terrible happens; we feel alone. We feel misunderstood. We feel this mounting pressure to live up to a standard of achievement we’ve projected for ourselves all in the pursuit of approval. I truly believe that human connection is predicated upon honesty. When we choose to bring the world a narrative about ourselves that is even a half-truth, we lose our ability to truly connect with anyone else. You can’t connect to someone’s projected image; you connect to a person’s essential humanity. The humanity of weakness, and failure, and success, and gifting. The humanity of insecurity, and overthinking, and sometimes overeating Double Stuffed Oreo’s and whipped cream straight from the can. 

Here’s a very present day example from my life…I’m a terrible long-distance runner. I’ve come a really long way in my “fitness journey,” and I’m really proud of the progress I’ve made but running has always been far from “my thing.” My first boyfriend was a collegiate track athlete who also ran cross-country in high school. So, suffice to say, he was definitely, “a runner.” He would want for us to run together, but his average mile pace was like 6:30 and I’m not even sure I could ride a bike that fast, so running together was definitely out of the question. I remember staying at his parents’ house and he would head out for a run and a few minutes later I would head out for my own “run.” I would give it every ounce of effort I could muster, but my mile pace was still somewhere around 8:45, or in other words, definitely not fast. I never wanted to run with him, even when he offered to run at “my pace,” because truthfully, I felt ashamed of the kind of runner I was, a “not very good one.” Six years later with a different boyfriend, (sorry for all the ex-boyfriend stories, I promise to not use names or too many descriptive details, but a lot of my good stories somehow involve men lol). I remember being asked on a casual first date, he said something like, “I’m thinking we could go for a run?” My palms started to sweat as I read that text. “A run?” “Oh, God, I’m a terrible runner,” I thought to myself. If I had a little Lizzie McGuire style caricature “Katie,” sitting next to me, the more honest internal dialogue would have said, “How in the world are we going to impress him if we go running? You’re truly a terrible runner.”

We went running, it was fine. I think I got us to mostly walk/jog because I just wouldn’t stop talking, and at a certain point running wasn’t conducive to that much conversation. Well, it’s been nine years since I wouldn’t run with my first boyfriend, and four years since I could barely run with another ex-boyfriend, and now mostly because of Covid-19 I find myself again venturing to be, “a runner.”

For the past month or so I’ve been running/jogging at least three times a week. I’ve taken a cue from the gym closures and figured it was as good a time as any to get outside and get running. I always told myself I would run a marathon by the time I was thirty, and after all the clock is a’ ticking. But it’s funny, I’m almost nine years older than I was when I was seventeen, but I’m still finding myself experiencing this same, “runner’s shame.”  Or, I guess really, it’s more “performance shame.” I downloaded a running app and started tracking my “runs.” When you finish your run, you get to select your exposure preferences. This determines who is allowed to see your mileage, pace, calories burned etc. The options say, “Everyone,” “Followers,” or, “Only You.” Up until yesterday I had always selected, “Only You.” I didn’t want anyone to see the thirteen-minute mile pace of my jog/walks. I was embarrassed of that number. I’ve worked really hard to get into “good shape,” and sharing my slow run time with anyone else seemed like it would somehow negate my “in-shapeness.”  

I have an awesome personal trainer, seriously, I never understood the value of a trainer until Chris, he has legitimately changed my life. Funnily enough, I didn’t even want to do the first training session with him, my best friend Alex just berated me into it. I remember that first session so vividly. I was astonished by just how out of shape I had become. I was seated on an incline bench doing this one particular arm movement with some light-weight dumbbells. I was trying my best to power through the sets but my poor atrophied arms just weren’t having it. My movements were getting sloppy and my form weakened and before I knew it I felt a tap on my wrist and heard my trainer say, “ok, good job, you can stop now.” I remember sitting up and feeling this surge of emotion run through my body. I had been told to “tap out,” because I couldn’t complete the exercise, and my ego could barely handle the bruising. I just hated being “bad or beginner” at anything. I remember leaving that session thinking, “wow, my ego was super bruised just because I’m not good at this. This is probably really good for me.” I realized how good it was for my soul to not be good at something and keep trying at it anyway, to keep moving towards progress even where there wasn’t a ton of natural ability. I’m not saying you should devote all your free time to putting effort towards hobbies or disciplines that don’t come naturally to you. But, what I am saying is, that it isn’t healthy to only do things you’re “good at.” And it is healthy to progress in things that don’t come easily to you, but that are good for you anyway. 

It’s been a little over a year now that I’ve been working with the same personal trainer and the strides I’ve made towards health in mindset, confidence, physique, and even just numbers have been incredible. I’ve worked really hard, but the more “in shape” I’ve become, the more that being “in shape” has become an ingrained part of my identity. I love being in shape, I’m proud of it, but it’s easy for me to talk about it now on the “other side” of that first personal training session. I’ve had successes in this area, so my weaknesses are easier to frame. I know this is all a little jumbled, but I guess what I’m getting at is that, it’s easy to talk about our weaknesses when we’ve already turned those things into strengths. 

It’s just easy to talk about weaknesses in the past tense. 

But what about when our weaknesses are still weaknesses? Or even if they’re not weaknesses, what about those things we are just now learning, the things we aren’t yet good at and may never be? How do we talk about those? Do we share them? And if we do, how do we share them? How do we share them in a way that feels unforced or fluid? 

I don’t have cosmic answers for you, I really just hope this gets you thinking. How do you relate to your weaknesses? How do you relate to your areas of progress? Do you share them? How do you share them? Why do you share them?

Are you sharing them because for once in your life you want to feel entirely authentic with everyone you know, both privately and publicly? Authenticity is a huge attraction in our culture today, but I also think we’re creating facades around ourselves more now than ever before. There are more face tune apps, filters, and fake nonsense than I even care to talk about. I’m not mad at those apps, and for what they’re worth in sparking and aiding the creativity of those visually gifted people, I think it’s awesome. But my God, Tik Tok views are more based off the number of abs you have between your crop top and leggings than ever before. I’m guilty of it too, we all are, whether we say it or not, we all want the approval of the world, even if just a little bit. 

I posted on my Instagram story today and said this, “I never post the times of my runs because I’m SO slow and haven’t wanted people to see that, so instead of celebrating the fact that I just get to run, I’ve kept it hidden. But I listened to this book my John Mark Comer yesterday as I ran and I was struck by this quote. ‘Why can’t we celebrate those who are both more gifted than we are and simultaneously celebrate our own best work?’ So, here ya go, these are my slow jogged miles from yesterday that I’m grateful for.” 

I posted this because it feels authentic, albeit a little forced. It feels authentic because all of it is honest and true, and I ran through those thoughts in my head. But it feels forced because even as I post it, I’m prefacing it by saying that I “never post things like this.” I could have just posted my run times without explanation, but I feel this incessant need to explain anything I put out that doesn’t seem societally optimal. Like, “Hey I’m bad at running, and trying to be better at sharing my weaknesses, so here’s me being vulnerable and conquering my fear.” You see what I’m saying here? I don’t think the trick is necessarily figuring out how to share authentic things in a way that feels unforced. I think the more important feat is reminding ourselves that we don’t have to prove anything. We don’t have to position or preface. We can, but we don’t have to. 

I love what John Mark Comer said. “Why can’t we celebrate those who are both more gifted than we are and simultaneously celebrate our own best work?” 

Honestly, celebrating others comes fairly naturally for me. I love hyping other people up. But celebrating my own best work? Especially when it’s not “exceptional,” is a lot harder. But that’s because for a long time I’ve stopped wanting to be “Katie” and just be human, and wanted to be perfect. But perfect has never been the goal, we don’t really want to be perfect. Yea, we want to grow and change and progress, but we never will be perfect. And more than wanting to grow and change and progress, I think we want to connect. Human beings are made for connection, we are built for relationship. I don’t want us to any longer sever our ties with one another because we’d rather that girl admire us from distance and think we’re perfect than, for her to see us up close, realize how beautifully flawed and wonderfully gifted we are, and know and befriend us. We want to know who other people really are, but we’re scared for anyone to see who we really are. We rather approval than authenticity a lot of the time.  

And that’s ok. I’m not trying to shame you or shame myself for the ways in which we’ve functioned and coped. There’s nothing wrong with you, and I think there’s a better way. There is a better way to be “authentic.” Webster’s dictionary defines “authentic,” as, “worthy of acceptance or belief.” I think God makes humanity worthy. I think God makes you worthy. So, you’re already authentic, and who you are, who you actually are, is worthy of acceptance. You’re not just good enough, you’re incredible, and wonderful, and unique. There is no one quite like you. No one with the same mixed bag of gifts, and talents, and faults, and quirks. No one quite so sweet. There is no one like you! And that level of uniqueness, that kind of specificity makes you human, and we are all SO, so human, and that makes us united!

…

I guess I just want to give you permission to slough off the lies you’ve told yourself or told others about who you really are. I want to give you permission to tell yourself, because I’m telling you to, that you are sensational! I’m giving us both permission to be on a journey of figuring out what it looks like to stop trying to be perfect and own being ourselves. I’m giving us permission to celebrate each other! And I’m giving us permission to celebrate our best work, no matter what it looks like! Life is too damn short to not celebrate, so let’s do it together! Let’s celebrate each other, let’s celebrate the random sunshine Seattle has enjoyed this month, and let’s celebrate who we are.