Uncomfortable In your Own Skin
I was uncomfortable in my own skin for most of my life. I didn’t know it for most of those years.
I was trying to be what I thought was expected of me. I suspect my name had a lot to do with it. Expectations, ya know.
I delivered on the expected Rebel “presence.” Performed her as long as I can remember. Never knowing that performance wasn’t me.
That’s how performing works. You become so much the part, the real you disappears. I watched so many women in business do the same. Didn’t recognize it for what it was.
Now I’m watching as women are being pushed to perform even more. Do you feel it too?
Everywhere you look articles, coaches and programs selling us the necessity of Executive Presence. Like it's a role to perform.
Truth is, women’s presence is already focused on performing. Showing up as women who “fit in” instead of the people we truly are.
Some of us shrink. “Don’t be too much.” We slide into the meeting oh so much smaller and quieter than we are meant to be.
Some push. “Work harder to get ahead.” We show up with forty slides and backup data for the backup data. Performing so hard the room can feel the effort coming off us in waves.
Others become someone else entirely. “Be one of the guys.” Talk like them, walk like them, laugh at the crude jokes. We step through the door as a version of us defined entirely by them.
Different programming. Different performances. Same result: We are still uncomfortable in our own skin.
How could we be anything else? We’re wearing a facade that was never ours. Of course we feel it. Every single time we step through those doors.
No Performance Needed
You go into your kitchen and you don't think about any of it. The kids are fighting over something ridiculous, dinner's not even started, and the dog just knocked over a glass of milk. You just move through it all, your way. Because that's your kitchen and you know it.
That is your natural presence. Unforced. Unaffected. Fully present with yourself and everything around you.
Not so much when you go to work.
The second we cross that threshold, we step outside ourselves to watch the performance. How am I coming across? Am I too much? Not enough? Should I speak now or hold back? Am I ok?
The second we start performing, presence dies. We all feel it.
The fist in our gut we feel in some meetings? It’s not a confidence problem. It’s the feeling of wearing a mask we were trained to wear so long ago we forgot we put it on.
Every woman’s natural presence is different. That’s what makes it real. One woman commands a room by being still. Another by being fierce. Another by being warm. None of those are wrong. All of them are truth.
We always had our own presence. We were just taught to perform a role someone else designed for us. Be small. Be big. Be them.
Presence was never something we needed to learn.
Turns out we weren’t uncomfortable in our own skin. We were uncomfortable in theirs.