Standing Firm in Your Truth: A Tale of Polarizing Self-Expression

Growing up, I was a triggering person, constantly struggling to fit in. I wore masks, but I've learned through my journey that it's powerful to be polarizing, to embrace authenticity and self-expression. In this episode, we unravel my tale and discuss how polarizing authenticity can shape our lives. We dive into the dynamics of family relationships, the sting of judgment, and the grip of shame, particularly around the holiday season. But remember, it's not just about sharing our struggles, it's about creating a safe space for conversations that foster self-love and acceptance.

The feeling of judgment, especially from family members, can often trigger our shame. Take a moment with me to reflect on why we feel this way and how we can transform it into a source of gratitude. We'll explore the transformative power of being polarizing, standing firm in our truth, and its impact on our personal growth. We'll also touch on the importance of honesty, vulnerability, and sharing our struggles as a path to deeper connections. I promise, it's about being true to yourself and embracing your journey.

As we round up this episode, we reflect on the power of being a polarizing individual, the masks we wear, and the importance of embracing our authentic selves. The conversation also ventures into the importance of gratitude, especially in this season of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. And as we continue this conversation, I want to invite you all to join our Milky Way community, a space for authentic connections and meaningful discussions. Remember, being true to oneself and living out our truth is what makes us uniquely us. So, embrace your journey, and I look forward to our next episode.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:36

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Amanda Quick show. I'm your host, amanda Quick. Today. The conversation that I want to have is a bunch of different things. I have so much to share with you all. I have celebrations to share, I have new understandings, and this concept that I want to kind of wave in and out of here is this idea of being polarizing, being a triggering person. Something that I realized fairly recently in my journey is that I've always been a triggering person. I've always been really polarizing, and that's not a new thing, it's just something I've recently started to be more of.

Speaker 1: 1:20

In fact, when I was a young child, I was very, not shy, unabashed about being my best self, and I would be loud when people wanted me to be quiet. I would play when I wasn't supposed to be playing. I would talk back to adults, I would say whatever came to mind, and for certain adults, especially the older generation, I was very, very triggering and I didn't care. And I think what was different about me as a child is that I didn't care that I bothered adults. I didn't care that they were angry with me. If anything, it fueled me. I didn't respect elders because they were older If they didn't show me an ounce of respect. I did not show them. I didn't care that I was five and they were 70. It didn't matter and that was something that surprised my mother and surprised other adults that I didn't care. But eventually, at least through my own peers, I did start to care. I did want to find belonging and understanding. I did want people to like me, love me, understand me, and I struggled to find it. I struggled to find others like me who weren't shy to be themselves, and what I saw working in other people and in my peers was those who wore masks. I saw that being cool and having friends. If you wore masks and pretended who you were and that person was cool enough, you could be loved and adored. And we all want that as children. We all want to be loved and to be understood, and so I tried it on.

Speaker 1: 3:16

But the truth was I wasn't very good at wearing masks, not even a little bit. I don't pretend very well, and the more I tried, the more honestly it repelled other people became, because the mask would come off and it would just slip off and all I would be would be a mirror for the mask that they were wearing, and they didn't like that. Nobody wants to be faced with the fact that they're not being who. They are, even children, because by the time you're 10, you're trying to fit in, you're trying to find your people, you're trying to find friends, you're trying to say the cool thing, attract the cool person. And you know, my child was no different. And the more I tried to fit in, the less they did and the more I felt repelled by everybody else and the harder it became on me to be okay with that. And eventually I turned to boys because I could get attention in that way and eventually I ended up married to a man who had his own demons in that area.

Speaker 1: 4:21

And in a lot of ways I see how my desire to belong and fit in led me on that journey, because it was never meant to fit in and belong not in that way. And I think a lot of people who find themselves polarizing and triggering other people without intent to do so have that same journey, whatever it looks like for them, and maybe they get better at masking than I did. But most of them never really feel satisfied with themselves and they feel like there's more that they could be doing or sharing, and yet they don't know how, because they've lost it a little bit and they're struggling to take off the mask out of fear of being rejected yet again, even though they don't belong with the mask on either. I'm finding myself being even more polarizing than I used to be, because all of a sudden, I'm no longer afraid to take it off. I'm no longer afraid to tell the truth of my experience, to share the horrible things that happened, and I can do so with a sense of freedom that I never had before. I can talk about the pain that I had as a child, as a teenager, and not worry about what you're going to think about me. I'm not worried about what anybody is going to think about me, but me, and the more that I can share that loudly, the more polarizing I become. But the beauty in that, the beauty of being polarizing, is that the people who are attracted to that and who feel safe with a level of transparency and vulnerability are only magnetized to me even more, and everybody else easily falls away.

Speaker 1: 6:03

And I think this is an important conversation to have as we come into the holidays, when we're going to be around friends and family and extended family that we may not get along with. We may not see often enough we may. They may not know the details of what's going on in our lives. They may have opinions about who you should be or what you should be doing, or what kind of job or what kind of partner or any of the things there's so many stories of hey, when are you going to get married? Or hey, when are you going to get that job, or whatever.

Speaker 1: 6:34

And most of the time when we hear that from extended family or anybody, we feel judgment. We feel judgment because they don't approve. They don't approve of our choices, they don't approve of our life, and if we have rooming there ourselves, we're going to have a reaction to it. If we're upset by the state of our lives, we're going to be really upset that they brought it up and we might not respond in the nicest way. We might say we might not say anything at all.

Speaker 1: 7:08

But what I find is, when those things come up and when people say things that make us uncomfortable, it's an invitation. It's an invitation to go. Why did that bother me? Why am I upset by them bringing up my lack of income or my relationship or whatever version of it it is? Why does that bother me so much, because what my aunt whoever thinks about that really has no bearing on my actual experience. And if I were to not be ashamed of my life and if I were to say I'm doing the best and I'm learning and I'm growing and I'm happy with myself, I would stand in truth in a different way, and the person who threw whatever comment my way might actually be the one sitting in their own shame and judgment of their relationship or their journey, or however long it took them to do something, or whatever their fears are and maybe their fears are simply that you're not going to live the same life that they did and they're worried about hardship. But on some level, they're still holding that and maybe there's some hardship that they haven't been willing to face themselves. Whatever it is, everything ends up being a mirror, and so we can choose to look in the reflection or we can choose to throw it back in somebody's face, and my invitation for you all, coming up to the holidays, is to take pause, to take pause when these things come up and to take a breath and to realize that these are all good things.

Speaker 1: 8:43

We talked last week about the gift of our shame, the gratitude that we can find in it and this applies here too Finding a gratitude and the things that we're not so proud of because of the lessons and the learnings and realizing that we made the best decision we possibly could and it set us on the path to be who we are now, and that that's something to stand proud in. And if we can hold that frequency, we can invite others to do that too, and if they're not ready or don't want to, we can hold the space of love and invitation for whenever that is, without return judgment on their own choice and their place and time, because perhaps only an hour ago you were also sitting in your shame and so we don't need to point it out unless somebody is ready to look at it. And when I think about that and I think about the ripples of that conversation because we had a deeper level conversation in my community about this just last week and I was talking to a member today, in fact about how that's impacting her and what's changed in her life when she realized the things that she'd been avoiding because of shame and just thinking about that even deeper and thinking about how we show up on a day-to-day basis if we were honest with the world about how we were really feeling, if we were honest with the world about what we were experiencing and what that meant, and the stories that we were telling ourselves about the judgments we would receive from other people, which were actually reflections of judgments we held within ourselves. If we could be honest and out loud with that, just how much would be shifting within self, within others. It's amazing the ripple effects this can have and the more people who are wanting to do that and do so with this community and a space of being seen, the more that this gets to happen and the build-up and the ripple effect just grows, and that's exciting to me.

Speaker 1: 10:49

It's exciting to me to see how, even within my life is, I've grown and changed and I no longer was the little girl who desperately wanted somebody to play with her and who eventually turned to boys in attention and eventually married two people who were not the best fits for myself and had children and masked harder and harder and harder, until, all of a sudden, I couldn't anymore and the world blew up in my face and I had to take the masks off to remember who I was and who I needed to be for myself and my kids, and as I did that, things started to unfold in a way they never did before, and after I succeeded at getting us out of that situation, I had to relearn and remember who I actually wanted to be, and I had to do so without the shame of the person I had been before and without knowing what was coming next. I think I told you all last week that maybe it was the week before that I was invited to interview for TEDx, and I learned this past week that I got it and I'm going to be live on stage in London, ontario, in February delivering my first TEDx talk. That's flip and exciting. It's like I've been a goal of mine for the last couple of years, and the theme of this event is Phoenix Rising from the Ashes and man. It is a perfect one, and this afternoon I shared the first draft of my speech with my new TEDx coaches and I left them speechless because this is such an ingrained part of my journey now Finding myself again and rising because of it, and facing my fears and facing the shameful experiences, removing the charge in them. By doing that, rewriting the story, there's so much power and potential to not just shift my life but everybody's lives I get to touch. And that, to me, is this whole flip and point.

Speaker 1: 12:55

I desperately needed my story to have value and so I went out and found it. I went out and found the point of the experience and why I had to go through what I had to go through, what I needed to learn and how I needed to share those lessons with other people. And I believe that there are so many of us out there with amazing lessons to be shared, to be spoken about. But we have to be willing to be polarizing. To do it, we have to take a stand one direction or another. We have to say this is my truth, based on my lived experience and recognizing that that may trigger the crap out of people and that may they may not like what we have to say, and they may throw stones, they may throw judgments. Man, the comments I have gotten when I took my story to social media there are some bad ones, and yet all that did was fuel me even more.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Being polarizing, standing strong in truth, has given me this gift, this gift of knowing that I have purpose. I can be that inspiration and my purpose is to be an example of possibility, in whatever way I want. There's no right or wrong way to do this. There's no right or wrong way to have a podcast or show. I just get to be myself and share my life, and people can like it or not, and those who do like it because I'm even more me and those who don't just don't listen. There's no wrongness, and that's the beauty of realizing the potential.

Speaker 1: 14:33

The more polarizing we get, the stronger the attraction gets, both directions. And so I, as I was kind of reminiscing because I've launched my new container, my new membership, and I launched it to my existing audience and I'm inviting anybody who feels called to join I'm also realizing that the more polarizing I get, the louder I actually have to be. I have to be louder to find the people attracted to this version of self, because the people who had been following me were following a still masked version. Thank you. It's still the master version of who I thought I was supposed to be showing up, as how I was supposed to be sharing my lessons, based on what somebody else told me instead of what I knew to be true. And so what I'm finding as I'm stepping into this next phase of my business and my journey, as I'm spending time with family on the holidays, I get to realize that, no matter what I'm doing, the most important thing that I can be doing is whatever is true for me. That's it. That's what matters. Sharing the truth of my perspective. My awareness is my journey. That's all I'm supposed to be doing, at least based on what I'm choosing, and other people's reactions to that are reflections and lessons for them.

Speaker 1: 16:01

And no, we don't need to be intentionally poking people's buttons, even though very young child me enjoyed that, and there's a part of me that does still get some joy out of seeing the triggers and knowing that there's something there for somebody, because it's almost like I can see the realization just ready to be bubbling under the surface, and I want to push the button and see if they'll get it. I really, really do, but I have to recognize it's never my choice. When somebody else is ready, as hard as that is, it's never my choice. And so I no longer debate or argue with somebody about who's right and who's wrong. I don't care, I really don't, because it's not about who's right and who's wrong. It's not about any of it. It's about honoring my values. What's important to me. It's about being integrity with what I'm sharing. It's about taking accountability for my self, my energy field, my reactions, my choices, and to just share in the most transparent and vulnerable that I know how, because that's what's important to me.

Speaker 1: 17:13

Your version doesn't have to look like that and there's no right and wrong way, and I do my very best not to cause harm. I do my very best to share from my experience and mine alone, and not make judgments on other people. I don't always succeed at not causing harm, or at least not hurting feelings. That's a really hard one, because I can't control other people's feelings and reactions as much as I want to, but I can hold space for their choices and their process. I can say I can see that you're hurting and I'm not going to add to this and I'm going to walk away. And that's what I choose to do as a way to stay in integrity of myself and hold my truth.

Speaker 1: 17:53

Well, also not trying to make anything worse. I've had recent clients fall away because they didn't like how I shared my experience. I've had friends walk away because I was too much. I've had audience people in my audience disappear, block me, all the things because they didn't like my message. But I've come to realize. All of those things are beautiful gifts. All of those things are just showing me that I'm being more me, I get to be more me and I get to show up in the most polarizing, potent version of myself in this moment, and getting accepted to be a TEDx speaker, being able to put my message out into the world in an even more powerful way, is also showing me the potential of what happens as we do this.

Speaker 1: 18:47

And so for all of you out there who feel like you trigger your family or your friends and that you have to wear masks to fit in or to not cause a fuss or whatever the story that you've told yourself, my question is what happens when you don't? What if you drop the story of when you were a child? What if you would drop the story of being a teenager and trying to fit in? What if you dropped all that story for just a minute? When you ask yourself what's really going to happen if I pull the mask off? Are people going to judge me? Am I not going to like me? Am I going to be judging myself for wearing the mask in the first place? Am I going to cause a fuss at Christmas dinner. Am I going to give grandma a heart attack?

Speaker 1: 19:37

Whatever the story is, what actually is going to happen if you're really honest with yourself for a minute and if you drop the mask and you show up to your friends, to your family, to your coworkers, to the world? Really is your full, authentic self? First of all, do you even know who that is anymore? And what if this is the version that actually finds you? Whatever it is you've been searching for, whether that's a relationship, a job, business, friends, whatever it is you've been searching for? What if the fact that you haven't found it is because you have been not playing the part of self? Your desires are coming from such a deep place within you, but if you weren't the one showing up in the world, it's a lot harder to attract those desires.

Speaker 1: 20:35

And maybe, just maybe, if we pull the mask off all of a sudden, things will start to shift. Yes, people will fall away 100%. So many examples of it but maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe people falling away is the best thing that can happen, at least for a period of time, because something else they've learned and this is something that's been a challenge, because I've lost not just friends, but I've lost relationships with what was closer family members, because my perspective was different.

Speaker 1: 21:12

The way that I showed up during the pandemic that I felt was best for my children was different and that caused a ripple in my family. It caused a break and a misalignment and it meant that we didn't speak or talk about any of it for a good few years. The thing is that was a few years in a lifetime and all of a sudden it's shifting again and I can't tell you why. I don't know specifically who changed or what changed or if anything changed at all, but eventually it did. And eventually we get to come back together and share a seat at the same table again and have a conversation about possibility and perspective again and be open to having a different opinion than the person in the room. And that, to me, is just showing the power of this, because had I thrown a big hissy fit and had I said some things I maybe didn't mean and caused a big ol' ruckus three years ago, I wouldn't be able to rebuild the relationship today. But because I held loving space and I could see the trigger and I could see the trauma and I could hold that and know that when the time was right, it would change again, and for now, I needed to be myself and they needed to be their selves. And eventually it'll change and it did.

Speaker 1: 22:45

And so, being polarizing, while it does bring people to fall away, it also brings people back together, because I've stayed true to my truth and I've learned and grown to the best of my ability and I've shifted and evolved how I share my message with the world and how I show up in the world and how I show up for my clients and the people in my community, and how I show up for my coworkers and how I show up for my husband and my children. I've shifted that as I've learned more, and I believe my mission is to share those lessons and learnings as I'm living them, because I don't do things the easy way. I don't know how to do that. I learn through direct experience, I learned through touching the fire, and learning is hot, and I do that in every single aspect of my life until I find something that actually does feel good, and the only way that I know for that to have value is to share it, is to share it the truth of my perspective, the lessons and the learnings to help other people not feel alone through their trials and tribulations, to recognize that I'm not the only polarizing, triggering person out there. I used to make it a wrongness, I used to put the mask on. I used to say I wish people could see me, but until I was willing to really see myself and take the mask off, that was never going to happen.

Speaker 1: 24:12

And being a triggering, polarizing person is actually one of my biggest freaking superpowers, because I know the button to push. I really do. I know exactly which button to push and I can see it and I just sometimes I just want to push it, but it's because I know the potential of what that button holds. I know that if we could unwind this thing inside of you, what could be uncovered? There's a rainbow underneath all of it, there's a pot of gold and I just know that storm cloud is trying to cover it all up. And if we just park the clouds a little bit and push the button, it all could come undone and it would transform people's lives if they were ready.

Speaker 1: 25:01

But I also have learned through my direct experience in pushing those buttons when they weren't ready to be pushed, that not everybody is ready, not everybody wants that. Some people are literally choosing the storm, and that's okay, because I did that too. I sat in my stuff and I can't judge them for that. No, everybody has the time and everybody's choice of when that is is their own, and I can honor that journey just as much as I've asked others to honor my own. And so, whether you're a triggering person or whether you find yourself triggered by your family and your friends, whether sitting at the Thanksgiving table this week was exhausting or whether it was enlightening or whatever your version of experience is as we begin this holiday season, being a polarizing person and standing in your version of truth is an invitation in every single aspect of your lives.

Speaker 1: 26:00

The mask you wear with your family is maybe different than the one you wear at work. The mask you wear with your partner may be different than the one you wear with your children even, but it's important to realize that you're still wearing them and that you might even be wearing one when you look in the mirror and maybe, just maybe, it's time to start pulling it down and putting it aside and trying on what it might be like to not do that anymore. What's the worst that could happen? And actually go down that thought for a minute and figure out that maybe, if you loved yourself in that version, other people would too. Other people would be drawn to you in the best possible way, and those that were not the best would fall away very easily.

Speaker 1: 26:54

That's my message for you all. If you've enjoyed this and you want to dig in deeper, I invite you to join my brand new community, the Milky Way. You can go to my website, amadecquiekeelingcom slash community. I will link it in the show notes. I hope you all had a beautiful Thanksgiving week and enjoy this Black Friday holiday, and I will see you all next week. Lots of love everyone.