Let in the light
Good morning gorgeous, it's so lovely to see you on this post-election-dumpster-fire morning. If you haven't seen it—we wrote Tinder profiles for the top three candidates on Sunday. Then, on election day the internet found them and went HAM. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for sharing, amplifying, calling out folks who bit our style, and being an incredibly supportive community. I am so grateful for this weird morning crew, you are magical.
Our post trended under all of the candidates' hashtags all day, so we showed up first when someone looked for #AndrewScheer on insta. You know what that means! From beneath bridges, basements, and sparsely decorated one-bedrooms, the trolls slithered from their hidey holes to offer opinions on our Tinder journalism.
About halfway through the day, I realized I was doing something deeply human, but also flawed. I was magnifying the negativity and minimizing the positivity. I was letting tens of comments determine how I felt about thousands of people seeing and enjoying what we had created.
We all do this, don't we? So few of us know how to hold on to something good. We don't have the shelving for accomplishments, but we have walk-in closets ready to house every single word of criticism. It's common to wake up in a cold sweat at 3 am remembering something dumb we did, but do we ever wake up at 3 am proud of our damn selves for something great? Only Lizzo does that shit.
Modern life demands too much of us, perfect insta hair and a PhD, abs and a successful side hustle. Respond to every text, every email, remember the birthdays, attend the baby shower, be a sex god, be a super-parent, mentor, host the event, minimize your pores, but also make the million. Fuck there is a lot there for us to fail at. The deck is stacked against us, so if we're looking for failures we are going to find some. It's inevitable; we can't do this all and still sleep.
When we live our lives focused on the fails, we create our own filter through which to see the world. The filter looks for the criticisms, the "areas for improvement", and puts a spotlight on them—casting our accomplishments into the shadows. We find it hard to see the good things because they've been muted and darkened for so long. We squint for self-acceptance until it hurts our eyes.
We need to change our filters to let in the light. It won't happen right away, and we'll need to practice finding and celebrating our wins every day. Build your accomplishment shelving, brick by brick. To start here are some ideas:
1. Accept compliments without caveats. Just say thank you.
2. Set the bar for yourself. Decide what success looks and feels like to you, instead of letting Instagram or your boss choose for you.
3. Make space and time to celebrate your accomplishments— the big milestone stuff, but the tiny incremental stuff too.
Remember: you're so much further along the path than you know.