Breaking free…

I nicked a display message off a friend’s blackberry display message deck – it was such an apt one and I thought it was a good reminder to have. It was an image of a horse tied to a stable. In the picture, the horse was held by threads! Yet, it so firmly stood by the anchor in the stable, invariably held down.

Sitting at a session listening to a physically challenged motivational speaker – this image was still playing in my head. His message highlighted that while it is easier to title his challenge as physical, many people where held down by invisible threads… sometimes by nothing at all – only mental threads.

I wasn’t about to waste both lessons so I thought deeply about them both; about all the ‘ropes that have held me down’… Ok, let’s rephrase that about all the ropes I had allowed to hold me down in 2013. All the times I had voiced ‘it is possible’ but acted contrary. All the times where one had painted perceptions that trapped one in a corner… that corner.

Children’s ability to ‘just believe’ repeatedly astounds me – when my first child was under six years old, I’d tell him anything and he’d believe – literally anything. I could tell him I was the Queen of England and it’d be just fine. Not only would he believe, he’d repeat it with utmost confidence. Now, at almost 10, he still believes me… only with caveat ‘he’d add Maama are you really, really sure? Like really? Then he’d repeat it perhaps to process it further and help his belief. So, you are saying it’d happen like that Maama? I often answer in the affirmative and I do mean it at the time – sometimes things change or may not change – a reality that life itself will teach him.

As the year is winding down, I find that I’m breaking the rules myself – either from physical or mental, fatigue, but slowly, ‘I’m too tired to do,’ is translating to ‘I can’t do.’

Sitting chatting with my networking group – I asked this key question – what do you think you couldn’t do? … I was looking to get put down for being so negative, given our mantra for positivity. Shortly after, the first respondent told us that it wasn’t what she couldn’t do, it was the feeling of being a fraud which she constantly kept with her.’ She said while she was doing what she was doing well at work and outside work… still she couldn’t help feeling like she was ‘acting.’ This friend is a leader in her company and a serious achiever in many regard.

An excerpt from Sheryl Sandberg’s famous book – lean in – did it for her. Where Sheryl herself had shared the same feeling of being ‘fraudulent’… the one I still find so amusing was when she was nominated as the ‘the fifth most influential woman in America’… she said she was very upset and thought it was a ‘fraudulent’ recommendation. She just didn’t feel good enough to be on that list, let alone have Michelle Obama be down on the list after her.

She said she had gone around responding to compliments from her team by saying ‘Oh, I don’t know if that’s me’… in response to ‘congratulations Sheryl, we see you are in the top five.’

It took her PA to shake reality into her – telling her people will soon believe her more than the polls she hadn’t conducted herself. She had to pause to shake off this drawback and only then did she fully embrace the recognition and then herself.

Like the horse, many of our drawbacks are perceived, sometimes when we really take a deeper look they aren’t there; but what if they are? People with truly debilitating challenges have fought to overcome, so why not you? As Faray Fray said, “everything we need is on the other side of fear.” Not sure what hang-ups you’ve had if any in 2013, I’ve fought some and won, I bet you can too. Too fat to do this, not enough money to do this, or not smart enough to do that, not connected enough to get this… here’s a call out to break free – just believe and you can…

There’s still a part of me that wonders if we all need to be freed from all ties. Something that makes me wonder is a reinvention of myself after a certain realisation that I didn’t come with all my shy valves intact. Some days I reflect that, that may have been a big take away. My realisation was almost like Adam’s post-apple realisation that he was naked.

I had grown up a real thin, sharp mouthed young girl in our simple Port Harcourt home. There, I said it as it was and didn’t care about the range of names I was called for my size. It didn’t even occur to me to be shy about anything. Some of the names, my parents even invented, I smiled at each, laughed along with the caller if I cared, verbally fought you if I was in that mood and just carried on. I carried on with this attitude into real life where I could still say anything to anyone at anytime. Until the day, I began the now annoying reinvention, caveat don’t reinvent yourself if you don’t have to, stay true. But if there are hold backs anywhere, imaginary or real, please step forward, break free and break through! Merry Christmas.

By: Nkiru Olumide-Ojo