I was lying on the massage table today.
If you’ve ever had a massage, you know how you end up kind of….drifting?
One thought to the next, your mind swirls in fleeting wisps like birds landing and taking flight again in a single flush.
Today, one bird landed and stuck in my mind. I was thinking how a few years back, I was at a fancy mastermind for Very Successful Business Owners and Coaches.
I felt lucky to have been invited and surrounded by other top people in my field. I was buzzing. Finally the people in my own field would recognize me as one of their own!
Each of us in the room of around 50 people were asked to introduce ourselves, share our business, and indicate our business value or sales volume for the year. (Ah, the pecking order begins!)
On my turn, I stood up and said I taught personal growth, healing, and success through Flowdreaming. I was just shy of 1 million in sales that year.
I saw a few heads turn to look at one another, and then it moved on. No one here knew who I was. Further, they did not believe me. Cold water trickled through my heart.
Next we were told that the point of the conference was to network, create supportive partnerships, and boost one another through our mutual success and hard-won knowledge.
After our first day, I noticed something odd.
I’d seen others clustered around the hotel bar after our workshops, deep in conversation. I, on the other hand, was catching eyes with the other rejects sitting alone on the hotel lobby couches.
I’m really good at coaching and teaching. As a speaker, I’ve filled break-out rooms at conferences to overflow into the hallways more than once. As a business owner, I’ve taken my vision and spread it to over 180,000 people over the course of twenty years, making book deals and content partnerships left and right. As a connector, my phone is stuffed with the phone numbers of countless stars and gurus.
Yet I remain the Queen of Being Underestimated.
I realized in that moment at the conference that it was happening again. It happened at every conference and mastermind, in fact.
Believe me, I’ve reflected on this more than once.
I’d asked myself, “Do I have resting b*tch face, silently and unknowingly making others scurry away with my get-out-of-my-space energy?”
I don’t think so.
Am I not reaching out enough, afraid of rejection?
Mmm, well yes occasionally, but generally I’m wide open and ready to chat. I’ll even march up to the hotel bar and order a glass of wine by myself, lingering and awkwardly butting in to closed conversations.
You think I’m joking, and I am a *teensy* bit.
But what I was thinking about on the massage table was this: I have been wildly underestimated my whole life.
And I’ve had to deal with this over and over.
And be successful in spite of it.
I grew up with a single mom (who was in a spaceship cult), dropped out (or tested out depending on my mood when I tell the story) of high school after 10th grade, and generally have never been quite “normal.” So what. That’s exactly what I love about myself.
My peers have often thrived in networks of people whose combined talents lifted them all.
I, on the other hand, have usually worked solo, plotting my own destiny, reaching out one-by-one to people I truly admire or like, and finding others who, like me, are also hungry to have their work seen, share a vision or skill, and in general, munch at the Universal buffet of life.
Which sounds aggrandizing as I write it, but what it means is that no one thought I’d do anything remarkable.
So, I’ve ended up seeking out others who’re also overlooked yet remarkable. We’ve created a loose network of support that manifests as zoom coffees and occasional meetups.
But mostly, I’ve overcome being overlooked and underestimated by constantly asking life and the universe, “What can I give?”
And life answers: “Give yourself, hon. It’s more than enough. You’re a cheeky little one with some gifts. Use them.”
I try to live into that every day, even against the closed shoulders and backs of my peers.
You don’t like to sit alone at the table, and neither do I.
The ones that have sat with me, I realized, are just like me: curious, different, risk-takers, smart, multifaceted, wanting desperately to see what they can make of themselves, wanting equally as desperately to see what their true gifts are and how to share them. They know the clock of life is ticking and we are impatient types.
They, like me, suck at bro-talk. They often suck at marketing, networking, and business conferences, or have taught themselves painstakingly (as I have) how to make a semblance of it.
They had to teach themselves to self-advocate, to say “I’m enough and better than enough.”
They had to be innovative, cutting edge, and sometimes hold dreamy ideas that not everyone “got.”
They refused to dumb things down and they always put results above ego or notoriety.
Above all, they were hell-bent on helping other people live into their own unique life success and vision, too.
I had been going to the wrong clubs, so to speak, all those years.
My people are always on the fringes. We’re cutting out own paths. We bump into each other like travelers in the forest, not on hard conference chairs.
Louse Hay said “Love yourself” at a time when people where being pilloried for being who they were.
Wayne Dyer said, “Show yourself” at a time when many of us were overcoming our fear of how to share our music with the world.
I say, “Own yourself” at a time when we’re drowning in other people’s successes, songs, media, and formulas.
Your voice is worth hearing.
And the only person’s voice that counts when underestimating you….is your own.
Lastly, if you’re ever at a conference where no one is giving you the time of day, then meet me on the Lonely People forest path couches.
Because as I’ve certainly found, that’s where the “other side” gets their Big Work done.
Feeling inspired? I hope so.
Leave me your thoughts in the comments below. Tell me how remarkable you are, and how I should never underestimate you. Because that’s the truth.
