Isolating Yourself
Channel: Ravi Tangri
Date: 11/11/2018

How allowing myself to be weak allowed me to be stronger than I had ever dreamed

It’s the summer of 2009, and my wife and I just decided to end our marriage.  On top of that, when we married, we merged our consulting companies, so we also have to separate our business

We told our son and my stepsons (her sons) and our families, but not many others yet.  It broke my heart to see my parents’ faces when we told them.

I’m heading down to Orlando for some meetings.  I’m on the national board of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS), on track to be president in 2011, and every summer we have a 2-day in-person board meeting prior to the convention for our sister association in America, the National Speakers Association (NSA).

So many of my closest friends are in CAPS and our sister associations around the world, and I’ll be seeing most of them at the convention.  I’m dreading it.

It really feels like I’ve failed. 

How am I going to keep up a positive face when it feels like my life is falling apart?

Fortunately, the board meetings are intense – everyone on the board works incredibly hard for our members, so I can stay focused there. 

But they still notice.  I see glances here and there, and the first night out to dinner, Paul asks me what’s happening.  He and I haven’t just served CAPS together.  We’ve worked on an intense project in Doha, Qatar the last two years.

So I tell him.  And you know what? I don’t break into a hundred pieces and he doesn’t think any the less of me.  Go figure.

And then over that evening and the next day a couple of other friends approach me and I share what’s happened with them and their support is amazing. I'm blown away.

Then it’s time for convention.  It’s hard to describe CAPS and NSA.  When registration starts it can take an hour to cross the lobby because you’re hugging so many people – and authentically hugging and loving them.

We usually only see each other twice live – at the NSA Convention in the summer and the CAPS Convention in December.

And of course, the first question is “How’s it going? What’s new?”

Now that I’ve realized I’m not being judged or seen as a failure, I do open up more.

Not in the lobby, of course, but in private conversations the next few days.

I’m overwhelmed by the support and the love.

And it’s not just emotional support.  Toni helps me rebrand my business, now that I was going solo again.  Crystal helps me understand some of what I was stuck in to help me move beyond it.  Nabil helps me get clarity on the gifts I still bring to the world.

Before I had thought I was being strong.  I had always isolated myself in crisis – I would find my way through. What I didn’t realize was that wasn’t strength at all.  I was as fragile as a piece of delicate crystal.

I suddenly realize that isolating yourself not only blocks your feelings, holding them in to fester rather than work through - it also blocks you from receiving all the love that’s out there for you.

Times like that it’s so easy to see yourself as a failure and imagine how others would judge you and you spiral downwards into a pity party.

As my friend David reminds me, I’m always there for others and I don’t judge them when they’re facing challenges.  Given that, he says, “it’s a little hypocritical of you to act this way, isn’t it?”  Boom.

It’s only now that I open up and let myself receive that I discover just how strong I am, not just within myself, but with the love and support of all those who truly care for me.

And the only thing that kept me from receiving all of this and finding this strength was me as I speak of in this video.

I’ve run into this so often with my coaching clients.  They do everything for everyone else, but they’re afraid to ask for or receive help.  And so they deny their greatest strength – until we work through that.

How often do you hide yourself from the world when 'stuff' happens? Where can you open the door to receive?

Share your thoughts in the comments below.