Blossom Like a Badass: How Do You Measure Actually Living Your Best Life?
By: Pamela O'Leary
Tags: Empowerment, New Years Resolutions, Womens Rights, New Year, Women

Wishing such quantifiable evidence existed for empowerment!

I knew my partner really loved me when I was very sick and didn’t know if I sharted myself and he checked. Yes, in fact I had sharted myself. He was kind enough to clean my sweet behind. I knew God really loved me when I miraculously made it to my father’s bedside 15 minutes before he died. It’s easier to know when others love us, but how do we know when we really love ourselves? How do you measure it? What evidence will be proof you really believe? Loving yourself is the foundation upon actually living your best life.

I live in data obsessed Silicon Valley, but nothing like Google Maps yet exists for my empowerment journey. When I restart my computer after it gets an update, I get an affirming message that my computer is 50 percent updated and I see a spinning wheel telling me to wait and that more updates are being processed. I wish such data existed for my life’s transformation! You are 80 percent ready for that promotion. You are 60 percent ready to have a child. You are 25 percent prepared for a new romantic relationship. That would be awesome to know with some certainty!

For the last ten years, I have been on a deep empowerment journey of learning to love myself. I have been fiercely trying to define success and happiness on my own terms, not on what society forces down my throat on a daily basis. It’s been one hell of a ride! I have seriously wanted to give up entirely and just settle for a game over.

So how do you know when you’re actually living your best life? Living your best life is not measured by how many followers you have on social media. It’s not how rich you are. It’s not how famous or important others deem you are. This is what society tells us a million times a day, but it’s not the truth.

As 2020, the worst year ever is about to close, I am eager to create a positive vision of hope for 2021. There are so many new possibilities I would like to create for myself and the world. I know that with the grace of God and commitment on my end, new opportunities will arise for my happiness and contribution to the world.

Validation and Affirmation

External validation is the false pretense of happiness and success. But it is so easy to default and conform to societal norms. What is more challenging is to define these on your own, perhaps against what society values or tells you who you should be. This is even more difficult if you identify as a part of an underrepresented community such as women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, or differently abled. We receive so many messages telling us daily that we are not enough in every way.

Living your best life means you love yourself fully and completely for who you are in this moment, wherever you may be. Rather than depending on external validation, you embody self-validation. You fill up your own cup. I dress up just for the joy of it, to feel cute, and to look at myself in the mirror and smile at my pretty self. I don’t need recognition from my boss or co-workers to know I am rocking it at my job. My friends may have what I want but do not yet have, and I can still be sincerely happy for them.

You embrace your greatest weaknesses. In fact, you fully own both your successes and failures. You take complete responsibility for your life and harness your ability to make choices for yourself. You actively create new possibilities for yourself. You are not a victim to circumstances and just react out of default patterns but can powerfully respond to life. You do not compare yourselves to others. Above all, it is the power to be able to authentically laugh at yourself with kindness and love.

Evidence of not loving myself

For decades of my life, I had no evidence of self-compassion. As a young politico in Washington, D.C., I was an ambition addict. All I focused on was how fast I was climbing the career ladder. I sought prestige and based my entire identity off a job title.

My head was filled with evil self-talk. Every moment, I beat myself up with the most critical judgment. I told things to myself I would never tell another person. I doubted all my actions. What did others think? Why did I do that? How could I mess up like that again? I operated in relentless perfectionist mode exacerbated by a fixed mindset. Mistakes were proof of my inadequacy. I’ve never been good at any of this. I’m not cut out to learn these kinds of things.

I only accepted compliments and praise when it came from another person. I did not say such things to myself. Or if one kind thought did occasionally pop in my head, I never believed it. My value came from my fancy job title, who I knew, how important they were, or who I dated. I depended on others to make me feel wanted, desired, pretty, smart, and funny.

I never trusted myself. My inner intuition was never listened to. I fully doubted my own judgement. I would ask twenty friends for their opinion before I made a decision. I never just went with my gut.

Before the age of 30, I had achieved my dream job as the executive director of a national nonprofit. While my friends were still aimlessly dating, I thought I had found my dream husband. But shortly, both core false foundations of my façade of happiness were suddenly taken from me. I hit rock bottom both personally and professionally. I didn’t know who I was or how to survive.

It was only after I had crashed and fully burned that I begin the journey of how to love myself. I finally started therapy to address my traumatic childhood. I took classes at Landmark Education to unlearn my flawed life framework. I expanded my views on religion to maintain my Catholicism while embracing aspects of Judaism. I worked with a coach to game plan my professional comeback. I learned how to relax and slow down with yin and restorative yoga. I leaned on my friends for support.

Even though I had done a tremendous amount of healing work, there were still some serious obstacles to overcome. I had not learned my lesson, so God made sure I would. On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, although sadly single, I would finally make six figures for the first time, while working for a famous philanthropist, a premier thought leader in my field. But it was like God was trying to tell me, “Hey girl, um I tried to tell you a job title and money isn’t the key to happiness, but I don’t think you really got it!” This too did not work out as planned.

So, to keep the brand new Prius I just bought, I became an Uber, Lyft, and Shuddle driver to make ends meet. I slowly regained my confidence by tutoring high school students for the SAT and their AP classes. I straight up hustled and learned to cherish what really mattered to me, spending cherished time with loved ones and giving back to others. Being a good friend, daughter, sister, and aunt were the titles that were most important.

So those are multiple examples of when I clearly didn’t love myself and therefore wasn’t living my best life. Those were the times when I compared myself to others, when my relationship status or job title falsely were the main factors in how I based my self-worth.

Evidence of loving myself

Thank God, after embarking on this deep empowerment journey of how to love myself, I now have multiple data points that serve as evidence that I am actually living my best life. Of course, it’s not perfect and I am always striving for new opportunities, but I am still happy in the pursuit, joyful right now in the present moment. It’s not like, “When I find the right man and get married, I will be happy.” It’s not, “When I make ___ amount of money, I will be successful.” My ambition is no longer an addiction. I do not need those future aspirations to have been achieved to be fulfilled. I accept and love my life as it is right now. I continue to be an ever- evolving version of my best self.

I began my empowerment journey by leaving a seven-year relationship with my college sweetheart. Finally having the courage to step away was my first indication I was committed to loving myself. It was the start of a long, deep, and painful journey of healing.

My strongest data point of loving myself is when I transformed my greatest weakness into my superpower and got sober from alcohol. For about 16 years of my life, alcohol was my most significant coping mechanism. I used it to numb my pain. During Greek life at college, binge drinking was glorified. As a politico in my twenties in DC, drinking everyday was just a part of the job as you went to networking events and happy hours. But when I moved to the suburbs of Silicon Valley and had to drive to and from my drinking romps, when the monthly pilgrimage to Napa wine country ended with a sprained ankle, and when my closest friends of over fifteen years started to no longer tolerate my drunken behavior, I started to realize maybe my drinking wasn’t quite so normal. After multiple attempts to get sober, I finally made it. Every drink I say no to is saying yes to loving myself. I was fortunate to have achieved a year of sobriety right before my father’s death. I have no idea how I would have gotten through his passing without this newfound strength.

Always check your junk mail. Another strong piece of evidence of loving myself is when given a sudden windfall of money, I didn’t make any major changes to my current lifestyle but was happy where I was in life. Completely unexpectedly, shortly after my father died, in what I thought was just a piece of junk mail, I received a significant amount of money. If this had happened a year earlier, I would have quit my job and traveled the world. But I really loved my current job and didn’t want to quit. I actually enjoyed what I did. It wasn’t about the money. Ironically, around this same time, my current roommates were about to move out and I was deciding where to live. Now, I could have afforded my own place, or at least chosen to move into a fancy apartment in San Francisco. I had already made plans to move in with my best friend into my old house on a beautiful lagoon. Even with this new financial freedom, I decided I still wanted to go with that original plan. So, with this life changing amount of money, I didn’t make any major changes to where I was. I kept the same job. I chose to live in my original plan for housing. I was happy where I was in life.

Lastly, I knew I loved myself when I reclaimed sovereignty of my body. I have a M.A. in Applied Gender Studies and have volunteered for years as a rape crisis counselor. During the many drunken nights in my past, I had a variety of unwanted sexual experiences. I brushed these off as not a big deal. I normalized the violation because I did not stand up for myself. But about two weeks before #MeToo went viral, I finally found the courage to call my rape a rape. Moreover, as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) professional, I felt morally obligated to speak out. I made a Facebook Live from the emergency room explaining the process to survivors and encouraging them to utilize this resource. Yes, I felt guilt and shame, but I did not allow those feelings to overwhelm me and prevent me from speaking my truth. Similarly, a few years later, I decided to utilize the egg freezing benefits my company generously offered. Once again, when even though I felt embarrassed I was thirty-five, single, and freezing my eggs, I decided to have fun with it and publicly celebrate this reproductive choice.

Even in writing this, I am scared out of my mind of the mean comments that could come, how this could impact future employment or dating, or how others will judge me. But here it is, baring my soul on the Internet, hoping it brings you some solace to know you are not alone in your journey! I too have struggled like hell but keep trying everyday to love myself.

Questions to explore your empowerment

So, what metrics will you use for yourself to gauge when you fully love yourself? Your measurement may be different from mine. There is no absolute truth, only that which you know in your deepest core to be true to you. Trust yourself. Believe in yourself.

Below are some deep questions to ask yourself. Every year, I love taking a few hours to do a deep dive reflection into the past year to create a strong vision for the new year using the free Year Compass guide. Another great reflection tool is The Soul Communion Workbook by Monique Mitchell. Throughout the year, I use the Passion Planner daily.

To learn more about loving yourself, I highly recommend checking out the work of Audre Lorde, Kristin Neff, and Jen Sincero. Let’s stay connected on this journey through #BlossomBadass!

Cheers to creating amazing new possibilities in 2021! Happy New Year!

· What does it mean to you to blossom like a badass?

· How do you define living your best life on your own terms, not just on what society tells you what that should look like?

· How do you really know that you love yourself?

· What does happiness and success mean to you?

· Rather than default to conformity of external validation, how do you fill up your own cup each and every day?

· How can you learn to be present and not stuck in the past or too attached to the future?

· What’s in your self-care toolkit? What resources or support could help you on your journey? How can you get more comfortable with asking for help?

· What do you think is your greatest weakness? How can you transform that into your superpower?

· What new possibilities do you want to create for yourself in 2021? What are you calling in? What are you letting go off?

· What surprised you the most about yourself during quarantine in 2020? What were you most proud of accomplishing from 2020? Which of those are strengths you want to bring with you into the new year?