I recently had a very familiar experience of shame, in a relatively unfamiliar context. Without going into too many details, I gave a presentation in a world far, far from this blog. It was a presentation, a version of which I had given twice before. The first two versions were resounding successes. I enjoyed myself. My audience enjoyed itself. Lots of good thinking was done. Lots of fun was had.
But this third time, I made a couple of mistakes. They boiled down to a departure from authenticity. I allowed myself to present a version of myself that, although close to the real me, was just a few degrees off. I was pretending just a little bit to be someone other than who I am. My urge to do this came from fear. I was afraid that who I was wasn’t good enough. And so instead, I pretended to be someone a little different. Someone a little closer to who I imagined my audience needed me to be.
As the presentation unfolded, I couldn’t avoid feeling inauthentic. Feeling that I was somehow lying. I wasn’t really lying, but I was acting just a bit. And I don’t like acting. When the presentation ended, all signs were that it had been well received, or at least well enough received. But as it ended, as I said farewell, a very familiar feeling of shame washed over me. And for days afterwards, its ember burned in me, scorching my insides.
The lesson seems pretty clear.
When I’m me, when I don’t pretend to be someone other than me, for the most part, I’m pretty comfortable. But when I somehow think that I’m not enough, that I have to be somehow different, when I put on an act, it takes something out of me. And it replaces it with that burning hot ember of shame.
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