I’ve been asked by my favourite Finnish friend (full disclosure, she’s my only Finnish friend, but she’s still my absolute favourite Finn, and I love her immensely!) to join forces and do a Podcast together – how exciting!! And a little bit terrifying.
Since we briefly spoke about it late last week, my thoughts have been returning to it, and what topics we may cover. To how we’ll banter, how we’ll be witty and funny, yet insightful and poignant, and maybe even voices for a whole generation of women, giving them permission to be themselves, and learn how to love their awesomeness.
In the daydreamings I’ve had over the past few days, I imagine what our opening lines and descriptions of ourselves will be. And as I daydreamed, without much conscious thought I heard the words “We’re just two average gir-“ – wait, no we’re fucking not! But also, maybe we are, or were….
And here I find myself sitting with this blog topic. What on earth is ‘average’, and why on earth do we want to aim for that?
I pondered on this for some time (my favourite place is in the shower, while I’m drying my hair, or doing the dishes), and it led me to consider that most of us have spent a considerable portion our lives (if not all of it) trying to be ‘average’, and fit in. We have been striving for anonymity and mediocrity by means of facsimile, and thinking this was ‘hashtag goals’.
As young teenage girls, we all wanted the ‘in’ clothes – for me it was green jeans, cutoff jeans, or something with a Stussy label on it, and to own anything from Sportsgirl meant you were set. If you had the right haircut, or were allowed to put a blueberry-hued rinse through your hair, you were in. You were accepted, you were cool. I have since realised that looking exactly like my other friends actually equated to meaning YOU ARE AVERAGE. And I never really put much thought into why it was so important that we didn’t stand out – why we felt we had to look like all the rest, and fit the mould of a perfect ‘insert-identity-here’. This was the key to acceptance. Depending on which ‘group’ you wanted to be a part of, your uniform differed, but the aim was the same – to fit in. To be average and not stand out.
I know there is a deeper, primal-brain reasoning for this – how when we were cavegirls thousands of years ago, we had to fit in for our survival. Life was tough back then (like, LITERALLY tough), and if the tribe didn’t accept you and kicked you out, it meant certain death. You needed the protection of a tribe for food, safety and survival. And because our DNA has not changed all that much since then, we aren’t really to blame for instinctually wanting to be same-same. And let’s face it, it makes sense as to why our high school years can feel like a fight for survival! Everyone’s all just trying to fit in!
When I was in my late teens, I was in what was then described as the ‘alternative’ crowd. While none of us had a single piece of clothing the same as anyone else (as we were all patrons of the local op shops and vintage clothing stores), we all managed to look ‘uniquely’ the same, if you get my drift. Our facial bindies may have been different, but we all belonged to the same group. The interesting part about being in the ‘indie’ crowd, was that everyone dressed and expressed ourselves in exactly the ways we wanted to (or at least this is how I remember it). Perhaps if I think about it, it was more the ‘indie mindset’ that counted, than the identical uniforms of say, the Sportsgirl crowd. My group of friends consisted of a range of identities including ravers, artists, musicians, math geniuses, debate team champs and even our school captain from memory. We all wore different styles of clothes, from glo-sticks and glitter and dreadlocks, to hippie-esque flowing skirts, brown stripy polyester 70s bodyshirts, to the super wide legged Kepper Jeans (remember those??), to very ‘socially acceptable’ clothing choices like jeans and T-shirts (and for the record, I will proudly confess to owning and wearing all of those things at one point or another during my teens/early twenties). And the cool thing is that all of these were accepted in my group. I never really thought about that until now, but if my memory serves me correctly, that’s pretty cool for a bunch of teenage girls, and I can’t help but wonder if that had some sort of effect on me that I’m unaware of.
If I fast-forward the twenty-something years to now, and think about my close friends’ group now, what we wear matters not. My tribe now consists of men and women who hold the same values as I do, with some of the most important ones being integrity, fun, non-judgement, and learning. We are supportive, loyal, and honest (even when it’s hard). We are so alike in so many ways, but importantly, we are so different too. We have different cultures and backgrounds, different family set-ups, different careers and industries, different sexual preferences, different music and clothing tastes, different financial situations and religions and political views, you name it. We’re different. And we embrace it, and each other. We are proud of who we are. Or at least, we’re trying. We are still human, after all.
I’m really clumsy. Like, stupidly fucking clumsy. I used to absolutely mortify myself with my actions – from those daily little stumbles on uneven footpaths (and perfectly flat floors, let’s be honest), to the major doozies, like jumping out of a moving bus while in Bali with a group of women I barely knew. And because not everyone is clumsy, or jumps out of moving buses, it makes me different (remember that different has translated to ‘outcast’ and ‘not fitting in’ up until this point in my life) – and god forbid I be different! I never realised how incredibly heavy the fear of being different was to carry. Being ashamed of something that is so inherently me is fucking weighty! I’ve finally come to realise that not only am I possibly NEVER going to be able to NOT stumble over my own two feet, but that this is one of those unique things that makes me, ME. After a lot of deep personal development work, I no longer get embarrassed about my clumsiness, but have learned to embrace it and unapologetically shrug it off with a giggle (or a belly laugh, if spectacularly awkward). If my clumsiness makes you uncomfortable, that’s ‘Your Problem’, my friend, not ‘My Problem’… If being clumsy isn’t ‘cool’ and makes me not fit into your group, that’s absolutely dumb and childish and I don’t want to be in your group anyway. So Nerny-ner-ner!! *pokes out tongue at you*….
I suppose I am what you’d call a recovering perfectionist, and putting down the embarrassment and hatred of my clumsiness was one thing that I have put down recently. It was a big step for me in releasing the need to fit in. To fit in, you had to be perfect. That included not being clumsy, not being fat, not being single, not being childless, not being unsuccessful, and all the other things women ‘should’ be. So 6 months ago, I took myself off on a retreat in Bali, and vowed I’d do something really scary – I vowed I would JUST BE ME. Honestly me. Unapologetically me. Vulnerably me. Imperfect me. And that scared the absolute shit out of me, because FITTING IN!! But I did it anyway, as I hear that the universe listens to the brave…. I spoke my truth and learned to let go of the fear of judgement (and that includes self-judgement). I allowed myself to be clumsy, and said things that I would have normally held my tongue on, for fear of looking stupid. I stood in a bikini in my imperfect body under a waterfall, and cried my face off in front of a group of strangers. And something incredible happened. I wasn’t kicked out of the group. I was embraced. I was celebrated. I learned that the only acceptance that mattered, was my own. And when you do finally grasp such a foreign concept, a funny thing happens. You attract amazing people. Not average people – AMAZING people (There’s also science around this, and it’s all about vibrational frequency and energy and stuff – and you can’t argue with science). You attract people that you want to be around, and people that will lift you up even if you are clumsy, or don’t have a body like Elle Macpherson, or a fabulous career as a neurosurgeon.
Long gone are the days where having cutoff jeans are important. It doesn’t matter what I’m seeing in front of me, or in the mirror, and it doesn’t matter that I fit in. I know I don’t want to be average. I want to be me. I want to be unique. And I want to surround myself with other unique and amazing people. I want my ‘average’ to be ‘fucking phenomenal’ to most people’s standards. So I’m going to continue working on that, because it’s been amazing so far. And it makes being happier a hell of a lot easier when you’re unapologetically clumsy and fucking phenomenal.
NAOMI BATTAH COACHING 
Leave a comment