EP.23 - The Power of Being a Misfit
SHOW NOTES:
Feeling like a misfit can be challenging in a world that values conformity. It's easy to feel disconnected.
It’s easy to feel like you don't measure up to society's standards.
What if you embraced your unique qualities instead of trying to fit in?
No one in the world is like you, and that’s your power.
I used to think negatively of myself because I identify as a misfit. I've learned that embracing my individuality leads to purpose, fulfilment, and success.
I want to share with you the strategies that helped me learn to celebrate being different, even in the face of rejection, abandonment, and adversity.
Together, let's discover the power of being a misfit and unlock our unique gifts and talents.
Here are the key takeaways from this episode:
02:13 - To thrive as a misfit requires you to walk the path of adversity.
06:13 - Become an expert of who you are born to be instead of being an amateur version of someone else, to fit into people’s expectations.
07:47 - Trust yourself because no one knows you better than you.
11:34 - Know what love looks and feels like for you, Focus on how you can create that.
14:19 - Be aware that sadness is part of the process.
15:21 - If you feel like a misfit, it's because you identify as a visionary.
18:21 - When you honour who you are, you're more able to honour the individuality in other people.
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About Me:
I help you lead with fearless authenticity by smashing the self-imposed heteronormative stereotypes that keep you playing small through emotional healing inner child and inherited intergenerational trauma. Create a purposeful life of your unique design by disrupting societal norms and expectations of who you should be. Explore mindfulness, fearless curiosity and loving kindness through the lens of Human Design to thrive as the person you are born to be.
Learn more about my coaching method and join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community at melissaindot.com.
TRANSCRIPT
0:00
When I lean in to what is different about me, and I get super curious, and I build a strong relationship, learning who I am every day as I'm evolving, I can become the expert of who I am, who I am born to be. Rather than become an amateur version of me, that fits into someone else's expectation. I'm not here to be a version of someone else. I'm here to be different. Not because I'm trying to be different, but because no one in this world is the same. That is my power. That is your power. That is your purpose.
0:44
Hey there. Welcome to the Fearlessly Curious Podcast, your safe space. Listen, lean in and learn the diversity of human experiences through the lens of fearless curiosity. When we learn more about each other, we also learn more about ourselves. How? Because when we listen to each other's curiosities and experiences, we relate to that which is in common, and that which sets us apart, gives us something to reflect on. We learn through and with each other. I'm grateful to you, the global community, for your curious questions. The Fearlessly Curious Podcast cannot exist without you.
1:31
This week on The Fearlessly Curious podcast, I have a topic that's super close to my heart. And it's all about being a misfit. How do you thrive in this world as a misfit? And some strategies that I have employed in my life that have helped me to embrace my individuality in the face of rejection and abandonment and struggle and all sorts of adversities? How did I hold on to my individuality to eventually thrive as a misfit? The quick answer to that is to thrive as a misfit requires you to walk the path of adversity. Because the biggest journey of owning your misfit-ness is having to let go of everything you thought you had to be.
2:27
I know that might sound strange. But as I mentioned time and time again, we're so conditioned to abandon, to deny, to avoid, to minimise the most unique parts of who we are in order to fit in. It's so deep, the conditioning, it's systemic. Our parents don't even realise they're doing it because they're living it. And the global system is built that way. So it's only through our own curiosity that we can start to disentangle from this collective belief system. And when we do that, we will find other people like us who are equally curious and who have disentangled or are in the process of disentangling themselves from a system that's all about being normal, whatever the hell normal is.
3:20
It's hard to embrace your individuality. But it doesn't have to be hard. It can be navigated with ease, you got to get used to being uncomfortable. That's why it's called growing pains. It's painful, because you are literally shifting from one space of being into another. Imagine the caterpillar that goes into the cocoon. If you know anything about the biology of that it literally just becomes a mush in that cocoon. It disintegrates. And from that incredibly, recreates itself and changes its form into a butterfly. So there is a death of the psyche, there's a death of an identity of who you think you are or you must be so that you can become the person you were born to be.
4:10
Have I embraced my individuality? I've kind of written down five points for you. From very early on, many of us, who identify as misfits will notice quite prevalently, quite obviously, that we're different to everybody else. That might be the way that we look, the choice of fashion and style, maybe the way that we speak, maybe the way that we see the world, how we engage with other people. That could look like being the quiet one, the super loud one, the one with loads of energy, the one who, when they say something it's perceived as being completely out of context. The one who's super creative, the one who's quirky, awkward, maybe. Eccentric, these are all words, labels, identities that many misfits I believe out there can identify with. The point is, you feel different. And as human beings we thrive, we desire to belong, we thrive on connection. So being accepted by our peers in our community is something we yearn for. So when we don't get it, it can leave us feeling rejected, abandoned. We might even disassociate, shut down to that experience. What we need to do is to lean into that difference. And know that we're here for a purpose. That difference that we're experiencing is the visionary. It's somebody who yes, indeed lean into the fact I do see things differently that's why nobody gets me. And the more that I lean into what is different about me, the more that I can learn about myself. And the more that I learn about myself, through my curiosity, the more confidence that I built within myself about my difference, I become the expert of who I am, rather than an amateur of a version of somebody I think I need to be.
5:28
Let me say that again, when I lean into what is different about me, and I get super curious, and I build a strong relationship, learning who I am every day as I'm evolving, I can become the expert of who I am, who I am born to be, rather than become a amateur of a version of me that fits into someone else's expectation. I'm not here to be a version of someone else. I'm here to be different, not because I'm trying to be different. But because no one in this world is the same. That is my power, that is your power, that is your purpose.
6:54
So lean into that which is different, hyper focus on that. Become obsessed with getting to know who you are. Keep doing, learning, asking, studying, case studying, researching who you are to become that expert.
7:12
Trust is the second thing. How can you learn to trust yourself? Now, from the day that we're born, we require some level of validation, right? Through love, through touch, through many different avenues. I'm not a psychologist nor am I a therapist, but I do know, as I mentioned earlier, we thrive on connection. And our trust becomes external. We trust our parents to take care of us, we trust our teachers to be the bearer of knowledge. We trust our care in the hands of our caretakers and caregivers. What's important is to learn to trust yourself, because first of all, no one knows you better than you. And if some of you out there like "well, I don't really know who I am", you still know more about yourself than anybody else does. Even in that space of confusion, there's aspects and parts of you that nobody knows. And nobody can truly understand you better than you because you are having your unique experience. So that alone can be the foundation from which you can live, trusting who you are, is that nobody knows you like you. No one is going to commit to you the way you can commit to you. Because who spends the most time with you, is you.
8:34
And yet we focus, I hyper focused on the relationships and friendships I could build and how they could validate me. When none of those people around me, my friends, my family, could fully commit to being with me 24/7. In my best state, yes. But in my worst state, nobody could really commit. It'd be foolish for me to expect anyone to commit to me for my whole lifetime, right? But I can commit to me because I am me. So based on that fact, I can lean into trusting myself because nobody has a level of commitment for me better than me. No one, therefore will ever be as loyal can match the loyalty that you will have for you. Although we're conditioned constantly to abandon ourselves, in order to meet the expectations of others. And that's where it falls apart. Start to value you. Start to practise loyalty to you, start to really listen to how you feel, how you sense the world out there. And of course, I want you to start trusting yourself because we talked about commitment and loyalty. And also nobody's going to spend as much time with you as you are. Who's the person you're going to have the longest relationship with in your life? It's you. So nurture you, trust you.
9:49
After all, there's no such thing as mistakes. We're all figuring out this life in this world. We don't consciously do things to cause harm or most of the time we don't. And we're making a mistake. I mean, what is a mistake? It's something that we tried and the outcome that we intended didn't turn out. So then we look at it as a mistake, then we refine it. Some of us take the same action over and over again until we learn that lesson. Is it a mistake? Or is it research? Is it data collection? It's also anchored in how we perceive failure, right? I see failure as feedback. How I can refine how I can get to know who I am, get into the details of who I am. And at the end of the day, you need to trust yourself, because when all else fails, when everybody else disappears, when there's no one around, who is always there for you? You.
10:39
So there are infinite reasons to trust yourself. And it starts with being present with yourself. It starts with self care practices. It starts with really asking yourself, what do I need? What do I want? What brings me joy? What are the things that make you happy? What are the things that make you feel safe and loved? The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman breaks down love into five categories. Service means having something done for you or doing things for other people. And gifts, which is someone giving you something, you know, having the thought and the act of giving you something compliments. Words of affirmation, which look like compliments and praise, a quality time. That's like spending one on one time with people in an activity, engaged in connecting. And connection through physicality.
11:27
So how do you embrace your individuality is to get to know who you are. And getting to know who you are, is about knowing what love looks and feels like for you and how you can create that. And leaning into your love language is a really great system. Like so, my love language when I did the test, and it's a free test. By the way, I can go online and just Google love languages by Gary Chapman. My primary love language is touch. So knowing that I go for a massage at least twice a month, that's my way of feeling loved, or that I don't need anybody else. I don't have to be dependent on someone else to provide me. These are ways to nurture my heart and my individuality. So that during life when I'm feeling rejected the hard knocks of life abandonment, because I don't fit in because I'm that misfit, I can lean into these tools that nourish and cultivate love within me.
12:24
How do you feel safe? What do you need around you, within you to feel safe so that when being a misfit throws its hard knocks at you, you can create safety for yourself. So like, for me, it's music was always music, because my mind, the words, the way that I think, the condition beliefs that I have about fitting in can get very noisy, can get very confusing, and can create a dissonance between who I think I should be and who I know I am. And in order to quieten that noise. In order to create safety within my body, I get out of my head and into the truth, the reality of who I am by listening to music. What's your tool? How do you feel safe? How do you create safety for yourself?
13:09
So I just want to recap those three points. How do you embrace your individuality? In a world that's trying to make you less of who you are, and more of who you are not? I cover do more of what makes you different, right? Become the expert of who you are. Secondly, trust yourself. And I've given you four or five reasons why you can trust yourself why you never need to doubt that. And then the third one I covered is to get to know what safety means and how to love yourself. So that in those times when you feel rejected, and abandoned or out of place or a misfit, you can lean into these, I guess self care practices to nourish yourself.
13:52
Two more points I want to cover, one is knowing that you are going to face adversity, you are going to face struggle being that misfit. You are. If you can acknowledge that not so easy to accept, but acknowledge it's going to be part of your process, that sadness is part of the process, then that's half the battle won, so to speak. And why am I inviting you to be aware that sadness is part of the process. It's because you will need to grieve who you think you should be. Right? We all have an identity, we have a conditioning, we have a narrative, a story, a visualisation, an illusion of who we think we have to be by all our conditioning. And that's what causes the struggle that dissonance between who I think I should be and who I am. So that sadness comes when I let go, when I surrender everything I think I need to be, I need to be. And you have to surrender that and it's a process over your entire life. And when you let go of something, it equates to grief. And when there's grief, there's sadness.
15:04
And I want you to start getting used to being sad. It's a part of life. I want to normalise that process of grief, letting go of everything that you are not, so that you can become everything that you are.
15:19
And lastly, remember that if you feel like a misfit, it's because you identify as a visionary. I mentioned this at the beginning, you can see what others cannot. No matter how hard you try to explain things to people, no matter how much you can see, someone can do things differently in a way that is better with less struggle. Remember that unless someone is ready to receive your vision, your words, your wisdom, that just giving it to them blindly, is gonna fall on deaf ears. So that's why you are a misfit. They're not there yet, they're on a different timeline. That doesn't make you better, or them worse. It just means that you don't fit into their timeline, their trajectory of life. And it's okay. Hold that vision. When they're ready, they'll come to you and they'll ask you, and then you will know that you can fulfil that vision.
16:09
That mission of being a misfit by providing them that information, when they ask for it because it means they're ready. If you're a misfit, it's also because you're really born to lead, but maybe not from the frontline. Maybe you're there to pave the way for leadership, maybe you have these pioneering ideas that nobody else has, and that you're to see them, and to build the foundation, and to get the people together, to build the team, to inspire, to motivate others to step into leadership. And once you set that up, you step away, and you let them take the lead. Not many people have the ability to do that. Maybe that's what being a misfit is about, for you.
16:55
Maybe feeling like a misfit is about you having a lot of different ideas and you being multifaceted. And you have this ability to jump ship and change direction, change course and your path with great agility in a way no one else can. And because nobody understands your agility and your ability to constantly change your direction, maybe they'll call you fickle, maybe they'll call you unreliable, irresponsible, because you never see anything through. But who said that we have to see everything through in one sitting? So maybe that's why you feel like a misfit because you're not just committed to one direction to one project to one idea, but you jump from one to two to five to three to four and back to one again.
17:42
So if you feel a misfit for that reason, know that that's your gift, that's your power. And I'll invite you to go back to number one, which is to lean into what makes you different, and become more of an expert in that.
17:55
The more that you can learn to trust and accept, or at least acknowledge what is different about you, the more comfortable you will become in being that misfit, that professional misfit, that person who no matter what shows up with fearless authenticity. That person who is always curious about themselves first, and even more fired up about honouring who they are. When you honour who you are, you're more able to honour the individuality in other people.
18:26
So I'll leave it there for you. These are some of my strategies, and how I embrace my individuality, and also why I created the online community. Mindfulness Playground, that's what I call it, but it's the safe space for people to show up authentically and also to walk the path of self discovery in our differences. It's the reason why this podcast exists, right? That space for us to listen, lean in, and learn the diversity of our human experiences. Knowing that we're different, knowing that there is no greater gift than to listen to someone else's life experience, and ponder and contemplate and relate to or maybe not relate and still know that there is another way of being out there in the world.
19:10
These are my strategies to thrive as a misfit. And it's really important for me to remind you that the journey of thriving in your individuality means that you will encounter adversity, because that adversity is going to help you deepen, widen, expand the ownership and the leadership you have in your individuality. It's challenging. Diversity is challenging everything you think you know about yourself, and creating opportunities for you to discover even more about who you are.
19:44
That's all for this week on The Fearlessly Curious podcast. You know what you need to keep, your heart open, your mind expansive. Until next week.
20:01
If you want more, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode every Friday. And please leave a review if you enjoy this episode. Don't forget to send me your curious questions and experiences as inspiration for future episodes. Your anonymity will be respected. If that's what you prefer. For more guidance and support, join my emotional healing, mindfulness and music community over at melissaindot.com. See you next week.
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