The Taboo F Word, Or Should I Say Words?

Before I dive into this blog, I am curious what F-word you thought this blog was going to be about?

When I was thinking of a title, I realized we have a lot of taboo F-words in our culture. It was interesting to me that when I lived in Denmark, kids could say f*&k without anyone batting an eye… except for me. I remember that my one little sister, who was in grade school at the time, dropped an F-bomb in the middle of a normal conversation, leaving me to stare at her blankly. I was 17 at the time and I wouldn’t even say that around adults, yet here she was so nonchalant about it. Now days it seems like ‘the F word’ is losing a lot of its taboo nature while other F-words are developing immense negative social acceptance. I am talking words such as flaws and failing. 

GAHHHHHHHH… The horror!

Have you ever read a friends Facebook status and instantly shaken your head? You know, that ones where the person is bragging about how good and awesome something is, yet you know for a fact that she cried all night and didn’t get a wink of sleep? 

We have all been there in reading these types of posts, and posting like this. Myself included. The Facebook Memories feature pops us and reminds us of these little white lies all the time… yet how often do we actually fess up and tell the truth? 

Our Social Media driven world is creating such an isolating culture because we are getting really good at hiding our true selves. Which got me thinking; How can we experience true fulfillment in life if there  is such a social norm, and pressure, to pretend like everything is awesome 24/7? 

How can we be authentic if we don’t embrace the bad? The negative? The flaws? The fails? The dark? Actually, how do we even know what positive is if we have never experienced negative? Can light exist without knowing the dark as a contrast? 

I know the previous questions can seem pretty metaphysical, but I just want you to start thinking about all the duality that is present in nature, and apply that to yourself as a living being. We aren’t just our wins in life. Our losses show us what it feels like to actually win. They teach us how to grow and expand as evolutionary beings. The flaws, fails, and losses present during different times in history have sparked some of the most iconic  revolutions on this planet.  

 What kind of society would we be living in today is none of these existed? 

With every little white lie that we put into a Facebook status, that we tell our friends, or that we tell ourselves, not only are we lowering our own integrity, but we are also setting ourselves up to fail.  When we live a life of  ‘perfection’, we are conditioning ourselves to believe our own hype. In that case, we are creating such high, impossible standards, that without continuing to create this fictional existence, we won’t be able to live up to said self-imposed standards.

Pretending that we don’t have flaws, that we haven’t failed in life, that’s playing it small. By doing these things we are actually limiting the amount of life that we can even experience because we start to believe our own lies. We create this fear of failure that will hold us back. We actually stop pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones so that we don’t have to hide yet another ‘blemish’ on our lives. Suddenly, we only associate our self worth with our wins and our losses take away any sense of worth that we have. 

Do you see the conundrum here? How exhausting and soul sucking does this sound?

And once again, we have all been there, myself included. 

So how can we start to move away from this?

In order to really understand what it’s like to live a life of fulfillment and authenticity, we need to adopt a habit of embracing all of life. The good, bad, and especially the ugly. 

While every one of us is unique in our beings, our emotions are collective experiences to all humans. Let’s take shame for example. I might feel shame after getting a bad grade on an assignment. Maybe when you get bad grades you don’t experience shame, but I am willing to bet that you have felt shame in your life before. 

Have you ever failed at something in your life and kept it hidden from others? How lonely of an experience was that for you? When we bottle up these negative emotions we are actually creating loneliness in our lives. We forget that human emotions are very universal and not only can it be healing to ourselves to talk about the deep dark things, it can also be very healing for others to hear us talk about these things. This is the perfect example of a win/win situation… yet how often do you shy away form this? 

The more we continue to hide behind some illusion of perfection, the more we add to the loneliness of the situation. You are actually more free in your life than you realize, but by pretending your fails/flaws don’t exist, you are simply reinforcing the walls of your own self-made mental prison. 

If you never experienced  loss in life, what would drive you to become better? What motivation would you have to grow and develop as an individual?  

I want you to really think about something for a minute or two. As in, read the next sentence then actually pause and envision it; If you were 60 years old and you lived a life without any fails, any flaws, any losses, what would that actually look like?

I spent a solid ten minutes working through this myself. I actually set a timer and allowed my imagination to go to town. Know what I came up with? The most boring story line I have ever envisioned. Anytime I tried to spice up the plot, I realized that in order to do so, some type of negative catalyst had to be present. 

Our losses have the greatest ability to turn into our biggest wins. Think about it. What’s a HUGE win for you? Can you honestly tell me that there was no sense of flaw, fail, loss, or any other type of negative spark that lead to the creation of your winning flame? 

If you know me, you know I am all about the reframes. In order for a word to elicit some type of feeling in us, we must first assign said meaning. The reframe that I want to offer to you, is to no longer associate negativity with words like flaws, fails and losses. Instead, embrace the fuck out of them as they offer you a chance to learn, grow, develop and truly experience life. 

Who’s ready to fail with me while embracing their flaws?

Much Love;

SJ