I’ve been afraid of not being perfect a long time, afraid that all the world will see how fallible I am and somehow persecute me for it. I know that might sound silly, particularly if you’ve met me – I’m a walking ball of glorious, beautiful imperfection.
But my life is a revolving door of ironies. I have a deep inner need to be accepted, liked and perfect, I want everyone to agree that I’m doing it right, I crave reassurance. But there hasn’t been a societal norm I haven’t wanted to bust free from the minute it’s put on me, I often offend many people in the process, I’m a systems-buster and a visionary and very little I do reaches a place of agreement from anyone, let alone reassurance.
I have a deep fear of sharing my passion and my voice with the world and having everyone turn their backs on me and I will be alone, ridiculed, laughed at. Yet I am compelled to get on a stage any opportunity I get and talk about those things most passionate to me and it’s difficult to get me off it once I start.
I hate the limelight, but have an inner desire to share my message with the world on as many stages as I can find.
And sometimes, I have absolutely no idea what the heck I’m doing and am terrified the world will find out and I’ll be seen as a fraud, a fake.
The funny thing is that most entrepreneurs share these same fears, even the ones with multi-gazillion dollar companies. They all write memoirs about it and I relish in the honesty of it all.
I want to be honest about who I am. I want to live my life with deep integrity to my own truths and my own path. For me, the things that make me great are also the great ironies in this game called life that house my deepest fears.
I don’t believe that we can truly live a life of integrity with our own path unless we fully own those things that are our weaknesses as well as those that make us strong. They are two sides of the same coin. Together is what makes it whole. If I say I am only those things I want everyone to believe about me and I’m dishonest about the rest – what purpose does that serve?
I’m not saying to give those things any power, goodness no. But acknowledging they exist, owning them, communicating them and being ok to tell the truth about them – nothing is more powerful. Nothing takes all the jet engines out of fear than to just tell the truth about it.
I see it all the time in the media – the contradictions that burst wide open in people. The senator who claims family values but is found to have 6 mistresses and a fetish for prostitutes, the pastor who is found to have an entire collection of rather nasty pornography, the perfect family with the perfect image who ends up in a horrific murder suicide. It’s everywhere.
These stories we use to sell the world on our perfection, to fit a box or an idea. To not be judged, to not be seen as imperfect, fallible. We repress them, hide them from the world and sometimes, they burst right through the ceiling.
Who knows how long I’ll want to write this blog, who knows if my opinions may change as my business moves forward and I change and evolve as a leader and a woman in my life. But I know I’ll always want to stand for the truth. As fallible as I am, I know in my heart I do my best to live my values and live my truth everyday. I do my best. And really in the end, I don’t know that I can ask much more of myself than that. Nor can any of us.
Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field. She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia. Find more on her here: www.krystinemcinnes.ca
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