On Having Your Shit Together
There was once a goal in my professional life…
Get interviewed for The New Man podcast. This was the first podcast I ever began listening to and is arguably the longest running and most popular podcast in the world of men’s personal growth. Recently I fulfilled that goal and had a great time on the show.
We intended to have a conversation about business and debunking some myths. What ended up happening was that Tripp instead dug into my story of weight loss, “finding my balls” with women, leaving my first career and growing my practice, that it ended up being a story piece about my life. He titled it How to Get Your Shit Together.
While I love the conversation we created and have gotten such beautiful feedback from my clients, friends, community members and potential clients. I really despise the title he gave the show.
For me and in the work I do with clients, having your shit together is not a virtue.
Yes, GROWING AND MATURING emotionally, physically, socially, intellectually, spiritually, sexually and romantically are all fucking awesome. You could call this getting your shit together. But in general when we use that phrase in our culture, it’s code for pretending that you are perfect, don’t experience challenges or setbacks, are a conventional success and stay 1000% responsible every day. It elicits images of men who look like Brooks Brothers models, have PHDs, a six figure corporate job, a tidy lawn, savings for retirement and never say or do the “wrong things.”
In my industry, most coaches try and perpetuate an image of having their shit together. It’s a fucking lie. We are all human, we have flaws, we make mistakes, we look crappy in the morning and sometimes are fearful, negative or unproductive.
I say FUCK THAT to “having your shit together”. At least in the conventional meaning associated to the phrase.
I don’t always have my shit together.
I’m going through a break up, sometimes I get sick, I went to Spain and didn’t sleep enough so exhausted myself on vacation, I had a night that I drank WAY too much and fell on my face…literally. I’m experimenting in life. My business is amazing but I make mistakes and miss opportunities. There are times when I go out for the night trying to look good and realize it’s been a hot minute since I’ve trimmed my nose hairs. In certain moments I spend money on things I really don’t value. There is always a desire in me to spend more time with my family, fill my social calendar more and get just a little more fit.
And…I LOVE who I am today. I love my business. I love my life. I help the fuck out of my clients because I have a skill set that serves them to create change. I’m not perfect. I don’t have ALL my shit together.
Okay, I do have a lot of my shit together but not all of the life categories that this phrase beckons to and not every fucking day.
The idea that you are supposed to have your shit together is one of the main reasons that you don’t.
It creates an idea or expectation that there are “those people over there” who have their shit together and you aren’t one of them. The concept has us living hidden lives where we don’t show authentic presence, vulnerability and mistakes. It encourages folks to walk around like robots and to apply pressure on themselves to reach some imaginary finish line when they are finally “adulting” well enough.
And I can hear you now “but Joe, I’ve opted out of that main stream robot bull shit…I’ve been walking a spiritual path…I’ve been living an alternative lifestyle…I’ve been on the personal growth tip for years…I don’t measure myself using that old paradigm.”
Awesome. I’m glad for you. And I can tell you from experience that those alternative views and lifestyles are just as filled with new versions of internal and external “having your shit together pressure”. It’s often just a new version. Don’t fall prey to that either. Define your own ideal even if it makes you different from your “new and improved hippy dippy, empowered, spiritual, sexual, oneness, personal growthy” tribe.
Time to blow up this concept and come up with a new paradigm.
Let’s redefine having your shit together. Here is what it means to me.
- You are fully engaged in life. You have rich experiences with meaning.
- You avoid perfection like the plague. Perfection is the thief of creation and growth.
- You are working to grow and evolve most of the time.
- You know your values and try to live in alignment with them.
- You are consistently caring for your body in a way that you feel proud of.
- You have the social life that fulfills you. Not some story book version that the culture conditioned you to think you need.
- Love and compassion for yourself and others is a primary focus in connection.
- You are grateful as fuck. You make gratitude a practice.
- You know and are reconciled with your core beliefs about the universe and people.
- Emotional intelligence and competence is a focus and is in constant development.
- You cultivate deeper mind-body connection regularly.
- You understand your value in the world, you live in alignment with that and in your professional life you ask for and attain what you are worth financially.
- You are disciplined when it counts and flexible when it will expand your experience of life.
- You have community or communities that you value and you give back to with the extra resources (time, energy or money) that you do have in abundance.
- You honor and respect others, especially those that have different life experiences and beliefs than you.
- Growth mindset is more important to you than looking like you know all the things. You’d rather be wrong, inexperienced and learn, than feel like an expert.
- Love matters. Love matters a lot. You know that relationships are the core of a full and healthy life. It’s not about quantity but about quality.
- You trust yourself and the universe and other people. There is capacity to surrender to the flow of life, give up control when it’s necessary and know at the end of the day you can handle anything and you will be okay.
- You are connected to a feeling of enough. You feel you have enough, you are enough, you give enough. You do this without abdication of responsibility, settling or denying your gifts or capacity to create more when you want it.
- You embrace, enjoy, seek out and appreciate paradox. You know that nothing is black and white. You see the world in many shades of the rainbow. You cultivate the spiritual technology to honor dark and light, yin and yang, masculine and feminine, sun and moon, earth and sky, dog and cat, beer and weed, soft and hard, hustle and flow.
- You take responsibility for your life, your emotions, your behavior and choices. You don’t blame others. You know that you impact your outcomes and results more than any external force.
- Humor is a driving force of aliveness. You can laugh at yourself while taking the world seriously.
- You live with authenticity and vulnerability. You value showing up in the world in your wholeness more than you value looking like you have your fucking shit together.
- You know how to ask for help. Sometimes…you actually do ask for help.
- You are self defined. The rules, values and worth that your family, our culture, your boss, some guru, your religion, this article assigned to you are less important than how you have identified “success” or “having your shit together”. You make the rules and success markers based on what you value. Bottom line.
Don’t worship the people who look like they have their shit together. They may have a fuck ton of their shit together, but they aren’t showing you all of themselves. They aren’t being true and honest with themselves and they are holding a lot of tension in effort to identify as good and right, rather than whole and human.
Sometimes you have to come back from Spain with a black eye, a cold, a busted knee and exhaustion. Isn’t that what life is all about? Living?!?!
It’s time to define what your version of having your shit together looks like. Don’t use mine or anyone else’s.
If you’d like more discipline, more compassion, more self love, career or personal growth but you don’t want to do it in a way where you put crazy pressure on yourself to attain perfection…
I’d love to help you. Reach out and let’s get your shit together from this new paradigm.