own your weird - how to care less about what they think

275. imagine how much energy you'd have if you stopped performing for other people and started living authentically. 

i share a middle school story that taught me how owning your weird saves energy, builds confidence, and quiets the “what are they thinking?” loop. 

i also talk about:

• rebranding updates and what’s changing soon 
• a stand-up comedy show at the comedy cellar that reminded me what happens when we live in fear of others not getting us
• the seventh-grade pressure to fit in 
• the life lesson i learned from my mom's 70s platform disco shoes

if you loved what i talked about in this episode, you're going to love working with me.

i can help you feel better and get more done when you work with me 1:1. i'll help you figure out a meaningful goal, we'll create an action plan and i'll help you get unstuck all along the way. you don't have to go it alone, and you don't have to burn yourself out!

 
want to see if we are a good fit for 1:1 coaching? go to https://showupsociety.com/coaching and schedule a free discovery call to see if we are a good fit and find out what it looks like to work together.

 
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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Promise

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Show Up Society podcast, where I help you get super clear on what you really want so you can focus on doing the things that really matter to you instead of getting overwhelmed with all the extra. I also hope you learn how to be kinder to yourself so you can overcome perfectionism, people pleasing, and your inner critic. I'm Life and Business Coach Tammy Bennett, and I'm about to help you show up for the life you want to live. Hello, friend. Welcome to the Show Up Society Podcast. This is episode 275, and I'm gonna talk about how to care less about what others think, otherwise known as how to own your weird. So before I get into that, I'm just gonna give you a little behind the scenes. Um, I am hard at work uh rebranding my website, my business, my uh podcast. It's a lot harder than I thought. Like it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. It's way more complicated than I thought it would be to rebrand so many little decisions, and it's really fun, but also a lot. But look for this podcast to be called a different thing and uh have a different cover somewhere probably in the middle of April. That's been going on and it's been really fun, and um, yeah, I'm excited about it. So this past weekend I was in Manhattan with my husband. We had such a good time. We visited our two kids that live there. Um, my husband was there for to do some work for Nike surrounding the Nike Indoor Nationals. That's the indoor national championship for high schoolers. And uh we also got to watch part of the New York half marathon, and I got to see one of my clients run and I got to cheer for her and took a good picture of her that I got to send. So that was really fun. We were also celebrating my husband's birthday, and one of the things we did was we took in a comedy show at the Comedy Cellar, which was so, so fun. So there was like the kind of opening act MC guy, and then there were five stand-up comics, and uh it was just so good. Uh, there were some that were better than others. So these are people that have written for like the Daily Show or other late-night talk shows, and some of them have um Netflix specials, they're kind of uh in different stages of their comedy careers, and some of them want to be stand-up comics, and some of them are just kind of testing jokes um for when they're writing for other people. But it was so cool to experience. And as we were walking home, you know, we were doing our debrief of like who we liked better than the others and what was funny and what didn't hit. And um one of the comedians stood out to me in that I really felt like she wasn't owning who she was. And I feel like very quickly into her set, she felt like the audience um didn't really identify with her or she didn't identify with the audience. And so I really I could almost like physically see her retreat and stop doing some of the jokes that she had planned because I sh I really feel like she thought like we weren't going to get it. Like we didn't get her, we didn't understand her. And um, so then she just kind of started interacting with the crowd. And it just made me feel like a little bit sad because I'm like, I wish that you had just been who the F you are, and if we didn't get it, then that's sort of like on us, and maybe we weren't the right audience for her, but she didn't give us a chance to love her, she didn't give us a chance to like her jokes. Um, and instead I think she just kind of assumed that we weren't gonna get it, so she retreated, and it was just a shame. And I really wish um, I think I she was relatively new, I think. So hopefully that like some of the other comics will, you know, talk to her and just kind of like tell her what's up, and that I think the more that she just owns herself and her set and these jokes that are kind of autobiographical, I think either she will she will find she will connect with her people, she will find her audience, and maybe it isn't the audience at this club, but if she continues to r just own and step into fully who she is, um, she will find a different venue and find her people. But also, we could have been her people. We could have understood these jokes. I feel like if she gave them a chance and she believed in them and she delivered them with like confidence. And so that whole kind of conversation and my whole thoughts about her really kind of got me into what I'm gonna talk about today and made me think a lot about when I was in seventh and eighth grade, which is the, you know, that's the time when we are so, so concerned about fitting in and being like the others and not standing out and not being different and wanting to really be accepted by the group. Um so I'm gonna share with you, we're gonna do story time with Tammy today. I'm gonna share with you a little story from that era, seventh and eighth grade, and it was sort of one of the seeds of what came to blossom in me where I started to care a lot less about what other people thought and just started to own my weird. And I'm gonna say own my weird a lot in this episode, and I'm not saying that things are weird, I'm just saying to just own who you are, that maybe someone in the world thinks is weird or different or not like them. But I think the more that we own who we are, the less we care about what others think, right? So if we so own who we are, then all the chatter and the noise from the trolls or the dislikers aren't going to affect us as much because we have this beautiful strong shield of just owning who we are. And I'm not saying that you're you're gonna get to a point where you just you're not human anymore and you don't care what people think. We humans are always going to care to some extent what other people think, and it is going to hurt our feelings sometimes if people don't like us or they say mean things about us, but um but we can practice and we can step into who we are, we can practice letting it affect us less, or um, even maybe just letting ourselves get a little a little hurt by it, but then moving on and not letting it stop us be who we are. So when I was in seventh and eighth grade, the style of shoes that was popular were ked, like really flat tennis shoes with like barely any rise, and Sam and Libby brand like ballet flats. And so, like the the style of the shoe that was popular was just as low as you could go, a low pro profile, super, super flat. In fact, I actually bought a pair of ballet shoes, like actual ballet slippers, to wear for one of my uh band performances. I played the flute, the band was super, super cool in seventh and eighth grade. I loved my teacher so much. Um, or maybe it was like Honor Society Awards, something like that. But anyway, there was some award show, and I made my dad take me to the local dance store and uh find some ballet shoes to wear. And I remember it was hilarious. This had this, by the way, has nothing to do with today's topic. I'm just going off on a tangent, but it's hilarious to me. So I remember um on the way home from that award show, my dad was like, Why didn't you dance? And I was like, What? And he was like, Why? I thought you were gonna dance. And I was like, What are you talking about? And he was like, Well, we bought ballet shoes for you. I thought you were gonna dance at the award show. And I was like, Oh my god, I literally don't take dance lessons. I don't know why you would think I would dance at the dance show because obviously the dance shoes were because like the ballet shoes were because that's the style. The style is to go as low profile, flat as you could go. But um, anyway, poor dad uh thought that I was going to be dancing at this honor show. He probably was like at this award show, he's probably waiting the whole time. Like, when is she gonna get up and dance? He was probably so confused when that didn't happen. I also want to pause here and say before we move further that I grew up in a very, very tumultuous household with uh abuse of all kinds and neglect and violence, and it was um not great, but there were really great moments. And uh what I'm gonna talk about today is a really great lesson that I learned from my dad, even though he was um really, really abusive and not a nice person and not a good dad. And so it's this really weird holding two things at once where I learned some really important life lessons that I'm grateful for from him. And I also have a lot of trauma and have had to do a lot of healing, and um, maybe we'll never be fully, fully healed um from him, also. So it's really strange to talk about that funny memory and the the kind of um good outcome memory that I'm gonna talk about in a minute, while also knowing that uh I've done so much work with like therapists and coaches and self-help stuff to just try to get me to be okay from some of the terrible things that were done to me. So um I just wanted to put that out there that you know sometimes it can be really hard to reconcile two sides of a person. Um, so let let now we can move on. Okay, so I've laid the background work of the sense of style and the particular popular shoes uh that were very flat sold. Okay, so now that that's established, keep that in mind, okay? So I was a very competitive runner. I went to national championships and I ran local road races almost every single weekend. I was always running. Um, and I got my sort of first injury at this point, and there was some Achilles tendonitis. Uh, my my Achilles tendon was inflamed. So we went to the orthopedic doctor in our hometown, and he said he recommended that I wear shoes that um kind of shortened the Achilles that were sort of like a raised heel so that I wouldn't keep putting stress by like flexing and pointing my foot and causing a lot of kind of rubbing or friction on my Achilles. Now, I might be saying this wrong because like I literally was 12 when he was instructing us to do this, and I sort of like zoned out. So if this doesn't sound um, you know, physically accurate, there's a good chance that I'm just reporting it wrong. So he wanted me to wear shoes that had kind of a high heel, right? Which like now in nowadays times that doesn't really make sense. But again, like I said, I could have misinterpreted it, but I do know that we came home and obviously I'm not going to wear high heels to school in seventh grade. I don't, I didn't even own a pair of high heels. I still can't walk in high heels. Um, and so that could have actually done more damage to my tendons and stuff if I'm like wobbling around, basically breaking ankles. But luckily, and I put that in air quotes, my parents were kind of hippies, and my mom still had in her closet some disco platform shoes. So they had gigantic wooden soles, and the heel part was probably four inches tall, and then um, but they weren't like high heels because it was like this solid block of wood, right? And then it like ended up in sort of like uh probably like a one and a half inch platform under the toe, but it was like wide and solid and stable. There was no way that I'm like falling down from these things. And then the top was like white leather, like sandal kind of. And so, like, I remember us getting home from the doctor and we're like sifting through the closet and finding these. And my dad was like, here, you can just wear these. These are perfect. And we took them to the doctor, and the doctor was like, Yes, these are perfect. Have her wear these. And I was like mortified. My eyes were gigantic. I was like, what is happening? There's no way that I can wear these to school. Um, this is like seventh and eighth grade, at least when I was in seventh and eighth grade, or who I was, was like not the time to show your individuality, not the time to be different or to stick out. This is not the time to be like, you know, I'm not a conformist. I wear my own stuff, I have my own style. Like, I had no interest in that whatsoever. Like, none. I really want you to like pause this. I really want you to pause this podcast and go look up Sam and Libby Ballet Flats just to get like an idea of what the style was. And I also want you to look up like Ked's originals to see like these are the style, okay? And then I want you to go look up like 70s platform sandals or 70s disco platform, something like that. And I just want you to see the mad difference between what was in style and what I was all of a sudden now required to wear for a couple weeks to school. And so I remember like the next, you know, so the next day, it's time for me to go to school. And I literally was like sweating. I was like almost having a panic attack. I um tried to plead sick, that wasn't working. I tried to plead that like my leg, my foot and leg hurt, and I didn't want to walk around at school. That that was not a thing. So I actually remember trying to take a white tube sock and putting it on over my sandal so that I was just gonna like lie and tell people that it was a cast. I mean, it would have sounded like a cast because this thing was so solid wood, but um, and I was like, I just can't let them see this. I have to let them like, I'm just gonna tell everybody that I'm wearing a cast. And I literally was going to wear like a regular shoe on one leg and the giant shoe on the other, um, and like just clunk, clock clunk all the way through the halls of my school and uh quickly realized like that was gonna be really hard. And also my parents were like, no, you're going to like throw out your hips and your back if you're walking around like totally lopsided. Uh, and you know, the sock would not fit over these things because they were gigantic. And so then I even tried to find um, my mom was a pediatrician, so we had, you know, supplies at home and we had ace bandages and I tried to wrap it around so it would look like like again, like kind of a cast type situation. That did not work either. And so I here I go off to school with these gigantic 70s sandals. And I remember just like almost in tears, and my face was red, and I just like didn't even want to come in through the entrance of the school building, and I like rush over to class, and my best friend comes up and she saw me, and she's like like dying laughing, and she's like, Oh my god, they're so much worse than I thought. And I was like, No, I know, I know. I tried to hide my feet under the chair at the table. I remember we went to band class and I like I literally was like my knees were just folded like as tight as they could, so I could like hide the shoes as far back as I could because I sat on the front row because I played flute, and it was just so miserable. And then I remember going to PE class and I had a note, like I wasn't allowed to participate in PE. And I remember the the PE teacher, Mr. Edwards, and he was like, Oh, Tammy's really dressing up today. And I was like, Oh my god, I just cannot. So all the heads whip around to me to look at me and my outfit and my shoes. And I like literally just wanted to crawl in a hole and die. And the whole day was so miserable. The whole day was like, that's probably one of the most miserable days I could remember in seventh and eighth grade. And there were quite a few of them. Um, but the whole day I spent just trying to hide my shoes and trying to like walk quietly because these things made a lot of noise. They were like clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, made so much noise in the halls when everybody else was wearing these little ballet flats that were silent. And I just remember wanting to make myself so small and hide my shoes. And, you know, I kept looking at everybody's faces. Are they laughing at me? Are they, what are they saying about me? Are they looking at my feet? It was just, I was on high alert all day. And I went home and I was exhausted. It is so exhausting to be on alert and to just feel, I don't know, so seen and like unsafe. And I'm not, I know that's weird for me to say unsafe when there are literally people that are in quite literal danger of their lives. Um, and I was in danger at home many times of for physical abuse and and other abuse. So I understand like the gravity of those words. And so obviously I wasn't in danger at school, but it can feel like that when you're in seventh and eighth grade. Um, so I remember being exhausted and going home. And the next day, I just I feel like I was so worn out from the day before that I was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna tell people, like, I have to wear these. I have an injury and like this is some weird kind of like healing tool. Um, I really wonder if today, like, if they would give somebody like some kind of a boot, like a walking boot or something. Um, but anyway, I just kind of owned it and I walked into the school and I wasn't spending any energy hiding my feet and looking at people's faces and like, you know, a couple little snickers or comments here and there, and I'd be like, Yeah, I have to wear these. I have Achilles tendonitis. And like, even just throwing out a word with itis in it, people kind of back up, you know, they're like, oh, sounds serious, okay, you know. And I just like kind of owned it. I was like, yeah, I have an injury in my foot. This is gonna help me heal. I really love running. I miss running. I want to get back to it, so I want to get better. And I just owned it. And guess what? Nobody else really talked about it. There might be like a little joke here or there, but it didn't bother me anymore because I was just so fully stepping into these gigantic clodhopper shoes, right? I just fully was owning that this is what I am wearing, this is what I am have to wear, choose to wear, this is what's happening, folks. And uh it was such a better day because I wasn't spending all this energy so worried about what were people thinking and were they still gonna like me, and was I still gonna be invited to the party, and was some and so-and-so still gonna ask me to dance at the dance on Friday night, and I didn't have any of that energy that I was spending. Instead, I was just being present with my friends and laughing about other stuff, and like nobody even looked at my feet anymore after like a couple of days. Like it literally wasn't a thing. And so my message that I wanted to share with you and that I wish I could share with that uh comedian that I saw was when we get out of this, like, what are they thinking about me? What are they thinking about me? narration in our head, and we just are like, this is who I am. You might like it, you might not. That's none of my business because I'm just gonna own who I am and and own why I'm doing these things, right? Like I owned why I was wearing these shoes. When you own why you're making these choices or why you're showing up in a certain way, or when you stop worrying about all of that and you just start owning who you are and being present with who you are and being present and what you're doing and who you're talking to, so much of the angst and the drama goes away. So much energy is reserved for you and for the important things. Because me worrying about what people are thinking in my shoes and me trying to like contort myself into all kinds of positions so that my shoes weren't visible took so much energy and it didn't help. It didn't help the situation, like nothing good came from it, didn't solve anything, it didn't change anything. All it does did was exhaust me and make me really sad. And so my message to you is if there is some part of you that you are sort of hiding or that feels different from other people, or um that you're just sort of like spending a lot of energy hiding, or spending a lot of energy bracing yourself from other people about, maybe just let that weird flag fly, right? Maybe just own the clodhopper shoes that you're wearing. Um, and for this comedian, just own who you are and just be fully you and you will find the people that accept you for that. And I'm not like, please don't get this twisted. I'm not talking about weird freaks and like abusers and pedophiles here. Like, I just feel like I know I don't need to say that to you. I know we understand that, but I just feel like in this current times, it's kind of important to say. I'm more talking about, like, you know, if you want to dress differently or if you want to do your sales emails in a different way from how other people in your industry are doing it. Um, own your weird, right? Get out of your own head. Stop worrying what other people think about you. Be who you are, embrace yourself fully. The more fully you embrace yourself and don't apologize for it, the more freedom you are going to feel. I can promise you that. I have seen this happen so many other times in my life. I could tell you so many other stories, and I could tell you so many stories about when my clients decide to do things their way, the amount of freedom and the amount of energy they regain and the amount of self-confidence that they build is astronomical. And so this is just my little, you know, sharing a story, and the moral of the story is to own your weird, care way less about what other people think, wear those clawed hoppers with pride, and um, you're gonna enjoy your days a lot more and you're gonna get a lot farther and you're gonna build your own life instead of worrying about what other people are thinking about you. Okay, friend. All right, that's it for today. Thank you for showing up to this episode of the Show Up Society podcast. Now go out there and show up for yourself. Hey, friend, if you liked this podcast episode and you want help applying it to your life so you can do more of what you want and feel good while doing it, you're gonna love working with me one on one for six months. I'll help you with strategy and mindset so you can figure out what you're doing. What you want, make an action plan, and I'll help you get unstuck all along the way. Go to showupsociety.com forward slash coaching to set up a consultation to see if we are a good fit for each other. Oh hey, loyal podcast listener. Thank you for being here all the way through to the end. Hi, friend. Your secret mission for today is to go find me on Instagram. I'm tentatively going to start showing up there again. Uh I'm I'm defining some new terms for myself. But anyway, find me on Instagram at Show UpSociety and find the post that corresponds to this podcast episode. And in the emojis, I want you to leave me some kind of shoe emoji to let me know that you listened to this episode and to let me know that you are going to kind of own your weird. You're going to show up fully being who you are, or at least you're going to start practicing it, right? And that you're going to start practicing caring less about what others think. That will be our signal to each other that like we get it and we're on the same page. Um, so yeah, do that. Thank you for being here, friend. I appreciate you.