Getting Back Your Awesome (or How Not to Lose it in the First Place)

Before you read any further, please go check out this post: Waking Up Awesome. It’ll only take a minute. I’ll wait right here.

Welcome back. What did you think? Are you loving the little girl in the photo? Do you remember ever feeling like that yourself?

Can we try something here? Dig through your old photos and find the craziest, least self-conscious one you can. One from a time before you cared about how much you weighed, or whether you were smart enough or good-looking enough, or what the opposite sex thought about you.

Do you have a photo in hand? Or at least a mental image of one, or even a memory from when you were feeling totally awesome? My photo is from when I was about seven, all dressed up in my mom’s clothes and feeling fabulous. I didn’t know yet what a calorie was or that people with certain face shapes shouldn’t wear hats or how messy life can be. I was just happy to be me.

The last thing we want to do is spend a lot of time thinking about people who’ve taken away our awesome. Maybe you’ve already done the work and have moved on. If you haven’t, you should. Those people are just ghosts now, mere thoughts that you don’t have to believe any more. Maybe you can even find it in your heart to thank them. If that coach my freshman year in high school hadn’t told me I wasn’t athletic and should stick to music, maybe I wouldn’t have tried so hard to prove him wrong. Maybe I wouldn’t be teaching boot camp at 43. Who can say?

Of course, sometimes it’s the people who love us most who can take away our awesome. I suppose they get afraid for us and, in trying to protect us, they start chipping away. “Do you really think that outfit matches?” “Are you sure you want to major in that? You’ll never make any money.” “Do you really need another cookie?”

Now wait a minute, you say defensively because just this very morning you made your daughter change her outfit before she went to school. I mean, really, you say, how could I let her go to school looking like that? They’ll think I’m not paying any attention at all. She’ll get made fun of. No one will understand. And you can’t just let them eat cookies all day! It’s tough, isn’t it? Someone has to teach kids to be responsible and eat healthy and look at least somewhat presentable. So how do we do it without throwing them and their awesome under the bus?

I’m obviously still learning about all of this myself, but I do have a simple exercise that might help you figure out if you’re in danger of squashing someone’s awesome.

Do you have a dog? If so, call him over and grab him gently by the ears and shake his head back and forth and say in your most loving voice, “You’re such a dumb dog. Yes, you are. I can’t even believe how dumb you are. And you’re smelly, too.” Your dog will wag his tail and look at you adoringly and beg for more. Why? Because even though he can’t understand your words, he knows from your tone where your heart is. He knows you think he’s awesome.

I’m pretty sure this works with humans, too. I’m not saying you should call your kid (or spouse or friend or self) “dumb and smelly,” just that you should trust that if you’re acting out of love and not fear, what you say will come out just fine.

{Being awesome as a brunette.}

At the end of the day, you know darn good and well when you’re messing with someone’s awesome. When you threaten never to buy ice cream again after you catch your son eating it before dinner, is there a chance that you’re actually freaking out about him becoming overweight? Or when you tell your daughter that she’ll never make dance line in high school if she drops out of dance in fifth grade, could it be that what you’re really afraid of is that she’ll be left out and unpopular?

If you’re lucky, you’ll have a wise child like my son Andrew, who, when I was lamenting the fact that no one around here had ever learned to play the violin like my friend’s kids, said, “Why don’t you take lessons yourself?” Touché, Andrew.

Here’s the great news: You can never really lose your awesome. No one can take it away from you. Just ask Emmanuel Kelly. Just ask me, because I get to watch Lily every day. The girl has been through more than most of us ever will and she’s so full of awesome it’ll make your head spin.

Now take that photo you found, the one from when you believed with all your heart that you were awesome and stick it someplace where you can see it. Just in case you need a little reminder.