Mission Driven Monday--Beyond Expectations: Finding Success by being True to Ourselves
This week, we continue our Mission Driven Monday series—a short post with a question to ponder and a big idea to think about during the week.
As we enter this season of entertaining and hospitality, it’s tempting to think we have to do #allthethings. You want the inviting front porch, the cozy kitchen, the charming gathering place. What you really want is the picture-perfect house, the one you see on Instagram and have been trying to re-create for the last four years.
I see you staring blankly at the screen. I lost you. Is this just me?
Yeah, it’s just me. OK, I’ll take it. Sometimes, I just can’t help myself.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian hospice nurse, wrote a memoir called Five Regrets of the Dying. The number one regret that surfaced among patients at the end of their lives was this: “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
Middle aged people always hear this and nod and pause. It hits home…hard.
What does it REALLY mean to live a life true to yourself?
I once read a story about a hawk that was raised with ducks. He walked like a duck. He quacked like a duck. Crows tried to eat him. That hawk should have been trying to eat the ducks! But he wasn’t, and that made him really bad at being a hawk. Poor guy had to be taken into captivity just to survive.
The world is full of wonderful people who are doing incredible work. Admiring their work, showing gratitude for it, even offering to help with it are all good things. But don’t be like the hawk who thought he was a duck. Maybe this week, you don’t read another “How I Built This” blog or click through someone else’s “Amazon Haul for the Fall Closet.”
Think about what you would share if you were sharing what you are best at. What would that be? This week, focus on that.
You know, for years, I tried to excel at work that just wasn’t in my wheelhouse, and all that striving did was confirm not only my insecurities but also my inabilities. It’s time to own who we are and eschew the expectations others have placed on us. I have a sneaky suspicion that those expectations might be more imagined than real, anyway. The truth is that we’re all just out there doing the best we can. And I don’t know about you but I tend to achieve more when the expectations come from within. Internal motivation wins out over the external kind every single time.
You’re probably curious about the other regrets Ware lists in her “Top Five Regrets of the Dying.” You can read through them here. If you’re healthy, and I pray you are, I hope you’re inspired to work on the things that make you uniquely you.