Canadian geek in Myanmar

I’m sipping on a fantastic Scotch, soaking in my last night in Scotland.

Twenty two years ago, I spent the summer bartending in the Highlands. A transformative experience for an fairly sheltered 20 year old nerd. For one thing, I was a pretty ugly kid. Even worse, I was a totally anti-social bookworm. Okay, so some things haven’t changed but it was this summer in Scotland that I truly started to look up from my books and participate in the world around me. I even had my first kiss here. He was a cook named Stuart with sparkling blue eyes. It was in the misty mountains of the Highlands that would form the foundation of the adult I would become.

I was a refugee and grew up really poor. Travelling overseas was never an option. The only reason I was able to go on this trip was because it was a working holiday organized through a student association. I landed in London and three days later pulled up in a bus at a crossroads with a postal office and a beautiful old church at the foot of Ben Nevis. A guy picked me up and took me to the place I would call home for four months. In hindsight, it was probably not a great idea to jump into a car with a total stranger in a foreign country.

My Asian looks were extraordinary and my total inability to understand the heavy Scottish brogue was a constant source of amusement to all those around me. I had to ask most of my colleagues to spell their name out so I could know what to call them. My first night I was dropped behind a rowdy bar that had 18 different ales and lagers and 150 different scotches. To make matters worse, each of these drinks had two or three different names. Luckily the Scots are an easy-going bunch and would walk me to the right pump so I could pull their drink. They probably thought I didn’t speak English. It took me two weeks to understand that having “tea” meant dinner.

It was my first experience traveling on my own. I’ve now been to over 80 countries, most of the time on my own. But this was the first and it was special. It’s my experiences here that gave me the comfort of grabbing my passport and beelining it to the airport without any plans.

I left Scotland and got a tattoo to commemorate my time there. My plan was to finish university and come back. It’s taken me 22 years but I guess better late than never. While there’s been a lot of changes in the world over the past 2 decades, it feels like all the best parts of Scotland have remained the same. The warm hospitality and the Scot’s ability to find joy in the simple things, not to mention the great Scotch. All good reasons to come back.

I’ve been reading Brene Brown’s new book called Rising Strong. For those of you who do not know who she is, you MUST watch this incredible TED talk about the Power of Vulnerability. Amazing.

She has several books that are all worth reading but this newest one is probably my favourite. While it stays in the area of human resilience, Rising Strong focuses on the times when you have fallen flat on your face, trying to find a way to breath. This is best described by her words:

We much prefer stories about falling and rising to be inspirational and sanitized. Our culture is rife with these tales.

We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending. I worry that this lack of honest accounts of overcoming adversity has created a Gilded Age of Failure.

But embracing failure without acknowledging the real hurt and fear that it can cause, or the complex journey that underlies rising strong, is gold-plating grit. To strip failure of its real emotional consequences is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important—toughness, doggedness, and perseverance.

Yes, there can be no innovation, learning, or creativity without failure. But failing is painful. It fuels the “shouldas and couldas,” which means judgment and shame are often lying in wait.

At one of my lowest points I asked a wise friend why people kept betraying me and she told me something similar to this next part and now I think I finally understand.

I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.

Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.

A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.

The whole book is a powerful read and those people who live their life in the arena, versus taking pot shots from the cheap seats will relate. If you take nothing else away from the book, keep this close to your heart.

One final quote from her (though I literally want to cut and paste the whole book, it’s so good)…

Courage transforms the emotional structure of our being.

How true this is.  But the transformation does not need to be negative, it’s all about how you rise strong and come up swinging again.

Those of you who know me know how much I love Joss Whedon of Buffy and Avengers fame. I’m unabashedly a follower of all his work, the dude is flat out brilliant. That said, his stuff is not exactly deep and meaningful so I was quite surprised when I came across this quote from him: “Bottom line is, even if you see ’em coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.”

I’ve spend the better part of this year dealing with some pretty big moments. First as an entrepreneur then losing the company and even attempting my first real relationship – 2014 certainly wasn’t dull.  I was saying to a friend last night how I can not wait until this year to be over as I’d like the psychological “break” that comes with a new year.  His response is that one day I will look at this year as one of the best of my life, even if it was shitty overall.  And he’s right. There are only a few times as an adult when life tests and changes you so dramatically in a small period of time. When the trauma is so great that there is a distinct “before” and “after” picture. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am a different person today than I was a year ago, and that’s not a bad thing.  I’d like to think that the me of today is more patient and stronger, though maybe a little more cautious and perhaps less trusting too.

That last part is sad but the overall tradeoff works for me because when you are forced to put yourself back together, you will find gaps and spaces that can be filled.  You also get the opportunity to discard the things that no longer make sense. In the past 12 months alone I have quit smoking, started baking, cooking, running, golf, yoga and French lessons.  I’ve shed friends and “trusted” advisors and opened myself up to romance, better mentors and stronger friendships.  I’ve relocated to a new country where I knew almost no one and have taken the time to build new friendships and forge new relationships.  My life, though dramatically different from the corporate ladder-climbing of my EA days or pitching-entrepreneur days of last year, is much richer and fuller for all that.

There have been no shortage of lessons learned this year but hands down, the most important thing I’ve learned is to prioritize my bucket list over my to-do list.  I don’t claim to have the answer to the ever-elusive work/life balance question but I do know this – startups take a whole lot out of you and are easily all-consuming.  I’ve spent the past six months trying to figure out who the hell I was outside of work and that’s because I never protected the part of myself that didn’t self-identify as a career woman. Once that was ripped away, the parts that were left didn’t have a whole lot to cling to.  The battle this year was hard-fought but the lessons learned were important and not something easily forgotten.

So my plan is to blow out 2014 in the most over-the-top, bucket-check-list, creating-big-moments way I can and kick off 2015 properly.  This past year has been full of shocks, betrayals and heartbreak but also firsts, lessons and growth and while I can already see that it was a pivotal and important year for me, the psychological fresh start is welcome and I can’t help but get giddy as I look ahead to 2015. Whedon is right, no one really wants their life to change but if it has to then I’d rather create my own Big Moments, thank you very much.

One final word as this has been my first post since shit went pear-shaped – I owe my sanity to a few key people this year and you probably know who you are. I don’t know how I would have made it through without you and I will be eternally grateful and indebted to you. You taught me the importance and power of building a strong support system and the characteristics I need to foster to be that for others in my life.  Thank you and I look forward to an amazing 2015 together!