Choosing Presence Over Performance
How I'm slowly learning to stop performing as a way to prove my worth
As friends sat around the kitchen table eating tamales we made, we shared our intention for the New Year.
Mine was clear: to stop out outsourcing my worth.
To know that a man, a business, more learning, more achieving: does not prove my worth.
To undo a lifetime of cultural conditioning that says you are better if you went to this school, have this amount of money, these manners.
To undo the conditioning that being chosen by another, is what makes you whole.
Then, to undo the years of self-talk that perpetuated these myths.
That become so exquisitely woven into my thoughts I did not know how pervasive, destructive they had gotten.
The comparison traps, the pressure to do more, be more.
This is a simple concept: it is not simple work.
It requires looking at all the places you reject yourself.
All the holes where you put pressure, expect perfection, and believe you should be this or that.
It requires leaning into the self-doubt that makes you believe you are defective.
And all of the different ways your thoughts loop, so that you can see the patterns and finally recognize the truth:
You are not your thoughts.
You are not your beliefs.
You are the sum of generational patterns, cultural conditioning, and the beliefs you’ve inherited.
Most of these need to be examined: yet to venture into this unconscious is a beast.
It requires courage, and tenacity.
Knowing you are worthy as a concept or insight isn’t enough.
You can’t just wake up and say, I have inherent worth because I read about the concept in a Pia Melody book.
Our brains don’t just undo years of survival wiring and conditioning because we want to feel better about ourselves.
Our brains don’t suddenly grasp, you don’t need to belong anywhere because you belong to the universe.
We are social creatures. We need each other to survive. We need to fit somewhere in to have a job or run a business.
Culture still exists. There are dress codes. Fashion signals how much effort we put into our external appearance, and attracts or repels.
Watch an episode of Palm Beach on Netflix, and see how the Mar-O-Lago socialites postulate to belong to the circles they deem superior. They’re clawing their way into belonging as a way to measure their worth externally. You can see how distorted it is by simply observing their appearance: their exterior is warped through multiple plastic surgeries, exaggerated make-up, and over the top dresses.
Unless you find this worth internally, the goal post will keep moving. You’ll keep chasing it in different directions.
You’ll keep asking:
Do they see me?
Am I ok?
Am I worth something?
This is not your soul taking.
It’s the layers that got imprinted in early life that took hold, and morphed into fear.
Fear of being left.
Fear of not being good enough.
These are silly. But they don’t feel silly.
They’re heavy, pervasive, exhausting and overwhelming.
They’re like wearing a winter coat in July.
They take up all the air in the room.
Yesterday, I walked around my house and said out loud: please let the fear leave my body.
I said it a 100 times.
I am done. I want to be done.
Yet every day is a letting go, a leaning into trust as a practice.
I’ve been crying for all the times I abandoned myself because I didn’t know I could say no.
Where I left my body because I was so dysregulated I ran towards dopamine, chasing men, chasing experience.
I have a distinct memory of meeting my ex partner 5 years ago, and how feeling chosen bolstered my worth. I had one of those brief moments of clarity where I recognized I was using him to feel better about myself.
That if an educated, extremely smart, depthful and gorgeous man who came from a good family picked ME, it must mean something.
For a good while I sent him passages of the books I read every morning because I wanted him to think I was smart.
I tried so hard to prove myself: only to realize this is survival wiring. Not reality.
Trying to prove yourself in a relationship leads to an inevitable failure.
It becomes co-dependency, and inside this arrangement the relationship has no space to breathe. You give up your autonomy to preserve the bond.
It suffocates both of you.
I’ve had moments of self-recognition: I am smart. I don’t need an advanced degree to prove this. Yet humming in the background is the other voice: who do you think you are? This person is so much smarter than you. You’re deluding yourself.
Yet, slowly, as my nervous system takes a new shape, I begin to see clearly:
I don’t care about postulating intelligence.
I care about one thing:
Wisdom.
Presence over performance.
Undoing survival patterning so that I can see reality clearly.
That this life is finite and our minds make up a lot of things.
That when we die, we may regret not getting in touch with our soul, others souls.
We’ll have lived a conditioned, never examined life. I’m some days jealous of the ones who can do that.
Yet I am awake.
I yearn to be free, to lean into, to trust life more than I trust the distortions of my mind.
I yearn to release fear, to uncouple from the years of survival wiring that put this fear inside my system.
To stop using external markers to prove my value.
To use truth, wisdom, and skillful self-talk to honor this value.
To continue to develop integrity, honesty, compassion, emotional intelligence as the inner scaffolding to hold ourselves in the light.
And to do this work: one day at a time.
Thank you. Thank you.