What would you say if...
The need for likeability has us swallowing our words for fear of offending. Let's change that.
This week we’re continuing our investigation of likeability with some journalling prompts. Feel free to respond to whichever prompt speaks to you, or work your way through them all.
Where am I not speaking up for fear of upsetting people?
Where am I speaking up to keep people onside, interested, or liking me?
What would I have to give up to be likeable?
What would I have to share or hide about myself to be likeable?
If I gave up on likeability, what would I say that I’m not currently saying?
Remember, there are no objective answers here. I’m expecting the questions to take people in lots of different directions. They’re designed to help you see your stories and assumptions, as well as the limitations stopping you from moving forward.
Having said that, here are some of my responses to get things started. (As you’re reading my responses, you’ll note that working in a stream-of-consciousness style works best with these prompts. Such an approach brings you an awareness of what needs to be seen and understood right now.)
Where am I not speaking up for fear of upsetting people?
Primarily on social media because I’ve decided that except for the conversations I have with the SOV community on my own account, far too many conversations on social media are deeply problematic.
This feels like a good boundary for me. As someone who had zero discernment as a young person about where to use my voice and where it would merely cause harm or upset, it feels like progress to be at a stage in my life where I understand that not all speech is created equal.Where am I speaking up to keep people onside, interested, or liking me?
This immediately brings me to thinking about the good girl archetype and one expression of her I haven’t spoken about much; the good ally or good advocate.
She’s an interesting phenomenon because, on the one hand, what's not to like about being a good ally? On the other, when influenced by the good girl archetype, the good ally’s internal drive is to feel seen and accepted. Which makes her advocacy all about the good girl needing to be liked and not about the issue at hand.This is a challenging investigation because there’s an intersection at play where on the one hand:
- the good ally deliberately chooses to listen rather than speak. She decentres herself to break down an aspect of her identity that has historically been centred, but...
- at the same time, the very essence of breaking down good girl conditioning is learning to centre yourself and your perspective. The more a person does that, the more quickly she frees herself from good girl behaviour.
So you have to be discerning about where you decentre yourself and where you centre yourself. Different work has to occur in different spaces to be free of the good girl and to learn how to show up as a genuine ally.
My hope is, that by simultaneously attending to both of these things, we can move closer to the essence of this invitation from the Aboriginal activists group Queensland, 1970s; ‘If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.’What would I have to give up to be likeable?
My integrity? Possibly. My values? Perhaps. I think the likeability paradox answers this one for me.What would I have to share or hide about myself to be likeable?
I notice a story popping up here; ‘You have to share more of yourself.’ I think about people saying that the best memoirs are where people cut themselves and bleed on the page (my immediate thought being; surely this is unnecessarily violent?).
I have no interest in cutting myself and bleeding in front of people. What I am interested in is sharing the wisdom I’ve gained from trauma and painful experiences, once there’s wisdom to share.
I remember sitting at a book festival event once. We were in a medium-sized room and the talk was sold out. There were some prominent Australian women on the panel and the topic of discussion was sexual assault.
Unfortunately, one of the panellists was very far from being healed from her own experiences and as a consequence, was figuratively bleeding in front of us.
Do you know who shows up at talks about sexual assault? Lots of sexual assault survivors.
Do you know what her figurative bleeding did? It triggered the entire room.I became so uncomfortable in my body that I couldn’t stay still in my chair. I was wriggling around trying to listen and I didn’t want to be a disturbance to those around me, but all I could think was ‘How long until I can get the fuck out of here?’
There is a time and place for sharing. Choosing not to tell your story doesn’t always mean you’re in hiding. Sometimes it means you’re in a season of your life where it’s more appropriate to be sitting in a therapist’s office than in a room full of women, talking about your life.
Of course, we need women’s stories.
We need women to speak about the violence inflicted upon them. We also need to keep ourselves and the people around us safe in that process.
And triggering other people is something we could do at any point in a storytelling process. We don’t always know what might trigger others. What I know though, is that when I’m still deeply wounded by an experience, my speaking needs to be held by people who aren’t wounded, not inflicted upon those who are.If I gave up on likeability, what would I say that I’m not currently saying?
I would talk about my disappointment with the political left. About the current dangers to democracy that I don’t see enough people speaking about.
I would talk about the West having become so enamoured with the idea of rights that it has lost its sense of responsibility.
I would talk about the power of words and how careless people are with that power. I would mention that people don’t fully appreciate the implications of speech. That they take it for granted, assuming that their words can’t really cause harm.
I would talk about the co-creative process we’re all a part of and how disappointing it is to live in societies that don’t appreciate the sacredness of collective consciousness. Of how far we’ve veered off track in forgetting that speech is a sacred act.
I would call people in. To a world where words are treated with the delicacy of our favourite flowers. Where we tend and nourish them, celebrate and respect them.
I would speak about vibrational languages. (Sanskrit, Hebrew, and possibly/probably other Indigenous languages - although I haven’t heard them spoken about as such. If you’ve heard differently, do let me know.)
I would remind them of something I learned from Alice Walker; that anything we love can be saved and that writing and careful use of words are foundational to that.
I would remind people that all words are sourced from the sacred original sound. As a yogini, I call that sound Om. Many other spiritual traditions have their own word.
Each time we remember this, we remember that words aren’t things to be carelessly thrown around hither and thither. They are forces of creation and ought to be honoured as such.
Q: What about you? What would you say? Let us know here.
Visibility Tool: Double Standards
Double standards lie at the heart of the likeability dilemma. Were there no double standards, there’d be no dilemma.
Let’s explore the double standards operating in our lives and psyches.