Tag Archives: be yourself

All Charisma and No Confidence

I have signed up for some training courses offered at work, one of them is called “How to present with confidence”. Yes, at 40+, I still struggle with opening my mouth in front of a group larger than 5. It’s a miracle that I even survived this many years in corporate America. Someone overheard me and commented, “Is this the same as the course ‘How to present with charisma?'” “Nope. I am not qualified to take the charisma class,” I joked.  I then made everybody laugh when I said, “Actually, I am all charisma and no confidence.”

I thought about this throwaway punchline on my 2-hour flight back home. (I am trying to read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and unfortunately my brains seem to want to think of anything else but focusing on that book…) We were laughing because it is impossible, right? to have charisma when one does not have any confidence. Doesn’t charisma come from a surplus of self-confidence?

However, deep down I knew I was kidding on the square when I threw out this line. I have been known to be charming on many occasions, but I never ever feel truly confident.

Is it possible to fake confidence and/or charisma? And if you fake it, is it still confidence / charisma or is it something else altogether? Could it be possible that charisma sometimes comes from one’s unawareness, unassumingness, and humility? Something more akin to quiet grace?

But of course, I already know this definition of charisma is, at best, marginal, if not considered outright incorrect, in a course titled “How to Present with Charisma” and the business world that propagate such courses.

Head. Desk.

I am unrepentant though, and probably will continue to be even after taking the “confidence” training. And I will continue to smile at the thought that I am all charisma and no confidence. Secretly, of course.

 

I’ve never been to me*

This post is inspired by The Bloggess‘ latest post I have no fucking idea what I am doing which has inspired 500 (and counting) comments so far, including the three comments I’ve left there… *cough cough* yes, I am a comment hog… 

I have been grappling with this question: Who am I? since high school, and it has induced a lot of angst and crazy shit, including reading and misreading existentialist novels, and a suicide attempt because it felt exhausting and pointless to go on living.

I remember one of my teachers was particularly asinine. For example, this being an all girls’ school, she would interfere in people’s friendships whenever she thought the young women were too close to each other emotionally. (More about that, and my life in all girls high school some time later…)  Anyway, one day she decided to talk about our mottos in life. So she wrote a bunch of standard, expected, nice things, e.g. the Golden Rule, be grateful, Karma, etc. Then she asked us to vote. I did not raise my hand, thinking it would not matter. That bitch went and added up the vote, and got pissed when she realized she was one person short. “Who did not raise their hand?!” she hissed. She had that look on her face that made me defiant (otherwise I’m usually quite easy going) and so I raised my hand.

“Why didn’t you vote?”

“Because none of them are my motto in life.”

She smirked. “Well, what is it then?”

I got up and walked to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk and wrote my name. True (or truth). Then I sat back down.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She hissed again, taunting.

“It means one should be true to themselves and be who they are.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ok then. Let’s vote again.”

Nobody raised their hand for the first choice. Nor for the second one. Nor for the third one… … When she got to the last one, the one I added, every single person in my class raised her hand.

This youthful obsession with finding oneself and staying true to it came hand in hand with my obsession of Hermann Hesse’s Demian. I was hooked by the very first line from the book:

I wanted only to try to live my life in accord with the promptings which came from my true self.  Why was that so very difficult?

This being one of the classic Bildungsroman, the protagonist’s main objective was to find himself, on a path to enlightenment and self realization.

Each man’s life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.

This sounds great and vaguely romantic on paper, unfortunately, it caused a lot of heartaches and confusion because try as I might, as pretentious as I wanted to be, I could not seem to embark on that journey. I did not even know where the Yellow Brick Road started.

During my “self searching” formative years, I wrote the only short story of mine that was ever published. Don’t get too excited, it was published by the school magazine. I don’t even have a copy of the magazine and I can only barely remember what I wrote. It was narrated in first person (of course!) fashioned after Notes from the Underground. The Narrator complained about having trouble recognizing her own face in the shop windows when she walked by, in the mirrors, and in group photos. What she saw was a young woman with an unnatural smile that made her look as if the corners of her mouth were pinned to the sides of her cheeks. She could not recognize her. Blah blah blah. She ended up carving herself a smile. (WAY before The Dark Knight with Heath Ledger as The Joker…)

Now that I am (much much) older and (debatable) wiser, I think I’ve got it figured out. The problem is that most people still subscribe to the idea of a true self being somewhere to be found, that there is this essence of oneself to be discovered.  (I think this has something to do with Plato and Aristotle from the very beginning but I have given all my knowledge about Greek philosophers back to the teacher as soon as I received my diploma…)  It is somehow our job, as we grow, to discover what that essence, that core, i.e. our true self, is.

But here is the right question to ask, imo: What if there is no core? What if we are more like onions? What if we are made up of all the layers? If so and you still believe in finding that core, no wonder you feel lost: as you peel away each layer of the onion, you are like, FUCK! There is another door behind this door!   What if we shift the paradigm of how “selves” are defined, and that every single layer is YOU?  The real you. Everything you do, everything you say, every decision you make, every breath you take, is what makes you you.

To steal Sartre’s famous line: “Existence precedes essence. ” Your essence, who you are, is defined by the way you live your life, the actions you take, the decisions you make.  This also means one’s true self is constantly changing, because our actions are constantly changing.

The person you encounter each time, even though she may be slightly different from one moment to the next, is you.

Ergo, even when I am pretending, I am being myself because in some sense, when I become so sure of myself, I cease being myself. Ouch my head hurts! I need to stop right now!

Before I end this rambling, I just want to quote e.e.cummings, yes, again, because the quotient of pretentiousness in this post has not gone through the roof just yet!

 

 

* I am not endorsing the message from the one-hit wonder I’ve Never Been to Me. Just borrowing the title. Although I’ll admit, the song is a sweet sweet gem for a good old drunken Karaoke session.

Can’t Hardly Wait

 

 

Some random associations from a picture I took this Sunday.

Budding.

Can’t hardly wait.

Spring Awakening.

Frank Wedekind

Frank Wedekind who in 1906 gave us a play criticizing the sexually repressed society with depictions of group masturbation and other subjects that scandalized theatre goers.

This quote attributed to Wedekind which made me chuckle because now whenever some trivial disaster happens in my otherwise mundane life, I think, “Yeah, a blog post has written itself!”

Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it.

 

The Lulu Plays by Wedekind.

Lulu, the complicated, contradictory femme fatal and victim, in a play that scandalized the audiences in the late 19th / early 20th century with its nudity, implied and not so implicit sex act, rampant confessions of lust and obsession, and an openly lesbian character.

Louise Brooks. Playing the role of Lulu in the movie adaptation of Pandora’s Box.

Louise Brooks. Writing a memoir many decades afterwards, so uncannily described how we feel now when we sit in front of our computers and pour our hearts out…

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it – learning to write – but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are “like” everybody – that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough – beauty…

 

 

 

 

Know thyself. Be thyself.

It is 2:03 am. I am all of a sudden wide awake.

Note to self: Listening to PRI Selected Shorts podcasts while cleaning the house is a sure way that your mind will become overactive and that you will have trouble falling asleep.

I will pay for this indulgence: lying down on my Therapy Couch and talking to you all, my imaginary friends, (I am going to start calling you Soren Lorensen I think…) soon since I have a 6:30 am flight to catch and I have not packed yet. Coming here has clearly become a serious addiction. I carry this urge at my throat to write something down all day long. I am afraid to open my mouth lest a scream may come out.

I often panic when I am made aware of this since it feels so similar to Narcissism…

Someone very wise, probably wiser than Confucius since she is female (and Confucius was obviously not) and women rock because of our uterus, that I have had the privilege of meeting through this little patch of heaven I call my Therapy Couch (or hell on some bad days I won’t lie to you) told me that she could tell that “blogging is both a creative outlet and just outlet” for me.

She was right. When I first started doing this, I really did not expect anybody to come by and get into a conversation with me. I saw this as a different medium of talking to myself since I have been doing that inside my head for a long time. Why not? I simply jotted down whatever came to my mind. No self-censorship. And no editing either, to be very honest with you.

It felt like liberation from Facebook. From the potential for censure by family, friends, colleagues. It felt like liberation from Twitter. From the bondage of 140 characters. And it felt like the earth after rain. It felt good.

When I began to have supportive friends who stop by on a regular basis, to check me out and make sure that I am still operating in a socially acceptable manner, I was flattered yet incredulous. “Surely they have mistaken me for someone else, or something else.” With that self-congratulatory realization of “OMG I have fans” came the burden to please. Or at least, since I have no mental filter once my mouth starts running, the fear for offense. The desire to please everybody, nay, the compulsive need to please everybody is one of those soul-killers that I am trying to escape. I am afraid I may have lost my way.

At the risk of sounding like I am trying to recast myself as the cliche in I’ve Never Been to Me… I am getting back on my journey to understand myself better. The peeling of the onion. What is more important though, is that once I find myself, I really need to just be myself. Perhaps the being and the finding happen at the same time.

So…

Dear Soren Lorensen,

I hope you will stay. But if you outgrow me or the other way around, I wish you the very best.

As always, a pretentious rambling such as this will not be complete without a quotation from a famous, yet just a tad out there, writer. Preferably by e. e. cummings. Here it is.

To be yourself

What is your blog rated?

I have to say, and yes, the following reaction says a lot about my pretension, my secretly wanting to appear to be what I am not: edgy, devil may care, swashbuckling, avant garde, ground-breaking, cool, I WAS DISAPPOINTED MY BLOG WAS RATED

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets


WTF? I am seriously crushed.

G?

I would think it at least warranted a PG-13.

Sadly Rated G

I can’t believe I have only said FUCK once. So after all this, I have been exposed as a Prude. Great. Just great… Great as in

G???!!!

p.s. You can also rate your own blog on this dating site. And come back and gloat if you are rated better than G. Yes, come back and GLOAT! So I can curse you and thus improve my rating.

p.p.s. In case it is broken, I tested the accuracy of the rating algorithms with The Bloggess’ website. Fuck. It is very accurate…

NC-17 No Shit

p.p.p.s. PSA: Do remember to clear the histories if you are married or in a serious, supposedly committed relationship, you know, so you don’t get into unnecessary fights with your significant other(s). (Am I awesome or what for reminding you this?!)

p.p.p.p.s. I want to ask you guys: this format of Endless Postscripts, you all used it at high school when passing notes back and forth with your girlfriends, right? Don’t let me down.

p.p.p.p.p.s. Turns out I am rated differently on different dating sites. Excuse me, but why are dating sites offering blog ratings?

This must be from a super conservative or Self-denial Anonymous dating site: the reason for my blog’s BETTER rating is cited as Fuck (x1), Death (x1).

Rated R

Credit: I need to give credit to My Wildlife’s Words. I found this phenom of Blog Rating badge-thingy through her “connections”.

In praise of the book, “American Born Chinese”

For Chinese people or people in the know, American Born Chinese are known as ABC, and different from Chinese immigrants (be their parents or their distant cousins), they have to cope with a different set of tribulations, and many of these are psychological. This book, or rather, graphic novel, follows the tradition of Frank Chin's angry plays ("The Year of the Dragon" and especially, "The Chickencoop Chinaman") and Maxine Hong Kingston's Americanization (or rather, Asian-Americanization) of Chinese folklore in "Tripmaster Monkey", and provides a 21-century spin on growing-up Asian/American in the USA. In fact, I have to wonder whether the young brilliant author Gene Luen Yang has read Chin's and Kingston's works — he must have since these are part of the "canon" now. 
 
All the above probably makes the book sound rather dry, it would be my fault. The book is a wonderful combination of humor, irony, insightful reflections, and great story-telling. It is a wonderful and short read: my husband, my 10-year-old, and I passed the book along and finished reading it in one night. You obviously do not have to be an ABC, or an Asian American, or an Asian for that matter, to appreciate the underlying theme of this book: you have to learn who you really are and appreciate who you are to begin to reach your full potential, and to truly feel that you belong wherever you go.  The theme of "trying to fit in" will resonate with any young person (and not so young) trying to find a place in the world for themselves. 
 
The book has won several awards, including the National Book Award for Young People. 

The trend continues: the hat stays. And I am inspired!

And it is not just a hat, nor is it a cowboy hat. It is a FEDORA.

My 5 yo got a wool fedora for his upcoming 6th birthday. He has been wearing that hat ever since. People would comment on how cute he is, esp. when he tips his hat slightly, and say, “How’d you do, Ma’am?”

This disturbs my 10-year-old who at this young age, unfortunately, has known first hand how ruthless schoolyard (or rather, bus stop) teasing can be. He has also learned that you really do not want to stand out, “blending in” is the smartest thing to do. (At 10?? What happened to my ham?? And I thought conformity is looked down in the USA! Seriously, the American culture and mentality sometimes is a mythical paradox to me…) So he tried to tell his younger brother that people might think he’s different and would make fun of him for it.

Here comes my diatribe of the day:

Ok, let me ask again: When does being different become a negative in this great country of ours?

(Ok, never mind. This is a rhetoric question… more or less).

But what happened to creativity and imagination? So it is ok if it happens in the movies, on paper, on the stage, in the office (i.e. “Think outside the box”), but not encouraged in the suburbs?

Standard response from my youngest? “I don’t care!” and “I think I look very handsome in this!”

Bravo to him for being so gutsy! Mama is very proud for his courage to be different.

But at the same time, I cannot help but wonder how long this unbridled unabashedness will last. They all grow up so fast, and part of growing up seems to mean losing part of yourself as you get older… Should I feel guilty also for letting him be himself? For indulging him even since I was the one who bought the fedora, naturally. And I am sure my kids could sense since a young age how abhorrent I am of “mediocrity”.

I actually told my kids that the greatest wisdom I hope to ever teach them is “Be thyself.”

I must be nuts…

My youngest’s got a fedora and a cane…

Son: Hey, do you know the name of my cane?

Us: No. What?

Son: John McCain!

(Confession: he was, for the longest time, pro-McCain. There, I said it. He actually cried over this several times pre-election day. His mind was set on McCain because he saw a lot of the commercials by the GOP camp during the 2008 PEK Olympics, and they all said, “My name is John McCain, and I approve this ad!” My son thought it was hilarious, and also McCain looks like a nice grandpa, and who does not like Grandpa??

He begged us so many times to vote for John McCain because, “He would cry if he loses! and I am going to cry too!”

I am happy to report that we did eventually win him over, and he watched the rally at Grand Park on TV with us, excitedly…)

Obama calls himself a Mutt and I have two!

.

Is it wrong to have hero worship towards a politician? Ever since the night of Nov. 4, I have been walking through the clouds. Elated, of course, but that feeling also comes from my disbelief that we actually did it. Or rather, he actually did it! And of course, we all know there is a long way ahead to deliver his promises, and truth be told, I don’t expect him to be able to deliver all those promises: There are just too many issues to be solved, and the biggest elephant in the room, our economy crisis, is getting bigger every day.

However, I have to say, I am a bit miffed by our President Elect, why? Because he’s brought tears to my eyes almost every day since he stepped onto that stage in Grant Park in Chicago and gave one of the most inspiring speeches that any of us have ever heard. This morning, he did it again: I am trying to keep the tears from actually falling down because that would mean crying. And that would be a ridiculous thing to do, wouldn’t it? Crying over some news conference remarks?? Obama describes himself as a Mutt, in a passing remark at his first news conference as President Elect.

And I have two here!

My 10-year-old boy just confessed not long ago that he is self-conscious when we are out together because people stare. For some reason, reading this news article this morning gave me hope that my children’s lives would not be as unnecessarily complicated as I imagine they will be.

The day after the election, we looked at the Exit Polls statistics on CNN and marveled (but not surprised) about the “racial” divide along the party line: not as pronounced as in the past elections (12% more of the White voters voted for McCain vs. Obama, whereas Kerry was behind by 17% among Whites in the last election. So we could say that Obama did “cross over,” but the difference is still obvious in the graphs). My 10-year-old asked me, “Mom, which one will I be?” The question startled and saddened me, because his identify of himself is still being formed, and yet, on any official documents, surveys, forms, he does not exist except as “Other”. I have studied all the theories on OTHER in grad schools, but it does make me sad when all those theories all of a sudden become applicable to what I am dealing with at home.

So, thank you, President Obama! Now perhaps we can openly discuss issues around Race, not in a stodgy way, but in an everyday lived-through dealt-with way. They are messy topics and there are seldom clear cut right or wrong answers, but we do need still start talking about it more openly, and in my view, more casually. If we cannot find humors in some of the messiness, and if we cannot make fun of ourselves, then the day will be far away when we can actually be color-blind, which if taken literally by the way, in my mind, is like alchemy… (We will always notice somebody else’s appearances first, and we need to learn as a culture to not let certain signifiers become symbols).

Perhaps now it would be easier to lobby for a label for mutts around the country that is better than “Other”?