Smile Right Through It | Episode 116

A lot has changed for me, my podcast, and the way I show up in my business over the last two years. One of the biggest changes has been a significant shift towards focusing on astrology. 

Don’t worry, that isn’t going away. I’ll still be offering a weekly forecast every Sunday, but for 2023 I’m also committing to creating an additional weekly podcast that will be… something else.

If you haven’t been with me since I began the podcast in January of 2021, you may not know that all of my podcasts were originally coaching-oriented and inspired by lyrics from songs. That’s what today’s episode will be. 

This time around, I was inspired by a song I’ve been obsessed with for days and a phrase I’ve been repeating to very nearly everyone I coach ever since it was said to me almost a month ago.

So, what do Humpty Dumpty and Brooke Castillo have in common? I’m so happy you asked.

Humpty Dumpty 

First, I should clarify that the Humpty Dumpty I’m referring to isn’t exactly from the nursery rhyme you may have heard as a child. It’s a song from AJR - which is an indie pop band you’ve probably never heard of. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to me coming up with the most random music eventually.

Alright so as a warm-up, I want you to go listen to the entire song. If you don’t have time to do that you can just think about the following lyrics:

Humpty Dumpty went down he said, “Screw it, Imma smile right through it and I’ll scream when no one’s around.”

This is the most on-point lyric for every single person I’ve ever met who is trying their best to please all of the people all of the time while ignoring their own thoughts, needs, feelings, emotions, and dreams for the future.

Instead of asking themselves do I want to go to the event with my friends, do I want to participate in the fundraiser, do I want to go on that date, do I want to stay in this relationship, do I love spending time with this person, do I find this work fulfilling, or does spending time with this person or these people make me more stressed and unhappy - people just smile and say yes and continue to do the things they’ve always done.

Why?

At the core of it, it’s usually because they think if they say anything other than yes (usually with a smile) that they won’t be accepted, liked, or loved for wanting something else. Wanting anything other than what the people around them want is scary. 

Sometimes people think that sounds silly when I call it out so explicitly because, in the moment when they are smiling and saying yes, they aren’t thinking “ohmygosh I’m so afraid to say no” - they aren’t thinking at all. They’re doing what they’ve been programmed (or what they’ve programmed themselves) to do.

Of course, you say yes when someone at the school or church asks you to volunteer. It’s not even a question of whether you want to. You have to say yes. It’s not like it’s optional. You’d be a bad person if you said no. Right?

Of course, you say yes when someone you’re dating asks you to join them for an event that you’d rather skip by having dental surgery than attend because being in a relationship means making the other person happy by doing what they want you to. Right? 

Of course, you do that thing with your family that is going to completely derail all of your plans for the week because that’s what a good daughter does. Obviously, it’s your duty to make sure they feel loved and valued and it wouldn’t be acceptable to skip that dinner just so you could do something for yourself. That would be selfish, right?

You just smile right through it and scream when no one else is around.

Yeah. But what if you didn’t?

What if other people’s emotions weren’t your responsibility?

Unhappy With Your Life

What if your only responsibility in this life is your emotions?

The second part of the inspiration puzzle is something my favorite coach, Brooke Castillo, said at a recent event.

If someone’s going to be unhappy with your life, it shouldn’t be you.

I actually used that in a recent forecast but it’s getting a spot here as well because I love it so flipping much and I’ve seen the immediate impact it has had on everyone I’ve shared it with.

I want you to take a solid day to think about it. If someone’s going to be unhappy with YOUR life - it for sure shouldn’t be you. 

That one sentence blows my mind every single time I think about it and in addition to having a word for 2023, I also have a mantra, catchphrase, tagline, or whatever you want to call it which is:

If someone is going to be unhappy with my life, it’s not going to be me.

It might surprise people to know that for most of my life, I’ve disregarded my own feelings as not being important. I know I can handle anything and my thought has mostly been that other people can’t. 

But someone else I love to pieces and respect immensely, the magnificent Maisie Hill,  said something else to me recently that made me rethink this on an even larger scale. She said she doesn’t over-function for other people. 

If I’m honest, there were actually a lot of other words around that phrase but it blew my mind to the point that it’s all I retained. 

Because…

Y’all.

Did you know you don’t have to over-function for other people? Like did you know that’s an option? Because I didn’t. I didn’t realize it to the point that I sort of took it for granted that I was supposed to. 

If you don’t know what over-functioning is, it’s habitually taking responsibility for ensuring the smooth functioning of their relationships whether that’s a romantic relationship, work relationship, friend relationship, etc.

I found a definition on psychologist Will Meek’s site that I really liked that broke it down a bit more by pointing out that it is “being overly focused on another’s problems or life situation, offering frequent (often unsolicited) help or advice, actually doing the things that are another’s life responsibilities because if you don’t, obviously it won’t happen.” Yeah. That’s me.

I would keep going regardless of how I was feeling and I would make things work even when other people weren’t interested enough to put forth any effort. Pretty much all of the time so that they’d get the end result they wanted. 

An example of this would be turning work assignments around in a few hours because whoever gave it to me missed their deadline. If the target delivery date was going to be hit then obviously that meant I had to drop whatever I was doing to make it happen. That’s just what one does. Right? 

Apparently, no. That is not just what everyone does, it’s what someone who is over-functioning does. 

I don’t tend to think of myself as a people pleaser and I’m pretty sure there isn’t anyone on the planet who would describe me as such. But I for sure am an over-functioner in very nearly all areas of my life. 

And it doesn’t make me happy. 

It does tend to make other people happy in the moment, but then I’m unhappy with my life because I’m not able to complete my goals and plans and dreams as they’ve been pushed aside while I over-function for someone else because I’ve decided (apparently?!) that I can handle that sort of thing and they can’t.

That’s just as insidious as the people-pleasing so many coaches talk about. I’ve always understood that saying yes when you don’t want to do something because you want to make someone else happy is never going to work because you can’t make people happy. You can’t make them feel any emotion at all. 

But I never connected that with my belief that I need to over-function to make up for the functioning, or lack thereof, of those around me is the same thing.

That’ll be stopping for me this year to the extent that when I identify that I’m doing it (or someone points it out to me), I fully intend to stop.

Because if someone is going to be unhappy with my life, it is not going to be me.

Until next time, my wish for you is that you are unapologetically happy with the life you create.