“Haters are a good problem to have. Nobody hates the good ones. They hate the great ones.”

-Kobe Bryant

This is the tenth post in a series about how The Willa Workshops on willawanders.com came to be.

Part 10

That Difficult First Year

How do you tell a story when it’s such an important part of who you are today but at the same time, the thing you are telling is so negative that you don’t want to give it any more energy?

Should I even tell you this story? How do I tell it without adding to the drama? Do I skip it and pretend it didn’t happen?

Or do I find a way to make lemonade out of lemons so that it becomes a story of strength and hope and we can all mutually benefit from it? I need to be very careful because this story is, let us say, a nuclear toxic waste dump.

And when something is that ripe for chaos and destruction, do you take risks with it? Even writing this one particular blog post is risky. But so much of what I do involves risk. I’ve become comfortable with that do a certain degree.

I’ll tell you what I can, the bare minimum: that first year of Fodder School had a serious, unfortunate, series of shocking events that would have sent most people running for the hills.

You are probably thinking right now, “what? what happened?”

And I want to apologize for leaving you hanging like this, but I hope that I’m going to make it up to you by focusing on the important parts of this particular story: the lessons learned and the personal growth that can only come from weathering the biggest of life’s storms.

You probably have some of these stories of your own. Perhaps you’ve tragically lost a loved one, weathered a divorce or a business failure, or suffered a debilitating health issue. Oftentimes I wonder if I am strong enough to handle these kinds of difficult life challenges. I think I may even have a bit of a rumination issue. I think, a lot, and mostly I’m thinking about worst case scenarios.

This particular unfortunate series of events taught me a few things, and I’ll share them here. If you can relate to what I’m about to write, please leave a comment because the sharing of this type of hope is, I think, a bright spot in life.

So without further ado, here were my major takeaways:

• Boundaries are important and healthy. I am allowed to have boundaries. As a lifelong people pleaser, this has been an epic lesson for me. In the past, I failed to put up boundaries when I should have put them up. But I’m finally getting that I don’t have to take everything. It’s okay for me to give a hard no, even when putting up a boundary is not what the other person wants. It is okay to choose me. (More on people pleasing and not being liked below.)

• Friendships are everything. A few close friends will be the difference between survival and utter falling apart and making horrible decisions. Listen to other people that you trust when you are in crisis because when humans are in a state of fight or flight, all rational thinking goes out the window. So if you have the presence of mind and body to realize that you are currently in fight or flight, don’t do what you want to do. Do what trusted, calmer people advise you to do. You will not regret this. (If one of my trusted advisors is reading this right now-thank you, thank you, thank you.)

• Growth can be very painful. Realize that when things hurt really bad, you are on the verge of major, life changing, personal growth. I know it feels horrible and why do humans have to experience pain like this, but trust me, something very big is about to happen. The universe (God?) has sent you a gift. A very horrible painful gift. It may not make any sense while you are in the heat of it, but chances are, it will make a lot of sense later.

• The Universe just might have your back. Along this line of thinking, I was reminded of an idea that I had embraced decades before: All for the good. I have been wearing an engraved necklace around my neck continuously for twelve years that basically says “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” With this particular challenge, I was led to Stoicism, which was compatible to this “all for the good” philosophy (if this idea is troubling to you, can I suggest checking out dialectical thinking?) Reading something from Stoic philosophy every day helped me to weather this particular storm, and I know it will be there for me now every single day. This book, The Obstacle is the Way, is a phenomenal beginning to any Stoic journey.

• Change is constant and necessary. When things are calmer, take time to figure out what you need to change. In my case, I needed to alter the way I “did business.” I needed to hire multiple lawyers (no one wants to pay lawyers) and go about this business that I call The Willa Workshops a lot more professionally, and legally (ie real contracts).

• We really can do hard things. As Glennon Doyle loves to say, “we can do hard things.” This is the thing that scares me the most: how will I ever be able to survive the inevitable, really hard realities of human life? I now have some semblance of evidence that I am capable of doing really hard things. I have evidence that I am stronger than I think I am and that I can survive serious adversity.

• Embrace the Messy. If you are going to try to do something great, you aren’t going to get things right all the time. You will make mistakes. It is okay. You’re going to need to throw a lot of spaghetti on that wall to find out what sticks. It just doesn’t all go down the way you want it to. Fail fast. Accept that this is part of the process.

• You may have haters. And finally and most importantly for a people pleaser like me, accept that not everyone is going to like you. I’m learning to accept that I can survive being disliked. People have their own personal garbage that they dump onto us and they may even decide that this makes us fodder for their pain and insecurities. If you challenge the status quo, if you do something great, some people just aren’t going to like you. You may even end up with haters. It isn’t about you. Only you know your heart. Only you know your intentions. Trust yourself (as long as you aren’t in fight or flight!).

To be continued . . .

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Wow. That was A LOT. I think this is going to wrap up in the next post. At least I hope it will! Please share your thoughts in the comments below.