You are invited to an in-depth exploration of a topic that is so fundamental to our human experience which reveals our true greatness. A topic that not just anyone can explore. It takes courage and honesty to go on this journey. The journey of “Embracing Your Flaws.” We’ll take a dive deep into this subject because it’s a journey worth investing your time in.
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How Embracing Your Flaws Reveals Your True Greatness
We are back. We are doing our thing like we always do. Remember, I said that we’re doing something different. We changed our format and so I want to remind you that instead of having multiple guests speak about the topic in separate episodes, we’re going to have multiple guys in one episode, which is starting now.
We already shared with you guys what our topic series is. It’s Embracing Your Flaws. We are going into an in-depth exploration of a topic that is fundamental to our human experience, which reveals our true greatness. I said we’re all great and we are. This topic is not like anyone can’t explore it. It is what I’m saying. It takes some courage and honesty to go on this journey.
For this episode, we have four phenomenal guests who agreed to go on this journey with me as we talk about embracing our flaws. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re going to take a deep dive into this subject and the reason why we want you to read because it’s worth investing your time reading this. Before we do this, before I introduce my first guest, I want to talk real quick about what flaws are.
Flaws are those imperfections, quirks, idiosyncrasies, and unique qualities that make each of us who we are. They can be physical, emotional, or related to our personality traits. Your flaws, my flaws, our flaws are aspects of ourselves, of yourself that sometimes we often perceive as undesirable. However, despite the beauty and the richness of the flaws that they’re going to bring to our lives, we live in a society that often bombards us with unrealistic ideals and perfection.
We are trying to reach perfection and we can. At times, we experience immense pressure to fit in, try to make everything right, and do it perfectly. These ideas can create a sense of shame or inadequacy regarding our flaws and will lead us to believe you, me, us, all that something’s wrong with us, or make us ashamed of our flaws.
Should we be ashamed and are they bad? We’re talking about embracing your flaws. That’s what we’re talking about and you accepting your imperfections, your vulnerabilities, without judgment, without condemnation, and without shame. Embracing your flaws is critical and crucial. It is an important part of our personal growth because it allows us to be ourselves. It allows you and me to let go of unrealistic expectations so that we can be ourselves and live and walk in our greatness.
You guys know I say this time and time and time again. I want to share real quick what I’m basing this on because I always use some Scripture because I’m a Jesus follower. With that, I want to say that Isaiah 64:6 said, “He looked beyond my fault and saw my needs.” In 2 Corinthians 12:9, in that verse, you have Paul quoting Jesus saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
What Paul is making a point here is that God is strong and that he can overcome our weaknesses. Our imperfections can also bring us closer to others, especially to those we might look down upon because of their flaws and their weaknesses. Let’s dive into this conversation. I want to bring on our first guest and I want to introduce to you again because she was one of our guests before. I’m bringing her on so you guys should be familiar with her. If not, go back and look at her episode. It exists.
Kimberly Jordan Croslin is a voiceover artist, a Hampton University graduate, and a proud mother of two spirited sons, Matthew and Brandon. She’s also passionate. She’s passionate about empowering women to find their voice. With that, please help me to welcome Kimberly Jordan Croslin to the show. Come on, Kimberly. How are you, my love?
Wonderful. It’s great to see you.
It’s great to be seen. I’m coming right back in from travel and getting into things. It’s like boom and then on my way back out. I want to say thank you so much for saying yes to being on the show again and we’re doing something different this time. Instead of having 40 or 50 minutes to go into dialogue like we did before, we’re bringing in 3 other guests that’s going to give us their perspective on embracing your flaws.
To be totally honest and transparent, you are the one who made me come up with this topic. I know your growth because you’re sharing it with me. I feel that because of that, I want you to share with the world. I’m saying this because I know it. You’re in a place where you are embracing your flaws. What I would like you to share with our readers is what the concept of embracing your flaws means to you personally. How does embracing your flaws impact your life?
The concept of embracing my flaws to me personally means that I can lay my burdens down, judging myself based on how others judge me. Some people think life is black or white. I’m a writer. I have some friends that deal with numbers and for them, it’s black or white. For me, I realize that life is more the shades of gray. That’s where I fall. I fall in the shades of gray. I’ve accepted my gray in my hair, in myself. I’ve accepted those shades because if there was no gray, there would be no need for Jesus.
I’m glad you said that because you made me think there was a movie about shades of gray. I love that, Kim. What is the impact that embracing your flaws has on your life?
It’s been freeing to realize that I don’t have to live to try to be perfect. I’m free from perfectionism. When you’ve lived most of your life around or in an atmosphere or environment where people were very critical of you, you get very hard on yourself. You believe what the critics say. When I embraced those very things that everybody criticized, I became free because I no longer needed validation from people.
I’m going to tell you another place where I realized that I was seeking validation. You spoke about my two-spirited sons. They have very strong spirits and I’m so proud of them. They are both at the same college. One is a junior and the other one is a freshman. They are doing well. This has to do with them because my flaws defined me in my mind.
I was seeking validation through my son’s successes. Whatever success they had and have was mine. That validated my existence, and that gave me worth because I must be good because they are doing well. Do you know that made me put such undue pressure on them all through school? I came to this realization. I had to tell them and ask them for forgiveness because I had been so hard on them all through school, because they had the ability, and they had shown the ability to be honor roll students. They made straight A’s. They would make A’s and B’s.
However, as their father and I started to experience different things in our marriage, we were not on the same accord, and our home was not a nurturing environment during that time, they could not perform to their potential. Instead of accepting that and holding myself accountable for the environment I was helping to create, I was hard on them for them to produce because as long as they produced and they were successful, I was validated and successful. I am free from that and I freed them. I had been freed from that for some time. It hit me how it impacted my sons.
Life is not black and white. Life is more of shades of gray. Click To TweetIt’s amazing that you recognize that. I’m so glad you shared that because my question was, will you share a flaw that has impacted you or that you recognize?
Insecurity, low self-worth, low self-esteem flaws because whatever I did back when I was married, whatever I did before I got married, I’m not that Kimberly anymore. I am a new creature in Christ. I do things that are wrong because I’m human and I ultimately make decisions to do things that are wrong sometimes. Sometimes more often than not, I make choices to do things that don’t serve me but they feel good in the moment, but that’s the gray and that is not who I am. Those actions do not define me. They are my experience. As I gain wisdom from those experiences, I share them.
Let me ask you and I thank you so much for sharing that. I want to ask you, what would be, in your view, the most powerful message, tidbit, insight, or takeaway that you can tell our readers about this discussion of embracing their flaws?
Sit with yourself. Look in the mirror, sit with yourself, and be honest. Talk to yourself. Write down what you hear yourself saying. Write down what’s coming into your heart. Think about it. Most importantly, get the path to greatness from Dr. Kim Grimes because once you can answer what you love, like, appreciate, and admire about yourself, once you sit down and know those things, no one can tell you who you are.
I went through the exercise and I continue to go through the exercise. When I find myself falling back into some habits, I sit down and go through the exercise. What I learned is to take a flaw and say what I like about the flaw, what I love about the flaw, and what I admire about the flaw. This showed me how to love myself unconditionally. It showed me how to see myself the way that God sees me.
I thank you so much for coming on and giving that powerful insight, as well as for your transparency, being transparent, and sharing. Thank you so much. I want to acknowledge you for who you are and tell our readers that Kimberly Jordan Croslin has grown. When she shared with you the insight that she’s given, it’s not because she’s pulling it out of the air. She’s living it. She’s walking the walk and talking the talk. Kimberly, thank you so much for being on this episode. I can’t wait for it to come out so everyone can read your message. Thank you so much, my dear. I truly appreciate you. We have three others that are coming and I will introduce to you our next guest.
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I’m with another phenomenal guest. We’re going to keep it moving. We’re trying something new. Instead of having multiple guests talk about the same topic on separate episodes, we’re trying something new. We’re bringing them all together. In this episode, we have four phenomenal guests. You’ve already met the first one and now I’m introducing to you our second guest. I’m so excited. D’mon Reynolds, he’s not new to our show. He’s been a guest before. To get more of his details, go back and find him in our listing. That’s what you do.
D’mon Reynolds was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Penn State University in 2017 with a Degree in Broadcast Journalism and a Minor in African-American study. D’mon is a Director of Ministry with Young Life. He strives to live a life dedicated to Jesus. He sees himself as an ambassador, allowing God to constantly make his appeal through him. Help me bring to our stage, D’mon Reynolds. Thank you. D’mon, welcome back. You know that our topic is embracing your flaws.
We have been, in some form or fashion, duped into thinking that our flaws are bad and that we need to be ashamed of them, or we should have some condemnation about our flaws. I’ve already shared and did an episode about all of my flaws and the impact that they had on me. They still have an impact on me. What I would love for you to share with our readers is the concept of embracing your flaws. What does that mean to you personally? Share with us how it has impacted your life.
Dr. Kim, let me first say as always, it is an honor and a pleasure to be on this show, but also, in general, I always tell you how great you are. I appreciate the opportunity to come on and share. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I received that. You are so welcome. Thank you for saying yes.
To me, embracing your flaws, let me come from this example. I’m married. My beautiful wife and I have been together for many years. In that span of time, you learn to embrace things about each other. What I learned through that process is also the things about me that challenge her. I’ve had to begin to love more.
For me, defining embracing your flaws is knowing that those things are there. Being self-aware of those things that make you quirky and might come off as irritating to others, but also those things that you might not be so happy about some days, but learning to fully love the person that it makes you and shapes you into. Embracing those things gives you a path to liberty. Saying that, I know what true love looks like when I love the good and the bad about myself. That’s what embracing your flaws is.
Here’s what I would like you to do. Share a specific flaw or imperfection and share how you learned about it and the impact that it had and may still have on your life because it may be something in the past that you know you learned from. Share something specific and then the impact that it had, and what you learned from it.
I’ll go on 2 levels because there are 2 levels. On a lower tier level would be surface levels. I worked in TV. I was on Channel 8 in Richmond, Virginia. I did TV. For me, one of my flaws on television was that I had mispronunciation trouble. I would not pronounce words correctly. You’re talking about in front of thousands of folks, they’re listening to me and I’m saying things not in the right manner. For me, that flaw in itself impacted me greatly at times. I’m like, “I go on TV and I’m trying so hard to perfect this part of my craft that I’m missing out on being me.” That was a part of my journey through TV.
On a higher level, I would say, at times, I care too much about what others think. That can be a bad flaw because even though you are in the business and the nature of serving people, it also can be bad because now it can make you go into this thing of performance. I felt like I needed to be a certain way all the time. I felt like I needed to have this perfection when, meanwhile, you don’t. We, as humans, do not have perfection. Over time, I’ve learned to allow that stuff to go. I’m still journeying through it. On TV, I was embarrassed enough times to where I got over it.
You said two levels. Did I miss a level?
Just on a lower tier level, I was saying that on TV, mispronunciation. Even deeper than that, on another level, was me not catering to people. That was a big thing.
It wanted to make sure our readers didn’t miss it as well. We all know that, and you said that society has an impact. As you said, you were on television in front of millions, and that represents society, especially in our heads. I love it when you said how you were trying to be so perfect that you missed out on being yourself or being you on television.
You spoke of one of my flaws and that’s the mispronunciation of words. I shared before that I embraced it. I’m like, “I said it wrong.” Thank God my husband’s around. He helps me. I own it and say, “I got that one wrong. Just keep it moving.” Let me ask you this. In your opinion, what role does vulnerability play in the process of embracing one’s flaws? How can individuals or an individual become more comfortable with vulnerability?
Immediately, what comes to mind is the Scripture. Where we are weak, He is made strong. It is a very biblical scripture. I think of how God honors vulnerability. I do believe that on the other side of being honest and true and also knowing that in anything that you do in life, whether that’s business, wherever you work, if you tell people your weaknesses or those things about you that might not be as great, it can help you.
I’ve expressed a lot of times in the capacity I lead now, so I have a team of people who do things that I might not be as good at. One of those things, for example, is administration. I might not be able to make Excel and spreadsheets. That’s not me. I’m not a super organized person. We have somebody who’s stronger in that area and I’ve expressed it. I’m like, “I want to be seen as this good leader. I want to lead you all. You all might think I can do all these things, but listen, I’m weak in this area.”
What makes someone a stronger leader is when you’re able to be vulnerable and wear your heart on your shoulders sometimes when you need to. Always discerning because sometimes you have to know who to be vulnerable with and in which setting. It’s helpful when you’re able to be honest and true to people.
Can you share, in your view, what would be the most powerful message or insight you would like our readers to take away from the discussion that we’re having right now?
One of the things that keeps us in bondage and in chains from embracing our flaws is caring about what others think. I’m not saying to be arrogant, but in the age of social media and the climate that we live in, culturally, it’s always pushing us to do what will make others happy. Embracing our flaws, whatever that might be. I have to recite this all the time. The fear of human opinion disables, but the one who trusts in the Lord remains secure.
Caring about what others think keeps us in bondage. Click To TweetI likened that example to somebody who’s handicapped. They’re restricted by what they can do. In the same way that somebody’s restricted by their disability, we restrict ourselves and handicap ourselves when we care what others think. People will make lifelong decisions that don’t align with who they are or what God created them to do because they’re so fearful of what others think.
For me, embracing your flaws, you have to get liberated from caring about what others think. I’m not saying be arrogant. I’m not saying criticism and certain dialogue are needed, but at a certain point in time when we’re digging deep and embracing the things about ourselves that we know could be some challenges, sometimes we also have to know, “In order to love ourselves, we got to liberate ourselves from caring about what someone might say because they might see this part of us that we don’t show everybody.”
Your comments, insight, and what you shared were powerful and empowering. Thank you so much for saying yes to being a repeated guest on our show. I want to not only acknowledge you as moving up in what you’re doing and being the Director of Ministry. I know that this is your heart’s desire for you to be in this position.
I am so proud of you and I’m so happy for you that you’re there. We’ve spoken before. Let me know how I can support you moving forward, but I want you to know that continue to do you and everything will fall in place. I also like to say that all our answers are inside of us and you know how to do that. Continue to look in to find your answers. Thank you again for saying yes and being on our show. Thank you, my friend. That’s two down. We have two more coming.
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I’m about to introduce you to our third guest. We’re still talking about embracing your flaws. We know that it is something that’s important. This is a journey. I already said it’s a journey that takes courage and honesty. It’s not something for the faint of heart. It requires courage for us to go in, look at our flaws, and own our flaws but not only that, embrace our flaws.
Our next guest who’s going to talk to us in detail, she’s going to do a deep dive with us about embracing our flaws, is Raven Thissel. Like the other two guests, Raven’s been on our episodes as well. To learn even more about her, go back to the other episodes. I’m not going to tell you about them because I want you to go and look. Here is her bio to tell you a little bit about her.
Raven Thissel is an award-winning Diversity and Inclusion Thought Leader, Certified Holistic Health Coach, International Talk Show Host, and Corporate Communication Consultant. She’s a Senior Communication Manager at Karat Brilliant Black Minds where she leads marketing and communication for a program dedicated to supporting the careers of Black professionals in the tech industry.
She’s also the CEO of Thissel Consulting, where she provides executive leadership to cultural innovation, innovatives and communication project management solutions for impactful organizations. Thissel’s holistic health education and public relations and marketing background have uniquely positioned her to exercise her passion for social advancement in various ways.
When she observed the climbing rate of suicide and stress-related illness among Black Americans, Thissel founded Crowned & Calm Co. with the mission of empowering Black communities with meditation and other holistic health tools. She is the Host of Raven Thissel Live, an IBM TV network talk show where she teaches holistic personal development to an international audience across 144 countries. Please help me to, not reintroduce, but to welcome back to our show, Raven Thissel.
Nobody reads that bio like you. I’m going to tell you that. Nobody gives the introduction energy like Dr. Kim R. Grimes.
I receive that. Thank you so much. It’s because of who you are. I want our readers to read it right. I have to share. You put it together. I’m giving it to them as you put it. You are welcome. As I said, we’re here talking about embracing our flaws, which we know, in the society that we live in, makes us feel that our flaws are reasons for us to be ashamed. We judge ourselves. We’re not pleased with them. What I would love for you to share is what the concept of embracing your flaws means to you personally and how it has impacted your life.
I’m so glad to get that question now of all days because I have been learning so much on this topic on this very day. That’s my answer. If I was to keep it very short, I would say embracing my flaws has meant being very curious, and becoming a student of myself.
I love that concept.
In doing so, I remove judgment and then the name flaw goes away. It is not even called a flaw anymore. The name of it goes away because I’m not judging it. I’m curious about it. I’m asking questions, “Why do I have this tendency? Why do I think this is right? Why do I have this pattern? What’s going on?” What I find at the bottom of those things that don’t line up with how I would like to show up, there’s fear.
There’s something that I have learned in my adolescence that I can now empower myself to unlearn. There is something that I’m doing that I don’t even believe in anymore, but I’m doing it out of habit. I get curious. I can find the solutions. I can find the healing and I can create space for myself to take my time as I grow through that thing.
I love that being a student of myself. That is so powerful. Thank you so much. You mentioned the term fear and that is the fear of judgment. That’s what we’re talking about. Fear is a big word. We’re speaking of fear of judgment. As we said, the fear of judgment from others and ourselves can be a significant barrier to embracing our flaws. What would you recommend someone or how can they navigate or overcome this fear?
On this one, I have to borrow from a wise woman named Brené Brown. When I hear the fear of judgment, what I hear is shame. The fear of judgment shows up in my life as shame, things that I am ashamed of. As soon as I put that name to it, I know exactly what to do. As soon as I realize I’m ashamed of that, I feel shame around this topic, I don’t want to talk about it or I’m defensive because I’m ashamed.
Whatever the emotion is that’s coming out at the bottom of the shame, I know exactly what to do. I learned it from Ms. Brené Brown. Cure for shame is vulnerability. Shame cannot exist in the space where you lay out the item that you are ashamed of for all to see. You empower yourself to be the one who lays it out. Not that you get exposed by somebody else, but when you choose to empower yourself by saying, “I didn’t do what I was supposed to do and I tried to cover that up by lying or whatever happened, I tried to cover it. I tried to hide it by looking tough. I was afraid and I was ashamed. I’m ashamed of how soft I am.”
The cure for shame is vulnerability. Click To TweetThis is a true one for me. I’ve always been a deeply soft-hearted person. I learned at a young age that soft-hearted people can get bullied, and run over. You don’t get to keep your stuff if you’re soft-hearted, because people who are not soft-hearted will take it from you. I learned to develop a tough exterior. I learned to develop a sharp tongue, try to be critical or witty, or try to show up tough in different ways that whole time.
I’m a whole M&M. If you get too hot, it doesn’t take much to break that shell, but that shell was holding me back. I wasn’t being true to who I am in a situation when I am confronted. Growing up, confrontation was very normalized for me. I spent my whole life thinking confrontation is normal. The whole time, I’m confrontational. Having the courage to say, “My instinct right now is to get right with you in an aggressive way. My instinct is in contradiction to my truth. My truth is that I feel afraid. What you said triggered a fear. I’m ashamed that I’m afraid of that. There’s shame around that I have to cover it up by trying to be tough in this situation.”
Instead of that, what I’m learning in this season is to take a beat. When I feel that aggression rise in the moment and say, “What’s going on? What are we covering up with that shell? You’re feeling afraid. You need to ask for reassurance.” Now, I’m using my language to lay that fear bare in front of both of us and be vulnerable and now the shame is gone.
You laid that out so methodically that someone can connect and say, “I can do this. This is what she’s doing.” Thank you for that. Shame is one thing that keeps people from stepping out into their greatness from being themselves because, again, they’re ashamed. I love how you connected with fear and fear of being judged and connected with that was so powerful.
You also spoke about vulnerability because I was going to ask you about that as well. Vulnerability sometimes gets the raw deal or negative connotation where people say, “You shouldn’t be vulnerable.” You and I both know vulnerability is the key. It’s the key to us being ourselves. I wanted to share that, but also, I have a number of things to ask you.
In your sharing, you answered a lot of the questions so I’m touching on them. That was to identify a specific flaw where you talked about how you built the shell, you became confrontational because of all of that and that was one of your flaws. I like when you said that and shared the concept of the M&M. When you said M&M, I wanted to eat some, but you put it in perspective in a sense like that’s not a hard shell. I got that as well. Thank you so much for that. What I want to ask you is, in your view, what would be the most insightful or powerful message that you can share with our readers as a takeaway for them to begin to embrace their flaws or about our topic, embracing your flaws?
If I had to share one thing, it would be that you can do this. A lot of times, we’ve carried a story about ourselves for our whole lives. Everything about the world around us in real-time, we perceive it through the lens of our stories. We tie the story to our identity so tightly that we can’t imagine who we are without that story. We can’t imagine a new story. Without a new story, we will continue to behave in the same patterns. It can feel impossible and overwhelming because of the stories that we tell ourselves.
If I had to leave your audience with one message, it’s that you can’t do this. You can’t rewrite the stories that you have been telling yourself that you have been believing. The wait is over. At any point, you can decide, “That’s not my story anymore.” You don’t have to wait until the New Year’s resolution. You don’t have to wait till the birthday Christmas. You don’t have to do it at Thanksgiving. You can do it now.
Do it now. I want to say thank you so much for saying yes to coming back on. You have in the past and still deliver powerful, sticky messages and you give sticky insights. What I mean by that is it sticks to you like it’s not going anywhere. I love it when you shared that the wait is over. Let’s do it now. You can do it. You can do this. This journey I’ve said about embracing your flaws is a journey that takes courage and honesty. Up until now, we have had three powerful guests who shared. You saw their courage and their honesty about embracing their flaws.
First, before we go into our next guest, I want to take a moment and acknowledge you, Raven, again, for coming and saying and being a part of the show. Thank you for saying yes. Thank you for always giving, serving, and supporting those people who are around you and those who are reading. You are amazing in line with the last two guests that we had. You guys, thank you, Raven. I truly appreciate you popping in. I’ll be back with our final guest, who is going to give us some powerful insights about embracing our flaws.
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Remember I said I had another guest. I’m ready to introduce you to our fourth guest on this topic. Before I do, remember we’re talking about embracing our flaws. I’ve said this and I’m going to continue to say it. This is not a journey for the lighthearted. It is a journey for those who have courage and who are honest. Courage to look in at who you are and honesty about what you see and what you find.
Our next guest who’s going to share with us not even about how to embrace your flaws, but embracing your flaws and what that means to them is Jonathan Daniels. Jonathan Daniels is a Graphic Designer, Social Media Management Consultant, and Life Coach for men. He has leaned into his passion for providing spiritual guidance, encouragement, and empowerment to other men and found in ritual life coaching.
He also began to realize his dream of creating a knack for advancing online brands through social media by offering these services as a contractor. When he founded Enritual Studios, Daniels also worked as a Social Media Strategist with Usher’s Digital Agency. He is the Host of Code of the Conscious Man, a PODTV podcast that is broadcast in over 44 countries, which is also featured on Roku and Amazon Prime. Most importantly, he is a father and is passionate about serving his family first. Please help me to welcome my friend, our guest, Jonathan Daniels, to our platform as he shares with us about embracing your flaws. Welcome, Jonathan.
You did that.
Thank you so much. I want our readers to know who’s on the show. I want them to read the dynamics in you and who you are. It’s going to come out as you share on the show. This is my opportunity to like, “This is who you are about to meet.” It’s showing enough truth.
Thank you, Dr. Grimes.
Thank you. Yes, you’re welcome. It’s so good to see you and so good to have you back. Jonathan is a repeating guest as well, like the other three. This is not his first time on our platform. Thank you, Jonathan, for saying yes to my request to be on the show again. What I would love for us to jump into is the concept of embracing our flaws.
We live in a society that makes us feel that we have to be perfect or we have to fit in a mold. If we don’t, something’s wrong with us. I want to have a deep-dive conversation about how do we embrace our flaws? What is that all about? What does that concept mean? What I would like you to do is to share with us what it means to you personally. How has that concept of embracing our flaws impacted your life?
I have a concept that I follow and always break down the word confidence when it relates to what I struggle in or what I need to improve in. The root word or confidence is confide. Confide means to trust. Do I trust myself? When I think about whether I trust myself, I automatically think about the things that I am not as good at.
When I learned that my trust is more powerful than my flaws, it doesn’t matter what I struggle with. It doesn’t matter what I am not able to do at that time. It doesn’t matter what I need help with. It is about, “Do I trust myself to get the party started? Do I trust myself to get this ball rolling?” When I do, I deal with the flaws as they come because there are other people in my circle who help me and are a resource for me.
I have a community now. My flaws don’t make me feel isolated. My flaws don’t make me feel as though I’m not enough. My flaws help me see that I am more than enough. I’m worthy. I am deserving. I am capable. All these things, my flaws are empowering because now if I embrace the things that I have at one point in time, did not like, now I own my power. No one can take that from me. That’s what embracing your flaws means to me.
My flaws are empowering. Click To TweetCan you share a specific flaw or imperfection that you learned to embrace and share a little bit about the journey? How did the journey unfold for you so that you could wrap your arms around it?
Overthinking. I used to overthink my entire life. I learned how to overthink because it’s a conversation that I have with myself. As a child, I didn’t have a lot of friends. I wasn’t very close to my siblings. I didn’t have people to talk to. I used overthinking in this conversation to walk me through my own decisions. As time went on, the overthinking turned out to be something more negative than positive. It caused me to doubt the very things that I know are for me, such as when it came to starting my own business, stepping out there to be a graphic designer, and leaning into the passion of being a life coach. Nobody wants to listen to me. I don’t know what I’m talking about.
When I learned that that overthinking was something that needed to be silenced, the gremlin calmed down. You know about the gremlin. The gremlin is now to the side and it watches from the sideline. It’ll never go away but now, it is no longer the main character in my story. Overthinking was my number one thing. That’s my number one flaw that I’ve learned how to fix.
Overthinking sometimes makes your head hurt. I’m quite sure you had headaches too. There are some misconceptions people have about embracing their flaws. How can these misconceptions be overcome?” It’s like, “I’m not supposed to look at my flaws. I have to be perfect in getting this done.” My flaws are not anything that I’m proud of, anything that I want to share with people, anything that I should have a sit down and have a conversation about. I’m not going to share my flaws. That’s not going to happen.” My thought is all of that are misconceptions. What I would like you to share is how can these misconceptions be overcome.
Misconceptions can be overcome by understanding that they’re tied to excuses. They’re tied to stories that you tell yourself. You need to eradicate excuses from your existence because if you continue to fall back on these things, you will never be able to see the light. You will never be able to hold true to what means the most to you because you’re either afraid, nervous, uncertain, or doubtful.
These normal human emotions that you have, you gravitate and latch onto and say, “I shouldn’t be scared of public speaking. I shouldn’t be scared to ask out the love of my life.” These things are normal. It’s okay to feel these things. It’s okay to feel these emotions, but don’t stay there because you should stay happy all the time. What makes you think that you should stay sad? It’s a fluctuation of life. I would say the misconceptions are tied to excuses that we tell ourselves and also listening to the stories that have been told to us by other people.
I’m a believer in how we create stories. One of the things I’ve been saying lately is not only do we create stories but we make things wrong and hard. It’s something simple and because it’s so simple, we don’t want to accept the fact that it’s simple, but we make it hard because that’s what we’re used to. It’s like, “I’m not used to simplicity. Nothing comes easy for me.” It’s as simple as breathing. We make it hard. As I said, we make things wrong. Thank you so much for that and for speaking about stories. Our last guest, Raven Thissel, talked about stories as well.
She mentioned how we create stories and I agree. We do. The other part is a lot of us are unaware that we’re creating stories. That’s another topic for an episode too, the stories that we’re creating or we’ve created and that we believe. Let me ask you this. How do society’s standards of being perfect or social media influence our perceptions of what is considered a flaw? What advice do you have for individuals dealing with external pressures about flaws, fitting in, their idiosyncrasies, and their shame in being themselves?
Post that Reel. Post that Story. Make the post go live. When it comes to social media, it makes you think that you have to have all these tools to be great when it’s simply doing it. We see the highlight Reels of our favorite social media influencers because we see the final product. We see the final edit. We see the background and the props. We see all these things but we don’t see the behind the scenes. One social media influencer that I follow has millions of followers. I’ve seen his background and his behind-the-scenes edits. A 30-second Reel will take him days trying to get it right.
One thing that we have to think about when it comes to social media is that just because we are unsure about something unique to us or something that we have not encountered or seen people do online, that’s your chance to do that. If you don’t see what you want to see online, then create it. If you don’t see the influence you want to have in your life, then be that influence. Post it.
You never know that this Reel, this Story, this post can be exactly what is needed for you to become the better version of yourself. Help that person who was either on the ledge or who was unsure, “Should I take this job? Should I go after this opportunity by posting that?” I’ve seen several people, hundreds of thousands of people who are now social media influencers who started out with nothing. Zero followers. They consistently post it for years and then all of a sudden, 2,000, 4,000, 10,000. It just goes. It’s not about the followers when it comes to social media. It’s about the impact. If you’re making an impact, people will see you. You’ll be noticed. Don’t go after people’s attention. Go after the intention itself.
If I were to ask you, in your view, could you give us or share with us what would be the most important or most powerful message that you would like our readers to take from our discussion about embracing your flaws or their flaws? The title is Embracing Your Flaws.
Learn to love you exactly the way that you are. I was thinking about this because I did a lot of emotional shadow work. Learning to love yourself exactly how you are is one of the hardest things you will ever do in your life because you see so much of what you want and what you don’t have. You want to be this great version of yourself and the world has many distractions that will make you think that because I don’t see that within me, that very thing, I don’t deserve it. When in truth, we create the meaning to life. Life doesn’t have meaning until we create it.
Once you are able to find your own meaning in life, your purpose, your vision, and what propels you forward, that is what is going to give you everything you need. When you start with the source, you love you first, the world has no option but to bend to that will. The way you walk, you are now walking with the power of God. You are now walking with the power of grace. You are now walking with the power of abundance, attraction, fullness, and wholeness.
It’s not something that you’re going to automatically always wake up with, “I’m about this,” but knowing that this is your base, that source, everything starts within and then you can go without. That’s how I embrace my flaws. Everybody has their own journey. There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path. Understanding that is what taught me to embrace my flaws.
There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path. Click To TweetThank you. I appreciate what you have shared. Thank you so much for saying yes to being a guest a second time on our show as we make a shift in how we do our format. Change is good. Change means growth and so we’re excited about it. I want to say thank you again for saying yes. I’m excited as we move forward into this new format, bringing more and more guests onto the platform to talk about the topic, but all in one session. That’s what we’re doing.
To the readers out there, I want to say thank you for hanging in here with us for this particular episode. I do want to also say that when we look at who we are, we’re great already in that. I also want to say that it’s important to understand that we all have flaws. Flaws are subjective and culturally influenced. We all have them. When we embrace them, own them, and be them, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. One person sees as a flaw, another person may see as endearing.
I want you guys to remember here on the show, this is what we do. We embrace who we are because we know it’s easy to lose yourself in the clashing ideas nowadays, conflicting beliefs, and the flood of information that we get day in and day out with society’s rigid expectations and endless opinions of self. Self-expression and self-appreciation can feel challenging and daunting. Most of the time, what we do, we push it down, we dumb down, we hide, we run, we don’t deal with it, or we go with the flow. We’re not even present.
What I want you guys to know is that you are you unapologetically. That means being true to who you were created to be and not allowing people’s opinions to affect how you show up in life and in the world. We all know people are going to talk. We say it over and over. Let them talk. Let them say what they have to say because we don’t have the time, energy, or space to be intimidated by the presence of others and what they think.
We don’t want you to think little of yourself. When you show up without pretense and hesitation, the world can’t dim your glamor. They can’t touch you. Most importantly, you will inspire others to shine your light and their light and help them shine their light as well. We want everyone to tap into your brilliance. Tap into your own brilliance because we all are great. We want to put an end to the disparaging mindset, the negativity that’s out there that’s preventing you from being authentic, from being yourself, and from owning who you truly are.
Join me here again and again where we’re going to create that safe space. We’re going to have that influential conversation. We’re going to bring on that guest that’s going to share some things that hopefully, you can connect with so that you can see that the guests that we’re bringing on are being themselves unapologetically because this is what we believe in. You are you and we say it all the time. I say it all the time. No one is better at being you than you. What am I asking you to do? Be you unapologetically because you are you. Thank you so much. I’m so glad you guys took the time out to read. I can’t wait to see you on the next one.
Important Links
- Kimberly Jordan Croslin – Past Episode
- D’mon Reynolds – Past Episode
- Raven Thissel – Past Episode
- Raven Thissel Live
- Jonathan Daniels – Past Episode
- Enritual Studios