I have this weird thing where I automatically assume that people don’t like me…
I can’t really figure out where it came from … or, actually, hmm – “liar!”, my mind just shrieked at me as I started to write this – I know EXACTLY where it came from.
Wow.
That literally just hit me right as I started writing this, as I wrote ‘I can’t really figure out – ‘.
You know when your soul just serves up a lil ass-whupping of truth for you, smack bang in the face? That just happened!
I was thinking about being back in school, and how I didn’t feel worried about people not liking me then.
OMG.
I LITERALLY just had the “liar!” shriek from inside again. Hahaha. What’s happening right now?! Am I blogging, am I journaling, am I channeling, who knows?! It’s all just the same.
I’m definitely sitting snugly in my bed at the retreat I’m at here in Ibiza, listening to root chakra healing music and JUST finished releasing quite a little bit via I think my 6th enema so far this week. So I guess I’m in a gooooodddd open and clean energy state to be letting things come up.
Anyway –
I was thinking about how in school I wasn’t worried about other KIDS not liking me, but I WAS worried about teachers not liking me. It’s a higher authority thing in general, actually, now that I think about it … and when I explain the ‘big’ thing it came from to you in a second, the first one I just realised while writing this, that will make sense.
In school I was super introverted, the shy and nerdy kid, DEFINITELY not cool or popular, a total ‘school square’.
But I wasn’t not LIKED. I didn’t have any issues with being given shit. I just wasn’t the cool one. Definitely wanted to be, mind you! In fact, I think it’s a BIG part of why I’ve created the online persona that I have – embodying the badass confident me I always wanted to be, and knew was somewhere within!
With teachers … I had a real issue with the fact that I thought (let’s be honest, often KNEW) that I was smarter than them.
I don’t even mean it in an ego-centric way, or in a finite way around intellectual knowledge, more to do with ‘all knowing’ and soul knowing, you know?
Kinda like how, when my 5 year old son says “I know everything Mummy!”, I’m like – “I’m sure you do honey. I have NO doubt”. Meanwhile his older sister presents him with trickity math problems to prove that he does not in fact know everything. He doesn’t give AF, he’ll admit he doesn’t know the answer, and then return simply, with a shrug of his little surfer-boy shoulders, to “I know everything”.
His soul KNOWS.
In school, back to when I was REALLY young, and all the way through, my soul just KNEW things. Yours too? I’ve no doubt!
So, while I was an A+ student, and always wanted validation, approval, love from my teachers, if they would say or indicate something I just on a soul level didn’t feel was TRUE, I couldn’t seem to hold back on saying it.
I got myself in trouble in high school science more than once for this, when it came to conversations around creation vs evolution!
So I was in this weird position of DESPERATELY wanting approval and love, always feeling unworthy without being ‘marked’ as the successful one, while at the same time simply not being able to go against my truth, when it bubbled up. Teachers would get frustrated – and also confused – at how goody-goody Katrina would randomly turn into the most stubborn and infuriating student ever, and basically argue until she was blue in the face in front of everyone!
I wouldn’t back down on my truth.
I still won’t.
Which leads me to the first realisation which I just had above, when I said I can’t figure out where this thing came from.
This thing where I automatically assume that people – PARTICULARLY people who I in any way view as a leader, or a person of some authority, regardless of whether or not it’s over ME – don’t like me.
I’ve noticed it SO much the past few years, as my star has risen in the entrepreneur space and I’ve met many amazing badass entrepreneur leaders – in every case I have ASSUMED this person already doesn’t like me.
In pretty much every case (I think!!) this has proven to not be true, and we get along great.
My underlying belief – and I was talking about this this morning with my guide here in Ibiza, where I’m retreating DEEP into peeling back all sorts of muck and layers, from nutritiional, to chakral, to quantum, to energetic, and more! – is that they probably think I’m a bad person in some way. Or, I dunno? Just NOT nice, or kind, or worth wanting to know.
Still can’t quite put my finger on what it is I think they think. But regardless, I’m happy to say that most people do seem to genuinely like me when they meet me.
Anyway, the realisation –
It was 2013, and I was part of an all-female 6 and 7-figure entrepreneur mastermind. It was invite only, and free. There were about 13 of us, and one of my mentors formed it. Several of my other mentors were in the group, as well as women I’d in some cases looked up to for years.
I LOVED being in this mastermind, it was a HUGE honour, and I made some amazing friends … which have largely shifted on, for reasons which may make sense in a moment. I was very much one of the ‘babies’ of the group, making around 30-35k a month at the time, with most far ahead of me on the entrepreneurial journey.
Anyway, the group was around everyday soul conversations of business, parenting, relationships, life and the like and it was mostly fabulous. Also very reassuring, to see that even women I looked up to so much still had doubt, and general life shit!
There was a lot of accountability as well, and we would pretty much have to report in on what we were doing, selling, launching, and how.
I found this inspiring, and helpful.
What I didn’t notice at the time … what sort of crept up on me … was that there was a general air of frustration with how I did things. And basically an expectation that at some point I’d ‘grow up’, or ‘settle down’, stop making up, creating, and launching new shit all the time.
The EXPECTATION and the doctrine was that a good entrepreneur created one signature program, and then monetized the fuck out of that, selling it over and over to build a million dollar biz, and THEN maybe adding a few other little things in.
Whereas I was, well – who I am now. Just earlier on in the journey. I CONTINUALLY launched new things! And because of the doctrine, I continually APOLOGISED for this, saying things like “I’m sure this will really be THE one, I promise!”.
Then invariably as soon as it had gone live I’d think of something else I wanted to do!
I felt SO BAD about this bad entrepreneur behaviour. Why couldn’t I settle down, be more organised, be like the other girls!
Kinda like how in school, when I’d ‘ark up’ and speak my truth, it was always, hmmm – what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I settle down, be quiet, be like the other girls? Take my medicine and swallow it nicely!
Well –
I just couldn’t.
In the end, I’d always speak my truth and I’d always LIVE it.
Gradually it became clear that the leaders of this group felt frustrated by me, and were starting to lose faith in me ever doing it right.
To be clear – all power to them if it’s truly aligned to them to do it my way.
But it sure as FUCK is not aligned for me, and never will be. I just didn’t know that yet.
What happened next was pretty upsetting for me, and still is, when I think of it.
Abruptly, the mastermind closed down. The woman who founded it said she no longer felt called to run it, or for it to exist. And poof – it was gone.
You have to understand, this group had been in kinda all day every day conversation for a LONG time by then. It was like a powerful womens circle. Obviously I was feeling kinda like I didn’t fit in … and I was also questioning the value systems of quite a few of the women in there, in that they would frequently say things that indicated they did NOT especially love their businesses or communities, and that felt off for me … but it was still a place I loved being, and leaned on daily.
And then it was just over.
It felt like a break up with no explanation.
And I just had this lurking feeling that actually it WASN’T over, but that it had just been re-formed, with a few troublemakers – hi! – kicked out.
Well, about 4 years later – namely late last year or early this year, I found out that that is PRECISELY what happened.
In that moment, well, way back to when I was told I was not doing it right, and then suspected the new group thing, a deep wounding occurred, and I think perhaps I made a soul agreement around something which was obviously already there, that told me –
You’re not good enough.
You don’t do it right.
You don’t fit in.
In the end, people (especially ones you look up to, or respect!) ALWAYS don’t like you.
I wonder if this has anything to do with me never allowing in men who are further in their journey than me … eek. #facepalm. TIME TO CHANGE! Haha. That’s my higher self shouting at whoever TF this self is.
At the same time as finding out that what I suspected HAD happened, I heard from one of the other women from the mastermind, also a ‘troublemaker’ type of gal who was continually bemoaning not yet having found her ‘thing’, that some of the key women in this group said to her, “oh, you’re just like Kat, we don’t know what to do with you!”.
And they did NOT say it as a compliment.
Fast forward to now and I am SO in my fucking power. I am largely not connected with the women from that group, although I see them on social and wish them well. But boy oh BOY am I SO GLAD I now know to stand in my truth so firmly.
To them, it was literally wrong – frustrating – bad – that I wouldn’t conform, do it ‘right’, be like them.
To me, it was heart-breaking and frustrating that I couldn’t SEEM to.
Be like us.
Do it like us.
Walk like us.
Talk like us.
BREATHE like us.
BE LIKE US, or else – you’re out!
Once again.
YOU are inherently not right, good enough, worthy.
Is how I felt. The judgement which I felt in that moment creating a ripple effect whereby since then I have ALWAYS assumed other awesome entrepreneurs won’t like me!
Just like in school days, in that mastermind I so desperately wanted the approval and validation of the women I looked up to, and just of the group in general. I have to admit – I STILL want that from others! It’s a practice, to be true to me regardless.
The truth is that for as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt sort of on the outside looking in, you know? This has been true with most groups, or circles, in my life.
Pretty much every womens circle I’ve been in, since I was a child, has ended up in me being the one to walk away, or feeling rejected, left out, like I no longer fit in.
For so long, I’ve told myself that this is bad. There’s something wrong with me. And that people just don’t really like me very much, in the end.
What I didn’t realise … what I STILL have to remind myself of … is that I’m different.
Not just from the other girls.
But even from the other entrepreneurs.
Frequently, my way of thinking, believing, KNOWING in my soul, it goes against what other leaders, the ‘higher authority’ people believe or feel.
And so I still often walk into new relationships, or connections, feeling trepidation that people won’t like me.
It’s been my experience so often. Or, more accurately, that they don’t GET me. They feel frustrated by me, unsettled, maybe worried, that I’m not conforming! Or – maybe they just do think I’m an annoying so and so. Haha.
Here’s what I know for sure though, and how this applies to you as well as me –
The right people will ALWAYS like you, get you, understand you.
You DO know everything already, just like my 5 year old does. You’ve always known!
You DO have to CHOOSE to stand in your power, speak your truth, stand up for what you stand for.
This WILL cost you people.
That is OKAY.
And as far as what your thing is, the ‘thing’ you’ve been looking for for so long, so you can say ‘hey guys, look – I found my thing! I can settle down now, like you!’, well that thing, haven’t you figured it out?
The one thing is you being you.
Crazy.
Chaotic.
Every-changing.
Never settling.
Always demanding more.
And always knowing it’s available.
You and me, and those like us, we’ve always known that we are called to walk a road more rocky than others.
We know we’re not for everyone.
We KNOW we’ll continue to be on the edges of nearly every ‘group’.
But we also know that what we feel is real.
That it always has been.
And that we are RIGHT.
About finite things, about rules, nah, who cares?!
But about what we need, and what we’re supposed to do?
Yes.
I don’t think I have a special message for you to sum this up with, except to say this –
I get it.
I know what it’s like to feel you’ll never fit in.
And I also know that the place to let go of that is inside of you.
Where you accept all that you always were, and finally, unapologetically, just allow yourself to become it.
When YOU say yes to all of you, guess what?
Life will too. And along with it? Maybe just a couple of pretty badass people such as these ones right here in THIS community of crazy ones.
You’ve always known you were different.
Might just be time to stop saying sorry for that …
📷– just before stripping off to bathe in the (freezing!) magnetic waters at Cala d’hort in Ibiza. The rock formation behind me is Magic Mountain, which has incredibly magnetic in its energy, causing the waters to be powerfully healing.
\
Leave a Reply