Firing the representative
Firing the representative
On perfection and hyper-productivity as a pathway to love
The Third Door is a weekly newsletter about sustainable business strategy for solopreneurs and creative souls who want more out of life than the status quo, hosted by business coach and strategist Jenni Gritters. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while and you receive value from it, I’d encourage you to sign up for a paid membership.
Jamie was great at her job. She’d always been the go-to person in every professional situation. She responded quickly, knew the answers to every question (and found them when she didn’t), and would often bend over backwards to make sure her clients got what they needed.
Jamie had been this way for as long as she could remember. In high school, she was a straight A student and captain of the volleyball team. She was on the student counsel and got into most of the colleges she applied to. She received gold star after gold star in every setting she was in.
But Jamie wasn’t happy. In fact, as she got into her mid-30s, she started to experience chronic illness symptoms like migraines, chronic fatigue and brain fog. Her TMJ — jaw clenching — got worse and worse as she kept trying to show up in her work in a way that didn’t expose her symptoms to her clients.
After months of this, she found herself sitting on the floor of the shower, sobbing. She was gutted. She was miserable. And she wanted out of all of it.
Jamie is a version of me and so many of my clients. We’re oldest daughters and former straight A students. And that hyper-productive role has put us in the same situation over and over again: Other people see us as highly competent but we can’t understand why their words don’t stick. Inside, we still feel angry, exhausted and full of grief.
When Jamie came to me, we started with expectations. We needed to talk through where she’d set the bar for success. Her responses will likely sound familiar to you:
I need to keep all my clients happy, so they keep coming back.
It’s a problem if people criticize me — such a problem that I’ll do anything to avoid it.
I need to look high energy and put together on all of my client calls, even if I don’t feel that way.
My to do list is way too long but I need to finish it anyway because it’s proof of my competency.
I need to look strong and skinny.
I need to make $2,000 more than my financial goals each month.
And I need to be a good friend and neighbor, spending weekly time caring for those around me.
This list is incredibly well-intentioned. But the truth was that Jamie’s bar was too high for her current capacity. She was exhausted. And she was trying to do the impossible: Care for everyone around her by meeting their every need and keeping them happy. Why? Because without that positive feedback, Jamie felt like she was failing. Because keeping everyone happy felt like safety.
After we looked at this list together, Jamie acknowledged that her bar was too high. She could see why she was tired and resentful. She knew she needed to take her 170% effort down to at least 120%. But she wasn’t sure how.
Here’s where we get to a concept I love, which my mentor taught me: There’s a part of you that’s more like your representative than your authentic self.
I often think of my representative as Jenni Gritters, this person on the internet who teaches with clarity and poise, the one who should never mess up or make anyone mad. She’s got her sh!t together. But my authentic self? She’s just Jenni, bun on my head, leggings scrunched under thick socks, covered in flour from making sourdough bread, no make up on, sitting at the kitchen table. She’s the one my kids (and now most of my clients) get to see on a daily basis. She’s who I am without trying.
See the difference?
Jamie’s representative was showing up to work every day with expectations of perfection, hyper-productivity, martyrdom as a pathway to love, plus a side of codependence.
Jamie’s authentic self was good at her job, had varying energy levels on different days, and cared about the people around her. But she wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t a performance. She was a human being who needed rest and support, too.
Jamie’s work was to fire her representative — lovingly, slowly, gently. Her work was to tell her representative thank you (because our representatives are usually armored, protective shields for the most vulnerable parts of us). But she needed to be able to show up to her life without the performance of it all.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much work that performance is, and how wildly exhausted I am when I realize that my representative has been showing up in the rooms I’m in. My representative gives people shiny object syndrome because everything looks so good. But that shininess is also unrelatable; it’s not real.
For the past month, I’ve been in it with sick kids, some deep therapeutic work of my own, lots of marriage therapy, and a ton of brain fog. I haven’t been able to be fully in my work and writing has felt hard. When this was happening, I had two choices: I could call in my representative and make it look like everything was fine. Or I could be honest about having one of those periods in my business. In the past, I would have done the former. (That’s what I did for the entirety of my pregnancies, when I was so sick I could barely function). But this time, I stayed true to myself. I was honest with my clients about this energetic valley I was in. And that inspired incredible conversations about how they, too, could fire their representatives and acknowledge their humanity.
Like Jamie would come to discover, this is a life’s work, a decision we have to make every day to choose authenticity over our protective shields. The more scared we are, the more vulnerable we feel, the more likely that representative is to come flying onto the scene to save us.
And sometimes, we need her. But mostly, we need honesty so other people can support us. We need to fall apart a little.
Jamie is now in the process of looking at her business with this question in mind: Where is my representative showing up, and where am I most able to be true myself? Together, we’re working on how she can lower her expectations, lean into the places where authenticity already exists, and make time to rest.
Sounds good, right? And, it’s hard work.
Today, I want you to ask yourself that question, too: Where is your representative running the show, and where is she stepping back so you can be your true self? It might be time to fire her (or send her into a gentle retirement) so you can feel more at ease and able to be your human self.
Sending love,
Jenni
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach living in Central Oregon. My goal is to teach everyone who will listen that it’s possible to build a simple, stable, successful business that support your human needs first. Join my group coaching program, SUSTAIN, for more conversations like this (and a community of people who are all about the path less taken), and follow me on LinkedIn & Instagram.