The worst thing someone could say to me

TheWorstThing

I’ve always said that if I have a super-power it’s that I’m really, really hard to offend. But this line:

‘You just seem to have the perfect life don’t you?’

It’s one that tends to get to me.

I hate the thought of someone thinking my life is ‘perfect’ because I feel it means I’ve not been ‘real’ enough in my communications with people. That I’ve fallen in the trap of only ever sharing the bright and shiny while sweeping the not-so-bright-and-shiny under the rug.

So what I do is go out of my way to share the ways my life isn’t perfect while underplaying the stuff that’s going really well.

Take this week for instance. It’s been pretty spectacular. Yet when I wrote the first draft of this post I was emphasising the ‘bad’ stuff. (The gastro that hit with great ferocity on Monday morning, the fact that the Amazon US kindle sales for Practical Perfection didn’t hit the heights they needed to get the blessed algorithm working for me.) And completely discounting the good.

I caught myself doing it and asked on Facebook whether anyone else does it. I took away a lot of things from that conversation, way too many to list here, but here is the main one:

Annette said, ‘Stop hiding your joy!! Joyful and smug are not synonyms!!!!’

Here’s an uncomfortable truth. There was a time in my life where I was smug about my happiness.

I used to think the equation was pretty simple: work hard = good things come your way, and you deserve all those good things. I’ve since become very uncomfortable with the idea of ‘deserving’ because I now know that, often, hard work by itself is not enough. You also need a big dose of luck + the support of others.

This week needed both those elements in order to deliver some stuff that’s made me supremely joyful and grateful. Stuff I almost didn’t share with you because I was scared I would come across as smug:

  • Practical Perfection launched with a blog post on my dear friend Woogsworld’s site.
  • Kevin Kruse not only gave it an amazing review on Forbes.com (Yes! Forbes!), he showed that he just ‘got’ what I was trying to communicate in the Overwhelm section of the book.
  • In the Amazon Australia store, Practical Perfection is sitting at #1 in one of its categories. (Unfortunately, the Amazon US store is where it really needs to be doing that … but still. I’ll take it!)
  • Despite having gastro in the wee hours of Monday morning, I was able to recover in time (thanks Alexx!) to record my first podcast interview about the book with Michaela and Warrick.
  • I’ve already received some amazing emails from readers letting me know how it’s impacted their lives.
  • Jackrabbit.fm, the podcast network that Let It Be and Straight and Curly are part of, caught the eye of the iTunes editor and he/she put both podcasts front and centre on the first page of iTunes!
  • I asked my writerly and bloggy friends for help in spreading the word about Practical Perfection, and they responded in incredibly humbling fashion.

So, yes, as far as ‘weeks in my life’ go, that was pretty special.

I’m currently experiencing a warm glow of satisfaction and I’m going to spend the weekend doing something Brooke mentions a lot in our podcasts: I’m going to ‘sit with it’ for a while. And just enjoy it.

(And I hope you guys reading here will too. Because, truly, none of it would have happened if not for you.)