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Image management is exhausting. It also looks like you are fine.
Why we hide how bad things have got is a question I want to sit with today, gently and honestly, because most of the people I coach are not hiding one dramatic thing. They are quietly image managing a whole life, and they are very good at it, and it is very tiring.
Welcome to Episode 6 of Season 4 of Messy Midlife. Season 4 is Honesty, and this is the Friday closer of Week 2. On Monday I handed you the season engine, Fact, Belief, Faith. On Wednesday I sat down with Eric Robinson, and he gave us the wet-socks metaphor. Today I take that metaphor and sit with it for the weekend.
Our focus question for the week has been, what am I protecting by not telling myself the truth. In this closer I want to be very specific about one particular kind of protection: the pretending-you-are-fine kind. The image management kind. The version where the numbers are worse than the ones you are quoting yourself in your own head, or the drinking is more, or the conversation you keep meaning to have has been being not-had for longer than you would like to admit, or the money is tighter, or the marriage is quieter.
Here's the honest bit. Image management is not vanity. It is protection. It is protecting you from feeling how bad it has actually got, because feeling how bad it has actually got would ask something of you, and you are not sure you have got anything left to give. That is not weakness. That is a very reasonable protector doing exactly what it was hired to do.
Eric's wet-socks metaphor, which I use here again with his permission and full credit, is the softest possible way to notice how heavy the socks have become without turning it into a case against yourself. You did not put the socks on wrong. You have just been walking in them for a long time.
No new tool this week. This is Friday, and Friday is for landing what Week 2 has handed you, not adding to it. The invitation for the weekend is one small, honest recalibration. In private, quietly, name one number, one behaviour, or one situation where the sentence you have been running about it is a bit better than the truth.
On Monday, Week 3 opens with the Gentle Why, and on Wednesday I sit down with Anu Verma.
Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and keep coming home to who you really are.
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