Last year, I wrote a newsletter called “To Counsel or Console,” which is about how we can loosely be broken into two camps of people: Consolers (healers) and Counselors (truth-tellers). In short, you need to know your audience before you go looking for feedback and advice: Are you looking for reassurance, holding, and comfort, or are you looking for unvarnished truth?
I don’t want to do a retread here, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my newsletter from a few months ago called “You Have to Start Where You Are.” In it, I offered my best advice to anyone who wants to write, or podcast, or do anything with a content base—I hate the word “content”—who feels like they don’t have the following to justify it. In it, I mentioned that my friend Regina cautioned me not to be too much of a cheerleader because it’s hard.
Regina has been boot-strapping her business for eight years, a makeup business by and for Latina women. And she’s a little pissed, because she feels like she was duped by positive feedback—that too many of us cheered her decision to do the thing (“you go girl!”), and not enough of us told her the truth. That she would likely fail, that she would wipe herself out in all ways, and that it would mostly suck. On some level she knew this, of course, this is the reality for founders, but hearing boundless enthusiasm and people who pledged to support (and maybe never followed through to place an order), convinced her that she could be different. (And maybe she will be, she’s not giving up yet!)
Switching gears for a second, I’ve come to believe (because Courtney Smith insists) that I might not be an Enneagram Type 1, and that I’m likely an Enneagram Type 6. Where the core vice/animating emotion of Type 1’s is anger (they think they know the right way to do things, if only people would listen!), the core vice/animating emotion of Type 6’s is fear. This checks.
Now, Courtney also says the Enneagram illustrates how each type’s tendency is actually their way of contending with fear, which is perhaps the most animating emotion in all of our lives, whether we’re willing to acknowledgement this or not. What she means by this is that a Type 7 would bypass fear through looking for FUN and JOY, a Type 2 will attempt to fix fear through GIVING and HELPING, etc. But for a Type 6 like me, which is the most common type in the Enneagram, we don’t have another emotion to reach to when it comes to managing our fear and anxiety: In fact, there is no strategy for a six except to lean into the fear and anxiety as something that must be faced.
You can listen to my conversation with Courtney about the Enneagram here—she’s also co-leading a workshop with me at AOLRC May 17-19, though that won’t be Enneagram-specific.
Courtney convinced me of my “sixness” when she was telling me how sixes operate in business: Sixes are classified as the skeptic, but they’re generally also highly intuitive, which means that they function as a type of “negative psychic” in groups. Perhaps it’s our hypervigilance and attention to what could go wrong, but we’re the ones who raise flags about likely outcomes, often outcomes that are the opposite of the big dream (i.e., the more likely reality). My love language is telling people about everything that could—and likely will—go wrong. Sixes are wet blankets, resented and yet largely correct in our intuition. (Of course, this can backfire for people as it can easily come to look like you’re making situations turn out as you predict so that you can be “right.”)
It’s not very fun to be a six.
I’m sure many of you know the myth of the Trojan princess Cassandra: Enamored by her beauty, Apollo granted her the gift of prophecy; when she rejected him, he swiftly cursed her with a follow-up. She could and would predict the future, but nobody would believe her. People thought she was a lunatic, which is why she’s painted above, tearing out her hair in front of the burning city of Troy.
The story of Cassandra is a myth because it illustrates a collective pattern—we see it in stories like Henny Penny or Chicken Little, and less insistently from cultural critics and historians who know how to read the tea leaves. The red thread connecting us to myths across time is that we are the ones who don’t want to hear the truth. Often, we’ll cherry pick the information that affirms what we want to happen and a vision of a future that we like, and discard the rest.
Of course, we’re officially not supposed to know the future—to know the future would forestall free will. We’re supposed to swim in uncertainty and take risks because, of course, this is the grand adventure of life, and also, you never know.
Going back to Regina’s journey for a second, there are a few points to make. One, when it comes to women in business, where investment dollars are scarce (at the time I published On Our Best Behavior, 98% of investment dollars were going to men), the hype machine tends to be way ahead of the market reality. (I’ll save that commentary for another newsletter, but far too many of us support with our words, but not our wallets or our time.) But that’s where we owe it to each other to be honest. Regina acknowledges that several people warned her about high failure rates—but that they were loathe to discourage her. One man she sought out—who had sold a very successful brand—told her to avoid this journey at all costs, but then circled back around and told her to try anyway. (Like this man, I always have remorse when I “rain on peoples’ parades” and then typically go back to temper my advice, mute my negativity, and be “encouraging.”)
Obviously, discouraging and encouraging are the verbs related to courage, which is rooted in cor, or “heart.” And this is interesting to me, too, both in the intimation that we grant ourselves so much power by suggesting that we can affect someone’s sacred core—and that we’re also legitimately susceptible to this, available to be buffeted by other peoples’ enthusiasm, either into the realm of possible delusion or to find ourselves flattened.
You know what I’m going to say, though. Our hearts are our own, and ultimately, it’s our responsibility to develop our own internal G.P.S.—is this a yes for me, or is it a no? As Regina concedes from the beginning of her journey, “I definitely felt like I was in a flow state for the first few years. I took that as a positive sign. I was really engaged and activated by it. In hindsight maybe I just loved creating something or I had tricked myself into loving it in order to be willfully ignorant of all the risks involved. I will say if you think about the risks involved too deeply, you’ll never try.” So, no regrets. Priceless lessons learned and a future that can’t yet be foretold.
As a Type 6, I know how to see and think about risks—I can talk myself out of most things, and manage expectations well. But I still try, and try again, in ways that feel measured and safe to me. I’m not here for the moon shot—I’m here for the right next steps in a general direction that feels aligned. I’m sure I’m missing out on something “bigger,” something impossible to predict, but I prefer to stay tethered to the reality I can parse and see. That said, we desperately need the dreamers, those who are audacious enough to try to change the world.
To my fellow Cassandras, I see you. And wouldn’t want to be you! (I kid, but everyone wants to be able to tell the future until you realize that for many people, the fantasy is far more compelling than the truth.)
THE LATEST FROM THE PODCAST:
4/25: On telling the Truth with Nell Irvin Painter
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4/18: Hitting the road with poet Joy Sullivan
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4/11: The unbearable beams of love with Anne Lamott
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4/4: Understanding the Drama Triangle with Courtney Smith
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3/28: The collective power of teenage girls with Mattie Kahn
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3/21: Breaking family patterns with Vienna Pharaon
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3/14: The upsides of menopause with Lisa Mosconi, PhD
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3/7: On the scientific and the spiritual with Jeffrey Kripal, PhD
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2/29: Five things I’ve been thinking about (Solo Episode)
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2/22: The basics of Spiral Dynamics with Nicole Churchill
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THE LATEST POSTS:
Accepting the Dregs: When You Want the Bigger Cookie
On Beauty: Do You Feel Invisible?
The Cosmic Egg: We are Missing THE Story
Intergenerational Anxiety: Understanding which Part is Ours
One Thing We Need to Learn: A Few Notes on Andrew Huberman
You Have to Start Where You Are
Synchronicity & Fate: Signs are Signs, But They Still Require Discernment
PART 4: The Achilles Heel of Women
PART 3: Who Gets to Be an Expert?
PART 2: The Perception (and Reality) of Scarcity
PART 1: Ending the “Manel”—Doing this Requires Understanding Ourselves
My Baby-Thin Skin: The Shame of “Disappointing” People and Our Doubled Selves
What Size Are Your Shoes? And More Pointedly, is Your Life Governed by Fear?
If You Build It, They Will Come: Maybe?
Entering the Wilderness: Embracing All that’s Not Human
Accepting Responsibility: Growing Up is Hard
Full archive HERE
My New York Times bestselling book—On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good—is out now.
You and Taylor swift are aligned!!! I 1000% thought I was opening your newsletter and would read about the tortured poets department. 😆 but here we are. Lovely post!
So is Regina still in business and is she thriving or surviving