Why Being Afraid To Cross the Street Changed My Life
Blog post by Heidi Gustafson
Mindset & Transformation Coach
Mastering Midlife with Heidi is dedicated to helping middle-aged women live their lives with confidence and joy, instead of merely surviving.
It was just three years ago, but ooohhh, so much can change in three years because of one instant!
It was April 2019 in Ubud, Bali. I was on a yoga retreat (my first) and was 56 years old. Old enough to know how to cross a street alone.
The hotel we were staying at was in the city center of Ubud and was on a very busy, one-way street. If you’ve been to Ubud, you know that it’s a bustling city with a lot of people and therefore a lot of traffic. Their streets are narrow and rough, so for convenience, many locals drive motorbikes. The roads are often jammed with cars and trucks and lots of these motorbikes… and gobs of people. It’s a far cry from the farm life I grew up in. The worst traffic jam I saw as a young girl was when someone’s cows or sheep would get out and be meandering down the gravel road.
Anyway, it’s my first day in this bustling foreign city and I needed to exchange money from US dollars to their rupiah… and the exchange store was across this hectic street. Did I mention the motorbike-driving locals paid little attention to the one-way traffic? They would sometimes go the opposite direction, weaving in and out of traffic, causing other vehicles to swerve to miss them. And sometimes to avoid being hit themselves, the motorbikes would drive on the sidewalks.
Oh, yes, and did I mention that we were at a T-intersection where other traffic is merging into this one-way street… and there’s no traffic light? My destination was across the street and the thought of crossing it scared me. So I did what I thought was a very logical thing.
I asked the retreat leader to have a local Balinese person go with me across the street. They know the ropes of crossing the busy roads AND exchanging money, so it would be killing two birds with one stone. Makes logical sense, right?
Yanta was the man chosen for the job. He got me safely through the traffic and assisted me in getting money exchanged. Mission accomplished!
She said, “Do you wanna know what I heard when you asked for someone to help you across the street?”
(Side note: In my defense, I did NOT ask to be helped across the street. I’m 56, not 86! Sheesh! On 2nd thought, in her defense, maybe I did seem like I needed help.)
Not ready for the impact of what she was going to tell me, I replied that I’d love to know what she heard.
She said four words that changed my life! “You don’t feel seen.”
Just like what happened every time I fell backwards off the swingset when I was a little girl, the wind was knocked right out of me. Whoosh… gone.
I knew it was true. I didn’t feel seen. I felt so small in this world that I thought I would be taken out when I crossed the street and worse yet…
I realized I had lived most of my 56 years that way.
The questions started going through my head:
What kept me from thinking I could put my hand out in a way to signal people to stop?
Other people crossed this street and I never once saw anyone come close to being injured. What made me think that I was different and invisible?
How long had I been living with this belief of not feeling seen? And what was it costing me to live this way?
Here are some things I discovered:
I realized that instead of doing things to be seen (or at least feel seen), my coping mechanism when I was young became to take myself out of the equation first.
It was a safety move.
I played small and shrunk so that I would actually not stand out, and therefore would not risk being hurt.
This safety play developed partially because of the belief that girls should be nice. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”
A nice person does not put herself first because that’s selfish.
A nice person is not proud because that’s arrogance.
A nice person doesn’t say no because… well, because that would mean she’s a bitch.
These were my thoughts! And I thought they were the truth!
This striving to always be nice led me to believe there were “right” and “wrong” things to say and do, but I didn’t have that rule book. I became terrified of saying or doing something wrong… of disappointing someone - my parents, my teachers, my friends. And so I played small and didn’t “allow” myself to be wrong. I imagined being wrong or displeasing someone would mean the end of the world… or at the least, the end of that person liking or loving me.
I became a people-pleasing, procrastinating perfectionist.
People-pleasers never want to hurt anyone or rock the boat. They feel as if everyone’s needs and feelings take priority over theirs. If I was nice and agreed with everyone, if I didn’t speak up or say no, if I never showed that I was hurt, then all would be right with the world and people would continue to like me. So that’s what I did. I went along with everything, even if I felt yucky inside. I never spoke up for myself. I never disagreed. I never set boundaries.
And from that stemmed perfectionism.
I thought if I could do things perfectly (like I thought everyone else already was), there was no chance I could get something wrong and risk losing friendship or love.
Perfectionism naturally led to procrastination because when I was unable to get things right (according to whose standards, I have no idea), I felt defeated. “If you can’t do it perfectly, don’t do it at all” became my silent mantra.
In retrospect, I was a puppet, moving and reacting to others in the way I thought they wanted me to. I didn’t develop a sense of self.
I was just the ‘self’ that others told me to be or implied I should be. The bottom line was that I didn’t even see me!
I had lived 56 years as if I didn’t have the right to show up and I had no idea who I was!
But I do now!
I have my own ideas. I speak up. I set boundaries. I mess sh*t up, and then I learn and grow from it.
I know now that not only will the world not end and I won’t lose people’s love, but that the world is actually a better place and I receive unconditional love when I create that for myself first.
I see me.
“I AM SEEN.”
Three words that changed my life!
Are you looking to live a more empowered, joyous life?
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This is for you if:
→ You’re ready to stop stalling or sabotaging your own progress
→ You want support and accountability to help you create change
→ You’re ready to go from maintaining to living a life of abundance
→ You want to be proud of and love the woman you see in the mirror
→ You’re ready to take action and make shifts in your life