I learnt a new word today: zoochosis.
It’s the word for the dysfunctions that happen when an animal is taken out of its natural environment, put in a cage, and tries to function outside of an environment that’s anything like what it was designed for.
The animal gets anxious. Overwhelmed. Stressed. Starts acting strangely. Trying to find fulfilment in strange ways.
It makes me think of us humans in the modern world we live in.
Roads and cars to go and see people that we know and love.
Hooked on screens.
Chemicals in our foods or cosmetics.
Expectations that we work 9–5, maybe much longer.
And all of it with this sense that, if I don’t meet all the expectations of that world, of myself in that world…
…there is something wrong with me.
Maybe I don’t have enough willpower, enough self-discipline.
Maybe it’s a brain thing.
We label it as ADHD when we can’t function or keep up with the demands of the world we are in today.
What if what we are seeing is nothing more than zoochosis?
We’re trapped in this cage that we’re not designed for.
We’ve built a world that’s not fit for human consumption.
And anyone who’s sensitive enough to notice, to feel how it’s not serving them—we label them as defective.
But when so many people are suffering at the game…
When do we look at the rules of the game?
Is this really the game we want to be playing?
I’ve also been thinking today about the talk that I want to give at MicroConf in Reykjavik in September.
I had a session with a speaking coach today where I wanted to narrow down the kind of talk I want to give and the topic.
What I knew straight away was I want to speak about something personal.
It’s a conference for SaaS founders, but I don’t want to give a talk that’s heavily about SaaS, or marketing, or tactics. I want to give a talk that’s more human.
And at the same time… she asked whether I wanted to give a talk that’s motivational (a “I did it and you can do it too”), and that really didn’t sit right for me. There’s nothing to take away from that.
I do want to be inspirational, but in a more subtle yet more concrete way. I want to share a story that helps people to feel less alone in what they’re going through.
Maybe I wasn’t consciously aware of it for most of my life, but all my behaviour was coming from this deep down place of:
I feel broken in some way.
There’s a way that I have to show up in the world in order to fit in, in order to be liked, in order to succeed.
I don’t know what the rules of that game are, everyone else seems to know the rules except me.
My life is trying to figure out the rules and play by them, even though maybe they’re pretty different than how I would authentically show up. But to authentically show up was not safe.
If I’m totally myself, I’ll be laughed at. I’ll be teased. I’ll be ridiculed or be bullied. I won’t be welcome.
That was my lived experience.
And over many years of self-discovery, and experimentation, and adventure, what I’ve come to learn is… I’m not even slightly broken. No one is.
Imperfect? Absolutely.
But every way that I’m showing up in the world, every way any person is showing up in the world, is by incredible divine design as a way to feel safe, as an attempt to access safety, joy, love, peace, connection.
This is universal.
No human can escape this.
We are all wired to move towards those things.
And sometimes the scripts that we use to keep us safe in that way aren’t serving us anymore, and maybe we describe that as broken.
It’s not broken.
It’s working entirely to spec.
And we get to decide whether we want to update the spec.
But to beat myself up for showing up in some way, for not being good enough, for not succeeding… that’s just a script too.
*
So my speaking coach had me pick out a fairly arbitrary story from while I was running my last SaaS company, and to riff for 30 seconds on what do I want my audience to know?
And then to riff for 60 seconds on an example—story, feelings—going into a moment, reliving it, that illustrates what I want my audience to know.
And then what the takeaway is from that. The why am I telling you this?
And we did that again for a handful of other arbitrary moments from when I was building RightMessage.
The first thing that was cool about this was - holy shit. I went from having zero potential talks to give to having infinite.
Every seemingly mundane moment, when shared vulnerably, when shared in a way that I’m connecting into reliving it and then making meaning at the end, is in itself an outstanding 10-minute talk.
So I went from having zero things to talk about to having infinite.
The second thing that stood out to me is that every time I did this, the meaning I was making from the seemingly unrelated stories was approximately the same.
They all circled back to this idea of the power of sharing the scary thing, saying the vulnerable thing, owning what I want or need in a situation, and the shame around having those feelings or owning those things that prevents us from speaking out in the first place.
Every one of the stories seemed to land on that meaning, that takeaway.
So there’s something there.
And the third thing that stood out to me is how triggering I found it to play this exercise.
Most life stories that you ask me about, I’ll happily share an anecdote, a story that comes to mind.
And then anything to do with my work, I tense up. I feel uncomfortable talking about what happened.
Even introducing myself (“what do you do for work?”) - I find it to be an uncomfortable question to answer.
Why?
I’m still sitting in that question, but part of the answer is that I’m trying to find a right answer. I’m trying to find something that sounds successful.
There’s shame around those times where I felt out of control while we were building. Where I didn’t like a direction that we were going but I didn’t have the confidence to speak up.
By so many measures, that company was incredibly successful.
And yet, of course, there were failures along the way.
And I feel uncomfortable acknowledging that.
In a broad way I don’t. I’ll happily talk about the fact there were failures. But when we drill down into a specific moment… I worry that I wasn’t showing up at my full potential.
Or worse: I feel like I was showing up at my full potential and my full potential was not good enough.
And that shame is why I feel so uncomfortable relaying these work stories.
And one thing I know so well by now is that if I’m feeling something and I think I’m the only one feeling it, I’m absolutely not.
And so if I’m feeling this discomfort around some of these stories that were happening when I was building that company, there are other people who can relate to that.
And that’s why those are exactly the stories for me to tell on that stage.
I can’t stand on a stage, or in a coaching call, or a webinar, and tell people to reveal more of themselves because they’re not broken if I’m not revealing myself because of that same shame.
This is the work.
This is the play.
This is the healing.
This is what I can do for myself, and this is what I can do for the world, for others.
And as much as it feels uncomfortable… I let myself feel it, and it also feels incredible.
I’m proud to do this work.
