Wrapping up “Feedback February” with this:

First, you do the heart-work. You hunt for humility. You excavate for equity. You mine for maturity. You peel back the layers of justifications and rationalizations and excuses, and you get to the core of what holds you back from engaging in the exchange of feedback. You choose the challenge.

Then, you do the do-work. You pursue the practice. You opt for opportunities. You look for learning. You, when rubber hits the road and you find yourself at the fork – one way easy, heading into denial and defensiveness and the other, much harder, heading toward self-awareness and enlightenment – again, you choose the challenge.

As you do the work, you find the work gets do-ier. Its payoff, reciprocal. Its action, repeatable. Its participation, freeing. You find this deeply challenging work **actually** confidence building. Wisdom developing. Boundary honing. Discernment sharpening. 

Not all feedback may be accurate, but it IS always relevant. Because whenever, LITERALLY 100% OF THE TIME (imo), you choose to engage in its exchange, you get to practice all of the above. So often we fear feedback because we think it will do the opposite of this. And don’t get me wrong – there are people who engage in feedback VERY poorly because they are unable and unwilling to choose the challenge which can cause significant pain, yet no matter, you have the choice to choose it. 

Here’s the What

In all that I endure, just as much as all that I celebrate, here is what I believe it boils down to: “Nothing is ever wasted.” This little 4-letter phrase has changed my entire everything.

And Here’s the Why

As I stepped (um, no…as I was violently hurled) into the abyss of cancer, I remember one night vividly: I was drowning in the bottomless ocean of bilateral mastectomy grief and fearing the imminent drip, drip, drip of the poison that is chemo, and words appeared behind my swollen, sad, bloodshot, squeezed-shut, heading-towards-denial, eyelids: “God wastes nothing. Nor will I.”

“God wastes nothing. Nor will I.”

-me

And then I knew. This suffering means something. It matters. In all of its REAL, it is purposed. This realization doesn’t make cancer easier. God no. It does make it relevant. And when something is made relevant, denial is impossible. And when denial can’t distract, everything has value.

Today, I wish that for you. I wish for you to be open to all feedback (wherever you choose to allow it to come from) and I wish for you to believe it is *all* relevant. Your efforts will not be wasted.

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