660: How to Not Fit In

So some of us remember when Lady Gaga showed up in her meat dress and maybe you're like, no, Summer, I'm really resonating more to Billie Eilish right now because, you know, that green hair and those baggy clothes, she's so anti feminine stereotype. You know what we're talking about here, not just in, you know, famous people, talking about not fitting in and how beautiful it is to not fit in and how sometimes we don't even realize we're trying to fit in until we've been rejected. And then we realize, I know why I'm feeling this way. I was trying to fit into something that didn't ever fit me and now I can see that. So do I want to keep feeling rejected or can I say, oh, why the heck was I doing that? And that's really the backbone of today's episode of flow dreaming. Episode 660, how to Not Fit in.

Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope.

And joy and relief.

And that is what being aware of your Flow does.

It gives you a feeling of power.

Again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStravik and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming.

So for some reason, this episode was inspired recently by an episode I listened to of Amy Porterfield. Some of you know her, she is a business superstar and I happen to like her. I, I enjoy listening to her show. So shout out to Amy. Hey, Amy, have you ever listened to Flow Dreaming? Anyway, she was, she was talking about something way far off the line from business. She was talking about how she had moved through depression recently and just feeling very, very off her game as a result of moving and gaining some weight and so forth. And I was driving at the time. I go, some of you know that I had breast cancer, so I am getting my lymph constantly pumped out. I know this is kind of nasty little backstory here, but they removed all of my lymph on one side of my arm, so I have to drive every couple weeks to the hospital and get it taken care of for the rest of my life. What do you know? Fortunately, it's not that bad of a thing. It's kind of enjoyable. But I was driving and listening to this show and this thing popped in my head and I was like, why, why am I thinking about this now? Why is her sharing this with me, bringing up this whole other thing? So I'm going to Share it with you, and maybe I'll even figure out more about it just by talking about it. And maybe it'll make the leap and something in your life will pop up that you'll say, oh, Summer was talking about this. And then this brought up that, okay, we usually talk about manifesting here, we talk about flow dreaming here, but the other thing that this show has really developed into over the decades is talking about you. Your personal power, your self love, your acceptance, the. Your inner game, you know, and yeah, we use universal energy. We use flow dreaming to up that game. It's a really important tool. It's like the bat in baseball. You couldn't play it without it, but damn, there's the whole game. So I'm here driving, and I'm thinking about how in the last few years, I've systematically given up a lot of the business groups and masterminds that I had previously been part of. And at first it was just kind of natural. It's like, yeah, I'm not really getting much from this one anymore, and, oh, I'll look for another, and I'm sure. I'm sure I'll replace it with something else. And then I started noticing I didn't replace them. I made some attempts and I kind of let them go. And I'm looking at my life right now and realizing I don't think I'm part of any business groups or masterminds. This is a first in, you know, a decade. What. What. What's going on? And I realized how to not fit in. This was a theme for me. This was something that has moved from being a proud outsider to trying to fit into once again, not being a proud outsider, but being a accepting of myself outsider. So I think Amy's story brought up in me a bit of sadness as I came to this awareness of who I am and how I was trying to fit in. And I did not. And so I left. And I didn't even realize what I was doing until I'm looking back, reflecting a year or two years later. So I'll tell you a little about this, right little. Just more details. Hopefully your mind is spinning and growing with this. And I haven't actually shared this with anyone, so it may not be the easiest episode for me to be recording. But for a time, I was really in there with a lot of bigwigs and movers and shakers and, you know, the biggest people in the coaching industry. We were talking and flying off to exotic locations together and masterminding on islands and holing up Together in Air, Airbnbs. And they were coaching people. They were people in the world of business growth and development. They were people in the world of personal growth and development. And we would talk about, okay, here's how we're going to support each other. And you know, this is at the time there was, and it's still this way, but there was a lot of people involved in affiliate marketing. And I don't mean affiliate marketing. Like, you know, you embed an Amazon link on your website and when someone clicks it, Amazon gives you a few pennies for it. These are big affiliate marketers. These are people who are, you know, giving out $100,000 prizes to their best affiliate marketers and, you know, doing profit shares of 50% or more on the price of their programs. So we're talking people who are doing, you know, half million dollar splits and so forth. And I would show up to all the meetings and looked good, my numbers were good, I could play their game, baby. And you know what I started to realize after a few years? Traffic and funnel events. All you marketers, your ears are pricking up and you're like, oh yeah, I've been to those traffic and funnel events, which is basically where all the bros of bro marketing get together. And like you're surrounded by 3,000 bros in bro marketing. And yeah, this sounds a little sexist, but it really is referring to a kind of interaction that's very masculine based, it's very exchange based, and it's a very. You're either inside their group or outside their group. And if you're outside your group for any reason because you are a woman, because you are trans, because you have a disability, because you are too young, because you are too old, because you are too pretty, because whatever, I mean, any reason at all, right? If you are outside, you're not getting the opportunities that everybody else is getting there. And I started to see how I'd come back from these groups feeling like, woo, yeah, this is great. I got all these wonderful ideas, but I didn't partner with anybody. I didn't mesh with them, I didn't put together any affiliate relationships. Nobody approached me, nobody asked, and I kind of didn't ask them. What it took me years to see was I wanted to be in this group because it seemed like everybody in my field in personal growth and coaching was there and they were in the spotlight and I want my flow dreaming work to be in the world in the same way. But the little, you know, last kid not asked to the dance, that was me coming Home from these. And after all of the new ideas kind of wore off and I did all the things that I could do solo on my own and with my own team, you know, my own flow dreaming team, it ended up being like no one called me in between our so called tight knit circle. It was not, it was a lot of surfacy exchanges. And I realized, these are not my friends. Oh my God, these are not my friends. What am I doing here? And I understood I'm not fitting in. Should I try to fit in? Should I try to be a different summer? Should I go in and do what they're doing? Should I make myself? Or should I say, it's okay, baby, don't worry about it, you've got your own way, run with it. So gradually I let go of them, pretty much all of them. And I look through my contact list and it's. I got to tell you guys, it's pretty freaking amazing, right? I've been in this field for 20 some years, but as far as forming these allies and relationships, the people that I look to and notice that like I feel like them, they're other solo flyers like me. Isn't that odd? And solo flyers tend not to get together with other solo flyers because we're all solo flying. This really made me aware that there is an art to not fitting in. And it really boils down to you understanding what is working for you. Are you feeling in need? Are you feeling grief? Are you feeling outcast because you're trying to push yourself into a shape or a place or people that aren't you? And feeling like you're missing out because you can't do it. It's like fomo, you know, on drugs. It's like crazy. Are you doing it? Are you doing it in your friend circles? I'm using business as my example. But you know, our friends, all their gosh darn gorgeous Instagram posts, etc. Families, workplaces, are you trying to fit in? And what happens if you just say, I don't, I don't, I don't. Here's where all this brought me. Now that I'm able to look at this with a bit more reflection. You know, when you're not in things, you can see them. Sometimes you're not even sure when the things you were in stop. Takes a little while to get caught up. Oh yeah, that's been gone a while. Ooh, now I see it like this. I realized that the people in my life are usually there in ones or twos, meaning I have a few special People, they've been with me for a long time. Some of them not when we talk. We share openly and freely. We don't usually put together money making exchanges with each other because that's not the value of what we share. And any of my friends who have been on a call and we've talked, and I say what's going on in your business? And then I share what's going on in mine. And. And it's just. It's freely given. It's, you know, $20,000 worth of information we're exchanging. But we don't. Because that's not how we do it. We just don't do it that way. And they often aren't necessarily friends with this whole big group who are all, like, shaking each other's hands and patting each other's backs. No, we're all just flying on our own with our own flocks and our own groups and our own teams. And we come together, we split apart, we run into each other again, and we split apart. It's a whole different ballgame, a whole different way of doing things. It's really interesting. I also noticed that I talk a lot about the power of community. And what I'm saying can maybe make you scratch your head and say, summer, you're always saying, great people flow together and birds of a feather flock together, and the people you hang out with are who you become more like. And you know what? That is true 100%. I consider my flow dreaming family to be closer to me than any of those marketing groups, business people, places, et cetera, personal growth, big wig groups, and so forth. Any of them. My flow dreaming family are the people who you. You're my flow dreaming family. You're listening to me. You're taking in information. We're exploring ideas together and topics like, this is our jam, you know, this is what we like to. I like sitting here right now talking about this with you, even though it makes me feel vulnerable and like I could be judged or make you. Maybe you're thinking I'm being judgy, right? It's bringing up a lot of stuff in me. But you're the people I like to talk to about this because I know you're gonna take it in and reflect it back to me in a way that's loving, because we are similar. My flow dreaming family, I've been building for 17 years. And that's a family in hindsight, that I realized I have never abandoned, I never stepped out of them. They grow and they grow and they expand every single year, and some of you swirl in and then you leave for a few years and then you come back in again. I had one of my beautiful private clients do that with me just in the last few days. I'm like, where you been the last couple years? She said, I've been off growing, like, cool, let's come on back. See, I realize that the people I am fitting in with are the people who are like me. And I wanted me to be something different, to fit in with some other supposed glamorous y group. And I realized I'm not. I'm not that group. So I will continue to grow my flow, dreaming the way that I want to grow it. A lot of the things I do fly in the face of all the markety stuff that's going on out there. But it's always been that way. I've seen this now. Back in the day, authors had to tour. You know, back in my days at Hay House, everybody who was an author, they were on the road, they were on stages, they were given seminars. They were, you know, their frequent flyer miles were like over the moon. And I remember even back then saying, I can't do that. They're really successful. I mean, they're really reaching people and creating change and creating a movement around their work. But I can't do that. I've got a three year old at home. I want to be there for her. How can I be different? And that's why I started doing webinars back in 2005, before anybody knew what a webinar was, I was doing my own thing. And I've continued to do my own thing even though, like a magnet, some of these bigger things have pulled me toward them and into them over the years. And eventually I realized we don't stay magnetized because I've learned how not to fit and be okay with that, to recognize that I don't fit. And finally, maybe finally to get to this place of. And it's okay that I don't fit. Because here's what I'm realizing even as I talk to you, there is a fear of not fitting. If I don't fit, I won't be a success. I won't be in doing the right things with the right people. I won't be riding the rising wave. I won't be. I won't be. It's fear. And that's the fear that holds me back from even more. Pursuing my own way, pursuing my own route. I had friends a couple years ago, some of these friends I'm talking About the ones where I make one on one relationships with and we are just good to each other and we share with each other. These are business relationships, personal relationships, relationships with certain of my students who are friends, et cetera. I was talking with a gal a few years ago, really big coach, really big in her work. And she said, yeah, I shut down all of my group programs. And this is right when group programs were peaking. I'm like, what, what, what? Everybody's talking about the value of scale. And you reach more people this way because your time is valuable. And eventually you end up with not enough time to teach all the people you want to teach. So you have to te group program. And she said, nah. And I thought, oh, gosh, I wonder if she's doing okay.

Maybe she can't do a group.

Maybe there's a problem, you know? And I went into that in my thinking instead of what I'm seeing now, which is I prefer working one on one with people. That's my gig. That's my thing. That's my sweet spot. That's my genius zone. Why would I do a group program just because everyone says I should? Why do I. Why should I scale? I mean, really, just because everyone says to scale? Who are they? They're all just lemmings following the other lemmings. I don't want to scale. I want to work one on one with people that I know will change, that I know will transform. Because we're going to make it happen. I love that I see what she's getting at. Like, I get it. I'm seeing it. She chose not to fit in because she was fitting herself. I choose not to fit in because I'm fitting myself. And the real key is that I keep my feelings about myself. Loving, strong, faithful and trusting. And maybe that's a key right there. Faithful. Keep my feelings faithful. It's easy to lose that faithfulness to myself. We all talk about the value of faith, but sometimes you can be drawn to other things. And you realize, because I lost faith in my own knowing, my own beat of my own drum. So I'm reminding myself more and more, what is my drum sound like? Do I know if it'll work if I don't have a whole bunch of people, you know, tooting their party horns around me, telling me this is what everyone's doing. See, when people are doing that, it gives you a false sense of security. Well, it's working for them. It'll work for me. Who here has signed up for a program where somebody said it's done for you. It worked for me. It'll work for you. And it didn't work for you. You know why? Because wasn't going to work for you. Worked for them. What is a thing inside you that's just you? Can you stay faithful to it? Can you have the trust in it? So going forward, I am working on trusting myself to move in new directions. Trusting myself. I changed up my me school program completely after almost a decade. Eight years of teaching it. I've written more books. I'm exploring some new and more nuanced areas about personal growth. Flow dreaming is the core, as always. But the book I just finished, I think I mentioned flow dreaming in it three times because I'm really looking at the other kinds of growth, the stuff that I've been, you know, digging into these last few years. So I'm going to trust myself. I'm going to see where I flow, where my life takes me, where my interests take me, where my work takes me, how that looks in the future. Expansiveness of flow dreaming or the work I do with clients. Or maybe it'll be group programs, maybe it'll just be series of small classes. Maybe it'll be my one on ones. I'm gonna find out. I want to know what fits. Because one thing I do know right now very clearly is what does not. I will never be throwing 25,000 bucks again off on some mastermind that I'll walk away from saying I didn't make one deep acquaintance. Huh? What was I thinking? What was I thinking? So I hope this gets you thinking. I'm not even sure if I know what the theme I mean it's called how not to fit in but it's a theme of maybe permission being okay with the fact that you don't fit or don't want to fit and that it's okay not to fit and that you can still be successful not fitting and. Or that the people you do fit with, they're there too. They just may not be the people you think you should be fitting with. Right? I fit with you. I fit with my friends, I fit with my family. I fit with fellow writers. I fit with people who have the same kind of, I don't know, balanced way of looking at life and co creation that I do. You can tell I'm like a really practical sounding person because I am. I spend a great deal of my day like tinkering with my website and writing and doing technical things like there's a lot in me super grounded. But then there's the Other part that says, why did I have cancer? How did I get myself through that? Who do I want to be in these experiences? How do I want to talk to my future and set up my life and my flow? Where do I want things to get brighter and more juicy and beautiful? What do I have to do toward that? It's an interesting mix. It doesn't fit a lot of people. You may be the same way, especially if you've listened to more than like five or six of these episodes already. I'm gonna put money down right now that you're the same way, and that is good. So stop berating yourself for the places and the people and the things that you've left. Stop berating yourself and wondering if there's something wrong with you because you didn't figure it out or you didn't make it or it didn't work out for you the same it worked for everyone else. It may not. They weren't your people. They weren't your tribe. It's okay. It's okay. And when you do want more community and more tribe, go make some new ones. Maybe you'll fit, maybe you won't. I'm not telling you to be a loner, by the way. Kind of the opposite. I'm telling you find where you fit. Don't make yourself fit. It's a big, big difference. And the chances are good right now you're already finding where you fit. It's already there. It's seated in your life. I am finding where I fit. And it feels really good. It feels a little scary and nerve wracking, but it feels good. Especially when I realized all the things that I will no longer be doing, I just went, oh, wow, now that's off the table for me. Now what? You know, when you have that kind of revelation inside yourself, Ooh, now what? Now I know what I will no longer not be doing, not be part of, not be in. Ooh. That's not to say I'll never join another, you know, marketing group, but they're gonna have to be some damn special something damn special about something that really fits. Where I walk in and I feel like, oh, my God, we see the same, I love you, I adore you. You want to. What do you want to do together? How do you want to do it right? It's got to be spot on. Spot on. So I'm going to leave you with this. It's interesting because I feel like the mood of the end of this episode is very not retrospective, introspective. It's big, it's deep, it's stirring. It will probably continue in your mind, in your being, even after I close up this episode today. I didn't give you the answer, but I gave you a direction and I gave you permission and I think that's the first thing we all need. So with that, the last thing, I always give you a little reference to something@flow dreaming.com that can help you in this case. I don't know. I don't have a flow dream for all of us odd ducks. Maybe I ought to make one Love myself as I am. Maybe that's the good playlist. Love myself on the inside. Love my body, love the way I show up on the outside. That's a good one always. Or maybe it's just a call to action saying if Flow Dreaming feels your thing, reach out to me, email me. I take in private clients and people all the time and we explore just like this. Except very, very personalized and deep inside of you. That's it. All right you guys, I love you. Thank you for bearing with me through this one as I kind of worked some stuff out on air with you. Frightening, but I felt called. I mean I had to. So go find out what it provokes in you and let's just kinda keep this ball rolling until next time.

I'll talk to you later. Hi friends, if you enjoyed this episode.

Then I'd like you to consider what having private mentoring with me would be like. You see, I accept a small number.

Of people each year for private coaching. The question is, what do you want to make? Who do you want to become? We can program and shape any area of yourself or your life. Imagine right now what you would be doing if you had no fear. Imagine how your life would look if there were no patterns and blocks repeatedly tripping you up. Imagine if you were fully healed in your heart, body and mind. Imagine if you also had a map to your success and you could follow it with ease and flow. Well, I look into you and into your life and I feel where you're going and know where the road is open and where it's blocked. I help you make the very best decisions based on what's coming up for you. I'll also show you exactly what I do day to day to succeed in my personal and business life. And we can create a copycat plan for you. So if you're game, you can fill out an application on my website for private coaching. Just go to flowdreaming.com coaching and then let's talk. I mean, the time to go for it is now. So let's just get this started. Just reach out to me at my.

Website, flowdreaming.com and I'll get right back with you.