00:00 

This is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 36, "Belonging and Fitting In." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, well, hey there. How are you today? I hope that life is fitting together for you. I hope that you are continuing on your path of growth and just continuing to be in a better and a better place all the time. I know that I am, and I just could not be happier with where I am and where I'm going. Could I be better? For sure. Could I make better choices? But you know what? I'm on a good path. I'm headed to a good place, and I'm getting better and stronger every day, and I love that. That makes life all worth living for me, because growth equals happiness in my mind, and I love that. 

00:58 

Alright, so today we are going to be talking about the concepts of belonging and fitting in. So, if you've listened to a lot of my podcasts, you know that I love Brene Brown, because right after my divorce, I was introduced to her work, and so much of what she teaches has helped me to heal and get to a better place. I'm so grateful for her work and her research. In her book Daring Greatly, Brene talks about the differences between belonging and fitting in, and I just keep thinking about what a shift in thinking took place in my mind when I started seeing those two things as different and understanding them better. And I feel these concepts are so important for us as individuals that I want to share them with you, because so much of what I'm sharing today is based off of Brene's work. I want to make sure that you're aware of that. Now, not everything, but a lot of the basic concepts. 

01:54 

So, I love Brene Brown's explanation of belonging versus fitting in, so this is a quote from her book, Daring Greatly: "fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be in order to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are, it requires us to be who we are." Great quote, right? I love the concept that fitting in means that I look at a purely superficial level, I would look at a group and see the kind of clothes that they're wearing and I would wear those same kind of clothes, right? 

02:39 

Whereas belonging would mean that I don't change what I'm wearing, I show up as is. And so this place of belonging, and I like to think of it as well as a family very often is a place where you just belong. They know your strengths, they know their weaknesses, they know what you look like without makeup, and they just accept you and embrace you even when you're dancing in the kitchen and when you're singing off key at the top of your lungs to your favorite song. It's just a place where you can be you and be accepted. Whereas very often in groups outside of our home, we do have groups that we belong, but very often new groups, especially we may not feel like we belong, and we feel like we have to change who we are. 

03:28 

So I think that all of us can relate at some level to both fitting in and belonging. I have a very clear recollection of one specific time, standing on the outskirts of a group of teachers from my school and wanting to join in the conversation and be a part of them, but it seemed impossible. There was no breaking into that close-knit group of teachers who already seem to have all of their stories and all of their inside jokes and all of their things going on. And at that point, nobody seemed to care if I was there or not, and no one even seemed to see me. And that can be a lonely place, standing in a group of people that I should have a lot in common with, but feeling like a stranger. And if a person in this type of a situation is desperate for belonging enough, I guess at this place it would be fitting in, right? If they're desperate to be seen enough, they can find themselves doing some pretty harsh things to try and fit in with this group, especially if they feel like being part of this group is important for their self-esteem, which, side note, as we talked about last time, just will not happen. This would be an external source rather than an internal one, and external sources do not build our self-esteem, only internal sources build  our self-esteem. 

04:49 

So, back on track, this is one reason why we stress about our teenagers so much, because most of them are insecure, they're uncomfortable in social situations, and they're desperate to have friends who will accept them. And as such, they are often willing to become who they need to be in order to be accepted into a group. To fit in with one group, they'll start doing drugs. To fit in with another, they may start having sex or using horrible language or being a mean girl, right? It's all about changing their identity to become what others think they should become, and then they have an in. Then they're part of the group they used to stand outside of. But now, they're no longer themselves, they're now just a replica of the group. They've become what the group is and what the group values. 

05:43 

Belonging, however, is a very different story. Brené says it's about being who we are and being accepted for it. I have a great friend from when I went to Brigham Young University who worked at the bowling alley with me and when we would get off late at night, like, 11 or 11:30, I don't remember the exact time, but we would walk across campus late at night heading home. We both lived on the south side of campus and we would be singing at the top of our lungs" oh, when the saints come marching in." We used to just belt that out and we could completely be ourselves with each other and knew that we were accepted in all of our strangeness and that we were loved for it. There was no pretense or changing our opinions or our clothes in order to be friends what a liberating friendship that was. 

06:17 

And we got together a few years ago and still just had a very open and honest conversation. It was a few years ago, right before it was like right before my divorce, right before I filed, and and we had an open conversation about that and I love that we could do that even many many years later as I've grown older. I find that I seek out friendships where I belong and I'm not willing to sacrifice myself on the altar, so to speak, just to fit in. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't still times that I find myself on the fringes with a longing to kind of be in the thick of something fun going on. But I don't care so much anymore because I've learned that if I don't fit in, if I don't belong, I don't want to be there anyway. It cramps my style and I don't much like being cramped. 

06:17 

So how do we help our teenagers, even our adult children sometimes, understand the feeling of belonging and not have them feeling like they have to find a place to fit in? So one of the easiest ways to answer that is to listen to what the teens in Brene Brown's study had to say about not belonging at home. Now we think that home is the one place that we really should belong and yet listen to the examples from her study that teenagers gave of how they did not belong at home. These are fascinating and a little bit ouchie sometimes. Not living up to your parents expectations. Another one, not being as cool or popular as your parents want you to be. Not being as smart as your parents. Not being good at the same things your parents were good at. Your parents being embarrassed because you don't have enough friends or you're not an athlete or a cheerleader. Your parents not liking who you are and what you like to do. And the last one, when your parents don't pay attention to your life. 

08:36 

Oh, do you see any of that in you? Do you see any of that in the way that you interact with your kids and how you treat your kids and the expectations you might have for your children or the people around you? These expectations assume the child will be a certain way rather than accepting the child for who they are. And to me, this sounds like parents who are still struggling with fitting in themselves rather than being in a place of belonging. So maybe raising children who feel like they belong is easier for parents who already feel like they belong, who are already comfortable in their own skin. 

09:14 

I heard psychologist John Lund, he's a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a talk I was listening to once, talk about parenting in these terms. And this is a paraphrase because it's been probably eight or nine years since I heard this. But the basic idea that stuck in my head was, what if as our children got older, our only responsibility was to set a good example for them and love them unconditionally? How would our relationships with them change? And those questions have caused me a lot of introspection over the years. Really, if I just live the best life that I can and love my children to the point of total acceptance and belonging, how would they change? It's a good question, how would they change? Next question, how would I change? What about how would our relationship change? Belonging is a place that makes us feel safe and confident. Belonging gives us the ability to move out into the world in search of our God-given purpose. Belonging is a  safe place to land when we inevitably fall. Belonging gives us the courage to get back up and give it another go. 

10:41 

So again, Brene Brown's research, she interviewed all these teenagers and here's what some teenagers said about places where they belong and I thought coming from teenagers I was just blown away by some of the insight, but I think they're way smarter than sometimes we give them credit for. So the first one: "belonging is being somewhere where you want to be and they want you." Another one: "belonging is being accepted for you," and the last one" I get to be me if I belong." Again, those were all taken from Brene Brown's book "Daring Greatly." 

11:16 

So depending on our background it can be difficult to create an environment where our teenagers feel like they belong. Very often we are parenting from our primal brain, right? We're parenting from this place where we just are not making conscious, intentional decisions. We're doing what comes naturally because that's how we were raised. And if you were raised in a place of needing to feel like you were always fitting in and that you couldn't just be yourself. I love that last one that I just read of her examples, "I get to be me if I belong." If you were raised in a place where you didn't get to be you, that's most likely going to be your default parenting. You're going to parent the same way. So unless you've done a lot of work on that and you were raised that way, I would take a look at that and just see am I doing the same thing or have I consciously or unconsciously worked that out. 

12:18 

And you know what? I find that I have a couple of kids that I can just have frank discussions with and say, "hey, how do you feel about this? Do you feel like I've created a place where you are accepted for you?" I could have that discussion with a few of my kids. I would try with a few others but I don't know that that would go very far. But again, depending on our background, it could be very difficult to create an environment where our teenagers feel like they belong. It can be challenging to overcome our own insecurities and desires to belong. 

12:54 

But the alternative is that our children are going to run out and try and find a place to fit in. If they don't belong in our homes, they're going to try and belong or fit in. They're going to fit in somewhere else. They're going to have a place to fit in. The repercussions of this scenario bring a whole new set of challenges that most of us would rather avoid. And that's not saying that if your child belongs in your home, if you have a really, really awesome sense of belonging in your home, that they're still not going to go out and get in trouble and do things. It's not saying that at all. But creating a space where they belong is going to help give them a safe place to land when they make some of those really rotten decisions that teenagers can be known to make. 

13:39 

So let's talk a little bit more about us as the bigger adults in this situation. I say bigger because I know I have adult children, and many of you do as well. So if we want to be the bigger adults, not better but just older, more experienced, how do we deal with this? So first of all, I need to realize if my insecurities about needing to fit in rub off onto my children then I really need to get my own stuff under control here. I need to be really self-reflective about where I am in this because where I am is going to impact how I'm parenting my children, how I'm interacting even with my adult children who may not need parenting so much, but it's going to interact. Do they have a place where they feel that they can belong when they're with me or do they have to feel like they have to change to fit in? If you have a child that doesn't go to church, when they come home do they feel like they have to go to church or pretend to do those things in order to feel like they fit in? Or can they come as themselves as a child who doesn't go to church and not go to church and feel like they're still loved and feel like it's still a place that they belong? 

15:01 

These can be tough for us as parents because we know what we want for our kids and yet especially as they get older I've got to get my insecurities under control so that I can create a safe place for my kids. I need to get to a place that I value belonging for myself and others much more than I value fitting in for myself and others. So I feel like I keep beating the same drum but so much of not needing to fit in and waiting until we find places we belong come back to the understanding that our worth is not variable. Our worth as people as human beings is fixed. It does not change because of our thoughts, our feelings, or our behaviors. The more we can tap into that solid place of self-worth the more confident we are in presenting our true selves to the world. When we can approach a situation knowing we may not belong, but willing to show up as our true self, we're making some serious headway. 

16:08 

I love an example that Brene Brown uses. She talks about if you were to go to a new book club. So if you read it and if I hated the book and I show up to this new group of people and everyone else loved it, to fit in what would I do? I would pretend and I would lie about liking the book. I would change who I am in order to fit in with the group. My insecurities about who I am will create actions of lying and changing who people see me as in an attempt to fit in with this new group of people. But if I'm secure about who I am, I can then focus more on belonging. I won't feel like I need to change who I am in order to be part of the group. 

16:54 

So in this case, I would be okay with stating that I didn't like the book. Now of course I don't have to be ornery about it and say they're all stupid for liking such a ridiculous book, but I would be willing to open myself up, be a little bit vulnerable, and state that I didn't really like it. It didn't really speak to me, or it wasn't really a genre that I enjoy reading. I also wouldn't feel the need to apologize for thinking and feeling differently about it. I wouldn't say, "I'm sorry, but I think differently." Why would I be sorry for having a different opinion? You can just say, "huh, I thought differently about it." Because my goal here is to be me, really me, and not apologize for being me. And if I can be in this group, and if they can embrace that I have a different opinion, then I found a place that I can belong. If I feel I have to change who I am in order to fit in with this group of people, then this is not a place that I want to be anyway, right? If the judgment comes down hard because I have a different opinion, I just want to go somewhere else. 

18:04 

There's no reason for us to really have to try and fit in. And this is the thing. As parents, as people, the more comfortable I become with myself, the more I can draw upon that self-worth, the more comfortable I can become with other people as well. The more I can accept me for being me, the more I can accept others for being themselves, including my children and spouse or siblings or whoever. It's kind of fascinating how that happens, right? When I become more secure with me, I become more secure with other people being them and I don't expect them to be like me. I love that. I'm not threatened by other people's differences when I'm comfortable with my own differences. 

18:56 

So time for a little self-evaluation. Where are you on this? Are you comfortable putting yourself out there or are you consistently looking for places to fit in? Good question. And it's a question that only you can answer. But we get to this place in life where we just start growing up, right? And it's a great thing. We start seeing things a lot more clearly. All of our years of experience are starting to help the pieces fit together. 

19:29 

Alright, so really quick, if you would like some personal help from me to work through belonging and fitting in or if you just want some help with a particularly tough situation you're going through or even just a challenging one, get on my website, tanyahale.com. You can go to the coaching tab and you can book a free coaching session to get you started. I would love to work with you. I would love to help you get your thoughts, get you where you need to be. 

19:55 

And again, I'm just going to add this as I do at the end of every podcast. If you are enjoying this, please make sure that you've subscribed. Please leave me a review. If you listen a lot and you really like it, a review would do me some great things. So leave me a review and then share this with people. I'm seeing my numbers are moving up. I'm almost at 2,000 downloads and I am at about 36 days. My first 1,000 downloads took 65 days and here I am at 36 days and I'm a day or two away from 2,000 downloads. So I'm super excited that it seems to be moving a little bit more quickly. So those of you who are sharing, thank you. Thank you for helping. I think this is a message that's just really valuable for all of us. I guess that's going to do it for today. I'm signing off with a happy day to you and I hope that you can really work on belonging and stop working to fit in so much if that's kind of your thing. Have a terrific day. We'll talk to you next time. Bye. 

21:00 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.