Metamorphosis: how much ugly would you endure if you were promised beauty in the end?

A biological process where one undergoes a dramatic physical transformation.

Have you ever done a chemical face peel?

I did one on Friday evening… and if you are well versed in the timing of a chemical peel (I was NOT), then you’d be able to quickly calculate that my entire face started falling off Monday Morning. I thought — should I work from home? Maybe it’s not that bad?

Izzy came in to my bedroom at 6am and with one look at my face she says: WHOA MAMA, your face looks CRAZY.

Why did I do this again? Oh right, to shed old skin and reveal more youthful, supple beauty. I just forgot to read the fine print: Warning - will look like a mulching leper for 3-6 days.

This whole experience got me thinking a few things about transformation - stream of consciousness here so will just riff for a minute:

1. ZERO chance I would have left my house looking like this in my 20s (and likely my 30s). I’m currently waiting for my flight to visit one of my portfolio companies in LA that specializes in social media marketing and content creators. This is NOT the team to visit when your face is mulching. But here I am, because….

2. …No one cares. People definitely noticed yesterday at work, but I just said - oops I timed my chemical peel a bit wrong… trying to glow-up as an almost 45 year old woman is no joke. But one very freeing realization that I think only comes when you are 40+ years old is that no one actually notices anything about you … they are too busy worrying about themselves. To the extent they do notice you, is only in reference to themselves, so it really has nothing to do with you. I came across a wonderful post this morning on this concept of “Audience of None” so sharing here for you to read later if so compelled.

3. Change requires sacrifice. It’s so easy to look around at what other people have, and covet it too — but what we don’t covet is the blood, sweat, tears that goes into reaching those heights (wherever, whatever they are). It’s also easy to begrudge our own blood, sweat, and tears and forget that we are putting that critical (relentless) work into our own growth and heights. No one is or will notice (point #2 above) and they will at most only see the outcome and assume it was somehow easier for you to achieve than it really was… I once told my brother (@mybrothersalawyer) when he started his law firm Ready Legal Group 10 years ago that one day, no one will remember that he started with nothing. No one will remember how hard it was, or even believe you when you tell them the stories. They will only see what you have now, and wish they had it too. No one WANTS to put in the work… but they WANT the prize.

4. Winning requires definition. It’s not possible to win two games at the same time. You have to choose which game you are playing, and what winning looks like for you. To some, winning is only a GOLD MEDAL (aka my dear husband, previously described in one of my essays as “The Maximizer"). To others, just qualifying to play in the game is winning. But no matter what, you can’t win if you don’t define what winning is to you. Even if you win a Gold Medal, if you didn’t decide that was the goal, then it’s just as easy to say - yes I won, but I didn’t get my best time; or, I won, but I didn’t win all the gold medals in my sport. How futile and exhausting, yet how often we keep moving that winning-bar.

5. Success is not guaranteed. But I wonder, if it were, would more people put in the hard work? Would you train 20 hours a day, every day of your life for 20 years to be in the Olympics and win a gold medal? Would you work 20 hours a day for 20 years so you could take your company public? I’m gonna go ahead and say - for most of us (certainly not me), probably not. But maybe for more accessible goals, like “reading more books” or “losing the persistent 10 lbs” — why is that so hard? I can only speak for myself, but it’s hard because while these goals are important, they are not urgent. And it’s SO easy to focus on the urgent and fill up your days with a flurry of action that FEELS productive, but doesn’t ever leave you enough space, time, energy to get to the “important stuff” (until of course you have some health crisis and then it’s 110% the most urgent and important thing to do). But there are some places where success may not be guaranteed but it’s certainly more likely: If you do exercise every day, and eat a balanced diet, you will be healthier. If you do spend time your kids and be present, you will build a stronger relationship with them. If you do write every week, even when you don’t really want to, you will unlock more creativity :)

6. If you know me, you know my mantra: Baby Steps. No one got to the finish line without taking the first step and then a million similarly small steps after that first step. There is no short cut that can accelerate the process of this ultra marathon of life. Maybe the trick is to get to that “runner’s high” some of my marathon friends speak of: a euphoric state experienced during or after (long distance) running, characterized by feelings of well-being, reduced anxiety, and increased pain threshold. I’m told you just “get into a groove”… that the rhythm of steps become meditative and you just forget about how long it’s been and you just run. Now - I have no doubt that someone running an ultra-marathon still feels pain, and fatigue… but I do wonder, could that be their positive reinforcement that they are reaching their goal? Is it possible to re-program your brain to not run from hard things, but to move towards those very challenges knowing that success is just ahead?

I certainly don’t want to romanticize pain and sacrifice for the sake of success — but perhaps my stream of consciousness brings me to this thought: If you are clear about defining what you are working towards, does that make the day to day sacrifices more bearable? Isn’t it ironic that when we do achieve success but it wasn’t really hard earned, we inherently value it less? We assume it must not be that important or difficult if we reached the goal so easily?

One thing is for sure - change is hard, but change is necessary to grow. Sometimes that change requires us to leave old ways behind, sometimes change requires us to acknowledge sunk costs and start anew. Sometimes, change just requires us to want more, knowing that if things feel too easy, then you probably aren’t really growing. And maybe that’s ok, you don’t have to be in a constant state of growth; but, noticing when you are, and aren’t, is worthwhile to manage expectations and assess whether you’re in need of some change.