Embrace Connecting Not Impressing

I was driving my dog to her acupuncture appointment yesterday (can’t make that s#!t up), while listening to a summit talk entitled Mindfulness and Compassion in the Treatment of Anxiety and Depression, when this line jumped out at me: “Think about connecting not impressing.” The speaker, Dr. Ron Siegel, was talking about how many of us experience anxiety from our need to be seen a certain way. You know, to come off as smart, likeable, competent, charming,  attractive, interesting, special, or whatever your flavor is. He proposed we would feel much less anxious if rather than try to impress people, our end game was to connect with them.

Dr. Siegel brought the theory to life by asking the man interviewing him if he was currently feeling anxious about anything. “Sure,” the interviewer said, “I want to demonstrate my worth. I want to ask smart questions and to come off as a good interviewer.” “What if?” Dr. Siegel asked, “none of that mattered and all you had to do was connect with me?” “It would be great!” the interviewer replied with obvious enthusiasm. “I’d be much more relaxed.” And, I’m thinking as I write this, it would be so much easier for the interviewer to have connected with Dr. Siegel if that need to impress  was out of the way.

It’s normal to strive to impress; I know I do it. In part, we do it because we carry around old stories and beliefs about our unworthiness, our “not enough”ness, our unlovability, etc. When these beliefs show up, we typically try to either push them away (i.e., distract ourselves, get busy, eat, etc.) or work harder to demonstrate our worth (produce, succeed, impress, etc.). But both of those strategies are short-term fixes. Eventually, our efforts to impress will falter and our beliefs will resurface. Take, for example, the interviewer. Had he asked what he perceived to be a mundane question or made a silly comment, his unworthiness would likely have returned in full force and with it, his capacity to deeply connect with Dr. Siegel.

What if, when we feel the need to impress, we follow the good doctor’s recommendation and consciously focus on connecting? What if we drop the pressure to impress with our words, and instead connect with a genuine smile? I can feel relief wash over me at this proposition. How wonderful it would be to simply connect as human to human, rather than  accomplishment to accomplishment

Speaking of connection, I had the privilege of facilitating a women’s meditation retreat this past weekend. Even though most of the women didn’t know one another and did not speak to each other until it was over, it was a beautiful, connected experience. The setting of a meditation retreat doesn’t lend itself to discussing what we do for a living, what our kids (if we have them) are up to, or other topics which we can lean on to impress. We were all there to practice presence and self-compassion, and without the dance of making impressions, meaningful connections formed.

I’ll leave you with an encouraging nugget from my research on women in midlife. Looking at the data, I found that for the majority of women, the need to impress reduces over time. In our middle years, we tend to have more comfort in our skin, more self-acceptance, and more certainty of our being. And with that, the inclination to impress naturally reduces. Hallelujah!

But, in those moments when that desire to impress does show up, I invite us all to try to connect instead. Ahhh…