My USC Kids and You (and Chappell Roan)

How to care out loud: your assignment

What do you do with the weird parts of you?

The body parts, the quirky likes, the ways in which you feel you stick out or care too much? This is what I’m leading my students through these days at USC.

It’s also what I meant to introduce last year here at How to Show Up buuuuuut didn’t quite have the bandwidth. Had the idea before I even launched this (A YEAR AGO!) to include a weekly or monthly “Letters to Your Weird” inspired a bit by

Elizabeth Gilbert

.

But instead of writing letters from love as she encourages, from the swirly spirit of love out there or the inner voice wanting to be heard, I wanted to encourage us to (with mischief in our eye, bien sûr) reclaim the parts of ourselves that have always made us feel different.

Because doing so helps us show up.

I maybe have spent my entire adulthood trying to reclaim the parts of myself that always felt like a liability, that marked me as other. How much of a word nerd I am. How sensitive I am to scary movies or cruel people. How earnest I can be in a world quick to mock cringe. How I have too many hairs on my chin but not enough on my head or eyebrows — ya know. Am still inside of this reclamation; maybe you are too.

So here’s the assignment I gave my college and grad students, in case you want to play along and join the revolution. By the by: my favorite moment from the Grammys on Sunday was Chappell Roan’s acceptance speech, where SHE DID THIS. Will come back to it in a mo.

But first:

List for yourself 10 things you’re obsessed with/can geek out about/feel weirdly attached to/love. It can be a TV show or a style of clothing or senior cats or a cause that’s hurting your soul globally. Big or little. Heavy or light. But make a list and keep it in the positive (aka this hurts my soul because what matters to me is X thing that’s wonderful) and if you get to 25 items on this list, YES. Feel free to ask friends or family. Feel free to get stuck and keep going anyway. What lights you up?

Next, the kids (yes, they are in their 20’s) had to pick one thing off their Obsession List to get up in front of the whole class and talk about extemporaneously for a few minutes. To experience claiming an aspect of your weird out loud without guardrails, without easy ways to hide, and notice how it feels in your body or mind.

Notice too how hot a topic it feels — how dangerous, how unpopular an opinion, how much it seems like it costs you to disclose. NO RULES ON THIS. No one had to push themselves beyond what they were willing to claim, but notice.

If there’s a spectrum of 1-10, 1 being it costs nothing easy pease and 10 being this is truly terrifying to share, just notice which you picked and get curious about why. ZERO SHAME about picking something lower on the spectrum, I told them. I would have too this early in the semester. This is how we practice exposing ourselves to caring out loud.

And all the mind/body feels that follow.

The kids did SO. GOOD. Here was the running tally on the board at some point:

I talk about caring out loud a lot — this is a central theme in my book because it’s what I discovered in my coaching and speech advising was the single biggest factor in whether folks showed up or not, and thus whether the speech went well or not.

*WENT WELL = made a difference. Speeches can be pretty or clever but if not a single person in the audience changes in any way, those pretty, clever speeches are a failure. Obviously said with great love, but as a lasso to pull us back to purpose: the goal of any speech is to move the audience and move the needle. In ANY way that helps. Tiny or tremendous. Boring speeches change no one. As soon as you care out loud, it’s no longer boring and something is bound to happen.

But to practice this caring out loud thing, we’ve got to a) figure out what we care about, which sometimes takes real sweat to uncover so that’s this assignment. And then b) practice doing it, and nudging ourselves to reveal how much we care more and more, hide less and less, till boom we’re showing up.

We’re there. In all our caring.

Cringe bedamned.

Chappell Roan took the opportunity that Grammy platform offered with both hands. She brought a journal up on stage — a JOURNAL! For anyone who’s ever received an award and said “oh my gosh, I didn’t think I’d win so I didn’t even prepare anything!” which is yay for humble but boo for showing the F up with any purpose at all, this was such a breath of fresh air! — and then she went on to say:

I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care, especially developing artists.”

We do indeed need to tell ourselves, to pep-talk ourselves, to care out loud. To, in this case, say something quite high on the 1-10 heat spectrum. And we need to practice saying what matters to us in smaller venues with less heat so that when the chance comes, we know what our mind and body is going to do and we say the thing anyway.

You could hear in her voice how terrifying it was. How much she wanted to hide.

But she showed up, for her younger self, and for maybe millions of others.

If you’re willing to experiment with feeling the feels, drop one thing from your Obsession List below.

AND — if you’re a paid member of this community — come to our monthly Zoom date this Friday to practice out loud or report on anything you’ve observed this week.

Next group Zoom is 10am PT this Friday Feb 7th, the day before I head to Mexico for a week of teaching at a retreat — woohoo! Join us for a robust and VERY real Q&A on all things showing up and speaking up. Listen in or ask for what you want.

Zoom link will go out to all paying subscribers morning of.

Come. We need you showing up.

Now more than ever.

Love,

Samara

PS. If you’re noticing a slightly different vibe, hi branding! I have a new website and am feeling my way out of the month of fires and federal fury — into something sweeter and more sustainable. I’ve been quietly building my consulting practice for years, and now my website reflects that work. Get in touch if you’ve been yearning for a trusted advisor to help you elevate your public speaking.

It would be my honor.