The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
Disgust can be your greatest friend. Revulsion which reverberates through your gut is impossible to ignore. It is an emotional command to remove yourself or resolve the offense immediately. It is a visceral lesson in avoidance. However, when you are disgusted with yourself, no matter how hard you try, you cannot avoid yourself. So when you feel disgust’s putrid paw on your shoulder it’s okay to shudder but it is better to get to work. After a presentation you may focus on what you forgot, feel critical about what you said and disappointed with the response. All are mild forms of disgust. You can transform disgust into discipline by affirming the truth, making a plan and being true to what you do.
The Truth with a capital ‘T’ is a bit elusive; however, what’s true to you is obvious. Or is it? Do you see yourself clearly? What do you do right after you finish your speech? Are you thinking, “I am so amazing, my only regret is that I wasn’t able to be in the audience watching myself”? Or, do you start thinking of everything you did wrong until the list grows so long it overshadows any of your successes? In between the extremes, lies the sweet spot of truth. Delusions of grandeur as well as depressing self dialogue may momentarily feel true. To keep convincing yourself and others that it is actually true requires disgusting amounts of energy. The truth is you are better in some ways, and worse in others, than you know. The key is to strike a balance between being too easy and too hard on yourself. You must separate you from what you do. Notice what you do well and what you can do better. Don’t resign yourself to believing what you have done is all you are. If something you are doing disgusts you, make a plan to turn your resignation into reasons to do better.
Wishing and wanting won’t make you feel better and it can’t help you get better. Dreaming and scheming of how to go from now, to the wow you can be, seems futile. You just can’t plan out everything and as the saying goes, even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Too often you plan and prepare a presentation only to find your time slot has been shorten, or your audience expected something completely different or worse, you were still disgustingly unprepared. Why plan when plans always seem to change? Answer: You can’t change the plan if you don’t have a plan. The purpose of planning is to weigh the costs. Just like your life, each presentation has a limited amount of time. You must decide what you will give, and what you will give up. When you don’t give your best, you are giving up on yourself. Sure, you can bluff your way through a speech but each time you choose to, you skew your view of the scale that balances practice and performance. Do that often enough, you will have convinced yourself that you don’t even need to practice, but best of luck consistently convincing your audience. The more planning you do, the more confident you become. When you value your plan, what you end up doing is valuable, even when it does not go according to plan.
It is disgusting to see your dreams and desires twist and turn into nightmares. Perhaps you have a collection of promises you have made to yourself, and broke or conveniently forgot. Just thinking of them may fill your heart with disgust. Deciding to improve you communication skills or any other form of self improvement is easy. The challenge is in managing your decisions. The disgust in your gut is reminding you to do a gut check. Mismanaged or unmanageable decisions demand creative criticism. Constructive criticism points out what you did wrong and shows you how to do it less wrong. Creative criticism finds and focuses on the success within the mess, and helps you clean it up. As disgusting as it is to reach into the sewer of your soul, there are jewels there for you to behold. Stay true to your intent to improve and you will consistently improve. Self-disgust comes from looking at ourselves through our unfinished or abandoned plans. Dispel your disgust by celebrating the intent of your promises and your plans. Use your results to mark your progress, not as marks against you progression.
When you see what you do as all there is to you, what you haven’t done becomes your undoing. Let your revolt point out the path to your best self and experience the pleasure of befriending who you are becoming.