I Decided to be a Whale
If you could be any animal (or bird) which one would you want to be? When a friend asked me this a few years ago, I thought for a second and said I’d love to be a fish. Which fish, she probed. I heard myself say: “a small fish”.
This question is frequently used in coaching workshops for self-reflection to get insights into what your values are. And I thought about my answer: a small fish! Resilient, friendly, free-spirited even, but wow, life can be daunting as a small fish!
Different things mean differently to people and we want different things at different stages of life, so I did not delve too deeply into it. Yet, I was intrigued enough to find out how some of my women friends might answer. They said: sparrow, the bird swallow, squirrel, and so on (Some even said monkeys showing how they longed to abandon their disciplined self and become a nuisance for a bit). Some very powerful values are typically attached to these animals: connection with oneself, the rare talent to find joy in small things, positivity, aiming high, being resilient and focussed. Yet, life sometimes presents with moving targets, conflicting ambitions, obstructive people, that challenge these values rather persistently. Applying my ‘small fish’ (or my friend’s ‘squirrel’) values to the workplace made my everyday life look full of humongous, wild, and unpredictable fireworks. Ambition and urge to grow helps to counter some of these but I thought certainly there is a better way of going about the difficult days.
Our self-image is formed, painstakingly, over the years by a complex interplay of life experiences, cultural exposure, upbringing, etc. Our brain makes us strong and it makes us weak, at the same time sometimes. Our mind’s untiring efforts to protect us from bad or embarrassing situations work against us when we are trying to reach out and experience the world differently. With all good intentions, poor thing will go to the extent of creating false images, so we avoid any possible danger. So, sometimes, we need to trick the mind to assure it: “I got this!”. So, I wondered, what if I was a whale fish instead! What if I could go about my not-so-easy days thinking I am a big, blue, beautiful whale fish?
Its a simple thought, but works wonderfully. Work with me on this:
To be clear, small fish are wonderful. Beautiful. They are resilient, watch out for each other, they work together and at the same time, they mind their own business. But some situations just demand a different you. Imagine yourself walking into a big meeting where you are going to present something you have been working very hard on for months. Imagine doing that as a small fish. You walk in, some people might miss noticing you, you might not always be audible, but it's all ok, as you don’t want to cause too much disruption in the ‘water’ around you to begin with. Because that work situation is not your safe space and you don’t want to trade-off that safety for playing big. You feel vulnerable.
Now imagine entering that room as a whale. It's not about being dominant or intimidating, or about how others think of you. It's very important to remember, it's about how you feel about yourself. As a blue whale, you walk in gracefully, with an awareness that what you say in this meeting is going to matter, because you gave this months of your life. You are friendly, but you mean business (almost all whale species are carnivorous though!). You are calm and poised, but your presence is tough to ignore. You may not talk loud, but when you talk, people want to listen (some species of whales are very loud singers though, and its amusing latest research says male blue whales are noisier than female!). You may not be a shark, but you know how to bring together a group to work in the most meaningful and fluid way. And, you know that if you were to be really attacked, you will be able to take it, more than you thought.
Working this into my tough days has made me become more aware and present in a tough situation and really thrive in it, rather than looking for wriggle room. I am not an advocate of asking women to transform themselves to fit into the corporate. But for all of us, regardless of gender, we want to feel more equipped and prepared, and for that, we sometimes need to make changes within. A small fish is strong with its values, but it also needs to be tough, to embrace life better.
Amy Cuddy’s brilliant research proves how making yourself take more physical space manifests into a more confident you. For myself though, taking up more space than I am used to, and ‘faking it’ made me feel somewhat inauthentic and vulnerable. As someone who puts an inordinate amount of importance on genuineness and being your real self always and at work (sometimes almost with pigheaded determination, no matter how detrimental it might get), I have found it working limitedly. It's a dramatically wonderful idea but I needed to apply it differently to convincingly claim that space. And it started to work when I got better at tricking my mind by replacing my ‘small fish’, with a big whale.
To beat the urge to curl back into the core, try this with small situations first. See how it feels different when you are just sitting-in in a meeting with your team. Gradually try this by adjusting your self-image before you start to evaluate a decision like joining a hobby class you have always been meaning to, or taking up a big project, or asking for a promotion.
Sometimes that's all you need. One simple logic. One simple thought to latch on to, to take that final step out of your rigid comfort zone.
Find your spirit animal, and give it more power.
