We are all remarkable
I suck at many things but one thing I am really good at is taking opportunities that arise to do some much needed self-reflection and growth work.
And that's exactly what happened when the Google marketing team asked me to speak at their in house #IAmRemarkable event, stating that I so truly embodied what it is to be “remarkable”. I momentarily cringed before I laughed out loud, for you see, a newly laid resolve was being tested for the first time.
If I had to choose one word that I've heard most often to describe my work - the word that I've read in emails or in comments online, or was told face to face after I've come off a stage - that word would be “inspiring”. As I write those words, I think what an honour and a privilege it is for anyone, let alone many people, to think of me in this way. I feel so grateful for this gift and ability, but honestly, it took me years to get here. For years it made me cringe to be called inspiring. It became a running joke with my husband and I. I'd come back from speaking at an event or in the media. He'd ask me, “how was it?” pause - then a snigger would appear on his face in anticipation of my answer “Did they say you’re inspiring?” Now smiling and mimicking my upcoming reaction, “Oh nooooo, yes they did”. I'd put on my most embarrassed and cringed out face. Of course, when someone said that to me in conversation I wouldn't make my unease obvious, I would smile and say thanks. But honestly, I would brush it off. I would hardly ever let it in, I never let it nourish me. I never allowed it to, no matter how much my family, friends or colleagues told me it was true. I didn't believe it.
I rejected it for several reasons. For a start, I didn't really understand or know what they actually found inspiring. I reasoned that if they wanted to build hospitals and treat patients they would have become doctors but they clearly didn't want to do that, so what gives? Another major reason for my rejecting this notion was the energy with which it was often said. “YOU are inspiring and extraordinary and I am...not”. It somehow put us on unequal footing, it disconnected us, added hierarchy, like I was better than they were, and I didn't see myself as being better than anybody else. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, I was just being and doing me. I was following my calling and purpose. I was pushing myself to follow my dreams and values, I was committed to being part of the solution not the problem. I was just taking what life threw at me and making the most of it and falling down and standing up again, crying, growing and sometimes - I was telling people about it.
Humility is one of my core values and I now realise that for a long time I misunderstood and misused it and that played a part in my rejecting the notion of being an inspiration. The root word for humility is “humus” meaning “earth” (not to be confused with the delicious Middle Eastern chickpea dish). Earth - the ground you stand on that supports all of life. Earth is power. I now realise that true humility is grounded in its power. True humility says, “hey! guess what? I’ve got lemons. Delicious, juicy, tasty, the most citrusy lemony lemons you've ever had. Who's got ice, and who's got water, and who's got a glass so that we can make the most delicious lemonade?” Humility is the essence at the heart of our interconnectedness, another one of my core values. It is only when we are grounded in and fully accepting of what our gifts and talents are that we realise we cannot do anything alone, that we absolutely need to cooperate, collaborate and bring forward our part in order to complete the whole.
After 10 years of war in Syria, I was questioning my purpose in life. Whilst being a doctor and saving lives is still absolutely a core part of me, I've also accidentally found myself in the public eye and on the global stage, shining a light on the darkness of war. I realised earlier this year that I was facing a choice - I either continue to brush off how people thought of me and the impact I had on them and continue to minimise myself out of some misguided interpretation of humility. Or, I could own it and step into that power, knowing that it is a gift I've been blessed with for a reason and that it is part of my responsibility, my duty and my purpose to be that voice.
The more that I reflected on what and who I found inspiring and remarkable, the more I kept coming back to the local health and aid workers I’ve been honoured to support through my work with CanDo. Not only doctors and nurses but law students, economy graduates, business people, butchers and mechanics - ordinary, everyday people who chose to be remarkable. To serve on the frontlines as health or aid workers, who every day risk their lives for strangers. In seeing their remarability, I finally saw mine. It made me realise the grave error that was distancing me from accepting compliments and my gifts; the wrong belief - the mistake that so many of us make in thinking - “remarkable lives in others but not in me”. It lives in the few like Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Oprah, but not me.
Actually, remarkable lives in absolutely every single one of us, I promise it's true! But here's the thing, each one of us has the seed for it deep inside us. It's just that some of us know that, and choose (yes I say choose) to nurture our seeds into blooming, magnificent trees. The seed needs water, it needs fertiliser, it needs the right environment to have enough sun (and not too much sun) and enough wind (and not too much wind) and the right soil and love and care and nurture, so that the seed of our potential can grow into this magnificent destiny tree that it was meant to be. And, we are all meant to be different; fig trees, roses, cacti, but we each have that seed within us, and so many things happen in our lives that threaten to keep that seed a seed. Whether you grew up poor, or in a war zone. Whether you had teachers, like me, who told you you couldn't be a doctor, or you been discriminated against because of your race, sexuality, religion or ideologies - whatever it is, there are a million things that are trying every day to stop you from meeting your potential.
BUT - it is your choice and yours alone. If you allow them to stop you from meeting or exceeding your potential, it's a choice and one you make every single day. Remarkable is in all of us. It's just that we are all along a different stage in our own evolution; we are all a masterpiece in the making. When I think of all of us being remarkable and all of us having that potential when its grounded in true and powerful humility, it's empowering and connecting; it stops being, “you're remarkable and I'm not”, or “I'm remarkable and you're not”, and it becomes, we are all remarkable. Look at us incredible creatures with so much potential. This recognition not only means that we feel empowered, but we are empowering others. The more we are able to meet our own potential and know that it is there in someone else, the more we are likely to help them to meet their own.
This summer I chose to own mine and that invitation from Google came at a time when I needed to put my mouth where my money was and rise into that power.
So I'm going to leave you with two questions:
What are you remarkable in or at?
Now, don't give me the “cringe cringe im not remarkable” like old me would. Remarkable you does not mean perfect you because none of us are that. What are you remarkable at, good at, excel at? Own it.
What seed of potential is in you right now lying dormant?
What's that seed that you really know in your heart of hearts you have, it's there, you just have not been nurturing it? The seed that could blossom into a best-selling author, a world-class speaker, or a leader at your workplace? A seed that if you nurture it and allow it to bloom, will catapult you to the next stage of your evolution - elevate you to be the better, bigger, more beautiful and - crucially - the more remarkable you.
