The dirty “c” word I’m referring to, of course, is conflict. It involves going after something regardless of your fears and insecurities. It involves going after what you want. I always thought that going after what I wanted was self-serving. I grew up thinking that if I got something that someone else wanted, that made me a bad person in some way. I would feel guilty for getting the last slice of cake, or getting the last seat in the car. I learned to put myself second and to make sure that everyone around me was happy. I mistakenly thought that pleasing was the road to love and belonging. I thought I could buy love with self-deprecation. I was wrong.

Living in this way made me angry and consistently frustrated. It created a block inside of my heart as I shoved my needs and desires deeper and deeper inside of my core.  I was always beating myself up for saying something stupid or something that I didn’t actually agree with, and I often felt deeply frustrated in social situations. I knew that if I could only speak with courage (in her TED talk, Brene Brown defines courage as the willingness “to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart”), ask for what I wanted and share what I truly believed, irrespective of what I thought those around me might think, I would find an inner peace in knowing that I was being true to myself.

I am speaking in past tense, but this is how I feel now. This is something that I work through everyday. I know that I am not alone in saying that my biggest adversary is myself.

I write this blog post as a final reflection to my ‘Made of Stone’ adventure. Carol, the character I played, is a very impulsive person who, although insecure in many ways, is not afraid to ask for what she wants. Playing Carol made me realize that maybe it’s okay if I go after what I want as well.

Carol and Pete fought all the time, and although their relationship was EXTREMELY dysfunctional, I realized that Carol was not a bad person for disagreeing with Pete or for putting him in his place when he was being ridiculous and insensitive. In fact, I quite respected her for her honesty and ability to be vulnerable. I respected her for her belief that she was worth something and that she deserved to be treated with respect.

One of the biggest lessons that I learned over the last couple of months came from an acting book: “The Power of The Actor” by Ivana Chubbuck

“A winner doesn’t actually have to be a winner – a winner tries to win, a loser accepts defeat.”

To my dismay, I realized that I’ve been playing to lose in a lot of ways. I realized that, even with all that I have accomplished so far, I am still too quick to accept defeat at a the hint of a criticism or at the warning of failure.

I recently also downloaded a book from the same blogger who introduced me to cold water showers, Joel Runyon, called The Impossible Manifesto. To my surprise this manifesto was all about making your life into a well told story. His tips for living a story worth telling paralleled a lot of the advice I had read in the acting book.

“A story involves a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. When I read this at that moment in my life working at UPS, I realized that if my life was a story, it would be a story about a guy sitting in a room reading other people’s life stories and wishing they were his.”

He goes on to explain how he decided to make his, a story worth telling. A story worth reading about. A story worth living.

I realized that, of course, I wanted the same thing for my life. I also realized that on order for this to be a reality, I was going to have to get comfortable with conflict because you just can’t have a good story without conflict.

So cheers to going after what you want despite fear of failure. Cheers to believing that we are all worthy of living the life of our dreams.

Cheers to being the gutsy, cheeky and sometimes unlikeable protagonist in our own life stories. Cheers to greatness. Cheers to living fearlessly. Cheers to conflict.