Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual

We will ruffle feathers. We might be the villains in a few people’s stories. We might even blow up a few bridges. But our worth is not based on how much we acquiesced to the people we knew. The goal is to betray ourselves less. So, be kind but take no shit.

Don’t let people who can’t spell your name right tell you about who you are. Don’t let folks who only have courage behind a keyboard define your goodness or your worth as a person. Do not let people who are already rooting for you to falter insist on your value, because they will steer you wrong.

A successful life is one lived on my own terms, not one where I end every day more tired than the last. And if everyone else around me is happy but I’m empty, then I have betrayed myself.

Know that you have the right to have your preferences, your borders, your boundaries. Tell people outright that you prefer another type of behavior. Wear a T-shirt. Make PSAs. Use a hashtag. Feel no guilt about it. Prevent riffraffery and the enemies of progress from constantly piercing your territory. Build a wall to keep tomfoolery out. Draw your lines without guilt.

I ask myself three questions before I say something that might shake the table. Do you mean it? Is this thing something I actually believe? Can you defend it? Being the challenger, I also have to be okay with being questioned and prodded. My ideas need to be explored deeper. Can I stand in it and justify it? Do I have receipts? Can you say it thoughtfully or with love? Is my intention good here? I might think I am righteous in my indignation or in my questioning, but am I saying it thoughtfully or with love? No matter how righteous it feels, no matter how true it might feel, if I say this thing in a way that’s hateful or that makes people feel demeaned or less than, the message will not land.

In all of these, your job is not to stop being this person you are accused of being. You aren’t supposed to constantly shape-shift to make those around you feel better about their own insecurities or failures. Your job is not to chameleon your way through life to the point where you forget what your true colors are. If you are too big, then it’s a reflection that the place you’re in is too small for you. It isn’t your job to get smaller to fit there, but to find a place that is bigger than you so you can take up all the space you want and grow infinitely. Anyplace that demands you shrink is a place that will suffocate your spirit and leave you gasping for air.

Owning your dopeness is not about being liked by others. It’s really about being liked by you first. One of my favorite proverbs is “When there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm.” If you are strong in yourself, the actions of everyone else are less likely to move you.

People have niceness and kindness mixed up. Niceness might mean saying positive things. But kindness is doing positive things: being thoughtful and considerate, prioritizing people’s humanity over everything else.

I am not fearless. But I’ve learned to start pushing past fear because oftentimes, the fear itself is scarier than whatever is on the other side. It’s like being afraid to walk through a dark hallway. If you close your eyes and run through it, you’ll be okay. And you’ll look back and say, “That wasn’t that bad.

Spend your privilege.” She got it from disability rights advocate Rebecca Cokley. It is the concept that the privilege we have in this world is endless. It doesn’t run out. You don’t use your voice today and have to re-up the next day. Power is limitless, and using ours for other people does not diminish it.

I’ve learned that the audacity to speak my dreams out loud, even if only to myself, has taken me far. I marvel at how many times the things I have dared to say have come true. The things I have let myself dream about. I ask, not with entitlement, but with hope, and magical things have happened.

When we dream, we’re giving others permission to do the same. When our dreams are big, we’re telling the folks who know us that they don’t have to be small either. When our dreams come true, we’re expanding the worlds of others because now they know theirs can too. We must dream and dream boldly and unapologetically.

Fear can very concretely keep us from doing and saying the things that are our purpose.

Times of crisis and chaos present us with the opportunity to do the best work of our lives. People use words that they pull from the depths of their spirits. People paint with strokes that they summon from their souls. People sing notes that come from the cosmos. People innovate. We must keep doing that.

A professional troublemaker is someone who is committed to being authentically themselves while speaking the truth and doing some scary shit. Here is to us, daring to live boldly.

We are all fighting battles with the world, systems, ourselves. Battles that are easy to lose. It’s so much easier to keep doing what feels comfortable. What feels safe. But then we might look up one day and realize that we’ve safety-netted ourselves into lives that feel like cages. Cages can get comfortable, but comfort is overrated. Being quiet is comfortable. Keeping things the way they’ve been is comfortable. But all comfort does is maintain the status quo.

Above all, trust life. Yes, it’s a raving douchecanoe at times. But trust the universe/God. Sometimes I think half my reason for believing in a deity is so I don’t lose hope and think life is a random mixture of arbitrary instances and none of it has any structure. That might drive me mad. I choose to believe in a higher being as an anchor and a grounding. I don’t think I have a choice but to have a deep belief that it will work out. It lets me get out of bed even when I’m feeling low. If control is a mirage, trust that God will order your steps. Have faith that Allah will place the right people in your path: the helpers. One of my favorite prayers when I’m about to walk into a new room is: “Please let my helper find me. Let me not miss the right connection I am supposed to make. Let me not miss the reason I am here.

Do not force yourself to want less to appease other people. Do not dumb down your needs so you won’t want to ask for more. You want what you want. Ask for it. A NO will not kill you. Ask for more, because if the fear of disappointment stops you from going for what you want, then you are choosing failure in advance. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we don’t think that we should ask for the thing we want, whether it’s a promotion from our boss, or more acts of service from our partner, or more attention from our friends, then we are opting for the NO, instead of trying for a YES. If we get the NO, we are still in the same place we are, losing nothing. But what if we got the YES, which would lead us closer to where we want to be?

What matters is how I handle it and move forward. That is what I will truly be judged on,

I reflect on the words of the world-changing GOOD troublemaker John Lewis: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to say something, and not be quiet.” We have a moral obligation to tell the truth. Tell the truth, even when our voices shake. Tell the truth even when it might rock the boat. Tell the truth, even when there might be consequences. Because that in itself, makes us more courageous than most people in the world. Use the three questions, know your voice is necessary, and speak truth to power. Even a whisper of truth makes a difference in an echo chamber of lies.

If the consequence is you get fired, is that an actual place you want to work? If you can get fired for challenging one idea in one meeting, is that company worth your time and energy? If the consequence is not that you’ll be fired or written up, then what is actually on the line if you speak up? Is it that you won’t be liked by whoever you challenged?

Do not let people make you feel bad for being successful, and for being you, and for being amazing, and for being accomplished. If people get upset at you for announcing something you did, those people are not your people. Those people do not deserve your dopeness. And those people serve no important role in your life. Anyone who is upset that I’m doing well is an enemy of progress, and I don’t need them around me.

The things we must do are more significant than the things we are afraid to do. It doesn’t mean we don’t realize there are consequences. It means we acknowledge that they may come but we insist on keeping on.

The goal is to betray ourselves less. So, be kind but take no shit.

When we want to say something and our voice shakes, we should take that to spur us forward, because that is when it is most necessary. Let your voice tremble, but say it anyway.

When we are afraid of having too much hope, we’re actually afraid of being disappointed. We are anxious about expecting the world to gift us and show us grace, because what if we end up on our asses? So we dream small or not at all. Because if we expect nothing or expect something small, we cannot be disappointed when the big things don’t happen.

Being accused of TOO MUCHness is to be told to take up less space. Being TOO much is to be excessive. How do you combat that? By being less than you are. And that concept feels like nothing other than self-betrayal. The inverse of too much is too little. I’d rather be too big than too small any day.

Who we are should not be beholden to the moods of the people we are around, their insecurities, or their projections. Because when someone says you are too much, it is more of a statement on them than it is on you.

Know that grace and accountability can coexist. Grace makes you forgive yourself for your mistakes and accountability lets you know that the lesson learned must be remembered and those mistakes can’t be frequent.

We challenge each other because if I’m your keeper, your underskirt can’t be showing on my watch. Your mistake can’t go unchecked; otherwise I’m leaving your back wide-open, when I said I got it. It’s about holding each other accountable and calling each other in (not out) when we fall on our faces. If you’re making piss-poor decisions, your friends should be able to pull you by your collar and tell you to get your shit together. A friend group that does that is a gift, and will always ensure that we are being the version of ourselves that we’ll be proud of. Otherwise, we’ll have to answer to them, and we don’t want that smoke. There are so many rewards to building a proper village that the accompanying fear isn’t worth it. Throughout my life, I’ve felt betrayed and abandoned and rejected by people who I let into my life. We’ve all felt it. It’s knocked me on my ass a few times. But I also think about what others have done for me or said to me that has lifted me up or pushed me forward. Those moments beat any of the betrayals. Those times attest to the need to never harden myself completely.