Kylility: On Embracing your own <Name>ity

A picture texted from Gloria after her Kylility text | Gloria at the Beach in Dubai | October 14, 2018

SUNDAY MORNING SURPRISE
It was a typical Sunday morning: I slept in, did some laundry, just got back from exercising. Then I saw the notification I had a voicemail on Whatsapp from my friend Gloria: "I was just thinking of you...you inspire me a lot with your sincerity, genuineity, and Kylality." She went on to say she was at the beach and thinking back to when we met at the swimming pool in Mumbai, while we were both there for a Corporate Happiness Bootcamp training in June.

GLORIA
During an activity in which we had to see (through movement) how much we thought we were creating change in our own organizations at the bootcamp, I could feel my body physically hesitate. I didn't feel as if I was really creating change yet. Gloria firmly took my hand, and led me to where she was standing: the firm "YES, I am creating change" section. 

It was hard to not fall madly and deeply in love WITH Gloria: she had the kind of warmth that made you feel like you had known her in a previous life. She gleefully stood out because she didn't fit in to any social norms. Whether she was sitting on the floor cheering, or hugging participants she had just met, or singing and dancing to her own tune (literally and figuratively), she truly embodied HAPPINESS.

Whenever I spoke to the Indian gurus, they would inevitably bring her up: "You know, think about Gloria. She doesn't really care what others think of her. She has really done the work to get to that stage of oneness."

Whoa.

STORYTELLING
On Friday night, I invited some new coach friends over for dinner. Over pork adobo and stir-fried bok choy, we eagerly chatted about everything we had worked on (and were still working on) to get to where we were as coaches. I confided in them that I was at the 25 mile mark with my book. I could almost see the finish line, but I wasn't sure if I could make it to the end. I further admitted that I had had a mini breakdown WITH my hubby about it all a few days ago. Both coaches talked about their parents and how their parents had made them feel "Not Good Enough." Everything they shared, I felt like I had experienced the exact same thing in my own life.

I nodded, inhaling deeply, sipping on my ginger tea. 

After a story I shared about how I had met my hubby, one of them said, "Kyla, you're such a great storyteller. I should bring you home so you can tell some stories to my kids!" Nobody had ever said that to me before. The other coach chimed in, "Wow, I have goosebumps."

After they left, my apartment felt re-energized, heck I felt re-energized. We (the apartment and I) were glowing with a new found possibility. My stories meant something--not just to me--but to others. 

BEFORE GETTING TO -ITY
As the Indian gurus mentioned, Gloria did the work on herself. You have to do the work on your SELF, WITH your SELF. An old high school friend put it to me like this when I was going through my quarter-life crisis, "It's like peeling an onion, Kyla. You have to keep peeling, and it may smell, it may make you cry, you may not like the process, but once you get to the core of who you really are, that's where the real you is."

And I would add, that is where the -ITY begins.

KYLILITY
What is it that makes me, ME? I used to be a people pleaser, and a whole lot of other things, because I always felt I was not good enough. But what is this Kylility that Gloria spoke of? The question lingered in my head well after she sent me that voicemail. I think it's a turning inward to see who I really am, rather than running away or finding external validation. It's a mindset of being kinder, more loving, more compassionate toward and WITH my SELF. It is my true vulnerability: the tissue on my face when I leave the house, my unbrushed hair, my imperfectness, the uncomfortable sometimes awkward things I write about and speak about, it's a gumption (my friend MK likes to say that I have a lot of it) to create change that is so necessary but so hard at the same time, it's speaking unspeakable truths, it's the audacity to want to lift an entire country's happiness set point (look out, Korea!), and bring myself up, up, up WITH it as well.

YOUR -ITY
Can be found not neatly wrapped in a gift box, but through inward work, struggle, tears, and everything in between. It is in those moments where you believe you are at mile 25, and you can see mile 26, and it is an uphill climb. When you feel as if you really don't know who you are, your -ity will be just waiting to be found, discovered, uncovered, again and again. It will evolve as you do, as it should. 

And just when you thought you couldn't climb that last hill, just remember the data from positive psychology: when you look at a hill alone, it seems steeper than it really is. However, when you look at a hill WITH friends or other people, it seems a lot more manageable. 

Thank you, Gloria, and my new coach friends for making that "hill" seem that much more manageable.