Just Showing Up to Your Commitments Can Be a Superpower

In this age of chaos and turmoil, many are searching for ways to simplify their lives — to reduce the metaphorical noise and mental clutter, to make life a little more palatable. Things like simply tidying our homes, minimalist living or embracing the principles of Hygge promise to ease the mental and emotional clutter and make life a little easier.

Life can often be simplified by merely doing the basics well — focusing your attentions on what you can control and letting the rest of life unfold around you. Call it stoicism or whatever you like — but it comes down to one simple thing:

Just show up.

One of the most defining events of my life would undoubtedly be the parting of my first marriage and subsequently raising my two daughters co-operatively with my ex-wife. Over the 15 years since divorcing I’ve learned a lot about life and about myself — and the lessons keep coming. One of the greatest positives has been to be able to share some of those lessons with other divorcing parents, to offer guidance, support and hope.

I recall speaking a few years ago with another divorced father who asked me what I thought were the things that made me a good father to my kids. It took a while for the imposter syndrome to dissipate before I could answer his question. ‘Good’ is a very subjective term and on many occasions, I’ve felt that my efforts were far from good — certainly not good enough anyway. In context I suspect he meant it in reference to his own situation — he was trying to figure out how to improve his relationship with his own kids.

I didn’t have an immediate answer but quite quickly after the call I figured out number one on my list.

I show up.

I show up for them and I appear where I say I will. I do what I say I will, when I say I will do it. I act fairly and consistently as much as I can.

Is this such a good thing? Is it rare or a differentiator? Would my kids agree?

I think so.

The Power of Doing What You Say You Will

Showing up shouldn’t seem like a lost art or a radical idea — I just think it’s something that you either do, or do not — there is no try (as Jedi-master Yoda tells us). It surprises me how many don’t really get this and don’t show up in their lives for others or for themselves. Instead, they search for some other solution or secret.

It’s not just about logistics — a case of being where you say you will be (although that’s part of it). I pride myself in having remained actively involved in raising my daughters from pre-school to adulthood, but that’s not worthy of applause. My custody of the girls has always been one week on, one week off but I’ve shown up at as many school parent-evenings, sports practices and tournaments, karate-gradings and orchestra performances as I could manage.

I didn’t do this out of a sense of duty or to prove a point — it was out of a desire to be involved and to do the right thing, to be their father regardless of divorcing from their mother. It was borne from a desire to show up.

It’s about more than showing up in a place though — indeed just being there physically is seldom enough.

Being Good to Your Word

It’s about committing to doing what you say you will, promising and then delivering. If anything, the essence of showing up is to under-promise and over-deliver and most definitely not the other way around. To show up is to repeatedly take the rough with the smooth, to accept and expect the knocks but to carry on regardless.

For your kids, it’s about setting the example of someone who acts with consistency, integrity, dedication and devotion. These words and principles don’t mean much to kids, but they learn the traits by observing their parents and others showing up in their lives. Kids also learn the importance of the traits from those who don’t practice them.

Our kids test us, challenge us and give us hell. At times it’s rewarding, heart-warming and uplifting. Sometimes it results in laughter and happiness and at other times, floods of tears.

Regardless of how each day ends, I show up the next day for more of the same because that’s what showing up means.

Showing Up Throughout Life

Showing up is a mindset that encompasses resilience — it embodies the intention to not be ground down, broken or beaten by circumstance. Instead of hiding from things that are likely to be difficult or unpleasant we take them on and come out the other side.

Showing up is not about shying away and cowering in a corner or passively letting circumstances and events unfold around us. Instead, we feel the fear and do it anyway.

When we face times of challenge and difficulty, showing up is essential. Relationship difficulties, money-worries, troubles in work and business are only dealt with by persistently showing up until they are dealt with or accepted as unchangeable.

Showing up helps us to maintain and sustain the good things too.

How many fitness and dietary regimes have calamitously failed due to complacency or apathy, when motivation and commitment were lost — when we failed to show up to the regimen? Enduring fitness demands that we show up at the gym and make the right dietary and lifestyle choices for the long term.

A healthy and happy relationship too, requires that we continually show-up — saying ‘I love you’ daily, not just when we want something. Showing up is part of the ongoing process of love and of life, not just a remedial action to resolve problems and overcome issues.

Consistency In All Things

Showing up needs to be done consistently and persistently for the benefit of others and for ourselves. Living in service of others is an admirable intent but one that will ultimately fail if we aren’t showing up for ourselves and meeting our own needs first and foremost. There’s a reason why the safety instructions on a flight tell us to get our own oxygen mask on before we help others; if we can’t breathe then we’re no use to anyone else.

Like most instructions offered to us these days, advising that we show up may seem obvious or futile, impotent even as a means of helping us through challenges or for making our lives a little simpler. But sometimes the most impactful changes are the simplest to implement if we can just put them into practice.

Show up for yourself, then you can show up for others. Sometimes you’ll be glad you did and other times you won’t. Whatever the outcome, you’ll know that you showed up regardless.

It won’t change what goes on around you and it won’t change what others do, but you WILL feel better as a result of what you did.

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This post was previously published on Ascent Publication.

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