Two outta three ain’t bad – easy, comfy, obvious
In doing physical projects, you have probably heard the expression “you can choose two of good, fast or cheap”. This age-old sentiment bears an element of truth and can be applied to a variety of situations. I’d like to propose a similar model for self-development work: “you can choose two of easy, comfy or obvious”.
For an action towards self-development to be “actionable” it must have two of the qualities. If something has all three at once, it’s not something you need to work on. It is already an assimilated and unobtrusive part of yourself. If you only have one of the three, that’s tougher .. but still doable.
Anyway, say you want to change something that’s both out of your comfort zone and physically difficult. In that case, you are going to need a super-surplus of the last element – insight – to get anywhere. It’s the same for any of them. Deep physical reserves, a broad comfort zone or piercing insight can compensate for a lack of the other two.
However, it’s inefficient to try to work on something about yourself by using strength, guts or intellect alone. Your time is better spent reframing the challenge to include more of your current capabilities. Read on for how I know…
BODY AND/OR HEART AND/OR MIND
To define what I mean by each of the qualities:
- Easy body – these are purely physical tasks of which you’re capable without breaking a sweat.
- Comfy heart – things within your emotional comfort zone, so much so that you don’t feel nervous about them.
- Obvious mind – the course of action is clear, so clear that it is, well, obvious.
When you find something in yourself that requires work, you’re going to need to use your body, mind and/or heart to get it done. And two out of three makes the job so much easier.
A non-transgender identity example of a two-outta-three self-improvement challenge is fitness. It is obvious what to do and it doesn’t impinge on your emotional boundaries, but it’s not physically easy. Two outta three: in this case MIND plus HEART helps you overcome the BODY.
A basic transgender example might be stepping into the world presenting yourself as a woman for the first time. What to do is obvious and doing it is not physically difficult. Get real with yourself, you are just putting on clothes and makeup and then opening a door and walking. That said, it can be WAY out of your comfort zone. Two outta three: your BODY and MIND can be recruited for the task, but your HEART isn’t in it (yet).
ANOTHER TRANS EXAMPLE
The above two examples are mind-plus-heart-minus-body and body-plus-mind-minus-heart, respectively. So, now let’s look at the curious case of body-plus-heart-minus-mind. That is, something that is easy and comfy, but you can’t damn-well notice what it is! Here’s a transgender example, it might sound like you. Say you’re still caught in the purge-shame-succumb spin-cycle of crossdressing that characterises the early stages of so many MTF gender self-development experiences (I’ve written about this before).
One easy, comfy and yet non-obvious way out of this trap is through adding a degree of androgyny to your life … and doing it openly. And the “openly” bit is utterly fucking mandatory. No, I am not talking about spinning around in some kind of attention-demanding rainbow-pride-flag tornado of self-absorption. Rather, I mean adopting androgyny openly but low key. Conservative androgyny.
Perhaps you could buy and wear a plain grey T-shirt from the unisex section – one that looks presentable and probable and which fits. Or, you could use a sun cream that has a tiny bit of tint to it. Or, you could wear clear nail polish. Or, you could give a unisex name – Lee, Ash, Brooke, or similar – when you order Starbucks.
Why this works and why it’s not obvious is due to how the shame-purge-succumb cycle clouds your mind. Under the SPS cycle, your femininity swings wildly between long periods of ultra-repression and short, dramatic (and self-destructive) seizures of ultra-indulgence. You’re not cross dressing: you’re binge dressing. And so the effectiveness of mundane expressions of non-masculinity is not obvious. But, trust me, the effect is real. And it’s also simple and not-at-all threatening to your comfort zone. Two outta three: BODY and HEART, without MIND.
FINDING LEVERAGE
So you’re working to figure out and then build a new gender identity. Well, that means you’re doing self-development work. It’s no different really than any other kind of self-D. You’re in the self-help section of the bookstore. You’re changing something about yourself. And the point of all the above is that:
- The obvious and physically easy thing will be difficult emotionally. If you are getting bullied, the course of action to respond is clear and the physical actions required are ordinary – the difficult part is how far out of your comfort zone doing these plain and simple things is.
- The emotionally comfortable and obvious thing will be physically demanding. If you are unfit, then you know you need to exercise and doing so doesn’t threaten your sense of self, but – boy – exercising is so physically uncomfortable.
- The easy and emotionally comfortable thing will be a mystery. The power of performing femininity in mundane ways is so counter-intuitive that it stands there in plain view and we keep ducking and weaving trying to see past it for some exaggerated “pink dose” that we assume will be more effective.
SCARED AND CLUELESS: ONE-OUTTA-THREE TRANSITIONING
It’s hard to imagine someone for whom transitioning is within their comfort zone. But it is imaginable that there are many people for whom the physical (BODY) and logical (MIND) elements are easy and obvious – two-outta-three. Because in transitioning, there are no 1000-pound weights to lift or astrophysics equations to solve, but there is the gruelling work of expanding your comfort zone.
For me though, when I started this, I was working one-outta-three. All I had was my body. For me, body was easy. I am small framed and slender, my cheekbones are high and round, my face is symmetrical, my skin is clear and even. With laser, my body hairs vanished like snowflakes in a deep-fryer. Heck, I don’t even have an Adam’s apple. All these unfair physical MTF advantages … and I just lucked into them. It feels grotesque to acknowledge, but “looks privilege” is real and I have it. So, back when I was a scared and clueless crossdresser, I still looked phenomenal.
This may have seemed unfair for the smarter and stronger gurls I hung out with. They envied me, even though they held so many advantages in experience, financial means, confidence, self-knowledge and mental stability. So scared, clueless and gorgeous, I had to grapple with a problem I could scarcely sense: what is going on with my gender? All I knew was that to even perceive the issue, let alone address it, I’d have to go way out of my comfort zone.
PRESSURE AND TIME
It took me decades of mental and emotional effort for the issues to become more apparent and working with them to be more comfortable. And I mean decades. I started crossdressing when I was 4 years old. It took another 33 years for my egg to crack enough that I could begin the work of assimilating transness into who I think I am.
Today, that work continues. I live my life either explicitly presenting as a woman, or just as a androgynous “body” walking around in jeans, beanie and hoodie. I suspect “being a woman” will always present challenges – it does for ciswomen. Society places challenges in the path of anyone intentionally asserting their identity. Meeting these challenges will require self-assertion, self-awareness and self-control. It will also take some combination of easy body, comfy heart and/or obvious mind.