How to Stop Being a Sell Out

The book I can’t stop telling everyone about is Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity. There’s a ‘scene’ in the book where she describes her career as a professional speaker, and shares one of the questions she asks the audience in virtually every speech she gives. “Are you comfortable right now in your seat?” People nod their heads. “Are you sure you’re comfortable?” She asks again. People nod. “Would you be sitting the way you’re sitting right now in your seat if you were at home on your couch and sweats? If not, go ahead and get comfortable.” She encourages. People move to make themselves more comfortable. The overall theme of her book is this: there is true nature, and there is culture. We are born with our own true nature, into a culture that may be different. When our true nature clashes with culture, we sell out to culture. This is true for how we sit when we’re an audience member at a talk like the one that Martha gives, this is also true for much more meaningful situations, when our gut is telling us “No!” but our culture is telling us “Go!”

Let me ask you this, where in your life have you been guilty of being a “Sell out?”

Think of A Time When You Sold Yourself Out to Culture, How Did It Make You Feel?

We’ve all had this experience. We’re met with a situation that requires a choice to be made. Our body is telling us to “go right” but our community is telling us to “go left.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve been guilty of “going left” simply out of wanting to people-please.

I remember the first time I had to make a really tough call at work. I was getting a lot of pressure from my leadership team to move really quickly on this decision. I personally felt letting this decision was inevitable, but the timeline on which I was being asked to move was disconcerting.

My true nature was telling me “No!” but the leaders were telling me “Go!” and I didn’t have the mental tools (or the spine!) to push back. My true nature was in a serious clash with culture, and big things were at stake. What did I do? I sold out! And on the day I sold out, my physical being felt awful, I felt hot, icky, anxious, and completely disregulated.

Now Think of A Time When You Didn’t Sell Yourself Out to Culture, How Did It That Feel?

Juxtapose this with a similar experience around a very big decision, where I expressed my concerns directly with leadership, made suggestions on how we could approach the situation and timeline in a way that felt very aligned. With that alignment, and support of the plan, the big decision was made, rolled out, and completed as discussed. My true nature was telling me “this is really tough, but it will be best for all, if we take action.” and the culture around me supported the decision, and the process. I kept my true nature, and fit it into what was required of me in the culture. Albeit, as leaders in business sometimes we need to make tough decisions, when we do it from a place of true nature, your body rewards you by feeling aligned and regulated.

If Selling Out Makes Us Feel Physically Ill, Why Do We Do It?

If you’ve ever made a decision that went against your true nature, my guess is you felt it in your physical being too.

Selling out your true nature, to culture, can come in the form of small things like saying “I’m good” in response to “How are you?” when you’re really not, or chronically over-working yourself and blowing past meal times because you’re “too busy,” to much bigger things like staying in a toxic relationship, or continuing in a career that makes you miserable.

So if it makes us physically ill to compromise our true nature, why do we do it?

Well, Martha identifies two forces: True Nature, and Culture. Culture is very powerful force, and our caveman brains are hard-wired to stay with the tribe consensus for fear of being banished, because banishment used to be synonymous with death.

Apply that to our modern world, and if our caveman brain is deciding between: sell out to culture for fear of banishment/death or act from your true nature and run the risk of feeling bad until you get over it, the path of least resistance wins — we sell out to culture every time.

But here’s the issue with that. The result of a lifetime of selling out your true nature to culture is disease.

Disease: a particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people.

At it’s best, the disease comes in the form of feeling unwell after a certain situation plays out, and at it’s worst manifests in our physical bodies as actual illness from a lifetime of compromising our true nature.

Brutal, right?

How To Stop Being a Sell Out

So how do we stop the disease? How do we stop selling out our true nature, to culture?! Well, I may be early on my journey, but here’s where I am starting:

• First, slow down, and start to take notice of two things:

  • Lie - Notice situations where you are tell lies (even white lies!), whether those are to yourself or others. And ask yourself, why did I lie?

  • Bad Decision - Notice situations where a decision needs to be made, and you were the decision-maker, but on the other side of that decision, you felt awful. Ask yourself, why do I feel this way?

• Next, start identifying the patterns hiding in your “Why?”

  • Lie - Do you lie to make people feel better about themselves? Do you lie to protect people you love? Do you like because you are hiding something that you feel guilty for doing or wanting? How does it feel now, knowing the core of what made you lie?

  • Bad Decision - Do you feel bad because your decision caused an injustice to another person? Do you feel bad because your decision compromised one of your core values? How does it feel now, knowing the core of what made you feel bad about the decision you made?

• Once you see why you lie or make compromised decisions and how it makes you feel, replay one of those specific lies, or situations in your head (or journal) and give yourself a second shot to do it right.

  • Lie - How could you have shared truthfully instead? (to be clear, lying by omission is still a lie) What are some things that you could have said that would feel in integrity, while also getting you the outcome you identified in the patterns above that were the cause for the lie?

  • Decision - How could you have made this decision in a way that is more truthful to you instead? If the outcome you were targeting was X, how could you have gotten there in a way that didn’t compromise your integrity?

• Now that you’ve taken the time to identify, reflect, and replay, take the opportunity to look at your upcoming obligations and spot situations in the future where you might just lie or make a bad decision, make a plan for how you could approach these decisions from a place of integrity.

• Finally, head into those obligations with a plan, and assuming you are safe to do so, act from this place of integrity instead.

• Later, reflect on how acting from integrity felt, and juxtapose that to the way that felt, to the situation when you didn’t act from integrity. Feels better right?

• Repeat!

Summary

In summary, we are all born with a true nature, but when that true nature clashes with culture, we sell out to culture. The compound interest of selling out to culture is disease. Those who want to remediate disease from their lives have to act from a place of integrity, driven by their true nature. It can be very challenging, especially if you are a “total sell out” like many of us are. Take small steps like noticing situations where you sell out, replaying them with more integrity-aligned responses, and then, when you’re comfortable, start actually taking these integrity-aligned-actions.