It can be tough to balance being an educator and being on your own journey. How can you deal with that?
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Cathy: How do you deal with being both a sex educator and a human being? Being the resource for information on dealing with personal relationship issues we all have? I have this feeling like one must know it all in order to help some. How do you address your own areas of needs for improvement while still helping others?
Reid: Good question.
Cathy: Yeah. Thank you for writing in.
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from The Intimacy Dojo. I’m Reid Mihalko, creator of Sex Geek Summer Camp, and when the Sex Geek Summer Camp shirt’s on, we’re talking business advice for sex educators.
Cathy: Yes. It’s a great question. I love what you talk about is just being vulnerable and sharing your process. I think for a long time, I think in the 1980s, gurus were the thing. Someone who had it all together and never had any problems but we’re a lot more sophisticated about issues, I think, now.
Reid: We know everybody has problems.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: Thank you, internet.
Cathy: Yes so trying to pretend that you have it all together, you’re probably going to fall pretty fast. Admitting, “I struggle with that, too. Here’s the things I’ve found that help me the most”, you’re still giving them a shortcut. It’s all about giving them a shortcut and some perspective.
Reid: And letting people know that they don’t have to try to find their answers alone.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: A really great answer to a question, as a sex educator and expert around certain things, is “I don’t know the answer to that. Let’s go find it together.”
Cathy: Yeah. You can actually teach them how to learn.
Reid: That way, you’re building more trust and then you can unburden yourself with having to have all the answers.
Cathy: Yeah. I think also framing answers not as, this is the golden key and it works every time for everything and it’s going to be perfect. Instead of framing it that way, saying, this is what works really well most of the time. You get to frame it for your particular situation. You do that with the difficult conversation formula. You’re not saying that it’s going to keep every relationship is going to transform them and butterflies are going to fly around and everyone’s going to be happy. It might be that you need to end the relationship with that person. You are promising that it will give people clarity and a deeper vulnerability and intimacy.
Making clear promises about what something can do rather than saying, “this is going to 100% all the time fix it and your husband’s going to love you and they’ll take out the trash every night.” I don’t think that most people are going to believe that and it’s going to be really hard to fulfill, especially if your husband forgets to take out the trash.
Reid: Basically, role model and help teach people how to be human beings. While perfectionism as a drive isn’t going to go away any time soon, modeling that we’re human and how to have human relationships and how to work through those things, will help you help people in a more powerful way and you don’t have to be perfect either and no one’s perfect.
You being not perfect and transparent and vulnerable with people and real will help you get clients and build fans and followers more than some guru who’s sitting on top of the hill all dressed in white and has no imperfections. Most people know that that’s just a matter of time before those imperfections basically come out in some sort of scandal or something like that.
Cathy: Yeah. One thing is being vulnerable is very different than using your clients as therapists so it’s important to have lots of support in the community. Having people to talk about your break up or your husband not taking out the trash or whatever it is, so that when you talk about it with your clients, you can share it vulnerably. Like, “this is something that I struggle with”, but you’re not really processing. You’re not leaning on them for that.
Reid: Yep. Take care of yourself. Role model for your clients how to take care of themselves and then go make the world a better place.
Cathy: Yeah. We hope this helped.
Reid: Leave your comments below. Thanks for writing in.