TO ALL THE BOSSES I'VE EVER LOVED, PT. 1

Parents, Guardians and Early Childhood Authority Figures

Parents, Guardians and Early Childhood Authority Figures -

Think back. Like, all the way back... Do you remember the first time you were instructed, or “bossed” by a parent, guardian, or authority figure into performing a certain task, and in a particularly, correct way - “their” way? i.e. “Make your bed,” or “Put away your toys…”

I honestly don’t remember the exact moment when I started to become aware that submission to, and praise from my authority figures was equivalent to my internal peace, it just sort of seemed to happen that way. And it kept happening.

Every time I would complete a task successfully in my family’s eyes, or in front of teachers, and they praised me for it…that false sense of internal peace was reinforced. I swear those had to be my first true hits of dopamine. I was hooked and the message from my brain was, “People-please or Fail.”

Before I knew it, I was a grown adult with deeply rooted, and fortified neural pathways that had attracted quite a slew of interesting characters into my life in the forms of Bosses, Friends, and even Love-partners (but especially Bosses).

It is because my life-path has been so impacted by my inauthentic drive to please others and self-neglect, that I have also come to realize how universal this experience really is, and how it effects the collective working-society we are all a part of today.

Look, I know it’s currently a challenge for our society to agree, or relate on hardly anything these days, but could we at least all agree that every Human Being’s common denominator is: we all begin our lives as children.

Unless we are AI or Benjamin-friggin-Button, typically we all grow up as somewhat of a blank-slate, witnessing the varying contrasts of what it means to be Human through the Beings in our immediate environments and our direct experiences with them.

At some point along the way in our relational dynamics with other Humans that are older, or bigger than us, we end up learning something to the effect of, “I’m the kid, they’re the adult. If I don’t obey this person’s certain set of rules or expectations, there will be consequences,” right?

Some of us get labeled as “difficult” early on and are made to feel as if receiving love or attention is conditional, or performance-based. Some of us learn how to manipulate whether for self-protection, or self-gain, not caring about the impact on others.

Some of us get spankings with the belt, switches - or worse - when we don’t perform or act accordingly. We either become deathly afraid of messing up, or pass those aggressive reactions onto others. And then some of us grow up with more passive guidance from our authority figures, and end up getting away with behaviors that don’t, or shouldn’t, fly in the “real,” or working-world.

Each of our unique upbringings and perspective about being alive and Human absolutely impacts how well we can work together, and the success of our collective ideas and business organizations on this planet. How could it not?

We all experience varying degrees of being developmentally stuck, or stunted based on how we were raised and how we internally process our upbringings as we age - every single one of us. And then we end up carrying these reinforced ways of being as “adults” into the working-world, even if they negatively impact ourselves and others.

Our society’s current lack of self-awareness before we actually start labeling ourselves as “adults” and entering the workforce, or having children, is creating a powerful ripple effect in everything we do together - the types of jobs we have, how well we can show up for those jobs, and how we impact other Human Beings and their mental well-being as we all cross paths and interrelate.

We often wonder why humanity is collectively feeling so burnt-out, depressed, and disconnected from each other and our selves. We just continue to press on, attempting to “earn a living” while also trying to enjoy any glimpse of this gift of being alive together.

We need a pause. A capital T, True pause. We need a reset and a genuine workforce restructure. Not a COVID-scare-tactic to get everyone in the same heightened state of fear so that everyone just keeps following along like sheep - No. We need a True, Intentional Pause (Now there’s a TIP for us).

We need to take a beat to really see what’s actually working in our current workforce structure, and to call out what’s not, and to begin again with our newfound insight and wisdom from where we are today.

I believe that in order for our current society to come together and form a more cohesive and healthy workforce structure, we will have to start individually. We will have to look inwards and self-acknowledge what we each are bringing to the table in terms of how we were raised, taught to relate, behave, react, and how we demonstrate what it means to work with others.

We’ll have to get uncomfortable, take personal responsibility, and ask ourselves why we are the way we are - which I know can be a suffocating experience for most of us. But, we are safe to ask and entertain these questions and evolve now thanks to all the brave souls who paved the way before us.

It’s going to require will, resiliency, transparency, and humility < some qualities I think we Humans have all lost sight of pursing, collectively speaking. So many of us are so afraid to admit that all of us are brought-up with shortcomings no matter how wonderful, or rich, or kind our authority figures were.

The other some of us have grown up believing that we are irredeemable based on how abusive, toxic or poor the environments were that we were born into. But I’m ready to shed both of these old and limiting patterns of thought, and beliefs. I’m ready to see what’s on the other side - aren’t you?

I believe having this discussion and cracking ourselves open is a critical first step to asking ourselves powerful and revolutionary inner-world questions like, “Am I making certain decisions in life and work, or behaving a certain way, because this is the type of human I want to pursue being, or am I still on auto-pilot from all that was mirrored to me at a young age?”

Asking ourselves these questions is how our subjective inner-world creates real, tangible, and positive changes in our objective, shared outer-world. I want to be a part of these positive, ripple effects while I’m still here, don’t you?

To My Parents, Guardians and Early Childhood Authority Figures,

You helped to further my exposure of what it means to be alive and human on this planet through reading me books and telling me stories. Then I begin to read, watch, and seek out new stories and information on my own as I progressed through childhood into young adulthood.

My mind became filled with Big Thoughts of how Humans came to be, what our purpose is, and where we’re all headed as a collective. I used my available senses and resources at the time in order to comprehend and figure out my own place in this world, but it’s been hard. I feel naive and resentful.

I’ve had moments where I’ve blamed and faulted you. I literally looked up to you to be shown how this whole “being-human” thing and growing up to “become somebody” all works. As a kid, I trusted that all the grownups in the world - in all of their different occupations - had it all figured out and taken care of for when my generation was ready to enter the workforce and participate in the “real-world.”

But, you were in the same boat. You had certain ideas and ways of being mirrored to you as well. I have now come to realize that we have all been a mirror-within-a-mirror-within-a-mirror to each other.

In my newfound awareness, I now choose to step out of it, and step back. To pause. To honor you and all that you had to endure to get me to the place where I can sit here and type out all these Big Thoughts, and know I’m not alone in having them…

So, thank you. Thank you for going before me and questioning things. For being afraid of uncertainty but pressing on anyway. Thank you for keeping me alive and as safe as possible. For intentionally guiding me down the path you thought would be best for me.

You were my first boss, my first guides and leaders. Thank you for showing me your perspective and life through your lens. I now release you and your perspective over my life choices and its direction from here forward.

Thank you for always ultimately just wanting what’s best for me: Me.

I’ll be the Boss of my own destiny now.

Love You Always My Parents, Guardians and Early Childhood Authority Figures, Teachers, etc. etc…

Dani Johnson

Thanks for reading (or listening).*

(*I try to leave my writing and voiceovers as raw as possible to intentionally lift the veil of our current people-pleasing, and “toxic-perfectionistic” society. Every Being’s “perfect” on Earth is incredibly unique, and the process of undoing and becoming is messy; We are All, always in the in-between, and in the midst of evolution itself. We need to intentionally create more space for every Soul to feel safe enough to fall apart and come back together in a supportive and nuturing world-environment (that does not take advantage of vulnerability, rather empowers it), over-and-over again - as many times as it takes - until we each truly have an opportunity to co-create new realities for the betterment of our timeline, for Humanity’s storyline…)

---