Advice I didn't take
When I was thirty, I moved to a small town where I didn’t know anyone. I moved because I was looking for a fresh start. My twenties had been hard, and I wanted the next decade to feel easier—less emotional turmoil and more ease in relationships and with finding financial security in the work I so loved doing.
Not long after landing in this new town, I found myself at an impromptu brunch after a visit to the Sunday morning farmer’s market. And there, I found myself in a conversation with a man in his sixties who had made a lot of money and a name for himself in Hollywood.
After talking for a bit about what had brought me to our small town, he leaned back in his chair and said, “Can I give you some advice?”
I got the impression that even if I said no, he was going to give it to me anyway.
“My advice is to find a much older guy who is substantial and marry him. Then you know’ll you be taken care of and can do the work you want, and when he dies you’ll have the means to go live the life you want.”
I am not joking. And neither was he. That really, truly was what he considered brilliant advice. And yes, I did want to throw up in my mouth when I heard it.
Before I go off on a tangent about why this advice was so terribly offensive on so many levels, let me bring it back to what, looking back, I took from my disgust in this advice.
Rather than “marry a substantial old guy to have the life you want,” what I decided to take from it was “become a substantial person to have the life you want.”
And by substantial, I did not mean it in the one way slimy Yoda meant it: wealthy.
To me, this is what it means to be substantial:
1. Have substance. Say and do things that are true and meaningful for you, and kind and helpful to others.
2. Be felt. To have substance, you have to feel yourself (your sensations, your emotions, your embodied experience). That’s also the only way that other people can feel you.
3. Be considerable. As in, believe that other people would consider you, and consider yourself. At any point of indecision, ask yourself what you would do if you believed that you and your needs got to be considered. Because you do, and they do.
4. Be solid. Not like a rock, but like a living, breathing, growing human who is trustworthy to themselves and to others, and who believes in the promise of resilience and the currency of connection.
5. Have worth. Not in terms of financial worth, though that’s great, too. But first and foremost, having worth means knowing your inner worth—that you’re inherently not less than or better than any other human, and that there’s no door you can’t walk through where you don’t belong if that’s how you hold yourself.
6. Be true to your essence. The word substantial comes from the Latin root substantia, which means “being” or “essence.” So to be substantial means to be aligned with your own essential way of being.
This was the type of substantial person I wanted to commit to being, and I have spent the last dozen years committed to trying to become that.
I also happen to have gotten lucky enough to marry a substantial guy—substantial by MY definition. So take that, slimy Yoda!
With that, if I may be so bold as to offer advice—commit to being a substantial person.
Because that’s how you’ll feel your life is your own and that you’ll get to make an impact in ways that are meaningful to you.
And because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we need more people of true substance in our world. The visionaries of the future I want to live in aren’t brilliant minds, but substantial beings.
What does substantial feel like to you?
What gesture or posture represents that feeling to you?
Call upon that gesture or posture on the days where you feel out of alignment with yourself as a way of coming back to the best in you.
Want help embodying more confidence and self-worth? Check out my LinkedIn Learning course on overcoming insecurity.