Another Achiever is Going Rogue! Here’s the story of Cheri Gregory, one of my favorite podcasters who also happens to be a teacher, speaker, author, and Certified Personality Trainer. There are so many things to love about Cheri: her passion to help women break free from destructive expectations, her writing style, and y’all, her voice is fabulous. She’s written two books with co-author Kathi Lipp: The Cure for the “Perfect” Life and Overwhelmed. She’s a mom to two grown children and wife of 28 years to Daniel.
How did you move away from performing for your worth and toward receiving grace?
I wish I could say that I used my mind and/or my heart to move away from performance and toward grace. The truth is that I’m so stubborn, the two major catalysts have been two things over which I have no control: illness and aging.
I’ve had several surgeries and a couple of back injuries that have slowed me waaaaaaay down and/or put me through seasons of chronic pain. Each time, I learned (and re-learned and re-re-learned…) that the world keeps on spinning even when I’m on bedrest. Lots of important things get done without me; lots of things I think are vital don’t actually matter.
I’ll be turning 50 soon; my brain and body don’t look or work the way they used to. But I find myself so much more grateful for both than when I was younger. In my 20’s, I was so hard on myself. Now, I’m just glad that after a half-a-century, I’m still alive!
Gratitude has been a huge force in moving away from performing for my worth and toward receiving grade. My decades of compulsive performance-ism were fueled by negative emotions: insecurity, jealousy, rejection, fear, grief. Gratitude actually re-wires our brains to ruminate less on negative emotions and respond to the good in our lives with joy!
What would you say to encourage the woman who isolates herself from feeling her hurt and pain by being busy, by looking for outside recognition, by always trying harder?
It’s not your fault: You didn’t ask to be this way; you didn’t bring performance-ism on yourself. Most of the time, it’s so automatic that you probably don’t even realize you’re doing what you’re doing. Once the Holy Spirit convicts, of course, it’s your responsibility to act. But you’re not to blame.
You’re not alone: You’re not some defective outlier — you’re part of a sisterhood of women who do the exact same things or similar things in their own way. And if we could stop long enough to hear each others’ stories, we’d be laughing hysterically and crying out, “Me too, sister. Me, too!”
It’s not too late: You can’t change the past. But you can change now, for the future. You can discover new options, and you can learn to make new choices. A woman came up to me at a retreat last weekend with tears in her eyes to tell me that God had told her, “You’re never too old to change.” She was in her 90s. It’s never too late.
Yes, you can: You can learn. You can grow. You can change. You can make one new choice. And then another.
Yes, you can.
You can fail, and you can try again. You can slow down. You can stop. You can say “no.”
Yes, you can.
You can become a woman who listens (instead of interrupting), enjoys others’ talents (instead of envying), and cheers her friends on (instead of seeking applause).
Yes, you can.
We aren’t accustomed to unconditional love, and we’re more familiar with checklists, performing, comparing, etc. What has helped you receive grace?
Oh man — I spent the first 45 years of my life absolutely addicted to checklists, performing, and comparing! What’s helped me learn to receive grace is one particular friendship in which I feel 100% safe taking risks and failing: my co-author, Kathi Lipp.
When Kathi and I first met, I was used to performing as a way to earn friendship. I didn’t consider myself likeable, but I knew I was useful. So I always worked hard to make myself indispensible in relationships.
But Kathi pretty much ignored my best attempts to impress her. She has always been far more interested in seeing me take risks and grow. She considers mistakes and failure normal—experiences to learns from and move on.
Having a friend who gives grace so generously — with whom the foundation of our friendship is grace — has taught me, first and foremost, how to give myself grace—which really means receiving God’s ever-ready grace. And the more grace I receive, the more grace I extend.
How has God helped you trust His grace and love for you?
Five years ago, I started taking solo performing classes taught by two improv instructors. (I signed up for their monologue workshop because I knew that improv was too far out of my comfort sons — I like my spontaneity very carefully planned, thank you very much!) The class met for eight weeks. For the first seven, my classmates – 3 men plus 4 other women – and I brainstormed, tested our idea on each other and gave each other feedback. The eighth week was when we performed our “works in progress.”
During the first few weeks, I was devastated by any feedback from my instructors and peers that was anything but glowing praise. I would interrupt them to try to explain what I’d meant, to help them “get it.” I would choke with tears and have to leave the room to collect myself. My instructors were endlessly patient with me. (They’d worked with plenty of performance-oriented perfectionists before!)
They explained, over and over again, that their feedback wasn’t criticism of me. They were trying to help me see the obstacles in my performance from the audience’s perspective — a perspective I was too self-absorbed to see without their help.
During our dress rehearsal, as we shared gut-honest feedback with teach other, it hit me: This is such a gift. I’m in a community that believes in my message and that cares about my success. They are inflicting a small amount of pain now — via invited critique — to protect me from the great pain of failing during the performance.
Up until this experience, I’d interpreted all criticism as rejection. But the feedback I received from this caring community of artists was anything but rejection: it was discipleship. And I realized that if people I’d known for just two months could pour into me, teach me, support me, and love me so powerfully, how much infinitely more patience, wisdom, teaching, support, and love awaited me in the artistic God who created each one of us?
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