Wedding shows are all the rage on television, especially when the summer wedding season is in full swing. They run the gamut from gown shopping and bridezillas to brides competing for “best wedding” honors. After years of ignoring these shows, I finally got curious and decided to watch one of them—and was amused and surprised when I discovered a lesson about living with multiple sclerosis in one of them.
The show was about shopping for wedding gowns, and the episode I watched involved a teacher with a $2,000 dress budget. The teacher had visited a particular bridal shop and found the dress of her dreams. It fit perfectly and looked beautiful. The only hitch: it cost $8,000. Still, she returned repeatedly to try it on and fall in love with it again. Then she’d leave and see if she could find an equivalent dress within her budget.
In the end, the teacher got a $16,000 dress that she loved even more than the $8,000 dream dress for $1,000—half of her $2,000 budget! How on earth did that happen? Because she had visited the same shop so many times, the sales staff knew her story and when a $16,000 couture dress was returned, marked down to $999, and used as a sample, they immediately thought of her. The next time the teacher was in the store, the staff showed it to her, and—you guessed it—she fell in love all over again.
The Importance of Showing Up
As I watched the episode, I was reminded of a few important things: A belief in possibilities, thinking more creatively, and simply showing up in life. The teacher could have been so blinded by her budget that she never tried on that expensive dress. Instead, she allowed herself the opportunity to wear a beautiful gown and experience the joy of seeing herself in it. With each visit, the teacher’s story became more meaningful and important to the sales staff—and unwittingly resulted in a gown more amazing than the teacher ever dreamed possible.
Living with multiple sclerosis (MS) can be like living on a fixed budget. It’s physically, emotionally, and psychically exhausting—and can limit my options. Because of that, I sometimes find myself slipping into a constrained mindset and not being present in many areas of my life, often without even realizing it. My fatigue and mobility problems make me want to hunker down and conserve energy, but that can be isolating and confining and can become habitual.
Whenever I start to feel myself shutting down, I ask myself these questions: Am I getting outside regularly? Have I experienced or learned anything new recently? Am I interacting with others? When I am, am I engaging with my full personality and curiosity, or am I hanging back? How often have I thought “What’s the use?” or something similar?
Every day is a judgment call. Sometimes, I’m truly not well and need to stay put. Other days, I just tell myself I’m not feeling well, even though I’m not having a bad day. It’s those rationalizations I need to guard against.
I’ve definitely had some great opportunities when I’ve shown up consistently and without a limited mindset, some as inconceivable to me as that $16,000 dress was for that teacher. For example, after consistently providing makeover events for women living with MS, I was invited to appear in a National Multiple Sclerosis Society ad campaign. That led to my unexpectedly being featured on the huge NASDAQ board when the campaign was run in Times Square during MS Awareness Week that year.
These stories reminded me that awesome wins come your way when you choose to expand your world a bit just by showing up.
Lisa Cohen was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2001. She’s the author of Overcoming the BS of MS and founder of Rockstar Women with MS, a website that offers programs and resources designed to empower women with MS.
