The Gifts of Imperfection: Being Worthy

Brené Brown wrote a beautiful book titled “The Gifts of Imperfection”, which is a blessing, especially to those of us who are recovering perfectionists. She has collected thousands of stories all over the country and found that we all struggle with shame and the fear of not being enough. As a result, many of us are afraid to be our true selves.  She found that how much we know and understand ourselves is critically important, but loving ourselves and embracing our vulnerability is even more essential, for our own sake and for those who are close to us.

But how do we embrace ourselves, just the way we are, including all of our imperfections? Oftentimes, we have knowingly or unknowingly created some sort of list that we have to satisfy first, before we “are worthy.” 

Things like:

I’ll be worthy if I lose twenty pounds.

I’ll be worthy if I can get pregnant.

I’ll be worthy if I make partner (or become a manager, director, VP, have a successful business, etc.)

I’ll be worthy if everyone thinks I am a good parent.

I’ll be worthy when my parents finally approve.

I’ll be worthy if I have a boyfriend/girlfriend (get engaged, get married, etc.)

It never ends. Once we finally reach one item on our list, we focus on a new one. We have to get to the point where we believe that we are worthy now. Not if or when we reach a certain goal. We are worthy and we are enough RIGHT NOW. There is nothing we need to accomplish first.

I used to have several items on my list I needed to accomplish successfully in order to feel worthy. There was always the next higher work title I needed to get to (first manager, then director etc.) I wanted my parents’ approval. Then there were all the day-to-day goals. What is on your list of things you need to satisfy before you are worthy?

Next time: How to believe that you are worthy right now

Are you your best friend or worst enemy?

I still see so many tributes people are posting about music legend Whitney Houston. Clearly her sudden passing has touched many. In a 2002 interview, TV journalist Diane Sawyer asked Whitney Houston what she considered the "biggest devil" among her failings. Houston answered: "Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. So the bigger devil is me, I am either my best friend or my worst enemy."

Looking from the outside, Houston had it all: beauty and talent, great fame, and huge financial success.  However, what she was feeling on the inside was a different story. What made her resort to alcohol, start taking drugs, and stay in a destructive marriage with Bobby Brown? It doesn’t matter how great things look on the outside – it’s how you feel on the inside that counts. Being famous and in the spotlight creates a lot of pressure: to look good, to perform well, and to sound good. It pushes you beyond your comfort zone, creating fear and anxiety. And it’s easy to feel “not good enough” or “imperfect” if you are constantly being watched, reviewed, and criticized by others. 

Whether you are your best friend or worst enemy is the key. If you are truly your best friend, then you will know that you are always enough, that you are perfect the way you are and that it is completely fine to make mistakes.  It doesn’t matter what everyone else says. If you are your worst enemy, you will always feel that you not good enough, judge yourself for all your imperfections and criticize yourself for every mistake you make.

It doesn’t matter whether we are famous or not – we all grapple with similar issues. Every time we try something new, we push beyond our comfort zone and might feel anxious. There are others around us who may voice their opinions and criticisms, and we have to decide whether we listen to them or not. 

How do you deal with your everyday pressures? Are you your best friend or your worst enemy? 

Will you love me unconditionally?

All of us are looking for love. Whether we are single and looking for a partner or in a relationship and want to feel more love from the person we are with. And what we want most of all is unconditional love: Feeling loved for just the way we are, even when we are not at our best. So we seek this unconditional love and are disappointed when we don’t find it. Yet how often do we give unconditional love, especially to ourselves?

How do you treat yourself when you don’t finish something on time, make a mistake, or act in a way you didn’t want to? Do you love yourself unconditionally or do you criticize and blame yourself? 

And how about when a loved one is late, does something to annoy you, or acts in a way you didn’t want them to?  Do you love him or her unconditionally or do you criticize and show your annoyance?  

I believe that it all starts with ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves unconditionally, forgive ourselves, and treat ourselves with compassion and understanding, it makes it difficult to do the same for others.

So I invite you to bring more unconditional love into your life by being kind to yourself. Forgive yourself.  If you have a pet, a friend, or a partner who is showing you love, return the same love not only to them, but feel it also for yourself.  Love yourself, so you can love the ones you care about. ♥

Don’t Take Anything Personally

If you have read Miguel Ruiz’s “The Four Agreements”, “Don’t Take Anything Personally” is the second agreement he encourages us to adopt.  He explains: “Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”  That sounds great, but it’s easier said than done. How can we stop taking things personally?

I believe that it all comes back to loving yourself. If you truly accept and love yourself – your body, your mind, your soul – then nothing anyone else says can hurt you. If someone says you are too big or too short, it doesn’t matter - because you know you are perfect the way you are. If someone says that you are stupid, clumsy, too much, inconsiderate, or too different, it doesn’t matter – because you know that there is nothing wrong with you and you love yourself the way you are. The only reason something hurts us is if we believe that it is true.

“But if I think that I am perfect the way I am, then I will never grow and I won’t improve! And I know that I have ‘flaws!’”, you may think.  Yes, of course we all have things that we may want to work on. And that’s ok. But don’t hold out on loving yourself, just because you haven’t reached a certain ideal yet. If we love ourselves, it doesn’t mean that we stop to grow. It actually makes it easier to change because we are being compassionate with ourselves and are using positive reinforcement as opposed to criticizing and blaming ourselves and using negative reinforcement. (You can look at my post from last week to read more about self-compassion.)

So invite you to continue to practice loving yourself, so you don't take things personally. If someone says something to you and you notice that you are starting to take it personally, take a deep breath and be kind to yourself. What are you believing that makes you take this personally? That you are not good enough, not perfect, not a good Mom, or not a good person? Be kind and compassionate with yourself. It's ok. Everyone has something to work on. You are still a good person. You are still loved. ♥

Self-Judgment or Self-Compassion?

Have you ever criticized or judged yourself? Maybe a meeting didn’t go well and you were angry with yourself for not preparing enough or not being able to express yourself the way you wanted to.  Or maybe you forgot to do something you really needed to get done and you told yourself: “I can’t believe I forgot again! That’s so stupid of me!”  

That critical voice used to run in my head all the time. I remember feeling shocked the first time I realized how many negative messages were running through my head and how hard I was on myself. I would never talk that way to a friend! So how come I was speaking to myself in such a mean way?

My inner critic actually had good intentions: She was trying to motivate me to get things done, not make mistakes and to do better. Unfortunately, in the process, she was also making me feel bad about myself.  She was not being very compassionate in the process.

Oftentimes we are afraid that if we are too compassionate with ourselves, we will lose our motivation and drive to accomplish things. Interestingly, a number of studies on self-compassion have found that people who have more self-compassion are less likely to procrastinate, more likely to re-engage with goals after facing setbacks, and more willing to receive and act on feedback.  It has even shown to lead to more success in dieting. Self-compassion is definitely more powerful than self-criticism!

Practicing to love myself has meant practicing self-compassion. So instead of berating myself for not doing something, I would tell myself that it is ok, that there is no need to be perfect, and that I can get started on it now instead.  =)

How do you practice self-compassion? You can begin by thinking of something that upset you today or this week. Instead of judging and criticizing yourself, simply write to yourself about this situation as if you were talking to your best friend.  Your best friend has your back, supports you, encourages you, consoles you, and celebrates with you. We are spending a lot of time with ourselves. Why not develop a relationship in which we are our own “best friend”?

For more about research on self-compassion, watch Stanford’s health psychologist Kelly Mcgonigal’s talk:  http://kellymcgonigal.com/2011/12/01/the-power-of-self-compassion/

Love yourself for everyone else’s sake!

Last week, I met with my book club to discuss the book “Bed” by David Whitehouse. The story is about Mal, who refuses to leave his bed on his 25^th birthday and continues to stay there for the next twenty years. Not seeing a purpose for himself and fearing a mundane existence, he decides to “give up” and just stay in bed. His family adjusts, and eventually everything revolves around Mal, with his brother sharing a room with him and his mother feeding and taking care of him. 

Our discussion led us to the question of how Mel’s Mom showed her love and whether it was truly love. She was so accepting of the situation, cooking for him, feeding him, taking care of him, which seems like a very loving act. At the same time, if you really love someone, would you let them just give up and stay in bed? Wouldn’t you stop enabling them and help them get back on their feet?  In a strange way, Mal’s mother had her own motivations for keeping him in bed. Mel gave his mother a purpose: helping him made her feel needed, which is something she craved. So was she in reality doing this for selfish reasons, not out of love?

I believe that if we don’t love ourselves, we cannot properly love others. Mal’s mother did not love herself enough to take care of herself and her needs (like finding a life purpose to pursue). So as a result, she “used” Mal as her life purpose, and in the process, wasn’t able to take the really loving action of helping him get back on his feet and engage in life again.

Sometimes, we think we are loving someone by accepting them just the way they are, by not speaking up when something bothers us, by catering to what they want and suppressing our own needs. But the fact is, by not taking action and speaking our truth, we are not loving ourselves and are not living fully. And our internal resentment only grows until it blows up one day. We need to take care of our own needs and find activities and pursuits that make our hearts soar. We need to set healthy boundaries. If we really love ourselves and are taking care of ourselves, we have so much more capacity to love and help others we care about. So love yourself first, for everyone else’s sake! =)

Feeling Inspired or Overwhelmed?

This past Saturday, I attended a chapter meeting of the National Speaker’s Association. As usual, there were very dynamic presenters who provided us with lots of very rich information on how to be a more successful speaker. During one of the breaks, I was talking to another attendee who remarked that these programs were great, but they were also a curse. On the one hand, seeing these amazing, successful speakers can be very motivating. You may walk away thinking: “Wow, this is what’s possible! Now I can go out and do that, too!”  On the other hand, you can walk away feeling overwhelmed and demoralized. “Oh my, see how great that speaker is. Look at their amazing Website. Look at all that they have to offer. I am so far away from that. How will I ever get there?”

I realized that I was going back and forth between both of these feelings. Rather than pushing away the overwhelm, I let myself feel it, so I could dig a little deeper to see what was behind it.  What I found was a feeling of “not being as good as” these stellar speakers who seem to have it all figured out. And when I thought about taking action on some of the steps presented, what emerged was a fear of failing, not being good enough, and making mistakes. Aha! These are definitely familiar fears to me – they may sound familiar to you, too.

As I was leaving the meeting, someone asked me whether I was going to go ahead and create a green screen at home to produce professional looking videos with varied backgrounds, as one of the speakers had suggested. I know by now that the best way for me to get out of overwhelm and fear is to take very small, but actionable steps. So I replied that the best first step for me would be to just start creating a short video with no effects – a one minute video. 

It’s ok to experience and feel overwhelm – we all do at some point or another. What’s not productive is staying there. So what I like to do to get out of it is to take action. Preferably, taking a very small, but doable step toward what I want to do. I now have my next step – what is yours?  =)