Category Archives: self-love

Are You Still Working on Yourself?

Working on car

Jill came to our first coaching session saying that she’s been “working on herself” for twenty years but still feels she has more work to do.

Every time I hear that phrase, “working on myself,” I visualize a car with the hood up and someone bent over the engine with a wrench. Frankly, it makes me cringe.

Like many women I know, Jill’s taken workshops, trainings, and courses with top self-help experts–the best out there. Meditation, spiritual direction, success training, more productivity, self-compassion, better thinking, building confidence–she’s done them all.

She even saw a therapist to see if she was depressed. The therapist told her she wasn’t and sent her away.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked.

“I just don’t ever feel good about myself,” she said. “I’m a phony and a quitter. I procrastinate. I don’t use the tools I learn. I keep trying, taking courses, listening to podcasts, but I think I’m just not good enough.”

“Jill, what if the real issue is your self-attack? You’re believing what you’re telling yourself–that something is wrong with you that needs work. What if you don’t need more confidence or self-compassion or productivity? What if the key to feeling good about yourself is accepting yourself right now, this minute, just exactly as you are?”

This is a novel concept for Jill and for many of the women I talk to. It’s as if there is a far-off destination, the land of “I’m fixed and don’t need to work on myself any more.” It’s always a faraway destination, miles from where they are.

But here’s the truth: We have good days and bad days, times we screw up and times we succeed. Sometimes we’re articulate and confident, sometimes we’re withdrawn and awkward. Sometimes we’re kind and sometimes we’re not, especially to ourselves.

In short, we’re human.

When we listen to the inner voice that attacks us, we forget our victories, our successes, and our kindnesses. We don’t remember our loving acts towards others and we can’t see the beauty that surrounds us.

The biggest problem Jill and many other bright, competent women share is believing the inner voice that tells them they’re not good enough exactly as they are

Consider these words from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

We’re all magnificent and messy, fabulous and awkward, deeply spiritual and disappointingly profane. And we don’t have to crawl on bruised and bloodied knees across a desert, futilely trying to be so good.

So how about getting your nose out of the engine of your heart and soul and gently lowering the hood. Walk away from the idea that you need to be fixed, tinkered with, worked on.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Can you quiet and listen to its soft whispers?

Roller Coaster

When you’re disappointed, does your mood plunge downward like it’s on a roller coaster?  Yesterday, my new client, let’s call her Susan, had plummeted like she was on the Coney Island Cyclone. She’d sought coaching after a string of business failures.  She suspected she might be doing something to attract this pattern into her life.

In a voice awash with misery and despair, she told me how she’d been incredibly happy this morning at the prospect of landing a fat new contract for her business, but a half-hour before our appointment, she received an email that the deal had fallen through. She was crushed and depressed, and beating herself up.

“So what changed the way you feel?” I asked.

“The company changed its mind,” she stated dully.

“How would you feel right this minute if the email had gotten lost in the internet’s parallel universe, and you didn’t know about it?” I asked her.

“I’d feel great,” she said glumly, “at least until I found out.”

“So what really changed?” I asked.

With some coaching, Susan realized that her thoughts about herself had changed. When she believed she had the contract, she thought she was smart and competent and valued, and she felt energetic and excited about life. When she got the email, she told herself the company had rejected her and she was incompetent and useless. She became listless and empty.

As Susan discovered first-hand this morning, if we attach our happiness and self-worth to external circumstances, like a big contract, a promotion, or our children’s grades, we climb aboard life’s roller coaster. When circumstances are favorable, we are high, excited, exhilarated; when things change, we nose-dive to the bottom.

We hop on a roller coaster to take this ride when we lose touch with our true nature, what Martha Beck calls our Essential Self. Our Essential Self knows that we are always sparkling jewels, treasures of infinite value and worth. This has nothing to do with success in any external form–contracts or promotions or our kids’ grades or any other person or circumstance outside of us.

When we lose touch with that part of us, that all-knowing, peaceful, secure place deep in our hearts, we are at the mercy of life’s roller coaster. Our self-worth gets buried by an avalanche of neediness and insatiable hunger for positive attention and rewards from others.

People change their minds, contracts fall through, and others get selected for partnerships, promotions and awards. That is the nature of life—change and unexpected circumstances are the only constants we can count on.

When we are in deep touch with our value, our worth, and the joy that lives deep inside us, we survive setbacks and challenges with peace and security. A contract can fall through, and we can put it into perspective. We’re disappointed, of course, but we can regain our positivity and hope, and we don’t slide into abusive or self-defeating thought patterns.

Sure, it feels fantastic to land a big contract. But when we are in deep contact with our Essential Self, we never lose touch with our worth and our value, and we can regain our energy and hope. We might even understand that the loss of the contract could, in some as yet unfathomable way, be in our best interests. We save the roller coaster ride for fun and games at an amusement park. And, we realize that the next gift from life may be just an email away.

Questions to Ask Yourself When You’re on the Roller Coaster

1. Are you having any negative thoughts about yourself?

2. Is this an honest, factual assessment of this situation?

3. What happens to you when you hold on to these negative thoughts?

4. Imagine being in the present situation without the negative thoughts and judgments. Does anything shift for you?

5. Is there a stress-free reason to keep the negative thoughts about yourself?

6. What is an honest assessment of the situation that doesn’t include any negative or abusive thoughts about yourself or others?

7. Does this change the way you feel?

Feast on Your Life

This poem was written by Derek Walcott, a poet and writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. He’s from St. Lucia, in the West Indies, which I hear is the most beautiful island in the Caribbean, which, to me, means it must be the most beautiful place on earth.

Doesn’t this say it all, and so beautifully?

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the others welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Cloudy Skies and Discouraging Words

“You’re so fat.” Julie is scolding someone close to her. She does it regularly.

Paula has a different message: “You spineless jellyfish. It’s a shame you are wasting your life”

“How could you be so dumb? No wonder your life is such a mess.” Kathy is delivering her blows with the accuracy of a champion prizefighter.

All three of these women are bright and educated. Each of them has many close, loving relationships, and excellent social skills. Each of these women knows that these words are cruel and destructive.

So who do you suppose they’re talking to like that? Their kids? Their spouses? Their friends? Of course not! They would never be so heartless and cruel.If you guessed that these are their inner conversations, you are correct. These women, whose names have been changed, berate and scold themselves many times each day. Continue reading

How to Love the One You’re Always With

What if you got the perfect Valentine from the most wonderful person in your life? This year, skip the middleman, and give yourself all the love, approval, and appreciation that you ever wanted from anyone else.

In honor of the one you’re with, the only one you’re always with, give yourself a Valentine, a luscious, mushy Valentine. Begin with a love letter to yourself. Here are some things to include:

  • What you would secretly love to see published about yourself if someone else was writing a tribute to you.

Continue reading