Tiny Buddha

Tag: patriarchy

  • How to Reclaim Your Power After Being Denigrated or Disrespected

    How to Reclaim Your Power After Being Denigrated or Disrespected

    “As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas.” ~Audre Lorde

    The high-speed train barreled through the Japanese countryside. Craning my neck to take in the scenery, excitement fluttered in my tummy. I was twenty-eight years old and living my dream of being a professional singer.

    My duo partner, Caroline, and I had just completed a month onstage at the Intercontinental Hotel in Manila, Philippines. A twenty-piece orchestra backed our forty-five-minute show, an entertaining mix of Motown hits, 80s pop ballads and a few Broadway tunes. Local authorities treated us like American stars, showering us with gifts and fine dining.

    Our next stop was a month at the Mandarin Hotel in Singapore. Opening to rave reviews, we slowly developed a fan following, including a distinguished older woman who invited us out to her estate. There, we sipped sweet tea and rode her magnificent thoroughbred horses through pristine rows of rubber trees in the slanting, late afternoon sun.

    I wondered what delights Japan would offer as we sped toward Kyoto. What I didn’t know was that instead of playing major hotel venues, we’d been booked into a string of men’s clubs. The postage stamp stages allowed no room for elaborate choreography or a live band. Instead, our charts had been recorded in the studio and reduced to a cassette tape.

    The small clubs catered to successful men and their mistresses. One night, we struggled through a plaintive rendition of Endless Love while male patrons grabbed their crotches and waggled their tongues at us. I stared at the ceiling, completely unprepared to handle the visual assault and praying my brimming tears would not slide down my cheeks.

    Similar acts greeted us at each stop of the tour. With no tools to process the experience, I turned to stacks of Pringles and cups of vanilla ice cream sold from the cart on our daily train rides to the next city.

    I fled to Los Angeles at the end of the tour, emotionally numb and ten pounds heavier, and never performed again.

    No one was talking about trauma in 1983. People around me laughed it off as a funny anecdote. I internalized my shame and judged myself for taking it so hard, ultimately deciding that I wasn’t tough enough for the entertainment business.

    But was that the truth? Is toughness really the answer to aggression and disrespect? Or is there a different kind of empowerment needed to retain agency in the midst of dehumanizing behavior?

    This question is more relevant than ever at a time when patriarchal values appear to be surging. It simply won’t work to fight back on the same playing field, to “out-tough” the bullies. In fact, we need to get off the game board altogether and rewrite the rules.

    Here are three empowering rules I wish I’d known at the time.

    Rule #1: Reclaim your permission to feel.

    When we’ve been in situations where we’ve felt powerless, we become convinced that showing honest emotion is weak, and that strength comes from the illusion of control. Retaining the upper hand. The strategy falls apart when we recognize that raw emotion can be our greatest source of power.

    Real power is not our capacity to manipulate people and circumstances. It is a grounded ability to act that emerges from being connected with our authentic self. Emotions are the pathway to authenticity.

    Cultivating emotional vulnerability is difficult. It requires dropping your defenses and connecting from the heart.

    Few know how to express clean (vulnerable) anger without diverting into blame, judgment or righteous indignation, and in fact may not even know what it is. Can you tell your spouse you are angry about something they did while staying connected to your love and commitment to them with an open heart? Can you navigate through the sting of humiliation and rejection, letting a friend see your naked pain, without diving into debilitating shame?

    Learning how to feel vulnerably is a skill set you can cultivate over time, one that will strengthen when you embrace the second rule.

    Rule #2: Find a safe ally who will bear witness to your truth.

    It can be scary to reveal what you feel. Exposing your vulnerability to an uncaring audience results in self-sabotage. The key is to find a safe ally who will mirror your truth and help you stand firmly in what you know.

    Whether you confide in a therapist, coach, good friend, or spouse, the key is to find a safe place to be real. Look for someone who will witness your truth with an open heart and encourage your messy authenticity. There is enormous power in being seen.

    Rule #3: Convert raw emotion to empowered action. 

    You will likely feel much better once you’ve honored your emotional truth. Restored to yourself, there may be a temptation to put the unpleasantness behind you and move on. But this is where you need to dig in and augment the fruits of your work.

    Don’t squander your hard-won authority!

    If you’ve done the first two steps in earnest, you will have made many discoveries. What are the empowering choices you want to implement going forward?

    I’ve seen this countless times in my own life and in the lives of my clients. The moments when we finally give voice to our unexpressed hurt or anger become a springboard for profound change. We can walk away from an unhealthy relationship. We can speak up to a dismissive colleague with clear boundaries. We can honor our needs, building confidence and esteem.

    Decisions born of raw vulnerability often become the defining moments in life, when we embrace permission to forge our own path.

    Reconstructing the Past

    I’ve thought a lot about that naïve young woman who returned from Japan with shattered dreams. Forty years later, I understand that instead of growing a thicker skin, she actually needed both emotional support and wise guidance to feel her way back to wholeness.

    In my imagination, I walk with her off that seedy stage and back to her hotel room as she removes her makeup and sequined dress.

    I sit beside her, ask how she really feels, and simply listen as she pours out her humiliation, her fury, her awful sense of powerlessness… her deep disappointment and sense of betrayal. And when all the emotion is spent, I tell her she has choices. She gets to have boundaries and do what works best for her.

    Together, we explore all her options and their possible repercussions. Then, we let her decide. She does not have to remain a victim. She does not have to let the behavior of others determine her future.

    The Secret Rule #4

    While we may not be able to rewrite the circumstances of the past, we can absolutely rewrite the beliefs we forged along the way.

    The most harmful of these have to do with our sense of being unlovable, or in some way unworthy. We can transform these limiting beliefs, helping our younger selves to know they matter, and their emotions are valid and heard.

    Over the years, I’ve gone back in my imagination to be the safe ally for many of my younger selves. It always makes a difference.

    Love is timeless. Imagination is creative.

    This is the secret rule that enables us to heal. It is never too late to stand in your power.

  • Trust Restored: Why I’m Letting Go of Preconceived Ideas About People

    Trust Restored: Why I’m Letting Go of Preconceived Ideas About People

    “The problems around us are only compounding. We will need to rediscover our trust in other people, to restore some of our lost faith—all that’s been shaken out of us in recent years. None of it gets done alone. Little of it will happen if we isolate inside our pockets of sameness, communing only with others who share our exact views, talking more than we listen.” ~Michelle Obama

    I’m up at the American River, one of my favorite summertime spots. I have a ritual of floating down it, then hiking back up the hill to my clothes. I love how the swift current knows exactly where it’s going, making any paddling unnecessary. I love how you can just lie back and let it take you as you look up at the cloudless blue sky.

    As I float, the sun beats down on my skin, but the river’s coolness counteracts its scorch. Small groups of Canadian geese speckle the shore. The air is still, its quiet punctured only by the occasional train sounding in the distance.

    Once I’ve reached the bottom, I set out back towards my towel—walking along a series of dirt paths consisting of small hills. They’re quick and steep like bunny slopes, coated with golden dust that glints beneath the sunlight.

    While walking them I notice two men picking fruit from a tree in the distance. Feeling exposed in my half-clothed state, I immediately tense up. I realize that having no shoes means I’ll be unable to walk quickly past.

    Bracing myself for discomfort, I continue walking. As the distance between us narrows, I wait for them to whistle, or to jokingly ask  if I need help finding my clothes—or create discomfort in whatever other way, be it through words or stares (as I’d become accustomed to men doing).

    I walk past, armor on, shield up—raising it a little more when one of the men begins to speak.

    His words are, “Hello,” followed by,  “You’ve got some tough feet!”

    They contain no sexualizing, nor any subtle attempt at intimidation. And in response to this comment— the kind one human would make to another, his equal—I find myself reacting with human thoughts in return:

    Yes—this terrain IS pretty rugged. I guess my feet ARE pretty strong. Thank you, Sir.

    **

    I think about how, in Whistling Vivaldi, a black man whistles classical music when crossing paths with white strangers on the street. He does this in hopes of quelling their fear and discomfort that are born from prejudice. Implying benevolent intentions and sophistication, his whistling preemptively wards off prejudicial treatment.

    Perhaps this man’s comment was the (gender) equivalent to this example—an attempt at polite conversation to keep from coming across as threatening.

    Or maybe he’d briefly entertained the same thoughts that often precede the sorts of comments I’d anticipated. Maybe in the past he would have converted those thoughts into unwitting weapon words, then launched them my way. Maybe, though, because our society is growing and learning and its people are evolving, he decided that day not to.

    Either way, I felt relief that the men did not behave in the way I’d predicted.

    It got me thinking about preconceived ideas. How we often develop templates, then apply them to the individuals we regularly interact with. How few encounters encourage us to challenge or expand these templates, because much of our lives are structured around familiarity. And how it’s easy to take one look at a person and file them away into a specified bin inside our minds, perhaps unaware we’re even doing it.

    How often do we go into an encounter with our mind already made up—both about the person and about what they could possibly have to say? Their words pass through a filter in our head, confirming what we already know or believe to be true.

    Sometimes our expectations turn out to be accurate. Other times they do primarily because we expect this of them, therefore never open our minds to the possibility that we might be proven wrong.

    People act in ways that contradict our initial views of them, but we don’t see it when we’re not looking for it.

    When I was a Lyft driver, I drove many passengers I was sure I’d have nothing in common with. One was a seemingly straight-laced white man who worked for a tech company. I thought we’d have little to talk about, but an hour later we were eating In ‘N Out and discussing everything from our country’s quick fix approach to handling emotions to how his brother’s coming out changed their relationship to finding a balance between impactful work and a job that pays the bills.

    So often we decide a person is a certain way. Our mind closes. Thereafter we do, indeed, fail to connect. But not on account of differences, but the fact that no connection is possible when the heart and mind are closed.

    **

    No shift in thinking takes place in a single instance. The fact that those two men at the river pleasantly surprised me, for instance, doesn’t erase the overall pattern. Many more such encounters would be necessary for a true paradigm shift.

    But it’s a start. And from now on when I have the bandwidth, I want to give people the opportunity to act in ways that contradict my preconceived notions of them.

    I don’t want to get to that point anymore where I stop seeing others as individuals. Where I’m blinded to what we have in common because I’m seeing only what they represent; the harm done by the larger group they belong to; the political implications of their behavior.

    For instance, several years ago a young man had approached me while I was reading at a bar—and I completely ignored him. At that time I was so fed up with men, so annoyed with their repeated intrusions on my dates with women, and so frustrated that it was them who approached me in public (never women), that I just kept staring down at my book. I didn’t say anything back. In the moment it felt empowering.

    When I thought about the incident years later, though, I regretted my behavior. The guy hadn’t even been aggressive in the way he’d approached me. He’d been earnest, apprehensive, even shy—the way I imagine I can also be at times when I approach women. He didn’t represent All Men; he was his own person, doing something in that moment that might have made him nervous, or pushed him out of his comfort zone.

    I’m not saying it was my job to ease those feelings, or that I owed him this. It’s more that I realized that now I would have genuinely wanted to. Wanted to have at least said hi. Wanted to have at least politely told him I wasn’t up for conversation. Wanted to, maybe not have smiled, but at least treated him more like a human than an implied enemy.

    I want to take my frustrations with patriarchy and heteronormativity up with the concepts themselves—and with individual humans only when they are truly practicing it.

    I’d like to believe that polarized positions aren’t set in stone. That they can evolve and expand with time. That we won’t be doomed to perpetual gripping of shields while walking this planet.

    This isn’t our climate right now—but I hope and wonder if one day we’ll at least start inching closer.

  • Rethinking Masculinity: Why I Want More Than Bachelor Parties and Football

    Rethinking Masculinity: Why I Want More Than Bachelor Parties and Football

    “Patriarchy is the expression of the immature masculine. It is the expression of Boy psychology, and, in part, the shadow—or crazy—side of masculinity. It expresses the stunted masculine, fixated at immature levels.” ~ Robert Moore & Doug Gillette

    Seventy eggs, packs of bacon, and multiple types of beer filled the fridge. On the counter lay handles of liquor and energy drinks. The dining table was lined with snacks galore: chips, Cheese-its, popcorn, Oreos, Doritos, and dozens of Fireball nips.

    I’ve been to many bachelor parties, and it’s not surprising that health is never a priority. Yet this time, things felt different, or at least they should have. Most of the men present were fathers approaching forty. Everyone was married, had highly respectable careers, and lived in nice homes across the US.

    It was clear that this weekend wouldn’t be a free-for-all of strip clubs. We no longer had the beer guzzling metabolism of our twenties or the naivete of our youth. But if not late-night revelry, what would it be? Accepting that we were older and in a much different place in life seemed to be in tension with what this weekend was supposed to be all about.

    The expectations, unspoken and unexamined, were looming over each of us. We were supposed to act as if we were decades younger back in college. The story we were unconsciously telling ourselves was that honoring a man’s last single days was to be full of drinking and debauchery.

    We didn’t come here to be emotionally vulnerable and eat salads. We came together to get rowdy.

    The question on my mind is whether there is space in our current paradigm of masculinity to do both?

    * As grown men, do we have to revert to childish ways of interacting?

    * Do we have to reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator of health and wellness to have fun together?

    * Are there not other ways of being together that better fit our present realities as mature, adults?

    Still more questions drifted through my mind:

    * Can we take a responsible approach to caring for our body and still make room to party?

    * Can we find a balance between celebrating our friend’s last days of being single without making marriage out to be a ball and chain?

    * Can we eat salads together and still be “manly enough”?

    I believe we can do all of these things, but first we need to unravel some deeply held social norms about how men are supposed to interact together in groups.

    The Undiscussed Rules of Bachelor Parties

    The unspoken rule of bachelor parties is that there are no rules. Go wild. Get f*cked up. Have as much fun as possible because you’re about to lose all your freedom. Or at least that’s how the story goes.

    But where did this story come from?

    How did all of us guys end up with this template of bachelor parties as a drug-fueled escape from responsibility?

    What’s more, how did we end up with this notion of marriage as impending shackles or the stereotype of men running away from long-term relationships?

    Movies?

    Media?

    Watching older generations go through their failed marriages and broken relationships?

    Probably all of the above and more.

    The stereotypes of men acting like boys is a sad reflection of our present reality. We have strayed from the mythic stories of men as responsible, powerful actors in the world and settled on a version of manhood that seems woefully incomplete. 

    Perhaps the most noteworthy archetype framing masculinity is that of a hero’s journey. It is the quintessential growing-up quest where men discover their strength through adventure and adversity. Endless movies from Star Wars to Harry Potter rift upon this classic template of human development.

    Yet what is notably missing from all these sagas is the hero as a family man, caring for himself and his world responsibly as an adult. We are obsessed with heroic journeys and completely unenthusiastic about domestic life.

    I get one makes for a much better motion picture, but it is this void in our present mythology that leaves men hanging on boyish and incomplete ideas of what it means to be a mature man. How does the hero turned father integrate into society, build a family, connect with other men, and take responsibility for doing good in the world?

    If the hero’s journey is the fundamental process by which a boy becomes a man, the question of how to actually enact manhood remains.

    This void is exacerbated when groups of men come together. The expectation is that of unhealthy behavior. The bachelor party is just one manifestation of this—groups of men acting like teenage boys… hedonistic, rebellious, and immature.

    Yet the world doesn’t need more rowdy teenagers. It needs strong, healthy men. Men, it’s time we grow the f*ck up. The problem as I see it, is that we don’t know how.

    No Models, No Vision, No Manhood

    When I look around for good templates on how to spend time together, all I see is sports, fraternities, and bachelor parties. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these, but as the only models for men to exist together, they leave a lot to be desired.

    Sports teams and bachelor parties may be suitable for the single twenty-something, but where are the role models for men trying to be a good husband or trying to make ends meet?

    I want more meaning and depth than our current cultural templates afford. I want to hang out with other men in a way that calls upon our higher qualities, not our lower ones.

    Yet I fear that the little boy in me so badly wants to be accepted by the other guys that I will continue to squeeze myself into outdated beliefs and unhealthy ideals that have me ripping shots of fireball just feel accepted—the policing of the proverbial “man box.”

    As men we must deconstruct this box and give ourselves permission to act differently. This includes

    * Learning to have drink without being irresponsible to our body, our friends, or our partners.

    * Learning to talk about our feelings as much as we talk about football.

    * Allowing ourselves to strive professionally without feeling like our self-worth is dependent on our ability to provide.

    * Feeling comfortable sharing our struggles with other men, so we don’t unconsciously accept that suffering alone is an inevitable part of being a man.

    Creating New Templates for Men to Be Together

    Loneliness is an epidemic. And for men, the feeling that you’ve got to “man up” and deal with all of life’s challenges on your own is a legacy of patriarchy that needs to be released.

    We need each other. More importantly, we need to learn how to be together in a relationship without feeling like beer and sports are the only way.

    Can you imagine a world where men hang out and actually come out stronger, healthier, and more sound in mind and body?

    I can. It’s not only possible, it is necessary.

    I can imagine the eye rolling among some guys. “That’s why there’s men’s groups. Don’t take away my bachelor parties or Sunday football.”

    To be clear, I’m not at all against bachelor parties. The “wild and free” mindset makes sense as a time-bounded final hurrah.

    I’m not advocating for less fun. I’m advocating for more opportunities for men (and women) to gather in a way that challenges the scripts and roles that have kept us prisoners to immature ways of interacting. 

    The current social pressure not only makes it difficult for men to be emotionally available, it also squashes so many of the joyful parts of our inner child—the playfulness, adventure, and energy of boyhood. It’s keeping us from our embodied selves.

    But we need to grow and integrate that into new rites of passage that allow men to avoid blindly accepting patriarchal norms.

    I don’t want to have to hide my softer, more vulnerable parts. I believe we can discuss how our social conditioning as men impacts our body and mind alongside discussing our fantasy picks and favorite cars. There’s room for it all if we can let go of outdated notions about how men can spend time together.

    If we can help each other evolve into a more integrated expression of what it means to be a healthy man, everyone will benefit—the boys who are coming of age, the men who are struggling to find their place in the world, and the partners who deserve men that are nurturing and generative, not hostile and destructive.

    Learning to be a better man, together.

  • How I Developed Self-Worth After Being Sexually Harassed and Fired

    How I Developed Self-Worth After Being Sexually Harassed and Fired

    “Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~Unknown

    In my early twenties, I was a food and beverage manager at a nice hotel in Portland, Maine. About a month after I started working there, they hired our department director, a man twice my age whom I would report to.

    At the end of his first week, we went out for a “get to know each other” drink at a loud and busy bar. As we drank and chatted, he was physically very close to me. I told myself it was because of the noise.

    His knees were against mine as we chatted facing each other on barstools. It made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t do anything about it. He put his hand on my thigh as we talked. I pretended it didn’t bother me.

    He leaned in very close to my face and ear as he talked about himself and told me how attractive I was. He led me through doorways with his hand gently on the small of my back.

    There was more of this over the next few months. More of him stepping on and just over that invisible line. More of me acting as though I was okay with it and convincing myself that I was.

    A few months after that night, he and I were in a position to fire a male employee who had several complaints against him for not doing his work.

    The morning before the firing, Human Resources pulled me into their office to tell me that this employee had lodged a complaint about my boss and me. He had said that he knew we were going to fire him, and he believed it was because my boss and I were having an affair. His “proof” was that he saw us at the bar that Friday night and saw us “kissing.” There was even a line cook who backed up his story.

    A few days later, both of these employees admitted that they didn’t exactly see us kissing, they just saw us talking very closely together, and it looked intimate.

    HR dropped the complaint but no longer felt comfortable with firing this employee, so he stayed on. A few weeks later after a busy event that went poorly due to being understaffed, I was taken into the CEO’s office, and I was fired.

    The male employee continued working there. My male boss continued working there. The male employee was promoted to take my now vacant position. My male boss was promoted to work at a larger resort at a tropical destination.

    These two events—being accused of having an affair with my married older boss, and subsequently being fired for an event that I wasn’t even in charge of staffing—were the two lowest points of my professional career.

    I honestly rarely think back to this time in my life, but I also recently realized that I never talk about this experience because of my embarrassment that I let this happen without objection.

    What This Story is Really About

    I didn’t think that my boss would hurt me. I wasn’t even worried that I would lose my job if I pushed back. I was afraid that if I acted like someone who was bothered by his comments, I would be seen as a lame, no fun, boring, stuck-up prude.

    I subconsciously believed that my worthiness as a person was determined by people who were cooler than me, more successful than me, smarter than me, or more liked than me.

    I believe that had I told my boss “no,” he would have listened. I’d gotten to know him over several months, and while he was egotistical, dim-witted, and selfish, I think he would have respected my boundaries had I set them. I just never did.

    There are a lot of layers to this story. Far too many to cover in one post.

    But the reason for writing this today is to share what I was so ashamed of. I was ashamed that young, twenty-something me was so insecure and so afraid of rejection that her people-pleasing led to allowing this man to touch her and act inappropriately.

    She was so afraid that if she set a boundary and said “no” she would be seen as too emotional, weak, and a complainer. She would become “less than.”

    I’ll restate that there are a lot of layers to this; from the patriarchal system at this business (and society as a whole), to the abuse of men in power, to mixed messages at high school where girls were not allowed to wear certain clothes because the boys would get distracted, to a lack of examples through the 90s/early 2000’s of what it looks like for a young woman to stand up for herself in a situation like this, and far beyond.

    But the part of the story I want to focus on right now is my insecurity. This is the part of the story that I had the most shame and regret about, because this was not an isolated incident for me.

    Insecurity was a Trend Throughout My Life

    People-pleasing was a huge problem for me in several areas of my life for many years. It’s something that held me back from so much.

    • I didn’t leave a long relationship that I’d dreamt of ending for fear that I would disappoint our families.
    • I let people walk all over me, interrupt me while I spoke, and tell me what I should think.
    • In my late twenties I remember being home alone, again, crying that I had no one who would want to spend time with me or go somewhere with me, feeling sad and lonely, when in reality I was just too scared and embarrassed to pick up the phone and ask, for fear of rejection.

    I wasted so many years and felt a lot of pain, and a whole lot of nothing happened as I was stuck. Stuck feeling worthless, unlikable, and unknowing how to “please” my way out of it.

    I spent years numbing how uncomfortable my insecurity made me feel by smoking a lot of pot. I avoided what I came to realize were my triggers by staying home or finding excuses to leave early if I did go out. I blamed everyone else for how they made me feel. I compared myself to everyone and constantly fell short.

    Until eventually, I realized the cause for all this pain and discomfort was believing my worth was based on what other people thought of me.

    The Emotional Toolbox That Saved Me

    If I could go back in time to give myself one thing, it would be the emotional toolbox that I’ve collected over the years so that I could stop living to please other people, because I know now that I am inherently worthy.

    By my thirties I found myself on a journey to lift the veil of insecurity that hid me from my real self. This wall I’d inadvertently built to protect myself was keeping me from seeing who I really was beneath my fear and anxiety.

    Once I found the courage to start tearing down that wall and opening myself to the vulnerability necessary to truly connect with the real me, I was able to discern between who I am and what I do. I learned to stop judging myself. I learned my true value. And I liked what I saw.

    Finding My Core Values

    I came to realize that it’s hard to feel worthy when you don’t really like yourself. And it’s even harder to genuinely like yourself if you don’t truly know yourself. Figuring out my core values was a crucial part of the puzzle.

    Core values are the beliefs, principles, ideals, and traits that are most important to you. They represent what you stand for, what you’re committed to, and how you want to operate in the world.

    Knowing your core values is like having a brighter flashlight to get through the woods at night. It shines a light on the path ahead—a path that aligns with your true self—so that you can show up in the world and to challenging situations as the person you want to be.

    It helps you decide in any given scenario if you want to be funny or compassionate, direct or easy-going, decisive or open-minded. These aren’t easy decisions to make, but knowing how you want to be in this world helps you make the decisions that best align with your authentic self.

    And when you truly know yourself and act intentionally and authentically in tune with your values (as best as you can) a magical thing happens: You connect with your own inherent worthiness.

    For me, I came to realize that I am a compassionate, kind, courageous, funny, well-balanced woman constantly in pursuit of purposeful growth. I like that person. She’s cool. I’d hang out with her.

    More importantly, I believe she is a good person deserving of respect. Which means I don’t need to accept situations that cross my boundaries. I have a right to speak up when something makes me uncomfortable.

    So how do you want to be? Which of your principles and qualities matter most to you? And what would you do or change if you chose to let those principles and qualities guide you?

    Connecting With Others About My Shame

    Shame breeds in the darkness. We don’t normally speak up about the things that we feel embarrassed about. And that leads to us feeling isolated and alone with how we feel.

    Whether it’s reading stories online, talking with friends, joining a support group, going to therapy, or working with a coach, share and listen. A vital component of self-compassion is learning to connect over our shared experiences. And it takes self-compassion to respect and believe in our own self-worth, especially when confronted with our inner critic.

    By sharing my feelings of insecurity, I learned that a beautiful friend of mine also felt ugly. I thought, “Wow, if someone that gorgeous could think of herself as anything less than, my thinking might be wrong too.” I found out that even talented celebrities from Lady Gaga to Arianna Huffington to Maya Angelou have all felt insecure about their abilities. That somehow gave me permission to feel the way that I did, which was the first step in letting it go.

    Who can you connect with? If you’re not sure, or you aren’t at a place yet in your journey to feel comfortable doing that, perhaps start by reading stories online.

    Coaching Myself Through Insecurity

    Alas, I am only human. Therefore, I still fall victim to moments of insecurity and feel tempted to let other people dictate my worth. Knowing that purposeful growth is important to me, I know that the work continues, and I’m willing to do it.

    So I coach myself through those challenging times when I say something stupid and worry about being judged or I come across someone who is similar to me, but more successful and fear that means I’m not good enough. I’ll ask myself questions as a way of stepping out of self-judgment mode, and into an open and curious mindset. These are questions like:

    • If my good friend was experiencing this, how would I motivate her?
    • Did I do the best I could with what I had?
    • If the universe gave me this experience for a reason, what lesson am I supposed to be learning so that I can turn this into a meaningful experience?
    • What uncomfortable thing am I avoiding? Am I willing to be uncomfortable in order to go after what I want?

    Or I’ll break out the motivational phrases that remind me of my capabilities or worthiness like:

    • I can do hard things.
    • My worthiness is not determined by other people’s opinions.
    • This is just one moment in time, and it will pass.
    • Even though this is difficult, I’m willing to do it.
    • I forgive myself for making a mistake. I’ve learned from it and will do better next time.

    Tools like these are simple, but priceless. They gave me my life. And I can say now without hesitation, I like myself, I love myself, I love my life, I’m worthy as hell, and I’m my own best friend. That’s how I want to live my life.

    Because of this, I have the confidence to speak my truth with courage, and I have the confidence to live authentically and unapologetically myself. And the number one person I’m most concerned with pleasing is myself.