Tiny Buddha

Tag: self-worth

  • When You Struggle with Being Yourself, Remember This

    When You Struggle with Being Yourself, Remember This

    “Make the most of yourself… for that is all there is of you.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Every day, it was more or less the same. I presented an edited version of myself to the world. I felt a deep level of discomfort with the idea of letting myself go. Could I? Should I? The answer was “no” every time, even if it wasn’t always a conscious decision.

    It felt wrong to be myself in a society where we’re conditioned to believe that we have to look and be a certain way to fit in. I believed that no one would accept me as I was. That it would result in my personality being mocked or criticized.

    After all, how can anyone understand someone who’s both quiet and bubbly? The two aren’t said to go together. If you’re bubbly, it means you’re outgoing, fun, lively. On the other hand, a quiet person is likely to be just that—quiet, all the time. At least, that’s what most people think.

    And if you’re both, then there’s something about you that isn’t quite right because you can’t be put into one box.

    As for the side of me that likes to laugh, be silly, and squeal in delight at rainbows, how childish. I need to grow up. I should be more mature like everyone else; play less and get serious about life because that’s how it is as an adult. Less fun, more… boring.

    Those thoughts held me back for years. The “shoulds” I imposed on myself were endless, and they rarely worked in my favor, so parts of me remained hidden like some shameful secret that could never be revealed. It felt like the biggest annoyance to not be able to show all sides of myself.

    As time passed, I started to notice some things about the way I interacted with people. I noticed that on some occasions, I would feel completely relaxed in a person’s presence. Talking to them felt like talking to someone I had known for years.

    There was no tension, no paranoia about what they might be thinking of me, and no unnecessary mind chatter trying to convince me that I looked stupid or weird.

    The second form of interaction was the kind of encounter where I felt judged with every breath I took.

    The vibe was off, a total mismatch, and the conversation was strained. Was it me, and was I the cause of this disconnect? Perhaps, at times, my obvious feelings of awkwardness or self-consciousness left the other person with a feeling of discomfort. Maybe they gave up after hitting the invisible wall I’d built around myself.

    And then, there was and still is the third type of interaction. The kind where I’m happy to talk to someone, but I make a conscious decision to not show all of who I am. It’s not necessarily because I don’t like the person or that I have anything against them. It’s often because I don’t feel a connection with them where I would want to show other sides of myself.

    Sometimes, but not always, I see myself as a prize. The more we get on, the more of me you win. The deeper connection I feel, the more of the prize you get to see, which may come across as pompous to a certain degree. But this isn’t about thinking that I’m better than anyone else or getting to choose someone’s level of deservability.

    It’s the level of connection that matters the most. In my mind, it’s not necessary to show everything to everyone all the time just for the sake of it, and perhaps that’s the introvert in me speaking. But that’s what has helped me to feel more okay with being myself.

    No pressure, no forcing. Just doing it my way and understanding that I get to choose: In interactions, I either reveal more of myself or I don’t. And if my holding back results in my missing out on establishing a deeper connection with someone because they took off due to seeing me as “hard work,” then that’s both of our loss. A loss, however, that won’t break us, unless we let it.

    So, when you struggle to be yourself, remember, you too have a choice. Always. And you don’t need to feel guilty or bad about not being your true self around others, especially when you don’t even want to. Sometimes, it may not even be appropriate.

    Showing up as your full-blown glorious self can feel terrifying, and that’s okay because you’re human. So obvious but so easy to forget.

    As humans, we ride the waves of life every day. Some of the waves are far too tumultuous for us to bear, and we’re left feeling battered, bruised, and shaken.

    We believe that what we’ve experienced is an unshared experience—no one will ever understand; we think that what we’ve done shouldn’t be revealed—people will think ill of us; we presume that what we’ve not done is going to be held against us. That may be the case in some instances, but the rest of the time, we’re safer than we realize.

    Being yourself is important, but forcing yourself to make it happen isn’t. You’re allowed to practice. You’re allowed to take two steps forward and five steps back. You’re allowed to trip up multiple times. You’re allowed to be human.

    So, be patient with yourself and focus on embracing your humanness because that, more than anything, is what we all share. And when we embrace it, we make it easier for ourselves to accept what, who, and how we are.

    It’s the remembering that we’re human and the compassion that we have for ourselves that steer us closer to being ourselves. Trying to be yourself while ignoring your human tendencies and being hard on yourself only leads to more trying.

    It’s time to stop trying, especially if you’ve been trying for years. Instead, spend more time noticing just how human you’re being today. Spend time noticing just how human others are being too. You may not always like what you see, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it all comes back to us being human. Multifaceted humans.

  • What to Do When You Can’t Seem to Love Yourself

    What to Do When You Can’t Seem to Love Yourself

    “You’ll be amazed at what you attract when you start believing in what you deserve.” ~Unknown

    “You just need to love yourself more.”

    I’ve heard that advice so many times when I’ve felt rejected, inadequate, and not enough. And instead of that advice helping me, it has just made me feel even more rejected, inadequate, and not enough.

    Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t angry at the person giving me the advice—I was angry with myself for not being able to love myself unconditionally.

    It’s easier to feel love for yourself when things are going well. When you succeed at something, feel appreciated by someone, or when you feel good about yourself and your life. That’s not when the rubber hits the road. Instead, that happens when things don’t go well. When you fail, mess up, or find yourself with a heart smashed into a thousand pieces.

    It’s in those moments of darkness that love and appreciation for myself have been replaced by judgment, self-loathing, and criticism. That’s when I ‘should’ all over myself.

    It’s in those moments when I’ve been in the company of shame, rejection, and inadequacy that I’ve been told to love myself more. And that’s frankly, much easier said than done.

    Building solid self-esteem is crucial, no doubt about that. But there are different ways to build it. If you also fall into the category of people who struggle with your self-esteem, here’s another approach that truly helped me.

    You Can’t Jump from Inadequacy to Self-Love in an Instant

    In a tough period of my life, I spoke to a therapist. She told me, like so many before her had, to focus on loving myself in those dark moments. When I asked her if she herself was capable of this brilliant advice, her reply was “Oh, I know, it’s actually really hard.”

    Something can sound good in theory, but if it’s not doable to put into practice it won’t make any difference. I needed some more concrete advice I could actually use in my daily life.

    For years, I was under the impression that self-love meant loving yourself in all circumstances, no matter what. In times of happiness, success, satisfaction, gratitude, and joy—as well as in moments of darkness, failure, misery, hurt, and feelings of unworthiness.

    Later on, I realized that the step I was asked to take in those moments was too high. I understood that you can’t go from feeling angry, hurt, or inadequate to loving yourself in an instant. That’s like asking someone to walk a long staircase in one giant step. It’s pretty much impossible.

    In my experience, trying to jump too far too fast means setting yourself up for failure. And what does this lead to? Yep, even more frustration, anger, and feelings of inadequacy.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to practice self-love and to tell ourselves “I love you.” But this may only resonate when you are in a somewhat good-feeling place.

    When I’ve tried to fetch too far on the love scale in moments of stress, despair, and frustration it’s made my mind go: “What the h*ck are you talking about?!” Instead of letting those words sink in, my mind has given me a long list of reasons I don’t love myself at that moment.

    And you know what? I’ve realized that’s perfectly okay. Because it’s hard to think thoughts beyond what we feel in a given moment when that emotion is overpowering. If you’re angry, you access angry thoughts. If you’re feeling insecure, you reach thoughts related to insecurity. If you’re feeling hopeful, you have thoughts connected to hopefulness.

    My point is this: We need to go step by step. We can’t expect ourselves to feel self-love, self-appreciation, and self-respect when we’re not even close to feeling these things. Instead, we need to take the next logical step that will help us feel better about ourselves. Then from that place, we can take another step in the right direction.

    Replace Love with Acceptance

    For me, everything changed when I stumbled upon these words: “I’m enough.” According to Marisa Peer, a world-renowned speaker and pioneering hypnotherapist trainer, these three words will actually change your life.

    “In my three decades as a therapist […], I’ve discovered that the root of so many modern problems— smoking, excessive drinking, compulsive shopping, depression, and overeating—come right back to a need to fill the inner emptiness of not feeling enough’ with external things.”

    Although loving ourselves under all conditions would be ideal, it’s not easy. Maybe it’s not even realistic. And what I’ve realized is that we don’t necessarily need to feel love for ourselves at all times. Instead, what we need to reach in those dark moments is a place of acceptance.

    All of our insecurities and, at times, dislike of ourselves, come from a place of not feeling enough. That time I was standing in front of a crowd, sweating and shaking, I didn’t feel competent enough. Those times I’ve questioned myself in meetings and have kept my mouth shut as a result, I haven’t felt smart enough. Those moments when I’ve looked at other people’s pictures and compared myself, I haven’t felt pretty enough.

    When we feel low on self-esteem we don’t feel enough, simple as that.

    And it’s no wonder that many of us don’t feel enough. That’s what the media and advertising keep telling us over and over again. “You need to weigh this much to be sexy.” “You need this jacket to prove that you’re in style.” “You need this car to show people that you’ve made it.” All in all, they take advantage of our insecurities.

    Self-esteem is about your overall sense of self-worth or personal value. And to truly know and feel that you are worthy, you need to feel that you are enough.

    So, to boost your self-esteem, you need to tell yourself these simple but powerful words: “I’m enough.” To remind yourself over and over and over again (because this is how adults learn: by repetition) that you are enough, no matter the circumstances.

    Realizing this was a huge relief to me. There was nothing wrong with me. There was nothing major that needed to “be fixed.” There was no need to dig into my past to figure out where my self-esteem got bruised. Instead, it’s about repeating and telling yourself that you’re enough.

    If you fail at a project and mess up, remind yourself that you are enough.

    If you come late to a meeting and feel bad for making everyone wait for you, tell yourself that, no matter the situation, you are enough.

    If you get rejected, stood up, or are left with a bruised heart, keep reminding yourself that you are enough, that you’ve always been enough, and that you always will be enough.

    Feeling enough is the baseline to strive for when you feel bad. To remind yourself that, no matter what is going on in your life, you are enough. You are smart enough, pretty enough, valuable enough, kind enough, and intelligent enough. You are enough and that is enough.

    Focus on Your Bounce-Back Rate

    What makes us often fail? That’s right, when we set the bar too high. So even if we’ve put it on a reasonable level by going from loving ourselves to knowing that we are enough, we still can’t expect that we’ll feel enough 24/7 (let’s be realistic here).

    So here’s another piece of advice that has helped me come back faster and quicker than before: When you dip into a dark hole, focus not on why you are lacking self-esteem, but on your bounce-back rate.

    How quickly can you go from feeling insecure, inadequate, and shameful to coming back to feeling enough?

    Take count, not on how many times you fall down, but instead on how quickly you manage to come back. When you fall back into negative thoughts and patterns, use it as your signal to shift and to remind yourself that you are enough.

    Remind Yourself of the Three Little Words

    Developing and nurturing your self-esteem and sense of value is crucial in life. It’s the key to giving and receiving love. It’s the doorway to self-love, self-respect, and self-compassion. And it starts with feeling enough, just the way you are.

    So, use the words “I am enough” as your foundation. Keep reminding yourself of this over and over again, until your mind starts believing you. Put up reminders on your phone, notes in your drawers, and write “I’m enough” on your bathroom mirror.

    Simply, set yourself up for success and solid self-esteem by constantly telling your mind that, no matter what is going on in your life, you are enough. “I’m enough” is the small, but very powerful sentence that will boost your self-esteem.

    Whenever you fall back into a dark hole, remind yourself that it’s not about the number of times you fall down, but about your bounce-back rate.

  • For People Who Look in the Mirror and Cringe

    For People Who Look in the Mirror and Cringe

    “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” ~Brené Brown

    When I was fourteen years old, I vividly remember the first time I put my fingers down my throat and made myself puke.

    I remember feeling fat, ugly, unworthy, and like I was not good enough. I felt as if I had no control and I was unable to effectively process the strong emotions I was feeling. Binging and purging allowed me to temporarily release these feelings, to numb them out, and created a fallacy of control in my life.

    From that day on, for the next twelve years of my life, I became consumed with food, weight, working out, and binging and purging.

    I measured my value based on the inches on the measuring tape, the letters on my clothes, and the numbers on the scale.

    I measured my self-worth on the severely skewed perceptions of beauty that I held.

    The way I viewed myself led me down a lifestyle of numbing my emotions with substances, putting myself in risky situations, and hurting the people I loved most.

    My self-hatred kept me blocked off, emotionally numb, and gave me a false sense of control in my life. I became adept at constantly wearing a façade of masks—smearing a smile on my face was second nature to hide the ugliness and shame that I felt in every pore of my body.

    And although over the years I have overcome my disordered eating, the battle with self-love continues. I sometimes wonder if I will ever be able to silence the constant push and pull from the internal thought patterns and dialogue that goes on in my head.

    The one thing that gives me some solace (and sadness) is knowing I am not alone.

    Because, no matter your age, gender, race, family make-up, or religion, the majority of us struggle with some sort of skewed self-image, negative self-talk, and self-limiting beliefs that keep us stuck in the perpetual cycle of questioning our worthiness.

    Although the stories we tell ourselves based on our personal life experiences, traumas, and joys are unique to us, they are collective to the human experience.

    This post is for anyone who looks in the mirror and cringes…

    Who cry as they measure their self-worth by the letters on their clothes, the numbers on the scale, or the amount of “likes” they get on social media…

    Who judge themselves for the jiggle of their bellies, the cellulite on their legs, or the wrinkles on their face…

    Who take out their perceived inadequacies on their bodies, harming it through their method of choice—substances, eating disorders, self-harm, risky behaviors.

    This post is for the women who are researching the next fad diet, fretting about the color of their roots, their wrinkles, or their weight as they contemplate spending their savings on cosmetic surgery trying to live up to society’s filtered expectations of how a woman “should” look.

    For the men who are measuring their masculinity based on the size of their penis, the look of their muscles, or the hair on their heads.

    For the transgendered and Cis community who feel trapped in a body that is not aligned with the essence of their true being.

    For the people who refuse to look in a mirror, fearful of what they may see.

    For the people who feel like they will never be good enough, strong enough, or worthy enough.

    I want you to know: You are beautiful enough. You are good enough. You are worthy enough.

    I know if you are reading this right now, you may be skimming over those words thinking “yeah, yeah.”

    But slow down and read them again.

    You. Are. Beautiful.

    You. Are. Good. Enough.

    You. Are. Worthy. Enough.

    No matter your age, size of your pants, number of dimples or pimples you have. No matter the size of your muscles, the hair on your head or the wrinkles in your skin.

    You matter.

    Your life matters.

    The world needs your essence. Your love. Your personality. Your spirit. Your uniqueness.

    In a world where we are inundated with an average of 6,000 to 10,000 advertisements a day telling us how we should look, how we should live our lives, and who we should be, in a world where social media is a filtered lens skewing reality, allowing only glimpses into the realities of others’ lives, it can be easy to add fuel to the fire of self-deprecating thoughts and feelings of unworthiness.

    What I learned from my personal struggle with body image, self-hate, and pure distain for every inch of my being, is that self-love is going to look different for everyone, and it is going to take time to undo the decades of self-deprecating self-talk.

    But it can be done.

    The rise of body-positivity and self-love movement is encouraging, yet it can also leave you feeling as if it is one more thing you are failing at because you just can’t bring yourself to fully embrace those lumps, bumps, tiger stripes, pimples, and dimples just yet.

    Through my experience I have found if you start small and give yourself grace and compassion you can start shifting your mindset around how you view yourself. Below are the steps I took in my journey that you may find helpful for your own journey.

    Do the deeper work.

    Begin to understand how your subconscious mind and self-imposed limiting beliefs from your personal experiences are keeping you stuck. Neuroscience shows us that we can reprogram our subconscious beliefs. Start being the scientist of your life and figure out where these feeling come from so you can start becoming aware of them. The first step in changing any habit/belief is awareness.

    Start small.

    Focus on the features you love about yourself. The first body part I started liking was my fingernails. Yes, my fingernails. But as I got used to saying I loved my fingernails I moved on to other body parts and kept the snowball going.

    View your body as your partner, not your enemy.

    This body does so much for you day in and day out. Shift into a perspective of gratitude for all the amazing things it does. Those thighs help you walk, that belly processes nutrients to fuel you, those wrinkles are proof of years of love, life, and wisdom. Start using the holistic healing powers of your breath. Begin partnering with your body on how you can help each other.

    Do an inventory of your strengths.

    If this is hard for you to do, then reach out to someone you love and ask them to tell you, in writing, what they love about you or see as your strengths. Seriously, this is scary. I get it because I did it. And I am so grateful I did. I reached out to three of my closest friends and family members and asked them what they saw in me. I did this over eight years ago and still have these letters taped in my journal so that I can read in times when I cannot see what they see.

    Consciously choose to focus on what gets you excited in life.

    It is so easy to waste our valuable time comparing our lives to others, focusing on what we hate about ourselves, or getting stuck in the perpetual cycle of negative self-talk. Instead, consciously choose to chase your curiosity.

    Have you ever set intentions for your year or your life? Setting intentions is one of the most powerful tips I adopted when I began my self-love journey, as it allowed me to focus on the bigger picture of who I wanted to be, how I wanted to show up each day, where I wanted my life to go, and what my definition of happiness truly looked like.

    Can you imagine how much passion, happiness, and love we would exude into the world if we were able to switch out the time we spend putting ourselves down into building ourselves up?

    We would change the world.

    You truly are so much more powerful that you know.

  • How to Know If Hidden Low Self-Esteem Is Holding You Back in Life

    How to Know If Hidden Low Self-Esteem Is Holding You Back in Life

    “Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.” ~Audrey Kitching

    You can try it all—exercise, a bubble bath, a relationship, a promotion, and everything else that you think will make you happy. I have come to learn those things will not give you the kind of happiness you desire until they coincide with you knowing your worth.

    At my unhappiest times, my eyes were wide shut to the truth—I had low self-esteem. I never considered that the lingering feeling of being stuck was coming from a lack of self-worth. Instead, I thought if I could control what was going on outside, it would fix the inside. Believe me, I gave it my best shot.

    I spent my latter twenties with a certain level of awareness that my needs were neither valued nor met. I was doing what I could to be as happy as possible, and yet I was haunted by the thought “this can’t be it.”

    I was in a long-term relationship and would often find myself daydreaming about our breakup. The dream would come to a sudden halt, as I was clouded by the fear of being alone and never being loved again.

    I spent that relationship feeling second best, putting his happiness above my own, longing for him to want me, and wondering if we ever fell in love. Ultimately, I buried the doubt and decided I was lucky. After all, as I knew all too well, it could be worse.

    My relationships had always been full of drama. Pre and post said relationship, if a guy liked me, I would run away; I would come away from a date and complain that the smallest thing was wrong.

    Then you have the guys that didn’t see me. As soon as I got wind that one was unavailable, he would become the whole meaning of my existence and I would be convinced he was the one, I loved him, he just couldn’t see how perfect we could be together. So I’d do every single cringey thing in the book to make him see that we were born for each other. This felt normal to me, and totally romantic.

    When I did date someone I liked, it was all about fitting my life around them, and when it didn’t work out, I would find a way to blame myself and spend weeks considering what I woulda, shoulda, coulda done.

    When it came to friends, if you could break down my wall, you were in. But I was (and sometimes still am) a bit on edge, convinced you will see through me. Convinced you don’t really like me, or I’ve said something to upset you. You probably wouldn’t know, because as far as you’re concerned, I’m strong and direct. I think that you think I’m stupid, inferior, or selfish.

    I believed that in order to keep my friends, I had to be the best friend, convinced they wouldn’t stick around otherwise. Friends were allowed to be unreliable and make mistakes, but I didn’t allow myself that kind of flexibility. This way of living worked—my friends are actually good people, so it managed to go under my radar. Besides, I thought I was lucky they even liked me, given where I’ve come from.

    If you’re not in my circle, it’s a bit tougher; it can be tough to get close. I’ve been told from first impression, it’s hard to know if I like you. I’m suspicious, closed, cold. One minute I can forgive easily, and the next I won’t. If you frighten me or challenge me, I can come at you with a sting.

    The thing about dormant low self-esteem is you have become the master. As I walked through life, I was ‘okay.’ I had a pretty low bar when it came to happiness. Playing small, outstaying relationships, chasing people’s approval, wondering if people liked me, not taking risks; they all felt ordinary, and they all protected me from confirming my biggest fear: No one wants me.

    My coping skills were doing the job, they kept me firmly in my comfort zone where I was safe.

    You know what happens when you never leave your comfort zone? Life becomes mundane and sad, and leaving it becomes scarier and scarier. Yet the longing becomes stronger. You become stuck.

    So how do you become unstuck?

    Today, I wholeheartedly believe I am as worthy as my friends, family, and any man I ever have or will date. I make decisions, I share my opinion, I walk away, I let go, I take risks, I let people in, and I experience a level of happiness I didn’t even know was possible.

    So how did the girl who ignored her inner turmoil transform her whole world?

    I should confess, I didn’t suddenly wake up and realize my worth. Several years ago, my boyfriend ended our relationship and suddenly I was exposed to feelings the relationship had been covering up.

    As life and luck would have it, around the same time, I was asked to deliver a workshop on self-esteem at work. That was to be my biggest eye opener of all. There I was, teaching people about self-esteem, and each session would set alarm bells off for me as it dawned on me: I did not know my worth.

    It became obvious to me that up until this point, the happiness techniques (gratitude journals, fun plans, and exercise) I had tried so hard to implement were not enough with my own self-acceptance.

    I started with relationships; that was where most of the anxiety and overthinking seemed to be coming from. I went for it—self-help, therapy, coaching, and any TED talk I could come across to help me understand why I was pulled toward people I knew I did not want or deserve.

    I learned a lot about my why; when you grow up and the people around you are consistently inconsistent, you develop the same pattern in your own life. I didn’t experience secure attachments as a child. I experienced things not even fit for adults to experience; I was exposed to violence, drugs, and chaos. I adopted coping strategies to stay safe. Outside of the home, I pretended life was fine, and that was to become my greatest skill.

    As I became more inquisitive and adopted more self-compassion, I was able to reflect on my life and identify the patterns that had been draining me and standing in the way of me being me.

    I know now that shining a light on those patterns helped me during my hardest times. I understood that I was not alone, and that insight gave me the most powerful knowledge of all: I was not stuck, and I had the power to change.

    To help you experience the same level of transformation, I am going to share common patterns of low self-esteem:

    You are too afraid to take risks.

    You play small, remaining firmly in your comfort zone. Perhaps when you consider making a change or trying something new, you are crippled by the fear of failing or what other people would think. You hardly consider you will be okay if other people judged you.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if you often daydream about the change, but you don’t go much further than that. It’s a no to a new job, no to a new gym class, and forget going on your dream holiday alone. A lack of self-belief gives you an overwhelming feeling of not being able to cope and over-valuing the opinion of others.

    You people-please.

    You say yes too much and care more about other people’s needs than your own. Behaviors will include going out of your way to avoid conflict and doing things you don’t want to do in a bid to make other people happy.

    When you have a fear of not being good enough, you will go above and beyond to make sure you are liked, often at the expense of your own well-being. Being kind is great, but that includes kindness toward you.

    You see yourself as lucky or that you should be grateful.

    You may well be settling for less than you deserve in life, love, and work. Niggly thoughts or feelings tell you that you deserve more, but you decide what you have is good enough. You might feel a constant longing for more—more love, more fun, more understanding… more.

    Perhaps you keep yourself busy and pretend you only feel this way because you’re tired, or you find yourself with a lack of motivation and decide this will pass when you feel yourself again. When you don’t value yourself, you believe you don’t deserve more and could never have more.

    You allow others to treat you poorly.

    People say things and do things that leave you feeling worthless and unheard. Sometimes you might attempt to stand up for yourself and other times you pretend you don’t notice. You make excuses for their behavior, or you accept their excuses for how they treat you. You do know deep down something is off.

    A significant sign here is that you spend time wishing people would show you more respect—yet you allow them to drop you and pick you up, cheat on you, put you second, dismiss your ideas and the rest. Other people treat you how you allow them; when you treat yourself poorly, others likely will too.

    You get needy.

    You have unhealthy patterns when it comes to trying to maintain certain areas of your life. You may know it’s not helping, but it feels out of your control.

    Perhaps you want to look a certain way, you want work to stay the same, you prefer your friend to stay single, or you don’t want this person to leave you. It’s likely in these situations that anxiety is overpowering, and you become irrational at times—sulking, over-texting, ignoring, pushing and pulling, you try anything. Often in this situation, you take things personally and see change as a form of rejection, and you under-estimate your ability to be okay.

    You do things you don’t want to do.

    You behave in ways that are not aligned with your values and who you really are. You sleep with them too soon, you go places you don’t enjoy, you hide your real interests, you may even lie about what you want.

    In some cases, you will know you’re doing these things, and sometimes you won’t name it, but you will come away from situations feeling like you have had all your joy sucked out of you. When you don’t appreciate yourself, you don’t consider that people will like you even when you have different interests.

    You worry and overthink things you have said and done.

    You spend large chunks of time worrying about what you’ve said and questioning if you’ve offended anyone. This may interrupt tasks that need to be done and steal happiness from your current moment.

    At this point you might seek reassurance or misinterpret other people’s words and actions to mean they are upset with you. Convinced your friends no longer like you, or something you said puts people off you, you become obsessive about it. When you don’t love yourself, you find it hard to believe anyone else does and you hold onto a fear they will leave you.

    You block people out easily.

    You avoid letting people get too close. You might see the worst in people, judge them, or assume they will leave soon anyway. Maybe you cut ties if they say one thing you don’t like, or you list all the things you don’t like about them and decide the two of you do not fit.

    You might say out loud you don’t care about not being liked or what other people think of you. Typically, you might avoid social get togethers, meeting new people, and second dates and find yourself jealous of your friends having other friends. If you don’t value yourself, you assume others will not value you, and so rather than risk being hurt, you just don’t let them in.

    —

     

    Looking back, the above patterns were some of the most prominent in my life. At the time, I didn’t give them the attention they deserved. Nobody pointed them out and they were a natural part of my day-to-day life.

    As I came to realize my true worth, many positive shifts occurred unintentionally. The more you do things that make you feel good, the more attuned you become to the things that don’t. One small change can feel hugely powerful and have a beautiful ripple effect across your life.

    If you are serious about having healthy, happy relationships then the first thing you can do is look at yourself. While relationship difficulties are inevitable, if you have healthy self-esteem, you’ll be able to face them feeling secure, knowing that no one person is more important than the other and for the most part, both of your needs deserve to be met.

    The most important thing I’ve done is work on my relationship with myself. I’ve learned to love myself, accept myself, and get to know myself, and let me tell you, it has been a bumpy road with many trips and falls along the way. That’s the way it works.

    If you have had enough of not feeling enough, it’s time to take notice. You don’t have to wait to hit rock bottom, you don’t have to wait another ten years. Start now, you deserve it.

  • If You Want a Healthy Relationship, Value Yourself

    If You Want a Healthy Relationship, Value Yourself

    “It’s all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self-love deficit.” ~Eartha Kitt

    I always found the concept of self-love embarrassing and horrifying. Just thinking about it would make me cringe. It felt completely wrong, and I didn’t understand what it was all about. Quite frankly, I felt disgusted by it and thought it was a new-age invention by self-centerd people who wanted to have more opportunities to be selfish.

    Sure, I was young then, but I can now also see how that reaction reflected the truth about the absolute absence of self-love in my life.

    At that time, I was not aware that my lack of self-love affected many other areas of my life.

    I particularly struggled in my romantic relationships even though that was the area I most valued and focused on. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than a loving and fun relationship.

    I wanted someone to make me feel loved, safe, and happy. I wanted to have an amazing life with someone else, but I couldn’t see that happening by myself. Every time I experienced difficult feelings or low moods, I felt disappointed, silently angry, and resentful because I blamed my partner for causing my unhappiness.

    I blamed them because, in my eyes, they let me down. If they did a better job at being a supportive and loving partner, I would be feeling better, right?

    And so, at first, I tried to change and fix my partners. I tried to get them to give me the relationship I didn’t give myself.

    Obviously, I didn’t know this then. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as being in a relationship with yourself.

    Most people I speak to don’t know this either. It’s not something we usually consider or are taught at school. And so, we live like we don’t matter. We don’t pay ourselves any attention and we try to get from others what we do not give to ourselves: a sense of worth, validation, consideration, and love.

    I lived like that for the majority of my life.

    I didn’t realize that I was in a relationship with myself. I didn’t know that that was even a thing. I definitely didn’t know that the relationship I have with myself informs the quality of all my other relationships.

    And so, I struggled through my relationships and endured experiences I wouldn’t have had if I had loved and valued myself.

    I struggled with the pain and desperation of unmet needs but failed to see that I could give myself what I wanted and needed. By being blind to this, I made myself depend on those around me, which usually didn’t end well. Codependency ruled and ruined my relationships.

    While recovering from codependency, I had many realizations that paved the way for developing an honest sense of self-worth. The notions of self-love I previously rejected so much now come naturally. They just make sense.

    And so I want to share with you some of the realizations I’ve had that helped me improve my relationships, feel good about myself, and fall in love with life, in the hope that you can see how the relationship you have with yourself directly impacts how you relate to others.

    Your Sense of Self-Worth Determines Your Relationship Standards

    If you don’t like and love yourself, you don’t value yourself, so you’ll have low standards for how you let people treat you. We simply don’t protect and take care of what we don’t hold in high regard.

    The way you treat yourself and how you let others treat you shows you how much or little you really value yourself. So notice the standards you set. Notice what you tolerate. This will tell you whether or not you value yourself if you are unsure.

    Noticing that this is something you can practice in your relationship. It’s an ongoing exploration that a partner can also help you with by providing feedback on how they see you treat yourself.

    If you want to learn how to treat yourself better, think about how you treat something or someone you value and truly appreciate. Then begin to set healthy standards for how you treat yourself and what behaviors you accept from others.

    For example, notice when you choose to go without something you want or need, and make a different choice. Find a solution for how you can give it to yourself. Be proactive when it comes to pleasing yourself or supporting yourself.

    Or, if someone is talking to you in demeaning and disrespectful ways, remind yourself that this is no longer acceptable because you now protect what you value: you.

    Your Level of Self-Care Impacts Your Well-Being

    So far, we have established that we take care of what we value. Your self-care is therefore an expression of what you believe about yourself.

    I am quite blunt about the absence of self-care and call it self-neglect.

    If you fail to take care of yourself, you give your partner a neglected version of yourself, which certainly impacts your relationship negatively.

    It may also put pressure on your partner to take on your responsibilities. Their rescuing tendencies may be activated, and you’ll co-create an unhealthy victim-rescuer or parent-child dynamic. You may feel too depleted to go out, take part in activities, or have fun.

    It is absolutely vital for you to take care of yourself. It’s not only for your benefit, so you’re in a position to actually enjoy your life and being in a relationship, but also benefits everyone around you.

    Remember this the next time the “self-care is selfish” thought swirls around your head. It’s completely untrue. You deserve your own time, attention, and care. It’s healthy and it’s necessary.

    Others Cannot Fill the Void You Create

    When we neglect ourselves, we deprive ourselves of what we need: attention, consideration, care, support, reassurance, connection, encouragement, and love.

    We then tend to look toward others to provide it for us. We mistakenly believe that the pain we experience is something only they can soothe or heal.

    I guess that’s true if we don’t do it for ourselves. The problem is that others cannot do it for us. They cannot fill the void we create by depriving ourselves of self-care.

    Other people can support us and boost us from time to time, but they simply cannot do it for us because their efforts meet a void and simply disappear into insignificance.

    When we don’t like ourselves, we don’t understand why others like us. When we don’t like how we look and someone compliments us, we don’t believe them. We think they’re lying to us or they are just being nice.

    When we don’t love ourselves, we cannot receive anyone else’s love because we don’t trust it. We don’t believe it. It doesn’t match with what we believe about ourselves, and so our brains reject it. It doesn’t feel safe and all of a sudden, our relationship becomes fear-based.

    Neglecting ourselves and expecting our partner to do our job for us is the biggest relationship killer. It sets us up for endless disappointment and feeling unloved because another person does not have access to what you have access to—your inner self—and therefore cannot meet your specific needs in the way you need them to be met.

    You Are Not Emotionally Safe for Yourself

    All relationships require emotional safety. It allows us to express ourselves honestly, openly, and authentically. We know that our partner gives us space to simply be and express who we are in that moment and to respond lovingly.

    When we don’t value ourselves, we don’t respond to ourselves. We deny what we feel, want, and need. We make ourselves not matter in our own lives. We may put others’ needs above our own and often, we may not even know what we want or need.

    This is a sign that we lack emotional safety within our relationship with ourselves.

    It is not safe for me to tell myself that I want something when I am being ignored, judged, or shamed for it. It is not safe for me to be vulnerable and open up to myself when I am being told to go away, avoid my feelings and desires, or that someone else is more important than me.

    The problem is that by not being emotionally safe to myself, I cannot be emotionally available to others because I simply cannot go there. I cannot be honest and vulnerable. I cannot open up to another person if I don’t open up to myself. I cannot share what I am too afraid to see.

    And so, not being emotionally safe and available to myself means that I put a limit on how deeply I can connect with my partner, which will negatively affect the level of intimacy we can develop and experience. Intimacy needs openness and emotional connection and cannot exist without emotional safety.

    I Am Co-Creator of My Relationships

    Relationships don’t just randomly happen to us. We co-create them. We are always in a relationship—even if it’s the one we have with ourselves.

    And it’s the one we have with ourselves that informs all others. I get that we are all conditioned to look for “The One” and to believe that there is a person out there that will heal us and make everything better for us.

    So it can feel like a huge loss to be told that you need to learn to look after yourself to have the relationship you want. It can feel like an impossible task, especially when you believe that you must learn it all before you’re in a relationship.

    I believe that we learn as we go along. We learn through and from our experiences and adapt our behaviors and decisions accordingly.

    I don’t advocate relational deprivation to end codependency or to improve the relationship you have with yourself. I support every individual’s choice and understand why recovery requires many to be and stay single. It is quite possibly the least complicated way to start over.

    It is also possible to learn to like and love yourself within a relationship and have that relationship change and improve as a result of your transformation because, after all, you co-create it.

    The relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for all the other relationships you have in your life.

    The good thing is that you are in charge of that now. You have the power and you get to choose how you treat yourself.

    Will you continue to deprive, neglect, or abuse yourself? Or are you willing to truly change your life by changing how you relate to yourself?

    The choice is yours and yours alone.

    Say “yes” to love—say “yes” to self-love because it does change everything.

  • How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

    How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

    “Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”  ~The Bhagavad Gita

    Growing up, I couldn’t have been further from my ‘self.’ Early childhood experiences taught me to focus all of my energy externally. To put everyone around me first and to be insatiably attentive to their needs. This kind of thinking instills you with an incredibly low sense of self-worth, disconnects you from your own feelings and desires, and ultimately leaves your happiness pinned to other people.

    When you have low self-worth, you mostly want to contract away from the world like a turtle. Hiding in your protective shell becomes a way of life because you fear that by revealing who you truly are people will leave, reject, or mock you.

    A common response from those around me was “Don’t worry! Just be yourself!” When you have low self-worth, “being yourself” isn’t just something that worries you, it’s not something that simply makes you feel uncomfortable. It is quite literally something your brain deciphers as high risk. The act of “being myself” was unbelievably terrifying. I had my guard up all the time and a face for every occasion.

    In my early twenties, I started to analyze my unhealthy thought patterns and tried three different therapists. Each one encouraged me to give a monologue about my life while they vacantly nodded and asked questions such as “How did that make you feel?”

    It did nothing for me. What I desperately needed was to cultivate a loving relationship with myself. I needed to get to know the girl I had been and the woman I was becoming. To be there for her, to soothe her, and to cheer her on.

    That’s where yoga came in.

    There was no single defining moment. My first yoga class didn’t change my life. Neither did the second, the third, or the fourth. Yet, little by little, as I went to more classes and read ancient scripture, I began hearing one important message reiterated over and over again—the importance of looking inward for validation, love, and support.

    Years of looking outside myself for these things had left my worth precariously hinged to other people, yet once on the mat, with only myself, I was challenged to connect with it all—my own fears, my own desires, and my own needs. Without this step, I couldn’t have moved forward in my life.

    My yoga practice went deeper when I found yin and restorative; branches of yoga which emphasize gentle support, nourishment, and mindful movement as opposed to any kind of striving or precision.

    Unlike the sweaty sequences of fast-paced flow classes, yin is a soft, intuitive practice that slowly guides you toward opening up, both physically and emotionally. Poses open your heart and your hips—places where those with low self-worth are often most closed off.

    Positions such as supported twist and swan can be held for over five minutes, encouraging a deep tissue release whereby tension dissolves out of your body and onto the mat. Meanwhile torso opening poses like butterfly and camel can make you feel totally vulnerable.

    As you sprawl out across the mat, the urge to close up can be powerful and it’s not unusual to feel emotional. It left me with no choice but to surrender, despite resistance from every cell in my body.   

    Many of the poses in yin yoga are named after animals and insects we associate with peacefulness. The gentle movement of a swan emits a blissful sense of inner peace. The slow-moving ways of a camel and the flutters of a butterfly convey the kind of quiet strength you feel when you finally reach a solid sense of self-worth. When you know you are enough, the need to prove yourself gradually begins to subside, being replaced by a lightness in both the body and the mind. It is this lightness which yoga instils.

    Similar to yin, restorative yoga aims to center you through both stillness and slow movement. It took all the energy I was relentlessly giving out to the world and brought it back to me. It felt like the first time I’d fully, and completely, focused on my own experience. It felt good.

    I went to restorative classes on Thursday evenings. I remember the first class I went to vividly because it felt so unnatural. Away from the pace of everyday life, where there are so many opportunities to numb out—with work, TV, socializing—this session involved just four restful poses each held for five to seven minutes.

    Poses included reclining hero, where you relax your entire body onto a supportive cushion, and bend your knees gently back, and Supta Baddha Konasana—lying with your legs open, feet together and arms left flat to the side. Whatever the pose, the purpose of it was comfort for the body, rest for the mind, and replenishment of the spirit.

    At the beginning I found this practise excruciating. My body was tense and my muscles were contracted. After years of avoiding myself, I simply couldn’t relax and let go because I was scared.

    The teacher noticed and he often came over to lightly press my back down onto the mat. Other times, he’d swap the hard cork block I’d picked to hold up my head for the softness of a folded blanket. As with many other yoga teachers, his non-judgemental support provided the safe, gentle push I needed to finally relax into my own body.

    These simple yet nourishing acts reflect the philosophy of yoga so well, in that the practice has little to do with who can stretch the furthest, the longest, or the most elegantly. Instead, one of the key tenants of yoga is union with yourself. If a pose feels painful, you adjust. If you’ve reached your edge, you pull back.

    This mantra has been repeated throughout every class I’ve been to, and it’s the most tangible evidence I have of the effect yoga has had on my life. If something feels painfully uncomfortable, out of line with my true nature, I now ask “Why am I doing this? Is it for me, or to please other people?”

    Chronic people pleasing, in order to gain a sense of self-worth, always felt excruciating to me. It put me at the whim of just about everyone I met. But it was only when I found the teachings of yoga that I realized why it felt so bad and found the courage to change.  

    When you’ve been so far away from yourself and finally connect to your inner being, it can feel overwhelming. The discovery that, I too, existed in the world, and not only that I had needs and feelings that deserved to be heard, but that who I was really, really mattered, was profound. In this way, yoga worked to highlight how prolifically I’d been neglecting myself in a way that talk therapy never even touched upon.

    I began to engage in radical self-care, I started a soothing inner dialogue, regularly asking myself if I was okay: how did I feel? (as opposed to how others felt). Albeit daunting and uncomfortable at first, I gradually stopped doing things to please others and started revealing every part of myself—the goofy side, the quiet side, the intelligent side. Why? Because my self-worth was inherent, it was within me rather than outside of me, and therefore, I had the safety to be exactly who I was.

    If you’ve ever struggled with low self-worth, you’ll know that the path to true acceptance is long, tedious, and never linear. It is a one step forward, two steps back process. One where you must wake up every single day and commit to building yourself up rather than down. One where you must silence your inner critic and instead begin to accept every part of yourself—even those which you find unpleasant.

    By practicing yoga and learning from the principles that underpin it, that path can be made easier, and a whole lot brighter, too.

  • How to Break Free from the Past and Start Feeling Good Enough

    How to Break Free from the Past and Start Feeling Good Enough

    “My biggest fear is that I’m not good enough. I have this voice in my head that I’ve been battling for years that says, ‘You’re not really talented enough. You don’t really deserve this.’ ” ~Rachel Platten

    When we’re continually surrounded by unrealistic beauty standards in the media and highlight reels of others’ success on social media, it’s no surprise that many of us feel like we don’t measure up or fit the ideals of perfection.

    At some point in our lives maybe we were rejected for the color of our skin, the shape of our bodies, or for the way we looked, and we decided that we were somehow separate from the world.

    These events can be detrimental to the beliefs we hold about ourselves and turn into thought patterns that continually chip away at our self-esteem.

    For me, the feeling of not being good enough started in my early childhood. My older sister looked like she’d stepped off the catwalk, and she was extremely academic. I, on the other hand, consistently got low grades at school and was rarely complimented for my chubby appearance.

    My feelings of low self-worth continued when I started high school. I was the only Indian girl at my school and was constantly bullied for my skin color, my religion, and being ‘different.’ Kids would throw things at me on the bus and push me around in the hallway. I started to hate who I was and the color of my skin and felt even less attractive than I did to begin with.

    As I reached my teens, I would jump from one relationship to the next, hoping that validation from a boyfriend would somehow make me feel better about myself, but it didn’t. The highs were short-lived, and those relationships soon spiralled into a cycle of rejection, which made me feel even more unworthy.

    Like me, maybe you too experienced a string of events while growing up that made you feel like you weren’t good enough. Whatever the experience was, no matter how trivial, when we have low self-worth, our internal dialogue keeps it alive, like an echo that continually reverts to unresolved traumas long after they have passed.

    Most of us don’t enjoy digging to the root of our beliefs and delving into why we think, feel, and act the way we do; instead, we’re wired to sweep things under the carpet and use alcohol, food, drugs, or sex as crutches to help us to mask our emotions and maintain our sanity.

    It can feel unnerving to unearth years of buried emotions and take a trip down memory lane to explore painful events, but to break free from low self-worth it’s vital for us to understand what parts of us require healing. Otherwise, it’s like going to a doctor with a pain in our tummy and asking them not to take a scan to determine its cause.

    The way we feel about ourselves on the inside directly influences what we will create for ourselves on the outside. If we don’t feel good enough when we’re in the privacy of our own thoughts, it often impacts the quality of our relationships, the level of our financial success, and the amount of love, health, and joy we allow ourselves to experience in our day-to-day lives.

    Many of us trap ourselves by looking at our lives through a lens of low self-esteem and telling ourselves stories based on outdated perceptions of past events.

    For a long time, I clung to the story of how I’d been a victim. I believed I had no control over what had happened to me—the abuse, the bullying, the heartbreaks, and the rejection. I would pity myself for having to endure all the events that had played out in my life.

    Instead of believing I had the power to take responsibility, I allowed past events to define who I was and how I saw myself, because I didn’t have the knowledge, awareness, or tools to know any differently.

    I was taught the importance of focusing on my education, finding someone to marry, and how to build a home, but I wasn’t taught resilience, I wasn’t taught about unconditional love or self-acceptance, and I wasn’t taught how to deal with life’s challenges.

    I wanted more from my life, but the story I told myself made me believe I wasn’t worthy of having it and that it just wasn’t going to be my fate. I would replay events in my mind and continuously felt like things were happening to me. I couldn’t see that the events were happening for me.

    If I hadn’t been bullied, I wouldn’t have built resilience. If I hadn’t been abused, I wouldn’t have developed compassion and empathy. If I hadn’t have been abandoned, I wouldn’t have the drive and ambition to be independent.

    When I recognized all I’d gained from my past, I was able to shift my perception and start seeing myself not as a victim but as someone who was strong and empowered. I began to re-frame my experiences.

    Knowing I’d been through hardship helped me to recognize that I had an inner strength to overcome challenges, and my strong sense of compassion and empathy toward others allowed me to recognize my ability to be emotionally intelligent. Seeing the gifts in my challenges allowed me to view myself in a more empowered way, and as a result, I started showing up in the world differently.

    It’s easy for me to see this now that I’ve moved through my story, but when I was in a war with myself I found it difficult to embrace the lessons.

    It’s hard to appreciate the painful events that have plagued your life and destroyed any ounce of self-esteem you had. It’s easier to blame the world than accept that although you may not have deserved what happened to you, it happened, and that the only choice you now have is to pick up the pieces and move beyond it.

    Most of us struggle to move beyond our stories and continue replaying them repeatedly in our minds, which only reinforces our beliefs into our reality. The more we replay our negative story in our minds, the more we continue to manifest the same events—until eventually we get fed up of living life on a loop and are desperate to break free.

    We may believe we don’t have the power to reshape our stories because they are so deeply ingrained into who we are and how we respond to situations, but we do. And when we rewrite our stories, we break free from our past and transform our lives.

    If you would like to release your feelings of low self-worth and shift the energy you put into the world, this powerful exercise can help.

    Story Time

    Take a journal and write down the story of your life.

    How do you define yourself?

    Is your story full of your greatest achievements and happiest moments? Or are you listing down all the bad things that have happened to you and how unhappy you are?

    When you pen down your thoughts you’ll instantly get insights into how you currently view yourself.

    Are you able to spot any common patterns? Is there a recurring theme of rejection, shame, or resentment? Are you blaming specific people or events for how your life has panned out?

    You’ll soon get valuable clues on what beliefs or experiences are dictating your story, and how you choose to view your life.

    Now, journal your answers to the following questions:

    • What did those experiences help you to learn?
    • What skills have you gained because of those experiences?
    • How can you apply those lessons and skills to your current life?
    • If you could go back in time, what would you change about those events? Or do differently?
    • Are you ready to let those experiences go? And if not, how does it serve you to hold onto those experiences or feelings?

    With this newfound awareness, I’d like you to re-write your past story, and see if the language you are using to describe your past has shifted.

    Often, when we look back on our past with a newfound perspective, we’re able to re-frame our negative experiences into positive lessons that have shaped the person we are today. Without our experiences, we wouldn’t be blessed with the wisdom we’ve gained because of them.

    When we allow ourselves to move into a space of gratitude for all that we’ve learned, we automatically shift away from feeling like a victim and reclaim our power.

    Remember, you, as much as anybody in this universe, have the power to change the direction of your future. You just need to be willing to let go of what no longer serves you.

  • 6 Powerful Steps to Stop Binge Eating for Good

    6 Powerful Steps to Stop Binge Eating for Good

    “As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter how ill or how despairing you may be feeling in a given moment.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

    Binge eating is hard. For me, winter time has always been hardest.

    The winter of 2011 was particularly bad. It was then that I sat, hands clasped around my knees, thinking about how best to kill myself.

    Hopeless only scratches the surface of what I was feeling—that same feeling I’d had on-and-off for fifteen years. I was twenty-three. I’d spent half my life in darkness.

    I went over the mathematics: Depression + Eating Disorder = Agonizing Existence.

    I was finally ready to admit I needed help. So as I sat there, I vowed to put an end to my suffering. I told myself “I’m going to give this one final push. I’ll put all of my energy into stopping this continual depression, and these cycles of binge eating and starving myself. If it still doesn’t work, I’ll just kill myself.”

    It really was that simple.

    By the end of 2011, I didn’t want to kill myself anymore. A few years later, I’d stopped binge eating completely. These days, I’ve never been happier. I don’t get depressed anymore. I am healthy, mentally and physically, and I try to live every day in gratitude, happiness, and well-being.

    That’s how I know you can do this too, and why today I’m sharing with you six powerful steps that I found essential to my journey.

    1. Realize there’s nothing wrong with you.

    I know it feels like you’re a disgusting, terrible person for binge eating. I know you don’t understand what’s going on, or what happened to your “willpower.” I know you’re starting to feel insane.

    But listen up: there is nothing wrong with you.

    Binge eating isn’t about food; it’s about emotions. People deal with their emotions in all kinds of ways. If you’re at the end of your tether, you might do drugs, you might drink, you might get really angry with the people you love, you might have anxiety attacks, and/or you might binge eat.

    This isn’t a judgment call. Binge eating is just what you’re doing to try to deal with difficult emotions in the best way you know how right now. That doesn’t mean you’re broken, that doesn’t mean you’re going to “be like this forever,” and it doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to cope in different and more productive ways.

    It’s completely natural and normal to want to feel better. So although it’s not ideal to binge, know that it is human, and it is okay.

    2. Reattach your head to your body.

    Up until I was twenty-three, I didn’t even know I had a body.

    I will never forget this: one day, I was walking up a hill to my office (I was doing a Ph.D. at the time) and suddenly I just felt terrible. Then I was frustrated that I had been feeling okay, and suddenly everything had become unbearable.

    I’d just learnt about mindfulness, so I did what is known as a body scan (where you “scan” each part of your body with your mind, and notice whatever is present, without judgment).

    You know what I realized? I was just really hot from walking up the hill.

    I took my coat off and felt instantly better.

    This moment was huge for me. I’d spent so long in my head that I didn’t even realize I had a body–that it too had needs—and that I needed to listen.

    As well as allowing you to get back in touch with physical sensations in your body (like temperature, and gentle, non-scary sensations of hunger), mindfulness increases your control over your emotions (more precisely, it increases activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, and decreases activation of structures like the amygdala that trigger our emotional responses.

    That’s good news if you’re binge eating. Maybe right now there’s a disconnect between your mind and your body, but by using mindfulness to gain more control over your emotional responses, you’ll start to learn to decide whether to listen to those calls to eat emotionally, or not.

    Action step: Start doing the body scan once a day. If you can’t manage thirty minutes, start with two minutes every day. Then build it up to five minutes, then ten. Start slowly and build it up over time. This is about practice, not perfection.

    3. Shift your self-worth.

    I’ve always been athletic, but while at University, I decided to “get in the best shape of my life.” I trained excessively: high intensity intervals, multiple times a day. I became obsessed with what I ate. I weighed myself multiple times a day, checked how my belly looked in the mirror every opportunity I could. I called myself fat at every single opportunity, and always felt incredibly self-conscious everywhere I’d go.

    In reality, I was a skeleton, but all I saw was fat, fat, fat.

    When my obsessive exercising and restrictive eating turned into binge eating, I didn’t know what to do. I was so ashamed of myself for my actions and what I was doing to my body after “all that progress I’d made.”

    All of my self-worth was in how I looked, and how thin I was. It felt like binge eating was against everything I stood for.

    I decided I needed to be stronger, both mentally and physically, so I joined a gym and began to train for strength. Binge eating made me feel completely out of control, but by showing up to train no matter how I felt, I started to realize that I actually did have control—that I could still act in the way I wanted to, even if I didn’t feel like it.

    I realized that I always had a choice.

    It’s important to say at this point that strength training has been a helpful part of my recovery, but you don’t need to go to the gym to stop binge eating. In fact, exercise can be unhelpful for many people, especially if you aren’t listening to your body when it needs to rest and recover.

    Indeed, while my commitment to strength training boosted my self-worth in the short term (and helped me stop binge eating), I eventually recognized I was too focused on my performance. I never quite felt like I was achieving, doing, or being enough.

    I now know that we are all so much more than how we look, how much we weigh, and how well we perform, so I recommend a diversified approach to building your self-worth. Instead of tying it to your body, focus on a variety of things, like being a good friend and relative, acting with integrity and honesty, and taking care of yourself enough so you can give back to others.

    So many people who binge eat are overachievers and perfectionists, but when you’re in this deep, it’s a sign that you need to diversify your identity away from perfection, dieting, exercising to extremes, and working too much.

    Instead, I recommend trying to figure out what you truly value in your life, then focusing on the process of becoming the person you ideally want to be. 

    Action step: Take a few moments to ask yourself: What do you value in your life? I don’t know about you, but when I’m lying on my deathbed, I don’t want the only thing people can say about me to be:

    “Well, at least she had a six pack.”

    No. I want to be so much more than just a body to the people in my life, and to myself. I want to be kind and strong, encouraging and inspirational. I want to love.

    Do you value being a good friend, parent, sibling, artist? Do you value your well-being? Could you start practicing gratitude for the things you have in your life, including your body? Could you practice just sitting, breathing, and being human?

    4. Find the diamonds in the turd. 

    Right now you’re focused on all the times you binge, all the times you have these strong urges to eat, and all the other things that you are doing “wrong.” But, I guarantee you are doing so many things right.

    I call these the diamonds in the turd.

    For example:

    Maybe there are only actually two to three hours each evening where there’s a strong urge to binge. Right now you’re focused on that time, but think about it: for twenty-one hours of the day, you don’t want to binge. That’s great! It’s also powerful information, because recognizing when you’re most prone to a binge is going to help you stop.

    Maybe you notice that you feel more prone to binge after you’ve had a bad night’s sleep, or when you’re stressed, anxious, or worried. Is it possible to get more sleep? Can you plan to get more time in for your wellbeing in general?

    Maybe you notice the urge to binge is stronger after you’ve looked in the mirror and insulted how you look, or when you scroll through Instagram and see athletes, models, and random happy people that you want to look like. Can you limit your time on social media, or only follow people that actually help you? Can you be kinder to yourself in the mirror?

    By starting to notice your own behavior—by becoming a detective about it, rather than judgmental critic—you’ll see there are plenty of things you’re doing right. This means you can begin to focus more time on the actions that are helpful (like taking better care of yourself through sleep, and taking time out just for you), and limit the unhelpful things (like social media, diet blogs, and your negative, hurtful self-talk).

    If you’re not sure where to even start, try making a tally chart of the number of times you catch yourself thinking about food today. This will make you more aware of your thoughts, which means you’re more likely to be able to catch yourself and say:

    • “Okay, I’m thinking about food. Does this mean I need something else right now?”
    • Or maybe just “Okay, I hear this thought, but it isn’t helpful right now. Let’s focus on something else.”

    It will also make you aware of how often your food thoughts aren’t occurring:

    “Okay, so today I caught myself fantasizing about food 37 times, but 50,000 thoughts go through my mind every day! So I’m not thinking about food ALL of the time. So when am I not thinking about food? Can I do more of that?”

    Action step: Find your diamonds in the turd:

    • What’s different about the times where I’m not binge eating / don’t want to binge eat?
    • Where am I when I do, and don’t, want to binge?
    • What activities am I doing?
    • Is there some way I can do more of the things that help, and less of the things that don’t?

    5. Stop restricting.

    There are many scientific studies showing a strong correlation between diets and binge eating. (Here’s a summary of just one of those studies.)

    If you’re finding it difficult to stop binge eating, one of the best things you can do right now is to stop restricting yourself. That means giving yourself permission to eat any food, at any time. It means not starving yourself the day after a binge, or doing excessive amounts of exercise because you “slipped up.”

    When I suggest this to people, there’s normally a lot of hesitation. I totally understand. You’ve been dieting and restricting your intake for so long that it’s scary to try something different. But binge eating isn’t serving you any more, and if you don’t eat enough, or eat what you’re really craving, then you will simply never be satisfied.

    Instead, satisfaction can be increased (both physically and psychologically) by bringing awareness to your tongue. How does your tongue feel in your mouth? How does the food feel, and taste, on your tongue?

    A lot of people talk about mindful eating, and this will definitely help, but only as long as it doesn’t feel restrictive. If “eating only when you’re hungry” feels too restrictive right now, then it’s totally fine to eat when you’re not hungry. If “eating mindfully” feels too restrictive, it’s okay to not do that for a while.

    When you’re ready, you can begin to introduce one mindful bite a day, then one mindful bite per meal.

    Action step: Try to stop restricting foods. If you binge, try to do it as mindfully as possible (giving yourself full permission to do so). When you’re ready, you can introduce mindful eating into some of your meals.

    6. If you do binge, follow these three steps.

    Trust me, you’re going to “slip up” on this road, but that’s okay. You’re in the process of learning the skills you need to cope in a more productive and healthier way. That takes time.

    These three steps will help you if you binge eat:

    Step 1: Forgive yourself immediately. (That was a tough moment, and you didn’t behave in the ideal way. That’s okay, you’re human, and you’re learning. Think of what you’d say to a friend going through the same thing, then say that to yourself.)

    Step 2: Try to become curious about what happened. Try to pinpoint what caused it. Was it a particularly stressful day? Were thoughts whizzing around in your head? What could you do to increase your self-care the next time that happens?

    Step 3: Wait until you’re next hungry, then try to eat a “normal” meal (just some basic veggies, protein, carbs, and fats). Don’t try to overthink it, and don’t try to restrict.

    The great thing about this is you will always get hungry again. And when you are, it’s another opportunity to practice listening to your body’s natural hunger signals.

    Finally, no matter what happens, just remember: as long as you’re breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.

    Illustration by Kellie Warren. Find her on Instagram @kellistrator.

  • Be Good to Yourself: 10 Powerful Ways to Practice Self-Love

    Be Good to Yourself: 10 Powerful Ways to Practice Self-Love

    “Self-love, self-respect, self-worth: There’s a reason they all start with ‘self.’ You can’t find them in anyone else.” ~Unknown

    It was one of those nights.

    I was in a busy New York bar, having fun and enjoying myself. That was, until someone asked me: “So, what do you do?”

    Within a few seconds my fun, happy, playful side vanished and in entered a girl full of doubts and insecurity.

    The truth was… I had no freaking idea about what I was doing! I had just left my corporate job and now I was on a journey to discover what I truly wanted to do in life.

    That question stripped me down to feeling naked and exposed. Because I didn’t have a job title.  (Unless “I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-with-my-life” works?) I had nothing externally to “prove” my worthiness with.

    I’ve always been pretty confident. My dad used to give me incentives for challenging myself. “Climb up that wall and I’ll buy you an ice cream.” “Be Santa Claus for your siblings and you’ll get that nail polish you really want.”

    So, I never had a problem saying yes to things, such as taking job offers abroad and accepting challenging positions and demanding projects. Of course I had moments of doubt, but even when I doubted myself, I always said yes and found a solution one way or another.

    Until that moment in the bar, I had (unconsciously, of course) proved my worth through my achievements. I had thought of myself as someone who valued herself no matter the job title, relationship status, or bank account condition.

    But, when I left my job and other external things fell apart, so did my value. Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

    In short, I had confused self-confidence with self-esteem. Oops!

    Here’s what I mean by this:

    Self-confidence is about trusting yourself and your abilities. For example, you can be confident in one area, such as cooking, dancing, or communicating, but then insecure in another, such as dancing or public speaking.

    Self-esteem, on the other hand, is about how you see yourself. It’s about your perception of your worth. No matter what happens on the outside, do you treat yourself with love, care, and respect or not?

    As a high-achiever, it’s easy to trick yourself and think you have self-esteem. I mean, as long as you perform and do well, it’s all good, right?

    Yeah, until you don’t. That’s when the sh*t hits the fan…

    When I realized that I saw myself as less worthy, cool, and interesting because of my external circumstances, I decided this wasn’t good enough for me. And it shouldn’t be good enough for you either, if this resonates. As they say, your biggest breakdowns often become your greatest breakthroughs.

    So, I got to work. This time, not by proving my value, but by practicing self-love. Below are some of the most powerful ways I’ve discovered to do just that:

    1. Focus on being someone who loves.

    If you’re in a place today where you don’t love yourself, it’s hard to take a quantum leap and become someone who does. Just like when you’re building muscles, self-love takes consistent practice.

    Instead of loving yourself, focus on being someone who loves. That is, allow love to flow through you as often as possible. Focus on what you love about the people you meet. Focus on what you appreciate while going to the store, sitting in a meeting, or while speaking to someone. Simply, adjust your body to positive emotions by finding as many things to love and appreciate as possible.

    2. Tap into what it looks and feels like to be loved.

    It’s easy to be loving toward ourselves when things go as planned, when we succeed and people like us. Not so much when stuff falls apart, we screw up or get rejected. When we struggle the most, that’s also when we tend to be hardest on ourselves.

    In those moments, ask yourself how someone who loves you deeply you would act. What would they say? What would they do? How would they behave? Odds are, they wouldn’t criticize, judge, and berate you. They’d offer you kindness, compassion, and acceptance. If you can’t think about a specific person or memory, imagine how the most loving human on this planet would be toward you. Then practice being that toward yourself.

    3. Stop comparing yourself.

    Comparison is a killer to self-love. And we aren’t usually very nice when it comes to comparisons, right? Instead, we take our greatest flaws and compare them to someone else’s greatest success. In short, you’re doomed to fail.

    Instead, realize that you write your story. Realize that you can’t compare your life to someone else’s because no matter how well you know them, you never know how they feel or how they perceive their life. Instead, spend your time and energy to nourish and build your path.

    4. Take baby steps to create the life you long for.

    Desires are powerful. And so, to take action turn those dreams into reality is to honor and care for yourself. By taking daily actions, you signal that you’re worthy of living the life you desire.

    It doesn’t have to be big action—just small and consistent steps in the direction that stirs joy, care, and excitement. This demonstrates that you care and respect your dreams and thus yourself. Has there ever been a better time to do that than now?

    5. Ask your guidance system for help.

    Imagine that your emotions are guiding you. When you feel good about yourself, it means that what you’re thinking is aligned with how your soul/higher self sees you. When you feel bad about yourself, it’s a red flag telling you that a change of perspective is needed

    If you think a thought such as “I am [something you don’t like about yourself],” how does that feel? Probably not so good, right? Then it’s a sign to think a different thought. Try to replace that with something kinder. For example, “I’m just so lost and confused” can be replaced with “I’m doing the best I can to move forward.”

    6. Surround yourself with people you feel good with.

    Oh, this is an important one! You may have heard Jim Rohn’s famous quote before: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Think about who those people currently are. Do they inspire, fill you up, and want what’s best for you?

    Just because you’ve been friends doesn’t mean you need to keep spending time together. Just because you’re taking a break from someone, doesn’t mean you won’t be close again. Be picky about who you spend your time with—don’t give it away in the spirit of mercy. (That’s not nice, neither to you or the other person). Be there because you want to; otherwise, don’t.

    7. Be compassionate when sh*t hits the fan.

    So many of us (myself included) tend to beat ourselves down when we need our love the most. When we fail or screw up or someone rejects us, that’s the time we often get even more down on ourselves. Beating someone who’s lying down, sounds fair? Um, nope.

    So instead, choose to be most loving and forgiving with yourself when things don’t go as planned. When you stumble and fall. When you say the wrong things. When someone rejects you or a project fails. Ask yourself what you need and then spray that all over yourself.

    8. Make room for healthy habits.

    Yep yep! Start truly caring for yourself by mirroring that in what you eat, how you exercise, and what you spend time doing. Do stuff, not to “get it done” or because you “have to,” but because you care about you.

    Don’t feel like going to the gym? Then maybe put on a soul-soothing podcast and go for a walk. Create habits that are healthy, not just mentally but also emotionally.

    9. Postpone your worry and negative thoughts.

    Are you ready for a really great tip? If so, then get excited. A very powerful technique I recently discovered is called a “worry-free month” (named it myself). Think about how much of your worry that actually serves you. Sure, some of the worry has a purpose, as it tends to give us a little kick when we need to get our sh*t together and start acting.

    But, my guess is that 97% of it is useless. Whenever those thoughts enter your mind, tell them, “Thanks, but I’ll deal with this next month.” By telling your mind that you’ll deal with it later (plus saying when), you stop feeding negative thoughts and thus decrease its momentum. Then, you simply do this month after month.

    10. Accept what you cannot love.

    This might have been the greatest game-changer for me. Because let’s face it: It’s easy to love what you love about yourself and not so easy with the things you don’t. So, instead of even aiming to love those parts, which will probably just make your mind go “Are you kidding me?”, focus on accepting them.

    One thing I’ve had a hard time accepting about myself is that at times, and for no real reason, I can get very nervous. Simple things, such as going to the supermarket can feel very difficult. Instead of rejecting or trying to love this nervous side of myself, I’m reminding myself to accept it. When it happens, I’ll tell myself something along the lines of “It’s okay, I can be nervous going to the supermarket today. It’s not the end of the world.”

    You don’t need to love everything about yourself to develop self-love; all you need is acceptance. Next time something happens that makes you want to get down on yourself, see this as your practice to accept what is.

    Care for the World by Caring for Yourself’

    Life is full of ups and down. Health can transfer into disease. Successes can be turned into collapses. Romantic love can be transformed into coldness. But, no matter what happens on the outside, we can still have a solid foundation built on self-love.

    Self-love isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity in today’s society. So, start implementing some of the practices above and most of all, have compassion with yourself when you fall short. Then simply brush yourself off and get back into it again. As they say, practice makes perfect.

    Finally, realize that by caring for yourself, you care for this world. Your actions have a ripple effect on others.

  • How I Stopped Trying to Please Everyone and Started Prioritizing Myself

    How I Stopped Trying to Please Everyone and Started Prioritizing Myself

    “When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you don’t say ‘no’ to yourself.” ~Paolo Coehlo

    My whole body was shaking. Tears streaming down my face, my nose blocked and throat sore from crying. Yet, no sound escaped my mouth except an occasional gentle sigh or hushed sob I was unable to control.

    My husband was lying in bed next to me. I held my breath and lay motionless whenever he stirred in his sleep.

    He had an early start ahead and needed rest. I didn’t want to disturb him, bother him with my silly crying fits. I didn’t want him to know that I was unhappy.

    He wouldn’t understand, I didn’t even understand myself. I had a good life. A loving family, caring friends, a promising career I enjoyed.

    I should have been happy, fulfilled, and grateful for the blessings in my life. But instead I felt numb, empty, and lifeless, as if a grey veil was covering every part of my being. And the crushing wave of desperation washed over me night after night.

    Because the nighttime tears were my only release. I drowned in overwhelm, stress, and exhaustion. I was so tired.

    Drained and worn out by the myriad of tasks every new day had in store. Weighed down by tons of work projects, household chores, family demands, and favors. Broken from being kind, loyal, considerate, caring, and hardworking for others, non-stop.

    I never had time to rest and relax. I couldn’t even remember when I last read a novel, walked on the beach, or followed my passions. And I had pushed my dreams to the back burner so many times that they lost all their pull and sparkle.

    I was trapped in an endless loop of “work, eat, cry, sleep,” and I couldn’t escape. Too many people relied on me, depended on my help, and counted on my support.

    I couldn’t let them down. They would be upset, displeased, maybe even angry. And they would be disappointed if they discovered the truth: that I wasn’t strong enough to cope with it all, that I was a failure.

    That night, as I secretly cried in my pillow, I realized that I was on the fast lane to burnout. I couldn’t go on like this without killing myself. And I knew something had to change.

    The Impossible Task of Relaxation

    In the following days, I attempted to take time out for myself—do things I enjoyed, pursue my hobbies, have a well-deserved nap. But my diary was too full, bursting with appointments, events, and meetings.

    My boss expected me to take on yet another project, my work colleagues asked for support with their problems, my friends needed help with wedding preparations, house moves, and childcare. My charity volunteering position as a treasurer of a local cat shelter demanded constant attention, and the household suffered in silence even without me taking a break.

    And how could I not put my family first in everything I did? I was their wife, sister, daughter, and mother. I loved them, was responsible for them, and wanted them to be happy and healthy.

    But sometimes I struggled to find the motivation, energy, and strength to get out of bed. And nobody noticed; nobody offered help or support. They took for granted that I would get it all done. They didn’t realize that I hated myself for being too weak to juggle it all.

    I felt overburdened, resentful, abused, and irritated. Why did they all take advantage of my good nature? Why did they not see how exhausted I was, how their demands swallowed my life?

    How could they do this to me? I knew nothing back then.

    The True Problem of the Ever Helpful, Chronically Selfless, and Desperately Exhausted

    I spent several weeks angry and resentful. People around me wondered why I was so unbalanced, upset, and grumpy.

    They had no idea that I was suffering because of their unrealistically high demands and expectations. That they were selfish, mean, and inconsiderate for shifting their burdens on to me. At least that’s what I thought.

    But then they started to ask whether something was wrong, whether I needed to talk about it, and what they could do to help. “Just holler,” they said. “Anything you need, any time, we are there for you, okay?”

    I was gobsmacked. I had convinced myself that they didn’t care, that they were taking me for granted and considered me their personal property.

    But the truth was that I had kept my suffering a secret. I never told them that I was stressed and exhausted; I never said “no” if they asked me for yet another favor. They didn’t know that it was all too much, that I wasn’t coping.

    They weren’t malicious, exploitative, or taking advantage. But they saw me smile, heard me say that “I was fine,” and were used to me helping out without a second thought.

    I had fooled them all those years with my happy face and bubbly spirit. So I could help, support, save, and rescue. So they could be grateful and I could feel useful, valuable and appreciated.

    There was no way around it: I was a people pleaser. I needed the praise, recognition, and gratitude of others to feel worthwhile. I was addicted to serving others.

    And I was hurting myself in more ways than I realized.

    6 Compelling Reasons to Break the People-Pleasing Addiction

    I knew that my people pleasing compulsion left me exhausted and drained of energy and joy. But only when I examined my predicament more deeply did I recognize the devastating impact it had on my life:

    1. I lost myself.

    Because I was so desperate to please others, I not only did what they expected from me, I also was who I thought they wanted me to be. I assimilated their interests, behaved according to their preferences, and kept my opinions to myself. My true self was buried under an enormous pile of adaptation and lies in the hope to please others.

    2. I felt unloved.

    I was always ready to help others but, when I needed support, I felt that nobody cared. They were taking from me without any intention to give back. Many of my friends back then only contacted me when they had a problem but seemed to forget about me when things were going well. Simply because they weren’t used to me asking for anything in return.

    3. I created co-dependencies.

    Many of my relationships relied on me giving and the other person receiving. I depended on the service to get my fix of appreciation and recognition. The others depended on me for my help and support. And I was never sure whether the relationships were based on affection or co-dependence.

    4. I was vulnerable.

    Because of my overwhelming desire for acknowledgement and appreciation, I would have done anything to please others. Looking back now, I understand how vulnerable this made me. How easily somebody could have abused me, forced me to do things to “make them happy.” I was lucky, but others might not be.

    5. I damaged my health.

    Because I was hard-wired to please others, I ignored my body when it screamed for rest. I couldn’t stay in bed if I had promised others my help or my company. I couldn’t live with myself if I let them down. So I ploughed through the exhaustion and drained my immune system until I seemed to have colds, coughs, and flus non-stop.

    6. I beat myself up.

    And when I was lying in bed with a high fever I still beat myself up for disappointing others. I felt down and upset because I was a useless inconvenience. I was horrified my family and friends would get sick of me if I bothered them too much and needed help. And I wondered how I could justify my existence if I got seriously ill or too old and frail to please everybody all the time.

    As I saw the damage my people pleasing caused in my life, I knew it had to stop. I had to break my addiction this time. I would finally learn to say “no.”

    But it was far more difficult than I imagined.

    The Real Motivation of a People Pleaser

    After the shocking realization of the true consequences, I was mindful of my people pleasing tendencies. I was determined to prioritize myself.

    But, while my body cried out for a rest, I felt lazy every time I settled down for a nap. I felt selfish when I indulged in a hobby and inadequate if I didn’t give 400% in everything I did.

    Whenever I attempted to do something for myself, rest, or say “no,” I was gripped by crippling guilt. It spread through my body, stinging in my chest, choking my breath, and weighing on my heart.

    My mind was racing with all the tasks I should do, all the chores I ought to complete, and all the support I was supposed to provide.

    Instead of enjoying my me-time, I beat myself up for not focusing on more pressing matters. Instead of deriving pleasure from my hobbies, I punished myself for letting others down. Instead of recharging vital energy, I condemned myself for not cleaning the bathroom.

    The guilt sucked all the joy out of my life and left me in an unbearable state of self-punishment, self-loathing, and self-condemnation. It seemed like I had only two options in my life: be miserable because of overwhelm, or be unhappy because of guilt. And none of these choices was acceptable.

    But why could I not prioritize myself? Why did I feel so guilty?

    The Tragic Reason Why We Sacrifice Ourselves to Please Others

    As I contemplated these crucial questions, I soon discovered that all my problems were caused by lack of self-worth.

    I was pleasing others because I believed that I wasn’t good enough for their friendship, respect, and attention. I didn’t deserve their love.

    I was convinced that others only tolerated me as long as I was useful, contributed my share, and proved my worth. I was terrified that they would abandon me if I didn’t comply, disappointed them, or ever dared to say “no.”

    Low self-worth caused fear of rejection. And fear of rejection produced guilt. An all-consuming pressure to do more, be better, and try harder if I wanted to maintain my relationships and keep my job.

    So pleasing others became an addiction. A compulsive overcompensation for my lack of self-worth and self-love. With guilt overpowering me every time I withdrew from my self-invalidation and chose to prioritize myself.

    I was burning myself out, sacrificing my life for others. Not because they demanded it but because I was convinced it was necessary to be accepted. Because I thought I had nothing to offer but my tireless service, commitment, and dedication.

    Because, deep down, I believed I was unacceptable, unlovable. Worthless.

    I knew that I had to say “no” to others if I wanted to prioritize myself. Yet, I never could. At least not without feeling like a nasty, unhelpful, selfish bastard.

    Yes, I could force myself to say “no.” But afterward, I would plummet into a turbulent sea of unhappiness, guilt, and self-punishment. It wasn’t the way out.

    Because my people pleasing addiction wasn’t the real problem, it was merely a symptom. If I wanted to learn to prioritize myself without suffering I had to treat the root cause. I had to heal my low self-worth.

    Learning to Prioritize Yourself

    I grew up believing that our worth is defined by our achievements, our usefulness to others and society. That we are inherently worthless but can earn worthiness by gaining qualifications, wealth, popularity, and success. And that we are only deserving of love and friendship if we sacrifice ourselves to please others.

    But I was wrong because the truth is that we are worth personified. Worth isn’t the result of our actions, accomplishments, and possessions; it isn’t increased by self-sacrifice. It is the essence of our being, the foundation of our existence.

    And it is our task to remember. To let go of our society’s misunderstanding and wake up to the exquisite value and deservedness that is inherent to all of us. To realize our infinite worth that does not depend on any outside factors.

    We are worth. And as long as we treat others with respect and kindness we will always be good enough to deserve their love—without sacrificing our happiness, damaging our bodies, and betraying our values.

    I must have repeated “I am worth” a million times. I affirmed it twenty times a day, told myself when I felt guilty for putting myself first. And I assured myself when I finally told my colleagues, family, and friends that I was stressed and exhausted, that I couldn’t go on like this, that I needed time for myself.

    And they understood. All those years I was horrified they would leave me if I didn’t cater to all their needs. But they knew my true worth better than I did.

    They cared for me, not for the tasks and favors I did for them. They respected my needs. And, after a while, I managed to prioritize myself.

    I now have time to pursue my dreams, give my body the rest it needs, and read a book in the sun. Without guilt or fear of rejection.

    I still enjoy helping and supporting others, granting favors, and doing my best at work. But my motivation has changed. I no longer do it because I am terrified of negative consequences.

    I do it because it makes me happy. And I now know that I deserve happiness. I deserve love, rest and time for myself. Because I am worth.

    And so are you.

  • How to Boost Your Self-Worth: 7 Tips to Feel Better About Yourself

    How to Boost Your Self-Worth: 7 Tips to Feel Better About Yourself

    “The more we see ourselves as a vibrant, successful, inspiring person who boldly declares and manifests her vision, the more we become just that.” ~Kristi Bowman

    I was kind of a chunky kid growing up.

    In my own little world of trolls and playwriting, I didn’t notice the chunk. I genuinely liked me. But when I entered the “real world” of opinions, people, and comparison, I began to realize or rather feel that perhaps my body wasn’t good enough.

    This thought was like a seed that was then planted in my brain. And every time I thought about it, I watered it. Soon enough, that seed sprouted and feelings of not being enough were just a part of who I was.

    I was really good at disguising those thoughts, though. Most in my circle had no idea of how I really felt.

    To be brutally honest, I didn’t even know how I really felt until an event that happened (years later) shined so much light on my deep-rooted feelings of not being enough that I could no longer not acknowledge my feelings. At this point, I fully acknowledged that I had some serious work to do.

    The beginning of the event (you’ll see why I say beginning shortly) was with a boy. I was in my twenties. We were newly dating. We had just come back to his place after a nice dinner. We kissed. We decided to change and put on some comfy clothes to watch a movie.

    While I was changing, a funny, unpleased look washed over his face, and he told me that he was surprised my stomach wasn’t really that flat. That I had somewhat of a “muffin top.”

    I stood there, pulling my shirt over my head, stunned. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

    After the movie, I left, covered in shame. I felt confused, embarrassed, and alone. Despite all of that, I continued to still see him until he inevitably dumped me a few weeks later.

    The real event was my reflection after this relationship ended, when I realized I felt so poorly about myself that I continued to stay with someone who made me feel deep shame. More importantly, I realized that he was just echoing and reflecting back my own feelings of not being good enough.

    It was in this moment that I decided I was, in fact, enough, and that things were going to change.

    Here’s what I did to begin to boost my self-worth and how you can begin to recognize your own worth too.

    1. Pretend you are your own best friend.

    Simply start to notice what you’re saying to yourself. You may be taken aback by how often you’re saying unkind things to yourself (I know I was), but know that it’s totally normal and part of the process. Allow yourself to observe the thoughts that come up and not judge yourself for having them.

    When you notice that you’re in this unkind space, ask yourself, “If this were a friend coming to me with these thoughts, my thoughts, what would I say to them?”

    This question would always wake me up and radically change my self-talk. I could see how mean I was being to myself. I wouldn’t speak to any other human being like I spoke to myself, let alone a friend. You may find this is the same for you.

    If this is difficult for you, it may be because you don’t think you deserve this level of kindness. First of all, you do. Second of all, you can combat this by choosing to focus on one thing you appreciate about yourself that day. Perhaps you appreciate that you decided to go on a walk even though you didn’t want to, or you were kind to your coworker, even though she was being unkind.

    Reflecting and recalling things you appreciate about yourself isn’t always easy, but the more you practice it, the easier it becomes. And it’s in this space you’ll begin to see you deserve to be spoken to kindly, just like you would speak to a friend.

    2. Surround yourself with people who bring you up.

    I was notorious for saying yes when I really wanted to say no. Again, it all boiled down to not valuing my wants, my needs, or myself. The first time I said no (with grace), I was petrified. I was worried the other person would hate me.

    Funny thing is, they didn’t hate me. They began to respect me more. And the more and more I declined outings, events, dates, work, and time with people who brought me down, the more I made room for the things in my life that made me shine, feel happy, and feel whole.

    By feeling this way, I began to really fall in love with myself and appreciate the power I had to make myself feel grounded. I began to feel enough.

    And it was during this time that I joined a local yoga studio, signed up for meditation classes, and started regularly hiking. Through these activities, not only did I find self-worth, and myself, but I also began to grow a beautiful support network of likeminded individuals who would eventually become friends.

    You can do this too. Find and/or make time for activities that bring you joy, and know that a simple hello and a smile can go a long way.

    3. Ask close friends or family members what they appreciate about you.

    Sometimes (or a lot of the time) a kind word from someone we love and trust can go a long way. Their perspective can also help shed some light on qualities about ourselves we previously dismissed.

    And when you have these words in writing, you can pull then out and reread them whenever you feel down.

    The email I sent, and that you can send too, went something like this: “As one of the key people in my soul circle, would you mind telling me what you appreciate about me? I’d be so appreciative!”

    Try it. Save their words. And reread them when you need them.

    4. Get curious about why you’re triggered.

    We get emotionally triggered for all sorts of things—words, actions, decisions, comments, and the list could go on.

    When I got serious about feeling my worth, instead of getting angry with others, situations, or myself when I became emotionally triggered, I got curious and began asking myself what still needed to be healed. By doing this, I was able to really heal my wounds and understand myself better, so the next decision, action, person, or words I chose would lend to better, more loving choices.

    For example, comments about how much or how little I would eat triggered me because I thought someone was judging my body.

    This observation made me realize I had more healing to do around accepting my body and being grateful for it. So I began to write what I appreciated about my body every day in a journal. Slowly, over time, I came to fully love my body—cellulite, “muffin top,” and all.

    You can do this too. The first step is simply becoming aware of when you’re emotionally triggered, leaning into the “why” behind it all, and seeing what still needs to be healed.

    5. Focus on kindness and helping others.

    Choosing to switch my focus from “What’s wrong with me?” to “How can I give back?” was immensely powerful.

    What made me see and feel my worth was helping others—giving a compliment, holding open a door, calling my grandma, starting a random conversation with the woman bagging my groceries, helping an elderly gentleman who had fallen get back up, extending an ear, a hug, and a tissue for a girlfriend after her long hard day.

    By giving back, even in tiny ways, I saw how much of an impact I had. I saw I mattered. I saw I had the power to create happier moments for others and literally turn frowns upside down. And when you see that you’re capable of this, you can’t not see that you are worthy and deserving of love, including your own.

    You can try this too with as much as a simple genuine compliment.

    6. Practice gratitude for who you are as a human being.

    In today’s world, we’re so used to looking at things from the outside in. I didn’t (and still don’t) want to feel my worth based on my looks. Our looks fade. Our soul never does.

    I knew this but didn’t know how to really feel it until I began making notes of why I appreciated and liked myself, on a soul-level. Not on the superficial level. For example, I began writing down things like, “I appreciate that I have such a deep capacity to feel.” This was such a simple, yet transforming exercise.

    You can begin to create this practice too. Every morning or evening (whatever feels best to you), in a journal, bullet-point a few things that you appreciate about your soul self that are unique to your last twenty-four hours.

    For example, if you encountered a rough situation at work and you were kind regardless, you could write “I appreciate I acted with grace and gentleness at the office today in an uncomfortable situation.” Or, you could write, “I appreciate my grace and gentleness.”

    The point is that your gratitude focus here is inward. You’re appreciating the qualities that make you uniquely and beautifully you. And you’re showing up daily to shine some light on them. And yes, know this may feel odd at first, but over time, it becomes easier, and naturally this appreciation of who you are positively changes your self-worth.

    7. Realize everyone has their own struggles.

    I had always known everyone had their own struggles, but I hadn’t fully internalized it. When I began creating a new tribe of souls who appreciated me, lifted me up, and who made me feel safe, I was able to talk about some of my struggles with loving myself and feeling worthy.

    When I did this, others began to open up about their own struggles with self-worth. This made me feel less alone, and ironically, made my self-worth soar through the roof because by simply being open, I was able to help others move through their own self-worth struggles.

    Here, I saw that I wasn’t alone and that I had more power than I thought. You do too.

  • 6 Toxic Thoughts That Keep You Battling with Food

    6 Toxic Thoughts That Keep You Battling with Food

    “Eating is not a crime. It’s not a moral issue. It’s normal. It’s enjoyable. It just is.” ~Carrie Arnold

    Like many women, I was introduced to diet “tricks” and “hacks” at a young age. In my case, that was around twelve to thirteen years old.

    I consumed magazines and movies that constantly reminded me about the importance of dieting, losing weight, and looking skinny.

    As a self-conscious teenager, I began to compare myself to the women in music videos with flat bellies, the slim actresses in movies, and models in magazines with their perfect “beach bodies.”

    This self-consciousness only grew louder as I witnessed girls in my classroom getting teased for being “too fat” and “ugly.”

    Thinking there was only one type of “perfect body” made me feel I didn’t measure up.

    How I Broke My Relationship with Food

    The feeling of not being good enough made me pay attention to the diet tricks I was promised on magazine covers.

    This is when my relationship with food changed.

    Food stopped being an experience to enjoy, and it became a way to create the body I thought I wanted.

    To be completely honest, my experience wasn’t as traumatic as what other women have suffered. I never vomited. I never stopped eating for days. Although I was happy whenever I came down with a stomach virus because my stomach looked completely flat afterward.

    I started experimenting with green juices—the wrong way. I would drink a spinach and cucumber juice (hating the taste) and immediately give myself permission to binge on pizza and other foods because I had “endured” the juicing.

    I began counting calories on a blackboard, like if I was doing math at school.

    For a period of time, I decided to eat only liquid and very soft foods, in tiny portions.

    After several months of my “experiments,” my father started commenting that the bones in my wrists became more noticeable, and my mom insisted I looked too thin, but there was not such thing at “too thin” in the mind of my teenage self.

    One time that I came down with another stomach virus, the doctor told me I was underweight, and she gave me a prescription for a supplement to gain weight.

    I was horrified at the idea of putting on weight. I refused, much to my mother’s concern.

    The irony was that even though I was restricting my food on a daily basis, I had no problem with binging on cake and ice cream while watching TV in my room. I thought if I ate very little most of the time, these foods were my prizes.

    Eating turned into a bittersweet experience. When I was in “diet mode,” I ate too little, with worry, and calculated the effect of everything I ate on my weight. When I was on “binge mode,” I ate without restrictions, with guilt in the back of my mind, feeling upset that I would have to go back to “diet” soon.

    When My Body Said “Enough”

    Because of my inconsistent and emaciating eating habits, I had digestive problems most of my teenage years.

    My turning point happened when I developed serious digestive issues during holiday.

    For almost two weeks I couldn’t digest my food properly, I was bloated, and I had constant stomach pain.

    Because we were away on holiday in my grandparents’ house in the countryside in Costa Rica, there were no clinics or doctors around.

    My grandfather made me tea with ginger and digestive herbs from his garden to alleviate my pain.

    To my surprise, that same day my stomach problems diminished, and after two days I felt in perfect shape.

    I was baffled that drinking tea helped me get better when medications that I’d taken for years couldn’t fix my stomach problems.

    This is the moment when I realized food could heal my body.

    I began researching and learning about what food could do for me from the inside out. Quickly, I realized the damage I had been doing to my body by eating the way I was.

    I decided to start eating whole foods, mostly plant-based meals, almost right away.

    I wanted to heal my body and in the process I healed my relationship with food.

    In my mind, food became what it should have been all along: nourishment and pleasure.

    Fast forward to today, I’ve learned how to eat intuitively, how to eat with mindfulness and joy, and how to approach my body from a place of acceptance and love.

    Our Thoughts About Food Matter

    Looking back, I realize how damaging my thoughts about food were.

    Seeing food as my enemy made me eat in a way that damaged my body—too little, too much, and never with absolute pleasure. This happens to so many people in our diet-crazed society.

    In this post, I want to help you identify and transform thoughts that are harming your relationship with food and holding you back from eating with joy.

    The way you eat is a reflection of your thoughts and perceptions.

    If you have been struggling with dieting, obsessing over calories, and restricting your meals, I want to help you take a step back and shift your mindset so you can heal your relationship with food.

    Letting go of these six toxic thoughts about food will help you eat mindfully, and with pleasure.

    1. Thinking of food as a reward.

    Rewarding a healthy diet with unhealthy food, like during cheat days, defeats the purpose of eating with joy.

    Having cheat days can make your daily meals seem less enjoyable in comparison, which diminishes your pleasure.

    Also, cheat days often turn into binge eating episodes that leave you feeling physically and mentally upset. This doesn’t contribute to your health or happiness.

    A more mindful approach is to allow yourself to indulge on not-so-healthy foods occasionally in moderate portions, instead of reserving certain moments or days to pig out on junk food. Don’t see these indulgences as “rewards” or “prizes” reserved for certain occasions.

    At the same time, eat healthy food that makes you happy on a daily basis. Don’t limit your meals to bland or boring food. Expand your daily menu so you’re always eating healthy meals you like.

    2. Using food as a punishment.

    Using food to punish yourself is just as damaging as using it to reward yourself.

    Eating less or not eating to “punish” yourself for overeating is only going to reinforce the feeling you have been “bad,” and this will make you more anxious and paranoid around food.

    For example, forcing yourself to eat only certain foods—green juices, “detox” teas, salads—that you dislike to compensate for binging episodes or because you feel “fat” will deprive your body of the nutrients you need and make you miserable.

    You don’t need to deprive your body; torturing yourself is not the answer.

    The best thing you can do to stop this cycle is to practice self-love. Love yourself, love your body, and know you don’t need to punish it.

    A healthy diet that keeps you fit is abundant in whole, nourishing foods. If you want to start over, don’t stop eating. Eat more healthy foods: berries, nuts, beans, lentils, quinoa, all the veggies you can imagine, plenty of water, whole grains, soups, and more.

    3. Thinking of food as comfort.

    Emotional eating happens when we see food as a form of consolation.

    I ate cake many times a week because I thought it made me “happy.” I was a lonely teenager, and cake made me feel life was a little sweeter for a moment.

    Using food to cope when we feel sad, angry, lonely, or hurt can be addictive. We start to associate “happiness” with food, and the longer we do it, the harder it is to break the habit.

    Relying on food to feel better shuts down the opportunity to work on your problems in a meaningful way.

    The best thing you can do for yourself is to actively seek healthier ways to cope when things seem bad—and there are plenty of them.

    Exercising, meditating, listening to music, reading, taking a walk, playing with a kitten or a dog, brainstorming solutions to your problems, learning a new skill, taking a nap, and talking to friends are more effective and healthier ways to lift up your mood.

    4. Seeing food as something “prohibited.”

    Having a strict and inflexible diet will stress you and it may not even help you eat less, according to studies.

    Food restrictions often result in constant thoughts and cravings about the food you are “forbidding”—donuts, brownies, ice cream, or sugar—and this keeps you from fully enjoying the meals in your plate.

    Studies show that restricted eaters have more thoughts about food that non-restricted eaters.

    Obviously, this won’t let you feel at peace or happy with your food.

    I’m not saying you should eat without limits and binge on whatever you want, I’m suggestion to focus your efforts elsewhere: Instead of frantically forbidding foods, focus on adding healthier foods to your diet.

    Forbidding unhealthy food makes you stressed and is ineffective, but if you simply focus on eating more whole foods, your mind will be at peace and you will eat healthier without even noticing.

     5. Seeing food as entertainment.

    When you go to the movies, do you eat popcorn because you’re truly hungry or just because that’s how it’s done?

    It’s probably the latter, right? In this context, popcorn is part of the entertaining experience.

    However, if you start turning to food to keep you entertained every time you’re bored, you will overeat and won’t savor your meals.

    Eating mindfully means being aware of your food and enjoying the experience.

    Using food as a distraction won’t let you enjoy your meals the same way.

    Instead of using food as entertainment, find constructive ways to occupy your mind.

    Activities that engage you, like playing a game, reading a novel, drawing, organizing or exercising are better for your mind and body.

    6. Measuring your self-worth based on how much you eat.

    Finally, don’t give food the power to measure your self-worth.

    You’re more than what or how much you eat.

    Beating yourself up over what you eat is exactly what harms your relationship with food and steals your happiness.

    If you feel you haven’t been eating healthy, don’t get angry with yourself. You can always make a change for the better and improve your diet whenever you decide.

    It’s important you see food as your ally, not as the enemy.

    —

    Food is not meant to make you feel guilty, worried, or restrict you in any way.

    It is there to nourish, support you, and make you feel your best.

    If you want to heal your relationship with food, begin by transforming the harmful thoughts that keep you from fully enjoying your eating experience.

  • Seeking Outside Approval Is Giving Our Power Away

    Seeking Outside Approval Is Giving Our Power Away

    Oil Painting Texture

    “When you do not seek or need approval, you are at your most powerful.” ~Caroline Myss

    Back in the winter of 2012, I was devastated by a sudden near-deaf experience (90% hearing loss), which led me to a dead end in my IT career.

    “You’ve been overworked. Rest is the only way to recuperate,” said every single doctor.

    Leaving my corporate sales job left me feeling like a total failure.

    I felt lost, confused, and frustrated as darkness swallowed my self-esteem.

    “Why did you have to work so hard and not get the credit you deserved?!” 

    “Is deafness all you got in return for striving toward excellence all these years?!”

    “You are worthless!” 

    As an overachiever and a perfectionist, I felt overwhelmed by a shame storm.

    I was caught up in bitterness and a sense of injustice until one day I realized that I was battling with myself, and the self-loathing quotient went off the chart.

    “What do you want, Universe? Don’t you see that I’m suffering?” I ranted out loud like a mad victim.

    Even though spirituality wasn’t my thing at that point in time, I literally “heard” a clear voice: “Own it. Take stock of your life now, Jen.” This triggered me to start asking why in heaven I had gotten myself into this mud hole.

    Connecting with My Younger Self

    With my eyes closed I saw a seven-year-old girl, the little me. She was taught to be very self-disciplined academically, as she was told to excel and work hard.

    Her sole goal was for her parents to put her on a pedestal for being good and intelligent.

    Since she came from a family where praise was like a foreign language, validating children for trying hard hadn’t been the parenting style in the house. Instead, there was often an attitude that the children could do better—they could work harder to achieve more.

    Hearing her parents give random compliments to other kids at the same age irritated her. She could only draw this conclusion: “Doing my best is not good enough, so I need to try even harder, or else I won’t be worthy of love and attention.”

    From then on, she constantly craved compliments and approval.

    “Jen, great job, keep up the good work!” Those simple comments were like water to her thirsty soul.

    Years later, she became masterful at overachieving, perfecting, and competing, which helped her gain “confidence” through compliments from other people.

    If she ever heard a negative comment, it could ruin her whole day. She’d go home discouraged and mentally lash herself for not doing well enough.

    She didn’t know what to say without first checking other people’s facial expressions. She lived on their compliments as the life stream of her self-worth. Until one day, she realized she’d lost it all. Her physical and emotional wellbeing had gone bankrupt, but worse her authenticity had gone down the drain.

    Even now, I can still feel her pain, the insecurity, the fear of rejection, and the strong need to be loved wrapped underneath a people-pleasing mask.

    Path of Returning to the Truth

    Deep down in my core, I knew that my mother and father, just like many other typical Asian parents, wanted their children to have better lives, and they believed that would come from in excelling in school so they could get better jobs, make more money, and be prosperous.

    I still thought that they should’ve done better, because they weren’t mindful enough to give me the emotional support I needed in my childhood. I got stirred up about it, and I even wanted to confront my parents with a letter to tell them what I thought after all those years.

    Just before I was about to take action, I heard something from inside saying, “They did you wrong, didn’t they? They didn’t give you what you needed, did they?”

    “They sure did!” I replied.

    Then the voice asked, “How do you think you would’ve done if you would’ve been in their shoes, with three kids to raise, with a business to run, with aging parents to take care of, and with a load of family chaos to be sorted out?”

    This conversation changed my perspective. I realized that my parents had done the best they could with what they had. They couldn’t give me what they didn’t even have themselves. I began to feel ashamed of my immaturity and selfishness.

    This time, the shame level was way stronger than it was when I left my corporate job involuntarily and felt worthless.

    Blaming is like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound; it never works. I realized that I was the one not letting anybody off the hook while busy swimming in the pool of victimhood.

    Lessons Learned

    Regaining my hearing after two months was a divine miracle, but I’m grateful that the silence taught me the following lessons about understanding others and releasing the need for approval.

    1. Stop seeking validation from others.

    It’s great when people believe in us, cheer us on, and make us feel valuable. We love when our partners compliment us or a friend is there to give encouragement.

    But you cannot become so dependent on people that you derive your worth and value from how they treat you. It’s easy to become addicted to compliments, addicted to encouragement, addicted to them cheering you on.

    But if other people change their minds and stop giving you the compliments you crave, then you’ll feel devalued. If they don’t meet all your expectations, you’ll get discouraged and feel inferior. You’ll start working overtime, people-pleasing to win their approval.

    At some point, like a mother weans a baby off a bottle, you have to break your need for external validation.

    You no longer need people complimenting you to keep you encouraged. Praise is nice to hear, but you can develop self-sufficiency.

    2. Have compassion for others.

    The truth is, our friends and family members have their own problems. They are not responsible for keeping us happy and making us feel good about ourselves. Don’t put that extra pressure on them. It’s unfair to the people who are in our lives.

    Moreover, sometimes when people don’t give us what we need, it’s because they don’t have it, because nobody gave it to them. If they weren’t raised showing affection to people, and we keep trying to get it from them, we’ll likely end up frustrated.

    Maybe they did the best they could. They may have made a decision that we don’t understand, and we may feel like it has put us at a disadvantage, but at least we didn’t have to walk in their shoes.

    3. Start approving of yourself.

    What people do, or don’t do, doesn’t determine our worth. Our value doesn’t come from another person; it comes from ourselves.

    People may not encourage us, but we can encourage ourselves. People may not make us feel special, but we can make ourselves feel special. We’ll have better relationships if we start validating ourselves instead of becoming needy and waiting for other people to give us our approval fix.

    Learn how to compliment and validate yourself. Practice affirming: I am strong. I am healthy. I am highly favored. I am beautiful. I am lucky. (Be creative!)

    4. Don’t give your power away.

    When a person walks away, wrongs us, or even makes hurtful comments, we need to learn to shake off that disrespect.

    Don’t believe the lies that we are not talented enough, attractive enough, or good enough. They don’t determine our value. They can’t lessen our self-worth. The only power people have over us is the power we give to them.

    We don’t have to play up to people to try to win their favor. If they don’t want to be in our lives, it’s actually their loss, not ours.

    —

    If you learn this principle of not relying on people for your worth and start generating your own approval and acknowledgment, you won’t feel crushed when somebody doesn’t give you what you expect.

    The less we depend on people for validation, the stronger we’ll become and the higher we will go.

  • How to Raise Your Self-Esteem So You Can Thrive in Life

    How to Raise Your Self-Esteem So You Can Thrive in Life

    “Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth.” ~Iyanla Vanzant

    Aren’t you tired of it?

    You know, that sneaking suspicion you aren’t enough.

    That inner commentary about where you fall short all the time. The mean internal remarks about your ability to handle life and how you just don’t measure up.

    And aren’t you fed up with how it’s been holding you back from pursuing what you truly desire?

    A better relationship or more meaningful work. That dream you’ve never told anyone because it just seems impossible when you think about going for it.

    Listen, I’ve been there too.

    My self-esteem was so low that I was eventually overcome by a terrible apathy, which turned into bouts of debilitating depression, which led to even lower self-esteem.

    It was a vicious cycle that started when, as a young child, I somehow disengaged from my true self and my higher power. This disconnection led to many irresponsible choices.

    The worst one was getting pregnant at sixteen and giving my baby up for adoption. It was the right thing to do given my situation, but I was consumed with grief and guilt for years.

    Then there were the addictions I created to cigarettes, overspending, anxiety medication, and alcohol.

    For years, I unconsciously went from one self-destructive behavior to another, rather than connect with and develop myself.

    As you can imagine, all this didn’t exactly build my sense of self-worth.

    Thankfully, I eventually found the courage to let go of the patterns that held me back, reclaim my true self, and recognize talents I never knew I had.

    Step by step, I was able to heal, rebuild my self-respect, and become who I am today—someone who never doubts that she is worthy of love, belonging, and all of life’s riches.

    How I Raised My Self-Esteem and How You Can Too

    1. Take a risk.

    We’re often afraid to show the messy, flawed, and vulnerable part of ourselves to others. But it’s a tremendous relief when you do and someone accepts you just as you are.

    When I finally shared my teen pregnancy and adoption story with a friend, I was so surprised when she told me the same had happened to her, only she had decided on an abortion. In that moment, our connection deepened, and my emotional wounds healed a little bit more.

    Shame vanishes when you receive support and understanding from others. We must stop trying to appear perfect by keeping our perceived flaws a secret and going it alone.

    2. Don’t get stuck in regret.

    Accept the reality that we all make mistakes, and choose not to get stuck in regret.

    Mourn your slip-ups fully, learn from them, and make amends where possible. Then forgive yourself, and let go of the past so that you can move forward, knowing you’ve done your best.

    Try to view difficult circumstances as opportunities to grow in awareness rather than as blows to knock you down. Accept the things you can’t change, change the things that are under your control, and keep heading in a positive direction. Strive to go forward and deeper within as well.

    3. Refocus your attention.

    Rather than focusing on your flaws, pay attention to everything that’s good about you and makes you unique.

    Come up with an actual list, and refer to it often to remind yourself of your strengths. This might include your natural talents, your learned skills, your achievements, your dreams, and even your healthy relationships.

    Cultivate extra self-confidence by choosing one item from your list and honing it further until it turns into something you can be even more proud of.

    You can actively direct your attention to creating the kind of experiences you want in life and becoming the person you want to be.

    4. Strive for integrity.

    Live in accord with life-affirming values such as truth and kindness. You feel proud of yourself when you seek the truth and do the right thing—the thing that gives you a sense of integrity and wholeness.

    Take time to identify what matters most to you. Then measure all your choices and actions against these core values, making sure you’re in alignment.

    Living this way simplifies decision-making and leads to genuine integrity.

    For example, loving-kindness is currently my highest core value. It’s important to me to treat myself, other people, Earth, and all living things with love and compassion. So when I have a choice to make or face a challenge, I often ask myself, “What would love do?”

    5. Develop your self-trust.

    Self-esteem rises when you know you can trust yourself, when you trust your own instincts and intuition over the ideas of others, and when you’ve proven to yourself that you can face disappointment and frustration without becoming destabilized.

    The more you can handle stress by self-soothing and finding strength within rather than escaping into self-destructive behaviors, the more you will trust yourself.

    And the more you honor your core values when facing life’s inevitable challenges, the better your outcomes will be, leading to more self-trust.

    In this way, you can build a sense of security and self-contained confidence that is not based on the approval of others.

    6. Be of service.

    Look around for how you can connect with and help others in your everyday life. Even a smile or a kind word can make a difference to someone else and instantly increase your sense of self-worth.

    Consider volunteering for a cause you care about that needs your particular skills. One of the best things I ever did was volunteer as a head coach in my local Girls On the Run after-school program.

    Empowering young girls to be joyful, healthy, and confident lifted my spirits and boosted my self-confidence. There’s no better feeling than knowing you truly helped someone.

    7. Never, ever give up.

    You must not allow negative thoughts to overwhelm you. Stand up for yourself no matter what. When you choose to be positive, you know you’re doing your best and can feel good about yourself, despite unfavorable circumstances.

    No matter what difficulties show up in your life—even if things seem hopeless—don’t ever give up on yourself. Always choose to channel your energy in a positive, productive direction.

    “Most of the important things in the world,” said personal development teacher Dale Carnegie, “have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”

    You: Necessary, Valuable, and Worthy of Reverence

    The truth is, healthy self-esteem requires ongoing vigilance and upkeep. It calls for self-understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness, plus large doses of self-compassion.

    It’s a tall order, but it’s worth the effort.

    We’ve all made excruciating mistakes, encountered harsh criticism, and experienced crushing disappointment. We’ve all taken a hit to our self-worth at one time or another.

    But you are just as entitled to good relationships, fulfilling work, and having your dreams come true as anyone else.

    After all, your being born a human here on Earth was, in itself, a miraculous event. It means that your uniqueness is necessary, valuable, and worthy of reverence.

    So don’t cheat us of your gifts by getting stuck in low self-esteem. We need you out here in the world.

    In the words of spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!”

  • 3 Ways You May Be Undermining Your Self-Worth (And How to Stop)

    3 Ways You May Be Undermining Your Self-Worth (And How to Stop)

    “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

    Self-worth comes from knowing that you are enough, just as you are. You are inherently worthy, and you don’t need anyone else’s approval.

    I didn’t always hold myself in high regard, or treat myself with the respect I deserved. I’m now in my thirties and live a beautiful life filled with self-love, kindness, and passion, but in my younger years I suffered from low self-worth.

    I had my fair share of life lessons and allowed myself to be treated poorly.

    I begged for love from a partner who was repeatedly unfaithful, holding onto hope that somehow he would change.

    I criticized my perfectly healthy and beautiful body, wishing it were different, and endlessly compared it to how others’ bodies.

    I also unconsciously bought into the belief that it was selfish to look after myself rather than seeing it as an essential part of supporting myself.

    I spent years being my own worst critic, and I couldn’t understand how to become my own best friend.

    I now recognize that I was desperately craving love and attention, but was withholding it from myself. I had forgotten my inherent power and worthiness.

    We all have times when we get caught up in routines and behaviors that don’t support us, yet we have the ability to make changes in our lives. We are never powerless. Once we understand where we might be hurting ourselves, it becomes much easier to know how to step up and support ourselves.

    Here are three ways you may be undermining your own self-worth, and how you can stop.

    1. Stop focusing on what is wrong with you.

    Most of us have a tendency to focus on what is wrong with us, and what it is we want to “fix.” We may focus on the fact that we think we are too big, too shy, not pretty enough, or not capable enough. There is no end to the ways we can critique ourselves! We unconsciously get into the mental routine of continually undermining our own self-worth.

    As a teenager, I struggled with my body image. Tragically, I look back and recognize that I had no reason to, but at the time I was comparing myself to the glossy images in magazines and other people who looked nothing like me.

    I hated my fair skin, was unhappy that my thighs touched, and thought my lips were too thin. I wanted to be a beautiful person, but thought of myself as anything but. I was relying purely on my physical appearance for my self-worth.

    Over the last fifteen years I’ve built a beautiful relationship with my body, and also with my soul. I now see my body as an amazing creation that allows me to experience life. I am grateful for my beating heart and two legs that hold me steady. I also recognize that I have a caring and kind nature, and those internal attributes are much more important than how I look on the outside.

    The lesson: Consciously focus on what is right with you.

    Regardless of how you might want to improve, you have things that are worth celebrating about yourself. You have gifts and unique talents that have come together to create you—a unique expression of humanity.

    Don’t overlook how amazing that is. Remember all the things you love about yourself and make a list. If you find it difficult to bring to mind the things that are so very right with you, ask a close friend what it is they appreciate about you and truly listen to and believe their response.

    2. Stop accepting less than you deserve.

    Many of us look for our self-worth in the wrong places. Rather than deriving it from ourselves, it’s easy to get into the habit of looking to others to make us feel worthy and loved. This can lead to struggling stand up for yourself and what, deep down, you know you deserve.

    By not wanting to upset others, you may end up giving too generously and find yourself in relationships where you feel you do not get enough in return.

    I have fallen into this trap in many relationships over the years. With friends, I would desperately make sure I paid for things to ensure I was never in debt to anyone, and always ended up spending more.

    I stayed in an unhealthy relationship littered with infidelity for years longer than I should have because I didn’t have the courage to stand up for myself and say, “How you are treating me is not okay.” It leads to feelings of frustration and resentment, and erodes your self-worth.

    My need to be liked and keep others happy led to situations where others took advantage of my good nature. I forgot it was my birthright to have boundaries, and that I didn’t have to put up with other people’s bad behavior. I had forgotten my power to say no.

    The lesson: You teach people how to treat you.

    Boundaries are important, and if something doesn’t feel right to you, you have to stand up for yourself and say no—whether it is someone’s behavior that’s crossed a line, or their ongoing expectations of your giving nature. You cannot expect anyone else to look out for your needs if you are not willing to first look out for yourself.

    If you tolerate negative situations or draining friendships, you are unconsciously saying yes to that type of behavior.

    Give yourself the space to reflect on your current relationships and have the courage to ask, “Do I feel I am treated as I deserve?” If the answer is no, don’t be afraid to reclaim your self-worth and stand up for what you need. You’ll feel better in the long run.

    3. Stop putting yourself at the bottom of your to-do list.

    Many of us have unconsciously taken on the belief that looking after ourselves is indulgent and selfish, and that the right thing to do is to take care of everyone else first. We put our own well-being at the bottom of our to-do lists and just hope that we might have some time and energy left to give to ourselves.

    Yet, if we don’t nourish ourselves, we won’t actually have anything to give. You cannot pour from an empty cup. When you put yourself at the bottom of your to-do list, you begin to burnout. You get sucked into a cycle of exhaustion, martyrdom, and low self-worth.

    Although I always had a tendency to give to others before myself, this wasn’t a lesson I was truly faced with until I had children in my late twenties. When there are multiple people relying on you, it becomes very easy to slip into martyrdom and begin to believe you have no time for yourself. After a couple of years of this routine, I reached a breaking point where I felt burned out and depleted.

    Slowly but surely, I began to start finding the time for small acts of self-care that revived and restored my spirit.

    I found an outlet for my creativity by starting a blog; I began reading again and regularly taking long hot showers. They were small things that made a big difference. I went from feeling rundown, exhausted, and unsure of my worth, to remembering the things that made me feel alive, energized and whole.

    The lesson: Recognize that self-care is an essential part of supporting yourself.

    When you show yourself respect by prioritizing your needs, and fill up your own cup, you send yourself a message that you are important and worthy.

    By consistently showing yourself this level of respect, you can pull yourself out of the cycle of exhaustion and martyrdom and begin to build self-worth. We each have different things that fill us up and make us feel alive and well inside, but you owe it to yourself to discover these things and make time for them in your life.

    —

    Cultivating self-worth will be a life-long journey for most of us. It is likely that many times over, life will knock our confidence and we will be required to once again dig deep into ourselves and uncover our inherent worthiness. Being aware of how we can support ourselves empowers us to take actions that will move us forward on the path to greater self-worth.

  • 10 Ways to Increase Your Self-Worth

    10 Ways to Increase Your Self-Worth

    10 ways to increase your self-worth

    Source: Steven Aitchison

  • The Best Revenge

    The Best Revenge

    The best revenge

    Source: Expanded Consciousness

  • You Are Worthy Regardless of What You Achieve

    You Are Worthy Regardless of What You Achieve

    Woman Looking Up to the Sky

    “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” ~Albert Einstein

    I am pathetic. I am a walking, talking cliché (well, maybe not walking—I use an electric wheelchair).

    I am one of those people who is so desperate to overcome their own sense of lack that they create some giant obstacle to overcome, or some massive achievement to attain, in order to feel that they might just be worth something.

    I am an over-compensator, so desperate to feel okay about the fact that I am, in some ways, not as capable as other people that I seek to achieve the impossible—purely to show the whole world, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am enough.

    The great irony, of course,  when you do this is that the only one you’re really trying to please is yourself. You’re just afraid that you aren’t worthy, so you seek to prove that you are, through your achievements. It doesn’t work. Everybody can see what you’re trying to do.

    Your desire to achieve is fine, but it’s silly and fruitless to pin your self-worth on it.

    You might wonder why I’m being so down on myself. And the truth is, I’m just being honest. This is how I operated until recently. It’s part of personal growth, something we have to go through before we begin to realize the deeper truths about life.

    No grand achievement will fill any emotional hole in me. It just won’t. The more I hope it will, the less likely I am to achieve it. It makes a man (or woman) weak and pathetic to be reliant on achievement for his sense of self because ultimately, he’s giving over his power to things he can’t control.

    Rather than move me toward my goals, all the hoping, struggling, wishing, and trying to improve myself only seemed to make the hamster wheel spin faster.

    In actuality, it was just teaching me how to have control over myself. I learned that in order to try and get the things I was so desperate to have, I had to do things that were against my nature and control my emotional state.

    I had to fight to turn lethargy into energy, anger into desire, or boredom into enthusiasm instead of embracing my feelings and allowing myself space to explore them. It works, but it’s exhausting. Not quite as exhausting, however, as actually trying to do things.

    Forcing yourself to get up for the alarm, to work toward the goal that you desperately ‘need’ to feel worthy or complete, and yet makes you incredibly anxious and miserable, is one of the hardest and most trialling things you’ll ever do. And I’ve experienced a lot of trials. The better you get at it, the more stupid it seems, because you just get more miserable.

    You become a slave to your goals and desires. A robot. A cog in a machine of your own making. At least if I was just going to work for somebody else I’d be paid to work in a machine I wasn’t responsible for. Being a slave to the machine of your own dreams and ambitions is like being the owner, repairman, operator, and cog all in one. It’s impossible.

    Eventually you start to wonder: “Hang on, I thought this was supposed to make me free. And happy. Not a slave.” You’re right. That’s what it was meant to do. But it never could. You’re asking for the impossible.

    Dreams and ambitions are wonderful. They bring fire to your belly, light to the distant future, and meaning to your miserable failings. That’s all it does, though. It doesn’t change your present moment. It doesn’t change the reality. Right. Now.

    On my journey in life so far, I’ve experienced three distinct phases, each of which has taught me an important lesson.

    The Leaf in the Wind Phase

    I am just one little leaf being blown around in the giant storm of life, and my only real power is to observe and absorb the world around me. I have to accept the good with the bad as well as my place in the world. However, this left me feeling like a passive observer.

    Self-Improvement

    I discovered the power of self-direction, that I could change my beliefs, habits, and desires through effort. I could teach myself things, and direct my life toward that which caught my eye.

    I gained an incredible, if misguided, sense of control over my future and started to believe I could literally control my destiny. Even when this led to success, I became more and more like an automaton—a slave to the habits and beliefs necessary to achieve the goals that I believed would make me worthy.

    Waking Up

    I realized using my self-improvement as a measure of my self-worth was a bit obnoxious, not to mention futile. Even if I got what I wanted, there would always be something bigger and better to measure myself by; I’d never be enough.

    Waking up involves discovering that you don’t need to change who you are; you are enough, just as you are. That doesn’t mean you can’t pursue change. You just do the things you have to do, step by step, without any attachment to a particular outcome. That’s it. You simply act.

    You start to like yourself, primarily because you get to know yourself. And you find that actually, you were pretty cool all along.

    The irony is, the outcomes we become attached to prevent us from ever getting what we really seek. Nobody wants to be rich or famous; they want to be significant and connected to other people. Those things come as a result of your process, the actions you take every day, not the outcomes we tie our self-worth to.

    The biggest part of ‘waking up’ for me was realizing that my obsession with audacious goals was my way of avoiding the real changes I needed to make, which were broadly around learning to like myself.

    Now that I’ve made some of those changes, my goals are less important to me and simultaneously more likely to come to fruition. All because I want to achieve my goals, I don’t need them to feel worthy or complete.

    I no longer feel that I have to change who I am to get what I want, which means I no longer repress my feelings. If I’m feeling moody, sad, or lazy, I embrace that and give myself a break instead of telling myself I’m wrong to feel how I feel.

    I’ve learned that we don’t need to control everything around us. We couldn’t even if we wanted to. There is only now. This very second is all we have, and will ever have.

    You can have goals, that’s fine, you can work toward them, that’s also fine, but to tie yourself up in a tight knot of stress and mental chatter is just a recipe for misery.

    Waking up begins when you realize that you don’t need to achieve anything specific to be worthy, happy, or at peace.

    Woman looking up to the sky image via Shutterstock

  • When Someone Cheats or Mistreats You, It’s About Them, Not You

    When Someone Cheats or Mistreats You, It’s About Them, Not You

    “Pain makes you stronger. Tears make you braver. Heartbreak makes you wiser. So thank the past for a better future.” ~Unknown

    I used to think when someone cheated on me that I was flawed.

    You see, I had a core belief that there was something wrong with me. I never felt enough. I’m not even sure I can fully articulate this feeling, but whatever it was, I just didn’t feel enough. Slim enough, pretty enough, clever enough, worthy enough, or just, well, anything enough.

    I’ve now come to see that when someone mistreats you it has almost nothing to do with you. Other people’s behavior is about them.

    I’ve come to realize that my ex flirting and engaging in a sexual manner with other women had to do with his insecurities, and nothing to do with me not being good enough.

    It was his issue, not mine. It was his ego that needed a boost, and he used other women for that because he wasn’t emotionally or intellectually developed enough to boost himself.

    I believe we must be responsible enough to look after our own feelings and not make someone else responsible for how we feel. He was still trapped in a cycle of thinking he needed someone to make him feel happy. He needed to use other women to boost his self-esteem.

    Previously, I’ve felt that my world was falling apart when a man cheated on me or left me. I felt my value decreased the moment he didn’t want me.

    I can now see my value just is, it’s innate. We are all born worthy—worthy of love and good enough. Even if no one in the world can see it, it’s the truth. I am enough exactly as I am. I don’t need to be anything other than who I am. I have nothing to prove to anyone anymore.

    I’ve realized that I am more than lovable. When someone doesn’t or can’t treat me the way I want and deserve to be treated, it’s not a reflection of me.

    I’ve learned that it’s my job to put my best interests at heart and love myself enough to walk away from anything that doesn’t serve me or build me up.

    This time I discovered an inner strength much sooner than I previously have. I walked away when I discovered the lies; previously I would stayed trying to fix myself when I wasn’t the one that was at fault.

    I now recognize that I am a complete person all alone. I don’t need someone else to complete me.

    I function and enjoy my life on my own. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy being in relationships—I really do, and I think it’s so magical when two happy, complete people come together and share their lives.

    However, I’ve discovered that if the other person is looking for someone to complete them or to make their life more exciting than it is, it’s more than likely never going to last.

    Relationships are places of spiritual growth, and they can enhance an already happy life. Their purpose is not to make a miserable one better; that’s too much power to hand to any one person.

    Love is a place of pure positive energy. If someone has to put you down in order to try to keep you then that’s not love; it’s control. Control is based on a scarcity model of love, and that’s not positive energy; it’s fear-based.

    I have never understood it when people said that love isn’t enough. Love is always enough, but love is about loving actions, loving behavior. You can’t claim to love someone yet lie to them; the two things don’t match.

    So here are the five things I’ve learned from my past failed relationship.

    1. When someone cheats or mistreats you, it almost never has anything to do with you.

    You are good enough even when their actions may have you believe otherwise.

    2. Someone else’s bad behavior doesn’t reflect badly on you.

    Someone cheating on you doesn’t make you look silly. It highlights that they have issues they need to work on.

    3. Your value and worth aren’t tied to anyone or anything.

    Not your weight, relationship, or job.

    4. Love is never bad; love is amazing, pure and simple. Cheating hurts, lies hurt, being heartbroken hurts, but these things are not love.

    These cause pain, but cheating, lying, and hurting others are done out of fear, not out of love. Love is, in fact, the only thing that ever makes the pain better again, and you can start to love yourself today. Self-love depends on you alone.

    Set the standard for how people should love you by loving yourself wholeheartedly.

    5. Just because one relationship doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean the next one won’t.

    Don’t give up on love; give up on the people who made you think love wasn’t good.

    And always remember what Steve Marabolie wrote, “The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.”

  • You’re More Valuable Than You Think

    You’re More Valuable Than You Think

    You Matter

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

    On a summer night in Hicksville, Long Island, I swung the bat and drove a double down the left-field line. I broke up the pitcher’s no-hitter, and he was one of the best pitchers in the league. I felt completely at home. I was myself.

    On another summer night in Vergennes, Vermont, I stumbled back to the fence tracking down a fly ball. I speared at it with my glove, then watched it bounce off of my hand and go over the fence for a grand-slam home run. I felt numb and hateful.

    For each negative episode on the baseball field, it would take days to recover. It tortured me, and by association, those around me. It wasn’t just baseball, either. It was all things—academics, peer-acceptance, or any life event.

    Well into my late twenties, I was still soaring through emotional ceilings and crashing through emotional floors. The longevity of the pattern was beginning to drive me crazy. I needed to end this cycle, but how?

    I didn’t know at the time that this was a self-esteem issue. The major flaw in my worldview back then was that my self-worth was based on what other people thought of me.

    Going back to when I was a kid, and well into adulthood, I was highly sensitive to the feedback of others. As a kid, a teacher would praise me and I’d be on top of the world. Later in the day, a coach would yell at me and I’d feel worthless.

    I had no internal anchor or innate sense of value. And why would I? The culture I grew up in was one where you could have worthless people. If you didn’t add value in some way to some person, you had no worth. You didn’t have a reason to exist.

    For me, grades and sports were what I did to prove I was worth existing. When things went well, I was untouchably confident. I felt alive and powerful. On the other side of that coin, during the bad periods, I felt homeless. Like I didn’t deserve to be, well, anywhere.

    I had no idea that life didn’t have to be this way.

    A Moment of Clarity

    One weekend in my early thirties, I was bed-ridden with the flu. Through the bedroom door, I listened to my wife and two small kids the entire weekend. On Sunday night, when I was feeling better, I came out to spend time with them.

    As I walked out, I could feel the energy in the room lift. This was something I had never experienced before. I felt a relaxing of tension and a sense of uplifting from my wife and kids. As I began talking and catching up on the weekend, I could see the positive effects continue.

    In that moment, the thought struck me—I’m being valuable just by showing up.

    Just by being myself, and expressing myself, I had a positive effect on everyone in the house. It was clear to me that things were different and better, simply because I was present.

    I gave more thought to how people’s lives would be if I simply disappeared. I began paying attention to the effect my presence had in normal, everyday situations. I realized that by expressing my truer nature—my quirky, sometimes nerdy, genuine self—I made a positive impact. I was giving out positive energy.

    This had been happening my entire life, but I wasn’t aware of it until that weekend.

    Over time, as these ideas took root in my mind, I sensed for the first time that I deserved to be here on Earth. I had an inherent right to exist; not a right I had to earn. I no longer felt like a guest.

    It was the start of a confidence rooted deeply within myself. I wasn’t emotionally dependent on the feedback or opinions of others. I now knew I had something of value, something that was intangible and plentiful, and I could give it to others all of the time. It was me and my energy.

    From there, I started to look for the same in others. I realized everyone has a unique piece of life’s puzzle to contribute. Some contribute in small ways, some contribute in large ways, but everyone’s piece is important. You cannot have a whole puzzle if a piece is missing.

    With this increased sense of value on my own life and the life of others, the quality of each day is noticeably better. Spending time and connecting with others not only feels like I’m giving a unique gift, but I’m receiving one as well. It’s a completely different way of living.

    This is a far cry from the me who kept his true self hidden. I used to think that revealing my true self was the cause of turmoil and destruction, and now I’ve realized that my true self is the vehicle through which I enjoy life.

    What I’m saying here goes beyond people who have a wife and kids. It goes beyond whatever limits you might feel you have based on your lifestyle or social circle. It’s impossible for you to know what kind of effect you are having on the world as a whole.

    You are you for a reason. Your quirks, your idiosyncrasies, the things that make you unique and who you are—you are meant to be these things and go about life in this way. Each action you take that’s based in your unique personality has ripple effect upon ripple effect.

    It’s impossible for you to know that the random person you chatted with on a bus about the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended up reading the books and became passionate about them. And that person shared them with someone else, who loved them so much and felt so inspired that they went on to become an author for themselves, writing books that sparked the imaginations and passions of thousands or even millions.

    Could you have ever known that sharing your interest on some random Tuesday on a bus could have had that effect? Did you consider that by staying silent, you broke the chain that would’ve resulted in joy for millions of people around the world?

    Nobody can know these things, but they are the everyday miracles of life. There is your value—it’s you, your uniqueness, and your expression of it.

    We are all blessed with a unique value, and the more we cultivate it and share it, the better we feel every day. Your true self is a gift and a key to unlocking a life of greater satisfaction. Go ahead and use that key. It will open a lot of doors.

    You matter image via Shutterstock