Tag: wisdom
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How to Turn Your Sensitivity into Your Biggest Strength
“Never apologize for being sensitive or emotional. Let this be a sign that you’ve got a big heart and aren’t afraid to let others see it. Showing your emotions is a sign of strength.” ~Brigitte Nicole
We have a problem in the modern world that needs to be addressed.
It impacts huge numbers of the population but is so ingrained in our culture that it’s easy for us to overlook how dangerous it can be.
This problem is the denial of sensitivity.
We often associate sensitivity with weakness, but when we learn how to manage our energy and emotions we can actually become more controlled, empathetic, and driven.
Most people suppress their sensitivity, not realizing that it’s a very powerful source of productive energy once they can learn how to accept it and direct it toward something positive.
For a large portion of my life I would feel emotions very intensely, whether it was while watching movies or noticing the feelings of those around me. I guess you could say I was a natural empath.
Unfortunately, I did what most people do in Western society—I cut these feelings off at the source, intellectualizing everything and separating my head from my body.
However, over time I eventually learned that the more I avoided feelings, particularly negative ones, the longer they would persist. It was almost impossible to let go of things. It wasn’t uncommon for unresolved issues that I hadn’t thought about in years to come up in a dream.
Now through meditation and mindfulness practices I’ve learned to sit with my emotions and use sensitivity to feel more joy, be guided by my gut, and employ all that emotional energy in creative and constructive ways.
Why Do We Deny Our Sensitivity?
According to Researcher Elaine Aron, about 15-20% of the population are highly sensitive due to the nature of their nervous systems. These people generally have an inclination toward overstimulation, emotional reactivity, and empathy.
Whether I fall under this umbrella or not never interested me that much. What interested me was that our culture often finds it culturally inappropriate to experience or express sensitivity, even though there are millions of us living somewhere on that spectrum who could get much more out of life if we just learned to use our emotions!
How Can You Turn Your Sensitivity into a Strength?
There are many ways to do this, and it’s partly going to be dependent on you as an individual. However, there is an overarching point to keep in mind, and that is to accept yourself and your emotions as they are, not to repress or avoid them or to feel guilt for having them.
Repression or avoidance often leads to what are known as meta-emotions, emotions about emotions, such as being angry because you are sad, or feeling guilty because you are excited.
You want to stay as far away from a lot of these as possible, as they can be confusing and dangerous. Just try to experience the emotion as is and accept it for what it is.
Recently I had an experience whereby I caught myself doing just this. I found myself in a social situation feeling frustrated with someone else’s behavior. I then became judgmental of my own frustration—it didn’t fit with my self-image of being cool, calm, and collected—and this morphed into anger at myself.
After a five-minute dance of unnecessary negative meta-emotions, I was able to catch myself and realize that it was okay to just allow myself to feel frustrated. The person I was dealing with isn’t perfect, and neither am I.
Sitting with Your Emotions
Most people have a whole host of conscious or unconscious avoidance behaviors that stop them from feeling both negative and positive emotions. Their sensitivity can make it seem like the experiences are too overwhelming, so they intentionally cut them off.
This can be something as simple as turning the T.V. on after work to avoid reflecting on the problems of the day, to avoiding commitment to a lifelong partner or drinking to numb the stimulation of complex social environments.
In fact, one way I personally used to deal with this was to read books, particularly about psychology, philosophy, or spirituality. By doing so, I was ignoring or intellectualizing any confronting emotions I had, which gave me an excuse to ‘deal’ with them without actually dealing with them.
I’d also find myself diving head first into new projects or jobs or even sometimes travelling to new cities, because at the time they seemed like a quick fix solution to any uncomfortable feelings I was experiencing.
To counteract this tendency, which we all share to some degree, we need to recognize an emotion when it is there, accept it for what it is, nonjudgmentally, and physically sit with it for moment before letting it go.
Make Use of Your Passion and Creativity
One trait that often comes with being sensitive is being passionate and creative.
Sensitive people are often artists, and vice versa, as they are more aware of their emotions and better able to communicate them to others through their work. Sadly, traditionally schooling tends to value science and business related skills from an early age, and so as children we may be encouraged away from our creative endeavors.
If you feel you are passionate about something you should never shy away from following it, no matter what anyone else says. You should use any strong feelings you have as a compass that tells you what you want to be doing with your time.
Take Breaks and Reflect
Sensitive people often tend to be very reflective. If they spend too much time in intense environments (which is most of the time in large cities) they can become overwhelmed.
We can use this to our advantage by engaging in reflective practices such as journaling, and allowing ourselves time to let our batteries recharge.
By taking specific time out of our day to stop and think, whether that be at home or in nature, we can become more aware of our situation and the subtle nuances that are impacting us in our day to day lives.
Suppressing our sensitivity is never a healthy option. If we can learn to manage it with these practices we can use it to our advantage and allow it to become one of our biggest strengths.
How have you managed your sensitivity? Have you found any ways that help you to use it to your advantage? Let us know in the comments!
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How We Can Use Our Painful Emotions for Good
“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” ~Meryl Streep
Growing up I spent a lot of time on the Internet browsing websites and looking at images. One image that stuck with me as a child showed an old man lying on a hospital bed, with tubes running into his mouth. In his hand, he held a “no smoking” sign.
As I stared at that image I began to think what it must be like to face the horrible consequences of failing health. I imagined the pain, the regret, and the desperation for a second chance. He wouldn’t get a second chance, though.
I lost myself in that moment, becoming the old man. Embodying his pain, regret, and his desire to warn others as a way to ease his pain. I learned through his experience, instead of my own, not to smoke.
Deconstructing the Lesson
By seeing the old man on his deathbed, we understand his mistake intellectually. However, through empathy, we can learn much more deeply. Through empathy, we create a painful association in our mind, much like classical conditioning, to a behavior.
This experience led me to avoid cigarettes because I associate them with pain, regret, and desperation. The old man used his painful emotions for good: He gave others a chance to learn from his mistakes. Now, I want to share my story, so that others can learn from my mistakes.
Painful Emotions
In middle school, I dreaded gym class. Not because I hated exercise, but because having the entire class stare at me while I finished the run last was humiliating. Being overweight most my life, this was my reality.
For me, being overweight made me feel that people didn’t want to be seen with me. For me, running was reserved for other people. Being overweight meant low self-esteem, low confidence, and shame; I hated it.
Unlike the old man, I still had time to change.
Each night after dinner, I would grab my mp3 player and go outside for a walk. The mp3 player had songs that stirred up my emotions and gave me motivation.
Focusing on all the pain that comes with being overweight, I drove myself to change. I vividly imagined myself finishing last, over and over. I decided that would never happen ever again.
Night after night, I walked and walked. Finally, I started to ride my bike, and slowly, I started to notice I was losing weight.
Months later, on a walk home, I decided I was going to run back. Running in my free time was not typical for me, as you can imagine, but surprisingly, as I broke into a run, I felt stronger than I had ever before.
The feeling of the air rushing by me was incredible. For the first time in my life, I associated running with pleasure. It felt like I was flying, so I put my arms out like an airplane and smiled.
Deconstructing the Lesson
A lot of people say exercise takes discipline, but I say it takes empathy. In my story I empathized with myself—my future self. I wanted a better quality of life for myself in the future.
I wanted an escape from all the painful emotions of being overweight. I didn’t even know what it was like to feel the air rush by when running. Being in shape showed me that being overweight feels like you are cemented to the ground by comparison.
The purpose of my story is to shed light on being overweight. If you are healthy, don’t take your health for granted; don’t go through what I went through.
I enjoy this quote by Tony Robbins: “Success doesn’t just show up one day. Failure doesn’t just show up one day, it adds up from all the little things. Failure to make the call, failure to check the books, it’s failure to say I’m sorry. It’s failure to push yourself to do something. All those little failures add up and one day something cataclysmic shows up, and you blame that, but it’s because all the little stuff added up.”
We don’t just run once and say, “Alright, I’m fit for life now!” Each day we make the little decisions that add up to our outcomes. I learned that lesson the hard way, but I used my painful emotions to bring positive change.
Sharing Your Painful Experiences
By sharing our stories, we give others a chance to learn from our mistakes instead of letting them learn the same way we did. Viktor Frankl is a great example of this kindness.
In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl chronicled his experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II. He describes how we all have freedom over our minds, and how we can leverage that freedom to decide the meaning of our experiences.
Viktor decided that he would survive the concentration camp to make sure that something like this would never happen ever again. That decision to give his experience an empowering meaning gave him the willpower he needed to survive.
Deconstructing the Lesson
Sharing our painful stories with each other is not being weak; I believe it’s being strong and considerate. I believe that we should not be ashamed to be vulnerable and share our darkest times.
We can choose to use empathy to learn from others and help them, and we can use our painful emotions to help others learn from our mistakes. Both approaches give painful emotions a new usefulness in our lives.
For example, if we find ourselves grieving the loss of a loved one, a breakup, or other unfortunate event, we can decide the meaning of our experience, as Victor Frankl did.
We can change the meaning of losing a loved one from loss, to discovering a new appreciation for all the loved ones we still have. Similarly, we can change the meaning of a break-up from disappointment, to new opportunities and insight.
Just as I imagined the pain of being overweight to bring positive change, imagine the consequences of prolonged grief. If we don’t change the meaning of these tragedies, our life may begin to suffer.
If we re-live the breakup over and over, we may decide to never open up again, for fear of another disappointment. Imagining the pain of living life that way can serve as the impetus for change.
In the same way as I did, we can imagine the emotions our future self may feel if we don’t make a change.
Through these events, we grow in our ability to control our emotions, and to help others who will inevitably face these same challenges.
While we wouldn’t desire these emotions, nor seek them out, we can view them as learning experiences for ourselves, and others. In Man’s Search for Meaning, we learn that through our suffering we may discover our purpose in life.
For Victor Frankl, his purpose is to share his story to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. For me, I want to share my story to show that our painful emotions can be used for positive change.
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How to Instantly Calm Yourself in Stressful Situations
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor Frankl
There’s a big lie we tell ourselves during stressful times.
It keeps us feeling lost, afraid, and unloved, like we’re being picked up and carried away helplessly by a storm.
Our heads can fill with scary images, words, and stories about the cause and who is to blame for our unwanted pain.
Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone. You’re normal. This is how humans biologically respond to stress.
So what’s the big lie?
The big lie is that we have no control over our stress response. Actually, we do. A lot of control.
I’ve struggled the hard way through my fair share of troubling times. I’ve experienced money and job issues, battled with health, and been pushed in challenging relationships.
But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is I grew up a highly sensitive person, who would internally react to almost anything that could be interpreted as negative.
Of the feelings above, I hopelessly sat at the “feel all of them” end of the scale.
That was until a particularly trying relationship caused me so much stress and anxiety that I became sick of my unconscious reactions, and vowed to do everything possible to stop it (or make it easier).
Through research and a lot of experimenting I created a practical way to calm myself down instantly anywhere, anytime, when a meditation cushion or reassuring book was out of reach.
The technique was so simple and powerful that it pulled me through a harrowing experience in that relationship, and has held me together in plenty of experiences since.
It’s easy to remember, has an instant effect on your mind body, and most importantly, is simple enough to be remembered and used when you’re going through the eye of your own stress storms.
How to Calm Yourself In Two Minutes
Take a moment right now to make yourself comfortable and try these four steps yourself:
1. Freeze yourself.
Remember the game you played as a child when you suddenly stopped mid-motion, like you were frozen in ice? Do that now. Halt your body parts, emotions, and thought processes. Think of yourself as a cartoon character that’s been hit with a stun gun. You can even make it a little dramatic if it helps.
2. Focus on your index finger.
(Skip to this if you find the first step difficult). For twenty to sixty seconds, concentrate solely on the back of your index finger. Let your mind and body be consumed by it.
Bring it closer to you. Study the rivets, creases, and those tiny little fingerprint lines. If your situation is noisy, let the sounds around you merge into a single background buzz, and let it fade out of your attention.
3. Take a conscious breath.
Let go of your focus and check back in with your body. Take a deep, conscious breath in, then let it go through your mouth, slowly and calmly, creating a wave of relaxation that starts in your chest and floats out through your being to the surface of your skin.
4. Look around consciously.
As you re-integrate with your surroundings, scan the scene in front of you. Remain as indiscriminate as possible with what you focus on the way you would when waking up in the morning.
Take conscious note of the thoughts that are trying to push back into your head and observe them with an attitude of curiosity.
How do you feel?
You might now feel a little more in touch with your senses, distanced from previous thoughts, and connected with the present moment.
Most importantly, you’ll recognize that the root of your discomfort is your thoughts. Everything else, like emotions, and physical discomfort, and pain, start there.
If you’re having difficulty slowing down the mind at the beginning, try this: If you meditate regularly, spend the last minute of your session focused on the same finger, in the same way. Doing this will associate (or anchor) the feelings of clarity, relaxation, and attachment with the action.
And if you don’t meditate, it’s a great time to start! It will help with your ability to cope with stressful situations generally, and dramatically improve the effects of this technique.
Why This Technique Works
Stress is a mental or physical tension, and both manifest from your relationship to the procession of thoughts in your head.
Mindfulness allows you to step out of the procession and watch it go past, without being carried down the fast-flowing river.
When we get pulled down a heavy stream, our emotions and bodies react as if the danger or pain contained in the thought is real, immediate, and must be dealt with now. That’s why we feel discomfort even when someone reminds us of a stressful situation we were trying to forget.
Reconnecting with the present reminds us that here is the only time there really is.
Focusing on your hands is an ancient Ayurvedic practice that helps to ground the soul and provide stability in the physical body.
Try It for Yourself
The most important reason this technique works is it gives you something back—control.
We may not be able to choose what happens to us in our lives, but as Viktor Frankl says, we can always choose our response.
Give it a go next time you feel yourself panicking (and be sure to let us know how you go in the comments below).
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10 Surprising Reasons To Stop Trying To Please Everyone
“Lean too much on other people’s approval and it becomes a bed of thorns.” ~Tehyi Hsieh
Let’s be honest with each other.
You’re a people-pleaser
So am I.
And so is Oprah, the President of The United States, and the guy next door.
We’re all people-pleasers to some extent. And that’s okay. Wanting to be approved of—and loved—is as natural as wanting food and shelter.
It’s when you try to please everyone that it becomes a problem. In fact, more than a problem, a disease. Harriet B. Braiker called it “the disease to please.”
And it’s making you ill.
Why?
Because you want everyone to like you. To love you.
You dread disapproval. Pleasing everyone seems to be the answer, the safe way to inoculate yourself against conflict and confrontation in relationships, whether family, friends, or work.
So you fail to speak up, fail to say what’s on your mind, fail to allow yourself to be the real you.
Instead you become the go-to person:
- The one who will always change their plans at a moment’s notice.
- The one who will always take on more work and stay late.
- The one who will always say yes.
The one who never says no.
The Disease To Please
I know exactly how that feels.
From what I wore to where I lived, I couldn’t live with anyone’s disapproval, so I spent my days stressing and second-guessing what to do or say.
But every time I sought someone else’s approval, a little piece of the real me died inside.
And it made me ill. Which was ironic, as my cure to conflict and rejection of always saying yes never worked anyway, for reasons I’ll explain later.
Oh, help!
How was I ever going to make it through life with that much stress and anxiety every day?
But the alternative seemed impossible. If I gave up saying yes to everyone and every request, if I put my needs before theirs, if I stood up for myself and learned to say no, they’d reject me, surely? There’d be rows, repercussions. They’d disown me.
The very idea was enough to bring on a panic attack.
But by now I was literally sick with the constant anxiety and stress over what to say and do, over who to be. I had to do something. So I set out to understand why the disease to please had taken over who I really was, why it consumed me.
I soon noticed that there were those who seemed immune to this disease. Indeed, many of the people I was constantly trying to please said what they thought, did what they wanted and yet were still popular, loved, respected even.
And not despite standing up for themselves, but seemingly because of it.
I started taking notes from them, learning ways to stand up for myself, to give a straightforward answer, to say no. It wasn’t easy at first, and I still need to check myself to stop falling back into my old people-pleasing ways to this day.
But the amazing thing is, there have been very few rows or repercussions. And far from disowning me, apart from a few people who were better out of my life, I am more liked and respected than I ever was before.
This week, for instance, I said no to my boss…without passing out in fear! I politely refused to do something I felt strongly was an unfair request. Standing my ground that morning removed a situation that had been hideously stressful for three years.
And far from falling into a fire pit of angry responses and reprisals, my boss simply respected me the more for speaking out.
Are you trying to please everyone? Are you afflicted with the disease to please?
Read on to find out why it will never bring you the approval and love you seek and what to do instead to reclaim the real you and cure yourself.
Why Trying to Please Everyone Doesn’t Work
1. You attract people less.
I had always looked up to anyone who had the strength to go out and be themselves. But all too quickly that admiration would turn to adulation. I found myself never speaking up, always going along with whatever they said and did, the eager puppy on their heels.
And then, when I looked dispassionately at how they really saw me, there was one overriding word that hit me—weak. Strong people seek strong people to be around, so it was not surprising they were polite but always chose their true friends elsewhere.
2. You love yourself less.
Because those very people you wanted to admire, respect, and love you now reject you, you tell yourself that you cannot be a lovable person. In desperation you increase your people-pleasing behavior and it becomes a depressing spiral.
The gap from the way you act to the way you really want to act widens with every people-pleasing act. This leaves you feeling disappointed and ashamed of who you have become.
3. You become more manipulative.
I would often feel resentful when a friend or colleague was asking for yet one more favor. They seemed to be manipulating me, taking advantage. Boy, that was hurtful.
But you know, once I’d looked logically at the way they treated me, I realized it was more down to the way I’d treated them. I’d set the rules for their behavior toward me. I’d been the one to say, “Hey, that’s absolutely okay, go ahead.”
In reality, I’d actually been the one doing the manipulating. Gulp!
4. You’re seen as less trustworthy.
Always agreeing or saying the “right thing” seems to be well-intentioned, but however you dress it up, hiding what you think isn’t telling the truth. And as humans we hear alarm bells when we sense that someone is being false.
It might seem like just a little white lie to flatter someone’s ego, but would you trust someone who only ever told you what you wanted to hear? Someone who hid their true feelings?
5. You end up with less confidence.
People find you untrustworthy because you only tell them what they want to hear, so they are hesitant to confide in you. So you never know what they are really thinking either, which leads you to feel less confident in dealing with them.
6. You end up with fewer friends.
Trying to please everyone is rooted in the fear of rejection. The irony is, because you end up seeming less attractive and less trustworthy, the very people you are trying to get approval from are often the people who reject you. Maybe not to your face, but in their hearts.
Without intimacy, relationships wither and die. And no one wants to be intimate or vulnerable with someone who hides their true feelings.
8. You end up with the worst of both worlds.
And what happens if you are trying to please two people who do not like each other? If you ingratiate yourself with one person and offer friendship, how do you now please that other person without un-pleasing the first? How do you decide who to please?
It ends with up both of them disliking you as they believe you must be betraying them behind their backs. Who wants a two-faced friend?
9. You become more resentful.
I have found this out for myself: you end up resenting the very people you’re trying to please. You feel they are taking advantage of you. However, when you are being honest, you also beat yourself up for trying to get them to like you by putting their needs before your own.
You imagine they only like you because you say yes to their every whim. And in truth, you have no real way of knowing whether this is true or not, so you become more and more resentful of them.
9. You hate the things you used to love.
Again, this is something I found from personal experience. For instance you may love cooking, maybe making cup cakes. So you offer to cook some as a way of getting love and appreciation.
But soon you are either cooking them all the time for one person or, once again, you become the go-to person and you end up cooking them for everyone. What used to be an enjoyable pastime now becomes a chore you hate.
And you’re not even sure any more if people actually like your cup cakes or if they are just seen as something free and easy they don’t need to put any effort into. Which is how you think they see your relationship with them.
10. You fail to please the one person that matters.
But the most important reason to stop trying to please everyone has nothing to do with everyone and everything to do with just one person—you.
Trying to please everyone is tied into the fear of rejection and the fear of failure. But the biggest failure in life is failing to be yourself. And the biggest rejection in life is rejecting yourself.
By trying to please everyone, you make both these fears come true.
Cure Yourself Of The Disease To Please
Trying to please everyone is a disease.
Learning to be the real you, to stand up for yourself, to say no, is the only cure.
Make a promise to yourself to start today.
Gently and with kindness, tell just one person no. .
Not everyone will like or love the real you, and that’s okay. You can cope; you are stronger than you think.
Because when you stop seeking the approval of others, you’ll find that you never needed it in the first place.
The world doesn’t need another insincere people-pleaser, the world needs the real you.
So step up and let the real you shine.
The world’s approval is waiting for you.
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How to Promote Yourself Authentically to Gain New Opportunities
“If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.” ~Unknown
I have always been a smart, dedicated, hard working person. I was raised to believe that those were characteristics required for success. So imagine my surprise to reach the working world and find unexceptional colleagues getting promoted above me.
There’s one memory that particularly stands out.
When I was twenty-five, I was on a team that consisted of amazingly smart, ambitious, hardworking people, plus one mediocre guy, Tom. His mediocrity stood out amongst a high-achieving team, but Tom thought he was a rock star.
Infuriatingly, all the right people noticed Tom. And they didn’t notice me.
In hindsight, the biggest difference between Tom and I was our mindset around self-promotion. We were both ambitious, but he was willing to push for it. Meanwhile, I was waiting patiently for my turn.
I couldn’t get past the idea that self-promotion was sleazy, manipulative, or desperate, so I refused to do it. I didn’t go in to a meeting with sweaty palms ready to ask for the promotion that I wanted. I just did nothing.
I waited and hoped that someone would notice how hardworking and deserving I was. But it never happened. I lost out on opportunities that would’ve helped me make a bigger difference and feel more fulfilled in my work because I refused to raise my hand.
Now, I’ve built my career on my skill for authentic self-promotion and have found tactics to promote myself in ways that feel in perfect alignment with who I am. These are the things I’ve learned along the way. I hope these work for you, whether you work for yourself or have a traditional job.
1. Find a role model for authentic self-promotion.
You can probably picture the kind of person that you don’t want to be when you’re promoting yourself. But do you know whom you do want to model your self-promotional behaviors after?
Look out for examples of people that promote themselves with honesty, integrity, and personality.
One of my role models once told me a story about going to a networking dinner and being pestered by someone who wanted her to quit her job and come join his company.
When her boss asked how the networking event was, she said: “It went well. I got offered three jobs. Actually, I got offered the same job three times. See how in-demand I am?”
She told me that it felt like a light-hearted way for her to tell him that she’s highly sought after. It both matched her cheeky personality and how they usually interacted with each other every day. If she tried to do it any other way, it would have seemed awkward and insincere.
Your mindset around self-promotion will dramatically change once you start looking for positive examples of people who practice authentic self-promotion. You’ll be surprised how many role models you can find.
2. Remind yourself how self-promotion can help you make a difference.
Self-promotion has a bad reputation for being egotistical. But it’s only egotistical if you’re solely focused on what it can do for you. Try focusing on how it allows you to help more people.
How many more people will you be able to help if you promote yourself and more people discover your work?
How will landing this new job or client help you make a bigger contribution to the project?
Getting the job or landing the client gives you the opportunity to change their lives or business for the better.
Thinking about how your work makes a difference takes the focus off you so that you feel less egotistical and reminds you that your work (no matter how menial you may think it is) helps others.
3. Realize that no one else is paying as much attention as you are.
In the past, I believed that if I truly deserved that new opportunity, then the people in charge would have already offered it to me. But that’s rarely true.
They have a lot on their to-do list and it’s easy for them to forget everything that you do. That’s why you need to regularly remind them, whether it’s a boss or a client.
All it takes is getting into the habit of a quick knock on the door to say, “I just wrapped up that project and wanted to let you know about the great feedback we’ve had so far.” It can be casual, honest, and low pressure. Don’t be afraid to let them see how valuable you are.
4. Ask yourself how satisfied you are with your work right now.
Feeling the need to raise your hand for new opportunities is a sign that there’s something missing from your current work. By raising your hand and advocating for yourself, you have an opportunity to find greater fulfilment in your career with minimal effort.
Ask yourself: what kind of projects would bring me more job satisfaction? Then, proactively ask for those projects.
Employers love it when their employees are engaged and fulfilled by their work, so there’s a good chance they’ll want to hear what you have to say. It’s helpful to you and it’s helpful to them.
5. Approach it like an equal.
I noticed that one thing that I disliked about self-promotion was feeling like I was asking for more than I was offering. It dramatically lowered my confidence and triggered the quivering, insecure voice that’s a dead giveaway that I’m nervous and unsure.
Now, before I even start on the path toward authentic self-promotion, I get clear on what I want and what I will bring to the table that is of equal or greater value than what I’m asking for.
It removes the feeling of powerlessness and helps give me confidence that I’m making a difference with my contribution. Even better, it means that I can easily explain how I’ll make a positive impact for my boss or client.
6. Notice what your fear of self-promotion is masking.
Your fear of self-promotion masks something much bigger. It could be fear of success, failure, judgment, or not being good enough. You’re not afraid of self-promotion itself; you’re actually afraid that if you promote yourself and it doesn’t go well, it’ll prove that your real fear is true.
For me, I’m usually afraid that I’m not good enough to get that big project or land that new client. If I raise my hand, promote myself and get rejected, it can feel like evidence that proves my fear—I truly wasn’t good enough.
What is the underlying fear for you? Where does that come from? When you dig deep into what the fear truly is, you can start to question its validity and build your personal growth muscles.
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The Benefits of Minimalism: 7 Reasons to Declutter Your Life
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” ~ William Morris
Have you ever noticed that every time you move you need a bigger truck than the last time you moved?
People love to collect things, and we have a tendency to keep collecting things in order to fill the available space in our homes (and sometimes beyond).
I’m a firm believer in the idea that material possessions do not equate to happiness, so I recently started to explore the idea of living a minimalist lifestyle, to see if a less cluttered home would result in a less cluttered mind.
I concentrated on decluttering each element of my life by reducing the amount of material possessions I owned and removing those that were unnecessary. This allowed me to focus on those items I valued most.
I followed the seven steps below to declutter my possessions:
Step 1: Categorized my possessions in order to sort through them one at a time (clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, cosmetics, electronics, books, etc.)
Step 2: Gathered together everything I own from one category, so I could see the true extent of my possessions.
Step 3: Immediately discarded anything that jumped out at me that I no longer required.
Step 4: Analyzed all remaining items to identify whether I loved them. After careful consideration, I discarded anything I didn’t love or need.
Step 5: This was a step where I pushed myself to be more ruthless. I questioned whether I really truly loved the things in my “keep pile” and removed a few more.
Step 6: Tidied everything I had decided to keep neatly away.
Step 7: Gave everything I wasn’t keeping to friends and charity shops and sent some things for recycling.
The process of removing all material possessions I no longer required from my life taught me a number of lessons:
1. Mindful purchasing
We purchase many items on a whim, with little consideration of need or desire. What a waste of money to buy something you may not even particularly like!
A thorough decluttering session teaches you to be more mindful of a purchase and analyze its importance before spending your hard-earned cash.
When decluttering my clothes, I came across several items that still had the labels attached. I found it really difficult to part with these, as it felt so wasteful given that I had never worn them. This was a great lesson in ensuring that from now on I will only buy items I am sure I will definitely wear.
2. Money saved from unnecessary and frivolous purchases
Restricting purchases to only necessary items has the added benefit of saving cash. My biggest overspend in the past has been on clothes.
Since I have significantly reduced my clothes shopping, I have saved a considerable amount of money. This money has helped to fund my true passion of travel and exploring the world.
3. Time saved by being able to find things more easily
Reducing your possessions allows you to find items more quickly, saving precious time.
No longer will you have to hunt through a stash of necklaces but easily choose one from the small collection you have retained. No fishing around among a mountain of handbags or rooting through hanger after hanger of clothes. The choice is quicker and easier.
4. Space saved from owning less
The fewer possessions you own, the less storage space you need.
Since doing some serious decluttering, I now need half the space I previously did. I am currently looking to move to a smaller apartment, as I now have far too much room for one person and could happily live somewhere much smaller.
5. Happier outlook
Surrounding yourself with items you love and displaying only the items most valuable to you will make you feel happier. You won’t have to search through lots of items that you don’t like. Favorite items won’t get lost at the back of the cupboard or the bottom of the drawer.
Gone are the days of saving your favorite things for a special occasion. Every day is a special occasion now that I am only using the things I love and my life is happier as a result.
6. Quicker and easier to clean and tidy
The fewer possessions you have, the neater your house will be and the easier it will be to keep clean.
Marie Kondo, the decluttering expert, advocates the philosophy that each possession has a place and you should know exactly where to find everything. This is only possible if you reduce the amount of your material items. Now my living space is cleaner and tidier, my mind is less cluttered.
7. More freedom
As you begin to detach from material possessions and place more importance on experiences rather than things, you will sense a feeling of lightness and freedom, which can become addictive.
I love this new sense of freedom I feel from no longer being surrounded by piles of unnecessary items I never use and being less attached to possessions. This allows me to focus instead on people and experiences.
Now it’s your turn. Choose one category to start with and focus on the seven steps. See how it makes you feel. Try to dispose of unwanted possessions responsibly.
