A Beautiful Calm AND a Great Power Discovered Through Words

A few weeks ago I came across an image that I hadn't seen in a long time.  It really brought me back in time for a moment.  This poem I had purchased at a poster sale many years ago, in the start of my first year of University. The poster sale happened every year on campus and was to help students to decorate and to personalize their res rooms.  I was drawn to this one above all others. I wasn't sure why. I had no idea that there were such large and dark feeling struggles ahead of meat the time that I was putting this poster on my wall.  I had no idea that it would become a corner stone of strength for me.  I had no idea it would end up being the first piece a puzzle that I would be putting together for the rest of my life.  I just liked it.

Each time I read Virginia Satir's words I again feel that same calm hopefulness I felt standing in the school lecture hall surrounded by colorful posters and buzzing student life.  And I want to share that feeling with you. I want to share what began my journey of discovery, of healing and of self love. I imagine that many of you have read this poem before, and if so then like me it may be a nice feeling reminder. For anyone who has not yet had the pleasure of feeling these words I am thrilled to introduce you.

Self Esteem 

by Virginia Satir

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me

Everything that comes out of me is authentically me

Because I alone choose it - I own everything about me 

My body, me feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions,

Whether they be to others or to myself - I own my fantasies, 

My dreams, my hopes, my fears - I own all my triumphs and 

Successes, all my failures and mistakes 

Because I own all of ME,

I can become intimately acquainted with me - by so doing

I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts, - I know

There are aspects about myself that puzzle me and other 

Aspects that I do not know - but as long as I am

Friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously 

And hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles

And for ways to find out more about me - However I 

Look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever

I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically

Me - If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought

And felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is

Unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that

Which I discarded - I can see, hear, feel ,think, say, and do

I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be

Productive to make sense and order out of the world of

People and things outside of me - I own me, and 

therefore I can engineer me - I am me and 

I AM OKAY

Have you read and felt these words before today??  Did today feel the same as you remember it from past or are you reading from a different perspective now?? OR was this your first encounter with these words?? What did you feel while you read???

I would be very excited to have you use the comment section below to share your thoughts. Or feel free to contact me via email or Facebook if public sharing feels like too much. I understand that fear because I have stood in that place also. If something here has resonated with a part of you today I invite and encourage you to share this post with those in your circles, allowing those others to feel something wonderfully strong about themselves. 

How Do I Begin To Learn To Love Myself??

This week I want to share a story with you.  It's a love story. It's an "in progress" tale. It's my story.  

I wasn't always in love with myself. My family and my University roommates will testify to that for sure. There were a few dark years in there. I had been a fun loving yet responsible student in my first year, but that changed as a darkness set in.  It was heavy and I was not equipped in any manner to love myself through it.  It took over my so-called life for a few years.  Now that I have found my way back to me I write about there being many ways in which we can sort through the grey stuff and get to the good stuff. I have done the work and I know that to be true, even though at the time my stuff felt darker than grey. I understand depression, in a way that surprises those who know the me of now.  

I judged myself harshly. I was sweet and easy going and full of understanding for others.  In fact part of what has drawn me to coaching is the part of me that puts other people at ease.  I have a calm way about me that seems to invite friends and even strangers  to share some of their most personal thoughts. But I didn't show that same patient kindness to myself. Why not?

To be truthful, I have no idea. Still.  I come from a loving and supportive family who have strong values and morals and yet, I wasn't always very nice to me. Over the past few years I have uncovered a lot about my own limiting beliefs and I have changed a lot of the language I use in my "self-talk". I know that I am not done, but I have made such huge changes for me that I wanted to share with you what I believe has been KEY for me.

I think that one of the biggest and most important questions to ask yourself is, is the boy across the classroom, the girl in the next cubicle, or the man in the bank really any different, any better or any more worthy than anyone else in the room, including yourself??  And if the answer to that is in fact No, then why is it that his or her opinion about you should hold so much power??Logically speaking, that doesn't make much sense. Emotionally speaking it makes NO sense. And yet it just was that way for me. It just mattered.

And it showed up in all of my relationships.  I was quiet and let others pick the movie, choose the restaurant, decide if I was invited or if he would go on without me.  I rationalized everything of course so that it made sense and felt as OK as it could, but really, I knew that they were excuses mostly.  I was far from empowered in my own life. I had no direction or real goals. I let others make the call. I didn't like myself for it, but that was how I rolled and I didn't expect it to ever be different.

A few bad years and more than one heartache later, when that thought pattern, belief system, idea habit became apparent to me I knew right away that it was definitely not one that was doing me any favors. I wanted to switch it up. But I had been doing it that way for years and years. HOW was my question. How do I change that??  Where do I even begin?? 

Louise Hay posted a Facebook status last week that brought the humble beginnings of my journey to the front lines when she said a "part of self-acceptance is releasing other people's opinions." From where I stand now, that makes total sense. But I remember a time when I would have followed that up with a "Yeah, but.....".

Many of the things we chose to believe about ourselves have absolutely no basis in truth. Just like my belief about anyone being any better or more worthy than I also had no basis in truth. It lived only in MY perception. So that is where I started. With perception. Perception didn't seem too heavy. It seemed like something I could handle and as good a starting place as any, so I began there.

I began reminding myself that to those same people who I felt had a power in my life, I was the other person across the desk. Chances were, if we really aren't so different from one and other, that they were worried about MY opinions. I also forced myself to stop and to take a moment to think about me as those who love me would. They are of course biased to my awesomeness. So I used that to slant my own biased opinion of me.  For me, if I aimed for a high 9/10 score on my personal awesome scale and I came out really believing at a 6/10 it was a step in the right forward direction.

I never tried to see myself as being better than anyone. After all my goal was not to flip the script completely, it was to find balance. I wanted to feel that I was just as good as anyone else. Equally worthy. Equally Awesome. 

That was the first chapter of the story in which I humbly began to fall in love with me. And now, many chapters later, I like myself too. Equally Awesome is a perception of myself that IS doing me favors and serving me well. Stay tuned for the rest. There are a few nail biting moments for sure, but it's turning out well and I am predicting a happy ending.

Now it's your turn.  Have you written your first chapter or are you currently working it out??  I'd be so glad to have you share your inspirational tale here in the comment section or over on my Facebook page, after all, you're equally awesome too!  

OR - If you need help figuring out where to begin to learn to love yourself, I have been there and done that and I would be honored to help you to sort through your grey stuff, and then to find and create more good stuff. Add your name and email above and maybe you'll win a free 1 on 1 discovery hour to get the ball rolling.  

Why Winning Sucks Just as Much as Losing

Everyone wants to win. But not me. I think that winning sucks just as much as losing. Or at least, I am really trying that attitude on for size. What's up with that? It's not because I am completely self aware and totally Zen or anything. I am as competitive as the next girl. And it's not because of any fears of losing. I have considered that and I know that there was a time when that may have rung more truth bells than I care to admit. But because I am learning to love me as I am and that feels better than anything that I have ever won.

I am competitive. It's in my nature. I was (working on that and its going well so I am allowing myself the past tense as a kind of reward) also afraid to loose so I would try to be selective about competing when I could be. I have albums and boxes full of ribbons and medals I earned as a child in both synchronized and competitive race swimming. I was good at that and so that became my "speciality". Never a well rounded sportsman I stuck with what I knew. And it felt good to win, I won't deny that. I competed in everything that I thought I could win. That sent me out into the world competing only where I thought I had a shot at winning. Not trying what I thought I would lose. Sabotaging myself along the way if what I thought I had a shot at went south. And feeling bad about myself in areas that weren't meant to be an obvious competition but yet were. That last part seems to be a natural part of being a teenage girl, but its been many a moon since I was a teen and though I now know how to handle that part of me, that part still shows up once and a while.

Competing in sports is healthy. Sure, I get that. But can the competition be kept on the playing field? I'm not so sure that is the direction in which many of us are heading. We compete in school. We talk about it being a competitive job market after school. We compete for the promotion. Corporations compete for market share. We compete with the models in the magazines, with our neighbours and our peers.  Heck, kids now compete to even make it onto the playing field to begin with. And I have watched people compete to be next in line at the coffee shop. Really?! Do you think that guy is gonna get the last cup of coffee there is?

How do we then expect to grow up and not compare ourselves to each other in every way. She is prettier or skinnier. He makes more money than I do. They have more than we do. That's a nicer car than mine.


What do many of us do? We get comfortable with our competitive side and then follow those comparisons up with a big dose of blame to make ourselves feel 'better'. We say things like "You can't have it all" or "Life isn't always fair". It's not my fault.  His father got him that job. She doesn't have to work so she gets to go to the gym everyday. Their parents both have top jobs and so ____.  (For the record blame is the quickest path to feeling worse about ourselves not better)

When there can only be one winner there are usually many who are left comparing themselves and coming up short. How on earth can one have that kind of inner monologue going on and still grow up to be a truly comfortable and confident adult? Is it any wonder that so many of us end up in a place where what we DO feel is a lot of lack and what we DON'T  feel is a lot of love for ourselves.

Winner or loser, either outcome fosters our competitive side, and that side is not what leads us to a place of fulfilment. I vote we dial back the competition. What would a world feel like where nobody felt the need to "keep up with the Jones'"? Where we could all embrace exactly who we are? What would it look like if personal growth began in a place of wanting to feel good instead of in wanting to feel better than anyone else? How would it feel to live in a place where success was born in an environment of support and our only competition was the one that we were having with ourselves?

Competition leaves us striving for more not because finding that level of more will feel good but because we believe that losing will feel bad. Let's leave the competition among us on the sports fields and remember that the Universe is a place of abundance, and it can and does care of us all in exactly the way we allow it to. 

I don't want to consider myself a winner or a loser because 

I don't want to be a competitor. 

Where are you competing and how does it make you feel? Are you driven by the great feelings that winning will bring to you or by your wanting to avoid the bad feelings that might come with losing? Leave a comment and share your story. 


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