Confidence. Self-worth. Who doesn’t want those things? Yet, they can be oh so elusive. I’m in the middle of creating all kinds of new material to help others gain confidence, because I know what it feels like to not like myself, or to like myself and still not feel totally confident.
So here’s a deep, dark, confidence secret. Shhhhhh. Close the door. Ready?
It’s okay to not feel 100 percent awesome about yourself all the time. It’s okay to be where you are, in this moment, feeling whatever you’re feeling. Part of being confident and having self-worth is knowing that you don’t have to do anything perfectly— including confidence. Even though my overall confidence has improved greatly, I still have days when I don’t feel confident.
Yet, my experience now is so different from what it used to be. Now, I am okay with not being okay. I am even okay with not really being okay with being okay. Just try to figure that one out! What I’m trying to say is—I’m in a new place of awareness about myself. I don’t have to be on top of the world to feel good about myself. I’m not perfectly achieving anything or living a perfectly raining-rose-petals daily life, and I have in fact made approximately seven-hundred faux pas today alone. Still, even in my crappiest self esteem moments, I feel an underlying sense of peace with who I am.
I used to have the misperception that other people had it all figured out, or were perfect, or never felt bad about themselves, ever. I thought I was less than them if I didn’t do things perfectly or “right,” or feel great about myself all the time. I wanted to be one of those people who had it all figured out and had risen above, somehow. I didn’t realize that the way to true confidence and self-worth traverses is through the messy, human, imperfections in all of us. Having it all figured out is a myth. I didn’t know that by letting myself being imperfect and human, I’d float up to the surface and find joy.
This is why I love mind-body healing so much. I started out trying to find pain relief from vulvoynia, interstitial cystitis, and irritable bowel syndrome, and I ended up discovering gold. I discovered how to feel better about myself, how to truly ease off the pressure I put on myself, and how to love even my most human, messed-up, messy, ugly, blechy moments. Which means I can relax into my very humanness, my very imperfection, and land into a place of peace, even when I’m not doing all of this relaxing into myself perfectly. That may sound like a paradox, but it’s the best I can do to explain this at the moment.
How did this happen? Well, it was a natural expansion of using the mind-body healing process for pain relief. The mind-body healing process essentially reconnects you to your soul. This means you can hear your soul wisdom. You can finally see yourself from the vantage point of your soul. Over time, spending more and more moments seeing from that vantage point creates a totally new perspective. The more time you consciously spend there, the more you naturally and effortlessly end up there. This means your mind spends more time telling you what your soul is saying and less time telling you tall tales. Again— it’s not about perfection. We’re just looking to tip the scales here, so that you eventually spend more time seeing how incredible, amazing, talented, and special you are and less time criticizing yourself.
If you’re having a crappy self esteem day (or month…or year…) you will be more likely to believe your mind when it tells you how awful your butt looks or how you are an idiot for messing up that presentation, etc. You will be more likely to look at others and think they have it all figured out and pulled together. (My colleague and friend Jessica Steward calls this compare and despair. How awesome is that!) Yet, even if your mind is doing that, you can step back and observe it, notice it, and know, even though you kind of believe your mind right now, that your soul sees you differently.
