I Heart Me (12 page)

People will do almost
anything
to belong. We've already seen how they will bully to be part of a group and then return to normal once the ringleader has gone. I remember a time at university when many of my fellow students teased a boy because he'd done some things that they deemed to be stupid. When in their company, I joined in. Privately, I felt sorry for him. Did I speak up? Eventually! But I was quickly overpowered by the group and so I joined in again, such was my fear of being rejected. While I've been bullied in my life, I've also been the bully in some ways. We've all done it.

In professional settings, it's quite common for a person to say things they really don't believe, just to stay liked or respected by the group. I once attended a lecture given by a scientist discussing the survival of consciousness after death. He said he'd given the same lecture in the medical department of a large, very well-known university, at a conference held there. During the lecture, the professors gave the impression they didn't believe a word he was saying, but over the few days of the conference, which involved social time, seven professors spoke privately with him and said they agreed with everything he'd said. Some said they'd made observations themselves that indicated the survival of consciousness and had interviewed resuscitated patients. But each asked him not to repeat anything of their conversation to their colleagues, as it could damage their relationship with them and potentially their professional reputation.

The scientist thought it was amusing that each of these professors had the same private thoughts yet maintained the identical charade in their professional lives.

While it makes logical sense for us to run with the crowd, especially if standing alone could harm our career and therefore have a financial impact upon us and our family, on a more primary level, each time we do this we compromise our authenticity and essentially give away a part of ourselves. It's fine to adapt what we say and how we say it out of sensitivity. But not when we do it out of fear. The former says we
are
enough; the latter says we're
not
.

Many people live most of their life on other people's terms, trying to please everyone, always trying to be what others want them to be. They'd like to believe they're just being polite. That's what we tell ourselves, isn't it? But when it comes down to it, most of us are simply afraid of not being liked. If we're not liked, we won't belong. And all of us need to belong. We can tell ourselves that we're happier on our own, but given half a chance to be part of something, we'll jump at it. It's hard to beat biology.

Wanting to be liked is normal, so cut yourself a little slack and don't be hard on yourself when you find yourself trying to please others. The problem arises when you're so afraid of not being liked that you'll compromise your own authenticity to be accepted.

The logic seems sound: be what people want and they'll like you, then you'll be accepted and belong. Great – except that it really doesn't work that way.

Basically, the more we compromise, the weaker our connections and the less we truly feel we belong. The more we're authentic, on the other hand, the higher the quality of our connections and the more we feel we belong. And the more we're our authentic self, the more deeply we wire ‘I
am
enough' into our brain networks.

Of course, there are risks involved in being authentic. When you show people your real self, they might not like you. They may reject you. That can be scary. It hits right at the number one fear.

A dear friend of mine who is gay told me that for many gays who haven't come out of the closet, the fear of a negative outcome (i.e. rejection by their family) is still greater than the possible rewards. The rejection, he said, is quite imaginable, and acceptance feels more like a pipe dream.

But what if people do accept you as you really are? In fact, what if they like you even more?

Hard though it can be, we need to focus more on this possibility, lest we remain stuck. Of course it's true that some people could choose to move out of our life. But if that does happen, it leaves space for new people to come in. Wouldn't you rather have people in your life who loved the real you rather than people who liked what you were pretending to be?

It's been said that you shouldn't try to get others to like you. If you're yourself, the right people will come into your life – people who love the real you.

Anaïs Nin wrote, ‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.'

SELF-LOVE GYM:
Being Yourself

The following exercise is designed to help you to lessen the negative weight of the risks of being authentic and focus more on the possible rewards.

• Do you work hard to get people to like you? Who specifically?
  
• Would it ultimately matter if this person/these people didn't like you? What's the worst that could happen?
  
• How might your life and relationships be if you didn't try so hard to get people to like you?
  
• What action could you take that would demonstrate that it didn't matter if someone liked you or not (without being inappropriate or breaking the law)? Remember, it would be a statement of being
  enough
  .
  
• For the next seven days, do one thing each day that shows that you are more concerned with being yourself than with whether people like you or not. Could you dress the way you want, or do your hair a way that you're worried people (or a specific person) might not like? Could you speak your mind at work and say what you've been afraid to say? Or could you say ‘no' when you want to instead of always saying ‘yes'?
  

When she read a draft of this book, my friend Margaret phoned me about the example I gave at the start of this chapter, my talk in Las Vegas. She told me that we couldn't be responsible for how other people perceived us. As long as we did our best, how someone perceived us wasn't up to us, it was up to
them
.

And she was perfectly right. It's not our job to manage people's perceptions of us. We'd be very busy indeed if it were, and we'd
quickly be exhausted. We can't please everyone. All we can do is be ourselves.

I've found that if I try to be kind, patient, understanding and sympathetic to others' pain – if I live with personal integrity – then I know that what I'm doing is coming from my heart and it's easier to let go of managing people's perceptions. I know, then, that I'm always doing my best.

I think that if we do this, we'll always feel authentic and always feel that what we're doing and how we're doing it is
good enough
. If people don't like that, that's their problem.

Have you heard about the power of looking in a mirror and saying ‘I love you'? Louise Hay has written lots about it and how it helps with self-love. I don't need to regurgitate it here. I'm a fan. I'm converted!

At Louise's 85th birthday party, she gave each guest a little pull-out card with a circular mirror on it stuck in the centre of a heart. Underneath were the words: ‘I LOVE YOU.' I have it in my office so I can see it as I write. I've used it often and learned the benefits of the exercise.

The reason I've called this section ‘Mirror, Mirror' is because in the course of your self-love project you might think that you don't need to live up to anyone's expectations, you don't need people's approval and that you don't need a specific person or group to like you. That's fine, but other people are perfectly
entitled to say the same thing. They don't need to live up to
your
expectations, or need
your
approval, or have
you
like them.

It's important to understand this, because if you do expect people to live their life according to your rules or expectations, or even if you judge them accordingly, you're effectively saying that it's OK for them (or someone else) to be doing the same to you.

In setting yourself free of the expectations, approval and judgements of others, you must set others free of
your
expectation, approval and judgements.

If you find yourself judging others, remember that you can't possibly know what's going on in a person's mind. You can't really know why they're saying what they saying or behaving in the way they're behaving. My mum taught me that growing up and I was reminded of it one morning when I was waiting in line at a coffee shop and a woman drove alongside the queue in a mobility scooter. There was only a narrow space between the line of people and the tables, and she attempted to drive along it. She made it, but drove over my foot in the process. She looked back, but didn't apologize, just carried on.

For a moment I was expecting an apology, but then I just dismissed it and got back to the important task of selecting which pastry I was going to have with my coffee. For the record, I chose a blueberry muffin, which I suppose isn't really a pastry.

The lady and I ended up sitting at adjacent tables. After about half an hour or so, when she'd finished her coffee, she got up
and back onto her scooter. It wouldn't start. She tried to turn the key several times, then telephoned the place she'd purchased it from.

An engineer turned up within five minutes. The place must have been local. I couldn't help overhearing what they were saying because they were only a few feet away from me. It turned out the woman had only just collected the scooter that morning. This was her very first outing on it and the first time she'd ever driven a mobility scooter. She'd come to the coffee shop for a rest.

I heard that she felt really self-conscious driving the scooter and wasn't at all confident about it. She certainly wasn't used to its speed, or its width, and this combination made it quite stressful when she had to drive through narrow gaps.

Now I felt such compassion for the lady. Now I realized that when she'd turned round after driving over my foot, she'd probably wanted to say something to me, but a mixture of self-consciousness and embarrassment, plus the fear that she might drive over someone else's foot as she navigated the narrow space between the queue and the tables, had made her channel all her energy into looking forwards and keeping going in a straight line.

It really hadn't bothered me that she'd driven over my foot. But I'd made the assumption that a person driving over another person's foot should apologize and so I'd judged her. That assumption also assumes a level playing field – that everyone has the same degree of stuff going on in their life. But we all know that's not true.

How many times have you felt judged by someone and wished they'd known what your life was like right then? Or what you'd had to weigh up in your mind before making a decision that affected them?

We can't ever know what's going on in a person's mind unless they tell us. So, next time you're about to judge someone, pause for a second and remind yourself that people have judged you without knowing what was going on in your mind or your life. And if you judge others, you invite judgement of yourself.

When you know you
are
enough, you have no need to judge other people. You let them be who they are or who they need to be. That's all.

Remember, we're all just trying to make our way through life with the skills and knowledge that we have. We all have hopes and dreams. And we all get scared. We all have what someone else would think of as a flaw. We all have what others would find beautiful too.

What do you focus on? The beauty or the flaw? It's your choice. What do you see in others? What do you see in yourself?

Practise seeing beauty today. See it in yourself and see it in others.

If you want people to see your beauty, look for theirs.

If you want people to know who you are, show interest in their lives.

SELF-LOVE GYM:
Set Them Free

Identifying the people you judge and the people you feel judged by helps you to set them free. This in turn helps you to be free – and to move away from
not
enough, especially if you've felt stuck there.