I Heart Me (24 page)

Self-love isn't selfish. As I said right at the beginning, it doesn't mean ‘love yourself
instead of
others'. In fact, as we love ourselves more, we have more love to give to others.

Self-love is like an internal bar of soap. It cleans out our heart and mind, leaving plenty of space for compassion and kindness. And that kindness itself is cleaner, fresher, more natural, more honest, more direct, more heartfelt and much more effective.

That's when we become one of that small group of people with compassion and kindness in their hearts who can change the world…

Chapter 13

Step Up and Step Out

‘If you think something is missing in your life, it's probably YOU.'

R
OBERT
H
OLDEN
P
H
D

You've already taken some action, but now you're building up your self-love it's time to look at really stepping up and achieving what you want in life.

A very important part of self-love is taking action. It's in consistently behaving in a way that says you
are
enough. It usually means pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. To be honest, probably the biggest gains you'll experience in the self-worth stakes will come when you push yourself out of that zone.

In
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
, Susan Jeffers wrote, ‘The “doing it” comes
before
the feeling better about yourself.' If you've been afraid to do things in the past – afraid to have that conversation, afraid to make that phone call, afraid to ask your boss for a rise – and you've been afraid because, deep down, you've felt you were
not
enough, then taking action will boost your feelings of self-worth. But the action comes first!

You'll probably still be scared. Chances are you will be. Everyone gets scared, even the people who do the most posturing and talking themselves up. Most of the time, they're doing that to build up their feelings about themselves because they're just as scared as you are.

Many people want to wait until they've read enough books, been to enough seminars, watched enough interviews and documentaries, grown enough, had that magical or enlightened insight that takes all the fear away. Then it will be easy. That could happen, but not in the way they think.

Overcoming fear doesn't happen by reading books or going on seminars, nor does it happen by sitting at home waiting for the world to come to us. It happens when we step out
into
the world, when we show ourselves as we are. It happens when we step up and step out and say, ‘
Here I am, world
.'

When we do that, we tell the world, the universe, whatever you want to call it, that we're ready. And when we've done it once, guess what? We do it again, and again, and again! It's consistent action that wires in a sense of being
enough
. Repetition! Repetition! Repetition!

SELF-LOVE GYM:
Remembering Your Courage

Here's a little exercise to help you to have the courage to step up and step out.

• Think back to some times in the past when you were afraid of doing something but did it anyway. What did you do? What was the outcome? How did you feel afterwards? Did it make you feel better about yourself? Write it all down.
  

I met a guy once who was a talented computer programmer. He was a lovely person and had ideas and dreams that could have morphed into a technology company that could have made a difference to people's lives. Inside, though, he believed he wasn't
enough
. He looked at Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs with great admiration. But he imagined that they had all the know-how that he didn't. He didn't know that they'd started with nothing and had no idea how they were going to realize their dreams.

It's the thought that other people have something you don't that's the problem. It infers you're
not
enough. And it prevents you from acting on your hopes and dreams.

My dream was to be a teacher, covering topics that inspired me. In 1999 I attended an ‘Unleash the Power Within' seminar led by Tony Robbins. One of Tony's big teachings was the importance of taking action, especially massive action. So I took massive action. I went back to work the next day and resigned from my job.

OK, I didn't quite think it through, but I'm glad I didn't. I had to work a three-month notice period. I enjoyed that time. I felt free. There was a complete absence of stress in my mind. I was pumped up, dreaming about what I was going to do with my life. I dreamed of writing books, giving talks and leading workshops that would help people to heal and feel good about themselves – exactly what I do now.

I remember waking up with a start early one morning about halfway into my notice period in a sudden panic about what I'd done. I'd resigned from a very good job to be a writer and public speaker.
What?!
First, I'd never been a good writer. It had taken me two attempts to pass my English exam at high school. I was also terrified by speaking in front of people. What had I been thinking?

Sometimes, though, action requires not thinking things through too much. The more we think things through, the more likely we are to come up with reasons why our plans won't work or to become fixated on the problems that might arise. They will arise in fact, because of our feelings of
not
being
enough
. People who live from ‘I
am
enough' rarely think things through. They have a dream and they know that somehow they can make it happen.

Some of us aren't so sure, though. A few months after I left that job, I was in the habit of sitting in a little coffee shop in the west end of Glasgow, drinking coffee and reading books. At the time I was reading the
Conversations with God
series written by Neale Donald Walsch. I was also listening to a lot of Wayne Dyer audios in my car. But even though I'd left my job to do what they were doing, when I really thought about it, it seemed above my station. I'd dreamed of doing it. Damn, I'd left my job to do it. But now I was hardly doing anything to move myself in that direction because, deep down, I believed I was
not
enough. It wasn't a conscious belief, more an assumption that coloured my thinking and inhibited meaningful action.

Without meaning to, I was comparing myself to Neale and Wayne. I loved what they were doing. Their words moved me and inspired me in ways I'd never felt before. That was actually part of the problem.

I imagined that anyone who came into contact with Neale or Wayne would have their life changed in about five minutes, such was the wisdom in their words. But I didn't seem to be good at helping people with their problems at all. I had friends who were just as screwed up now as they had been for the previous five years. If I was anything of an influence at all, surely they'd be healed by now. Surely
I'd
be healed by now…

Also, I lacked confidence, despite talking myself up and riding on the whole ‘having had the courage to leave my job' thing, and I knew it. Neale and Wayne were obviously super-confident.

Neale and Wayne were also complete, healed, perfect. I wasn't.

I didn't think all this consciously. It was just an assumption about my own worth that led me to imagine there was such a huge gap between me and my heroes and, in my most private moments, to believe in my own deficiencies.

Self-worth lies deep inside. It's a very intimate thing. It's there in our most private thoughts and feelings. It becomes visible in the comparisons we make between ourselves and other people.

I'm sharing my own experience because I've learned that it's much more common than you might think. Everyone compares themselves to others in some way and finds themselves lacking. It might be down to how clever the other people are, how confident, how much money they have, how many resources, how pretty or thin they are, how free of cellulite, how whole… Everyone perceives a gap between themselves and others. But that gap prevents action.

In truth, there
is
no gap. It is artificial. The only place it exists is
inside our own minds
.

Also, as I expect you'll remember, we never really know what's going on in someone else's mind. In all likelihood, the people we're comparing ourselves to have identical fears to us and identical insecurities about their own worth, no matter what they might be doing in the world. We're all human, after all.

I once worked alongside a girl who was beautiful. Everyone thought so. Other girls felt insecure around her. They compared themselves to her and felt they were
not
enough. They saw her as confident. They wished that men would flirt with them as much
as they did with her. What they didn't know was that she was just as insecure as they were. The reason she went to such lengths to make herself look attractive was
because
she felt so insecure. Where everybody else saw beauty, she saw only deficiency – something that needed to be improved upon. She felt that she was
not
enough.

There was no gap between how that girl felt and how the others felt. What about you? Do you think there's a gap between you and other people? Is there a gap that prevents you from claiming your worth, from stepping into the world and saying, ‘You know what? I
am
enough!'

Once you remove the gap (from your mind), insights come, perceptions change, action is taken and everything changes.

SELF-LOVE GYM:
Removing the Gap