The greatest love of all to love yourself

I watched the Whitney Houston documentary on Netflix yesterday. I cried. A couple of times. Her story is sad, and tragic. Obviously I shed some tears for that. Witnessing the rise and fall of one of the most beautiful voices of our time will not leave you undisturbed.

But to be honest, mostly, I cried for me.

Over the years I’ve honed the craft to become inconsolably melancholic in a split second, especially when I’m reminded of my life through my senses: the gentle smell of coffee filling the kitchen from my childhood home, a return visit to the neighborhood I grew up in, or in this case songs I used to play over and over on my Walkman as a 15 year old.

It’s hard to imagine, knowing how much I played those songs, that I’d forgotten about the huge Whitney Houston fan I used to be. And maybe less so about the huge mistake perm I convinced my mom I needed to get in order to fit in at school. Biggest lesson of 1990: hair grows very slowly.

It’s incredible what the mind remembers. It never stops to amaze me. Given the right cues drawers of memories open up to us, giving us a chance to poke our noses into the many moments that make up our pasts. The best part is, we never know what we’re going to get. Or when it’s going to happen!

Like yesterday. As I was settling into the documentary a strange feeling of déjà vu came over me.

I couldn’t quite place it at first, but halfway through the thing it hit me: I’d seen this footage before! Not in another documentary or randomly. No, what I realized was that I was recognizing  what I was seeing.

I always get a bit weird when that happens. I also like it a lot because it brings me into a somewhat altered state of being. Perhaps it happens to you to sometimes too. You’re looking at, reading, or listening to something then all of a sudden you realize you were a witness to it before. You were present during the actual moment of creation of that thing. In other words: you were there!

Coming to this conclusion always brings me back to the limits of my own existence. Which in and of itself is a spiritual experience. That’s why I like it so much. It reminds me of what’s important.

Through the old footage, the inevitable clip from The Bodyguard – I was 17 when that movie came out and totally smitten with Kevin Costner (sadly the romance ended when he grew gills and decided to go live in the ocean) – and the many, many songs…

I remembered.

Who I used to be. My teenage years. The dreams, and goals of a 15 year old. The heartbreak that followed my first love.

The things I stood for, cared about, and believed in before I convinced myself I wasn’t good enough. That I needed to be someone else. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that the Whitney Houston documentary is called “Can I be me?”. Is there even such a thing as coincidences?

Being taken down memory lane like that has a different effect on me depending on how I stand in my life when it happens.

Often though it will make me wonder: Where have all the years gone? Yesterday was no exception. I asked myself that question. To be honest, I’m not sure. I spent so many of those years trying to please everyone around me, trying to not have the anxious thoughts I had, trying so hard to mold myself into a perfect version of who I thought I needed to be… It’s all a little blurry.

There’s one thing I do know.

When I was 15 I was awake, in love with life.

Then at 35 I woke up again, when I finally remembered that the greatest love of all is learning to love yourself. 

Why forgiveness is an act of kindness towards yourself

Last week on the blog I wrote about what to do when someone hurts your feelings. One of the things that I mention in the post is forgiveness, as a way to help you move past whatever someone did to hurt you.

Since the post has been up, I’ve received a number of emails from readers telling me how difficult it is to practice forgiveness sometimes, and how unfair it feels having to be the one “doing the work” when someone else should be doing it instead.

Thank you all for sending me these great questions. They made me think, and want to dig a little deeper into what forgiveness actually is, and why it’s a true act of kindness towards yourself…

Learn to forgive yourself first

We all have things that we’re not proud of, that annoy us about ourselves, that linger on from the past. Bad decisions we made, situations we didn’t deal with as good as we could have, people we hurt…

I like to think that everything begins with ourselves, forgiveness included. And just like I believe you cannot love someone deeply, truly, fully until you give that same kind of love to yourself, I believe you cannot enjoy the benefits of forgiveness entirely until you’ve learned how to forgive yourself.

So the first step towards forgiveness is not about giving your blessings to someone else, but surrounding your own bright self with the loving-kindness that comes from not beating yourself down anymore over a mistake you made, accepting that you’ve dealt with a situation in a shitty way or made a mistake, and silencing your inner nasty when she’s putting on the blame game.

An easy, yet super powerful way to practice self-forgiveness is this:

• Give yourself credit for recognizing your mistake (or whatever it is you’re blaming yourself for). This is the first step towards growth, and not a trivial thing! You deserve to be proud of yourself. Shoulder tap lady!

• Accept that mistakes are a part of life, and that you’re not the first one to make one, nor that this is the last one you’ll ever make. As a recovering people-pleaser, and somewhat of a recovering perfectionist too (hum hum), this was a difficult lesson for me to learn. For a long time my anxiety, and worry revolved almost entirely around me making mistakes. This made it hard for me to be social, go out and enjoy myself because the next days I would be filled with anxiety, worrying about what those people at the party thought of me, and whether or not I’d said the right thing, and been the right way (as if that exists!) all night long. A total nightmare! Until I accepted that I would never be perfect, and that mistakes were part of my life’s journey.

• Know that you are a magical being that learns, and grows all the time! Mistakes are always in the past. And guess what? You don’t live there! You live in the present. Every moment of your life you have the choice to learn from your mistakes so that you can grow into a better version of yourself. I use this growth mindset attitude on a daily basis. Understanding that I’m not my mistakes, that I can outgrow them, and learn from them at the same time comforts me, and helps me to forgive myself.

Now it’s time to start forgiving others

Forgiving yourself is the most important step – but it’s only the first one. Practice it often, whenever you feel you need to. But don’t fall in the trap I fell into for so long: becoming great at forgiving yourself, but walking around with frustrations, sadness, and hurt feelings as a result of what others have done to you.

If you do, you’ll hang on to toxic energy that – newsflash! – only you feel! That’s right. The person that hurt you is most probably totally in the dark about what you’re feeling, and is not being hurt back. Only you are – again!

Forgiving others is a difficult thing to do. Believe me, I know!

And if you’re anything like me, it won’t come to you overnight either… (damn ego!). But you can do it, and it is so absolutely liberating, that I promise you.

The way I forgive others is not driven by selflessness (sorry Buddha, not there yet) but by sheer self-love.

Because forgiving others means being happier, living a better life, removing toxic energy, moving on… good things that will affect your own life first, not always that of the person you’re forgiving.

Forgiving someone comes down almost the same steps as the self-forgiveness practice above:

• Give yourself credit for recognizing that someone has hurt your feelings. You’re protecting your boundaries, and taking good care of yourself there. Well done! As a people-pleaser, I really had to learn this the hard way… actually recognizing that I’d been hurt instead of internalizing all of it.

• Accept that mistakes are part of life, and that other people are only human too. It might not make the hurt go away, but it can certainly deflect it from your ego, and help you realize that we’re all in this human experience together.

• Use the growth mindset to figure out what you can learn when someone hurt your feelings. I believe there’s a silver lining to everything, and this is no exception. Maybe you’ve stumbled on a sensitivity you have that you need to safeguard more, or you weren’t clear on your boundaries enough. This is certainly not to say that you are to blame for someone hurting you, but simply that you can learn how to protect yourself from it.

When you learn to forgive yourself, and others, there’s one universal outcome I believe will come your way: you’ll have a better life. Less stress, less worry, more love, more compassion, and so many other wonderful emotions, feelings, and experiences.

That’s why it’s an act of kindness towards yourself. And for that alone, it’s worth it.

Now do tell me. Is it easy for you to forgive yourself? Others? What works well for you? Let me know below.

What to do when someone hurts your feelings

Throughout my life I had my share of people hurting me, and I can say with absolute certainty that I’m not alone in that. We all get hurt. At certain times though it felt as if being hurt was the natural state of my life, never understanding what I was doing wrong to deserve it, feeling pretty sorry for myself, with no clue at all about what to do when someone hurt my feelings.

Then a few months ago, someone that was pretty close to me lashed out at me, out of nowhere, quite literally in the middle of the night. The incredible thing was that I didn’t feel all that hurt about it, and the hurt that I did feel went away quickly… In the past few years i’ve become much more self-aware. Of my feelings, what I’m made of, what I stand for, and what I believe in. I also started to love myself – finally, and through this process what hurts me, and how I react to other people’s not-so-fun behavior towards me has drastically changed.

This post is an attempt to share what I’ve learned along the way about what to do when someone hurts your feelings, and how a shift in perspective, and true love for yourself makes all the difference.

#1 Who’s hurt you

No two hurts are the same. Depending on the person who hurts you, you’re reaction will be different. Whether you’re full of self-love or not, some people just get to you faster, and deeper than others. My husband for instance doesn’t have to use that many words to hurt my feelings, while some distant relative or acquaintance will have a much harder time shaking my world.

At least that’s the case today.

As a recovering people-pleaser things were pretty different before. When all I wanted was for everyone to like me (never gonna happen lady!), anyone could hurt my feelings – easily. All it took was a few words. It’s only when I learned that I couldn’t possibly be liked by everyone that the hurt started to go down. But that’s not where the biggest transformation happened.

Things really started to shift when I understood it was OK for me not to like everyone either!

When I realized this a lot of the hurt went away on it’s own, and ever since before letting feelings of hurt get to me, I ask myself if I really care about the person who’s doing the hurting. If not, I drop the hurt feelings, and sometimes the person too.

#2 How have they hurt you

There are many ways someone can hurt you. That’s why this is such an important question to ask yourself when you think someone has.

Very often feelings of hurt are a result of our own wounds, and weaknesses. So again, not all hurts are equal. Did someone say something that triggered you? Or was she actually mean to you?

It’s important to be aware of this two main reasons. First, you don’t want to blame someone for something they didn’t do. Then, especially when there’s an internal trigger, you want to use the opportunity to grow. Nobody wants to keep nasty triggers for life, right? So getting clear on what sets you off by analyzing your feelings can help you to grow as a person. And, like knowing who’s hurt you, will help alleviate the hurt itself as well.

#3 You’re in control of your reaction

I believe that in life there are two kinds of events: the ones that you have control over, and the ones that you don’t. How people treat you is part of the latter, but how you react to it isn’t. You have control over that. In fact, when it comes to ourselves, and our feelings, there are many choices we can make because we’re almost always in control.

We can choose not to believe our thoughts, we can choose to feel good even when things don’t go our way, we can even choose to forgive someone who hurt us (more on that below). What we can definitely choose is how we react when someone’s hurt our feelings.

This may sound difficult, maybe even impossible to you. Believe me, it sounded like that to me for a long time as well. Until I realized nobody was actually making my choices for me, hence nobody – whatever they had done to me – could make me feel anything. Only I could do that. Of course having someone hurt your feelings always stings a little. But I’ve learned not to let it get to me or giving it a lot of thought, by asking myself one simple question, something that an anxious mind like mine welcomes with open arms, believe me. How do I want to feel?

#4 Is it worth working things out

Let’s say it’s not an inner trigger that is causing you to feel hurt, but a not-so-fun thing someone said or did to you. Let’s also say this is not a random person, but someone you know or that you can’t simply forget about.

The question to ask yourself now is whether it’s worth working things out with them or not. Is this person worth your time, and do you want to keep them in your life?

This may sound like a very selfish question, but I believe it isn’t. It’s a self-love question. We’re not meant to be for everyone. This implies that not everyone is meant for us either. Just like you have control over how you react to things, so you do about who you allow, or don’t allow into your life. Someone hurting your feelings, especially if it’s deeply or more than once, asks you to consider the relationship, and what it’s worth to you. Is this a reciprocal relationship? Are you happy with it? Would you rather not have this person in your life? Are you the sole giver, or are you also getting in return? These are important questions to determine whether or not it’s worth working things out. If it doesn’t feel right, you have the right to move on.

#5 Forgiveness is an inside job

Finally, when all is said and done, you can choose to forgive the person that hurt you. Not working things out, and moving on are not the same thing as forgiveness. The big thing to understand about forgiveness is that it’s an inside job.

Forgiveness is about you, not the other person. The reason is that all the feelings you walk around with are your own. In most cases, the people hurting us are unaware of our inner life. And when they aren’t what they know of it is usually the tip of the iceberg…

Yet we think we’re punishing them when we’re angry, sad, frustrated. We don’t tell them anything, but we walk around with all those feelings, expecting them to magically know about it, and suffer as we do. Or we’ve put an end to the relationship but still we carry those feelings with us, they linger on, weigh us down. That’s why forgiveness is important. Not for the salvation of someone else’s soul, but to free your own. And that’s why I try to practice it as much as I can, whatever anyone has done to me. Not to heal them, but to heal myself.

In the end what it comes down to for me is, when someone hurts my feelings I’m the one in control. This means I don’t have to “take” anything from that person, not her behavior (obviously) but also not the feelings of hurt she’s given me, not the frustrations or sadness, not even the relationship if I don’t feel it serves me anymore.

When someone hurts my feelings what I do is take control, do everything I can to heal myself, to learn, and move on.

How about you? What do you do when someone hurts your feelings? Do let me know below, I really want to know.

How to forgive yourself for making mistakes

During a coaching call this week, a client asked an important question about mistakes. We were tackling the subject of self-love and how important it is to remain your own best friend and to be caring for yourself, especially when you are working towards your goals. And that made her think of how terrible she feels when she makes mistakes, and how hard it is for her to forgive herself for them, let alone love herself through them.

I feel that this is such a widespread issue, and one surrounded by a lot of shame, so that I need to write about it, and provide you with the perspective that I gave her. I believe we don’t talk about our mistakes nearly enough. And when we do, we always do so in a very negative way. But who can blame us?

We’ve been thought to feel ashamed for our mistakes and to feel bad for making them. As if there’s a state in which we could exist that would be mistake-free.

But feeling bad for making mistakes is nothing more than another illusory state our society has thought up for us to aspire to: like being a size zero, or being able to have both a perfect career and a perfect family with perfect kids, and be happy all the time about it, too… or like, in this case, living a totally mistake-free existence. It’s just not possible.

But just because perfection isn’t possible doesn’t mean we have to dread our mistakes or feel ashamed of them. Not always. Making mistakes can be a good thing sometimes, and a necessary step towards new skills, or new knowledge, or even new perspectives about things. And even when the mistakes have rather negative consequences, like losing a significant amount of money due to a bad business decision or hurting other people because of something that we did, they’re usually not as bad as we make them out to be.

So, here are a few things to consider when you’re beating yourself up about a mistake you made.

Ask yourself, what’s the worst that could happen? Very often, we play catastrophe scenarios in our heads when we’ve made a mistake. What is everyone going to think about us? How are we going to survive it? These are just a few of the things that our inner critic loves to throw at us when we’ve made a mistake. And that’s why it’s so important to stop for a minute and take a breather. And ask yourself, what’s the worst that could happen? In most cases, you’ll realize that what your inner critic is telling you comes straight out of a sci-fi movie, and that the consequences of your mistake are really not what you make them out to be.

People really don’t think about you that much. Our inner critic really loves to be in the spotlight. That is why she makes us believe that other people are always talking and thinking about us. Truth be told, they aren’t. They have their own lives, their own problems, and most certainly their own mistakes to deal with before they have time to think about us. Remember this when you think the world is going to end and someone is never going to forgive you for what you did. Chances are, they’ve already almost forgotten about it.

Making mistakes mean you are in action. I love to tell my clients to cheer for their mistakes, because those mistakes are a living proof that my clients are in action. And I’ll take action over inaction every single day. Try to use mistakes as a positive reminder of you working towards something, and trying to achieve things. You’ll feel better about them instantly, I promise.

Making mistakes simply means you’re human. Making mistakes doesn’t only mean you’re in action; it also means you’re human. And how beautiful is that? The human experience has many colors and shades, and making mistakes is part of that. It’s a reminder that life is fragile, that goals are worth pursuing, and that the journey you’re on means something to you.

By embracing your mistakes as a part of who you are, you’ll be able to deal with them much better, forgive yourself for making them, and love yourself through them. Because mistakes are not just something to avoid.

Of course, we hope we won’t make many and that, if we do, the consequences will be limited. But making mistakes is part of the game of life and business, and if you’re not making any, that means you’re not playing. It’s just like with the omelet; don’t be afraid to break some eggs.