"Be a truth seeker. Growth begins with the courage to look inside yourself. Choose to be brave, and uncover endless potential."
As a competitive and nationally ranked tennis player, a coach, therapist, corporate speaker and champion motivator it has become blazingly clear to me, people spend far too much time and energy worrying about what other people think of them.
While some people cope with self-doubt more skillfully than others, we all feel it to some degree. And it's easy to see why: The need to belong is hardwired into our DNA. Human infants are born utterly dependent upon their community. Our ability to survive and thrive is largely contingent upon receiving love, attention, and care. But as we grow up and begin to go through life, it's clear that love and positive attention are not guaranteed. In fact, we learn all too well that the people around us can be judgmental and critical. Not everyone will like us. Not everyone will even notice us. We won't always be the prettiest, thinnest, smartest or richest.
We've all developed different coping mechanisms to deal with our fear of judgment. Some people shut down and avoid situations where they feel insecure or vulnerable. They play it safe. They live half-lives. They don't speak their whole truth. Their mindset is "If I don't show up, I can't be judged." At the most extreme end of the spectrum they may convince themselves that if one person rejects them, everyone will. If a friend or therapist points out that such catastrophic thinking isn't grounded in reality, they agree. The rational parts of their mind know that their extreme fear of judgment is illogical, but when emotion takes over, fear will win out over a rational response every time.
At the other end of the spectrum are those people who spend all their energy seeking validation and trying to win the approval of others. Their tactic is to protect themselves from potential criticism by attempting to please everyone. Their mentality is "I'll be so perfect that no one would dare reject me." Inside they are driven by the same fear and their need to be universally liked will inevitably catch up with them. They've given so much power to external validation that they've lost control over their inner lives.
It's hard to live fully when you're always afraid the other shoe is going to drop. When you're terrified of disappointing people or not living up to your carefully-crafted image of perfection, you can become caught up with the accoutrements of life: Your clothing, your bank account, the beauty of your dinner table, the achievements of your children. The sheer amount of energy it takes to maintain this facade is exhausting, so being uber-pleasing has a shorter shelf life than you'd suspect.
You may be neither one of these extremes. You're not hiding from the world, but neither are you a raging perfectionist. You're somewhere in between. You're "happy." You have "a good life." Nothing's really wrong, at least nothing specific you can name. You're managing your anxieties fairly well.
But inside you know there's more. There's a higher degree of meaning, fulfillment and regret-free living out there waiting for you. And you also know, even deeper inside, that somewhere along the way you learned to hide parts of yourself. The parts that you've decided are unloveable. The parts that you fear may cause the people you care about to be disappointed, to view you differently, or reject you. But what you don't see is that the very parts you're hiding may well be the key to living that fuller, more authentic life.
You are authentic when what you say matches what you feel, think and do. Authentic people don't say "yes" when they're thinking "no" and, even more importantly, they don't say "no" when their hearts are telling them "go for it." There's no discrepancy between their inner and outer lives.
This may seem like an impossible mission, to have absolute integration between feeling, thinking, saying and doing. Our moments of misalignment, are our cues to pause, take a deep breath and look inside. Only then can we make the adjustments that lead us to mental, physical, and spiritual health.
Let your personal Look Within Project begin, NOW. Over the next 12 months I will be posting articles that will inspire you to take a closer look within, identify a shift you want to make, and then contagiously turn your adjustments into a widespread positive epidemic.
This Look Within Project is your call to action.
Many of these changes you'll be making on this journey will be small. At first they may even seem ridiculously simplistic. But the simplicity is the source of their magic.
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