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How to be yourself What a strange title you may be thinking… but I’m sure many of you can’t answer ‘yes’ to this question: “Do you show up fully as yourself every day in every moment?” Thought so… Why is it so difficult to be ourselves? Take a look around you (like you didn’t need reminding) we are bombarded with sales of products and things we ‘need’ in order to improve ourselves, be better, do better, have more, lose the wrinkles, lose the cellulite, lose the flab… the list goes on. This messaging has been learned by our subconscious minds since birth. The message of… “You’re not good enough just as you are. You need ___ to be seen, to be heard and to matter in society.” This is so normal to us that everyone around us is conditioned to think and act this way too. It’s normal to talk about what diet we’re on this month. It’s common practice to be working our ass off in the gym in order to be ‘beach ready.’ It’s expected to be comparing beauty products in order to find the one that gets rid of our wrinkles… because God forbid we age as our bodies go through life! These media messages only add to the beliefs and values of our parents and those that raised us. And whatever our parents believed, we also took as our own beliefs. After all, as children we looked up to our parents to keep us safe and to teach us everything. Most of us have been raised by parents that have sadly also been conditioned by society and so throughout our lives as we’ve grown up, we’ve adopted a deep belief that we’re just not good enough. Our parents did the best they could. I’m blessed to have a mum who loves me unconditionally and shows her love in any and every way she can. So when I was a child and I saw my mum constantly picking fault with herself, grabbing her tummy fat and saying ‘look at this it’s disgusting!’, I was petrified of gaining weight to the point where I fell into anorexia. I’m not blaming my mum of course not, it wasn’t only seeing her act that way that caused my fear but she didn’t know any better either. She had been taught to believe that her beautiful perfect tummy that housed a safe place for me and my sister to come into the world, was ‘disgusting’. 🙁 I have tears writing this. On top of believing that how we look isn’t good enough, we also believe that we need to achieve or have lots of money in order to be happy. And this is not our truth! So before I go any further, can we just take a moment to send ourselves some compassion? No wonder we feel this way. And that’s ok. The fear of being judged The more I coach and the more people I help (including myself!) it’s clear to see that the fear of being judged is what keeps us from being ourselves. It’s what keeps us from choosing to wear jeans over shorts and ‘just dealing’ with how hot we get. It’s what makes us say yes to a night out when all we really want is to have a night in our PJs with a good book. It’s what motivates us to start a new diet or join a gym because #bikinibody… Our constant worry of what others may think, or say about us is what stops is from fully showing up as ourselves. But what are we really scared of? What IF people DO judge us? Then what? Truthbomb… people DO judge us. All. The. Time. And I’ll tell you what we fear… We fear being rejected. We fear being unloved. And that fear is real for us. So what can we do about it? I’ll get to that shortly...
