Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way (12 page)

Appreciating another person doesn’t mean that everything about them is perfect (no one is), or that our relationship with them is completely harmonious and free of conflict or issues. My mom and I had lots of challenges in our relationship throughout my life. But being able to acknowledge and appreciate my mom in that way was so meaningful for her and for me. And, now that she’s gone, it has an even greater and deeper significance in my life and our relationship. Sadly, we sometimes wait until it’s too late to let people know how much we appreciate them.

We have to be willing to look for and find things to appreciate about other people—which sometimes can be challenging, especially depending on who it is. Ironically, appreciation of others has less to do with them and more to do with us. We don’t actually see people as
they
are; we see them as
we
are.

A number of years ago I was talking to a mentor of mine about some people in my life who were really bugging me at the time. After complaining about these individuals and explaining some of the details of the various conflicts for a few minutes, he asked me, “Hey, Mike, who’s always at the scene of the crime?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Who is the common denominator in all of your relationships?” he asked.

“Oh,” I said. “I guess that would be me.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Everyone in your life is actually a mirror. When you change and you change the way you relate to people, the people around you actually change in your experience of them.”

“So it really is all about me?” I asked, somewhat kidding and somewhat serious.

“Well, not in the ego-based, selfish way you might think. But in a real sense, yes, it is all about you.”

Appreciating other people (or not) is actually just an extension and expression of us appreciating ourselves (or not). When we authentically appreciate ourselves, we give ourselves permission, perspective, and awareness to look for, find, and see the inherent beauty and value in other people. Once we see this, we can express it. When we have the courage to express our appreciation in a generous and genuine way, it can literally transform our lives.

As Wayne Dyer says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” When we expand our capacity for appreciation of others and of life, what we’re really doing is expanding our capacity to appreciate ourselves and, in so doing, we become more available for the love, connection, and fulfillment that we desire.

CHAPTER 19

Be Aware of the Imposter Syndrome

The day I arrived on campus at Stanford University as an incoming freshman was simultaneously one of the most exciting and humbling days of my life. Not only is Stanford one of the best colleges in the country, it also has one of the best baseball programs. Growing up as a kid who loved playing baseball and wanted to go to a great school, I’d long dreamed of going there. And I wasn’t the only one who had this dream; there were literally tens of thousands of high school baseball players across the country who wanted a chance to play at Stanford. Fortunately, I’d done a good enough job on the field and in the classroom in high school that I got recruited and accepted. I’d actually gotten in during the early admittance period in November of my senior year, so by the time I showed up on campus, I’d been “the guy who was going to Stanford” for almost ten months.

But that very first day of freshman orientation, I had a simple but profound realization:
Oh yeah, everyone else here got into Stanford, too.
All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so special, and my 18-year-old ego took a big hit. I was used to standing out both in school and in sports. Within a very short amount of time at Stanford, I realized that standing out here was going to be a lot harder. Not only did the idea of succeeding seem daunting to me, but as I began to get to know some of my fellow classmates and teammates, I started to wonder how I even got in. There were times, especially during that first year, when I worried that someone was going to find out I wasn’t supposed to be there and they were literally going to ask me to leave.

This wasn’t something that I talked about with anyone else. Most of the other kids in my dorm and the guys on my team seemed to be pretty confident and comfortable—they fit right in. I just assumed there must be something wrong with me and that I just wasn’t as talented or sure of myself as everyone else. Of course, this wasn’t actually true. Although I wasn’t aware of it at that time, it turns out that just about everyone around me, especially given our age and where we were, felt some version of those same doubts. They were all just doing their best to pretend they didn’t, as was I.

This is what’s known as “the imposter syndrome.” It’s very common—not just with college kids at a place like Stanford, but for most of us, throughout our lives, and in various environments and situations. I see this with many of the people I coach, work with, and speak to. A few years ago I was delivering a day-long seminar to a group of senior leaders on communication and presentation skills. These folks were all very smart and accomplished, but like most human beings, they had some fear and difficulty when they got up to deliver a presentation. Public speaking is a place where the imposter syndrome shows up all the time. Most of us know that it’s common for people to get nervous when they speak in front of a group and each of us has personally experienced the negative impact of our fear during a presentation. However, we often have these erroneous notions that we shouldn’t be afraid because it means we’re weak, incompetent, or unprepared. We also believe that somehow speaking is much worse for us than for other people—this false idea comes from comparing how we feel on the inside to how other people look on the outside, and they don’t usually look as nervous as we feel.

As part of the seminar, I had each of these leaders deliver a presentation to their peers. They were filmed and received feedback from the group and coaching from me. It’s an incredibly valuable experience and a rare opportunity, but can often be quite nerve-wracking, as you can imagine. A man named James got up and delivered his presentation, which went well from my perspective. I asked him when he was done how he thought it went.

“Terrible!” he responded.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Well,” James said, “first of all, I wasn’t prepared; I forgot a bunch of things I had wanted to say, and I lost my train of thought a few times.”

“Really,” I said. “It didn’t seem that way to me.” Then I asked the group, “Did you guys think he was unprepared and off track?” All 12 people in the room unanimously said, “No!” I said, “James, I think you may be being a little overly critical of yourself; that was actually quite good and easy to follow. And, it’s important to remember that no one knows what you were
planning
to say, they only know what you
actually
say.”

James then said, “Second of all, I felt so nervous with that camera in the back of the room, all of you staring at me, and knowing I was going to be critiqued, that it was hard to concentrate.”

“Wow, that’s interesting, James. You didn’t seem that nervous to me,” I said. “On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the most nervous, how nervous did you feel?” I asked.

“About an eight,” he said.

“How nervous did he look?” I asked the group. Most people said about one or two.

James’s experience is quite common, not just with public speaking but life in general. We tend to be overly critical of ourselves, and often for no valid reason, which ends up either psyching us out or negatively impacting our experience—usually both.

I experience the imposter syndrome in my own life all the time—especially in my roles as a father, an author, and a speaker—where I’m often related to as an “expert” but don’t always feel that way (and sometimes feel like the antithesis in certain situations). My girls are quite curious and like to ask a lot of questions, which is great, except when it’s annoying, or, even worse, humbling. There are many times they ask me questions that I’m unable to answer—because I don’t know the answer or because I want to protect them from something. And even though I sometimes want to say “Why the heck are you asking me that? How am I supposed to know?” I do my best to answer their questions as authentically and confidently as I can, and try to remind myself that I am actually qualified to be their father, whether I feel like it or not.

It’s important to remember that everyone feels like an imposter at certain times and in certain situations. There’s nothing wrong with us for feeling this way; it’s just part of being human. And, if we can have compassion for ourselves when we feel like an imposter, two wonderful things can happen. For one thing, we can stop spending so much time and energy trying to hide or compensate for our insecurity (which makes life much more fun and less stressful). Also, we can remember that we
do
know some things, have certain skills, and might actually be qualified to be in the position or situation in which we find ourselves.

CHAPTER 20

Give Yourself Permission to Cry

Something extraordinary happened at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on January 14, 2012. Sure it was an amazing ending to an NFL play-off game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints (which the 49ers won in dramatic fashion, making all of us fans here in the Bay Area very happy), but the monumental win wasn’t what made it so remarkable to me.

As Vernon Davis, the tight end for the 49ers who caught the game-winning touchdown, came running off the field, tears were streaming down his face. He came to the sidelines and was embraced by his head coach, Jim Harbaugh, in a huge bear hug. Coach Harbaugh hugged him for quite a while and spoke into his ear in what I can only imagine was an expression of authentic appreciation and celebration. It was a beautiful and moving moment that transcended football, and even sports—it was about courageous triumph, raw human emotion, and vulnerable self-expression. (If you didn’t get a chance to see this when it happened, I highly recommend searching for the video of it online; it’s quite moving.)

Of course, I loved it—not just because I’m a huge sports fan and like to see my hometown teams win (especially after many years of not winning, which was the case for the 49ers that year in the play-offs), but because it highlighted something very important … the power of tears! I also loved it because you don’t usually see a big, strong football player like Vernon Davis break down and cry in the arms of his coach in front of 65,000 fans in the stadium and millions of people watching on TV. But he did, and it was a powerful scene and an important reminder of what it means to be human.

One of the many things tears can do is remind us of our humanness, our vulnerability, and our connection to one another and to things much bigger than the specific circumstances we are facing. We cry for different reasons and based on different emotions. Sometimes we shed tears of pain, sorrow, anger, frustration, or grief. Other times, tears show up because of love, joy, inspiration, hope, or kindness. Regardless of the underlying emotions, crying often makes us feel better and is one of the most authentic expressions of emotion we experience as human beings.

However, many of us have a great deal of fear, resistance, and judgment about tears—both ours and those of other people. While this tends to vary based on our age, upbringing, gender, and the environment in which we find ourselves, I’m amazed at how often crying is seen in such a negative way in our culture, even today.

As a man, I was trained early in my life, like most of the men I know, that “boys don’t cry.” Based on this and a variety of other factors, I sometimes find it challenging to access and express my own tears. But I do actually love to cry, so when my tears show up, I let them flow, often quite passionately.

One of the places my tears often flow is on airplanes. I don’t know why, but for some reason, being on airplanes gets me into a heightened emotional state. I was on a flight a few years ago and decided to purchase a movie on my personal TV monitor, which I don’t usually do. It was the award-winning film
The Help,
which I kept hearing about but hadn’t seen yet. The movie really got to me. The emotional story, coupled with my heightened emotional state along with some stuff that was going on in my life, caused me to sob so intensely that the guy sitting next to me leaned over, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Dude, are you all right?” Although I was momentarily confused and a bit embarrassed, since I had gotten so into the movie that I forgot I was sitting on a plane, I jumped right back into the film and let the tears continue to flow, which felt great and so cathartic.

As I look back at some of the most important, pivotal, and transformational moments of my life—both ones I considered to be good and ones I considered to be bad at the time—tears were a part of just about all of them.

How do you feel about shedding tears? Is it easy for you to cry? Is it hard? Are you comfortable crying in front of others? Do you judge yourself or others for doing so? I think it’s interesting and important for us to ask ourselves these questions and notice our relationship to tears.

I’m not advocating that we go around crying all the time just for the sake of it. Excessive crying can sometimes point to a more serious underlying emotional issue or can be done as a way to manipulate others; I’m not talking about that, either. I’m talking about our ability to express our emotions in an authentic way, some of the time resulting in the shedding of tears. What if we embraced crying a bit more and let go of our negative connotations about doing so? As Charles Dickens beautifully wrote in
Great Expectations
, “We need never be ashamed of our tears.”

When we cry, we often open up, let down our guard, and connect with others in a more real and vulnerable way. Many times in my own life and with some of the clients I’ve worked with, I’ve seen tears dramatically shift a person’s perspective, change the dynamic of an argument, and bring people together. Tears have a way of breaking down emotional walls and mental barriers we put up within ourselves and aganist others. Crying tends to be a human equalizer, because no matter the circumstance, situation, or stress we may face, our tears often have a way of shifting and altering things in a beautiful manner.