Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way (15 page)

As amazing as this story is, the most incredible part is that when this coach told this story to a roomful of 150 Minor League Baseball players, he broke down and cried in front of all of them. That never happens there,
ever
. And a few days later, dozens of those players were coming up to talk to me about it because it had a huge impact on them.

That’s how powerful it is when we have the courage to be vulnerable—when we let people see who we really are and how we really feel.

Dr. Brené Brown, author of
Daring Greatly
, is a psychologist and research professor from the University of Houston who studies human emotions, including shame and vulnerability. In a March 2012 TED talk, she said, “Vulnerability is not weakness, and that myth is profoundly dangerous.” She went on to say that after 12 years of research, she has actually determined that vulnerability is “our most accurate measurement of courage.”

Unfortunately, all too often we relate to vulnerability—especially in certain environments, relationships, and situations—as something we should avoid at all costs. However, it’s vulnerability that liberates us from our erroneous and insatiable obsession with trying to do everything “right”—thinking we can’t make mistakes, have flaws, or be human. In other words, being vulnerable allows us to let go of the pressure-filled, stress-inducing perfection demands we place on ourselves.

In addition to our own liberation, when we’re vulnerable we give other people permission to be vulnerable as well, and in so doing, we open up the possibility of real human connection and the opportunity to impact people in a profound way, which is what most of us truly want in life.

CHAPTER 26

Trust Yourself

By the summer of 2004, my relationship with Michelle had come to a crossroads. We’d been together for almost four years and had been living together for more than two. The main point of contention in our relationship had to do with our future (i.e., when and if we were going to get married). Michelle was just about to turn 34 and I was 31.

We talked about our future quite a bit—she really wanted to get married and start a family. While I, too, wanted those things, I didn’t feel that I was ready yet. During our conversations, we both did a pretty good job of listening to one another and being as compassionate as possible, but, in our lower moments, it would get sticky, painful, and sometimes even ugly. Michelle would start to push and I would start to pull away—a classic, stereotypical male/female dynamic in relationships, particularly related to commitment.

I knew that if I chose to marry Michelle because I felt pressured by her or our friends, or even because “it was time,” we’d been together long enough, and we were at the right age, I’d resent myself or her, and it wouldn’t work. And, while I was aware of some of my own fears and doubts about the idea of getting married—to Michelle and in general—I hadn’t really looked at or owned some of the deeper issues that were getting in my way.

In the middle of that summer, she and I went down to San Diego to participate in a three-day workshop called “The Shadow Process,” delivered by the late author and teacher Debbie Ford. We were both big fans of Debbie’s work and had heard great things about this program. The Shadow Process is all about coming face-to-face with our “shadow”—all the parts of ourselves that we’ve tried to hide or deny, the parts we believe are not acceptable to our family, friends, and, most important, us. Our shadow is also made up of everything that annoys, horrifies, or disgusts us about other people or about ourselves. In the workshop, we were given the opportunity to both confront and make peace with various aspects of our “dark” side, as a way to liberate us from our fear, judgment, and denial.

I loved it! It was intense, of course, but absolutely transformational. Given what was going on between Michelle and me, I related everything I was learning and experiencing in the workshop to our relationship. Initially, I found myself focusing on all the reasons why I thought we shouldn’t get married—and why it seemed like I couldn’t fully trust Michelle. I had had trust issues for much of my life—growing up with a single mom, without a lot of money, and in Oakland had forced me to become “street smart” and to have to rely on myself in many ways. In my case, this involved not trusting people easily. I spent a lot of time and energy waiting for people to disappoint me, let me down, and leave. I prided myself on not being needy or dependent, which was how I often justified not being intimate or vulnerable.

As I started to look more deeply, beyond some of the drama from my past, and get more in touch with how I was actually feeling, I realized that my trust issues had nothing to do with Michelle. What I realized for the very first time in my life was that I didn’t trust
myself
.

I was terrified to get married and was worried that if we did I would ruin our relationship, her life, and the lives of the kids we might have. I thought,
What if I fail, cheat on her, hurt her, hurt our kids, get depressed again, lose interest, don’t have what it takes, end up being a total loser as a husband and father, or die?
All of these things seemed horrible, which is why I’d been denying them. I realized I was avoiding them unconsciously or hoping they would just go away so I would be “ready” to get married.

Realizing this was quite painful and humbling at first—but ultimately it was liberating. I knew that running from these fears or pretending they didn’t exist wouldn’t work. I needed to own them if I was ultimately going to transform them. As vulnerable and scared as I felt to admit these things, I sat down with Michelle and shared them all with her. She wasn’t upset; in fact, she was grateful I was willing to be so open. We had a series of wonderfully authentic and heartfelt conversations that weekend about our relationship, the future, and the fears that we both felt.

The most important moment of the workshop for me happened on the final day. I asked myself a simple but important question:
If I trusted myself fully, what would I do?
The answer was clear and obvious—I would ask Michelle to marry me. Three weeks later, I proposed. She said yes and the following summer we got married!

Trusting ourselves doesn’t mean that we won’t get scared, have doubts, or make mistakes—all of which are inevitable in life. Trust is a choice we make in the moment. It is choosing to empower our belief in ourselves over our fears of what might go wrong. It’s not about avoiding or denying our fears, it’s about having faith in something that is bigger and more powerful than fear: us.

It’s understandable that many of us struggle to trust ourselves, especially at certain times, in certain situations, and with certain people. We tend to remember the times we’ve failed, made mistakes, or done things that in hindsight we judge as unworthy of trust. However, self-trust is, like most things in life, a present-moment phenomenon. As soon as we reach back into the past to determine if we’re worthy of trust or capable of trusting ourselves, we give away our power.

Self-trust is a lifelong journey and something we continue to grow into as we evolve. For some of us, it’s easier than for others. It’s important for us to be mindful and compassionate with ourselves in regard to self-trust. I’m grateful to see my own capacity for self-trust continue to expand, especially in the past few years. And, I’m also aware that there are times that it’s extremely challenging for me to trust myself. Eleanor said something to me in a session we had a while back that resonated with me about this. She said, “Mike, you actually do trust yourself quite a bit, you just don’t think it’s safe to trust yourself, so you end up second-guessing yourself a lot.”

However easy or difficult it is for you to trust yourself, remember that listening to your inner wisdom, trusting your own instincts, and relying on yourself in a healthy way to make decisions in your life are the best things you can do to liberate yourself from unnecessary fear and stress, and to empower yourself in every aspect of your life.

CHAPTER 27

Remember that You Are Much More than What You Do

In June of 1993, I woke up in the Stanford hospital in a daze. In addition to being out of it, I was in an enormous amount of pain and unclear what had happened and why I was there. Over the course of the next 24 hours, as I regained consciousness and some of the medication they’d given to me began to wear off, I learned that in the middle of the night I’d had a freak accident.

It was finals week of my freshman year at Stanford and my friends and I wanted to blow off a little steam, so we threw a party in our dorm room. I ended up drinking a lot, which was something I was doing quite a bit in those days, and had a vague recollection of our night of partying. At some point after midnight, I passed out in my bed, which was the top bunk of one of the two bunk beds in our two-room dorm. My bed, which we had moved a few months earlier, was pushed up against the wall right next to a set of big windows. At some point not that long after I fell asleep, I rolled out of my bed, and out of the window, and fell two stories down to the concrete terrace 15 to 20 feet below. To make matters worse, or at least more embarrassing, I was completely naked at the time.

In hindsight, it was probably a blessing that I was as drunk as I was and had passed out because, amazingly, I fell in such a way that I did a relatively small amount of damage in what otherwise could have been a catastrophic accident. I broke my wrist, I broke my pelvis, and I had slight compression fractures on two of my lumbar vertebrae. I also managed to scrape the side of my face on the back of the tire of a bicycle that was in the bike rack right next to where I fell.

Needless to say, when the reality of what had happened became clear to me and I realized what I’d done, I was filled with a deep sense of shame, embarrassment, and fear. In those first few days in the hospital, as they were assessing the extent of my injuries, we weren’t sure what was going to be required. Initially, the doctors thought they would need to operate on my back and fuse my bones together, which would’ve essentially ended my baseball career and impacted my physical mobility for the rest of my life. Once the swelling went down, thankfully, they realized they would not need to do such an extensive procedure. It turned out that with a back brace, a cast on my arm, lots of rest and recovery time over the summer, and some good fortune, I was going to be just fine and might even be able to continue playing baseball in the fall.

My freshman year at Stanford had been a difficult one for me. While I was excited to be in college and enjoying the Stanford experience for the most part, a different injury to my pitching arm had forced me to miss the entire baseball season, have a minor elbow surgery, and put my baseball future in jeopardy. Since much of my identity was tied up in my being a baseball player, it had been very difficult to spend the entire season not playing. I stayed at home when the team went on the road. I watched the games from the dugout when the team played at home. I’d never been injured before like this and I felt like a loser. The thing that made me feel special and important in life was being a good baseball player. During my freshman year, not playing left me feeling lost, and the fear of not being able to play in the future left me feeling terrified. I’m sure my bouts of excessive drinking that year were directly related to my feelings of self-loathing, my lack of identity, and my fear of the future.

As painful as that week in the hospital was, there were two incredible and enlightening aspects of it. First of all, as each day passed, the news about my injuries and my prognosis got better. By the time I left, it seemed pretty clear to me that, while I’d probably be in a lot of pain over the summer and I had to take things easy, I was going to be just fine. I felt incredibly grateful and blessed because it was made abundantly clear to me by many of the doctors that I was lucky to be alive and still able to walk. I had come close to losing my life or having it changed dramatically, and this reality had put a lot of things into perspective. Although I was deeply shaken by this experience, I also felt incredibly fortunate.

Second of all, the response from my friends and fellow classmates was incredible. They came to visit me in the hospital. They brought notes, cards, flowers, and balloons. They told me how they felt about me and how important I was to them. I was touched deeply by the outpouring of support and appreciation. It helped as I was dealing with the pain of the accident, and the embarrassment I felt about all of it. What specifically amazed me was that there were all these people who I’d only known for that one year who seemed to really care about me and think I was a great guy. But, they hadn’t even seen me play baseball and that didn’t seem to have anything to do with how they felt about me. This blew my mind. Because, at 19 years old, I thought what made me special was the fact that I was such a good athlete, but these people seemed to like me anyway.

I learned a great deal about myself, about life, and about what truly matters through that scary experience. Thankfully, I recovered fully from the accident and was able to resume my normal activities by the end of that summer, even being able to play baseball again when I returned to Stanford in the fall. But, the lessons of that experience have stayed with me, and I’m grateful for that.

Unfortunately, we often attach much of our value to what we do. And while there’s nothing wrong with enjoying our work and being excited about what we do, it’s important for us to remember that we are
much
more than that. As I travel around the world speaking to groups within a variety of different organizations, I meet lots of incredible, intelligent, and successful people—many of whom are passionate about the work they do. I also have had a chance to coach and speak to lots of entrepreneurs and people, like me, who have their own businesses in which they are committed to empowering and supporting others. Many of these folks eat, breathe, and sleep their work—which is both inspiring and at times a little scary.

When we define ourselves by our work and what we do, we end up putting an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves—living and dying by the results we produce, our reputation, or a variety of external circumstances and situations, much of which we can’t control.