Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way (20 page)

Self-care is fundamental to not only our personal well-being but also to our relationships with the people closest to us. It empowers us to be more available and generous with the people around us in an authentic way, while modeling to them how we want to be treated. As Michael Bernard Beckwith says, “The Golden Rule is ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ The Platinum Rule is ‘How I treat myself is training others how to treat me.’”

At the beginning of 2012, Michelle and I made a commitment to take even better care of ourselves in service of our marriage, our girls, and our lives. One of the practical steps we took was to start a new exercise and eating program called The Happy Body, based on a book and program we’d heard about with the same title. The program consisted of eating a primarily paleo diet, which is lots of vegetables and protein, and eating at particular times throughout the day—essentially every three hours. It also involved a daily 45-minute workout we could do at home and a 5-minute meditation right after the workout.

The details of the program, both eating and exercise, were fairly simple and straightforward. We were excited to start the program and do it together. In addition to this, right around the same time, I began working with my counselor Eleanor. In our very first session, she challenged me to focus on taking care of myself and fulfilling my own needs—not looking outside myself for approval and achievement to fill me up.

By the end of February of 2012, I’d lost 25 pounds. And while the weight loss was exciting, what was most exciting to me was the enhanced energy and vitality I felt. As great as the specific techniques were, I actually think the reason I felt so good had less to do with the details of what I was doing and more to do with my commitment to making self-care a priority. Taking care of myself was something I’d done before, of course, but was something I often struggled with on many levels, especially in terms of making it a consistent priority in my life. However, through this process, something shifted inside of me and I began to realize the importance of self-care at an even deeper level.

Over the past few years, I’ve continued to use the techniques that jump-started my practice. And while my consistency does ebb and flow, I continue to feel the benefits of my commitment to self-care. I am energized physically and have kept off most of the weight I lost. I have noticed that I treat myself better, have more compassion for myself, and find it easier to prioritize my well-being and myself in general. And this has led to more peace and more confidence in my life.

Taking care of ourselves takes courage, commitment, and willingness. Given the nature of our busy lives, it’s not so easy, logistically or emotionally, for us to make and keep our self-care commitments. It’s not about doing it “right” or “perfectly,” or even about following some detailed plan to a tee. It’s simply about remembering that we deserve to take care of ourselves, and when we do, it not only nourishes us but also allows us to be available for important things and people in our lives.

CHAPTER 37

Focus on What You Can Control

In April of 1995 we had a meeting in our Stanford baseball locker room with our pitching coach, Dean Stotz, and our entire pitching staff (about 18 guys, half of the whole team) that had a profound impact on me. At that point in the season, we were really struggling. Going into the year, we were the number one–ranked team in the country. According to all the experts, we were supposed to have the best team in college baseball. But, as we say in sports, you don’t play the games on paper. As the season had gotten under way, we lost some key games and had some significant injuries. By April, which was the midway point of the season, we were no longer ranked number one in the country. In fact, we’d fallen out of the national rankings completely.

Coach Stotz, sensing our frustration and experiencing some of his own, decided to have a conversation with us in the locker room to see if we could shift things in a more positive direction. He said to all of us, “Look, guys, I know it’s been tough and we haven’t been playing that well. I wanted to get together as a pitching staff and talk about what’s been going on. Instead of me doing all the talking, I want to hear from you guys.” He continued, “Let’s have an open, honest discussion about some of your biggest frustrations. You have permission to say anything you want.”

Although we were a little nervous, especially at first, once we started talking, we began to open up and Coach Stotz started writing down what we were saying on the whiteboard in the locker room. Many of the things we talked about initially were pretty straightforward baseball-related issues—we weren’t scoring enough runs, we weren’t playing great defense, we’d blown a couple of games that we all thought we should have won. Some of the stuff had more to do with some specific circumstances we’d been facing: the injuries, the rainy weather early in the season that caused some games to be canceled or rescheduled, the ongoing construction at our stadium that had been delayed by the weather, a few questionable calls from umpires that cost us a game or two. After a while, some of the guys were willing to get a little more personal and started talking about some even more sensitive subjects, like playing time (thinking they weren’t getting a fair chance to play), team policies and rules they didn’t like, and even some of the attitudes of the other members of our team who weren’t in the room (there is often tension on a baseball team between the pitchers and position players, and that was definitely the case on our team).

Coach Stotz didn’t say much, he just continued to add to what was now becoming a pretty long list. When we were finally done, he said, “Look, men, I understand your frustration. I feel the same way about a lot of these things and there aren’t very many things up on this board that I would even disagree with. But, I have a very simple yet important question to ask you—how many of the things on this list can you control?”

As I stared at the list and contemplated Coach Stotz’s question, I realized that most of the things up on the board were clearly out of my control. They were all based on what other people were doing or not doing, or based on circumstances that weren’t up to me. One of my teammates raised his hand and said, “I don’t think there’s anything up on that board we can fully control.”

Coach Stotz then said, “That’s right! The truth is, most of these things are just complaints. And while there may be some validity to them, the more important thing to remember is that there are really only three things that you can control in baseball, and in life, for that matter. Those three things are your attitude, your effort, and your perspective. That’s it—attitude, effort, and perspective. If you can focus your attention on those three things—have your attitude be as positive as it can be, your effort as passionate as possible, and your perspective as healthy as you’re able, then you can be a productive member of this pitching staff and ultimately of this team. The same is true for life. Remembering these things will help you engage effectively in anything that happens.”

For me sitting there in that locker room at the age of 21, it was a pivotal moment and a profound insight about how I could relate to not only baseball but my life moving forward. I was grateful for those words of wisdom. They also seemed to have a positive impact on our team, as we did turn things around that season and ended up making it to the College World Series, which was a huge thrill for all of us.

I’ve thought about that conversation many times over the past 19 years and have shared that same insight with many of my clients. Too often we get caught up in focusing on things we can’t control and render ourselves ineffective at both influencing positive change and enjoying the experience.

Remembering that we have complete control over our attitude, effort, and perspective is empowering—especially when we find ourselves worried about how things are going to turn out with a particular project, relationship, goal, or any other important aspect of our lives, big or small. We can be incredibly powerful and effective in our ability to create and manifest the things we want in our lives, especially when we focus on what we can actually control.

CHAPTER 38

Forgive Yourself

In December of 2011, I decided to head up to Calistoga for a few days. Calistoga is a small town in Napa Valley, about an hour from where we live. For the past few years, Michelle and I have each gone up there occasionally by ourselves for some personal retreat time. It’s been a great self-care practice that has benefited us both individually and as a family. It’s amazing how taking just a few days away can help me put things in perspective, recharge, and reconnect to what’s most important in my life.

That December was an emotional time for me. It was the end of what had been a tumultuous year, filled with big highs and big lows. My mom had died in June, we did the short sale on our house in August and moved, and life had changed for us in many significant ways. Even with the difficulty and intensity of the year, a lot of really good things had happened, too. It felt like life was moving in a really positive direction for us.

As I took some time to reflect and go within, I realized I was carrying around an enormous amount of resentment, most of which was directed at myself. I took with me to Calistoga some old cassette tapes of an audio program called “Forgiving Yourself,” which I’d actually never listened to when I’d purchased it many years before. The tapes talked about being hard on ourselves, and being critical and harboring resentment toward ourselves—all things that I’d done quite a bit throughout my life. Based on the suggestions of this audio program and my own insight and awareness, I spent a lot of time over the course of those few days writing in my journal and meditating, all with the specific intention of forgiving myself.

I started to write down a long list of things that I wanted to forgive myself for—being harsh and critical of some of the people closest to me, being annoyed and unkind to my girls at times, worrying about all kinds of superficial things, doing harm to my body over the years, not taking good care of myself, making mistakes in my business and with our finances, not practicing what I preached in my work, and on and on the list went.

As I wrote these things down in my journal, initially I was concerned that it was simply just my gremlin taking over and listing out all the things that were “wrong” with me and all the reasons why I was “bad.” But as I allowed myself to engage more deeply in the process, I realized that what I was doing was simply telling the truth about all the things I’d been judging myself for. This was my attempt in some way to let go of the resentment I was holding toward myself. I was trying to move into a place of forgiveness and, ultimately, freedom. And while I wasn’t sure if I knew exactly the “right” way to forgive myself, I decided to simply ask, in my writings, my prayers, and my meditations, to be forgiven. Before I went to bed at night, I would ask for the weight of this self-criticism and negativity to be lifted off of me.

By the time I left Calistoga, just a few days later, I felt 50 pounds lighter. Just a few weeks after that, I had my very first session with my counselor Eleanor. As Eleanor and I began to work together, which we’ve continued to do over the last few years with wonderful results, she began to explain to me the nature of growth and change.

“Mike, as you grow, change, and evolve, here are the basic steps involved in the process: recognize, acknowledge, forgive, and change. First,” she said, “you must
recognize
what’s going on and what you’re doing. This is about seeing and about authentic awareness. Then you
acknowledge
the impact of what you’re doing with compassion and without judgment. This is about feeling your emotions and owning the impact. Then,” she said, “the most important step in the process is forgiveness—a willingness to
forgive
yourself. Self-forgiveness isn’t about letting yourself off the hook, it’s about caring enough to take a deeper level of responsibility. And when you do that, you’re able to forgive yourself authentically. The fourth step,” she continued, “is
change
. However, if you genuinely recognize, acknowledge, and forgive, the change pretty much happens on its own, and you don’t have to—nor do you get to—control it. Change is the result of authentic forgiveness and authentic forgiveness is about releasing the past and all the stories you have associated with it.” Then she followed up with the kicker: “Unfortunately, what you often do, Mike, and this is true for many people, is recognize, acknowledge,
punish
, and
repeat
—instead of forgive and change—which keeps certain negative patterns in place in your life and causes you a great deal of pain and suffering.”

The truth of what Eleanor taught me resonated deeply and we continue to talk about it in our sessions today. Since that initial conversation, I’ve been consciously focused on forgiving myself as well as releasing the past and all of the stories I have connected to it. Given that I’ve got many years of experience of
not
doing this and still have a tendency to be hypercritical of myself, as many of us do, self-forgiveness continues to be a challenge for me, although it’s getting easier. It’s a practice, and like any practice, the more we do it, the easier it is and the more effective we become.

The more willing we are to take an honest look within—to recognize and acknowledge our self-sabotaging ways and to forgive ourselves for them—the more likely we can begin to change in an authentic and powerful way. Self-forgiveness makes it possible for us to forgive others and to live our lives with a genuine sense of freedom, peace, and love.

CHAPTER 39

Let Your Light Shine

In October of 2000, I had the opportunity to meet Dan Millman. Dan’s classic book
Way of the Peaceful Warrior
had a profound impact on me and my life when I read it just a few years earlier. I was grateful to get a chance to connect with Dan and excited to gain some wisdom and insight from him as I attempted to start my business as a speaker and a coach, and hopefully, one day, become an author like him.