Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way (4 page)

Writing and publishing a book now felt like a big, but also practical, goal given my new business and career path. Thanks to some great help and mentoring over the next couple years, by mid-2003 I had a full book proposal and a literary agent, which was quite a big deal for me—especially given my age at the time (29) and my fear of writing.

My agent started submitting the proposal for my book, which at the time, we were calling
The Power of Appreciation,
to various publishers in New York. The first round of submissions went out to ten different publishers, all of whom rejected it. The second round of submissions, which we sent out a few months later after some tweaks and adjustments, went out to seven more publishers; again, all rejections. By the end of 2003, I was feeling pretty disappointed and disheartened. The following year, my agent and I parted ways, and I didn’t think my dream of becoming an author was anywhere close to coming true.

In 2005, I decided to take another crack at it. I got a new agent, made a few more tweaks to the proposal, and changed the title to
Focus on the Good Stuff
. And, at the beginning of 2006, we were ready to start submitting the updated proposal. After seven more submissions and seven more rejections, I hit what felt like my rejection limit.

In late February, my new agent said to me, “Mike, you’re a nice guy, and this appreciation message is a good one, but I’m not sure it’s going to happen.” I trusted my agent and took her feedback to heart, but that same night something just snapped in me. I got angry and had a big realization, so the next day I called her back and said, “Listen, I realized after our conversation yesterday that I’ve been waiting for permission from you, from these publishers, or from some outside authority to tell me that I’m ready to be an author and that this book is worthy of being published. I’ve decided that I’m not waiting for permission anymore. I’ve been scared to write this book and haven’t been sure if I could even do it, but I’m ready now, and if no publisher wants it, that’s fine; I’ll just publish it myself.”

My agent said, “Okay, I hear you. Before you do that, there are three more publishers on my list. I will send it out to them and see if there’s any interest. But, if they’re not interested, I don’t know what else to tell you.” She sent the proposal out and within just a few days she got back to me and said, “Guess what? All three are interested!” And within a few weeks, I had a contract in place to write and publish my first book!

Although I had made some changes, the proposal was essentially the same one that had been rejected 25 other times total and 7 times within the previous month. There really wasn’t anything different with the book idea itself; something had just changed within me. I shifted and was finally ready, which, at the deepest level, is what I believe allowed it to happen.

In hindsight, I can see that it happened at just the right time, when I was actually ready—mentally, emotionally, and practically. It seemed like it took a very long time, from 2001 when I first started working on the proposal, to 2006 when I finally got the contract. And, even though those five years were filled with a lot of rejection and doubt, the manifestation of this specific goal was less about all of the practical things that were involved in making it happen and more about my internal shift and change—once I was truly ready, it happened.

We’ve all had this experience in our lives in both big and small ways. Do you ever notice that when you’re having a bad day or a rough time in life, even the people and activities you normally love don’t bring you the same amount of joy? On the flip side, when you’re having a great day or things are going really well in life, even the people or circumstances that might normally annoy you somehow seem much less stressful. In those simple situations, your perspective and your own internal state have a big impact on how you experience life, not the other way around.

What if we put more attention on our own growth, evolution, and transformation—and less attention on trying to change the people and circumstances around us? This doesn’t mean that we’d stop caring about what other people do or say. It also doesn’t mean we wouldn’t give feedback to or make requests of those around us. We also wouldn’t stop working toward specific changes, goals, and dreams related to the most important aspects of our lives.

However, by letting go of our insatiable desire to fix, change, and control everyone and everything around us, we give ourselves the space to focus our attention on the true source of our own happiness, success, and fulfillment—ourselves!

CHAPTER 4

Remember that You’re Valuable Just Because You’re You

A few years back, I started playing a game with my girls, Samantha (our eight year old) and Rosie (our five year old). The game goes like this: I ask them, “How much does Daddy love you?” They respond by putting one or both of their arms up into the air as high as they can and say, “This much.”

I say, “That’s right!”

And then, I ask them a very important question, “And how come Daddy loves you so much?”

To which they say, “Because I’m me!”

I then say, “That’s right, just because you’re you!”

It’s a fun, sweet, and powerful game that I love playing with them, and it’s something I hope to continue for many years. I play this game as much for them as I do for myself. For the girls, I want them to know that my love and appreciation for them is not based on what they do, how they look, how well they listen, if they come in first place in the swim meet, if their teacher has good things to say about them in school, or any other conditions, expectations, and accomplishments.

For me, I do it for two main reasons. First of all, as a father, I find it challenging at times to keep my heart open and to stay connected to my love for my girls when they do or say things that upset me. This game serves as a reminder that my intention is to love them unconditionally—even in those moments when I don’t approve of what they’re doing. This is often easier said than done—especially when my girls do or say things that I deem disrespectful, ungrateful, or worst of all, mean. The challenge for me is to stay connected to my commitment of unconditional love and at the same time give them feedback, boundaries, and consequences that will serve them well. This is, by far, one of the greatest challenges of parenthood for me.

On another level, by saying this to my girls on a regular basis, I feel like I’m healing something deep within me that I’ve carried around for most of my life—the belief that my value as a human being is based on certain conditional, material, or external factors (accomplishments, appearance, approval of others, status, and so on). Even though I know better than to use these external factors as a basis for my self-worth and value, I find it challenging at times to let go of the conditioning and feedback I’ve received from the outside world.

How about you? How much of your own worth do you place in the hands of other people’s opinions, material success, or other outside factors? If you’re anything like me, and many of the people I know and work with, probably quite a bit—or at least more than is healthy. The belief that we have to do specific things, produce certain results, look a particular way, and so on, in order to be valuable or lovable causes a great deal of suffering in our lives. From an early age, most of us have been doing whatever we can to gain approval and love from those around us. It starts with our parents, siblings, and family members when we’re very young. As children and adolescents, it extends to our teachers, coaches, and especially our friends. As we move into adulthood, it continues to expand to include our colleagues, clients, and anyone we deem important to our success in life.

At the age of seven, I started playing baseball (well, T-ball, actually) and I loved it. Not only was it a fun game, but I was really good at it—which made it even more fun. For a young, sensitive boy who struggled with deep feelings of insecurity and whose father was not only absent, but also beginning what would become a six-year odyssey of mental hospitals, halfway houses, suicide attempts, noncommunication, and more as he struggled with serious bipolar disorder, baseball became a safe haven for me. It was a place where I received approval, recognition, and love—or at least what felt like love to me as a boy and adolescent. From the age of seven all the way until I decided to walk away from the game on my 25th birthday (after four surgeries on my pitching arm), I had a love–hate relationship with baseball. I loved the game itself and had enjoyed lots of wonderful experiences playing. However, since my identity was so wrapped up in it and the approval, recognition, and “love” I received from playing were so conditional, I got to a point where I resented this great game.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with our desire to have the respect and admiration of those around us or to accomplish our most important goals, we often give away our power, consciously or unconsciously, to the people, circumstances, and results (or lack thereof) in our lives.

Our true value has nothing to do with any of these external factors. At the deepest level, we’re valuable as human beings just because we’re us—not because of what we do, how we look, what people think of us, or what we produce or accomplish.

In my very first session with my counselor Eleanor a few years ago, she explained to me that part of what caused the suffering and insecurity in my life was when I looked outside myself to fulfill my needs, which, by the way, she said was true for most human beings. She then explained a unique set of seven needs that was, as she described it, a modified version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

1. Safety
   
2. Security
   
3. Belonging/Value
   
4. Love
   
5. Knowing
   
6. Beauty
   
7. Spirituality
   

Eleanor then taught me a simple but powerful meditative technique to use as a way of learning to fulfill my own needs.
¹

I have used this technique a lot over the last few years and it’s had an incredible impact on my life. It has been a great reminder and a practice for me to focus on fulfilling my own needs—not erroneously expecting people, accomplishments, circumstances, or situations outside of myself to do it for me. The bottom line is that we are safe, secure, valued, loved, known, beautiful, and spiritually connected—just because we are who we are. That’s it. We can’t earn or lose that which is inherently ours.

_____________________

¹
Specific instructions for how to do this meditative technique, as well as a link to the page on my website where you can download a free audio recording of me guiding you through it verbally, are listed in the appendix section of the book on page 203

CHAPTER 5

Be Gentle with Yourself

In April of 2009, my book
Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Already Taken
came out. The book was released on a Monday, and we had a big launch event at a local hotel. The following few days consisted of the online launch campaign, some media appearances, and a few other events—exciting stuff. Toward the end of the week, I was finally able to get to the local Barnes and Noble near where we were living. I hadn’t been in an actual bookstore since the book had come out.

I wanted to check out this particular store because my publisher told me that not only were they carrying the book, but they would be featuring it up front the first month it was out. I was excited about that. When I walked into the store, at first I didn’t see my book, which concerned me. But before I went over to ask someone where it was, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. In the middle of the store, they had a big circular display for the new releases, and there was a small stack of my books there, on the back side of this display.

I walked over, picked up a copy, and stood there, admiring my own book. Although I had boxes of them in my office, seeing it in the store for the first time filled me with a sense of pride and enthusiasm. Then I had this thought:
Should I buy one?
I know this might sound a bit narcissistic and self-absorbed, and it is. But what I’d learned when my first book came out is that books are essentially on consignment in the stores. This means that if nobody buys them, they get sent back to the publisher. A few of my fellow author friends and mentors had told me that it was totally okay, especially in the first few weeks after it comes out, to pick up a few copies of your own book when you’re in a store, to “help the cause,” so to speak. I had done this a few times when my first book came out, but for some reason I felt more self-conscious about it this time around.

As I stood there in the middle of the Barnes and Noble, I debated for a while in my head and finally decided,
The heck with it. I’m going to do it again, but just one copy.
I took the book and got in line. As I was standing there, I told myself that when I got up to the front, I would let the person behind the counter know that it was my book and it had just come out that week. The closer I got, the more nervous I began to feel. When it was my turn to pay, I put the book down on the counter and the woman at the cash register immediately said, “We’ve been selling a lot of these.”

“Really?” I asked excitedly.

Then she asked me a question that kind of threw me off: “Did you see this guy on TV or something?”

Although her question made sense since I had done a few local TV interviews that week, it totally caught me off guard, and here’s what I said in response: “Ah, no, ah, he’s a local author. I just want to support him.” As it was coming out of my mouth, I was thinking,
What is that?

I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but I was mortified by what I’d just said. The woman behind the counter had no idea it was my book, although she probably thought something was up, given my awkward response and the strange look that I’m sure I had on my face. I couldn’t even figure out how to recover or say anything else. All I could do was reach into my wallet and pull out my credit card, with
my name
on it, to pay for the book. With my head down, I signed the receipt as fast as possible, grabbed the bag containing my new book, and literally ran out of the store. Standing there on the street corner, I thought,
I wrote a book on authenticity, and I just
lied
to that woman.