One of the things I love most about coaching is the privilege of holding space for someone as she dives into her own experience. As the relationship deepens and trust is tested and found to hold strong, we go on inspiring journeys together. Often the journey is one I think of as “the road to genuinely liking yourself.”
Sometimes we share the highs, sometimes the lows. In the process of moving forward with her vision for herself and her life and relationships, we might explore behaviors she’s proud of or that leave her cringing. People show up frustrated, exalted, angry, sad, disappointed, thrilled, scared. They laugh, they cry; they go deep and emerge with pearls of wisdom. And I get to lovingly witness it all.
A Foundation of Trust & Courage
I mentioned ‘trust.’ In the particular context of life coaching, trust means many things, but in the coaching session itself, perhaps it can best be reduced down to the question, “Will you judge me if I share this with you?” or perhaps even closer to the truth: “Will you still love me if you know this about me?”
I find myself sitting in awe of the courage it takes to reveal oneself to another human being: our glorious, glowing strengths as much as our hollow, pitted ugliness. Often it is just as difficult – if not more so – for people (and especially women) to reveal their strengths as it is to share what they perceive as their weaknesses. After all, to talk about strengths is “bragging.” And self-awareness is “supposed” to be about knowing our faults and coming to terms with them, right?
Half right. Or maybe more accurately: one-third right.
Self-Awareness minus Judgment
Self-awareness is largely about seeing ourselves as we are and understanding the impact this has in a variety of different circumstances – without judgment either way. Reserving judgment on ourselves is a crucial step on the path toward unconditionally loving ourselves. Think about it: You don’t say to a little kid, “I love you – except when you do that. Then I stop loving you.” No, you love them all the time – though admittedly you may not like a particular behavior. The behavior, however, is not them.
Simple, right? So why is this clarity so difficult to achieve when the subject at hand is ourselves?
I would argue that self-awareness is one-third about seeing our faults without any blinders on. It is one-third about recognizing our strengths without any filters or mufflers to dampen the glorious noise. And it is one-third about stepping back from the immediacy of our experience to see the larger context, which gives us perspective and allows us to just be as we are.
Liking Yourself – Putting It in Context
When we stay connected to ourselves without shying away from either our darkness or our light, we begin to recognize that our greatest strengths and our greatest weaknesses are often two sides of the same coin. For myself, I discovered during a series of powerful workshop exercises that one of my big self-criticisms – “You’re too much,” which castes my high energy, intelligence, engagement, and enthusiasm as something that overwhelms people – was also one of my greatest strengths, as evidenced by feedback from friends and colleagues who describe me as “filled with light,” “abundantly awake and alive,” and “a thoroughbred.”
Knowing we are often dealing with two sides of a single coin allows us to take a step back in any given situation and recognize that the story we tell about that characteristic or behavior – “Who” we judge and describe ourselves to be, even just to ourselves – can be influenced for the positive by a holistic awareness of the larger context.
Liking Yourself in the Face of Judgment
Any given person, whether judging you negatively or putting you on a pedestal, is likely responding to you based on their own perceptions, insecurities, and negative self-talk. Some people carry around more of this than others and shove it off onto other people more frequently – a behavior, interestingly enough, that tends to be inversely proportional to the level of self-awareness they’ve cultivated for themselves.
When you choose to become aware of that simple fact in the context of that particular person who is judging you either way, and you then choose to make adjustments accordingly, this can become an act of kindness toward that other person (for example, my clients who actively decide to let slide the crotchety comments from an aging parent or who adjust how they express themselves around particular people). However, taking it further by taking on that other person’s judgment as a sustained and generalized commentary on yourself and “Who” you are in the world as defined through that one person’s limited experience and possibly warped perspective is doing yourself – and the world – an incredible injustice.
The act of separating the simple fact(s) of you from the judgments laid upon those facts in a particular context creates the space to see your qualities and characteristics as neutral, and simply waiting for the story you tell about them to decide which side of the coin they will represent at any given moment.
How to Stay Connected to Liking Yourself
Remember that experience of remaining consistently loving toward that child we talked about, separating their behavior from their self? Loving the core of them, including their personality and characteristics in all their various manifestations (while perhaps preferring the experience of some expressions over others)?
You remain connected to the core of that child no matter what, and you take the larger context of their behavior into account as an important part of the story: perhaps they’re hungry, tired, cold, cranky, frustrated. You know, for example, that the same high spirits and willingness to speak out that got them into trouble at school are a big part of what make them so much fun to explore the world with in other contexts.
Applying that same consistent and loving connection to your own core qualities while understanding the contexts you operate within forms the essence of liking yourself. Allowing your various expressions of self to attract some people and deflect others can be viewed as part of the dance we all participate in as we move through the world. Opportunities are opened up in both instances; they just might look a little different in each manifestation.
Our job is to recognize, learn from, and act on those opportunities in our own unique way on our own unique timetable and for our own unique reasons. There are no wrong answers! We are all constantly evolving, using the tools and resources we have available to us in that moment to move along our path, shaping it the entire way.
What will your unique path look like? Will you shine, skip, dance, make noise? Whatever you do and however you do it, I encourage you to be kind to yourself and to feel alive and embodied with your whole gorgeous self. I can’t wait to hear about your adventures!
