Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way (10 page)

“Daddy!” said my then two-year-old Samantha. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy—open up!”

Samantha, who has always been quite passionate, was going through a phase where she was barging into rooms, particularly the bathroom, all the time—so I’d been well trained to lock the door whenever I went in there.

“In a minute, honey. Daddy’s shaving,” I said.

Samantha continued to bang on the door and said, “Daddy, open the door! I have to tell you something
important
.”

“I’ll be out in a minute, sweetheart,” I said, hoping she would just go away (although I knew there was little to no chance that would actually happen).

“Daddy,” said Samantha, “it’s
really
important.”

I let out a big sigh, and with a towel wrapped around my waist, shaving cream on half my face, and a pretty bad attitude, I begrudgingly opened the door. “Yes, honey, what is it?” I asked, impatiently.

I looked down and saw Samantha standing there completely naked with a huge grin on her face. She looked up at me, spun around with a little twirl, and, with her arms outstretched, said, “Daddy, look how cute I am!” Then, quite pleased with herself, she gave me a big hug and ran off.

The irony of the situation was not lost on me. Although I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry, it hit me in a profound way that Samantha’s relationship to her own body and appearance was quite different and more empowering than mine.

Being hypercritical of my appearance, unfortunately, is a somewhat common experience for me and is something that I’ve struggled with significantly at times in my life. Some of the deepest pain and self-loathing I’ve ever felt has had to do with my feeling ugly and not good enough physically. I’m sure there are a variety of external factors that have contributed to this to some degree—growing up with parents who didn’t feel good about themselves physically and who both talked about that quite a bit; being focused so intensely on the shape, size, and function of my physical body as a competitive athlete for almost 18 of my first 25 years on the planet; and being impacted by our media and culture, which seem to have an insatiable obsession with appearance, beauty, and body perfection. However, at the root of these issues for me (which I think is true for most of us who struggle with this) is a deep sense of feeling fundamentally flawed.

A couple of things have added to the complexity and confusion of this particular issue for me over the years. First is that I’ve gotten mostly positive feedback about my appearance. I’ve never really been significantly overweight. Nothing is physically “wrong” with me, but I still feel unattractive. Which leads to the second bit of added confusion: I’m a man. Body image stuff, as we often read about, is portrayed mostly as a “women’s issue.” However, it has been a major issue in
my
life. At times I’m not sure what’s worse, feeling bad about my body and appearance, or feeling embarrassed that I feel bad about my body and appearance—both of these experiences have produced feelings of shame, guilt, sadness, anger, and conflict within me. And I know I’m not alone. This isn’t something that only affects teens, celebrities, or women—it’s something that people of all ages, body types, races, genders, backgrounds, and professions struggle with.

Most people I know have complaints about their bodies and how they look—whether they admit to them or not. There’s nothing wrong with us wanting to look our best, take care of ourselves, and be fit. However, billions of dollars are spent each year by advertisers telling us we don’t look good enough and need improvement. In return, we spend billions of our own dollars collectively on various products that are supposed to reverse our aging process, regrow our hair, smooth out our wrinkles, whiten our teeth, help us lose weight, make us look and feel better, and so much more. All in all, it sets up an unhealthy dynamic that is based on fear and scarcity. We buy into the idea that we have to do anything and everything we can to keep up, fight the natural aging process, and stay young, fit, and beautiful for as long as humanly possible. It can be exhausting and scary.

Over the past few years, I’ve started to get more real about my own struggles with my appearance and my deeper feelings about my body. Thanks to some great support, inner work, and healing, I’ve made good progress in this arena—although it still ebbs and flows for me and there is more work to be done. I had what felt like a pretty big breakthrough in 2012 when I decided I was finally ready, after a number of years of avoidance, to update the photos and videos on my website. My last photo shoot, which was in 2008, had been so upsetting and traumatic that I hadn’t been interested in doing it again. But by 2012 the images and videos on my website were dated and it was becoming problematic.

My hair started thinning when I was in my late 20s. For someone who was already hypercritical of his appearance, this was a scary and painful development. In addition to my own body issues, hair loss had been a big thing in my family, as my father had lost his hair quite young and it caused him a great deal of pain and suffering. So in both my family and our culture at large, hair loss for men is seen as a very bad thing. Even though it’s quite common, it’s something people (especially other men) often comment on and make fun of. Losing your hair isn’t really something you can hide or cover up all that well—it’s out there for the whole world to see. By my early to mid-30s, it was becoming pretty obvious, and it was a source of deep pain, shame, and embarrassment for me. Most of the reason I hadn’t gotten new photos taken had to do with my hair and my lack of acceptance about it. Although I’d been consistently shaving my head since mid-2011, something about getting these new photos and videos done made me feel vulnerable and scared in a way I wasn’t sure I could handle.

I reached out to some of the people closest to me to ask for their support, and I found some good professionals to help with the photos and videos. Although I was pretty freaked out, I scheduled a photo shoot and also planned to take a look at some video footage of some speeches I’d recently given. The process of getting the photos taken and the videos filmed wasn’t the hard part for me; it was looking at them afterward. Going into both the photo shoot and the speeches I knew were being filmed, I focused my attention on how I wanted to feel, not on how I wanted to look. I also did whatever I could to be kind and loving to myself, even though I was feeling self-conscious.

I had Michelle and also Melanie, who works with me, look at the photos before I did—so they could send me the ones they liked best (and hopefully get rid of some of the bad ones). That helped and I was actually quite pleasantly surprised by how they turned out. The videos, on the other hand, were more difficult, as I had to watch myself speaking for hours on end in order to pull out the clips for my speaking demo video and for various pages within my website. My gremlin had a field day with me at first, but after talking to my counselor Eleanor about it, she suggested that I focus on how I wanted to feel while I was watching the videos, which helped shift my perspective and made the viewing/editing process a little easier.

Although it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, the whole process ended up being a lot less painful than I expected and the net result was that I was able to launch a new website with updated photos and videos of myself, that fall—which was a huge deal for me on many levels.

As I contemplate future photo and video shoots, I still feel a bit scared and daunted. However, these feelings are less intense based not only on this past experience, but also on my personal commitment to making peace with my body and appearance. When I come from that place of peace, things are much different and more enjoyable than when I come from a place of criticism and judgment (i.e., the world of my gremlin).

What if we could befriend our bodies and not treat them like enemies we’re trying to beat, conquer, or at least keep at bay? What if we could remember how accepting and celebratory we were about our bodies as young children? The key to all of this is not about losing more weight, finding the right workout program, getting the best products, or buying better clothes. It’s really about us making peace with our bodies, and, on a deeper level, making peace with ourselves.

It’s essential for us to forgive ourselves and to also forgive our bodies. In many cases, we have done, said, and thought really negative and damaging things to and about our bodies over the years. With a sense of healthy remorse and a deep sense of empathy, we can begin to forgive ourselves for how we’ve treated ourselves in the past. At the same time, we can practice forgiving our bodies for not being “perfect,” which no body ever is or will be.

CHAPTER 16

Trust Your Gut

I was invited to speak a number of years ago at an event for a big insurance company. This meeting was an annual kick-off/goal-setting session held by the president of one of the four big divisions within this entire organization. Although there were only about a hundred people in the room (the senior-most leaders within this division), it was one of the highest-level and most important events I’d spoken at up to that point in my career. In addition, this was the first time I’d been hired by this client. Needless to say, it was a big gig for me, and I wanted it to go well.

The vice president of human resources, Christopher, who invited me to speak at the event, wanted me to talk about my book
Focus on the Good Stuff
, and specifically about how appreciation impacts employee morale, engagement, and productivity. He also made it clear to me that Bob, the president and his boss, was not a “touchy-feely” guy, so it was important to keep my presentation very business specific—using a lot of data, research, and information to make the business case for the value of appreciating employees.

I spoke with Bob on the phone prior to the event, and Christopher’s assessment of him seemed quite accurate—he was a no-nonsense, bottom-line kind of guy. The call went well, and I was feeling excited about the opportunity to speak at this important meeting, although I was still feeling a bit nervous about it, too.

I was scheduled to speak for an hour at the very end of the meeting, but I asked if I could come a few hours earlier just to sit in the back of the room and get a sense of the group and meet some of the folks before I got up. As I was sitting in the back listening to Bob speak to his leadership team, he talked about the previous year, which had been rough for them results-wise, and about the new year, which he felt cautiously optimistic about. I could feel a lot of stress, pressure, and fatigue in the room—these people had been through a lot; they were worn out and worried about turning things around.

My gut feeling was,
These people need a good cry.
As soon as that thought would pop up, right behind it would be another one, probably from my gremlin, which said,
Shut up! There will be no crying today, Robbins, no touchy-feely stuff—remember what they told you. Stick to the script, do a good job, don’t blow this. It could be a huge opportunity for you.
For the next few hours, as I sat in the back of that room preparing for my presentation, I continued to have this argument in my head between my intuition and my gremlin. It was, as you can imagine, a bit stressful and confusing.

When I finally got up to speak, I began talking all about the importance of appreciation, explaining the business case for it, citing some of the key research from the fields of positive psychology and strengths-based leadership in terms of engaging employees and maximizing results—all very important stuff. And though I understood this and saw that it was resonating with the group, my gut kept telling me that I needed to be talking in a more personal way.

One of my main intentions whenever and wherever I speak is to touch people’s hearts and have an authentic conversation about not simply the topic at hand but also what’s going on in the present moment and what we’re all dealing with as human beings—both the joy and the pain of being alive. Although I felt nervous about it, I decided to trust my intuition. I had them pair up and do an exercise where they talked about some of the stress they were experiencing as well as what and whom they were grateful for—even in the midst of the uncertain times they were going through. The conversation shifted from data, information, and the importance of appreciation in business, to the relevance and importance of appreciation in life. As I closed my speech with a final, personal story, there was a lot of emotion in the room—a number of people were crying.

Bob, however, didn’t look pleased. He had a pained expression on his face as he stood up to say a few closing comments to the group to end the meeting. Even though I felt good about the speech and could tell it resonated with the group, I sat there on pins and needles waiting to hear what Bob had to say. He started to tell a story about one of his mentors who had helped him through some difficult times and specifically over the course of the last year when things were really tough for him as a leader and for them as an organization. As he got to the end of his story, he paused, stumbled, and got choked up with emotion. By the reaction of the group, I could tell this wasn’t common for him and was a pretty big deal.

As the meeting ended, Christopher made a beeline right over to me, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me out into the hallway. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Four years! For four years we’ve been waiting for him to show up like that as a leader … and, he finally did it today. Thank you.”

Even though it was a risk and I felt scared, I chose to trust my gut and it paid off—not just for me, but for Bob and the entire group. Bob thanked me briefly that day and followed up with a heartfelt e-mail after the meeting. In his note, he talked about how important the message, meeting, and moment were to him personally and to his leadership group. I continue to work with this organization quite a bit and whenever I see Bob, he lovingly refers to me as “the guy who made me cry.”

For most of us, myself included, trusting our gut can be challenging at times. We have a tendency to second-guess ourselves, to not listen to our intuition, to value the opinions of others over our own, or to hang on to negative memories from the past when we’ve made mistakes or “bad” decisions. These things make it difficult for us to trust ourselves and thus create issues in our relationships with others, our work, our lives, and, most specifically, in our relationships to ourselves.