Confidence is something that is invaluable in my life and business. I was an eye surgeon and entrepreneur for a long time, though confidence, true core confidence and a healthy self-image was not something that I actually possessed despite outward appearances.
I had bought into the lie that if I worked really hard, ignored my needs and just pressed on into the world of academics and achievement that I would feel good about myself, have plenty of confidence and happiness and live happily ever after.
Well, apparently this fairy tale lives on as I look around me and see women knocking themselves out and getting sick physically and emotionally from burnout and stress. I know men do this also, yet I’m specifically addressing women here.
Now that I’ve taken the time to go inside and learn how to eliminate the blind spots that were distorting my own self-image and limiting my true potential for business success, happy relationships and good health, I can see more clearly how to acquire the vision for my life that I always hoped for.
Now don’t misunderstand me, business and professional success is quite important to me, but now that I “know who I am” instead of believing the media and societal nonsense that there is something wrong with me or that I am deficient in who I am in some way, I can relax and have more energy and space to be my authentic self.
This authentic self, I call it the “Magnificent Me”, is separate from the sense of “self” that we form in our brains, the mental construct of “who we think we are” – The Mental Me. Science is now finally beginning to venture into this murky territory. It is not a black and white conclusion if examined like a math formula, yet the more we come to understand how our brain/mind create these identity stories, the more empowered we can be especially as women.
I find that we as women carry an over abundance of self-deprecation. We are constantly self-rejecting, rejection others, comparing, judgment and over doing. Men have far more testosterone than we do and can get away with over working more easily. When we over indulge in work and then turn around and try to seek love and approval by pleasing everyone but ourselves, our sexy, playful parts get neglected and we turn into “dull girls” (no offense ladies, “dull women” is just fine also).
Confidence for women takes courage that’s for sure. It requires courage in order to go against the prevailing “common sense”. Common sense, says that confidence is based on externals such as the degree you hold, your job title, your gender, race, religion, family social status, etc, etc.
This may be “common knowledge”, yet it is foolishness. It is not wise. Wisdom overrides convention, and thus, the need for courage to be able to open your mind – and heart – to be able to consider it and receive. Sometimes I need to be the “loving lioness”.
When I was insecure and lived in fear, I came from a place of self-rejection, criticism of self and others and essentially lived hiding behind a mask of “confidence” and over achievement. It was a mask because it did not feel authentically me.
I was so afraid of being hurt that I decide to control (what an illusion) instead of being controlled. While this decision did help me at the stage of consciousness that I was at, and in the world in which I found myself, it ultimately created chaos in my life and was leading to forms of self-sabotage.It became destructive.
Change is a good thing, in that sometimes things need to be destroyed before they are rebuilt. Yet, if you use wisdom, you can head some of this type of destructive energy off at the pass. Why wait until your life falls apart from illness, divorce or unpleasant relationship drama with children or friends? Why wait until you get kicked out of that job you hate or your business falls apart?
This is the way the “common” mindset works. It hangs on for dear life, clinging to the status quo, fearing change. If you want quantum leap change, and if you want core confidence, coming from your true, Authentic self, you will have to take the leap, by faith with courage, using PRINCIPLES that are ancient, and lasting, in order to live your true potential.
Confidence and empowerment is something near and dear to my heart, as I know the pain of self-rejection and the hazard of constantly striving to over achieve. It’s not productivity that is the problem; the issue is the mindset in which the goals are set and undertaken.
If we as women buy into the faulty thinking that our worth is based on what we do, what we look like and whom we are trying to please today, we will never have peace of mind, empowerment and personal power or authentic confidence.
The driven behavior that is going on in our society today is not even healthy masculine behavior. Truly healthy masculine energy (not male, -masculine- there is a difference) allows us to move forward into life and get things done. It creates a sense of independence, provision and protection.
Even as women we need to have a balance of these qualities in order to speak up, have courage to go through fear and to keep people out of our space when we need to. These qualities are not limited to males/men. The driven quality that most people attribute to men that we see is really the wounded ego. In fact, men need to live in more balance and tap into the feminine qualities of the Queen also, truth be told. The need to relax, feel and enjoy life is a human need for health and well-being.
The ego, our sense of human identity has its place and I believe that if you did not have one, you would not be able to self-identify yourself. Yes, you can be aware that you have an ego, yet are NOT the ego. You can be aware of yourself as a spiritual being, yet living the human experience via your “role” or as you call yourself, yet not get lost in the ego. This only comes via awareness and spiritual maturity which is a process unique to everyone.
It is not a one size fit all cookie-cutter process. Anyway, the ego wounded pushes and drives us as it gets lost in “survival of the fittest”, judgment, competition, all based in fear. Ego gone wild is fear at its worse. So, in earlier decades of my life, my ego, (I too was lost in it at one time), in its need to survive and get, (notice I said “get” not “receive”) affirmation and what I perceived then as love was always striving to prove that I was “good enough”.
Yet, funny thing was I never truly felt good enough or that I had enough of anything, be it time, energy or money. This is no way to live and accounts for all of the stress, fear and chaos that is going on in the world today, not to mention war, disease and greed. As women, it’s time to see through this nonsense and stop the madness in ourselves first, and then perhaps we can do what the Dalai Lama said in regard to “the western woman saving the world”.
If we don’t save ourselves first, the attempt to play rescuer again is a waste of time and as dysfunctional as ever. If we don’t develop confidence from our CORE, it’s just fake, cosmetic. Living into the Queen is about self-love, self-acceptance, and recognizing the POWER of love and feelings. Our feelings are just a guidance system to reveal to us what we truly perceive; not what we give lip service to.
As human, women and men, we have allowed ourselves to be conditioned like Pavlov’s dog to repress our feelings and run away. When we learn to make friends with them, we then are able to be truly empowered and physically healthier as well. As we face our fears and release this repressed pain-body of emotion that dwells within us at a cellular and energetic level, we can heal. Once we heal our wounded ego, these “cataracts of the soul” can fall away and we can let our Light shine and see others and ourselves more clearly.
Money and career success in general impacts our relationships, our lifestyles and even our health. All around us the workplace and business landscape is shifting. Being a former eye surgeon, I know what it means to invest a lot of time and effort at learning a skill yet, nowadays, there is no profession that is immune from change.
Job transition and entrepreneurship rates are rising rapidly, and depending on your perspective, this can be a “good” or “bad” thing. One thing is for sure – if you want to successfully navigate our changing times with your physical and financial health intact, you will need to consider opening your mind and become aware of what FEAR is – Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality.
I’m referring to psychological fear. When I wrote my book Empower Up and Play Big which introduces new cutting-edge brain science and practical ways to apply it into our everyday lives, it occurred to me that based on the way our brain works, if we are unaware of managing our attention, it is all to easy to create “stories” of fear of success of fear of failure.
These terms are tossed around loosely and often without much consideration as to what they really mean. From a practical point of view of learning how to “breakthrough fear”, I think it’s important to define what is the root issue in the first place. Fear of failure and success break down into the fear that there is a threat to either our sense of security, love or self-esteem.
If you are familiar with the chakra system of integrative health, you will understand that these are issues in the first three chakra levels, and even if you are not familiar you can still understand the point here, so stay with me. If these two fears are related to these three human needs, how do they play out? In essence “Fear of Failure or Success” show up in our lives as:
Happiness is truly an inside job. It’s been said that material things, and money won’t make you happy. It never was meant to. Poverty and lack won’t make you happy either. There is an article today in the New York Times, “But Will It Make You Happy?”
The issue is, nothing outside of yourself is going to give you the joy and happiness that can only be found within. It’s there already, yet it is covered over by the illusions of life. What are some of these illusions? The very belief that anything outside of you is the SOURCE of your joy is a major illusion.
The outer is really a reflection of your consciousness. It is a summary of what you have been “being”, “doing” and the perception of what this translates into manifestation, what you have. Even if you have many material possessions, if they were obtained in a state of being of ungrateful, whining, complaining, “not enoughness”, you will still feel unfulfilled when you obtain it.
If we feel dis-satisfied with ourselves, and that we are “missing something”, when we go to find it by getting whatever we think that is, we will still feel that negative feeling as the material things cannot fill a spiritual void. I get this. I get it because I’m aware and actively, mindfully addressing it in myself.
It is a process. It is not that I am broken and trying to “fix” myself. I’m just simply peeling away the “cataracts of the soul”, these illusion, beliefs that filter over the light of Spirit and distort how I see the world and myself. As I dump the conditioned beliefs handed down genetically, by society and the stories I created and wired into my brain/body before I realized this, I see life through new perceptual eyes.
The key to happiness is to BE happy – NOW. Now is all there is. You may have to deal with releasing the energy patterns in your body’s cells and energy field (this is getting into science now, not simply woo-woo, so keep your mind open if you want to grow).
Empowerment begins the day you are willing to open your mind and reassess what you think you “know” for sure. Our beliefs are evolving all the time. We only “believe” we know “how life really is”. We’ve been taught, even this is done usually unconsciously, to put ourselves down and to judge harshly almost everything we do.
It could be the way we dress, what we read, our career choices, how we look, our hair – even how we mother and raise our children. The list is never ending. There are many reasons why this happens. What I want to focus on here though is a major concept as to how to stop judgment in its tracks. It’s called “self-acceptance”.
Self-love is not the same as narcissism. It is simply having compassion and the flexibility to allow yourself to grow and unfold. Where you are is where you are in consciousness today and that evolves. I am the mother of two teenagers, and of course I’ve given them “my best”.
One piece of wisdom I’ve come to understand is that in any given moment, I am operating out of my own level of understanding and how I feel about myself influences my perception of self and others. This is always “by best” as I cannot see through any other filter but my own mind and brain.
There is an article today in the Huffington Post, “Negotiating Mommy Guilt vs Mommy Wisdom”, and it speaks about the “inner critic” that we all have. Where does this critic come from? Some of the voices are our own stories and versions of “how life is” that started in early childhood. Some are from our ancestors via the gene pool. Some are from those rigid, small-minded teachers in grade school.
Where are they hiding out? In your memory, the memory held in your body at a cellular level. In fact, there is an area of the brain called the area of “autobiographical memory” – the story of who you think you are.
Core confidence comes from the inside out as does empowerment. Empower is just that, power coming from within. When I refer to core, I’m referring to the Authentic Self AND I see an acronym within the word.
C is for Courage, O is for Open-mind, R is for Reflection and E is for Enthusiasm. Within the word enthusiasm is “theos” which refers to God/Spirit and “en” is “in”/within.
So, in order to be truly empowered, your confidence and sense of self-esteem has to start from the inside out. As long as you look outside of yourself for security, love and self-esteem you are in trouble. Why do we allow others to tell us who we are and what we can do?
It’s primarily because we don’t trust ourselves. We’ve forgotten how to listen to our own intuition and guidance from spirit. We don’t “trust our gut”. This tends to come from years of not believe aware of how e wire our beliefs and just giving away our power out of fear of rejection. While rejection is particularly scary for children, and I do understand why, as grown adult women, we can make a decision and then set an intention to learn how to let go of the old stories that are wired into our own brain, nervous system and hence body.
Yes, this does require courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. FEAR here as referred to is Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality – it’s psychological in nature. When I first started this journey, I had to first open my mind to new ideas. Trying to get a new result using the same information and doing things the same way really is a form of “insanity”.
I had to reflect on the thoughts feelings and emotions and stop judging them and running away. There is much wisdom to be gained from reframing our stories. I learned how to make friends with them and “update” my belief system.
Lastly, instead of looking for transient artificial happiness “out there” somewhere, I realized that as I dropped the old stories that my body felt different, my perception of self and others changed, and I started feeling natural joy within – and it was more often than not independent of what was going on around me.
This is true enthusiasm. It comes from within, from the Authentic, spirit self. You see you do not need to seek the Light outside of you; the Light is already within you. Our behaviors and attitudes are not the same as who/what we are. They are just a reflection of what we believe. In fact, at your core, you are already “ok” right now – just because you breathe. What do you think?
Confidence is something that is invaluable in my life and business. I was an eye surgeon and entrepreneur for a long time, though confidence, true core confidence and a healthy self-image was not something that I actually possessed despite outward appearances.
