You are born an innocent, adorable little baby entering this world with inherent worthiness of love, without having to do anything to earn or deserve affection. Imagine you grew up feeling loved and safe, yet empowered to test boundaries and explore new realms. When you inevitably got hurt in your exploration, you were met with an encouragement to express your pain, and a comforting reassurance that you will be okay. You were taught that pain is a part of life and getting hurt is not something we have to be afraid of because we are strong and can handle it.

You were pushed to work hard for what you want, building a work ethic, confidence, and pride in your ability to make things happen. You were encouraged to fail often because it means you are taking risks, putting yourself out there and on the path to succeeding. Your unique talents, passions and interests were championed, encouraged, and celebrated, allowing you to forge a unique path, authentic to who you are and what lights you up. You went on to study things in school that interested you and forged a career path that is meaningful and fun, without a care or concern for what other people think.

Your dedication to embark on purposeful and passionate endeavors, develop your skills fully, take risks, put yourself out there, fail, keep going, ask for help, receive constructive criticism, learn, grow, pivot, innovate, and evolve, leads to incredible financial success and professional fulfillment. You continue to grow and push your boundaries your whole life, leading to perpetual passion, aliveness, and pride.

Your genuine confidence and happiness allow you to open up and connect with people easily and effortlessly. You foster a vast community woven with genuine and deep relationships with people mutually supporting and caring about one another— feeling a profound sense of belonging and love. Your wellspring of innate security, joy, and abundance allows your cup to spill over onto others, freely sharing support, warm smiles, and random acts of kindness with both strangers and loved ones alike. When people you know hurt you, you talk about it with them openly and honestly, working through your differences, and growing together.

You wake up with excitement for your day and go to sleep with peace and fulfillment, knowing it was a day well spent. When your life is done one day, you smile knowing you left it all on the field and made the most of the time you were given. You lived, you loved, you mattered, and now you are ready for the next great adventure.

It is likely your life experience feels vastly, and maybe even laughably, different than this idyllic picture. In fact, it may feel something more like this…

You are born an innocent, adorable little baby entering this world with inherent worthiness of love. But soon you learn that affection must be earned. Early in your childhood development, you begin to study your parents, learning which behaviors please them, earn their affection, and create peace in your home. And conversely, you learn which behaviors seem to lead to disapproval, abandonment, or volatility. You internalize a deep fear that you aren’t enough and won’t be loved unless you can perform in all the right ways.

You go on to lead a life determined to prove your significance. You study things in school and choose a career path that you think will make your parents proud, earn lots of money, sound impressive to your friends or just feels safe, never considering what you enjoy. Soon you feel the pressure to settle down, get married, buy a house, maybe have a few kids—so that’s what you do. You work hard and achieve some degree of success and feel like you “should” be happy with your life, but deep down you feel a profound sense of unfulfillment, wondering “Is this it? Is this all there is?”

Your seeking of external validation creates patterns of people pleasing, social anxiety, and a life-long performance of who you think you need to be to be liked and loved. All of which leave you feeling some degree of exhausted, insecure, bitter, unworthy, anxious, alone, and uncared for.

You look at other people’s lives on social media and it feels like you are behind. It feels like you should be better, life should be more than what it is. You feel the potential within you for so much more than this. You fantasize about changing careers, changing spouses, changing addresses, changing yourself in some sort of way that just seems better.

You have lots of ideas. You set lots of goals and make lots of plans and do lots of research and think about it all a LOT… but alas nothing ever actually changes. You can never quite seem to take action or put yourself out “there.” At least not long enough to be successful. And so you remain stuck in analysis paralysis, perpetually planning to start, trapped in a purgatory between being fully here and somewhere else, enslaved by the never-ending obligations and responsibilities of your life.

You have lots of stories and excuses about why you can’t and haven’t done anything to change, but deep down you know the truth… you’re afraid. Afraid to make a mistake. Afraid to fail. Afraid to let people down. Afraid to make the wrong choice. Afraid to start over. Afraid of what people will think. Afraid of rejection, abandonment, looking stupid. Afraid you are wasting your life. Afraid you are going to die alone. Afraid of pretty much everything. Ultimately, afraid that you aren’t enough and won’t be loved.

And so you remain stuck in your familiar and comfortable routine, hidden away from the world, choosing the familiar pain of your present circumstances over the uncertain abyss beyond what you’ve known. You beat yourself up for your failure to change and for settling for this mediocre existence, gathering further evidence to support your deep-seated fear that you are not good enough.

The inner screaming of your soul that you are wasting your life manifests as anxiety, trying to wake you up to make a change. But that internal alarm is quieted by a blanket of helplessness and hopelessness called depression. And here you remain, swaddled in apathy, sucking on your chosen pacifier of comfort to get you through each day.

You’ve found enough sources of pleasure to numb, distract and escape from your pain— whether it be endless busyness, food, alcohol, pain pills, weed, shopping, video games, online puzzles, extramarital affairs, social media scrolling or Netflix binging.

These coping mechanisms provide just enough pleasure to dampen the pain of disappointment, loneliness and self-loathing that may otherwise motivate you to make a change and grow beyond your current circumstances and limitations. These low-quality sources of pleasure provide a temporary high, followed by a comedown and feeling even worse about yourself and your life, creating a downward spiral taking you further and further away from the person you might have been and the life you might have had.

Other people trigger you easily and often, causing you to either erupt in anger and meanness, hurting the people you love; or you go cold and pull away— protecting yourself and hurting them silently with your withholding of love. You pass along the pain you feel inside like a contagious pandemic, until eventually it seems that all people suffer from the affliction of being a selfish asshole. Believing that all people suck, you seek further refuge in the cozy isolation of your nest at home.

You put your head down and do what you have to do to get by. The days, months, and years blow by in a monotonous blur that feels like blink, until one day you lift your head up from the hamster wheel you’ve been mindlessly running on and realize you’ve reached the end. You are flooded with regret for all the things you wish you would have done differently. You wasted the precious time you were given just existing and settling for the distraction of entertainment instead of the rapture of aliveness that existed just outside your comfort zone. You didn’t live, you didn’t love, and you didn’t matter— and even though you aren’t ready, now it’s over. You are being forced to exit your life much the same way you lived it—feeling terrified, inadequate, and powerless.

Unless, of course, you decide to take your pen and rewrite the end of your story.

You cannot change the beginning. Your parents and your childhood were what they were and it’s not worth wasting any more energy wishing they could have or should have been different. You cannot change your past, but you sure as hell have the power to change your future. At any moment, you can choose to step up and step out of your comfort zone. You can break free from the fear, insecurity, limitations, and other dysfunctional patterns you inherited. You can start living the life deep down inside you know is possible. A life full of passion and purpose and love. A life where you feel confident and fearless, and worthy. A life that ends with no regrets.

Much love,

I was so scared that it felt like I was going to throw up. I tried desperately to slow my breathing as my mind and heartbeat sped out of control. I was about to get on stage to give a speech in front of a thousand people, and I was 12 years old. My dad, a successful trial attorney, had spent weeks coaching me—helping me write my speech, practice it in front of the camcorder, making notes for improvement all the while. I had already won competitions in my class, all of 6th grade, my entire middle school, the county and now the big show—the Florida Tropicana Public Speaking State Competition! When it was finally my turn, my dad put his hand on my shoulder and told me to just go have fun. It doesn’t matter what the result is. “You’ve already won just by getting up there.”

I won 1st place at that competition.

People always ask me how it is that I am so confident. This is why— I had parents who believed in me and a dad who constantly nudged me out of my comfort zone.

The secret to being confident is doing things you aren’t sure you can do, and then learning you can in fact do them. When you put yourself out there and get positive results enough times, you develop a belief in yourself that “you can do anything you put your mind to.” We call this confidence.

Confidence is a feeling that we have what it takes to achieve a desired external outcome.

Sometimes that outcome is being liked by others…

I know how to “match and mirror” you to foster a feeling of connection and likeability. I know how to make interesting conversation. I know how to be aloof enough that you chase me. I know how to flirt and seduce and charm and attract. I know how to do makeup and style my hair and find my light and work my angles and edit imperfections and write witty captions that elicit lots of likes. I know how to make you laugh. I know how to work hard to get good grades and a scholarship to college. I know how to nail an interview and land pretty much any job I want. I know how to knock down doors and sell myself—or ice to an Eskimo for that matter. I know how to start a business and make lots of money. I know how to speak in front a group of people. I know I can lead a class as president, my teammates as captain, or my employees as boss. I am confident there isn’t anything I can’t do.

But I’m also confident that none of that really matters because it doesn’t get you love.

Confidence and self-love are two very different things that are often confused as being the same.

Confidence is a belief in your ability to accomplish things you desire in the world. Self-love is still feeling like you are “enough”, even when you fail. It is feeling you are worthy of love without needing to accomplish anything at all. It’s how much love you feel when no one else is around.

Confidence will get you what you want, self-love will give you what you need.

Everyone wants to be confident because it appears like that’s what makes you lovable. But we confuse being liked with being loved. Adoration, envy, respect, attention, affection, praise… Those things can feel great, but none of them will fill that void you feel within you. Nothing will feel like “enough,” and you will keep striving endlessly your whole life for more, never feeling satisfied. Only love can fill that void. And love can’t be earned. There is nothing you can “do” to be loved. You can only “be” loved.

Look at celebrities— Rich. Beautiful. Famous. Adored and desired by everyone. And yet look how many are addicted to drugs to escape their pain. They feel the pressure to perform and maintain physical perfection and the professional success that have earned them such affection—all of which dictate things they must do and carbs they must not eat and designers they must wear and awards they must win. It has to be earned. When I do this, you love me. If I stop or fail, I will lose your love. Therefore, you don’t really love me—you love my clothes and movies and the lifestyle I portray on Instagram because you fantasize about how fabulous it must be to be me, and how good about myself and loved I must feel. And you crave that for yourself. But it’s a mask and a character that is adored, not the person.

We will never feel genuine love from others until we learn to love ourselves.

Self-love will set you free. When you learn to love yourself, you don’t need anything from others. Your cup runneth over. You can connect and give love freely without seeking anything in return. You can receive love deeply without fear it is going to be taken away. You can be alone and not lonely. You can pursue passions that inspire you without fear of failure and being judged. You can open yourself fully and put yourself out there without fear of rejection. You can speak your truth without fear of abandonment. You can say “no” to things you dread doing, without fear of disappointing others. Your significance cannot be diminished nor enhanced by any external accomplishment or failure, so you are free to live a life true to yourself, not the life other people expect of you.

So how do you actually “love yourself”?
Mantras? Eh, they’re ok…
#selfcaresundays? They aren’t bad.
To love yourself is both the easiest. . . and the hardest thing to do.
You simply have to be yourself.

You reconnect to how you feel rather than just how everyone else feels.
You understand what you want rather than what everyone else wants from you.
You say “no” to things that don’t feel good.
You say “yes” to things that do feel good.
You ask for what you want and need.
You tell the truth about how you feel and what you think.
You show all parts of yourself, (even the parts you’re afraid will make them leave).
You share your pain and your shame.
You have compassion for yourself when you are hurt…
Forgiveness when you make a mistake,
Encouragement when things are hard.
You rest when you are tired.
And when you are rested, you work hard on what’s important to you.

You fill your home, your closet, your calendar, your refrigerator, and your mind with things you love… rather than the things that you think will make other people love you.

You discover that the thing that makes you feel the best in the world is to make other people feel loved—without wanting or needing anything else in return.

You realize that you are not your body, your job, your car, your witty personality, or anything else that can be taken away. YOU are eternal.

You are love. So just be yourself.

Much love,