Being self-assured yields kindness and contentment. This is contrary to what most of us were taught, and yet I’m increasingly sure that it is true. This is why, in my recent post about being self-assured, I questioned the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary about words “related” to self-assured: vain, egotistical, pompous.

In my mind, being self-assured means being on one’s own team, with a commitment to working on the skills and internal resources that help us through new challenges. It means having trust in one’s own ability to show up and figure it out regardless of what life throws our way.

I think there is a real problem when we equate working on things like positive self-talk, emotional regulation, wellness, and self-care with being “vain” “egotistical” and “selfish.” I hear this quite frequently in my office. Many really nice people think it’s selfish to be in therapy or to take time to help themselves feel better. No, I say. Taking time to feel well and gain helpful skills is about the best community service you can do.

Let me explain with an example. Who would you rather spend time with: A.) a person who is generally pretty upbeat who has a fairly predictable range of emotions and reactions and generally understanding and helpful OR B.) a person who does the opposite, who bombards you with negativity, complaining, yelling, the silent treatment, or aggression for reasons that either you don’t understand or are out of proportion to the situation and whom you generously dub “difficult.”

I admit that most of us are probably somewhere in the middle of Person A and Person B. No one is calm and collected all the time, and that’s probably a good thing. But my point is, being more self-assured is something that is quite desirable. It’s the underlying trait that makes people truly kind, steady, and easy to be around.

If we have emotional “stuff” bugging us, as we all will at many points in our lives, it requires attention and work. Otherwise, emotions bubble up and come out in ways that invariably impact others. Always. I get the “I don’t want to be selfish” concern, but taking care of your emotional life is not selfish. Not one little bit. NOT taking care of your emotional life will keep you inching towards being Person B. Don’t be Person B. It’s miserable.

Being on the journey towards increasing self-assurance is kind to yourself and to the world. It is not selfish. Selfishness is the product of unmet emotional needs always coming to the surface. Selfishness is needing to drag down others with your oozing and overwhelming needs, that only you can really learn to fully address. Others are there for validation, encouragement, listening, and even cheerleading. They are not there to manage your feelings. If you are managing your feelings (not denying, pushing away, projecting onto others but really feeling, owning and working through them), you are contributing positively to the world.

I’m no mathematician, but I think more self-assured people=a better world.

What do you think?

Can being self-assured help us to go boldly into unknown life territory? This is a question I’ve been thinking about lately. But what does it mean to be self-assured? To me, it seems like a very desirable quality, something to cultivate in oneself and in our children. In my curiosity, I did some research. According to Merriam-Webster Online, the term means “sure of oneself: self-confident.” It says that related words include: vain, egotistical, pompous.

I partly agree, but I have some issues with this definition and with the “related” words. I guess this begs the questions: Who am I to take issue with the dictionary? Am I self-assured or really pompous after all?!

In my mind, being self-assured means having a sense that one can make it through what life throws our way. It means cultivating helpful self-talk and being on your own team. Life is hard, you don’t always know what to do. You may be scared or unsure. Being self-assured (in my unofficial dictionary), is having some acceptance of this and still trying our best. It means showing up physically and emotionally and being in the driver’s seat of our lives. Even the self-assured need to buckle up because it’s often a bumpy ride.

In my humble (and yet self-assured!) opinion, self-confidence is a little different. I think confidence is the belief that you can accomplish something. Usually we gain confidence through previous life experience. I am confident in my skills as a therapist from roughly 10 years of training and practice. Prior to becoming a parent (where you clearly cannot get the experience until becoming one), I did feel self-assured because I was committed to managing my emotions, accepting things I cannot control, and willing to get help and support whenever or wherever I hit an inevitable bump in the road. These two examples feel really different to me.

It seems to me that confidence is trust on one’s abilities and self-assurance is trust in one’s self. I need previous experience to be confident. I need a rich knowledge of my internal resources (emotional, physical, spiritual) to be self-assured.

Self-confidence is great for preparing in many aspects of life. It’s a positive thing, but I don’t think it goes far enough. I think we need to develop self-assurance for the many situations for which you cannot prepare.

What do you think? Is there a difference between self-confidence and being self-assured? How do you feel about the term?

Next post, I’m going to take on those “closely related” words. If you have thoughts on that, too, I’d be very interested.

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I believe that failure is an unhelpful concept. I’m not even convinced it’s a real thing. In my mind, it belongs in the category of make-believe creatures along with unicorns, dragons, and the Easter Bunny.

Recently, Seth Godin (marketing genius and writer whose lessons surprisingly generalize to many areas of life), made a very wise point in his post, Just the good parts. He feels that when you hit bumps in the road, like a bad break or rejection, “It means that you’re doing worthwhile, difficult work, not merely amusing yourself.” I would add to this and assert that you can’t have success without so-called failure.

In my assessment, there is no way to “fail.” Life is not graded. You can’t get an F. There is showing up and participating, making choices, being accountable, and doing our best. Or there is not participating, waiting for others to make choices for us, and claiming that we are helpless. And every shade of gray in between. Trying and having it not work out as we predict or would like is not the same as “failure.”

In my mind, every time you choose to participate and give the best you can in that given moment, you are being your very best self. You can’t really go wrong. Maybe your grade isn’t so great, or the guy you like turns you down, or you didn’t get the job you interviewed for. But that is never failure. And usually, in the end, it works out better than you imagined.

At the end of the day, if we’ve done our best, we have a better sense of self and accomplishment. We can better accept our inherent strengths and weaknesses. We can begin to cope with the many areas of life beyond our control. Participating fully in life as our real selves with all we’ve got is the bravest and most rewarding way to live. Just showing up and learning from all that life has to offer will always be a winning experience.

Fearing failure is devastatingly counter-productive. It keeps us from putting our best, most authentic selves out in the world. We all lose when others hide themselves and their talents. It keeps us withered and tight, unable to bloom and open.

What could be different in your life if you stopped fearing failure?

PS: I’m still working on my project of finding ways to make emotional health information exciting and accessible to a wide audience! Can you help me by taking a very brief survey by clicking here? Your feedback WILL make a big difference. Thank you! And, while I’m in the mood for asking for favors, if you like what I’m doing, please feel free to subscribe to this blog, share on social media and encourage your friends to follow along and to take my survey too. (I hope the adorable collage in this post will serve as appropriate compensation for your time!)

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It’s back to school week here in lovely Portland, Maine. Whether you are a student or not, it seems like an appropriate time to revamp work habits. Last week I detailed my dislike of procrastination and this week I think it is high time we do something about it.

It’s easy. My first piece of advice for addressing procrastination is to know how to get started. Actually, I’m not even going to make you start, only pre-start. It’s like preschool for procrastination. It gives you a solid foundation and it’s pretty easy. Really.

Take 2-5 minutes to get the drift. The idea behind pre-starting is that you simply take 2-5 minutes to understand what the project, assignment, or duty is that you need to complete. Pre-starting means that from the moment you know about an assignment or some other thing you need to do,  you take 2-5 minutes to be sure you know what exactly it entails. For example, read the assignment, look at the directions booklet, ask your spouse questions about the house painting project.  That’s it. You simply start to understand what the process will be all about.

Do it now. The point of pre-starting is to take a very short amount of time to get the basics of the project immediately when you know about it. So just do it! I know you can.

It’s important. When my clients are struggling with procrastination, I find they often do not know exactly what an assignment or project really involves. We have the tendency to estimate that it is bigger or more difficult than it truly is. Pre-starting helps you get an accurate view of what you are doing so you know from day one. Plus, you are already practicing facing the situation head on as opposed to avoidance, which sets the stage for procrastination. I’ve seen a lot of successes with this strategy in my office.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. Why not, right?

Procrastination is not about being lazy. It is not about being complacent. In fact, most procrastinators care very much about how things turn out. Procrastination is a way to avoid the fear of failure until the last possible moment. Then we say, “Oh, of course I did badly, I didn’t have enough time.” Or we just do good enough, so our best possible work goes undone and not judged by others. Procrastination is a fear-driven behavior. It is the opposite of going all in.

Another problem with procrastination is that it provides all of the stress on the mind and body of actually doing the work, without any of the reward. We spend our time and energy thinking about the work we should/want to/need to do. We worry about when and how we will do it or how it might feel. We think of what the outcomes will or won’t be. Meanwhile, we produce absolutely nothing (or anything but the work that we are dwelling on).

All this worry undermines our confidence. There is great pride that comes from putting in effort and producing something of substance. Even when the product is not spectacular, the process teaches us something. When we procrastinate, we lose the focus on process, learning, and hard work. We get stress and feelings of inadequacy instead. I think battling procrastination is an important step in improving self-esteem.

So I say go for it. Show the world your best work, your best self. Do your work in a timely manner. Give it the space and time it deserves. You deserve it. No one ever regrets it.

Need ideas for battling procrastination? Stay tuned for the next post in my back to school series…

Image by Victor Hertz

Okay, so this topic is bigger than a blog post can contain, but it’s a start. I’m so worried about this problem, I need to start talking about it every place I can. The problem: many people, and most notably young people, feel that their worth is in question. They (or really “we”) feel that worth is tied to things like GPA, salary, position, social class, appearance, romantic success, productivity, cleanliness, organization, keeping up with milestones, how cool you look on Facebook…pretty much everything. It’s always at stake. “Am I good enough?” is the question plaguing so many wonderful, lovely people everywhere.

The interesting thing for me is that many people who look like they are succeeding on many of these measures are the ones who feel the worst. I think it’s because when you are acutely aware of what you are being measured on, you can see all the places you fall short. Since we cannot do everything under the sun well all of the time, it becomes incredibly easy to feel like a failure. It becomes too easy to see every criticism and rejection as evidence of not being “good enough.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic, as maybe you can see from some of my posts. So, I was really encouraged to read a recent interview with Brene Brown. If you have not seen her first and second TED talks, I can’t encourage you enough to check them out. She said in her interview “When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.” I wanted to get up off the couch and applaud.

Indeed, understanding that you are worthy by virtue of being born is the secret to much relief and happiness. It makes me wonder, what would happen if we truly bought into this notion? The idea is old- it’s really equality in its most pure form. But we’ve lost touch. And in losing touch we’ve created a generation or more of people who don’t know they’re good enough just by being them. So my job is largely helping people to see what is already and has always been fundamentally true.

Feeling worthy of love and belonging gives us the security to go out into the world and do good, important work. It gives us the strength to give love and compassion generously without fear. That’s why it’s so important. That’s why I might never shut up about it.

I enjoy going to what I refer to as “the jungle gym for grown-ups.” It reminds me of recess time. I think adults need that kind of physical recreation too. Last night I was working on my clean (its a weight lifting move) and making good progress. Some of the ladies I work out with noticed. Several were appropriately congratulatory about my personal record. I said to them, “I feel good about that.”

As a therapist, those are the moments I help clients identify. It’s about finding times where you feel both physically and emotionally good about something you have done. Many people want to work on self-esteem and confidence. I think the key is to take note of these moments and to be able to direct your mind back to them again and again.

Next time I’m at “recess” and I’m going to attempt to lift something, I can think about my recent success. That gives me an example of my capability. If I think of that, it gives me encouragement to try to push myself again. If I try, I’m more likely to succeed. That gives me yet another example of a positive outcome. I’m building a repertoire of mental examples of success.

Most people have the tendency to do the opposite. They tend to review the mental examples of every incident of perceived failure. Running through these examples gives us more “practice” with actions we would rather not repeat. Instead, we need to be aware and direct our thinking toward our examples of preferred actions. This takes awareness of our thoughts and intentional redirection, but it’s very doable. When we do this, we have incredible potential.

Laurel Parnell, a leading expert in EMDR, has an excellent book that helps to instruct people on how to “tap in” to our own inner resources. If you are interested in seeing how you can build upon and tune into your own positive memories and experiences, I would highly recommend her book, Tapping In.

I suggest starting to notice moments where you can say, “I feel good about that.” Maybe you can even tell someone or write it down. Even better, begin to review moments you have already experienced. The more you think about positive moments, the more accessible they become.