The ego can be a thing of terrible beauty – rampantly cocksure one moment, fragile as parchment the next.

It is capable of inspiring and propelling us to moments of true greatness, leaving others around us lost in the backwash of its afterburners. And then, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it instant, it can plunge us into self-doubt and self-loathing.

Ego defines our emotional and psychological essence, a wild animal that paces the cage we lock it in. We feed it and it grows. We starve it and it shrinks. We neglect it and it becomes savage.

Often, its food of choice – or, perhaps more accurately at least, the diet we choose to feed it – is the approval and love of others. Our daily interactions with other humans – and machines, actually – can be boiled down into simple transactions of approval and disapproval, an ongoing exercise in the mutual business of validation, judgement, recognition and acknowledgement.

For the most part, these things are largely trivial. It’s the smile from the barista when they hand us a skinny white decaf. It’s the grateful flash of headlights from another driver when you stop to let them through. It’s recognition from a slight acquaintance who remembers you. It’s when someone likes your Facebook post or retweets you.

Other elements of our transactional relationships have more weight: praise and emotional or financial reward at work, the spontaneous show of unconditional and unsolicited affection from a partner, the return of romantic interest from someone we find attractive, the pride of a parent.

And just as this apparent positive validation of our worth to society feeds our ego, fattening it that it might grow, a lack of validation or, worse, active disapproval of our sense of being and value brings self-doubt and, in extremis, self-loathing when we are not anchored by a healthy foundation of self love.

If the essence of who we are – the ego – really is a wild animal, then it’s in our own self-interest to tame it.

But we also need to understand that ego can never be truly housetrained, because there are emotions as volatile as quicksilver that inherently make up its DNA – anger, passion and love, for example – and these are not only an intrinsic part of who we are but are also, in moderation, part of a healthy psyche.

So, what does it take to temper, if not wholly tame, the beast? Ultimately, it comes down to understanding that the most important validation we receive is the validation we give ourselves.

In short, it’s about realising – and then accepting – that it’s absolutely all right to love ourselves.

We are conditioned by society to believe that self-appreciation is ill-disguised vanity, a character trait more deserving of scorn than respect.

But there is a fundamental difference between self-validation and vainglory. The quiet self-reassurance that confirms our own worth and value and integrity as a human being is the polar opposite of wanton boastfulness that is the progenitor of envy.

Like all things, we need to practise self-love daily in order to turn it into habit. We do that by choosing not to beat ourselves up, by not abandoning ourselves through the choices we make and by removing ourselves with dignity from harmful or toxic situations and people.

Self-love is about having the strength of character, psychologically and emotionally, so that the positive view of yourself is unaffected – or, at the very least, less affected – when someone in your orbit decides to be a dick about who or what you are.

And in turn, we find we can recover from painful situations more quickly because we don’t become lost in their afterburners.

An absence of self-love leaves us horribly vulnerable to the ego’s swings in response to validation or disapproval.

That makes for a rocky road through life, one paved with a corrosive and submissive need to please everyone in the pursuit of their love and appreciation. It is the road upon which we develop an anodyne and vanilla mask behind which our true self hides.

With self-love we understand and accept we can’t please all the people all the time, that we will piss people off and that the world beyond the parapet is sometimes an unforgiving place in which we absolutely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

It’s about allowing your self-belief and self-respect to be absolutely unshakeable despite the fact someone else might not see you for who and what you really are.

It’s about not letting someone tell you that you can’t do something.

It’s about learning to trust yourself and always listening to your intuition above all else no matter how experienced or demonstrative the person giving you advice.

Above all, loving yourself for being you doesn’t mean others will also see you as you see yourself. It doesn’t mean your boss or your colleague or your lover or the barista will treat you as you deserve to be treated. Bottom line? It won’t stop that dick being a dick.

You won’t suddenly be without flaws. You won’t find yourself exalted to a pedestal or adored, Kardashian-style, on social media. You won’t necessarily be everyone’s must-have friend.

Self-love doesn’t make you exempt from criticism and it doesn’t mean you won’t experience toxic behaviour.

But it does mean you won’t tolerate that, and the effects of others’ behaviour and actions won’t be something you stick in your emotional suitcase and wheel around with you for evermore.

Self-love isn’t about being perfect (and what the hell is that even, anyway?) It’s about being good enough for yourself to live with, and strong enough to choose not to live around the people who’d prefer to see you as something less than that.

The festive season is almost upon us, so do yourself a favour this Christmas and give yourself the gift of self-acceptance. Walk tall and proud and relax, knowing you’re already enough, regardless of how much you might want to still improve.

Be you. It’s the most exquisite gift you’ll unwrap this year.

In a shade over six months the UK will no longer be a member of the European Union. Whatever your view of that in principle, the matter of Britain’s membership is a debate that has long since been obsolete. Our love affair with Europe is in its death throes and come next March the political equivalent of a decree absolute will formally be signed by all parties.

Our departure is no longer about the financial terms of the divorce, either. 

Events over the weekend (which largely unfolded in The Daily Mail at the pen of Boris Johnson) and this morning, as it was revealed that at least 80 Conservative MPs will vote against Theresa May’s so-called ‘Chequers’ deal, have ensured that the immediate post-referendum arguments over whether or not the NHS would get another £350m a week are also now entirely moot.

The big question today is whether we will have any sort of formal relationship with the rest of Europe at all. 

And as we career toward the increasingly likely reality of crashing out of Europe without a deal, there is a growing clamour from the cheap seats to suggest the Prime Minister finds herself in the uncomfortable position of trying to broker a new relationship with Europe from a position of total weakness.

There will be a relationship of some sort simply because there must be. Our economy is not built to allow us to be a Bridget Jones-style singleton restricted solely to slightly grubby one-night stands behind a skip with the US or China. We need the love of Europe if only because so much of our economy relies on her.

So, what has all that got to do with love and romance? Well, quite a lot as it happens, because people who are dating from deficit – where one person believes they have nothing to bring to the relationship but requires a lot in return – is something we see a lot.

What this boils down to in effect is that people can see a potential relationship as the be-all and end-all answer for not feeling good about themselves or as a substitute for whatever they think might be missing in their life – and the result is that they begin to outsource their self-esteem, passing responsibility for their emotional wellbeing to someone else. While that may be the easiest option – subconsciously or otherwise – looking after your emotional wellbeing isn’t someone else’s job.

And anyway, your self-esteem is far too precious to entrust to someone else. The start, or even whiff, of a new relationship can be like getting a regular dose of laughing gas. It can numb the pain you feel and can make you feel invincible. For a while. 

But it’s always a temporary respite and given how you value yourself affects your perception of yourself and others, your self-respect and your basic judgement, there’s a highly rational argument to say the last thing you should be doing is making yourself available and, therefore, vulnerable at the very moment you really need all those attributes to be fully functional.

As Natalie Lue, the queen of all things self-esteem, says:  If you can’t date with your self-esteem in tow, wait until you can

Natalie is essential reading for anyone struggling with self-esteem in relationships and has written an incredible blog on the subject. 

In the end, there isn’t actually a short cut to loving ourselves. We see plenty of people in unhappy relationships with themselves and significant others as evidence of this.

When we take shortcuts, we have to accept the fact there will be consequences every time we abandon the loyalty and responsibility we have for our emotional wellbeing. Those consequences manifest themselves in how we feel, how things go and what happens in the future.

Occasionally it’s quite liberating to damn the consequences and not do due diligence during the dating process, but if that becomes the default solution to every situation life throws at you and you’re not ultimately true to who you are and need to be, then eventually the wheels are going to come off in the howl of tearing emotional metal that will leave you broken at the side of life’s busy highway.

As therapists we’re fond of saying that the best relationship you will ever have is the one you have with yourself. If it sounds like it’s a cliché then that’s probably because it is – in the same way that every truism is, by definition, a cliché. 

But when you understand you’re the only person you can rely on to love you for who you’re meant to be, and then live that reality, you’ll find other people will love you for exactly the same reasons. And if they don’t love you, they’ll certainly respect you for it.

In contrast, when you set out to please others before you satisfy your own emotional needs you’re more likely to find your self-esteem is the doormat on which they start to wipe their feet – even if they want to cross the threshold into an intimate relationship with you in the first place

It may be that you’re sitting there thinking, it’s all very well saying I need to love myself, but I don’t like who I am! If that’s the case, then guess what? You got it – you need to change your belief system so that you can give yourself fully to you.

When you create boundaries for yourself and can see the value in who you are and what you stand for, the sketchy behaviour that defines the way other people treat us and behave around us also changes positively. And the reason’s simple: in the first place, we’re far less likely to put up with rubbish behaviour from others. If we have good boundaries, and if we’re used to feeling good about ourselves, we’ll recognise when the person we are dating does the opposite; but if we’re used to feeling bad about ourselves then being treated badly by someone will feel incredibly familiar.   

You know that anyway, right? Because most of us have had those moments when we discovered the best things arrive when we’re not trying for them. The way we think and feel about ourselves is not only highly visible – it’s also highly infectious. When we have low self-esteem, we’re more likely to tolerate sketchy behaviour. And the reverse is also true.

If we always arrive at a potential relationship with our self-worth in the red, the chances are we’ll only inspire the person on the opposite side of the candlelit dinner to do one of two things: either they’ll call it a day after the first date; or take emotional advantage of us in a relationship that to all intents and purposes looks normal from the outside but on the inside boasts all the attributes you’d normally associate with a snake pit. 

At worst, we’ll end up spending – and wasting – a significant part of our lives with someone who matches who we are, because nothing creates deficit more effectively than unhelpful narratives about ourselves or the opposite sex.

Those narratives are very popular, and they become self-fulfilling and include:

There are no men/women left for you;

All women/men are psychos;

Men only like young women 

All men cheat;

You can’t meet anyone over your own age;

All women are money grabbers / emotionally unstable  

You only ever attract narcissists

You always get hurt 

You’re doomed to be single forever

These limiting beliefs will do a fabulous job of keeping your victim story alive and kicking, give your first dates the tightest screening outside of airport security, fortify your walls like nothing else, and continue attracting all the negative things out there that there are to attract (yes, these negatives definitely exist, but it’s about learning to see the signs and avoid them).

Insistence creates investment. More than that, what we fear we unconsciously attract, what we resist (getting hurt) persists, what we focus on we get more of – and these beliefs either make you feel terrible about yourself or paint the opposite sex as utter monsters – neither of which will bring you the healthy relationship you desire.

When we believe negative things about ourselves we are also much more likely to be subject to what I call scarcity thinking – and then you end up accepting much less then you truly deserve.

If we don’t think we are lovable (remembering that flawed human traits can still very much be lovable) why would we expect anyone else to?   If we can’t ‘live’ with ourselves why would we expect to find someone who can?  

The good news is that no matter how estranged you and your self-esteem have become, your relationship with yourself is always salvageable. It takes work and effort and, often, the support of a professional therapist – but nothing is ever irretrievable.

Relationships are a mirror of our relationship with ourselves so the most worthwhile thing you can do before going out dating is create a really solid foundation of self-love for yourself, which you do by challenging all the outdated toxic harmful beliefs you have about yourself, relationships, love and the opposite sex and changing them to neutral or positive beliefs that support and uphold you. 

If you don’t, you might just find you’re forced to come up with a relationship plan that even you can’t vote for.

Give a man a fish and he’ll feed himself for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll feed himself forever. Or so the saying goes. It’s probably true, but who really knows? Fish can be damned smart. Particularly the ones that have been caught before.

Here’s a saying which I know is absolutely true:

Give someone five minutes with nothing to do but think and they’ll find a way to beat themselves up about something, no matter how small or trivial.

It’s a sentence or thought that starts with the words If only I hadn’t …

… said that, done the other, been mean about Rachel’s new hairstyle, bought that dress, maxed out my credit card, asked out the guy/girl in the Costa queue on an irrational impulse, inhaled an entire packet of Hobnobs in a single sitting, been quite so unkind to my mother, jumped to that conclusion about Dawn Smith when we were ten, poked the cat with a stick, got back with her / him for the 30th time, thought bad things about that woman before I knew she had cancer, turned down that job promotion, frittered away my teens … the list is endlessly long.

More than that, it’s unfailingly and ineffably pointless and if I could only follow one spiritual or self-care practice for the rest of my life it would be to never beat myself up about things ever again. Because apart from being a long and pointless process, it’s also a process that is inarguably toxic.

Living in perpetual self-flagellation is like driving through life with the handbrake on.   

But regrets are good, right? It shows I’m human, for God’s sake! That I have empathy and sympathy and humility – all that good stuff that makes people realise I’m not the self-centred narcissist I think I am.

And guilt! Oh, God yes – lots and lots of that. After all, why should the good Catholics have the monopoly on guilt? There’s plenty for everyone – we just need to dwell on stuff awhile and soon enough it’ll engulf us and make us feel … what? Better? More worthy? More human? More deserving?

No. It does none of these things. Self-flagellation – the supreme art of giving yourself a hard time about stuff you can’t change – not only kills your relationship with yourself, it’s the best possible way there is to keep yourself stuck in the horrible decisions and emotions of the past. And that, in turn, keeps you locked into the very thing it is that you want to change.

Your relationship with yourself is the absolute basis of a good life. You’re stuck with being you, so if you’re going to learn to love the person you are, the minimum you need to do is to make peace with yourself.

And if you can’t do that for yourself – and there are a lot of people who can’t – then accept the help of others to help you find that path. It’s all very well me saying you just need to stop doing whatever it is that makes you berate yourself, but if it were that easy you’d probably have stopped already.   However it is important to set the intention no matter how you do it.  

In the end, sometimes we need a bit of a helping hand to see ourselves for who we really are rather than who we think we are. When you’re ready to start down that road, people like me are here to guide and help you.

A happy and fulfilled life comes from being your own best friend and celebrating the good things you represent. The odds are they’ll significantly outweigh the bad things – but we seem to be world masters in obsessing about the imperfections.

So, stop. Have your own back. Be there for yourself because when all’s said and done, you’re the only person out there you can reply on to be that guy or girl.

So why do we behave in such an obviously destructive way, replaying the car crashes of our emotional past with no apparent resolution? The reason is that guilt seeks punishment and the cycle goes something like this: 

1. Feel bad about yourself

2. Binge eat a packet of biscuits, feel terribly guilty about it, swear off them, then beat yourself up harshly.

3. Eat another packet of biscuits in a desperate attempt to feel better after giving yourself the beating

4. Decide the biscuits aren’t working and open a bottle of wine

5. Indulge in a 40-minute compare and despair binge on Instagram

6. Repeat whatever it was that made you feel bad in the first place.

7. Rinse and repeat.

The other thing is that this self-torture is more effective at chewing up your life-force, vitality and self-worth than a year on crystal meth. So, if that’s the vibe you’re going for, jog on. But if, like most of us, it’s absolutely not how you want to spend your life, then it’s imperative to make a deal with yourself to find a way to stop doing it.

As Jeff Brown so beautifully puts it, when dealing with your issues:  eat your stuff, or it will eat you.    

Stopping beating yourself up is the one thing that will improve the quality of your life instantly. As in this very second. And, quite unlike crystal meth, it’s free. The high of liking or even loving who you are is better, too.    

That isn’t to say we shouldn’t all look for self-improvement, success and growth – that’s an essential part of the human experience. And it’s not realistic or even desirable to stop wanting more from your life, because that’s also part of the human condition.

But beating yourself up for where you are just because you’re not yet in the place you want to be will keep you exactly where you are. Because the other truth about self-flagellation is that what we resist persists.

Telling ourselves we’re somehow wrong, deficient, ‘less than’ or defective because we aren’t where someone else has reached is the most powerful thing we can do to shame ourselves and keep us stuck exactly where we are.

Yes, we need to be true to our own values and standards and it’s right and healthy to want to be better at those things and to want not to repeat some of our mistakes – just as long as we’re not punishing ourselves when we fall short.

If you have experienced trauma in childhood, however large or small, the negative inner critic – aka The Superego – will be especially prevalent in your life. The role of the superego is to protect you, but the way it executes that task can feel especially malevolent at times. It’s the voice of fear and, as I often explain to my clients, fear is the strongest emotion we can experience.

The problem is it can often get translated as truth and I’ve found through my own work with clients that the white noise of persistent self-criticism diminishes once trauma and inner child work has been performed.

If our friends behaved like our superego, they wouldn’t be friends for long. Yet many of us tolerate this constant belittling of ourselves without complaint. Why would we treat ourselves in ways we would never tolerate from someone else? The answer is almost certainly that we’ve been listening to what a friend describes as the committee in the head for so long that we think what it has to say must be true.

But it’s possible to say not today thanks and take a different path that starves the superego of its power over us. If you cannot do that consciously, then do the therapy work to negotiate with it and it will set you free in a way you could never imagine.   

When you point blank refuse to beat yourself up really wonderful things start to happen. You naturally set better boundaries; you allow yourself to do more things and you get more done; you feel bolder and freer and you care much, much less about what others might be thinking of you. 

More than that, it also ‘unsticks’ you, so whatever you are stuck in – bad job, bad relationship, weight you can’t lose, habits you can’t shake – you can begin to wriggle free from.

Living a life that’s the stuff of a Kafkaesque doom narrative is no fun, but liberating yourself by not beating yourself up allows you to live in reality much more comfortably and means you are more grounded and less likely to go off on those oftentime disastrous flights of fantasy.    

There are a trillion goals we can have and so many things we can look at in ourselves and want to improve, but the reality is that you only need one goal to transform your life in the most radical and remarkable way possible: to be really, really comfortable in your own skin.   

Being the person who is really, truly, wonderfully okay with all of who they are is hands down the most magnetic and attractive quality in the world.

Let me put it a different way. If beating yourself up is like driving through life with the handbrake on, choosing to like who you are is the sheer joy of releasing it and putting your foot down. And after everything that’s gone before, isn’t it about time you floored your life?

Over the last few days, former Wham! manager Simon Napier-Bell has suggested that George Michael may have been tortured by a childhood secret that proved to be both the singer’s inspiration and his curse.

Michael was, of course, a global superstar, recognised as one of the most gifted songwriters of his generation. A string of bubblegum hits in the Eighties with Wham! made him the bedroom-wall-pin-up for teen girls – and some teen boys – around the world.

And as he outgrew the sockless deck shoes and coiffured highlights and forged a more contemporary image rendered in brooding charcoal and black and punctuated by goatees and designer shades, his songwriting became similarly substantial, its themes darker and more complex.

As a concept, it’s a fantastic script. Two star crossed lovers wounded by a past littered with one failed relationship after another. Life gives them one last battle to fight: the battle to find each other.

It’s a sweeping, soaring, tear-fest of two people hampered by fate and shackled to a future they can’t yet see but which they both know lies somewhere just beyond their immediate reach. It’s Gable and Leigh, Bogart and Bergman, Tracy and Hepburn. It’s Keira Knightley and Andrew Lincoln in that scene in Love Actually. Except in your version, Keira doesn’t let him walk away.

You have the script and, because this is your love story, you have a ready-made cast. It’s an epic romantic blockbuster destined to smash all box office records.

The only problem is that your subconscious has been tasked with job of directing it.

As the director of your personal movie, your subconscious is more Quentin Tarantino than, say, Steven Spielberg. It’s opinionated and often comes with its own agenda, drawing on your past experiences to inform your present and future. If you grew up in a house of drama, your subconscious is more likely to push you toward dramatic love and tempestuous hit-and-run run hook-ups. 

Nourishing your heart involves making a practice of loving every aspect of yourself. This is about embracing all of your inner world too. This includes those parts of you that are responsible for some of your greatest challenges. Many people have parts of themselves that are closed down to love, push away opportunity and sabotage their best attempts to make positive changes in their lives. It can be tempting to attack these parts of your mind, making them wrong and blaming them for everything that is difficult in your life.  Unfortunately that only makes matters worse. If you do have parts of yourself that seem set against you, they are working on some level to serve you. They always are. Yes, those parts may be serving you in wholly destructive ways, underpinning any number of terribly limiting behaviours and beliefs but those parts will be doing that with your best interests at heart. Somewhere in the middle of their motivation is a desire to keep you safe.

Changing behaviour only works in a real and lasting way if we can get every aspect of ourselves into alignment. It is about negotiating with yourself so that every part of you comes into agreement. Then it no longer involves any will power. Will power is when one part of you wants one thing and another wants something else and you go to war against an aspect of yourself.  True transformation comes from realising on a deep level what truly serves you. This is not a chore, a duty or a loss. It is a gift of love. From there, there is no more struggle or effort required. So, how do you bring those parts of you into agreement? Continue reading…

Having a healthy sense of self esteem and self value is important in all areas of life, and your workplace, whether you are working for someone else or running your own business, is no exception.

So what does valuing yourself in business mean?    Well, it’s helpful to break it down:

One of the most important ways we can value ourselves in business is financially.    Whether this is fighting for the payrise we deserve or ensuring that we are charging enough for our services, time and products, it’s absolutely essential.   In today’s economic climate it’s easy to go into fear, overcommit ourselves financially and timewise, but if you can’t afford it then it’s counterproductive.     When running your own business sloppiness around financial details will undermine you faster than anything else, whilst we don’t always have time to do all of this ourselves at the very least it’s important to keep a close eye on the details, or have someone you trust taking care of this.

The same goes for time.    Time is, of course, money and if you’re continually giving away your time for free, or undercharging for projects it will ultimately lead to underearning.    If you’re starting up it’s often helpful to take on pro-bono projects in order to make contacts, build your reputation and hone your skills, but it’s important to set boundaries around it.   Of course pro-bono projects can be highly enjoyable, especially if for a worthy cause, however it’s essential to ensure that you plan accordingly, and allow paying projects to fully support these.   The same applies when you are an employee, it’s easy to get caught in a ‘people-pleasing’ loop in a desire to get ahead, but it creates what I call the ‘domino’ effect in that you are continually playing catch up, struggling to get out of bed due to the late nights at work and, again, ultimately it is counter-productive as you under-resourced and simply cannot perform to your best ability.

What does abandoning yourself mean?

Well it means saying yes when really you feel no, it can also be described as people pleasing, playing small or giving away your power. It’s when you override the protestations of your inner voice and allow yourself to be overly influenced by others opinions, evaluations and verbalisations. Or it’s when you give yourself up to avoid rejection or the fear of it. Turning to a myriad of mild, or not so mild, addictions is another all too common way of avoiding painful feelings and therefore abandoning yourself.  Many of us are guilty of some or all of these at some time or another, but for many it’s become a deeply ingrained habit, or worse still a way of life.

So what does it cost us? Well continuing to abandon yourself is deeply corrosive to your self worth as you are not only giving yourself the message ‘I don’t trust myself’ but you are also compounding it with ‘what I think and feel doesn’t matter, even to me’.

Ultimately, continuing to abandon yourself will leave you dis-empowered and resentful.

If you have abandonment issues from childhood then this subconscious wounding unfortunately increases the likelihood of abandoning yourself in adulthood – we often do to ourselves what was done to us – until we bring our attention and healing to this. The reason for this is twofold: firstly the subconscious seeks out what is familiar, no matter how uncomfortable and painful, in an attempt to resolve it and secondly if there are unresolved childhood abandonment issues self worth will have already been eroded, meaning you are much less likely to trust and listen to yourself, until you do the work to do that.

I imagine most people would agree that bullies are a nuisance, and that’s putting it mildly. I’m sure at some point in our lives, we have all experienced being bullied, intimidated, coerced and victimized, and I think we would also agree that it doesn’t feel good. In fact, it can stir up some very uncomfortable feelings, ranging from indignation, fear, sadness and hurt. Some of us will come out fighting, and other’s may retreat and just hope that the person responsible will eventually leave us alone. As a way of coping with the stress posed by this external threat, albeit an individual or group, we may try to be overly nice to compensate, or seek ways of remaining safe, by being hyper alert and trying to anticipate their behaviour. In doing so, we end up compromising ourselves, creating incredible stress and living in a state of anxiety. If our exposure to this level of anxiety continues, and panic ensues, then our self esteem is compromised and damaged. Once our self esteem starts plummeting, then most areas of our lives are negatively influenced. Over an extended period of time, we become a shadow of our former selves, unless we find a way to cope by seeking support, help and advice.

When we feel the need for constant external validation, maybe it is time to start asking ourselves why that is. This applies specifically to women, who may regularly elicit attention from men to feel special, worthy and attractive. In fact, some of us can take this to an extreme, where we seek validation, using our feminine charms and sexuality to be ‘seen,’ noticed and approved of. This feeling of power gives us an instant feel good ‘hit,’ which never lasts, because ultimately it doesn’t reach in and validate who we are as people. So, we are off on our search again, longing and yearning for that magical person to give us something that for some reason, we are unable to give ourselves. That search will eventually lead us back to ourselves, because it is a dead end on a road going nowhere. We are solely responsible for determining, deciding and creating our level of self esteem that doesn’t require anyone’s stamp of approval.

Being centred and grounded in our authentic selves is not easy if we have low self esteem, we need propping up, we need to be noticed, and this need originates from a core wound that no amount of validation can heal. However, that doesn’t stop us jumping from one relationship and sexual encounter to the next, in the hope that this person and ensuing distraction will take our pain away. We are living on the periphery of our lives, orbiting our core wounding with an astute cleverness that has become our default defence mechanism. Unfortunately there is not a man walking on the earth who has the power to reach in and love all the hurt away, that belief belongs in the fairy tales with the likes of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. In real life, Sleeping Beauty would wake up out of her 100 year stupor, dust herself off and tell Prince charming to take a hike, while she gets on with the business of discovering the Queen that she is, and not the ‘princess’ that she’s been conditioned to be. True, authentic transformation evolves out of the pursuit of self discovery, an innate potential that resides in us all. Low self esteem, with all its highs and lows, does not feel good. This offers a momentary reprieve, but it will never offer the one thing that we truly need, and that is healing. We can become so immersed in our story that it is hard to imagine that life could take on new meaning, that we could create a reality that would be deeply satisfying, in a way that drama, addiction and another pair of shoes, could never match and never equal.