Look into yourself and shine

Posted by | November 30, 2013 | Food for thought, Uncategorized | One Comment
nasa moon cropped

“When you start that high, you have a lot farther to fall and you hit the ground a lot harder from that height.”
                                                                                                 – Tim S Grover

A person close to me sent that quote. She’s been struggling with her sense of self worth, though she’d deny that was the case. No matter. We all see things differently from our own point of reference, and at the end of the day, the difference is semantic – the reality is that she’s not feeling the love for herself.

We’re talking about the intrinsic self-love that keeps you happy within yourself self-love, not narcissism.

When she was younger, she achieved great success. People looked up to her. Respected her. She had money to burn, to live the good life, to wear the best clothes, to eat the best food in the finest restaurants. And this wasn’t silver spoon city where everything was handed to her.

Bill Clinton famously said of George W Bush, that Bush was a man born on 3rd base who thought he hit a triple. My friend hit a triple, building everything she had on a foundation of hard work and talent.

Then she took a break from the game. With that break, she found all that she had achieved slipped away. The simple version? The money ran out.

Her life didn’t end. It changed.

She became a mother. She began to teach yoga. She does yoga every day. She’s not just a teacher, but a yogi, a person whose practices yoga at a deeper philosophical and spiritual level. A level where the yogic principles permeates all things and activities.

She started writing, or I should say, writing again, because writing was her first love. She writes every day. She started with short stories, and now is well into her first novel. Her journey is internal. Day-to-day, everyday, and that is enough.

But there are those dark days when she realizes that her journey isn’t quantifiable and that people will judge her (as she judges herself) as not having achieved anything worthwhile.

A yogi? Where are your DVDs? Your yoga schools across the country?

A writer? Where’s your multi-book contract and appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show? Where’s the Hollywood adaptation of your work starring the A-list actors du jour?

The slow burn is that she once had it all and now people dismiss her out of hand. That is the value they place on her, and the value she places on herself and what she’s been doing. Nothing.

So she sent me the quote. She’s flown high and now has fallen. And the landing hurts like hell.

Well yeah. But it only hurts because she’s got it all wrong. She’s looking at her outside appearance as if that’s who she is. She’s not the only one that does that. We all do. We look at our outside appearances and judge ourselves by that. And we judge others by that as well. Our values are skewed. We place value on things that we can quantify, and the more of that thing we have, the more value we have.

We begin to look in the mirror to see our true selves. The person staring back at us is the one we judge ourselves by. But the image staring back at us is only the surface, it doesn’t tell us anything about who we are on the inside. We need to stop looking in a mirror to define our self worth. Our worth isn’t found in our bank account. Or what job title we have. Or the clothes we wear. Or the house we live in.

We need to stop listening to others who only look at the mirror image to judge us. We need to stop listening to others even if they are saying good and great things about us. How beautiful we are. What a great career we have. The criteria is still the same, external appearances. If the criteria is wrong, it doesn’t matter if they say you are exceptional or worthless. They are equally meaningless.

There’s only one place to look to judge yourself. It’s on the inside. It’s who you are as a person. As a human being.

The problem is that it’s hard to do. How do you judge yourself, your internal being? I don’t have that figured out. It’s 1oo percent abstract. Counting cars and their price tags is easy. There’s an absolute number on that.

But a place to start may be to imagine your life without anything. Imagine you woke up and everything you had was gone. No fancy house, no money in the bank, no car. You only had the barest necessities.

In that moment, how do you feel about yourself? Do you feel good? Do you feel worthless? However you feel, and only you know how you feel – and there’s no prize for feeling one way or another – that is the measure of your achievement.

External things are transitory. They can be taken away from you at any moment. Any sense that external things are permanent is illusory. You have no control over them. But you have control over yourself. I’m not suggesting for anyone to give up the comforts of life. There’s no nobility in poverty. Just don’t define your value by your the value of your possessions. Don’t let others define who you are by your possessions.

The richest person is the one who can stand fully naked, unashamed and unabashed, clothed only in the essence of their being. The beauty of life is that each one of us possesses that same being.

She sent me a quote.

So I wrote back:

Don’t look in the mirror. Look into yourself.
In the mirror, you see high and low.
In yourself, you only see effort, passion, and focus.

In the mirror, you can fall and hit the ground.
In yourself, you can give 100% effort
On the right things at the right time.

The Moon is higher than you, but it never falls.
The Sun is higher yet, and it never falls.
They are just being Moon and Sun all the time.

Be the Moon. Be the Sun. Shine.

 

One Comment

  • Arjen Dijkman says:

    Great piece of writing Boyd, and you’re right we all experience the shallowness of superficial “judgements” ever y day, at work, at home, with friends, at the soccer stadium etc. I hope your friend can smash the mirror and see what lies behind. Love & Light my friend