A hug changed my life

It took me by surprise, and for the first time, I felt like it didn’t matter what I did or who I was. I mattered. For a moment, I stopped fighting myself and covering myself up. I dropped the weights that I had been carrying my whole life.

For the first time, I felt like I was enough. I didn’t need to pretend anymore.

That night as I laid in bed, I said to myself,

“I am enough.”
“I am enough.”
“I am enough.”
“I am enough.”
“I am enough.”

And I began to heal inner myself.

This hug was special because it was the first time I was overwhelmed with a sense of warmth and love. And it was the first time I let myself feel this person’s overwhelming love and joy she wanted to share with the world. It’s incredible that such tiny moment — only a few seconds — helped me gradually let go of the burden to prove myself to other people.

My hug with Sylvia changed my life.

I struggled to write this story because in the back of my mind, I kept telling myself, “Why would anyone want to hear my story?” Like a broken record, a voice looped round and round: “Will anyone like me after I tell it? What will people think of me?”

That was my measuring stick before I hugged Syl. Before that moment, I lived as if I needed to work for love. The glass was always half-empty. Although I knew my parents love me unconditionally, I still bought into the idea that I need to prove my worth to the world. I believed that I wasn’t worthy if I wasn’t important to as many people as possible. If I wasn’t well-known for what I do, I did’t matter.

How many of you reading right now feel like you have to fight for a place in this harsh world? That if you weren’t managing a company, creating a hit blog, or giving a TED talk, you’re somehow invalid. That you’re a nobody if you haven’t make tons of money, acted in a TV show, or written a New York Times best-seller.

How many years will it take for you to finally say, “I am enough.”?

We are all searching for significance. But to what end?

We think that our ultimate prize is to be able to love ourselves. But that’s not true.

We accept the love that we think we deserve

Looking back, I find it funny that I needed permission to accept my own love. As if I needed to receive a card in the mail that said, “You have earned enough points! Now, you may redeem love for yourself — for ALL yourself.”

You might be grinning now, but how many accolades, things, and milestones you need before you finally throw your hands up and say, “I’ve won so many points now that I can cash it all in for…love and acceptance?”

We are perpetuating a lie that we need to do enough in order to be enough.

In that case, ultimate prize is to be able to finally accept love from ourselves. How absurd is that? Somehow we’ve reduced human dignity to rungs on the ladder of society.

When we accumulate worth like we’re accumulating money or things, we measure life — and each other — by how much we lose and gain, often at the expense of another person.

The motivation to move higher up the rungs — and not fall off — drove me to do things out of self-preservation. One way this manifested itself was in sports. I have been a competitive swimmer for most of my life — from 10 to 22 years old —and it was my source of pride and security. Swimming was my passion, and I studied it religiously. I practiced year-round and would analyze tapes of races from the Olympics for hours on Saturdays that I didn’t have meets.

I was a great swimmer, but I was also addicted to my own success. Every time I saw my name in the newspaper, it was a hit. Every race I won was a validation of my worth. Every medal I collected, it felt like the weight was lifted off my shoulders because I had staved off failure. I felt accomplished and had another story to impress other people.

I made other choices because I thought they helped prove my worth.

I majored in biology because I want to be respected.

I pretended to be straight for about ten years because I couldn’t bear to witness my friends’ disappointed faces.

I worked for a startup because although I sincerely wanted to make a positive impact on the world, secretly I hoped it would also help me join the ranks of people I admired.

I thought that if I accomplished more, I would appear more impressive and gain more love and acceptance. I thought that I’ll finally be worth the love. But that equation is false — and destructive.

Your worth is your birthright.

Be > Do > Have

One of my lowest point was when I was blackout drunk, slurring, and walking outside lost in the middle of a blizzard. I’m pretty sure I was wandering around in a not-so-good neighborhood. When I woke up my friend with a phone call, I could barely tell my him where I was. Amidst the worst hangover the next day, I berated myself for what certainly could have been a tragedy if not for my friend picking up the phone and driving to get me.

That wasn’t the last time I used alcohol to ease the pain of feeling like I had no place in this world. But life has a way of slapping you across the face, trying to wake you up to the reality that you’re heading down a dead end.

When your worth depends on external things, you try to fill it up with anything but what you truly need to heal.

My healing process started at Bold Academy. It was an experiment by Amber Rae, a writer and entrepreneur who I had been following online for a few years. She wanted to find a way to help accelerate individuals — in a way similar to tech incubators — so they could create a life more aligned with their highest self.

I applied to the program in San Francisco and was accepted. That’s where I met Syl, one of the mentors in the program, who greeted me with a hug. And that hug created an inflection point in my life. I didn’t cry the first time I hugged her, but I let go completely the second time. I couldn’t hold on to the pain anymore and the floodgates of tears opened. I hadn’t cried in over 8 years.

Syl didn’t know it, but I had been starving to feel complete, and the way she shared her warmth and love changed my life. In an instant, as I embraced her, I felt as if I didn’t need to do anything more to earn her love.

She embodied love.

For the first time, I felt enough. I wasn’t lacking in anything. I couldn’t help but let go of the armor that protected me from the eventual rise and fall of love that comes attached to accomplishments.

It’s hard to encapsulate exactly how that moment felt, but that’s the point. Love is powerful because it is meant to be felt. We are meant to embody it.

When we operate from a place of fullness, we don’t have to depend on other people to judge whether we have done enough to deserve love.

When we understand that we are born already complete, we reclaim our dignity and measure equal to every human being in existence.

At Bold Academy, I learned a new framework for living within our fullest potential.

Being > Doing > Having

Amber told a story of a speaker who asked a group of Fortune 100 executives:

“How many of you achieved success over the last year? You experienced returns on investment and reached quarterly goals.”

Almost everyone raised their hands. But then he asked:

“How many of you feel successful in the work that you do?”

Only three people raised their hands.

Achieving success is not the same as feeling successful.

We do things because we are driven by an innate desire to feel a certain way.

Ask yourself: Why are you doing what you do? What is driving you?

When you tie your self-worth to money, fame, prestige — you will never have enough. You will never feel like you have done enough. The chase never ends.

The key then is to start with who you want to be. How do you want to feel while doing the work? What do you want to embody while interacting with others?

Free? Nourished? Connected? Authentic?

When you get clear on who you want to be and how you want to feel, you can align yourself with actions that support your values and make you feel successful. You bring “success” from external definition into internal definition. You take certain actions because it’s who you are and not because you’re trying to gain something.

My friend, Syl, embodies joy in how she inspires clients in her fitness coaching program. Because she operates out of a place of enough — instead of a place of lack — Syl is able to fully give to others, like me. She doesn’t have to waste energy worrying about where the next validation of success comes from and when it will be enough.

Although I’ve earned many accolades in swimming, I was always looking for the next hit. I never felt like I was good enough because there was always the next hill of accomplishment to conquer. My swimming career is a metaphor for how not to approach success in life. I was never fully happy when I competed because what I was really competing for was people’s admiration and validation.

Live naked everyday

The person you are right in this moment is enough. You don’t need to prove your worth. You don’t need to search for stories to give evidence to why you matter. Absorb and enjoy the the person that you are in the present.

When I started to peel back a layer of my identity after Bold Academy, it revealed another layer. Layers upon layers of stories I held on to because I wanted to impress others. I wanted to show that what I did matter and that I matter because I did it. I wanted to prove that I was a human being that was worth loving, listening to, and looking up to.

Living naked means letting go of who you think you should be. It’s shedding the layers of stories that are preventing you from living your truth. It’s unclenching your grip on needing to validate your existence.

Let go of control and just be. Give up on needing to achieve “perfection.”

Significance is created each and every day. By you alone.

It’s not something given to you or a destination you reach. It’s something you choose to experience each day. Every day matters because you make it matter.

The work on myself is never done. It’s a continual process of examination and reexamination of the stories that help — and hurt me. But I know that I am already significant in my own eyes and you are, too.

Now repeat with me:

(Breathe in deeply)

I am enough.

(Breathe all the way out)