Loving yourself is integrity, not approval

The card, Erik reads it

Practice. I speak to myself the way I'd speak to a friend. I try things I've told myself I'm not the kind of person for. Purpose. I can name, out loud, what I like about myself. Method. When I'm struggling, I treat myself with the same kindness I'd offer a friend. When I fail at something, I don't decide it was never my thing.

Open, Erik [stop]

For years I said awful things about myself out loud. In front of friends, in front of family. I'd tell them I sucked, that I was a loser. They never knew what to do with it. I thought it was motivation.

One friend looked at me and said one word. Stop.

That grounded me. In that moment I saw what I was doing. It wasn't pushing myself. It was just disrespect. Now when I catch a sentence like that starting, I say the same word to myself.

Erik, the two stories [special or broken, the cult email]

After my burnout I go looking online for what's wrong with me. I take a personality test and the result feels like someone read my diary. Relief. Then an email arrives. It says I have the rarest type in the world, less than one percent. It also says I'm broken, my energy is wrong, and they can fix me. It's from a cult.

What I noticed years later: it said both things in one message, and both made me want to read more. For a long time I swung between exactly those two stories. Somebody special, meant to save the world. Or a broken misfit who fits nowhere. They're the same trap. Both are about being different from everyone else, and neither one lets you be an ordinary person who is tired and needs rest.

Nina, first question [what she hears clients say about themselves]

Erik asks: When a client talks about themselves in your sessions, what do you hear most? Is it the "I'm special" story, the "I'm broken" story, or something else? And what does the body do while they say it?

[Nina answers. Follow-up: How do you get someone to hear their own self-talk? I needed a friend to say stop. What do you do?]

Erik, not my thing [maths, programmer, Dutch, olives]

The second half of the card is the part I actually needed. I try things I've told myself I'm not the kind of person for.

I'm fifteen. My mom wants me to take advanced maths. I say: it's just not my thing. What did I know about myself at fifteen? Only the story I kept repeating. Today I design software systems for a living and I love logical puzzles.

I said the same about programming. I'm not technical, I'm people oriented. I said the same about Dutch. It just doesn't work for me. Today I light up when I get to speak it. As a kid I ate meatballs, sausage and pasta and nothing else. Now I eat plants and love coriander, which a DNA test says I'm supposed to hate.

I still don't like olives. So I've stopped saying I don't like them. I say I haven't met the version of myself that likes them yet. And when I fail at something, I don't get to decide it was never my thing. That single move had cost me more than any real lack of talent.

Nina, second question [where do the expectations come from]

Erik asks: When I found out I was going to be a dad, I read every parenting book and got more anxious with each one. You asked me one question. Where do these expectations come from? And the answer wasn't the books, it was my own childhood. Why did you ask that instead of reassuring me?

[Nina answers. Follow-up: When you see somebody being hard on themselves, what's underneath it most of the time?]

Erik, integrity [the word, telling yourself the truth]

The word I'd use for loving yourself now is integrity. Not approval. I don't have to like everything about myself. I have to stop lying to myself about what I can do. Every time I hid behind a label or said "not my thing," I was treating myself as somebody who couldn't handle the truth. Every time I acted like someone I wasn't, I liked myself a little less.

Erik, what this gives you [two things to do]

Two things. One, catch the sentence and say stop. Out loud if you have to. Two, write down one thing you've declared "not you" before you were twenty. Try it once this month. Not to become good at it. To find out whether the sentence was ever true.

Close

What did you decide wasn't your thing, and when did you decide it? Comments. Next: love for your ideas, and the manuscript I deleted at eighteen. Book link below.