Find Yourself. Find Your Passion.

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I was back at Jackson Memorial Hospital with my mother for my weekly dose of torture at the hands of a scary seven-foot German doctor with the bedside manner of Frankenstein, who would inject a miracle fluid into huge welts on my face and neck. The pressure was so immense I felt my skin would burst. I was ten years old then and had a horrible case of acne. It wasn’t only on my face and neck, but also on my chest, back and arms.

For years, my parents shuttled me from one specialist to another in search of a cure. One of them recommended squeezing all my pimples to get rid of them. This exercise proved not only to be intensely painful but left huge scars all over my upper body.

I was so ashamed of my scars, I always hid them. Except for the beach, I never uncovered my arms; never revealed my shoulders; never showed a bit of cleavage. I hid under long sleeves even in the sweltering Miami heat.

But the clothes didn’t just cover the scars. They were also intended to mask the excess weight I carried since childhood.

For years, I saw everything, did everything, experienced everything through my perception of my body.

Even in the midst of receiving an award or traveling in a foreign country, or making love,

I would be pinching my muffin top more or less inconspicuously, to remind myself of how I wasn’t worthy … because I was fat.

For most of my life, I saw myself through the veil of extra pounds and pimples.

And then one day, at university, I was having a conversation with a counselor about my grades and, somehow, we got onto the subject of my arms and scars and hiding and he, very wisely, led me to see that I was holding myself back, not performing at my peak in school, but also imprisoning myself by covering up who I truly was. That was my “Aha!” moment – the moment I decided to allow myself to break free from this self-induced shame. And slowly, I started to liberate my body and my skin.

My path from self-loathing to self-loving spans decades, but whether it was the weight or the scars, my transformation started with a simple premise: I had to accept myself as I was before I could change any part of me.

How could I possibly accept myself with 30 extra pounds and a land mine of scars?

It became easier once I realized that I’m much more than just a body.

And that the body is a vessel that helps us navigate this world we live in. But it’s NO ordinary vessel. This body of ours is a priceless work of art. It’s masterful.

Our bodies practically run themselves with very little effort on our part.

I mean, have your lungs ever asked you for help pumping air?

Or has your heart ever put you on notice that it was going to take a few days off? Don’t worry – you just have to beat 24 hours straight and manage a bit of blood work. I’ll be back in a week.

Normally our bodies just go on about their business of keeping us alive even when we insist on talking down to them or mistreating them.

Once I realized that, I stopped harassing my body and started loving on it. Every morning, I would wink at the mirror and throw myself a kiss. I can’t say this was easy at the beginning. Heck, I couldn’t even hold my own stare at first. It was extremely awkward. But I kept at it and little by little I showed myself more and more love. And today, it’s a freakin honeymoon every morning (kiss kiss kiss) in front of the mirror.

The joy that I get from not only saying kind, gentle and adoring words to myself, but also from feeling them, is beyond anything I could have imagined. I literally feel myself glow regardless of what may be going on. I know I’m getting older (like everybody else) and I’ve gained a few COVID pounds, like most everybody else (except my mother), but beyond the extra wrinkles and the little pouch, I’m still this beautiful woman who’s smart, funny, playful, honest, loving, generous, passionate, adventurous – should I go on? But this is what I mean, there is sooooo much to us, sooooo much goodness, sooooo much love inside every single one of us. This isn’t unique to me. We’re all wonderfully amazing. To use my favorite word when it comes to describing women, we’re all magnificent.

The path to self-love and acceptance and the three things that can get you there

1. Self-awareness is the ability to pay attention to what’s going on inside of you at any point in time – the thoughts that arise and the emotions that accompany them, as well as the reasons for the emotions. Imagine you’re a lighthouse, and the ships are your emotions. And you’re constantly scanning the waters for your emotions and inquiring about how they got there and what their mission is.

Why is this important?

Because typically what happens is that we react to people, things and circumstances without even knowing why. And that’s because we may not be in touch with our emotions. We feel them, but we don’t know the origins of them or why they bubble up when they do. We’re also distracted, in our heads, and therefore things catch us by surprise. So we may blame others and complain about how things aren’t working for us, but we don’t take the time to inquire why we behave the way we behave and try to understand the others’ behaviors.

Self-awareness is key in getting back to yourself, in truly understanding why you do what you do, what’s underneath the triggers, and how you react to them. You stop and observe – research the annals of your life, and decide to inquire further to get to the root of your emotions. You find your own answers.

2. Self-compassion refers to treating ourselves with the same patience, kindness and understanding as we would treat our best friend when he/she is suffering. Compassion is the highest level of empathy – that is when you see someone suffering and regardless of how bad they are, you don’t look away. You help them any way you can. That kind of unconditional acceptance turned inward is what we need to give ourselves when we’re experiencing fear, shame, guilt, and regret, those very sticky emotions that love to latch unto experiences and not let them go.

Why is this important?

Because I don’t have to tell you that we’re our own worst critic. From a very early age, we’ve gone through life collecting and donning hand-me-downs of conditioning others placed on us as well as a few we picked out ourselves based on how we saw ourselves and our perception of how we compared to others. “I’m lazy.” I’m weak.” “I’m incompetent.” “I’m not reliable, not funny, not smart, not capable, not beautiful, not thin, not interesting, not rich, not deserving, not worthy enough. This conditioning turns into limiting beliefs that color every aspect of our lives, like my weight and pimples did. We then start to see life through those colors, and because what we believe we see, that’s exactly what we’re going to get.

It’s as if you look at yourself, like I did, and say, “I’m fat.” And keep repeating this to yourself. You could starve yourself, and put in hours at the gym every day for months, but you will not lose weight. And if you do, it’ll just be temporary.

Why? Because your focus is on being fat. That may not be what you want, but that’s what you’re focused on. That’s what you keep repeating to yourself. That is what you’re vibrating at and what you will continue to attract to yourself. So no matter what you do, you can only gain weight until you change the way you feel about yourself. What you focus on grows. Continuous thoughts become pathways in your brain. The only way to change your “reality” is to change how you see it, talk about it, but more importantly, feel about it and experience it.

Something that happens when you’re being self-critical is that you tend to isolate. No one else understands me. I’m alone in this, but nothing could be further from the truth. Self-compassion allows us to see that we’re not alone, that our issues are not just the domain of one – that we all have flaws, that we all make mistakes, that we all are perfectly imperfect. Isn’t that what you would tell your best friend?

3. Passion – In emotional intelligence terms, this is referred to as motivation, which we all know has to do with enthusiasm, drive, initiative, ambition, etc. While all of these nouns are powerful and can lead us to get off our butts and do great things, I believe that what we need to do is tap into our passion. Because once you know who you are, once you accept yourself as you are and start falling in love with the real you, you can then tap into your magic, your spark, what makes you come alive, your purpose, the work you would do for free.

You won’t need to drive yourself, you won’t need to increase your enthusiasm or set your ambition on fire, because you ARE on fire and what you’ll need to do is HANG ON! because the momentum is going to catapult you forward. That is why I focus on passion as the greatest engine for reaching our dreams. Our passions ARE our dreams In action. And because they’re so personal, and we’re so invested in them, living our passion requires little effort and can produce great joy.

4. The thread that ties it all together is mindfulness. It makes all of these principles possible and achievable in much less time than it would take -- if you did this --- out here, taking life at face value, and trying to figure out what everyone else is doing and how they’re affecting you. Mindfulness is the windshield wiper, if you will, that allows you to see things for what they are without judgement.

Mindfulness is a practice you can do at any time of the day as you go on about your business. It’s the gentle awareness that allows you to see not only what’s going on but where your thoughts and emotions are at any given moment. In the words of Jon Kavat-Zinn, the mindfulness guru, mindfulness is intentionally paying attention to the present moment without judgment.

Why the focus on paying attention? Because we do it so rarely! According to a Harvard study, our mind wanders 50% of the time. Where’s it going? To the past or to the future, anywhere but the present moment.

You’ll notice that:

• you’re either ruminating about something that happened, something you regret doing or not doing, something you lost, something you wanted to happen and didn’t …

• or you’re fast forwarding to what you want to happen, or are putting on the brakes to something you DON’T want to happen and are possibly already suffering in anticipation of this which hasn’t happened yet.

In essence, we’re usually thinking about I, me and mine and, we’re going through life on auto pilot.

If you don’t believe me, can you recall what you had for lunch yesterday?

Mindfulness is also a type of meditation. Meditation is not just for monks in orange robes or white loincloths sitting cross-legged in caves for thirty years. Millions of people the world over practice meditation today. Why? Because it’s transformational.

There is nothing mystical or woo-woo about meditation. Simply put, meditation is paying attention to the way our mind actually works. Just like there are many types of sports, there are many types of meditation. And just like sports can lead you to physical fitness, meditation can guide you to mental fitness (to achieve clarity, peace, confidence, creativity and bliss).

Scientific studies have also shown that meditation can help improve sleep, reduce anxiety, and stress, lower blood pressure, decrease pain and provide a host of other health benefits.

Although I had been doing the “I love you-amazing woman-mirror-trick” for years, and it worked its magic, it wasn’t until I started meditating on a regular basis that I started to feel happier, freer, more open and accepting and gained a lot more clarity about every aspect of my life.

My relationships took on a much deeper and satisfying meaning not just those with those closest to me, but with everyone I come in contact with, like the new cashier at the supermarket. My creativity spiked. And I’ve discovered my sense of purpose. More importantly, I now have an overall appreciation and, in a word, maybe two, unconditional love for myself as I am --foibles and all-- and my life as it is right now – challenges and the rest of it.

Meditation helped break down the barriers that were holding me back from being me. It opened the door to my own self-awareness, self-compassion and the explosion of my passion.

And it’s this openness, acceptance, knowingness and creativity that I want YOU to experience as well.