The One Realization That Turned My Insecurity Into Confidence
In very early 2022, I found myself at something of a personal dead end.
I’d never been particularly confident. I’d always battled insecurity and fear and self-loathing, and things had just gotten a hell of a lot worse.
It was pitch black, a steady flurry of snowflakes dusted the highway, and I found myself almost unable to see the road through the tears that were streaming down my face.
As I drove through the night, alternating between sobbing and screaming, I wondered just how it had come to this.
It sounds incredibly melodramatic to say that all of this pain was over a breakup.
Even more so when you consider that the relationship had lasted less than a single year.
But in that moment, all of the struggle, all of the progress I’d made to overcome my inner demons (or so I thought), had been wiped away in a single moment.
I found myself back at square one. Miserable, alone, insecure, and cripplingly afraid of the future.
But far from being the end I imagined it was, this was secretly a new beginning.
Over the next few months, between bouts of crying and existential numbness, I looked inward.
And amid this crucible of all things terrible, I discovered a truth that had been the source of my lack of confidence, my insecurity, my people-pleasing tendencies, the reason I’d been such a “nice guy” for my entire life.
Alan Watts popularized a concept known as the “Backwards Law” - the idea being that counterintuitively, the harder you chase something psychological (security, love, acceptance, respect, confidence) generally the harder it will try to elude you.
There’s a subtlety to the way this manifests in our day-to-day lives.
I spent 26 years of my life CHASING the approval, the validation, the “Good job, Andrew!”.
Not because I wanted it - but because I NEEDED it.
Or so I told myself.
And the harder I chased, the harder I tried, the more insecure and hopeless I felt.
Interestingly, the very relationship that left me feeling completely obliterated, had itself only manifested as a result of the ONE time I had given myself unconditional permission to push myself out of my comfort zone and just see what happened. I allowed myself to stop chasing and to simply BE OKAY, and suddenly things changed.
But I didn’t learn the lesson. I didn’t understand just yet. And so as the relationship went on, my insecurity grew larger and larger and I found myself a victim of the Backwards Law. My fundamental belief that this girl was “out of my league” meant that I felt the need to “try” to keep her in my life. It didn’t feel “normal” for her to just “be” in my life. I needed to EARN IT.
The harder I tried to keep the relationship, the harder I pushed it away - things slowly getting worse and worse until they eventually culminated in my late-night drive past endless rows of streetlamps that appeared only as blurry streaks through my tear-streaked eyes.
The truth I discovered about myself was simple, but it changed everything.
The driving force behind this “Backwards Law” is this:
Every time I chose to chase approval, every time I people-pleased, every time I was “nice”, I was slowly chiseling away at my source of power.
When I tried to be confident, I was telling myself that who I was WASN’T enough. That subconscious belief doesn’t motivate a great deal of confidence.
When I tried to chase validation and approval, I was telling myself that other people’s opinions were more important than mine. Even further reinforcing the belief that I NEEDED to chase other people’s approval and validation in the first place.
The same pattern appeared in almost every area of my life.
The realization that changed it all was that I had been REJECTING MYSELF - in favor of the opinions of others, in favor of approval and validation.
In my rush to feel better about myself, I didn’t realize that the primary person consistently rejecting me was me.
That rejection of self was implicit in almost every action I had taken, caving to fears and anxieties about “what other people might think”, and constantly avoiding anything that would open me up to the perceived pain of rejection.
I had unknowingly been hamstringing my confidence, my trust in myself, for YEARS - decades even.
That realization has changed everything. My life is fundamentally different now. That night I spent screaming through my tears was the best thing that has ever happened to me.
I used to break myself into fragments, using some pieces as a shield to hide behind, and frantically burying all of the unsightly ones so that nobody would ever find them. In my experience, true improvement only happened when I stopped hiding from myself.
Stop rejecting yourself. Heal your relationship with YOU. That’s where it all starts.
You can watch my video about this topic here! https://youtu.be/1ZB9CGbnJLI
Take Your Energy Back
About a week ago, I had the sudden realization that I’d been misinterpreting a very large slice of reality.
I’ve spent most of my life avoiding things that make me uncomfortable, procrastinating, dealing with fear, and self-sabotage. The usual!
These emotions, thoughts, and feelings always seemed to be omnipresent, unwanted invaders. Somehow making me unsafe within my own skin.
And then, in a flash - I saw that actually, no. The fear was also me. The doubt was also me. The procrastinating was also ME.
I saw that I wasn’t being invaded at all. I was being PROTECTED. Unnecessarily, perhaps. But protected nonetheless. The negative emotions served a purpose - they had an intention (a misguided one prompted by old conditioning, likely) that was for my theoretical benefit.
Due to my conditioning, my programming, my beliefs, and my preconceptions, my mind was dedicating MY energy to create these “negative” emotions, and I was then running from them. Running from the other pieces of myself.
And somehow, once I saw that it was actually MY energy, my tendency towards avoidance seemed to instantly vanish.
There’s nothing to run away from, and nowhere to run.
I can see now that I had been consistently breaking myself into competing fragments. The “good” side (which I identified with “me”) and the “bad” side (all the “negative” stuff) which I tried to avoid and “improve”.
The knowing provides a certain level of peace. I know that my fear, my doubt, my insecurity, it’s all just MY ENERGY. And that seems to completely change my relationship with fear.
When you see that all the parts of you that you’ve disowned, ran from and avoided are actually just your own energy and your own power in disguise - you can welcome them back without fear.
You can stop breaking yourself into fragments, and take your energy back.
You Can’t Hold On
One of the most profound realizations I’ve ever had about “letting go” is that you actually HAVE TO let go in life.
Seeing this makes the process quite a bit simpler. You may still experience a significant amount of psychological resistance to the idea of letting go of your attachments, but that doesn’t change the fact that you actually have no choice.
Most people spend their entire lives acting out of a state of inner insecurity. Thus, they seek external sources of security as compensation.
This manifests as follows:
I don’t feel good about myself as I am, so I decide that I’m going to do something about it.
This is the initial step. We take action to compensate. This can range from using substances to cope with our internal feelings to trying to earn as much money as possible to frantically prove to ourselves that we ARE worth something, that we ARE enough.
Conveniently, the world we live in has, from the very moment you were born, barraged you with an endless array of messages about what “should” make you happy.
So we think, “I need more money, a nicer car, a girl or boyfriend, a nicer house, more freedom, a new haircut, nicer clothes, to lose weight, to be famous…” and so on.
And while there’s certainly no problem with any of those things, there IS a fundamental issue with the way we go about getting them.
I believed, for a long time, that a partner would “fix” me. I needed to find the right person, who loved me the right way and understood me. And then somehow by that process, I would finally feel whole and complete.
When I finally found a relationship that checked those internal boxes, I was over the moon. I was so incredibly happy - So happy that my mind detached from reality and went into “imagination mode”
I imagined a future, traveling the world with my partner, maybe a family someday, how happy we’d be…
And it all came crashing down around me during a sudden and unexpected breakup.
Afterward, during a sort of “relationship post-mortem”, I realized that through my desire for that story to be played out, I had actually contributed (if not directly caused) the breakup to happen.
I was so attached to the story of the girl who would fix me, so lost in my own “broken-ness”, that I was blind to reality. I was desperate for anybody who could come close to making me feel whole.
Because I had the image of the one perfect person who would make me whole, who would solve my problems and set me free, I PROJECTED that image onto this girl.
She became my goddess, my way out of hell, the one who would save me.
Even when the relationship ended, it wasn’t ACTUALLY about the relationship. I was trying to hold on for the sake of the image. The relationship was on the rocks and wasn’t a good time anymore. The thing I was desperately clinging to and refusing to let go of was the STORY in my own head.
And the lesson I learned is that over time, illusions will fade. The truth will be made clear.
I was trying to build a life around a series of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and coping mechanisms.
If I had let the fantasy of the perfect future go, I would’ve been able to be more present, more relaxed in the relationship. It may well have lasted a lot longer. It may have even turned into something like I’d dreamed it would.
But my dissociation from reality, my projecting the image of perfection onto this girl, and then struggling to measure up to my own projection, that’s what ultimately caused me the pain.
No matter where you draw your security from, if it’s external, it can and will fade.
If you draw your sense of purpose from your job, who will you be when you retire?
If you draw your sense of security from your power, your physical strength, who will you be when you get old and withered?
If like me, you strive to find that other half, who will you be without them? Will you be broken once more?
The very nature of everything in the world is transitory. Everything is constantly changing. No relationship, family, friends, business, romance, none of it will last forever.
Even if it lasts 50 years, it will eventually fade.
And the more desperately we try to keep it, to control it, to force it to stay… the quicker it seems to leave.
You really can’t hold on. No matter how hard you fight, no matter how hard you try, you eventually have to let go - because the THING will be gone.
The only thing we CAN hold onto is our mental pictures, our ideas, and concepts.
That might sound defeatist and nihilistic, but it isn’t!
The very beauty of life comes about from the fact that it will change. So enjoy the time you have. Be present. Live, laugh, love!
Let things come, enjoy them. And when the time comes, let them go. Trust that new things will also come. New things you might have never expected.
The world is full of amazing relationships that have stood the test of time. And the world is also full of miserable couples who have stuck it out for 30+ years out of sheer stubbornness and hate. They might be “holding on” to their relationship - but they’re actually holding on to a past picture. An image of how things used to be, or how things “should” be, projected onto a reality that no longer matches the ideal.
This pulls us out of sync with reality. Like my relationship. I was in love with the fantasy I had projected onto reality. But that brought with it crippling insecurity, neediness and anxiety. Because I wanted to maintain my projection, my mental image of the relationship, at any cost.
My addiction to this image of the relationship ended up costing me the actual thing.
It pulled me out of sync with reality. When we spend our time clinging to emotionally charged mental images, we lose touch with what’s going on. Our projections become more important than actual people.
Looking important becomes more important than being happy
Having people think your life is good becomes more important than having a good life
Being rich becomes more important than taking care of your family
We become blinded by the glamour of the mental image, and we lose sight of what matters.
So be willing to let go of the mental pictures, your projections, and your insecurities, and see clearly!
Because life, REAL LIFE, isn’t something you CAN hold on to. You can only hold on to your illusions ABOUT it, and in my experience, those illusions cause a lot more trouble than they’re worth.
But the good news is that you don’t have to be bound by your fears, you don’t have to spend your life constantly seeking that external validation and sense of security, and you don’t have to chase that perfect relationship to find your other half.
Because one day, you realize that there was no need to run around compensating in the first place.
Just Let Go
I never thought I would be a remotely spiritual person.
For most of my life, I thought of myself as a fairly rational pragmatist.
In college, I was required to take a single “philosophy” class, and I took Logic. It was the only philosophy that I didn’t think was a joke - because it wasn’t really philosophy.
If anybody had preached to me the power of forgiveness, gratitude, letting go, and how “just changing your perspective” was the way to freedom in life, I’d have thought they were full of shit.
That is, until I saw myself. I saw my own patterns and conditioning for the first time.
I saw that everything I’d been holding onto for my entire life, was effectively negative programming.
I’d slowly turned from a happy, inquisitive child who loved to learn, to a miserable 20-something-year-old who was crippled by fear and full of self-loathing, resentment, and hopelessness.
How? Why?
Those questions caused a subtle stir in my being. My mind went from being 100% despair to 98% despair and 2% curiosity.
Most people, most of the time, are just like I was.
We are so consumed by our programming, so deeply ingrained in a state of fear and lack, that we spend 100% of our time focused on fixing our feelings. Focused on getting things we want. Running away from the things we don’t want.
So focused that we never ask, “why?”
They seemed so obvious to me before, my problems. The world was too hard, I couldn’t succeed. I wasn’t loveable. I was just a fuck-up.
I spent my entire life compensating for my inherent “badness”. People pleasing, avoiding conflict, trying to stay as small and inoffensive as possible. Being the nice guy, doing the “right” thing. I even found myself constantly over-apologizing, as if my very existence was something offensive to other people, and I needed to do something to make up for it.
My entire worldview, my entire life, everything I thought I knew, was built upon either avoiding or compensating for my “fundamental flaws”.
And what changed my life was permission to let go.
I was so sure that I knew how the world worked, and yet I was miserable all the time and I hated myself. I was so smugly confident, I almost took pleasure in my own pain.
What if I was wrong?
For so long, being right was all I had. I might’ve been depressed, but at least I was RIGHT about it. I had good reasons for why everything sucked. I had a very convincing story that I told myself over and over to rationalize everything.
Rationalize. Rational lies.
Lies that sound nice, that we can tell ourselves to feel good because we’re too afraid to face the truth.
For me, letting go meant releasing that intense grip on my own story. What if everything I believed about myself and the world was, mostly, wrong?
For years I’d been so entrenched in my own story, in my own “rightness”, that I refused to even look at the bigger picture. I was blind to the possibilities of the world, and the opportunities that surrounded me the entire time.
I was so convinced that the world was like a stormy sea, and I was clinging to a life vest with every fiber of my being.
Michael Singer (author of The Untethered Soul, great book!) perhaps says it best when he says most of us are so busy trying not to drown that we never notice we’re lying face down in a puddle, and it’s only our own flailing around that’s splashing water into our faces.
Life is beautiful. Far more beautiful than I’d ever noticed when I was running around trying to fix myself. Or trying to hide from myself.
Somehow the most painful, tragic moment of my then 26 years on the planet turned into the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Because it destroyed me. It absolutely obliterated everything I ever thought that I was.
Suddenly there was nothing left to hold onto, I was adrift in the ocean without a life-vest. Nothing made sense, I had no purpose, I had no hope.
And yet, I didn’t drown. I kept asking why. I kept searching for the deeper meaning.
Why had I been so sad? Why did nothing make sense? Why was I so dependent, so afraid all the time?
We have been programmed, all of us.
Our inner seeds of insecurity, our “fundamental flaws” that we develop as beliefs in childhood, somehow crystalize into facts as adults.
We learn that dogs bark, cats meow, and we aren’t whole and complete.
These fundamental beliefs are the foundation for an entire life built on insecurity.
Is it any wonder that our cultures and people are so insecure, afraid, so violent?
Is it any wonder that billion dollar industries exist so that you can try to dress “better”, drive a “nicer” car, have a “fancier” house?
The entire world is made up of insecure children frantically trying to compensate for their lack of inner security and balance.
They desperately need love and compassion, and yet they live in a way that consistently pushes those very things further and further away.
We kill people in the name of peace, we use fear to promote security, we suppress the truth in the name of freedom. The whole world hangs in the balance when egomaniacs control nuclear weapons - like children who never learned to share their toys.
We have been programmed to accept this as normal. To accept our role. To feel guilty for thinking we could be more. To cower in the face of our own fundamental worthlessness. Either paralyzed OR hypnotized by our not-enoughness, we either stay small or frantically flail around trying to prove to ourselves that we’re better.
All of this is built upon a seed that is a lie. You’re not fundamentally flawed. There is NOTHING wrong with you.
All the fear that stops you from acting is PROGRAMMING.
The layers of compensation, rationalization, fear, insecurity, anger, and pain go so far and so deep that many people never look inward.
We become tools of the system, accidentally or intentionally inflicting pain and misery on others, perpetuating the belief that they too, are flawed and not enough.
Let it all go. Let the illusions go. We’re so afraid to see the obvious. So paralyzed by our own negative programming and conditioning.
Our attachment to the external is so OBVIOUSLY transitory. The very nature of reality IS change. And yet we build our entire lives around clinging to the first hint of security we can get. We don’t trust life, in spite of the fact that we EXIST in the first place solely due to life.
We didn’t do anything to be born, it just happened. We didn’t have to try to grow as we got older, it just happened. In fact, you don’t even know how you’re reading this and understanding it right now. It’s just happening. Yet we frantically bounce around trying to control every single variable in our lives, under the illusion that if we don’t hold on, everything will fall apart.
We cling to relationships, money, property, and any hint of security, on the assumption that it will cure our inner feeling of lack, of emptiness.
To let go is to simply see that while there’s nothing “wrong” with ANY of this, it just doesn’t work.
It’s not the path to freedom. It’s not the way to truth. And for most people, it doesn’t lead to a very happy life.
So wake up! Look around and see that you really have NO CHOICE but to let go.
Because you actually can’t hold on anyway.
“The Way Things Are”
My personal freedom was found when I discovered that things aren’t the way they are.
I had been living my life based on a lie. A lie that fueled an endless list of attempts to compensate for what I believed was my fundamental inadequacy.
My basic paradigm, the assumption upon which I had unwittingly based my entire adult life was, put bluntly, horse-shit.
You see, at the core, I believed that I was “bad”. Therefore, my entire life was built around compensating for my inherent “badness”.
People pleasing, perfectionism, conflict avoidance, crippling fear of failure, all served to build an image of stability and “goodness”, that I could present to other people. That way they’d never find out how bad I actually was.
I think most people have a similar belief, usually formed in childhood.
We have an experience, usually with one or both parents, where we notice for the first time that love is at least partially conditional.
We go from having only experienced unconditional love and care, to experiencing rejection for the first time in our very short lives.
Perhaps we get yelled at for the first time, or perhaps our parent or parents don’t give us the same amount of attention they usually do.
We think, “what did I do wrong?”
“Why doesn’t mom/dad love me like they used to?”
As little kids (and frequently as adults) we often lack the ability to see things clearly.
We don’t see that mom had a rough day at work, and she was exhausted and didn’t have the energy to spend time with you like she usually did before.
A kid just understands “Mom didn’t give me attention” and has to try to explain to themselves WHY.
I and many, many other people came to a simple logical conclusion. I must be bad! I must’ve done something wrong.
This represents a huge problem for a child who depends on their parents not just for love, but also for food and shelter. If you’re not loveable, you’re going to be abandoned, which means you will quite literally die. (Perhaps this explains why for many people the fear of abandonment is similar to the fear of death)
And in little Andrew’s mind (and the minds of millions of other children) a simple solution presented itself.
What if I never do anything wrong, ever again? What if I only ever make people happy? What if I’m always right?
Then they’ll have to love me, and I’ll feel whole again.
…
I spent about 26 years of my life living out that pattern. Dealing with maintaining an external image of perfection. Everybody always believed I would accomplish great things. Everybody was always saying how great I was.
It didn’t matter. I knew it was all an act. Because I knew I was bad. That’s just how it was!
Until one day I saw the truth.
The way it was…wasn’t.
I saw the entirety of my years of fear and anxiety, my self-loathing and my occasional desire to erase myself revealed for what they were.
Bullshit. Meaningless. A child’s misunderstanding extrapolated across two and a half decades of life experience.
Everything I had every tried to do to "improve” was pointless, because I was trying to improve something that wasn’t.
The belief that I wasn’t good enough motivated action to change, but it also motivated self-sabotage!
My crippling fear of failure led me to give up on college and to give up on pursuing my dreams. I thought there was no chance “someone like me” could succeed. All the while I needed to maintain an exterior image of being “right” to prove I was good. So I always had a convenient line of excuses ready to justify my place in life.
All born out of a belief that was WRONG.
These fundamental flaws - our belief that there’s something wrong about us. We’re just bad, or unworthy, or unlovable.
These things lie at the bottom of the chain of "why”.
And they’re simply not true.
There’s nothing wrong with you, and you don’t need to be fixed.
90% of the problems I’ve faced in my life (probably 99 or 100% if I’m being honest) have been born SOLELY out of my desire to avoid being revealed as a fraud, unlovable and unworthy. Insecurity, fear, doubt, jealousy, anxiety, and guilt all spout endlessly from the belief that we’re flawed. That we’re somehow less.
We spend our lives CHASING what we think will fix us. But it never works, because the energy that motivates the chasing is the energy that sabotages the effort.
As Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “It is only that which is that can be transformed”. In the original context he spoke in terms of knowing where you are in life. Where you actually are.
When we are acting out of this fundamental inadequacy, we sabotage our own efforts. We attempt to transform that which is NOT. And thus, cannot ever be successful.
But the good news is that you don’t need to transform the belief that you’re unworthy, or flawed.
You simply need to see the truth and let go
“It is only that which is that can be transformed”
Asking “Why”
I’ve always been a curious person. I’ve always wanted to know what things are, how they work, and most importantly, why things are the way they are.
While growing up, I would frequently get into arguments with my parents when the imperative “Because I said so” was invoked.
To my mind, this was a highly suspect and completely unsatisfactory answer.
There’s a good argument to be made that I was just a stubborn kid who didn’t want to do his chores, but this tendency to push back against “because that’s the way things are” served me well during the absolute low that came following my break-up in early 2022.
I was devastated. I was miserable, hopeless, and full of absolute despair. I was the human embodiment of Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt.
I cried every day for a month, and then most days for a second month, only taking breaks when I felt too empty to cry that day.
And then, suddenly, the entire path to personal freedom was blown open when somewhere in the back of my mind, a question bubbled up…
Why?
“Why are you so devastated?”, the one remaining logical brain cell in my aching head asked.
“You only dated her for like 6 months!”
Oh yeah.
That WAS strange. How could somebody I’d only dated for half a year make me despair of ever feeling happy again?
Thus began the cascade of “whys” that would utterly transform my life.
Why did it end? Why had I become so dependent? Why did I feel such a strong need for this girl? Why did I feel like my life was crumbling to the ground? Why did I suddenly feel devoid of any meaning or purpose?
After all… it was only a 6 month relationship… right?
This one logical thought was like the fine blade of a chisel slowly working its way through the otherwise impenetrable walls around my mind. Walls made up of sadness and anger and every other conceivable negative emotion.
But slowly and surely, the chisel blade worked its way through my entire life. Revealing truth where before I had once been (perhaps willfully) blind.
The answer to these whys fundamentally shifted my view of not just my own life, but “life” itself.
I realized I had been living a lie. I’d been living half a life. I’d built an entire identity around avoiding myself. Around fracturing and dividing who I thought I was from who I wanted to be. Around trying to hide my “flaws” and act like I was happier than I actually was.
My relationship had ended because of a multitude of reasons. Many of which had been my fault. I’d been needy and insecure and had put my former girlfriend on an incredibly high pedestal.
“Why?”
For years I’d built an entire persona around people pleasing, making other people happy, being the “nice” guy. Endlessly trying to make everybody like me, not because I wanted them to be happy, but because I desperately needed their validation to not feel hollow.
“Why?”
I’d always been a perfectionist, wanting to get everything right. I needed to know the right answers. I couldn’t stand conflict or people not liking me. I needed to be seen not just as “good” but as the “best”, and this has caused me to be terrified of anything too challenging. I was crippled by a fear of being seen as being a fraud.
“Why?”
Because I’m bad! I’m unlovable and unworthy and people will leave me if I make a mistake. People won’t want to be my friends if they see how worthless I am.
“Why?”
…Well…That’s just the way it is, right?
“Why”
…Because
This last one stumped me.
Hold on, I never accept “because”. Not unless it’s backed up with some evidence.
And just like my mom when I was a kid who didn’t want to do the dishes, my mind got frustrated when I refused to accept the “because”.
“Why am I not good enough? Why am I unlovable and unworthy?”
“That’s just the way things are!” the mind countered.
That’s a lazy answer. That’s a cop-out.
Was it possible that I didn’t have a good answer? Was it possible that there was no good reason for the myriad of compensation mechanisms I’d employed? Was it possible that I had lived my entire life feeling not good enough, trying to compete for validation, trying to be everyone’s friend and never let anybody down on such a simple assumption as “Because you’re not good enough” with nothing to back it up?
Was that just “the way things were”?
Finding Freedom
I’ve spent a great deal of my life feeling bad.
Feeling not good enough, unworthy, unlovable…being filled with self-loathing.
I’ve spent days quite literally banging my head against the wall.
I’ve had days where I wondered if I should just end it all - if life was even worth living.
And then something happened that utterly changed my life.
Something completely unexpected and unwanted.
Something that I fought tooth and nail to avoid. And yet it ended up being the best thing to ever happen to me.
In 2022, the end of a relationship left me feeling shattered, completely alone, hopeless, and empty.
I cried every day for a month. That’s not hyperbole. I actually cried every single day for a month.
See, just before this breakup, I thought I had found my way out of my misery.
I’d worked so hard, I’d faced my fears, I’d done so much to come out of my shell, trying to fight back against those inner voices - trying to “better” myself.
And for a short while it had worked, I’d increased my income, I’d increased my self-confidence (I thought), and I’d fallen in love. I had dreams of a future, traveling the world with my partner, and being a photographer.
I thought I’d found an angel. Someone who could save me from myself.
And here I was, once again, consigned to my own personal hell. Tossed back into the pit, with even less hope than before.
Yet somehow. In ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine, this place of absolute agony and misery was exactly where I needed to be.
I suddenly saw in remarkable clarity how I had been acting out the same pattern again and again for my entire life.
I saw how fundamentally limiting beliefs were clouding my judgment and dramatically limiting my potential. I saw how I had made MYSELF miserable for YEARS. How I had paralyzed myself in a place of indecision, so afraid of making a mistake that I simply did nothing.
That place of absolute despair was the beginning of a transformation. A journey that provided me with a new sense of purpose, and a realization about the fundamental nature of our human experience, and how backward everything sometimes seems.
This transformation has completely changed my relationship with the world, and myself. And I can wholeheartedly say that I no longer look at the world in the same way. Not even close.
I no longer experience self-loathing, I no longer bang my head against the wall. On the contrary, I quite enjoy being me!
This blog will be about that journey, the lessons I’ve learned, and how I believe they can help you as well.
And it all started with a single question. A single word. One of my favorite words.
In fact, my mom would tell you it’s been my favorite word since the day I learned how to say it.
It all started when I asked, “why?”