When You Think You're Not Enough: The Four Life-Changing Steps to Loving Yourself (Gift for Women, Motivational Book, and Fans of Never Good Enough or The Self-Love Workbook) - Softcover

Kingma, Daphne Rose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573245348 ISBN 13: 9781573245340

Publisher: Conari Press, 2012

Synopsis

Who Better to Love You Than You?

It’s time to stop feeling like we’re not enough. We’re either too fat or too thin. We're not good enough, pretty enough, popular enough, powerful enough, bold enough, brave enough, interesting enough... The solution? More self-love.

Know yourself. Bestselling author and psychotherapist, Daphne Rose Kingma, offers a four-step plan to reclaim and love ourselves. Complete with stories and examples to drown out the inner critic, When You Think You’re Not Enough sets out to remind us that we’re more than enough.

Be nice to yourself. If we’re being honest, we don’t take ourselves much into consideration. Acceptance, appreciation, respect, compassion… we reserve these virtues for others. Daphne reminds us that we need these to feel good too. It is only after we foster these in ourselves that we can apply it to a greater purpose.

Inside, she’ll encourage you to love who you are, and look at and let go of:

• Self-deprecating behaviors and beliefs
• Old patterns and pressures
• Imaginary ideals and standards

If you’re ready to start loving yourself, and enjoyed books like, I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't), More Than Enough, or You Are Enough, then you’ll love When You Think You're Not Enough.

About this title

About the Author

Dubbed the “The Love Doctor” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Daphne Rose Kingma is an emotional healer, spiritual guide, former psychotherapist, relationship expert, keynote speaker, and author. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages, selling over a million and a half copies. A frequent guest on Oprah and Charlie Rose, Kingma has appeared on various television and radio programs.

A longtime resident of Santa Barbara, California, she is also a frequent workshop leader at Big Sur's prestigious Esalen Institute.

www.daphnekingma.com

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When You Think You're Not Enough

The Four Life-Changing Steps to Loving Yourself

By DAPHNE ROSE KINGMA

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2012 Daphne Rose Kingma
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-534-0

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One Moving Forward, Looking Back
ONE: Why You Need and Deserve Your Own Love
TWO: How Don't I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways
THREE: How Did It Get to Be This Way?
FOUR: Learning to Love Yourself
Part Two The Path to Self-Love
FIVE: Speak Out
SIX: Act Out
SEVEN: Clear Out
EIGHT: Set Out
NINE: Living with Self-Compassion
About the Author

CHAPTER 1

Why You Need and Deserve Your Own Love

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love andaffection.

—Buddha

There is only one of you. You are a precious, unrepeatable expression of themind of God. It is confoundingly simple to say that there will never be anotheryou, but there won't. There is no one else who sees the world exactly like youdo, whose feelings strike the strings of their heart exactly the same way asyours. There is no one, no matter how similar or familiar, whose days and yearswill be exactly like yours, no one else who can perfectly nurture your dreams,who can most deeply feel each of your hopes as they fly like small butterfliesinto your heart or are crushed in the palm of a stranger.

Even if we all have thousands of lifetimes—and many people believe we do—theperson you are in each of those lives is not this you, with this birth, theseeyes and these hands and this pain to work out, these parents, these brothersand sisters, these talents, these gifts to give, this precise number of days andminutes and hours between the writing of your name on your birth certificate andits carving on your tombstone.

You're the only one who has the exceptional opportunity to truly know you and todiscover your single beautiful path. Others can hold a mirror for you and showyou parts of yourself that may have been obscured for a long time, but they cannever give you the whole of yourself, the whole you that is yours to possess, toexpend, to express, to release when your day in this life is through.

You can love others, care for them, encourage them, support them, listen tothem, comfort them, joke and argue and cry with them—and I hope you do—but allthe gifts of joy and consideration and nurturing that you give to others, youalso deserve from yourself. You need the love that only you can give you.

Raw Beginnings, Deep Roots

Recently, at a party, I mentioned that I was writing a book on self-love. I sawa lot of heads turn. "Now, there's a topic," said the woman standing closest tome. "Self-love—I still struggle with self-hate. That's a deep black hole I'vebeen trying to climb up out of for years."

There are thousands of reasons for not loving ourselves. Every person has one—ora hundred and one. We're too fat or too thin. We cry too easily, or not at all.We fear failure and success. We're foolish. We're not good enough, prettyenough, powerful enough, tall enough, brave enough, interesting enough. Weconvince ourselves we don't deserve the lives we desire.

Remember the proverb, "Love your neighbor as yourself"? Maybe we love ourneighbors so poorly because we never learned how to love ourselves. Maybe we'retrying to extract love from a love-starved self. Maybe, in order to repair ourability to love others, we need to start at square one—with ourselves.

In my own life, I always felt that I was superfluous and, in fact, a burden tomy family. It wasn't because my parents didn't love me; indeed, they both showedme many beautiful expressions of love. It was because the circumstances of ourlife were difficult. I was the fifth child and fourth daughter in a familyalready struggling to make ends meet. While I was still very young, all mysiblings became ill, two of them with life-threatening diseases, another with aprotracted case of pneumonia. I remember watching my mother, weary beyondbelief, single-handedly nurse all these ailing children. Day by day, I waitedpatiently on the stairs for the time when she would come to feed me. At thosemoments I felt sorry, apologetic almost, that after taking care of everyone andeverything else, there was still another person—me—who needed her attention andcare. Wouldn't things have been easier for everyone, my young subconsciousasked, if only I hadn't been born?

Later this belief repeated itself when, as a young girl, I looked at mybeautiful older sisters and concluded that, already, my family had enough girls.We were still having a very hard time financially, and it seemed that my being,my existence itself, was a burden to parents already stretched to the limit. Iresponded by trying to take up as little time, space, money, and care aspossible. I practiced the art of being invisible. Trying to disappear is a longway from loving yourself.

My experience is only one of the multitudes of human experiences, many of themfar more direct in their cruelty and impact, which make it difficult for us tolove ourselves. We live through such experiences and come to adulthood, where weare expected to love others as ourselves but unfortunately, for many of us, theessential capacity to love ourselves is missing. This has profound implicationsnot only for our capacity to feel happy and satisfied in our own lives, but alsoin our ability to love others.

When we haven't learned how to love ourselves well, we keep getting stuck onthis simple first rung of the ladder. We don't know how or how well to treatothers and we have problems with what we call boundaries. We stumble through theswamps of low self-esteem and thickets of self-loathing that derail us in ourefforts to "love others as ourselves." It has been my own walk down the path toself-love that inspired me to write this book, as well as my witness of manyothers as they, too, took the journey.

In order to walk this path we must first understand that self-love is notnarcissism. Nor is it egotism, greed, self-righteousness, self-involvement,stubbornness, or conceit, all of which have given real self-love a bad name.Rather, it is the singing spring from which each of us can become our mostauthentic self.

Self-love is also mysterious. For when we really learn to love ourselves, we nolonger have to work at it every minute. By continually reminding ourselves howimportant we are, how important loving ourselves is, we eventually arrive at aplace where self-compassion comes more easily, almost automatically. From thewell of quiet acceptance, from the practice of a gentle unconditional care ofourselves, we can reach out to love others with exquisite generosity andbounteous open hearts.

That is because self-love is above all a spiritual matter. For it is only whenwe can actually see and feel ourselves as one of the threads in the vast humanshawl, as deeply, indeed, unconditionally received by a passionately caring andbeautifully ordered universe, that we can truly love ourselves. This true, feltsense of ourselves as a precious part of the universe is really the ultimatesource from which we can love others.

While traveling in Italy recently, I met with a holistic physician who conductsworkshops on self-care and spiritual practice. When I asked him what he found tobe the most prevalent problem in his medical practice, he said, without aninstant's hesitation, "People don't know how to love themselves."

Whether this rampant lack of self-love takes the form of physical affliction—obesity,addiction, and the myriad ailments which have at their source anunresolved emotional issue as in the doctor's practice—or whether it expressesitself as a so-called "psychological" problem—low self-esteem, relationshipdifficulties, problems with money—it's clear that there is an epidemic of ourinability to love ourselves.

Indeed, I once heard a highly spiritually developed person say that it was easyto meditate six hours a day and it was easy to give away all his goods and servehis spiritual master; but when his teacher asked him if he loved himself herealized that he did not. In facing his answer to his teacher's question, heencountered the limits of his capacity to love.

It doesn't matter whether your own struggle to love yourself was born ofdifficult life circumstances or through some excruciating emotional or spiritualassaults—the wound is great. For so many of us, loving ourselves is our greatestemotional problem.

I have written many books about love: how to love well in a relationship, how tolive through the end of one, how to inform your love and relationships with aspiritual dimension, how both women and men can learn to love and understand menbetter, how we can love people with personalities different from our own, andhow all our loves are infused with that one great Love which is the light ofbeing itself.

All of these instructions about love, however, are based on the notion that wealready know how to love—to appreciate, apprehend, delight in, honor, value,esteem, praise, care for, empathize with, and even cherish—ourselves. If you'relike me and a great many other people, you're probably still not an expert atthis, your greatest life's work of love. And so I invite you to join me in thisprocess of discovery.

This book is a journey to you, a discovery of how you lost yourself—andtherefore lost your ability to love yourself. It is also a map to the beauty,the grace, and the strength that is you. It is le beau chemin, the beautifulroute you will need to travel in order to reclaim them.

Loving yourself—truly receiving and cherishing your own being—is ultimately thetask of a lifetime. Although the process can seem complex, at heart it's notvery complicated. It's a matter of taking the four simple steps on the journeyto loving yourself: speaking out, acting out, clearing out, and setting out. Idescribe these fours steps in part 2.

The brief stories I relate in the coming chapters illustrate by example thesteps that others have taken on their path to self-compassion. They may not beprecisely the steps that you need to take, but they can certainly point you inthe right direction. I hope they will inspire you, and I encourage you to holdthem up to yourself, take the parts that apply to you, and then use them tocatapult you into action.

Change requires courage. Acting with courage, that is, behaving in ways that areunfamiliar and even scary to you, is what creates actual change. Once you havestepped—in thought, word, action or practice—across your own inner limits, youwill actually start to function in new and different ways. This changed behaviorwill deeply affect the way you feel about yourself. Instead of discouragement orself-criticism, you will start to feel self-love.

With this in mind and with my encouragement and love, I urge you to take thesefour powerful steps on your own path to self-compassion.

May you enjoy the journey. And when you are finished, may your heart be full ofYou!

CHAPTER 2

How Don't I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways

I can't believe how cruel I am to myself.

—Woman, 36, recovering from a suicide attempt

Difficulty loving ourselves is a universal problem. And far from being the best-keptsecret of our individual selves, it's a creeping general malaise, somethingwhich, given a chance, we're all grateful to confess: "Oh, you have troubleloving yourself too; I thought I was the only one."

If it's true that so many of us struggle to love ourselves— if I nod with bothrecognition and shock when the Italian doctor states the problem, if the partypeople are cheering the fact that I'm speaking to this topic—how did it get tobe this way? And why haven't we been able to do something about it? Why are weso seemingly uncomfortable in our own skins and why do we keep trippingourselves up with so many kinds of self-sabotage?

Why are we sometimes able to notice this awful treatment of ourselves, but arestill unable to prevent the next binge of self-criticism? And why, in our ownprivate dialogues—those lying-awake-in-the-night conversations we sometimes havewith ourselves—can we be so astonishingly brutal, not telling ourselves all thethings that are right and good and beautiful about ourselves, but all that'swrong, bad, ugly, and hopeless about us? Why? Have we come to accept all thisself-negating behavior as simply and unavoidably just the way things are?

One way to find the answer is to take a good look at all the ways we tortureourselves. Let's take a minute to drag the demons out into the light so you canstare them down before you move beyond them. I encourage you to look at thislist without self-judgment. Just notice, with compassion if you can, how many ofthese things you do to yourself. Awareness is the beginning of healing.

Self-Criticism

My nose is too big, too small, too crooked, too pointy. My eyes are too dark,too light, too close together, too far apart. I'm too fat. I'm too thin. I'm toougly. Why did I wear that fancy blouse—too dressy! Why did I wear that plain oldsweatshirt—too shabby! I'm too wishy-washy, a patsy. I should have tried harder.I shouldn't have bothered. I shouldn't have said that. I should've said thatinstead. I should've been nicer. More aggressive. Less blunt. I wasted way toomuch money on that hotel room, house, car. I didn't invest nearly enough moneyon that motel room, cottage, bicycle. I should've asked that cute girl out on adate. I was a fool to love him in the first place. It was the biggest mistake ofmy life to marry her. I should've been more patient with my mother. I should'vegotten angry with my father. I should've blamed him more. I should've thankedhim more. I should've forgiven him before he died.

Self-criticism is speaking badly about yourself and, in general, evaluatingyourself in a negative manner. It is beating yourself up verbally for the sheerknee-jerk habit and indulgence of it, just because it's familiar to pick onyourself and put yourself down. Through self-criticism, you look at yourself andfind yourself somehow unacceptable, not worthy of your own love.

Self-Blame

It's my fault my parents fought all the time—I wasn't a good daughter. It's myfault my child is sick—I didn't keep him away from that kid with the runny nose.It's my fault my husband is overweight—I don't cook him healthy meals. It's myfault my wife is unhappy—I don't earn enough money. It's my fault my favoriteteam didn't win—I didn't wear my rally cap. It's my fault that it snowed lastnight—I didn't pray to the sun gods. It'll be my fault if the house burns down—Idon't check the electrical wiring weekly. It's my fault the economy crashed—Ididn't manage my money well. It's my fault the ozone is depleted—I don't use theright hairspray.

A variation on self-criticism, self-blame is imagining— no, it's beingabsolutely sure—that, whatever's gone wrong, it's your fault. It's choosing toblame yourself rather than the ordinary changing vicissitudes of life or thepeople who are actually at fault, for whatever has gone awry. When your form ofnot loving yourself is self-blame, you tend to see every problem as somehowcaused by you.

Self-Deprecation

I'm not valuable. I'm not special. I've no impact or meaning in the world. Ireally don't have any real talents. I don't write well enough, sing high enough,run fast enough. Okay, sure, I painted that picture, but it's awful, thecomposition's off, the colors are all wrong. I know how to tango, but what couldbe more meaningless? I'm lazy. So what, I'm raising three kids, working fulltime,and taking care of my elderly mother—I could be doing a lot more. Let'snot talk about my goodness and kindness—lots of people donate time at theirchurch, buy armloads of Girl Scout cookies, let people in front of them in thegrocery check-out line. And please, please, please don't tell me I havebeautiful eyes, shiny hair, a bright soul—I don't, really. Just look at thetelevision and magazines—I don't look like her! I could never wear that!

When you belittle yourself, you are not honoring yourself. Your talents, youractions, your hobbies—however ordinary they may seem to you—are actually youressence. They're all the extraordinary things you are; they're what you have togive. Denying your gifts is not honoring your spirit.

The media assaults us every day, all day, telling us that we're not good enoughwithout buying their products, having a model body, or viewing the world theirway. This information contaminates your precious brain, and if you're alreadynot very good at loving yourself, it reinforces your sense of unworthiness.Surrendering to this media assault is a form of self-deprecation.

Self-Doubt

Sure, I have years of experience, but there's got to be someone more qualifiedfor the job. I'm not funny enough to go to open-mike night at the comedy club.I'm not quick enough to learn how to use a computer— if I tried, I'd break itfor sure. I'm not smart enough to apply to law school—if I did, I'd probably berejected. I can't confront my coworker—and, on second thought, maybe he didn'tmean to steal my idea and present it to the boss.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from When You Think You're Not Enough by DAPHNE ROSE KINGMA. Copyright © 2012 Daphne Rose Kingma. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Conari Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573245348
• ISBN 13: 9781573245340
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176