Self-Help Girl
On learning when to stop outsourcing myself
“You were the second person I ever knew,” she said.
Wait. Who was the first? I said.
“Me. I knew myself first.”
My 8-year-old daughter once again left me speechless while I readjusted my 6’1” frame on her twin-sized top bunk.
It’s 8:47 pm. When her deepest thoughts always surface.
I had never thought about it like that. We were talking about who was the first person she ever knew. My answer was, of course, me. She saw me first. She knew me first.
But I was wrong. And she was right.
We know ourselves before anybody else.
Yet somewhere along the way, we forget that we are the experts on ourselves.
Especially when we’re the kind of person who leans into “self-help.”
I’ll be honest. I do harder than lean. I am a self-help addict.
From the moment I read Sean Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” on my living room couch, I was hooked. I was 13.
I remember putting the book down after devouring it all afternoon, staring at the popcorn ceiling, in awe of what I just learned.
Wait. I have the power to change my life?
I have the power to change my life.
I can have everything I’ve ever wanted.
The career.
The wardrobe.
The husband.
The family.
The house.
The success.
It’s all right here within my reach. I just have to be super duper dedicated to becoming the best person I can be. I can do that.
But first, I have to read another book. I’m going to need help.
So, I found more…
Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles.
Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.
Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection.
And we can’t forget Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret.
Then, came the coaches.
Marie Forleo
Wayne Dyer
Sean Croxton
Rachel Hollis
Gabbie Bernstein
Amy Porterfield
Jenna Kutcher
Allie Casazza
These were my people.
I listened to their podcasts, read their books, took their courses.
They come with me everywhere. After school drop-off, on a walk with the dog, while cooking dinner, on a plane to vacation, sitting on a beach with my course workbook in my lap, pen in hand, filling in the blanks.
My gurus taught me how to be a savvy online entrepreneur,
how to shift my mindset,
how to eat and take extremely good care of my body,
how to wash my face (lol),
how to meditate and do EFT,
how to start and grow an email list,
and how to become her.
I am who I am because of them, BUT…
I’m not 13 anymore. In fact, I just turned 40 in November. And something is shifting in me. I’ve been asking myself,
Where does their advice end and my intuition begin?
And more importantly, who is my self without all of this help?
I have packed every waking moment with their voices, applied all of their formulas, toggling from one method to the next.
Maybe part of the problem isn’t the methodology, but the inability to focus on one for longer than a few months before jumping to the next one.
The One Thing would probably have something to say about that.
But I think there’s more to it than that.
When all of your space is taken up by others’ energy, others’ advice, there’s little room left for your own. The intuition muscle weakens.
For example, I pitched myself to an organization to do a keynote speech to millennial women entering perimenopause. A topic I am very confident in, in a setting that I am very comfortable with: on stage.
But when they emailed me back to setup a meeting, my first instinct was:
I’m going to need help with this. I can’t do this alone.
I need to join Jess Ekstrom’s Speaking Membership program. She will tell me how to reply to this email, how to pitch myself, how to ask for what I’m worth, how to conduct myself on stage, how to network, and how to collect testimonials after.
I just took her bootcamp and it was fabulous. If she gave all of that away for free, imagine what she would give in her membership.
Pause.
Do I need her? Or do I know how to do all of those things already?
Can I combine everything I’ve learned over the years, get quiet, and decide that I already have the answers?
That feels scary. That feels lonely. It also feels fast. There needs to be more learning in between. More steps. More preparation. More proof.
I still feel like that 13-year-old girl lying on my couch with Sean Covey, asking him to give me all the answers because I didn’t know them.
And then I think about my 8-year-old. So confident in herself. The girl who’s been wearing cat ears to school every day for the last 3 years, no matter what people say about them. The girl who loves dragons and still believes in magic, while her friends are losing their belief and just want to talk about scary things and boys.
I love that girl.
She knew herself first. Before anyone told her she needed help remembering.
I think I can learn something from her.
