This is the final chapter in the saga of why I think I’m not good enough and why I heart Max Simon’s events forever.
Aaron’s been on me, or rather on to me. He’s been pushing me to really let go of my notions that I’m not good enough. He’s been a huge support and on most days it makes me very happy that a guy like that works with someone like me. He’s quick to point out that I’m amazing. If you don’t have your supporters get them, they’re worth their weight in gold! I’ve got a solid handful, at this point, and I stand on the shoulders of giants!
We’re ready for launch and he asks me what I’ll need to do to be ready. “Oh, get a designer, get the site launched, set up the infrastructure.” I tell him.
“And?” he says. The question dangles there. And? I’m all a blank. And??? What? There’s more. I’m not seeing it.
I guess it. “And…(I’m searching and so I keep talking) prepare for greatness?” I ask a little confused.
“No.” He continues. “You’ll have to give up the notion that you’re not good enough.” He’s firm and I’m glad we’re on the phone. He has this thing he does when he’s firm about something. He looks right at you with his jaw set and with an absolutely truthfulness in his gaze you know it just is and he’s right.
I agree. “I know. I am. I’m almost there.” I assure him, but I’m kind of lying. He’s my mentor though and he’s coaching me. It’s time and we both know I need to get there.
But truth is I don’t know where it came from so I don’t know how to get rid of it. But I’ve been going there and the blogging has helped. My open honest vulnerable, almost uncomfortable at times sharing has aired a lot of this, but it’s one of the last perspectives that still needs to go bye-bye.
Fast forward a week. We’re at the Max Simon event and Aaron, who has been my partner for sharing, has left to get a brain break. So I’m left alone to ponder my views around my worth by myself. And I do and it’s profound and I look up and Max Simon, our amazing seminar leader, says that I could share with him, which is a little unusual, but I’m not going to turn down the opportunity, although he has no idea what I’m about to say and I would have much preferred hiding somewhere to showing this one to the light. And what a thing I have to share. What a thing I have just discovered. I warn him. This is huge for me.
We were asked to really look at our view of money and how we view our worth, so that we will ask to be paid what we’re worth. We’re taken through a series of exercises – one of which asks us to look at the money lessons from our parents. I draw a blank kind of and then I don’t. From my mom: don’t save, struggle, work hard, and lack and from my step father: squeeze that dollar, until it hollars. I look at my own money issues, which rock! I love money, I think it comes easily and continues to come. I’m good with abundance, creation, and manifestation. And then I look further. I do have another father – - the ”real” one. I look there. It comes clear to me like my name that what I might have inherited from him was no worth. He paid only $100.00 by his own confession, of child support, and then stopped paying to punish my mother for being high strung. He tells me this in one of the few conversations I’ve had with him. My response was I would like the rest he owes and he crushes me with judging me by saying bitterly, “Oh, you just want the money?” It’s hard to sum up a lifetime of lacking for things and what that would have meant to us to not know that constant lack and shame. I just tell him it would have been nice leaving out the details. To which he began to defend his reasons why he never paid or contributed. It was my first lesson in people believe the bullshit they tell themselves. Me included.
What I realize during Max’s money exercise is what I would have made that mean starting at a very young age is I had no worth, was not worthy, and not good enough to pay more than $100.00. This unworthiness is in my lanugage, is in my feelings about myself and I’ve said it repeatedly that I feel not good enough and not worthy, even though I know that me not being worthy of anything is just ridiculous. It has plagued me so, until now!
How could anyone not be worthy? How could anyone who is an amazing being be not worthy? The contradictions had really perplexed me.
I’m staring Max in the eye and it’s taken 37 years and this 4 day seminar to get this about my own dynamic and my own sense of worth. My plates of my earth move and irreversibly shift just a little more as I’m telling Max this. I’m floored by the revelation. I’d never thought about it, in this way. It had never occurred to me, in this way. I’d never connected these dots. It gets more real in the telling and after the sharing is over, I’m a little overwhelmed at the discovery and at my feelings about it. I’m kind of glad Aaron’s not there, although he tells me often that I’m at my best when I’m being my most authentic. We all are! Aaron comes back.
Holy Moly! I sit there and the moment feels surreal. It’s not true! And, oh, how I wanted to weep in that moment from relief and from the feelings that sprang up. A whole lifetime of feeling unworthy released itself in that moment. Max is still looking at me supportively as I sit in my chair. He knows this was HUGE for me.
There’s more.
I go up to the front of the room to talk about something else, which I don’t remember what it was about now, because, after I’m finished and am about to sit back down, Max calls me out, in a very supportive way. “Would you like to share what you learned during our exercise?” I’ve got the mike in my hand. I’m up there already and I think to myself that I don’t want to, but I think I should. My voice cracks. Some tears come up. My chest gets tight and I’m trying to navigate the old feelings of worthlessness and the new realization that I’m free from that very old, negative self limiting belief and I cannot tell which is stronger – the relief, the old feelings or the feeling of wanting to inspire with my story. So, I start explaining my sudden emotional change. I tell them they are about to witness bravery and courage and they’re all very quiet listening to me share this terrible burden I’ve carried my whole life. I tell them and I hear me telling it in a little voice which gets stronger. 45 beautiful people hold a space for me to share this. We’re not a rah-rah crowd and the applause has been kept to a minimum for most of the event, which is perfect! We’re very supportive though, even without the fan fare and high-five your neighbor fare of other seminars I’ve attended, we’re getting the we support you point across. This seminar is meatier, more spiritual, more leveled, and feels more authentic because of the lack of forced support and choreographed applause. But when I’m done they’re applauding and I realize something great. They really responded to me. We weren’t applauding any speakers and they were applauding me. And later people approached me to tell me things. They confided in me. They supported me. They admired me. It was quite a moment.
It gets even better.
There was one person with whom I didn’t connect. And I’m a connector, so this is saying a lot. There’s wasn’t a person I didn’t hug, whose story I didn’t know, with whom I didn’t spend a moment hearing about their life, their work, or their story. And on the last day, at the last break he finds me. He runs after me to find me shouts my name and runs to catch up. He wants to talk. And for some odd reason, I’m suddenly rude telling him I could walk and talk. If he wants to follow behind me, while I multitask, I can fit him in between getting my bags and getting water. And then I realize, he’s run after me. He’s shouted my name, pronouncing it properly even. He purposely sought me out. And I realize he REALLY has something important to say. I stopped and told him I was sorry for not giving him my full attention and my bags could wait. I had all the time in the world for him and I would love to talk to him. The Glen Ivy Retreat is chock full of nooks and conversation corners and we sit in one. The main hall is quiet and we’re all alone. The walls, which have aborbed tears and smiles and laughter and the confessions of life and love, lean in just a little to catch our words and absorb them in too.
He wants me to know that what I shared with the group the day before helped him understand his own pain and perspectives around how his own father had dealt with him his whole life. He shares that he realized last night that feeling unworthy and not good enough would have effected all of his relationships with almost everyone. He wanted to thank me. He wanted me to know I changed his life. He wanted me to know his life felt better. He looked relieved and I have to say alive and he didn’t look as dark as the previous days, probably for one of the first times in his life.
I was overwhelmed by this trust and confession. I felt him. I felt this one guy who moments ago I had judged as being disconnected from the group, as the only one who had not made that effort, was the one guy with whom I shared this secret pain and terrible perspective. I suddenly was his soul sister; I was suddenly his catalyst and in some ways his shepard. We suddenly were never strangers and never had been. I knew his whole life.
Again it comes to me that not only was I not not good enough, but that in being so vulnerable and sharing of myself to the group the day before, I had changed his perspective and he felt that it had changed his world. He was so grateful. We hugged a long hug and said our thank yous.
I walked to my room to get my bags, alone, and this beautiful feeling poured into me, along with a big sob of release half way up the stairs. The last perspective was leaving. It was a beautiful ending to an amazing seminar. That wonderful man gave me a gift too; for the first time, I really saw what and who I could be for people and it was bigger than I’d ever imagined or had really understood. I let that one in, and to do so, I had to let the old perspective out, one final last time. There wasn’t room for both.
Watch out world! Within 24 hours of the seminar’s end, I had two speaking engagements, realized I want to inpire future PebbleStormers and will tour speaking, and attracted in two amazing women who are very much connected to the women’s empowerment movement and motivational speaking, and discussed creating a partership around sales and financial empowerment with a 3rd amazing friend.
Go to a Max Simon event, if you can. It will change your life. He’s big on coaches, on learning, and on finding your tribe - - people who are like you who inspire you and whom you inspire.
