Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way Read Online Free PDF

particular way, and so on, in order to be valuable or lovable causes a great deal of suffering in our lives. From an early age, most of us have been doing whatever we can to gain approval and love from those around us. It starts with our parents, siblings, and family members when we’re very young. As children and adolescents, it extends to our teachers, coaches, and especially our friends. As we move into adulthood, it continues to expand to include our colleagues, clients, and anyone we deem important to our success in life.
    At the age of seven, I started playing baseball (well, T-ball, actually) and I loved it. Not only was it a fun game, but I was really good at it—which made it even more fun. For a young, sensitive boy who struggled with deep feelings of insecurity and whose father was not only absent, but also beginning what would become a six-year odyssey of mental hospitals, halfway houses, suicide attempts, noncommunication, and more as he struggled with serious bipolar disorder, baseball became a safe haven for me. It was a place where I received approval, recognition, and love—or at least what felt like love to me as a boy and adolescent. From the age of seven all the way until I decided to walk away from the game on my 25th birthday (after four surgeries on my pitching arm), I had a love–hate relationship with baseball. I loved the game itself and had enjoyed lots of wonderful experiences playing. However, since my identity was so wrapped up in it and the approval, recognition, and “love” I received from playing were so conditional, I got to a point where I resented this great game.
    While there’s nothing inherently wrong with our desire to have the respect and admiration of those around us or to accomplish our most important goals, we often give away our power, consciously or unconsciously, to the people, circumstances, and results (or lack thereof) in our lives.
    Our true value has nothing to do with any of these external factors. At the deepest level, we’re valuable as human beings just because we’re us—not because of what we do, how we look, what people think of us, or what we produce or accomplish.
    In my very first session with my counselor Eleanor a few years ago, she explained to me that part of what caused the suffering and insecurity in my life was when I looked outside myself to fulfill my needs, which, by the way, she said was true for most human beings. She then explained a unique set of seven needs that was, as she described it, a modified version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
Safety
Security
Belonging/Value
Love
Knowing
Beauty
Spirituality
    Eleanor then taught me a simple but powerful meditative technique to use as a way of learning to fulfill my own needs. 1
    I have used this technique a lot over the last few years and it’s had an incredible impact on my life. It has been a great reminder and a practice for me to focus on fulfilling my own needs—not erroneously expecting people, accomplishments, circumstances, or situations outside of myself to do it for me. The bottom line is that we are safe, secure, valued, loved, known, beautiful, and spiritually connected—just because we are who we are. That’s it. We can’t earn or lose that which is inherently ours.
    _____________________
    1 Specific instructions for how to do this meditative technique, as well as a link to the page on my website where you can download a free audio recording of me guiding you through it verbally, are listed in the appendix section of the book on page 203

CHAPTER 5
    Be Gentle with Yourself
    In April of 2009, my book Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Already Taken came out. The book was released on a Monday, and we had a big launch event at a local hotel. The following few days consisted of the online launch campaign, some media appearances, and a few other events—exciting stuff. Toward the end of the week, I was finally able to get to the local Barnes and Noble near where we were living. I