Translator: Marta Palacio Reviewer: Denise RQ
You should come over for coffee some morning to our house.
We make good coffee.
We make it early, but the earliness of the morning is made up for
by the fact that the coffee is fresh, and hot, and rich, and dark.
We sit with that coffee as we serve it up to each other,
and the best thing about it, I think,
is that it's coffee that comes with an affirmation.
You see, we have this series of mugs at home
that we use as our favorites.
So, we drink out of our favorite mugs not on special days but on ordinary days.
We'd use them Monday to Friday.
These are mugs that each come to us with a little message on the outside.
And they say things to us like, "The cup is half full,"
or, "Fall in love with as many things as you can,"
or, "Wake up and be awesome."
Or my personal favorite, "Good morning, handsome."
(Laughter)
I used that one this morning for myself.
But you get this mug, and you sit with it, and you enjoy it, and...
Perhaps it's because it's one of the first-thing messages
that comes to you in the day.
You can sit at the counter, and look at the mug of coffee,
and read its message, and think about it.
Because there aren't yet
the three million other messages that are going to come.
That you're still having to work out,
but you'll have to work your way through as the day progresses.
Instead, you have this one message - an affirmation.
And some mornings, hopefully, the right mornings,
one of us receives the mug that has a very special message
that we are going to spend our time with today.
And that is, "Be yourself, everyone else is taken."
Be yourself, everyone else is taken.
It's a good message.
Dr. Seuss had caught onto that idea years ago,
when he wrote in one of his books,
"Today you are you. That is truer than true.
And there is no one alive more youer than you."
He had caught the same idea as the affirmation
that it is good for you to be you,
that being you is exactly the right thing for you to be.
And yet, so often we find ourselves feeling
like, "Oh, I've wished I was just somebody else."
Be yourself, everyone else is taken.
It's not quite as easy as then just saying, "Oh, well. OK."
There are times that we find it really quite hard.
And perhaps part of that is
because we get the affirmation on the mug, in the morning,
and then we step into the rest of the day,
and there are all these other things that come as part of it;
all these other messages which are telling us in one way or another
that being ourselves is not such a good idea,
but that we really need to be aspiring
to be this person or that person or be like this or be like that.
You watch TV or listen to advertising -
remember, advertising's success comes by prodding at our failures.
So the advertising pulls the clothes out of the dryer and says,
"Do your whites come out this white?"
And we look, and we say, "Well, no."
Or the next add comes on, and it poses the question
that perhaps we should really be smarter than we are,
or that we are not driving the right vehicle,
or that we weight too much, or that we are not wealthy enough.
These ads just plant these doubts in our minds
and confirm the doubts that naturally might be there.
So here's the challenge.
We get handed the affirmation, "Be yourself, everyone else is taken,"
and we are often feeling like, "I would be someone else, anyone else."
This is my concern.
My concern is that when we buy into this message of self-doubt,
instead of a more balanced assessment of our strengths and abilities,
we miss out on so much.
The people around us miss out on so much, as well.
They miss out on that unique gift that only we can bring to them.
When we take hold of this negative message that gets suggested to us
and begin to live by it as if somehow, we don't belong,
we aren't up to it, we don't fit, we shouldn't be part of it,
then we reduce our abilities in the day,
we diminish our capacity to manage our stresses,
we lower our resilience
so that obstacles that arise before us feel larger,
and we begin to struggle as we step out the door.
So how do we change ourselves?
If that's my concern, here's my hope.
How do we change ourselves from that perspective
to one that really functions
out of an assessment of strengths and abilities?
How do we seize a vision of ourselves
and then dream dreams that arise from that vision?
How do we move to a place
where we recognize the gift that we can be to people around us?
How do we do it?
That's where we are going to spend our time together.
Before we jump into answering it,
let's have a story of somebody who's walked this road before us,
somebody who doubted herself,
and then came to a position of strength and growth,
and lived out of that.
I met Rachel while she was in prison.
She would come down the hall, and walk in through the door of my office,
and flop herself down on a chair in the corner,
and she would just begin to talk.
I learned all sorts of things about Rachel
as she talked in those many different visits.
I learned she was a woman in her mid to late 20s,
that she had been on the streets since she was 14,
that home and family had been violent and abusive,
and the street had been the same.
I learned that Rachel had learned to hate herself
because she had come to recognize herself as a failure,
a mistake, full of flaws, and nothing redemptive about her at all.
That was how the world had treated her, and that was how she had come to feel.
So she had gone looking for some way
to block out the pain of this and even her awareness of this opinion,
and she found it in addiction.
Addiction cooperated with her for a while, and it gave her what she wanted:
a way to forget all these things that plagued her.
But eventually, addiction turned to doing what it does.
It demanded more, and more, and more of her.
And so, Rachel became unable to hold any kind of job,
because her priority
was not going to be going to work, staying at work, and doing her work;
but her priority had become a matter of getting high.
And she was no longer able to manage money
because she didn't have money that was some for rent, and some for groceries,
and some to go to a movie with a friend;
but her addiction demanded all her money.
So it went to it.
So she found herself then
spiraling down towards the very bottom and hating herself even more.
Finally, that sense that she had that she didn't fit,
that she didn't measure up, that she shouldn't be part of anything
led her to a sense of permission to take part in crime.
And crime led to prison,
and prison led to the chair in the corner of my office.
And she just kept talking.
It was interesting to hear the progression in how she talked as time passed.
Because at first, she talked about her using,
and she talked about what it was like to use,
and how it felt to be high with her crack, she talked about her life on the street.
She talked about fondness for those things.
The very first indication of change for her
was when she said one day,
"And I've begun to think - maybe...
Maybe I would only use a few days every week."
At first, I thought, "Why would you even allow that?"
But then I thought, "Look at the progress; it's there.
Look at the realization that she feels that she could live a few days a week
only using those days."
And she talked and talked, "Maybe I would just use on Wednesdays."
And then, she began to make another shift,
and she spoke almost as if there were two people.
There was healthy Rachel, who she was now,
and there was using Rachel, who could look back on and remember.
She would compare the two of them,
what they like to do in their spare time,
and what they were interested in, and how they pursuit life.
She came to recognize healthy Rachel as a pretty appealing person,
someone that she could enjoy being.
And she kept talking.
"You know, it's been three months since I've used," she said.
"And I'm starting to feel OK."
"It's been five months since I've used.
Now I'm washing my hair every day, and it has its own shine now."
"It's been quite a long time since I've used,
and I'm starting to like myself."
"Do you know now it's been eight months since I've used,
and when I go by the mirror and see myself just out of the corner of my eye,
I think I'm pretty."
"It's been so long since I've used, and I like cooking.
I enjoy making recipes.
And you know what? I crocheted this scarf all by myself,
and when I get out, I'm going to go to a Wall Store,
and I'm going to buy more yarn, and I'm going to crochet more things.
And I love reading.
So, when I get a job, and save up my money and buy a bicycle,
I'm going to ride my bicycle to the library, and get a library card,
and then I can sign out crocheting books,
and there will be more and more complicated patterns each time I go back."
"I don't know what I'm going to do for a job," she would say.
"But I can do a lot of different things.
I have a lot of skills that I could offer,
and whatever I don't know now, I can learn."
Then she said one day, "I'm ready."
Rachel went to the parole board, and they agreed with her she was ready.
She's been successful out in the community.
I don't know the color of the bicycle that she rides down to the library
to pick up her crocheting books or what level of crocheting she's at now,
but what I saw was that she had morphed
from a woman who was full of self-doubt and putting herself down,
and she had changed into a woman
who had the courage to be herself and to set out from that position
to dream the dreams that were connected to that.
It was an amazing thing to have seen.
So how could we do it?
How could we make that same kind of change
from the person we sometimes discover ourselves to be,
the person who feels like they don't fit, like they shouldn't be a part of this,
and they aren't up to it
to being someone who can recognize who they are
as a person of gifts and abilities,
and a person who can dream dreams from themselves, according to those?
We told Rachel's story as the first part of that.
Now from that, there's a few things
that we can draw out and that we can use from that story.
I'll tell you this amazing transformation that took place in Rachel's life
can certainly take place in anyone else's as well.
She got hold of a few different things.
The first thing that she took hold of was a sense of self-worth -
a way of being able to look at herself and smile and say yes
instead of all the things that she had felt before
when she had thought of herself.
She found a sense of self-worth.
Then, she found self-love.
She just loved her crocheting, her cooking, her dreaming.
She loved those things about herself.
And then, she found something that's very, very important.
She found an opportunity, or an ability to recognize a need for growth.
So she had self-worth, and self-love,
and an appreciation of the need for growth.
You might have noticed that growth in particular
came through in that time where I said she was talking about work,
and she said, "I don't know what I can do for work,
but whatever I don't know now, I can learn."
She didn't feel like she just had to be all together,
but she was wise enough to say, "I'm still on my way."
Self-worth is something that we have innately,
and it's the seed of all three of these
which make up together healthy self-esteem.
It's that self-esteem that enables us to be ourselves,
To confidently be ourselves
and to dream the dreams that come with that.
Self-worth arises from the fact
not that we are somehow now good enough to have it,
like, "Yesterday I was on my way,
but today I've arrived, and look: I've got self-worth."
Self-worth come simply because we are.
You are a person of worth.
We live, we breathe, we have worth.
From that, we can experience self-love.
Because where there is self-worth, self-love is not far behind,
Because we look at ourselves, and we can say, "Wow, I'm all right."
I hope that you give yourself the opportunity, from time to time,
or you will give yourself the opportunity
to look and to ask yourself what's gone well,
to look back on the last day, or the last week,
to do it more often, and less often, but say, "What has gone well?"
Think of the big things and think of the small ones.
Like, you go for a run, and your run ends with an uphill stretch.
As you began doing that uphill stretch in your run,
you would arrive at the top of it just exhausted,
and hauling for breath, trying all you could do to stand up.
But now, it's not like that at all.
In fact, now you're continuing to run at the top of the hill.
That went well.
Or remember the fact that you were in a conflict with somebody,
and you managed yourself in such a way, that while you were in conflict,
you asserted yourself and stood your ground -
stood for what you wanted to -
but you did it without taking anything away from the other person.
That went really well.
Or think about the fact that at work the other day
you praised someone for their presentation.
Because they nailed it.
And so you praised them. It was the right thing to do.
Even though that's the person who so often feels like your rival.
You could have nitpicked at what they had done,
but instead, you said, "That went well."
You might literally have said that.
And it went well. It went well for you to do it.
That is self-love. It's not being self-absorbed.
It's not being egocentric. It's just being realistic.
It's just saying, "There are things I do that go well.
And that are significant, and these are my accomplishments.
They are parts of who I am."
If we love ourselves, knowing ourselves,
then perhaps, we are also able to give ourselves freedom to be incomplete,
permission to be imperfect.
This is the hugest part of this transformation
that I'm hoping we can make like Rachel did.
Because if we are able to say,
"You know, it's all right that I'm not complete yet,
that I'm not perfect, that I'm not all together,"
then we don't have to look down on ourselves
because we are aware of our weaknesses.
We don't have to discount everything that we can do
because there are still some things that we can't.
If we can allow ourselves to be imperfect,
we don't have to cover ourselves up with some sort of facade of someone else,
But we can simply be ourselves.
And that is so much the better gift that we have for us and for one another.
When we choose to be ourselves and to live out of that,
there are all sorts of things we're doing:
we're connecting with self-esteem and living out of that -
which is just healthy and normal -
and we're also bolstering our resilience, we're increasing our capacity for stress,
we're standing up against the wear and tear of life
because we are us,
and we're able to say, "That's good. It is not perfect, but it is good.
And I'm happy about that."
So, may you and I, like Rachel,
rise up from this posture of doubting ourselves
and discounting everything that's good
because we've picked out something that we would say is bad.
May you and I be people who say yes to ourselves,
and who are able to look and affirm their achievements
and the opportunities that we've taken hold of.
May you and I take hold of that gift that we are
to the people around us,
and live it out with courage in the world as we experience it.
You should come over for coffee some morning.
We make good coffee.
We make it early,
but the earliness of the morning is looked after
by the fact that the coffee is fresh, and rich, and dark, and hot,
and it comes to you, as well, with an affirmation.
And when you come for coffee,
maybe you'll receive a very special message
[on] the best mug of all,
"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken."
Thank you.
(Applause)