There’s a part of me that doesn’t care about you.  It’s not here to solve your problems, lend you an ear, or serve you in any other way.  It looks out for me and me alone.

Isn’t that a terrible thing?  Actually, I don’t think so.  In fact, I think acknowledging I have a “selfish” part — and, sometimes, doing what that part wants — is key to experiencing, and expressing, real compassion for people.

I Used To Be Such A Sweet, Sweet Thing

I used to act really nurturing and giving, all the time.  Whenever someone had a request or a problem, I was the first to volunteer my time and energy.  I can practically hear Alice Cooper now:  “I opened doors for little old ladies,” and so on.

But I eventually had a couple of disturbing realizations.  The first was that I expected praise for service I did, and felt upset when I didn’t get it.  Why would I care about receiving praise, I wondered, if I genuinely liked helping others?

Second, if someone — heaven forbid — criticized me in a way that suggested I was selfish, I got even angrier.  I couldn’t help but ask:  if I’m really such a 24-7 generous guy, why does it bother me when someone says I’m not?

Acting Caring Vs. Being Caring

Finally, it dawned on me that, at least sometimes, I wasn’t helping people because I enjoyed service.  Instead, I was doing it because I wanted to show people I wasn’t self-centered.  In other words, I did it because I didn’t want to experience the shame I felt when someone called me selfish.

I started wondering:  what if, on some level, I actually am selfish?  What would happen if I learned that there is, in fact, a part of me that thinks only of my wants?  Would I explode, implode, or be annihilated in some other messy way?  Probably not.

I noticed my body relaxed, and I sighed with relief, when I asked questions like these.  It was as if, to put on a benevolent mask for the world, I had to tighten some part of my body, and use up energy keeping that part tense.  Dropping the mask freed up that energy, and was a big relief.

I also saw that, the more relaxed I felt, the more I experienced real gratitude.  Life, I found, is more fun when I’m not trying to appease someone or protect myself from criticism.  From that genuinely grateful place, compassion for others comes more naturally.

In other words, interestingly enough, admitting there’s a part of me that doesn’t care actually releases and nourishes the part that does.

Everybody Is Everything

Why?  I think about it this way:  each person is like a prism – an object that breaks up a beam of light into the colors of the rainbow.  The colors represent every human character trait:  compassion, selfishness, love, anger, sadness, and so on.

Often, we decide we don’t like one of the colors — perhaps we’d rather not be blue (sad), red (angry), or something else.  So, we cover up the prism to keep others from seeing that color.  The trouble is that, when we block the prism, none of the colors can be seen — no part of us can be fully expressed in the world.

When I try to hide my “self-centered” part, it’s like I’m covering up my prism — “hiding my light under a bushel,” as the saying goes.  The result is that I can’t really bring my generous part into the world either.  If I want my compassion to fully show up, I need to let my selfishness make an appearance too.

With That, Some Gratitude

I want to thank two generous and, undoubtedly, totally unselfish souls for the gifts they gave me.    Evita Ochel and Patricia Hamilton recently wrote warm and wonderful reviews of my audio course.  I hope you’ll check out their sites and enjoy what they bring to the world.

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For a few years, I believed that what we often call “the rational mind” was my enemy.  I have a powerful rational mind, and most people would see this as a plus, but to me that was part of the problem.  I thought all the analysis, judgment and criticism my mind did was holding me back in life.

For instance, when I was having a conversation and just trying to listen to the other person, the rational mind would kick in, coming up with counterarguments, different perspectives, advice and so on.  Unconsciously, the other person would sense this, and it would be disconcerting to them.  I often felt helpless in the face of the mind’s constant whirring.

How I Lost My Mind

This was partly, I think, because I had an intense, time-consuming job — being a lawyer — where the rational mind dominated everything.  As a young attorney at a big law firm, I led a cloistered life, spending most of my time in my office drafting legal papers, memoranda and letters.  This was okay with me in the workplace, but it wasn’t easy to silence the mind’s noise in my off hours.

In a sense, leaving that job and starting to coach and write was my rebellion against what I saw as the tyranny of the rational mind.  I knew there were parts of me I hadn’t spent much time cultivating, and I thought leaving my old environment was the only way I could really do that in earnest.

I also immersed myself in ideas and techniques to help me discover “who I was beyond the mind,” as some spiritual teachers put it.  I spent countless hours meditating, releasing emotions, taking workshops, and so on.  Conversation, for me, became about noticing what I felt in my body and trying to give that a voice — “I’m feeling my shoulders relax as I talk to you.”  I wrote a slew of articles, and ultimately a whole book, about listening to instinct and intuition.

I made some progress toward this goal of self-discovery — I experienced moments when my mind was blissfully empty, and all I felt was raw sensation — my pulse, breathing, tingling in my hands, and so forth.  I saw that the rational mind was “just another part of me,” to paraphrase Michael Jackson, and that I was an okay person even when it wasn’t operating.

How I Found It Again

Perhaps the most important thing I noticed, in these “mindless” states, was that the mind no longer seemed so oppressive.  When I began to feel more in control of it, I started to see that it was simply a tool I could use — not an enemy bent on destroying me or making me unhappy.

After seeing this, I started regaining my interest in using the rational mind, and discovering what I could give the world with it.  I got back into reading about philosophy, psychology, and other disciplines I scorned for a while as abstract and “heady.”  I started a new blog addressing some of the criticisms of personal growth, which has a more “pointy-headed intellectual” style, I think, than what you’ll read here.

I’ve noticed, as I’ve been reconciling with my mind, that I’m having a blast.  I’ve been cranking out articles nonstop for the new site, which ideally will turn into another full-length book.  The heightened awareness of my body I developed has actually helped me appreciate this — I’ve noticed how light and free my body feels as I’ve done this writing.

The moral of the story, I think, is that I needed time away from the rational mind to rediscover its value.  Another takeaway is that we don’t serve ourselves by pushing away parts of who we are, and one of the most rewarding things we can do is make peace with the parts we find it hardest to deal with.

How about you?  What part of you have you been pushing away?  What could you do to integrate it back into your life?

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There’s a lot of personal development writing about how it’s important to avoid “toxic people” and “energy vampires”—people who criticize us, make fun of us, tell us we can’t achieve our goals, and so on.  I actually have the opposite view:  that the “difficult people” in our lives offer us wonderful opportunities to grow as human beings.

My sense is that, whenever you find yourself getting annoyed, disturbed, or uncomfortable around someone, you’re always learning something about yourself.  In a nutshell, what you’re becoming aware of is a part of yourself you aren’t fully comfortable with.  When someone acts in a way you see as greedy, fearful, obnoxious, or something else, the discomfort you experience is actually your distaste for your own greed, fear or obnoxiousness.  The other person’s behavior is simply reminding you of this unwanted part.

What’s more, simply having this awareness can do much to help you reconcile with parts of yourself you shunned before—and free up all the energy you were using to repress those parts, so it can fuel you as you pursue what you want.

My Own Example

I’ll tell you a story that illustrates this idea well.  When I first started my own business, I had a friend who basically told me I was wasting my life, and that I had been brainwashed by self-help books I’d read about being an entrepreneur.  When he said these things, I felt angry, and initially I reacted the way I think most of us would.  I decided I was “justified” and “right” in feeling upset, and distanced myself from him to make sure he wouldn’t hold me back from reaching my goals.

However, around that time, I began reading Embracing Our Selves, by Hal and Sidra Stone.  One of the many valuable observations the Stones make is that, when we feel distressed by someone in our lives, that’s probably because they embody a part of us we tend to “disown” or push away.  On reading this, I realized the reason I felt so upset when my friend spoke pessimistically about my business was that there was actually part of me that felt the same way.

In starting my new venture, I’d been making a concerted effort to stay positive and directed, and never let doubt creep into my mind.  Labeling my friend as “toxic” and pushing him out of my life was a natural outgrowth of this mindset.  But by forcing myself to be perpetually upbeat and motivated, I was shoving aside a younger, less self-assured part of myself—a part that was scared that I would fail and that I was, in fact, wasting my life.  And by pushing that part away, I was doing violence to who I really was.

Making Peace With Our Fearful Parts

For a moment, instead of keeping this scared child part at bay, I tried allowing it to voice its concerns.  I acknowledged that, on some level, I was feeling fearful and pessimistic about my path, just like my friend.  When I admitted to myself how I really felt, some tense areas in my body suddenly relaxed, and I felt refreshed.  All the energy I’d been using to plaster a smile on my face and force away negativity was now freed up to help me achieve what I wanted, and I actually started feeling more excited and directed about my goals.

So, in an important sense, my friend’s pessimism was helpful to me.  By voicing his doubts about my course in life, he alerted me to a place where I wasn’t completely okay with myself.  I was repressing a childlike part of me that felt timid and unready, and straining against that part was actually physically tiring.  But when I fully accepted that part and listened to what it had to say, I felt more powerful than ever before.

What I learned from this experience was that the greatest power to pursue our goals and succeed comes from wholeness—from our acceptance of every aspect of who we are.  This may sound counterintuitive, because a lot of self-help literature advises us to simply tell our fearful inner voices to shut up, and avoid people who remind us of them.  But if you try on the accepting mindset I’m talking about, and simply let those voices be without judgment, I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

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The fear of annihilation often manifests itself in our lives as a worry that, if we show the world who we truly are, we’ll be hurt or destroyed—in other words, that we’ll be annihilated for fully “being ourselves.”  Many people have a specific part of themselves that, for this reason, they’re afraid to display to others.  For instance, maybe this part is their anger, vulnerability, sexuality, or something else.  If they let others see this emotion or behavior, they fear, others will abandon them and leave them to die, or even physically harm them.

In my own case, for much of my life I was afraid of hurting others.  I believed that, if I expressed emotion or asked for what I wanted, others would suffer.  Thus, I was very careful to avoid telling or showing others how I felt, and I literally held my body in an expressionless and rigid posture to make sure no one knew.

Consciously or otherwise, I believed that, if I released the tension in my body and expressed emotion, no one would want anything to do with me, and I’d be isolated, unloved and eventually starve to death.  I was in the predicament Dr. Darren R. Weissman describes in The Power of Infinite Love And Gratitude:  “What’s the foremost reason . . . why so many of us are afraid of getting well?  The answer is the fear of losing love as soon as we reclaim our disowned selves.”

Eventually, I started recognizing that this approach to living wasn’t actually serving anyone.  It took great effort for me to constantly monitor my communications and posture to ensure no emotion was ever expressed.  Instead of thanking me for my efforts to avoid hurting them, as perhaps I hoped they would, other people became uncomfortable around me, as my rigid and robotic way of being was unnerving.  But while I knew on a rational level that I wasn’t helping anyone by concealing who I was, I’d become so accustomed to hiding away that I was afraid I couldn’t change.

In a moment of despair about this, I had an interesting thought.  What if my worst fear were actually true?  What if I actually would hurt people, and they would abandon or harm me, if I showed them who I truly was?  What if I am an inherently evil, hurtful person, who brings pain into the world?  What if hiding away was the only real option for me?

At first, having these thoughts only plunged me deeper into my funk.  But after a few minutes of moping, I suddenly burst out laughing.  It was as if an inner voice I’d never heard before spoke up and told me that, even if I am an evil person, that’s perfectly okay.  As I had this thought, the constriction in my body released, and I felt infused with energy.  It was as if a dam inside me broke, and healing, empowering water was spreading through every part of my body.

Another realization came swiftly afterward.  I recognized that there was, indeed, a “dark side” of my being.  There was a part that was willing to do and take whatever it wanted, when it wanted it, without regard to anyone else’s feelings or wellbeing.  There was nothing unique about this—everyone carries some of that “dark” energy.  But I was so afraid of this energy that I’d designed my entire life—down to the way I moved my body—to avoid unleashing it on the world.

When I simply acknowledged that part of myself, without pushing it away or pretending it didn’t exist, I suddenly saw that I had nothing to fear from it.  Yes, I saw, I am mean and hurtful—and I am also generous, kind, beautiful and so much more. 

My “dark side” is just a universal part of the human experience.  Simply acknowledging its existence in me doesn’t hurt anyone, and won’t cause me to be abandoned or annihilated.  I created much more discomfort for myself and others by disowning that part than I did by just letting it be.

My own story illustrates the exercise I’ll share.  You, like most people, probably have an emotion or behavior you’re afraid to show the world.  Perhaps it’s your weakness, sadness, aggression, ambition or something else.  If this is true for you, and you’ve been designing your life around not displaying that part to others, I invite you to try this simple technique:  just admit to yourself, without judgment or reservation, that the part you’ve been concealing exists.

For example, if you’re worried about revealing the fact that you sometimes feel weak and helpless, try saying to yourself out loud “I am weak and helpless.”  If you’re worried that others will see your jealousy, say to yourself “I am jealous.”  And so on. 

Once you’ve done this a few times, notice that admitting the existence of your disowned part didn’t destroy or damage you.  Recognize that what you’ve just said is not simply true for you, but has been true for practically every other human being in history.  And feel the peace and relief that acknowledging more of your humanity brings you.

I was inspired in doing this exercise by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone’s wonderful book Embracing Our Selves.  The Stones lovingly describe the difficulty, but the eventual empowerment, we experience when we integrate aspects of our humanity we’ve pushed away in the past:

It is sometimes painfully difficult to honor all our parts. As Jung once so aptly said, “the medicine we need is always bitter.” Well, it may not always be bitter, but . . . it is not always easy to accept patterns that seem reprehensible to us or, more accurately, that seem reprehensible to that part of us with which we are identified. The rewards for embracing our selves are great, for each reclaimed pattern feeds us with new energy, each helps to make our journey on earth more meaningful, more effective, and more joyous.

I’m convinced that the key to inner peace, and achieving your goals in life, is developing a healthy relationship with every part of yourself, no matter how frightening or ugly those parts may look to you.  In acknowledging and honoring every aspect of your being, you gain access to more resources, and to more composure and empowerment.

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