Tina Lifford

If you are new to this blog, welcome. This blog is about your innate FABULOUSNESS. We share tips, stories and information I collect that can assist you in living your best life. I hope you visit us often. I will be sharing good stuff often.

The following question was emailed to me through our www.totallyfabulouswoman.com site. I thought I would share it and my response with you. (If you have a question or comment regarding Waking up Fabulous in your own life, please feel free to email me at tina@totallyfabulouswoman.com.

Q: Tina, have you ever been insecure or lacked confidence?
Jennifer

A: Yes Jennifer.

We all experience a lack of confidence sometimes in some area of our lives. Confident successful people like Oprah, Madonna, Colin Powell and even Jesus and Buddha had their insecure moments. Insecurity is some portion of every human experience.

Unfortunately most people feel there is something wrong with them if they feel insecure. People hide their insecurities in shame. This makes talking about the truth difficult. No one wants to admit they have insecurities and sometimes feel like they are not good enough or like they are lacking in some way.

However the truth is your insecurity can be used as a gift. It is the very experience of yourself that can allow you to discover the deeper Truth about yourself.

The way this works is the insecurity feels so uncomfortable that it "pushes" you to find ways to not feel so bad. Healthy strategies for learning the truth include: reading books on spiritual development, reading self-help books, enrolling in workshops that help you get in touch with yourself and help you see and unravel some of the experiences in your life that have left you feeling confused and hurt. Therapy is also a good strategy. If you do any one of these you will gain information that helps you to know you are not alone and you do not have to live with your insecurity forever. Anything you place your attention on will change. If you place your attention on feeling more secure and confident and happy being you, you will come in contact with the kind of information that will help you get there. You have to want it first. You have to be interested in figuring out how to live your best life. Then you have to do things to help you get there.

Most people do nothing. Therefore, their insecurity just gets bigger and begins to eat them up from the inside. A lot of people turn to drugs or other bad habits that distract them from feeling their inner discomfort with themselves. Some people will talk on the phone all the time. Other people will eat. There are many ways people try to side-step their inner discomfort.

My suggestion is that you find a safe place to talk about how you feel. By a safe place I mean someone who understands how life works and can help you learn more about yourself and understand more about life. It is a mistake to think you know or can figure out the answers by yourself. You may be able to but it will take a long time and use up most of your life. Why use this slow method when you can work with people who can mentor you and share wisdom.

I have confronted and struggled with a number of insecurities in my life. I am a successful actress, yet sometimes I have to talk myself through stage fright. I use to think the insecurities said something bad about me. Now I know that everyone deals with feelings of insecurity. Actually insecurity is mostly self-judgment. We must learn to accept ourselves more. This is hard sometimes, but if you put in the effort you will get there. Wise people learn to experience their insecurity without letting it define them or without taking the insecurity personally. I have learned to look at myself when I am feeling insecure and say, "Oh look I am having insecure feelings." When I do this the feelings do not overwhelm me because I am not trying to hide from them. I make sure to remind myself of the difference between me and my insecurities. I am not my insecurities. My insecurities are just feelings. They are feeling trying to point me in a direction of healing and giving myself more self-love. If I give them the time they need and ask myself what I need and take action to learn more about me, the insecurity will turn into a gift and then it will heal and go away.

I hope this helps.

Fabulous me to Fabulous you,
Tina

P.S. I just finished writing my book, Waking up Fabulous: 5 New Strategies for Being the Best YOU Ever. Watch for excerpts.

(I suggest you lovingly caress yourself as you say this prayer.)

I wake this morning in profound appreciation for this body and the life I live.
I give thanks for its strength, endurance and flexibility.
I apologize for any conscious or unconscious transgressions against myself and my body.
I ask that the conscious awareness that is me (beyond my mind and ego) reveals to me the ways I am unconsciously hurting, disrespecting or taking this body and life for granted.
I also request the support necessary to shift my unconscious behavior into Light-filled awareness and with Grace embody the ways of thinking and resultant actions that heal my unconscious relationship with God/Life/Me.
I recognize that more love of me is the answer to every question in my life.
Gratitude for this profound opportunity to be me is a direct path to JOY.
JOY is the light-filled way I get to be with ALL.
JOY is a great way to experience wholeness.
JOY is a way of knowing GOD.
I surrender to the JOY of being ALIVE, AWAKE and AWARE in human form.
Each breath I breathe is one of GRATITUDE and THANKS GIVING!

Fabulous me to Fabulous you,
Tina

P.S. Starting this week, Friday blogs will be called Celebrity Friday. I will take some celebrity or news from the week and place it in the Waking up Fabulous context.
Monday I will share an unusual way of being with your body that will surprise you and that feels really good!

It may be difficult to look at these ladies and see any resemblance between their lives and yours. Some of you feel that you will never have their wealth or fame. Some of you are completely uninterested in their wealth or fame and find the way they live their lives to be unconscious, indulgent or generally dysfunctional and therefore utterly unattractive.

What if you were to think back to a time when you tried desperately to “fit in”, or when you desperately needed or wanted “to be seen”, or when you were so young or arrogant that you thought the world revolved around you? If you go back in time and recall feeling insecure within yourself and the behavior that flowed from you during those uncomfortable passages, might you have a bit more understanding of these young ladies? Might you see maybe a tiny bit of resemblance, or at least have a bit more compassion for the challenges they clearly face?

The point I hope to make has very little to do with these celebrities. Rather, the point is to become honest enough and accepting enough of yourself that no matter the situation or challenge you have compassion for yourself, that you try again and again in your life until you get the answers that make the difference your heart desires, and that you dare to use the world around you as a reminder of the importance of being and staying connected to yourself. When you see someone in distress, love them instead of gossiping. Pray the prayer of gratitude that gives thanks for the life you are living.

These ladies have forgotten their true fabulousness. They have not learned that true fabulousness is not in the how much money you have, who you sleep with, or what kind of car you drive. True fabulousness is in how you respond to yourself, life and others. Can you respond to yourself with love and compassion and forgiveness? Can you extend that forgiveness and compassion to others? Can you work with whatever has taken place in your life until the pain is transformed into a gift and you accept from your pain the good it brings? Can you find joy in the midst of life’s challenges? This is the path of Waking up Fabulous.

These ladies have gotten caught defining themselves by the world around them as opposed to going within and making peace with the hurt and confusion that live inside. Hurt from their past has distorted itself and left them feeling “not enough” (even though they have money and fame). If we are honest, we all know what this feels like and how feeling this way can periodically disrupt or negatively impact our lives. If we take time to acknowledge the places that hurt, we can give them the dose of love that will help them heal.

If there is old hurt lingering in your life, I encourage you to take time to acknowledge it. Make a list of the left over hurt and instead of blaming yourself or others simply go down the list and with each hurt or painful memory tell yourself, “I love you very much. I am sorry about the parent, teacher’s comment, illness or whatever it is that hurt you growing up. Hold yourself and rock or rub your shoulders as you speak these words of love and compassion to tell yourself. This may feel foreign or weird but it can do a world of good. I encourage you to try it today as a strategy for Waking up Fabulous.

Fabulous me to Fabulous you,
Tina

Our celebrity today is Mother Theresa. I was going to write about Michael Vick’s animal brutality. However, I changed my mind after reading the September 3, 2007, Time article The Secret Life of Mother Teresa! There is a soon to be released book titled, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday).

It will be interesting to see what the world does with this Time article and the upcoming book. Both reveal Mother Theresa’s 50-year battle with faith. Letters written by this world famous servant of God reveal that for most of those years she “felt” spiritual “dryness,” “darkness,” “loneliness” and “torture.”

What most strikes me in reading the article and her quoted comments (mostly from letters written over the years to her spiritual confessors and superiors) is the attention given to suffering—Jesus’ suffering, the suffering of the poor and Mother Theresa’s own suffering—and the judgment of herself that accompanied her faith “crisis”. Is there is any surprise that in a religion that emphasizes suffering and judgment, suffering and judgment would show up?

One lesson I have learned in my never ending “Waking Up Fabulous!” journey is to always remember to love me and accept me no matter where I am.

A freeing choice for Mother Theresa could have been to admit her “darkness” without beating herself up and judging herself as unworthy, un-favored or a hypocrite. What if she would have decided to love herself as her God loves her? If she was unpracticed at loving herself then maybe this would have been a great prayer: “Dear Loving and Heavenly Father, how can I learn to love myself and accept myself like You Love and accept me?” If her crisis was one of doubt, then a good prayer would have been, “Dear Loving and Heavenly Father, how can the darkness be lifted that I may experience your presence?” A good question will bring to the heart an answer that the mind cannot access. A good question opens the heart and allows for answers to come from God/Universe through the soul. Judgment clogs the channels. It makes us our perception of ourselves the center of attention. Because no two things can occupy the same space at the same time; judgment takes space from God. God/Universe works through love and the love of creation. When we eliminate judgment there is more room for Love to surface.

True self-love is the final frontier. When we learn to really Love starting with ourselves, the entire planetary experience will shift. It is impossible to truly Love self and not know God. However everyday people claim to Love God and treat themselves and others poorly—with hostile judgments and shame.

When we remember first to love ourselves in times of difficulty this is a way of loving God/Universe. When we learn to allow our feelings to come up, and to love and accept ourselves through the process, we are treating ourselves with the level of care that is the Loving nature of the Universe. Judgment blinds us and breaks the spirit. Get rid of the judgment and the feeling of Oneness grows.

When we allow a painful feeling without judging it or ourselves, this supports these feelings in moving “through” us, like water moving down hill. Accepting a feeling doesn’t mean we have to “buy it” as real, nor does it have to be a statement about who we are. A feeling is just that…a feeling. Just because you feel fear under a certain set of circumstances doesn’t mean that you have to claim fear as your identity. Feeling fear is simply the experience of feeling fear.

When we accept a feeling without attaching our identity to it, we stay flexible and allow the feeling of the moment to shift and dissolve or change into a new feeling. We can even learn to “guide” our feelings into better feelings.

If we give up resisting our feeling or trying to keep them at bay we are free to lovingly question and explore them. We do not have to be afraid of what having such feelings says about us. To not resist your feeling does not give irresponsible permission to unleash emotion at others. Rather it is an invitation to learn the art of watching your feeling, understanding them and learning from them. We can even learn to appreciate feelings and trust there is valuable healing information in them. For instance, if you find yourself jealous or afraid, this information lets you know you have stored confusion and hurt that needs more loving attention.

Acknowledging your feelings and loving yourself through the process eliminates the negative pressure build-up that comes with trying to keep feelings from surfacing or expressing. The more we try to keep something at bay, the more effort and focus it takes to keep it at bay and the more stress gets locked into our bodies with this effort.

Secrets are the worse. They are like the joke that instructs you to not think about pink elephants. All our energy rushes to what is being hidden, denied or ignored. Suddenly all you can think about is pink elephants. Denial actually creates more focus, more pain, more tension, more stress.

More self-love is the answer to every problem we face. Self-love has no conceit in it, nor is it arrogant or haughty. Self-love is the true mirror image of our love of God and all else.

I trust that Mother Theresa was a wise woman. However self-condemnation supports a sense of separation from God/Universe. How can we condemn ourselves and not judge the hand that made us? Self-Love heals separation and allows the individual heart to reconnect to the ONE. There is nothing on the other side of God/Universe. All appearance to the contrary is illusion. Deepening your Self-Love is a way of learning this lesson.

We all know we can use more self-love. I encourage you to begin today loving yourself more and celebrating opportunities to give yourself more self-appreciation.

Fabulous Me to Fabulous You,
Tina