From safety to love

“You can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to be helped.” How often have you heard this phrase throughout your life? And do you really believe it? Or is this merely a phrase used to rid oneself of responsibility, of our duty of care to one another as simple human beings?

When people state that you can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to be helped, what they’re inadvertently stating is that there are people out there who are intentionally choosing to suffer, to be in pain, to be alone. And I really don’t believe that to be true. We as humans are hardwired for survival; no human is brought into this world with an innate desire to die. Nor to fail. What human do you know enjoys the feeling of failure?

I recently had someone enter my life who has challenged everything I’ve been conditioned to believe by society; the aforementioned statement being one of those things in question. She believes that no one can help her because she doesn’t want to be helped. And perhaps on a superficial, unconscious level, that might be true. But her biology suggests otherwise.

I recall watching a TED talk earlier this year about children in school and how we as a society operate under the belief that kids do well when they want to do well. So when a kid fails, it’s because of a lack of will. In reality though, kids do well when they can do well. If a kid is not succeeding then, it’s because there’s something in their way preventing them from doing well. As humans, we want to grow. We want to succeed. And we want to get along with one another. But often when we’re in pain or don’t feel safe and don’t know how to communicate that, our behaviours tend to give the impression that we really don’t give a shit.

After hearing this girl state that she doesn’t want help because nothing can help her, it prompted these proceeding questions: What makes people closed? How can you help people who don’t want to be helped? How do they get to that point of being closed? What can give someone purpose and hope and a reason to keep on living? How can we create more people like Nicole Gibson’s teacher and my professor? What helps save people’s lives and what doesn’t help? What do people need and how can they get it?

And the one answer that kept pulling at my heart? Connection. And connection in the form of unconditional love. But what does unconditional love even mean? And how can we achieve it?

I’ve spent much of my life trying to find places in which I feel love and belongingness and that’s always been my primary focus. But after having read Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek and revisiting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I realise that my focus has been on something that cannot be felt without something else: safety. In Leaders Eat Last, Sinek focuses on this aspect with specific regards to businesses and companies, but I realise that feeling safe is a necessary component before any single person can feel love and connection. So the question then is not, how can we feel love, but how can we feel safe?

Almost everything in society today is focused on the individual – when you read self-help books, it’s always about how you as the individual can better yourself, and I fucking hate it. Because it’s an endless cycle that preys on the feeling that the majority of us do not feel like we are enough as we are. Don’t get me wrong, investing in yourself and your development is invaluable, but what I’ve found is that it’s not fulfilling. And it misses the whole purpose of what life is really about: connection.

I’ve often believed that with regards to mental health programs, we’re focusing on the wrong thing – we’re focusing on what the individual needs to do to become better, whether that’s learning to identify one’s triggers, learning how to communicate their feelings, or just learning how to manage one’s pain; it’s all tailored towards the individual taking responsibility for themselves. Which, I’ll admit, has its place. But what if, instead of teaching people to work on themselves, we taught them how to be there for other people. What if we instead, taught people how to love? Taught them how to create an environment in which others feel safe to express themselves, to be themselves? Because that, to me, is more transformative than any self-help course I could ever take.

When I asked the question above about what helps save people’s lives and what doesn’t, I looked to what helped save my life three and a half years ago. And the answer? My professor and my really good friend Ida. What did they offer me, other than being there for me, that others didn’t? Complete acceptance and unconditional love. They provided an environment in which I felt safe, in which I could just be without judgement. I put them both through fucking hell; I used to text Ida and tell her no one cares, no one gives a shit about me, why don’t I just die, meanwhile, she was there. She was caring. But I couldn’t see it. I was in too much pain to acknowledge her. And how did she react? She didn’t. She never took it personally. She never judged me for anything that I said or did. She just chose to love me. To support me. To accept me. And that? That’s what saved my life.

So instead of asking, how can we make people feel loved? We need to be asking, how can we make others feel safe? Safety comes from trust. And trust is established in the spaces of non-reaction, non-judgement, and total acceptance. Unconditional love is synonymous with complete acceptance. And I believe these are all things we can work on and develop. Yes, learning how to talk about your feelings is great, but what if the other person judges you? Or reacts to you? What then? What I’ve found is that it’s in those times of judgement and reaction that forces people to retreat, to isolate themselves, and to become closed. I don’t believe anyone truly doesn’t want to be helped; I believe that they’re often in too much pain and have been rejected too many times that they don’t believe help is obtainable. What I’m finding though, is that love changes that. Connection changes that. It’s transformative. And it might just be life-saving.

But don’t you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else? No. Because the truth is, you already do love yourself. It’s just that our perception, based on everything we’re fed from society, has been influenced so much that we’ve been made to believe we’re incomplete, we’re not good enough, and we don’t love ourselves. But if you can understand this perception, it might just revolutionise your life. And for me, this perceptual shift happened a few weeks ago when I was doing some work on altering my perceptions. I was telling the guy I was working with how any time I made a mistake in soccer, I would catastrophize the mistake into believing it meant I wasn’t good enough, in any aspect of my life. He challenged me and said, “So imagine that you have just played the best game of your life, but two weeks later, you play even better - does that mean that in the first game you played, you weren’t good enough?” And the answer was evidently, no, because it was the best at the time. He then proceeded to ask me, “What does it feel like to be good enough?” My initial response was, “Full, happy, content.” Okay, so what do I need to feel those things? And I couldn’t answer that question. He then proceeded to say that “good enough” doesn’t exist; it’s just an imaginary construct. Because everything that you are, in this moment, is who you are. You don’t need to add anything to your life to become “good enough” or to love yourself, because you already do. All of that exists within you. All you need then, is a perception shift. And that’s exactly what I experienced.

Having said all of this, what is my advice? I really don’t believe you need to keep working on yourself in the conventional meaning of that term. Because you are enough. You do love yourself. You have absolutely everything you need within you. Instead, work on creating a space for others in which they can just be. Without judgement. Without reaction. And without ego. When it comes to helping others, don’t. Helping someone cannot be your primary focus because that comes from a place of imbalance, a place of superiority, a place of ego. And how do I know what is best for you? I don’t. And so I won’t help you. But I will love you.

Who do you want to become?

Sometimes it takes meeting someone to help you realise all the places in which you are stuck. At least that’s what happened with me. About five or so weeks ago, I met a girl. This girl helped me realise so much about myself, despite not knowing anything about me. One of her first observations was that I was so “tense” – in my movements, in my rigidity with who I thought I was, and in my interactions. Less than a week later, she added to this by saying that I’m a “head” first person – when I meet someone, it has to make sense, rather than it necessarily feeling right. And the reason for that is because I’m not in my body, I’m in my head. And she was absolutely right.

Her next observation came about with regards to sex – I have all these little rules about how things are supposed to go when you meet someone: first you get to know them, then if you like them, you might kiss, hold hands, and cuddle, and then after some time has passed to consolidate those feelings of trust and comfort, sex will naturally ensue. She challenged this though, why does it have to be that way? I reasoned that for me, someone who isn’t in their body, it just had to make sense. But what I didn’t realise was that these “rules” were my way of rationalising the feelings of shame and guilt I had which were associated with sex. I felt like it was taboo or wrong to do anything with someone before you knew them. Holy shit – I’ve been carrying around this shame and guilt for years, where did it all come from?

I can pinpoint where all of these feelings started. And naturally, they started in my childhood. When I was around 7 or 8, I vividly remember my Oma stating, “If any of you are gay, I’m going to disown you.” Now at that age, you don’t think much of a comment like that, but you do internalise it. Likewise with my parents and brothers at the same time being outwardly against homosexuals – you then grow up with this internal belief that being gay is wrong. When I was about 12, I was looking through Anastacia’s music album and I vividly remember feeling sexually attracted to her – I was so confused. And angry. So much so that I said, “No Nicole, this is wrong. She’s a girl and you’re a girl and you can’t look at her breasts and be attracted to her. That’s wrong.” And so I stopped – not looking, but feeling. I completely shut off those feelings. And perhaps that’s why I’ve struggled to feel much of anything for all of these years.

This helps explain why in college, I was always so uncomfortable with my teammates getting changed in front of me. At the time, I thought it was because I was afraid that if my teammates caught me glancing their way that they would think I was checking them out and I didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But I think the real reason was that I was afraid I might actually enjoy looking at them. But when I was 12, I made an “agreement” with myself that I would not allow myself to feel those feelings because they’re wrong. I realise now, that I’ve been so sexually repressed because of these subconscious beliefs that I had no idea I was carrying around. And so I owe a lot of thanks to this girl – she helped loosen something within me that I wasn’t even aware was there.

Not only have I struggled with these feelings of guilt and shame, but also those of not feeling like I was enough as I was. I alluded to this in my former post, but it again stems from my childhood and my difficulty to accept my sexuality. My biggest fear growing up was disappointing my parents – I hated the way it felt to disappoint them. And that’s a primary reason why I quit tennis; I couldn’t handle disappointing them. And it’s also the primary reason I struggled for so many years to accept who I was – because I felt like no matter how well I did in soccer, or how well I did in school, there was still a part of me that wasn’t good enough. A part of me that was “wrong”. A part of me that was a disappointment to my parents. And it wasn’t anything they overtly said, if anything it was the covert behaviours that I interpreted as rejection of who I was and internalised as failure.

The problem with self-limiting beliefs such as not feeling like you’re good enough is that it isn’t isolated to one aspect of your life. Instead, it permeates everything. Every interaction, every hobby, every achievement. It affects how you carry yourself, how you see yourself, and ultimately how much you achieve. I’m convinced this is the belief that is the cause of my injuries, the destruction of my relationships, and the reason I’m so hard on myself both in life and in soccer. So now that I’m aware of all of this, what does this mean for me?

About three months ago, I started an anti-inflammatory, alkalising cleanse to ultimately heal my gut from the digestive issues (leaky gut) I was experiencing. This cleanse, which consisted of no grains, no dairy, and no sugar, sounded like torture. But it’s actually been one of the best things for me – I now cook for myself three times a day, and clean up straight away. I live in a much cleaner environment, and I feel so much clearer in my thinking and within my body. I feel strong – not just because of the food I’ve been consuming, but because of what I’m choosing to focus on.

In my former post, I brought up the law of attraction. Within these past few months, these laws and all the potential they possess have become so much more apparent in my life. My excitement towards this subject is palpable and I can only hope that you too, will experience a similar excitement.

After struggling to find a job for almost two months, I went onto LinkedIn and I searched for people who were interested in the same things I was acutely interested in; self-limiting beliefs, law of attraction, technology and human behaviour, and injuries. I then reached out to a few people in hopes of connecting with them. Two days later, I had a trial shift in the city. But it just so happened that the trams in Adelaide stopped working that afternoon. So along comes this guy who’s eating a bag of lettuce, which I thought was peculiar. He too, was stranded in the city. But he didn’t seem to care at all. And so we caught an Uber together and I realised that this was a guy who was living the life I wanted to live – he lived without a phone for three years. And doesn’t use technology all that much now. He took a course on energy and self-limiting beliefs which changed his life. Do you think it’s pure coincidence that we met that day? Because I don’t think it was. I think I manifested him into my life.

I asked him my favourite question that I ask new people – what’s a book that has changed your life? He said that his mentor, Bob Proctor, swears by Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. So naturally, when someone recommends a book that has changed their life, I proceed to purchase said book. While at the bookstore, there was a book that caught my eye, You Are the Placebo, and no matter how much I tried to ignore it, something about the book wanted me to read it. And so I did. And upon commencing the first chapter, I realised this was a book that was going to change my life. And it is.

The purpose of life, I believe, is to become intentional creators of our own life. What we don’t realise is that we create everything in our reality – when we experience something we don’t want, it’s because on some level, that’s the energy we’re putting out into the universe. The universe will always give you what you ask for. But not what you consciously ask for – it’s what your energy is projecting. Many people say they want money, but what they feel isn’t the possession of money, it’s the absence of it. And, because of law of attraction, the energy you put out is the energy you get back. So if you’re experiencing the absence of money, the universe will give you more of that.

When we experience what we don’t want, we inadvertently experience what we do want. What tends to happen though, is that we focus on what we don’t want and so the universe gives us more of that. I know that I intentionally manifested this girl in my life – I kept putting out into the universe that I wanted to feel wanted like a guy wants a girl. And this girl did exactly that. Which I now realise, is not actually what I wanted. And so I’m choosing to focus on the feelings I do want to experience; safety, balance, love, and appreciation. What’s imperative though, is to not just write these words on a piece of paper, but to experience the feeling of them before they happen. Because everything in this world is made up of energy (everything is made up of atoms and all atoms are made up of electrons and all electrons have an electron cloud which is really just energy), we can literally manifest whatever we want in our life so long as we experience it before it happens.

In Dr. Joe Dispenza’s book, he helps explain how people can walk on coals without getting burnt – and it’s because they believe they can. And they don’t question how. They transcend their current state of being to become someone else; someone who can walk on coals. And what’s even more remarkable? You and I are capable of this too. Not just in regards to walking on coals, but to become anything that we want. 97.5% of our DNA is “junk” – in other words, we only activate and use 2.5% of our DNA and that’s because we’re constantly thinking the same thoughts and engaging in the same behaviours, hence we experience the same things. But, by altering our thoughts and our energy, we can ultimately change our DNA - how fucking cool is that?!

All it starts with is belief. The people who heal themselves from cancer through thought alone are those that truly believe, with their energy, that they will get better – if we have the capacity to create illness, we also have the capacity to create wellness. Every potential in the future, exists in this moment right now – that’s called the quantum universe. So whoever you want to become, whatever you want to achieve, you can. The potential for our lives is literally limitless and if we can harness our own energy, we can fulfil our life’s purpose; we can become intentional creators of our own life.

This sounds amazing, right? And it is. What’s so amazing is that this is accessible to every single person on this planet – all they have to do is transcend their current state and experience whatever or whoever they want to be, before it happens. This energy (your thoughts and a heightened emotion) will then slow down in the form of matter to become whatever it is that you are desiring. The challenge is rewriting your script – overcoming the years of programming with thinking the same thoughts and engaging in the same behaviours. But with persistence and clear intentions, anything is possible.

After everything I’ve realised about myself recently, I’ve wondered if we are all, to some degree, carrying around these subconscious feelings of shame and guilt as well as feeling like we aren’t enough. And I suspect we are. I believe then that the purpose of our adulthood is to decondition ourselves from everything we’ve been conditioned to think and feel from our childhood; to return to our innocence. Don Miguel Ruiz talks about this in The Four Agreements – our goal is to eradicate those little “agreements’ we’ve made with ourselves and to return to being young, wild, and free. As always, change starts with awareness. And in light of the recent books I’ve read, I now believe any change is possible so long as you believe it is and commit to experiencing your future before it happens. Surrender to the universe, and you’ll receive what you’re asking for.

So who or what do you want to become? Because for me, I want to be free.

Not enough

These two words have pervasively infiltrated my life in the past week or so. After the realisation I discovered while in America about my desire to help others stemming from an internal fear of not being enough, I’ve found this feeling to be the root of angst within other realms of my life. And in today’s society, I’m really not sure it’s a feeling any of us can truly escape.

I fully acknowledge, especially given the content of one of my former posts, that this feeling of not being enough stems entirely from one’s ego. And the simplest solution is to merely become conscious, to become aware that this is what I’m feeling. But something about the simplicity of this solution doesn’t seem possible, because maybe, just maybe, there’s actually something deeper to this.

Everything in our world is tailored towards the fact that many of us feel like we aren’t enough. Every time I jump on Facebook, I’m bombarded with this overwhelming sense that who I am, what I’m doing, where I’m going; none of it feels enough. And I know I can’t be the only one that is experiencing this, because all of us are being exposed to the same information. We’re all being exposed to the highlight reels of friends’ lives, or to advertisements about self-growth or courses that we should take, or to articles about how terrible the world is which then serves to create fear and polarise people.

Advertisers prey on our insecurities. They prey on the fact that almost all of us feel like we aren’t enough. That’s why self-help books sell. That’s why so many people who are motivational speakers, life coaches, or business specialists are all making a living – because they know you don’t feel like you’re enough. And they know that they can convince you to take their course, even if it costs thousands of dollars as many of them do. How much do you value your freedom? They might query. And if you can’t afford the $10,000 to take their course, well then you just feel like shit because you must not value yourself very much.

The other overwhelming factor is, how do you even know which course to take? Or which book to read? There are literally SO many of them. How can you then be sure that the one you’ve chosen is going to be the best one for you? Well, you don’t. And simple psychology will tell you that the more options you have, the less satisfied you’ll be with whatever decision you make. FOMO (fear of missing out) is a thing purely for this reason – it operates on the premise that no matter what decision you make, you’ll be missing out on an experience elsewhere with someone else. And how do you know that? Well because you’re constantly exposed to it. On Facebook, on Snapchat, on the news, in books; everywhere.

Honestly, I’m just tired of being exposed to information that is created to purely reinforce the feeling that I’m not enough. Or to information that is created because it plays on the ego’s need for drama and fear. I’m tired of being manipulated. I’m tired of being subconsciously controlled into how to feel. And that’s all advertisement and technology serve to do; manipulate you.

I fully acknowledge that this feeling of not being enough is my own issue and an issue that is rooted in my childhood and probably in my younger self’s inability to accept that being gay was okay (because every message in society communicated to me that it wasn’t). But I also know that investing in any of these courses or books is not going to resolve this deep-rooted belief that I have and have had for probably over 10 years. Nor are any affirmations I tell myself daily. Because if anything, it’s just going to reinforce my need to take another course, and another course, and another one, and in essence, serve only to reinforce the feeling that I am not enough right now. Because that’s what these courses, businesses, and books are communicating to you subconsciously. And that’s why people invest in them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally an advocate for self-growth. But at what cost? We’re now constantly trying to get somewhere, or being told where we need to go, or being reminded that where we are isn’t enough. What ever happened to just being? We’ve become human doings rather than human beings. Human doings with an incessant need to be somewhere else, to learn something more, to be someone more.

The other week, a friend of mine suggested I become a motivational speaker. And I genuinely considered it. Until I thought about how much information is already out there, how many people are getting into life coaching, healthy eating mentoring, becoming a personal trainer, and so the word motivational speaker almost disgusted me. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do; they already get way too much of that from society. If anything, I want to help people return to who they were before they were conditioned to feel and think and behave in certain ways from technology and society. I want to help people to just be. How can I do that? By presenting myself in the most humanly human way as possible; by exposing my flaws, by being vulnerable, and by committing myself to sharing my story, all of it, in a way that is so raw and real, it’s relatable.

I had to get rid of Instagram last year because it genuinely made me feel like fucking shit any time I was on it. I would see images of my teammates and the lives they were living or the body that they have, and it would make me feel miserable. It would make me question why I didn’t look like that. Why I wasn’t in the gym instead of on my phone looking at their pictures. But instead of serving as motivation, it served as a deterrent. It made me feel like drowning my sorrows in a container full of Nutella.

I questioned whether or not I needed to sit there and process these uncomfortable feelings or whether the best course of action was to just remove the triggers from my life. And some may believe that I need to do the former, to work through those negative emotions, but I disagree. And I disagree because technology has increased at a rate that evolution cannot keep up with. Our brain does not possess the defence mechanisms necessary to prohibit us from digesting this information subconsciously. We process 80% of information subconsciously, which means consciously or not, we are constantly comparing ourselves to the lives of others so long as we are being exposed to that information.

My solution? Eradicate exposure. Facebook, the news, technology – it’s all just emotional torture. I’m sorry that I can’t get on Facebook and be happy for the information I see, because I know it’s all bullshit. It’s not reality. It’s fake. And I believe it serves no other purpose than to make oneself feel better and consequently, it probably makes others feel like shit. Because the reality is, there are few people out there who genuinely feel like they are enough. And those that do, probably aren’t on Facebook. I remember reading in a Womankind magazine the following question, “If people couldn’t tell anyone that they hiked Mt Everest, would they still choose to hike Mt Everest?” If people couldn’t share their experiences, what feelings would they then be confronted with?

We live for the screen and through the screen. So much so that we no longer know how to entertain ourselves when we don’t have a technological distraction nearby. We’ve been conditioned to have short attention spans (ADD and ADHD diagnoses are increasing rapidly); our brains and their creative components are atrophying because they’re not being used. Despite being more connected, we feel more alone. And so I’m going to attempt to decondition myself from what I’ve been conditioned to feel and think over the years.

I went to the Australian Post Office the other day to purchase a street directory (which they no longer sell) and the lady almost laughed at me as though I was born 500 years ago. How many of us can remember directions to a location the first time we go there? Probably very few because we just use our GPS; our GPS does our thinking and our remembering, so why would I need to use that area of my brain?

Because of all of this, I’m forcing myself to go on a technological detox. No Facebook. No Snapchat. No GPS. And very limited phone use. I’ll have access to my email once a day and to Skype, and obviously to written letters too. But I don’t believe I need to learn how to process these negative emotions because I truly don’t think we can unless we’ve reached a point where we’ve dealt with our primary fears and those insecurities of not feeling like we’re enough. Our society has changed so much because of technology yet few of us are questioning the effects it’s having on our brain and overall wellbeing. We’ve just accepted these technological advancements as the world in which we live and conformed unconsciously rather than intentionally creating a life for ourselves that is both rich and fulfilling.

So before you buy whatever it is you feel compelled to buy, ask yourself why. Are you buying this because you’re genuinely interested in what the speaker or author or company has to share? Or because you feel like you’re not enough and their talk, course, book, or business might provide the answer? I’m tired of being manipulated. I’m tired of being told what to do. And I’m tired of living in such a success-driven world. As I mentioned before, my intention is to come across as humanly human as possible. I want people to be able to relate to what I’m saying. I want to talk about the things that we all feel, but we don’t talk about because we don’t feel like we can. I don’t want to tell people what to do. I just want to help people to be. To accept themselves and to know that they aren’t the only ones that feel the way they are feeling. I’m not here to sell anything, to motivate anyone, or tell anyone how to live their life, I’m just here to share my story.