Wicked Games

There are some collective themes we’ll probably all experience in the course of our lives and one of these is betrayal. Sometimes they’re small ones, where you find out someone you trusted has been unkind about you, and others can be completely devastating. We all have our own personal scale of what we find enormously wounding – for some infidelity isn’t such a big deal and for others it means the end of the relationship, without question. Then there are the million ways in which we are misled or betrayed by those in whom we’ve place our trust in the workplace.

A few people I know are going through tough times with colleagues who they’d trusted, but have let them down in some quite spectacularly appalling ways. One particular person has gone through the most extraordinary catalogue of horrors, which has turned a minor incident into a fully-fledged witch hunt. The Spanish Inquisition would be proud of the torturous conclusion to this sorry tale. Needless to say, she has suffered enormously at the hands of some pretty slick characters, who’ve all managed to take care of themselves quite nicely whilst making her the scapegoat. It has taken an enormous strength of will just to stay functioning in the face of this ongoing barrage of criticism, lies and ultimate injustice now affecting her career on a permanent basis.

Yet the curious thing in this story is that, now it has become so outrageous as to be almost comic, she’s finding it easier to deal with. Oddly enough, sometimes it’s only when a situation gets so out of hand that you can lift yourself above recrimination and start looking at the bigger picture. This is not the only time the theme of betrayal has arisen in her life, but this time it’s a doozy. If we are to assume that all issues come up to create some kind of healing, then it’s becoming apparent that in this case it’s about strengthening her own sense of empowerment in the face of a huge abuse of power by others.

Now, it’s not always that easy to see what’s really going on – particularly when you’re in the thick of it – but when you can begin to get a sense of perspective, you’re on the way to unravelling the core theme that lies beneath. In this case, it’s a complex set of issues about valuing the self in the face of disapproval by authority figures, a need to respect and honour her own creativity and skill, and a push towards standing strong in her own power.

My favourite quote on power comes from the movie poster of The Godfather Part III, which said “real power cannot be given – it must be taken”. There’s so much truth in that statement – absolutely no-one can empower you to believe in yourself. Chasing approval is a dead-end street, because although you might be appreciated one day, you may not be the next and you’ll always be on the lookout for someone else to tell you that you’re OK. You’ll never really feel it on the inside. Cast-iron self-worth comes from knowing that you’re OK regardless of what anybody else thinks and regardless of what appears to be happening in the world around you. It allows you to stand by your own truth and integrity, even in the face of extreme criticism and disapproval. When you strengthen your own sense of power, you can become immune to the attempts of others to control you or shame you into accepting their beliefs or way of life.

Luckily, it’s rare that we experience huge betrayals in life. More usually they’re of the common and garden variety, but far more insidious are the ways in which we betray ourselves, diminishing our own power. How many times have you agreed with someone else just to avoid conflict or not stood up for what you believed you were due because you were afraid to ask for it?

This week, take a look at betrayal on both levels – from the outer world and the inner world. Where have you experienced betrayal from others and what might that experience have been trying to teach you? Is there a recurring theme of betrayal? If so, rather than attack yourself for poor judgement, ask yourself what this theme might be telling you about your own need to value and honour yourself and your beliefs. Make an honest inventory to take a look at where you have betrayed yourself – and where you’re still doing it. Try to find the underlying theme. What’s standing in the way of your own empowerment? Where do you let yourself down?

The good news is that when we resolve our inner issues, we are far less likely to experience those same issues in the outer world. What we bring to consciousness no longer disarms us by appearing in the guise of outer experience. That’s not to say that the issue won’t repeat itself, but that we become far more equipped to deal with the consequences when we understand the game we are playing. If you’re in the midst of a betrayal drama right now, try to distance yourself from the events and tell the story to yourself dispassionately, as though it were about someone else. That should give you the detachment to start looking underneath the drama for the deeper purpose.

Above all, remember that true empowerment is simply about honouring the truth of who you are. It has nothing to do with power over others, which is just the illusion of control. Real power is having command over your own attitudes, beliefs and emotions – and allowing others the freedom to do the same.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link inthe Favourite Sites section on the rightor by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 18 Feb 08)

The Way Of The Peaceful Decision-Maker

Having just talked yet another person down off the ceiling, the issue of clarity and discernment is uppermost in my mind. When the world is a scary place to you, the tension is palpable and stress is making your voice rise to a pitch that only dogs can hear, call me old-fashioned, but I don’t call that a great time to make a decision.

This year is shaping up to be a bit of a challenging one for a lot of people, calling for some smart and savvy discrimination in how choices are made. That’s not to say it won’t be an easier ride for others, but even if the heavens are shining on you, you still need to be picking the options that are best for you, rather than going along for the ride.

So, for the record, here are a few pointers to enhance your decision-making prowess:

Don’t Panic

You may recall that these words were inscribed in large and friendly letters on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe – just because it’s a work of fiction doesn’t mean it’s not true. No good can ever come of panicky energy, because it’s based on fear. When you’re fearful, it’s nigh on impossible to get in touch with your inner guidance and logic goes out the window as well. Not exactly an ideal scenario, is it? If you’re in panic mode, then you need to do whatever it takes to calm yourself down and change the groove of your thinking. You need to interrupt the pattern so you can approach the question again with a clear head.

Relax

So, your head’s in a spin, you’ve got a huge decision to make and you haven’t got a clue what to do – do you really think getting stressed about it is going to help the situation? The only way out of that spiral is to do something that gets physical – getting you out of your head and into your body. Walk, swim, exercise, get a massage, lie on a beach if you have time, but don’t try to cure the problem with more thinking – your best thinking got you here. If you’re under time pressure, just get outside and walk around the block, taking a few deep breaths along the way, or sit in the park at lunchtime. Getting out in nature, particularly by water, is very calming. Even in urban environments you can find fountains, rivers, parks or day spas that have very zen-like energy to give you a swift relax and re-charge.

Stay In The Present Moment

Most of the unnecessary drama in our lives could be removed just by observing the tenet to ‘be here now’. It’s that simple. When our minds are in the past, we’re usually either regretting something good now lost to us or reliving some past difficulty. When we focus on what’s to come, we have a tendency to awfulise, projectecting our current difficulties way out into the future. Both of these past and future obsessions bring enormous stress to the present day and make it extremely difficult to make wise choices. The past will not necessarily repeat itself, nor is the future certain to be a replica of current experience, so why entrap yourself in this type of thinking?

Open Your Mind

When you’re uptight about which direction to choose, it’s usually because you think you’re in an ‘either or’ situation and there’s no other option. That’s exactly when you need an open mind. Get creative and start finding other ways to think about the question. Talk to an inspiring friend, get a coach, use creativity techniques like A Whack On The Side Of The Head cards, get online or talk to others to research new options – do anything that gets you out of ricocheting between two choices. There is always another way, but you usually can’t find it either because you don’t think you have a right to ask for it or you simply haven’t opened your mind to the possibility.

Feel Into The Options

When your mind isn’t a reliable source of guidance, due to the mental spin factor, then the best way to get insight is via your feelings. Make sure you’ve done the relaxation bit first, though, or the only feelings you’ll be getting in touch with are ones of panic and fear. When you’re in a more laid-back mode, sit quietly, close your eyes and imagine the first choice ahead of you like a road. How does it feel to you to follow that road? Let your imagination give you images or a sense of how that might be. Pay attention to the sensations in your body as you visualise taking that path. Then do the same for all the other options. You should be able to get a clear sense of which choice feels better to you, as long as you remember to stay with how it feels to you rather than what you think about it.

Know Nothing Is Forever

What paralyses us most when it comes to making decisions is assuming they’re always irrevocable. When you really think about it, there are very few things in life that last forever and your decisions definitely aren’t cast in stone. These days there’s very little that can’t be undone if you really need to – for example, changing jobs is no big deal if you’ve misjudged a career choice. Sometimes it’s going far enough in the wrong direction that gives us the impetus to jump tracks to the right way, so staying flexible to what comes up for you in life is a very useful skill. If you’re completely stuck and just can’t make a decision, at times the best thing you can do is just take action. Not making a decision just keeps you stuck. At least doing something will shift the energy. When you know it’s not forever, you’re not afraid to jump.

This week, take a look at where you’re finding it difficult to make a decision about a particular direction, an opportunity, a relationship or a work issue. Use a combination of any or all the techniques, but do them in sequence. Jumping ahead without creating a calm foundation will affect the clarity of your insights and your ultimate decision. When you’ve made your decision, add a little magic by visualising success for yourself in whatever you’ve chosen. That’ll help it to become the fabulous turning point you wish it to be.

Now, I know it’s Valentine’s Day this week, so as a special treat, here’s a link some of the most direct (and occasionally profane) dating advice you’ll ever get, from Greg Behrendt, consultant on Sex & The City and author of He’s Just Not That Into You and It’s Called A Breakup Because It’s Broken. In the Ask Greg video section of his home page at http://www.gregbehrendt.com/ you’ll find all the sage relationship advice you’ll ever need – with a hefty reality check as a bonus. Happy V-Day, everyone!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link inthe Favourite Sites section on the rightor by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email mailto:coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk.All. All material © 2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 11 Feb 08)

Taking Care Of Business



We’ve been revisiting the basic concepts of confidence, self-worth and self-acceptance over the past few weeks. Before we wander off piste to visit whatever else pops into my mind, it’s probably timely to take a look at the concept of service and how that fits with the inner-directed process of building self-confidence.

Whether or not we later embrace any form of religion in our lives, our early conditioning by the authority figures of our childhood sets up a credo – or set of commandments – by which we are exhorted to think always of others. That in itself is fabulous. What isn’t so great is the way that is subtly translated into a belief that we should always put others first, even when that comes at great personal cost to ourselves. Then, effectively, we are in sacrifice, not service. There’s a competing voice we hear daily, too, that says ‘nice guys finish last’ – reflecting the fact that we’ve become a more or less permanent ‘me’ generation. No wonder we’re confused.

For many of us, learning to tread the fine line between service and sacrifice is a life-long challenge, as we ricochet between giving till it hurts and shutting down because we have nothing left to give. We treat taking care of ourselves as a selfish act and question if it’s OK to be successful when so many others have so little. It’s a moral and ethical debate that can paralyse us from action in the outer world and prevent us from maintaining even the most basic of personal boundaries. Until we develop clarity on our own concept of service, then we will wage this inner war with ourselves, bouncing back and forth between sacrifice and service.

Marianne Williamson – one of the greatest spiritual teachers of this age – addresses how she wrestled with these issues in her new book, The Age of Miracles, recounting “I woke up once to a late-night epiphany that shone like a neon pronouncement: that the key to human salvation lies in our living for each other … The line I heard in my head that night was not ‘give away everything you own’. It was ‘live for others’. And I’ve wondered what the world would look like if we did.

“We’ve been so thoroughly programmed to look out for number one, as though ‘me’ is so much more important than ‘we’. But the shift from living for ourselves to living for others is clearly the spiritual imperative calling humanity back to the garden. What, then, about healthy boundaries? Does living for others mean I’m going to give everyone everything – as in my time, my energy, my money, my heart? I’ve tried to do that … be the paragon of self-sacrifice … never having time for myself, making myself wrong for wanting to take care of me, always running around to please or do for others. And it got me nowhere. If anything, it left me angry, resentful, vulnerable to thieves and feeling much more stuck in a rut on my spiritual path as opposed to being sped up on it. Wrecked half the time, I rarely showed up as my best for anyone.

“Healthy boundaries are loving; they show respect both to the person who sets them and to the person who’s asked to honour them. I think it’s best to seek a balanced life, at peace with ourselves and our own loved ones; then when we do turn our attention to the world, we can bring so much more to it. We bring a higher version of ourselves. According to A Course In Miracles, sacrifice has no place in God’s universe. Taking care of ourselves in a righteous way is meaningful service to a greater task because we cannot give what we cannot be. From that space of peace and the moderate behaviour it produces, comes more than enough money and time and energy to give to the world. Service is very serious work, but co-dependency is not.”

If we have any hope of eradicating the concept that taking care of self is innately a selfish act, then what we really need to learn to do is to receive without guilt. Many of us are hard-wired to give constantly and have little experience in receiving gracefully – whether that’s the love of another, a gift or even something as simple as a compliment. What lies beneath that inability to receive is a profound lack of self-acceptance – and often a deep self-loathing – that deflects any incoming appreciation like a computer firewall bounces back spam. You might be being given plenty of love and support, but without self-acceptance, it’s impossible to take it in.

The relationship therapists, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, were shocked to find that even when clients were given the tools to provide the support their partners had asked for, those same partners couldn’t accept the love they were being offered. As they wrote in Receiving Love, “Who wouldn’t be eager to accept the gift of love freely given? We never thought about the fact that the ability to receive love isn’t natural and inborn for everyone. We have since discovered that some lucky souls blossom and heal when they are offered what they need. But most of us have some trouble taking in affection, praise, support, compliments or gifts from others. For some reason we are not always able to swallow, digest and use this food for the soul. We can taste these morsels of love, but we can’t digest them as nourishment. Like many people with food allergies, we are left craving the very thing we cannot digest.”

Bottom line, we will have no sustainable ability to offer anything to the world until we can first learn to nourish ourselves, and the bedrock of that nourishment is self-acceptance and self-esteem. Unless we think we’re worth something, all the love in the world is wasted on us as we remain incapable of truly receiving it. Having a deep sense of self-worth is an inner process and not a function of how we appear in the world – it’s not about what you do for a living, how you look, who you know or what you have. It’s about being at peace with who you are.

Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations With God, describes meeting the extraordinary Ram Dass, who was left disabled, wheelchair-bound,and barely able to speak after a stroke. He says, “I met Ram Dass, after his stroke, in a hotel room in Denver, and I want to tell you something, I never met a healthier man. I sat in that room with a master. I said, ‘Ram Dass, how are you?’ And he sat in his wheelchair and took a long time saying the words ‘ I am wonder-ful’. That’s health … that’s peace, that’s joy. And when you have so much happiness and peace and joy that you spend your life sharing it with everyone you touch, that’s enlightenment. You have become a master. When your life is no longer about you, has nothing to do with you, but is about everyone whose life you touch, you have become a master. For in the end, that is why you came here. Not to somehow ‘get better’, not to work on yourself. Consider the possibility that all the work you will ever need to do on yourself is already done. All you have to do is know that. Then you will realise that the wonderful message from Conversations With God is true – ‘There is nothing you have to do, nowhere you have to go, and there is no one you have to be, except exactly who you are being right now’.”

This week, learn to live the paradox that seeming to be selfish can be a selfless act. Take time out to nourish yourself, choose to receive compliments gracefully, and think of yourself with love and compassion. While you’re doing that, you can begin asking yourself what you can do to live for others – what’s your special form of service? How can you share your joy with those you touch?

As a final clue, I’ll leave you with a little more guidance and wisdom from Marianne Williamson, who says “So how then do we live for others? The best I can come up with is that service is a way of being. It means I can make the person who just carried my bags into the hotel room feel how much I appreciate what he did for me. Tip him generously as well, of course, but match the tip with an attitude of honour for what he does. Both are important. It means that in any moment, as part of my spiritual practice, I can do what I can to show love and respect for the person in front of me.”

Become a master of the fabulous art of true service, not sacrifice.


Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link inthe Favourite Sites section on the rightor by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com.
For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk.
All material © 2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 4 Feb 08)

The Heart Of Confidence


Not sure why – perhaps it’s the whole January new start thing – but I feel moved to do a bit of a back to basics riff on the principles behind I Am Fab. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know this blog is dedicated to promoting self-confidence and ways to enjoy an authentic, meaningful life – even if that’s not entirely evident at first sight! The topics may meander around all sorts of themes, but the general principal is that being exactly who you are is just fine. There’s nothing you need do to fix yourself. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite – the limiting beliefs you hold about yourself are what stand in your way.

Confidence and authenticity are byproducts of getting comfortable with yourself, not striving to become some idealised image of perfection. If you want to be happy with yourself and your life, letting go and learning to love yourself are the major keys to success. With a little self-awareness, it’s relatively easy to take a look at your own self-imposed limitations, but most people find the ‘loving yourself’ part the hardest. As one friend complained recently, “all those books tell you to love yourself, but nobody tells you how to do it”. I’m always up for a challenge, so here goes …

Get Over The Idea That Loving Yourself Is Selfish

Let’s face it, most of us had a less-than-ideal upbringing when it came to any sense of a positive self-image. When you’ve had your parents, your teachers and any kind of religious influence coming down on you like a ton of bricks for anything that vaguely looked like it was ‘selfish’, taking care of yourself is not going to be a natural skill. The Judeo-Christian concept of ‘original sin’ reinforces the idea that we’re all somehow bad, need to be punished and have to be taught to be good.

For those reasons, accusations of ‘selfishness’ are powerful ways of shaming and manipulating, so anyone who wants or needs to control you will be ploughing that field for all they’re worth. However, what’s really selfish is not taking care of yourself. When you do that, you’re playing the burning martyr game, where you appear to be in sacrifice but are actually getting satisfaction from the pity of others or from feeling like a ‘good’ person. Genuine selflessness does not give to get.

Loving yourself and taking good care of yourself means you’ll be relaxed and generous with others, because you’ve made sure you have a well from which to give. You cannot give endlessly without draining yourself and sacrifice isn’t really giving anyway – it’s just a strategy to get attention or to shore up a poor self-image.

Watch Your Inner Dialogue

How you speak to yourself is indicative of how much love and esteem you have for yourself. What’s chattering away in your mind when you look in the mirror first thing in the morning? What do you say to yourself when something doesn’t work out for you? If you’re critical, blaming and punishing in your self-talk, that’s a clear indication that you need to work on being kind to yourself.

The first step to self-love is simple self-acceptance. Start looking kindly at yourself in the mirror. Pay yourself a compliment rather than chip away at what you don’t like about yourself. If something goes wrong, go easy on yourself. Don’t start beating yourself up or blaming yourself automatically. Maybe it’s just not the right time or even the right situation for you. Learn to grow from your mistakes, not be paralysed by them.

Celebrate Your Successes

So few of us have any kind of positive habit of celebrating our achievements – most of us move from milestone to milestone looking back at what went wrong, rather than what went right. You cannot develop a positive sense of self-worth if you constantly focus on your failings rather than your successes. Learn to make a discipline of reflecting on what you’ve achieved, rather than what you feel is lacking.

You can do that by celebrating milestones as they occur or even having a daily habit of listing three things you’re happy to have achieved at the end of each day. You might even enjoy a practice suggested by Esther Hicks and Abraham, called The Book of Positive Aspects, where you write down all your successes and positive achievements in a notebook so you can return to them on days when you’re not feeling that great about yourself.

As a starter for ten, why not just think of three things right now that you’re really proud of, that brought you the most joy or that are major achievements in your career or private life? Get in the habit of thinking positively about the way you’re living your life.

Set Clear Boundaries

This one’s an overspill from the ‘burning martyr’ syndrome. A lack of healthy boundaries will kick you into sacrifice, leaving you feeling drained, exhausted and worthless. Failing to take good care of yourself in light of the demands of others simply reinforces that you believe other people’s needs are more important than your own. It’s hard to feel good about yourself when what you need or feel simply doesn’t matter – to you or anyone else.

Boundary-setting is not about putting up fences, but of holding a strong centre and reacting appropriately in the moment. It’s about trusting that you’re the authority in your own life and that you know what’s right for you. It means saying ‘no’, even when that might feel uncomfortable, because you trust your own judgement. Strong boundaries protect you from being manipulated by the inappropriate demands of others and they reinforce to the world that you value yourself. That’s vital, because, believe me, if you don’t, no-one else is going to do that for you.

Make Positive Choices

Loving yourself isn’t just sitting around talking nicely to yourself – it’s about action and integrity. If you’ve decided you want to lose weight and you stuff your face with fast food, that’s not a positive or loving choice. You’re out of integrity with what you’ve declared you want and you’re not supporting your own physical well-being. If you’re hanging out with people who are manipulative or hyper-critical, then again you’re not making choices that say to yourself that you’re worth loving. If you’re tolerating any kind of relationship that’s destructive, that’s a massive blow to your ability to love yourself and to your self-confidence and self-worth.

Take a look at how the activities and people in your life support your total well-being. Where are you out of integrity with what you want for your life? Are you living the kind of life someone else has mapped out for you? Are you moving forward in the direction you really want to go or are you holding yourself back because of limiting self-beliefs or another person’s opinion?

Trust Yourself

People with low self-esteem are self-abandoning. They follow what others insist upon because they don’t love themselves enough to trust their own opinions and intuition. If something doesn’t feel right to you, you need to honour that. You don’t actually owe anyone an explanation for the decisions you make, so even if it’s just a hunch, value yourself enough to trust that and live by your own lights. Following your intuition is a way of loving and valuing yourself. Stop second-guessing your instinctive decisions and learn to trust yourself.

By taking action in support of your own feelings and inner guidance, you’re sending a strong message to yourself that you’re worth listening to and taking care of. When you really embody that, you’re sending that same message out to the world, loud and clear.

Just Relax – Drop The Judgement

When you love yourself, you can be OK with yourself exactly as you are. You don’t feel like you ‘should’ be anything other than your true self and you extend that generosity of spirit to others as well, making you a very easy person to be around. Learning to let go of all the judgements you hold on yourself and others is the most freeing and loving thing you can do for yourself.

That means dropping perfectionism and examining all the beliefs you have about success, so that you can develop a healthy sense of success on your own terms. Don’t strive for what looks good to others – if it’s not that important to you, forget about it. Embrace freedom and spontaneity. That allows you to open to new possibilities and creative expression you may not have considered. Let your mind open to your heart’s desire, not just what you think you can achieve or what you ‘should’ aspire to.

This week you have a seven-point plan to work on to build your self-worth and learn to love yourself. Give each one a try and see the difference. It might not be an overnight transformation, but stick to it and you’ll soon be noticing that you’re treating yourself more kindly and building a strong foundation of self-worth. What could be more fabulous than that?


Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link inthe Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 21 Jan 08)

Scary Monsters

I love all things quirky and nobody does it better than Louis Theroux. He’s on a quest to expose the most eccentric forms of human behaviour, via his documentaries for the BBC, in his own curiously laid-back style. Last night’s programme focused on the modern plague of plastic surgery and – in the interests of understanding the addiction to going under the knife – he even had some lipo of his own. That’s above and beyond the call of duty in my book, but he does tend to do total immersion in his subject.

A woman of only 26 was a plastic surgeon’s receptionist, so she’d already had numerous procedures and was moving on to breast realignment, lipo for the love handles and a nose job only a few months after what seemed to be a completely unnecessary tummy tuck. Another woman went for a complete body makeover in the hopes of getting her astonishingly shallow boyfriend back, but the ones who scared me the most were the men.

One guy looked like he’d been stuck in a wind tunnel for years with a face that was pinned back so tight it was a wonder he could speak, but the saddest case was the man in his fifties who’d clearly had plenty of facial work, plus implants in his pecs, a tummy tuck and bicep implants to make his arm muscles look bigger. Louis’ very innocent style of interviewing lulled him into revealing that he’d been called an ‘ugly bastard’ by his stepfather for years and still saw himself that way, hence all the effort he put into sculpting his appearance. Although he’d had therapy, there was still an enormous gaping hole in his self-esteem that he thought plastic surgery could fill.

That poor man will probably spend the rest of his life – and his bank balance – trying to overcome his lack of self-worth by applying a cure that will never work. Nothing that is based solely on external appearance and approval by others will ever make a person with low self-esteem feel good for any length of time. It’s a quick fix that’s ultimately detrimental if it masks the need to address a lack of self-acceptance and self-love. Renovating the outer without taking a look at the inner is just throwing a bit of window-dressing over the problem, and the same issues will continue to erupt in your life no matter how much money you throw at them.

If you find it difficult to accept yourself as you are, by all means work on the outer issues that bother you, but never forget that the real work is done inside your own mind. It’s not always possible to forget the types of taunts that man endured as a child, but it is possible to transform the relationship you have with those kinds of memories. What matters is not what occurred, but what we make it mean about us.

We can choose to live as though unkind words are the truth about us, or we can choose to see them as thoughtless and insensitive comments from people who were incapable of acting kindly towards us. When we unhook ourselves from the belief that we were treated badly because we deserved it, we free ourselves to become self-accepting and ultimately to develop a degree of self-love. Then, what we think about ourselves becomes far more important than what others think of us.

As Phillip Moffit wrote recently in Yoga Journal, “Transform does not mean to fix or make go away whatever trauma and scars you may be carrying from childhood: instead, you slowly develop a new relationship with your difficulty, such that it is no longer a controlling factor in your life.”

There’s no denying it’s a process that can take some time, but when you liberate yourself from the stories you’ve been told about who you are – and have continued to tell yourself over and over – those emotional scars can fade away. Like all scars, they’ll still be there, but they’ll have much less power to affect you. Then you can begin the work of building your own self-worth from within and become the authentic self you were always meant to be.

The effect of this kind of confidence is best described by the Dalai Lama, who has said, “With the realisation of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world. According to my experience, self-confidence is very important. That sort of confidence is not a blind one; it is an awareness of one's own potential. On that basis, human beings can transform themselves by increasing the good qualities and reducing negative qualities.”

Not just this week, but every week, try to excavate at least one lie about who you are from the vaults of your memory and see it for what it is – someone else’s projection. So often people don’t even remember the comments that have wounded us, because they were said in anger, in passing or simply out of plain spite, yet we take them to heart and wound ourselves over and over with those words.

Especially, don’t let the words of someone you neither liked nor respected steal your sense of self-worth. Learn to let other people’s poison wash away and keep your self-esteem intact. This goes as much for the present as for the past. Make your opinion of yourself the priority and let other people’s judgements be seen for what they are – reflections of their own insecurities, projected on to you.

Be kind to yourself with what you perceive to be your failings and learn to celebrate your good qualities. Know that out of some of our most painful experiences the greatest wisdom can grow. The poet Antonio Machado knew this when he wrote, “I dreamt last night, oh marvellous error, that there were honey bees in my heart, making honey out of my old failures.”

Dream some honey bees tonight and let your heart – not your surgeon – do the work.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 8 Oct 07)

Eat Me

Life here in Fab Towers has taken on a gentler pace over the last few days, due to a resurgence of sciatica – literally a pain in the arse. It’s not exactly the most fun I’ve ever had in bed, but if life incapacitates you, I have learned that you might as well enjoy the ride rather than try to fight it. After indulging in the classic tacky TV free-for-all, watching the kind of junk that is oh so satisfying when you’re feeling under the weather, the enforced rest has given me the opportunity to savour a gem of a book about love, sex and the art of eating, called Eat Me.

Its food-savvy author, Alexandra Antonioni, weaves together real life stories and wisdom about dating and mating with fabulous recipes for each stage of a romance, from first flirtation to final curtain. Her own personal insights are definitely worth the read, but for I Am Fab purposes, there’s real mileage in the collective wisdom she has gathered while researching the attraction stage.

Discussing what men look for when seeking a long-term partner, she recounts “The kind of women they want to date take good care of themselves and how they look, but apparently it is not about having the perfect body or looking like the models in the fashion mags (airbrushed within an inch of their skinny, cellulite-free, digitally-enhanced, irritating selves), it is about confidence. If you look good, you will feel good, ergo you will be upbeat, friendly and approachable. If you make no effort with yourself, why should anyone make an effort with you? So it’s not about being a perfect 10, it’s about being the best that you possibly can be, no matter what you weigh, how old you are or how much money you have.”

Exactly. And what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. That’s what we go for in guys too – someone who’s relaxed and happy with themselves. Confidence is an aphrodisiac. As Sophia Loren put it, “Sex appeal is 50 per cent what you’ve got and 50 percent what people think you’ve got”.

Acceptance is the issue here. If you spend your time worrying that you don’t look like someone else – particularly the aforementioned irritating, airbrushed models – you’ll never learn to make the best of what you have. When you can value your own particular brand of beauty, you’ll have the kind of confidence that is unshakeable. That means learning to love your quirks, play up your assets and play down the rest. It means knowing that what you have to offer is far more than just how you look – it’s how you can make someone feel; how fascinating or charming your presence can be.

Let’s try an asset audit this week. What are the top three attractions you have in looks, temperament and talents? Is it humour, humility or heartfelt empathy that’s your primary asset? What would your friends say they love about you? If you don’t know, ask around. Check with a good friend – preferably one whose style you admire – to see what he or she would love to see you wear. Maybe you’ll get some new style ideas and see your body through kinder eyes than your own.

The French have way of describing relaxed confidence as someone who seems ‘bien dans sa peau’ – literally good in their skin. You cannot be truly confident until you love the skin you’re in – and everything that goes with it. Knowledge is power, so start paying attention to what really works for you and start working it, baby!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 17 Sep 07)

Top Dog

On one of our regular forays in the search for the perfect carrot cake with a friend the other day, we ran into another acquaintance of hers on the High Road. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this woman that would, on the surface, justify a strong reaction, yet whenever I meet her I feel uneasy and can’t wait to get out of her presence. I’ve long since learned to pay attention those kind of energetic ‘hits’, because you ignore them at your peril. If your radar is trying to tell you something, the smart option is to listen.

Now I’m not saying that there’s anything particularly amiss with that person, but that she does have the kind of intense, nervous energy that isn’t a good fit for me. That understanding has bubbled up to a conscious level in this case, but we are making vast numbers of unconscious decisions based on energy throughout our day, rarely stopping to comprehend why we like, trust or dislike someone almost at first sight.

We’re not used to talking in energetic terms about human relationships, but Cesar Millan, the ‘dog whisperer’ bases his seemingly magical skill of dealing with problem animals on the energetics of communication. As he says “I’m happy to report that the universal language of Dr Doolittle already exists. And humans didn’t invent it. It’s a language that all animals speak without even knowing it, including the human animal. What’s more, all animals are actually born knowing this language instinctually. Even human beings are born fluent in this universal tongue, but we tend to forget it because we are trained from childhood to believe that words are the only way to communicate. The irony is, even though we don’t think we know the language, we are speaking it all the time. Unknowingly, we are broadcasting in this tongue 24/7! Other species of animals can still understand us, even though we may not have a clue how to understand them. They read us loud and clear, even when we’re unaware that we’re communicating! This truly universal, interspecies language is called energy.”

Describing how the interplay of energy works in a societal sense in his book, Cesar’s Way, Millan goes on to say “When it comes to energy, we humans have much more in common with animals than we usually like to admit. Imagine one of the most ruthless jungles in the human world – the high school cafeteria. Picture it as a watering hole where different species – in this case, the cliques of jocks, nerds and stoners – peacefully intermingle. Then a bully ‘accidentally’ bumps into a smaller guy’s food tray. The energy released by that interaction will ripple right through the room … Let’s say the little guy in the cafeteria is having a bad day. He’s failed two tests in a row and is in a weak state of mind. He happens to look up and accidentally catch the eye of the bully. Maybe the bully was just minding his own business, but as soon as he picks up on the weaker guy’s diminished energy, the whole dynamic between them changes in a split second. In the animal kingdom, that’s called survival of the fittest.”

One of the most striking observations made by Millan is the recognition of the kind of energy we respond to in and demand of our leaders. As in the animal kingdom, leadership energy is recognised as calm and assertive. As he says, “Right or wrong, we in America expect our leaders to project a dominant powerful energy, like that of a Bill Clinton or a Ronald Reagan. Some powerful leaders project a charismatic energy that infects and energises everyone around them – consider Tony Robbins. Martin Luther King Jr projected an energy that was what I call ‘calm assertive’ – the ideal energy for a leader.”

If you watch his television show, you’ll see Millan gaining instant respect and obedience from even the most troubled of dogs by projecting that kind of leadership energy. From my own leadership experience, I've found that challenges to your authority tend to come on the days when you’re feeling less confident in yourself and rarely arise when you feel comfortable in your role as leader. Calm, assertive energy instils confidence in others, so everyone relaxes.

Leader or not, start paying attention to the kind of energy you’re projecting. Notice if your energy is fractious or stressed and see what kind of effect that has on those around you. Particularly notice what happens when you’re around your friends, work colleagues or family – whose energy do you most respond to and how would you describe it? If you’re aiming for promotion, remember that calm, assertive energy is a universal leadership style – looking frazzled may give others the signal that you’re very busy, but it won’t make them feel confident that you can cope. A cool, calm and collected energy is the one to cultivate. Let’s all play at being top dog this week!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 10 Sep 07)

In The Spotlight

At the first taping of the new Marc Wootton Project at the BBC on Friday, he introduced some inspired new comedy characters, including a gloriously ghastly American called Candy, who makes Jackie Stallone look positively normal. My favourite, though, was the marvellously insipid Peter, who’s so convinced he’s becoming a vampire that he keeps a video blog of his supposed transformation and attaches wheelies to his trainers to perfect his Dracula-like glide. Watching him attempt suicide by garlic was a moment of comedic genius.

That brings me neatly to the subject of this week’s I Am Fab – just getting the outfit right isn’t enough. Despite Peter’s purchase of the requisite cape and bowtie – and his conviction that his hair is receding into a widow’s peak – looking like a vampire doesn’t necessarily make him one. The outfit definitely helps, but if you don’t have the skills or the inner confidence, you’re not going to convince anyone else, however appropriately-dressed you might be.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for confidence is the fear of how we’re being perceived or judged by other people. The reason that public speaking is the number one phobia for most of us is that it taps directly into this fear of exposing ourselves and being humiliated by the harsh judgements of others. Yet that fear is based on the largely false assumption that people are paying attention to us and would actually remember our faux pas.

Research from Cornell University would beg to differ. A few years ago they did a trial where a student would enter a room wearing an ‘embarrassing’ T-shirt – featuring Barry Manilow, a face unlikely to improve your street cred – and was asked to estimate how many people had noticed the shirt. The self-conscious Manilow shirt-wearers assumed a figure of about half the room, but the actual number who’d paid attention to the sartorial shocker was under a quarter. In later experiments, the same researchers found that people’s fears lead them to exaggerate the number of people who had actually noticed them by up to six times. This wild exaggeration of external perception is known as the ‘Spotlight Effect’.

Tom Gilovitch, one of the Cornell psychologists who identified the Spotlight Effect, has found the same misperceptions in a number of situations, including group discussions, where people routinely overestimated the impact of their gaffes or clever comments. He notes, “The fact is that others do not notice us as much as we think they do.”

The benefit to us in terms of confidence is that the truth will set you free – if you know that hardly anyone’s watching, you don’t need to be so self-conscious. It’s liberating to know that you’re not being closely observed and that the perceptions others have of you are probably nowhere near as harsh as you’re assumed them to be. In fact, not only are most people not judging you, they’re probably not even paying attention at all.

Gilovitch put this to the test in another study with students who were asked to make a three-minute speech with five minutes to prepare. One group was given vague reassurance that it would all be OK and the other was given research findings noting that speakers “feel that their nervousness is transparent, but in reality their feelings are not so apparent to observers. If you become nervous, you’ll probably be the only one to know”. Unsurprisingly, the second group was significantly more lucid and less nervous, as rated by outside judges.

So now you know that hardly anyone is paying attention to your nervousness, self-consciousness or faux pas, what could you be doing that you’ve put off out of fear? Is there something you’ve always wished you could do, but were afraid of making a fool of yourself? Can you be a bit bolder in the way you express yourself? Where can you challenge yourself to speak up? What’s the wild idea lurking in your secret heart? This week, rest in the comfort of knowing that there’s absolutely no point in being nervous or inhibited about taking a stand or being yourself – the odds are no-one’s watching anyway.

Remember this rule from in Roger Rosenblatt’s Book of Ageing:

"Rule #2 - Nobody is thinking about you.

Yes, I know, you are certain that your friends are becoming your enemies; that your grocer, garbageman, clergyman, sister-in-law, and your dog are all of the opinion that you have put on weight, that you have lost your touch, that you have lost your mind; furthermore, you are convinced that everyone spends two-thirds of every day commenting on your disintegration, denigrating your work, plotting your assassination. I promise you: Nobody is thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves—just like you."

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk.All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 20 Aug 07)

Brand U


It’s always gratifying when your convictions are borne out by research. At Chez Fab the watchwords are authenticity, individuality and style, and it appears that qualities such as these are now being recognised as keys to success in the workplace.

At first, the study by University of California researchers might seem a little depressing, as it reveals that those deemed the most attractive make 12% more money than those regarded as less goodlooking. However, it’s not just down to looks. The main reason for this beauty premium is that attractive people are perceived to be more helpful and co-operative.

The conclusion from the research is that attractive people make more money because they find it easier to encourage co-operation among their co-workers. One theory arising from the research is that others are more co-operative with attractive people because they believe them to be more helpful.

Work strategist Catherine Kaputa, author of U R A Brand, suggests “Good looks have what social scientists call the halo effect. Because someone is attractive, we assign many other positive attributes to him or her that have nothing to do with looks”.

Among her top tips for success are:

- Package yourself: clothes will not help you perform, but will help how your performance is perceived.
- Emphasise features: be confident about your looks and build a strong image.
- Have a trademark: think Bono’s shades or Sir Robin Day’s bow ties. Stand out from the crowd.
- Focus on ‘soft power’: use your values, style and point of view to attract others to you.
- Hone your speech: the ability to sell yourself and your ideas is critical.

All this reinforces the age old PR truth that perception is everything. It’s not about whether you’re actually the best-looking person in the room, but it is about whether you’re the most striking individual in the room. Physical beauty counts, but so does style, presentation, intelligence and confidence.

This week, take an audit of how well you’re making the most of your assets. Are your clothes the same old, same old? Could you do with a bit of wardrobe revamp? Is your image strong or wishy-washy? Is there anything about your style that’s memorable? What would be your signature look? Focus on your values and viewpoints too – be bold and stand up for what you believe. And never underestimate the power of being genuinely helpful – attractive people are treated positively because we believe they possess the stellar quality of kindness. That alone is enough to make you fabulously attractive …

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 14 Aug 07)

Charm School

We all love a list, particularly when it comes to fashion and personal style, so it was fascination central to see the results of the Style Icons of the Past 50 Years magazine survey this week. To be included in such illustrious company, you’d expect virtual gods and goddesses of charisma and personal style, yet both the male and female lists were a curious mix of the truly great and the famous for being famous breed. Quel dommage!

In the women’s list, many were the timeless figures you’d imagine any list would be incomplete without – Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly of course – and yet others were unfathomably accorded a status far exceeding their influence. As it is, I can barely grasp the concept that some people might find Victoria Beckham a fashion victim par excellence. However, to find her not only present on a list of the major style icons of the past half a century, but ranked higher than Sophia Loren is as bizarre as it is ludicrous.

The men’s list is equally strange. First of all it’s topped by David Beckham, ahead of Cary Grant, Elvis Presley and David Bowie. Then it ranks Robbie Williams further up the list than Marlon Brando, John Travolta and Sean Connery. He may be a great singer, but he’s hardly made a contribution on the style front. It’s difficult to imagine what a Robbie Williams ‘look’ might be, apart from a shedload of Maori tattoos or the occasional indulgence in some Kiss-style make-up. Quite how the Robster cuts it in the style icon stakes is beyond me – surely the Saturday Night Fever white suit had a lot more cultural impact, however ghastly it may have been. Of course style is by definition such a personal, individual thing that none of us would – or should – ever agree wholeheartedly on that kind of list, but what the genuine icons seem to have that the others are sadly lacking is a veritable supernova of personal charm. Charismatic people seem to radiate their own internal light just that bit brighter than others. They have an effortless grace that is truly individual, making them unforgettable. The great icons are all remembered long after their heyday, not only because they could light up a room, but because the power of their personal style had a lingering impact.

In a sense, that has very little to do with fashion, because it’s not really about the clothes, but the attitude with which they wear them. Marilyn Monroe could have stopped traffic dressed in a burlap sack and Cary Grant managed to keep us all swooning even in a dress in I Was A Male War Bride – which does rather make David Beckham’s sarong look a little tame! There’s a very intriguing story about Marilyn Monroe that underscores this perfectly. One afternoon she was in New York, incognito, with an old friend, who was surprised by how easily she could pass unnoticed in public, even on the subway. Mischievously, Marilyn asked ‘Do you want to see her?’. She simply fluffed up her hair, took off her coat, became Marilyn Monroe and seconds later she was mobbed. Megawatt iconic style is a state of mind, not just the state of your wardrobe.

That kind of confidence, charm and grace does not come from being a stick – Marilyn was notoriously a voluptuous size 16 – nor from slavishly following the dictates of fashion. What’s sad about style these days is that it tends to be a sausage-machine of predictable generic looks and sizes, and only a very few individuals seem to emerge with any discernible distinctive personal cachet. Thank God for fashion aberrations like Nicole Kidman, who makes pale look interesting or Johnny Depp, whose quirky style clearly works for him, even if it’s not something that many others could successfully carry off.

Charisma is such a magical gift, made even more special by the fact that it comes in so many guises. Much of Bill Clinton’s fame came from his legendary charm, which was often attributed to his ability to focus his attention on you so powerfully that he could make you feel you were the only person in the room. A grande dame of the British theatre is equally well-known for having a way of making you feel as though you’re enormously attractive when in her presence. Another much-celebrated writer is famed for having the exquisite skill of making you feel as though you’re terribly intelligent when in her company. What they all have in common is that their charm comes from taking a genuine interest in others, not just themselves. Truly confident people are so relaxed with who they are that they have no need to be self-obsessed or self-conscious.

How do you apply that in your own life and amp up your charm to mega-watt status? The short answer would be to accept who you are, be totally comfortable with it and take an interest in other people. Back to where we began, my distaste for the style of Victoria Beckham is that she comes across as curiously devoid of character. Her media persona is rather like an x-ray – utterly lacking in life and passion, beyond the self-absorption of remaining in the spotlight. Self-obsession is a deeply uncharismatic trait, which is why thoughtfulness and kindness in others is such an attractive quality. Obsession with the self is a type of energetic black hole, offering nothing to others and often stealing energy and attention, whereas the radiance of charismatic charm adds a little sparkle to whomever it touches.

This week, let’s all go to charm school. Let’s just decide to take ourselves and life lightly, and be as charming and thoughtful as we can be. Decide what your charm super-power is and turn it up to the max. Do you naturally make people feel comfortable, welcome or attractive? Does your interest in them make them feel witty or smart? Does your way with a compliment uplift them and help them feel great about their own unique gifts? Whatever your particular charm skill is, spread a little charismatic fairy dust this week and notice in turn just how happy and confident that makes you feel. Take a leaf out of Marilyn’s book and let the world see just how fabulous you can be ...

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right.
For alertemails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk.
All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 25 Sep 06)

Spiritual Power

Power is such a dirty word. We don’t seem to have a positive cultural image of power, as most of our associations with it tend to centre around control or corruption, yet we are engaged in power plays every single day of our lives. A lot of the people I’ve spoken with this week are experiencing various forms of power struggles at work and in relationships and, of course, on a collective scale we are going through one hell of a power struggle in the Middle East. On an individual level – as uncomfortable as this may be – if you want to become captain of your ship and master of your own destiny, then you have to come to terms with your relationship to power and authority.

Women can struggle with this more than most. As so much of our communication style is based on creating relationships, issues of authority and power can be a real challenge. That’s not to say that power is the exclusive province of men, but they do have a bit of a historical headstart on this one and a cultural bias towards seeming naturally authoritative. As the leading commentator on male/female conversational styles, Deborah Tannen, notes in Talking From 9 to 5: Men and Women at Work, there is a minefield of difficulties inherent in differing communication styles and these impact hugely on perceptions of power. She says “Men whose oppositional strategies are interpreted literally may be seen to be hostile when they are not, and their efforts to ensure that they avoid appearing one-down may be taken as arrogance. When women use conversational strategies designed to avoid appearing boastful and to take the other person’s feelings into account, they may be seen as less confident and competent than they really are.”

Ay, there’s the rub. All that girlie niceness just doesn’t cut it in the power stakes. Yet, some thirty years of feminism – and a tedious foray into the embarrassment that was girl power – surely can’t mean we’re still meant to behave like male clones just to be heard in the world? Thank God – and Gloria Steinem – that those days are gone, but we do need to redefine power in a more spiritual and feminine way. And that power is one of self-assurance and attraction, rather than control and manipulation. Interestingly enough, the examples that I’m going to use of those who’ve demonstrated this power are both men, but what they have in common is a strong attunement to their creativity and the ‘feminine’ (but not exclusively female) ability to be receptive to spiritual inspiration.

A few years ago I was publicising one of the designer Paco Rabanne’s books, and ended up in his Paris atelier on the eve of one of the haute couture shows. It’s a no-brainer to work out that the atmosphere should have been so frantic and stressed-out that I’d have needed a tranquiliser just to enter the room, but he was totally calm and his studio was simply a happy little hive of activity, rather than the fashionista edition of Dante’s vision of hell. When he was being interviewed by journalists, he simply told his story – which was a rather controversial memoir of his past lives – with an effortless openness. He felt no need for defensiveness. If they accepted his story, great, if not, that was their choice. One by one, they were all charmed. Standing in his own truth and self-acceptance, he was a quiet, yet enormously powerful and charismatic figure.

That simple, unthreatened and unthreatening sense of power reminded me of seeing the singer Donovan in concert, way back in the seventies. Glam rock was in its heyday and shows were as loud, glitzy and tacky as they could possibly get. Understatement was a forgotten art. Against the tide of all this mega-performance mayhem, Donovan walked silently out onto an empty stage, sat cross-legged on a cushion and played acoustic guitar. Nothing else – just him. And the audience was spellbound. That, my friends, is real power in action.

What they both have in common and demonstrated in spades was total self-acceptance and a level of comfort with their own authority that most of us can barely dream of. They show us the power of attraction versus control, a definition of power that has a naturally feminine feel. Rather than needing to engage in a fight or struggle, any opposition simply melted away in the face of that level of conviction and personal authority.

So how do you use this in your own life, rather than on the stage or on the page? Perhaps the best piece of advice I could give you comes from the promotional poster for the film The Godfather Part III, where the tagline ran “Real power cannot be given. It must be taken.” Whoever wrote that one was a genius, because it’s an absolute truth. Not in the sense that you need to come over all Mafiosi, but that no-one can invest a power in you that you are not willing to accept for yourself. If you’re waiting for someone else to shore up your sense of authority then you are coming from a powerless position. Until you accept the power of your own wisdom and talents, then no-one else is going to do it for you.

If you’re coming from a place of power that needs to exert control over others, then that’s a brittle and ultimately weak position. Spiritual power comes from an awareness of self and compassion for others. People of real power and authority don’t need to control circumstances or other people, knowing that defencelessness is the ultimate safety. If you’re comfortable with who you are and are not concerned with how you’re perceived, you’re not vulnerable to attack, even if it occurs, as your self-worth isn’t based on outside approval.

The poster-boy for this kind of effortless effectiveness must be Ghandi. After all, he turned the tables on an empire and changed the course of history with total non-violence and most of the time he did it lying down. Now that’s what I call style!

This week, take a look at your own definition of power. Is it tied up with controlling people or circumstances? What would it take for you to let that go? What would it take for you to believe in yourself enough to be comfortable with just being you? If a power struggle arises, take a deep breath and stand firmly in your truth. Don’t let anyone bully you and don’t try to browbeat anyone else either. If you’re strong in your power, you can afford to be generous and do the gracious thing. Where in your life might you need to claim your own power and stand up for what you believe in? Think of some role models for a feminine or more spiritual form of power that you’ve come across in your own life. What are the qualities in those people that you most admire? How could you begin to embody those qualities in your daily life?

Spiritual power isn’t a game where one person wins and another loses. As the comedienne, Lily Tomlin, has so aptly pointed out, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat”. In the new paradigm of power, win-win is possible because we all get to be who we truly are, without compromising ourselves or diminishing the power of another. The power of a person on purpose and in tune with themselves is a glorious thing to behold and a huge gift to the planet. The world doesn’t need any more shrinking violets – it needs everything you have to offer. How about letting that fabulous, powerful self of yours out to play?

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right. For alert emails on new postings, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field.All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 7 Aug 06)

Confidence Trick

It may not always be immediately obvious, but the underlying message of the I Am Fabulous chronicles is that real confidence comes from being comfortable with who you are. Even if that means accepting having a hefty dose of writer’s block, as I need to do today. Taking my own advice, I’m faking it ‘til I make it, deciding to just get something on paper, whether I like it or not. I know I can put it off until tomorrow, but I’m wise to my own tricks and don’t want to start down the slippery slope of letting my mind get away with thinking that my inspiration has dried up. That couldn’t possibly be the case, because I know that when I’m willing to trust myself and my own creativity, there is an endless flow of inspiration.

And so it is with confidence – when we’re willing to shake off our own insecurities, the truth of who we are can make itself known. In developing self-confidence and self-worth, we’re not so much creating something new, but restoring an awareness of who we really are at heart. This is a process that requires letting go of the negative tales you’ve believed about yourself and being willing to learn to focus on your essential goodness. This is probably the most challenging part for most of us: being OK with thinking good things about ourselves. We’ve had a lifetime of instruction in how not to be big-headed, to show off or be selfish and absolutely no guidance on how to care for and nourish ourselves.

This is particularly true of women, but men don’t escape those self-denying messages. I just heard a caller on a radio talk show discussing his inability to say ‘no’ and what that may have stemmed from. Looking back into his childhood, he recalled a song he was taught at Sunday school, which went something like “Jesus, Others and You, put yourself last and that spells JOY’. No surprises there, then. Being loving to others is a wonderful credo to live by, but in a valiant effort to ‘do the right thing’ most of us have forgotten to be even slightly loving to ourselves. It’s so alien to us now that thinking well of ourselves seems completely out of character. A friend who runs spiritual retreats tells me that the most challenging prayer for most people is not one where we admit our faults, but one which goes “Show me the truth about myself, however beautiful that may be.”

So where do you start? First, by accepting exactly who you are right now and dropping the daily drip-feed of self-criticism. When you get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, look kindly. Think of something to be positive about – your character, your kindness, your sense of fun. See that, not the physical imperfections you tend look for when you see yourself in the mirror. Challenge yourself to find things you like about your body. Have fun: think mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?

Get a journal and get writing. Start a book of ‘I Like That About Me’ stories and fill it with all the times you’ve achieved something, felt confident or done something adventurous, inspired or kind. This is a fabulous resource you can go back to every time you need a confidence boost. If you’re about to go for a job interview and you need an uplift, use your ‘I Like That About Me’ book to help you tap into your memories of being self-assured and successful, and I guarantee you’ll be feeling like you could take on the world.

Buddy up. Find a friend who wants to work on her confidence too. Challenge each other to tell stories about yourselves in a positive light and share the things you love about each other. Have a bragging competition and see who can be the most over-the-top and still keep a straight face.
Whenever you have a spare moment, daydream in a positive way. See yourself achieving the things you want to achieve. Imagine yourself being loved and appreciated. It’s your daydream, so go for it. The more real it feels, the better.

Remember who loves you and why. Imagine being a friend or loved one who cares for you deeply and see yourself through their eyes. What is it they love about you? What have your friends and family told you that they appreciate about you? Are you a great listener, good company, thoughtful, wild, entertaining, stylish or even a bit mad? Learn to love what others already find lovable in you.

Be kind to yourself. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to do, just out of a sense of duty. Learn to say ‘no’ when you need to. All your positive thoughts about yourself will not make any real difference if the actions you are taking undermine your sense of self-worth. Having an over-developed sense of responsibility for others can be a way of dishonouring yourself. Make yourself and your own wellbeing a priority.

When you are willing to let go of a notion of ‘being good’ and are ready to accept that you already are good, then you can trust yourself to make the right choices for yourself and for others. This opens the door to your own intuitive guidance, which is an inner wellspring of creativity and confidence, ready and waiting for you whenever you want to tap into it. The proof is in the reading - if it can cure writer’s block, imagine what it can do for you …

Imagine a woman who authors her own life. A woman who trusts her inner sense of what is right for her. Who refuses to twist her life out of shape to meet the expectations of others …
Imagine a woman who has grown in knowledge and love of herself. A woman who has vowed faithfulness to her own life and capacities. Who remains loyal to herself. Regardless.
Imagine yourself as this woman.
- Patricia Lynn Reilly, Imagine A Woman In Love With Herself

The latest update to Coach Fabulous is now online. Click through to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com or use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right.
For alert emails on new postings, with added inspirations and confidence tips, send a blank email toIAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field.
All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 3 Apr 06)

Shoot The Messenger

Sometimes it takes a bit of anti-fab to remind you what fabulousness truly means. I was struck today by just how insidious one simple message could be. Of course we’re constantly bombarded by editorial and advertisements implying we’re less than acceptable without the benefit of some new gadget or beauty product, but most of it flies under the radar. What brought it into sharp focus was the sheer audacity of the latest advertisement for a magazine touting self-development and ‘a richer life’ for women, asking “Are you with the wrong man, or are you the wrong woman? Just think about it. “Are you the wrong woman?” Subtle it ain’t.

This is for a publication aimed at affluent, intelligent women. Did they think we wouldn’t notice? OK, it’s a universal truth that all advertising exploits fear or creates new needs, but this one’s really shameless. Absurdly shameless, considering that it’s for a self-help mag. So what has this got to do with fabulousness? Absolutely everything. Fabulousness is a state of mind. It’s the beauty of your true self aligned with genuine, inner-driven self-belief. What’s fabulous about you is what is individual and unique about you. You cannot possibly be the wrong woman.

This is not about one single advertisement; it’s that we’re drowning in a sea of media assaults on our self-confidence and self-worth that we probably don’t even notice. Every now and then we hear the siren call of some person, theory or product that we think could boost our self-esteem, but nothing will help if it’s based on the premise that there’s something wrong with you. Or even worse, that fundamentally you’re somehow wrong.

Self-confidence, like happiness, is an inside job. It’s an inner light that says you know your own worth. Like any flame, it needs fuel. That comes from paying attention to your own inner world, treating yourself kindly and seeing yourself as perfectly acceptable whether the outside world does or not. The relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have. If you’re willing to think of yourself as wrong, not enough, less than etc (strike out non-applicable) then don’t be surprised if others do too. It’s not rocket science. We get back what we put out.

Nowhere do we see this dynamic more powerfully than in intimate relationships. Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love, says the first thing you should do when you’re attracted to someone is pray, because every potential for neurosis you have is about to come out of the closet. She says “We never get crazy like we do around the people we’re really attracted to … our fearful places have to be revealed before they can be healed”. Asking a destructive question like “Are you the wrong woman?” only feeds the cycle of fear and fails to do the real work of bringing light to the places where we aren’t being accepting of ourselves.

Sustainable self-confidence comes from taking responsibility for your own emotional well-being. No man will do it for you, no promotion will give you that lasting feeling and sadly not even a Vuitton handbag can cut it in these stakes – this one’s entirely up to you. All that you are willing to think of yourself, for good or ill, will show up in your life and your relationships.

The Toltec shaman, Don Miguel Ruiz, writes in The Mastery of Love, “To master a relationship is all about you. The first step is to become aware, to know that everyone dreams his own dream. Once you know this, you can be responsible for your half of the relationship, which is you … Next, if you know what is love and what is fear, you become aware of the way you communicate your dream to others. The quality of your communication depends upon the choices you make in each moment, whether you tune your emotional body to love or to fear … Finally, if you are aware that no-one else can make you happy, and that happiness is the result of love coming out of you, this becomes the greatest mastery".

So the next time you’re lounging about, flipping through a glossy mag – which is one of life’s joys, particularly if accompanied by cake and champagne - see if you can spot the intentional error. If it’s not helping you to see yourself with love, it’s not helping. Do a Nancy Reagan and Just Say No to anything that peddles the myth of being ‘wrong’ and keep your fabulousness burning bright.


For alert emails on new postings, with added inspirations and confidence tips, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field.
All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 9 Jan 06)

The Year Of Living Passionately

This year, in the spirit of fabulousness, we are letting go of punishing New Year’s resolutions and choosing to dedicate ourselves to delight. Let 2006 be a year of joy, clarity and positive choices that reflect who you really are.

When New Year’s Eve rolls around, it brings a powerful opportunity to create focus and attention for the year to come - and to celebrate and release all that the past year has brought. Before you pop the champagne cork, take a few moments to look within and set the intention for your fabulous self to take centre stage next year.

This can be as simple or as splendid a process as you’re willing to create, so you can either go the minimalist route and just take some quiet time or go the whole hog and make it a complete celebration. For a fully fabulous effect, set the scene by taking the phone off the hook, lighting candles, playing mellow music and filling the air with your favourite scent. Get together some fun, frivolous music for the finale and have a pen and paper to hand. The final essential for a total blast is a glass of fizz to seal the ritual.

So get quiet, breathe deeply and start to pay attention to your memories of the year that’s now passing. First on the agenda is a sweeping overview from the highest perspective. What were the highlights? What were you doing and who were you with when you had your best times of 2005? When did you feel the most energised, expressive and totally you? What were the top three fabulous things you did, felt and created? Who were you close to and who were the great new people who came into your life? Really pay attention here. The joys of last year are the building blocks for the year to come. If you don’t take time to celebrate them, they’ll pass by without giving up their gifts. It’s like getting presents but not bothering to unwrap them. What was really fabulous for you in 2005 that you haven’t really acknowledged?

Now that you’ve felt the joys, it’s time to let go of a few things that no longer serve you and say a final farewell to the people and things that have left your life in the past year. What are you willing to leave behind you as you face the new year? Look carefully – what choices or attitudes held you back, affected your relationships or blocked your self-expression? Are there circumstances or relationships that it’s time to release? Is there someone you need to forgive or is it simply yourself that you need to give a break to? These insights don’t need to be painful, just purely true and purposeful. The aim is to see clearly, be accepting of yourself and others, and let go. Knowledge is power – if you are willing to see the root of your own self-sabotage, you can do something about it. Remember, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

At last, the really creative bit: what are you ready to accept for yourself in the new year? Get excited, get passionate and have no limits. Go for what you’re willing to create, not what you think you can have. Who do you want to be physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually? What would your life look like if you were really willing to be your fabulous self? Who would you spend your time with and what would you be doing? What is it that you would just love to be, do or feel? The key word here is love. There will be no list of resolutions, just choices for love and passion: things you love to do, people you love to see. What are they and who are they? Where are you going to devote your energy this year? Go wild and go for the most authentic future you can possibly envision.

Anything is possible as long as you are willing to choose it and genuinely commit to it. My friend Charlotte told me about a fabulous choice she made one year: to spend at least one weekend a month abroad. Not only that, but she actually did it. Now that’s inspirational!

We’re on the final stretch now. Look at all your fab choices for the year to come and pick your top three. You can have more if you like, but we are not in resolution territory here, so just pick the ones you know you really want and will really commit to making a reality. Breathe them in, see them happening, feel how it would feel to live them and say a total inner ‘yes’ to having them come true. You’re not hoping or wishing, you’re accepting them into your life as utter fact. See yourself making the small choices along the way that will bring these bigger choices to fruition. Know that it’s your willingness to believe in your own fabulousness and take action to support it that will make the coming year different to any other.

Now crack the bubbly, crank up the music and celebrate just how fabulous you are going to be in 2006! If you have any lingering doubts, heed the wisdom of Dawna Markova, author of I Will Not Die An Unlived Life, who says “I’m coming to understand that there is no such thing as finding one’s purpose. It’s about creating the conditions, for six months or six minutes, where your purpose can find you. It’s not about asking what is the meaning of life, but rather asking what your life means. It’s being willing to receive the truth of what you hear.” So listen, choose and commit. This is the path to true fabulousness.

For alert emails on new postings, with added inspirations and confidence tips, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field.

All material © 2005 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 27 Dec 05)

Self-Awareness & Self-Consciousness

While we may love the celebrations, very few of us get through the festive season totally unscathed, with our self-esteem fully intact. Sometimes it’s just the over-achieving Christmas bug to get it all done that gets to us or the pressure to come up with a fresh look for the endless round of parties. Other times it’s the strain of keeping a lid on simmering family tensions. Whatever crops up as your particular chink in the armour, there’s a simple remedy to bring an instant hit of fabulousness – knowing the difference between self-awareness and self-consciousness, the fab and anti-fab grooves of your own mind.

Your confidence and general fabulousness can move smoothly through all this and more if you’re willing to apply the self-awareness vs self-consciousness test to what you’re experiencing. The idea is to stay awake to the tone of your inner dialogue and notice how it is contributing to your experience. Watch for where it begins to masquerade as reality. Self-awareness will give you an honest appraisal of the situation, but self-consciousness will put you front and centre in the picture, usually in a negative way. Is your thinking self-aware or self-conscious, fab or anti-fab?

The anti-fab nature of self-consciousness will keep telling you that you’re not OK as you are, that you need to do more, be more or have more in order to get by, let alone succeed. That voice can lead you so far away from your true self that your life is ruled by expectations and goals that are not even your own. Nothing is as soul-destroying as keeping up appearances on a life you don’t even want. As the writer Kurt Vonnegut so aptly put it, “Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be”.

Self-awareness, by contrast, is a relaxed acceptance of the truth of who you are in essence and the truth of who you are in reality. You may not always live up to your own standards, but a fab and self-aware attitude will notice the disparity, accept where you are now and make adjustments accordingly. The anti-fab self-conscious mindset will spin into self-attack and punishment, finding every bit of evidence to prove just how dreadful, inadequate or hopeless you are. Do you really want to live with that load of rubbish in your head or are you ready for some serious fabulousness?

In short, don’t give airtime to any thought that isn’t demonstrably true and, above all, don’t make negative experiences mean something about you. For example, if someone blanks you, unless you know it was deliberate, let it go. Perhaps they just didn’t see you or have time for a chat. Unless you ask, you can’t possibly know what the truth is. If your relatives are snappy and Christmas dinner is as cheery as an episode of Six Feet Under, maybe that has nothing to do with you or anything you’ve done, maybe that’s just the way they’re feeling. If you don’t know, don’t assume.

With self-awareness you notice what’s going on, but don’t turn it into self-attack or give it meaning it doesn’t have. We make false assumptions all day, every day, that colour our view of the world – and ourselves – and seriously affect our personal interactions. If you’re willing to change your viewpoint, you will change your experience.

The one true blessing of getting older is getting more comfortable in your own skin, but you don’t have to wait for the wrinkles to arrive to get the wisdom. Beat the Christmas rush and start appreciating yourself now. When you’re looking in the mirror putting the finishing touches to your party outfit, practise finding things to like about yourself. If you’re under pressure to get things done, focus on what you’ve already achieved, not what’s left on the list. Whatever you put your attention on affects how you feel about yourself. You can make wise choices about where your attention goes.

Use self-awareness to see the truth and find the joy in your life, not to avoid pain or hide in denial. Self-awareness means seeing clearly, acknowledging the truth and moving forward. Self-consciousness takes the same scenario, poisons the truth and locks you into a self-defeating spiral of despair. Give yourself an early Christmas present and choose the gift of self-awareness.

Pema Chodron, the Buddhist author and teacher writes in The Places That Scare You, “This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armour our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have. Rather than appreciate where we are, we continually struggle and nurture our dissatisfaction. It’s like trying to get the flowers to grow by pouring cement on the garden.”

Self-awareness might be critical, but it doesn’t have to be serious. Play with it, see life as an experiment - your most valuable asset is a sense of humour about who you are. Remember to let the ‘I Am Fabulous’ mantra do its magic. Use it as the fast-track route to pulling the plug on the paving work, having a laugh at your own mental grooves and letting yourself blossom in gentle self-awareness.

For alert emails on new postings, with added inspirations and confidence tips, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field.

All material © 2005 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 19 Dec 05)