I held the third online seminar just about 2 months ago. Ms. Angela Hollinger, CEO of CeCan Business Development, also chairman of Mokuyo-Kai was kind enough to talk about her own experience regarding her finding "true-self" as a guest speaker.
Have you ever thought about what kind of person you really are? I've mentioned this in the newspaper "Fraser" as well, the local Japanese newspaper. What type of person do you think you are? How would you answer this question? Most people are very humble. People typically do not speak all their great qualities. They would tell me a little about their amazing talents and they would move on their flaws. Or that they would tell me they're just "normal" or "average" or "regular" person, just as other people are. Why do you think this is? Do you really think you are no one special? I can speak for Japanese culture that this can be true to some extent. It is considered virtue to praise others, or see their great qualities while you don't show off your greatness and stay humble.
It is obviously no need to brag or show off about how great and amazing you are to every single person you meet in your life. Because you don't need to prove your greatness to anyone. But at the same time, I feel that you never need to deny your amazing you or make your value seem smaller than others. Not at all.
"Oh no, I'm not all that good, I'm nothing compare to you."
"I just got lucky this time, that's all."
Have you ever made comments similar to these about yourself? It is so nice when people accept how wonderful you are. But often we can't accept praise without putting ourselves down. What's more important is for you to accept how wonderful you are and this is not only important, but necessary. At the same time, if you realize every single person is as wonderful and special as you are, you won't feel the need to be overly humble.
Angela talked about how she established her "true-self" through various experiences she's had in her entire life. "You can only control yourself", she said to us. With that, she's always focused on what she can do, how she wants to interact with others, as well as self-praising and self-accepting. Beautiful and amazing way to put yourself first.
"Keep yourself on the cold stone for 3 years until it gets warmed up", a way to tell us to have perseverance and "Never involve people in your problems". These are often considered virtue but at the same time, it keeps us trapped. You shouldn't have to keep pushing yourself and put up with whatever is stressing you out forever and ever. You also should allow yourself to ask people for help. You don't have to go through it alone. She's stressed the importance of always doing something new to challenge yourself and living your life to the fullest by loving and praising yourself. Her amazing and powerful talk gave us so much to think about. Some cried and all of us had a lot of good laugh. We ended our two-hour seminar with full of smiles. It was beautiful.
I want you to think about "what type of person you are" one more time. Write down all the words that came up in your head. If there are many "negative" words or flaws, you could possibly keep telling these words to yourself. This is like a bully is living inside your head and constantly reminding you how flawed you are. And this also would make it very hard for you to be your true self and use all your great abilities and talents to the fullest. Because every time you do something, you compare yourself to other and your bully in your head will keep putting you down.
What Angela said about controlling yourself has a very deep meaning. This also includes controlling your thoughts and emotions. Try rewriting your negative words to positive ones. It is hard at first as you are not familiar with this so you need lots of practice. But slowly and little by little, change those negative words to caring, loving and kind words. When you start accepting all that you are and who you truly are, the bully in your head will start coming out less and less. Eventually it will disappear. Praise yourself and love yourself. Be your biggest supporter. Be loving and caring to yourself as much as you are to others. Because that's who we truly are. Made of love, kindness, joy and happiness. We're here to love ourselves and love others. To live in harmony. To build a greater world together.