I think my response to a client‘s email would be valuable for anyone. I don’t think many people make the progress he’s making and I think his doing it could inspire others. I know he inspires me.

He didn’t come to me for personal insecurities or shame. He came to improve his life in other ways. Only once he started making progress there he realized things that he was holding himself back with internal conflict he had avoided facing for years. External success and internal success often build on each other. They often require each other.

He wrote:

Thank you for all your help!!

I cannot express how much I appreciate your feedback and it’s motivating to have people much more experienced than I provide positive feedback to help me in my life. I want to correct a statement I said but I was too ashamed. [he described his issue] and it crushes me to even type this because its like my little secret fear that I don’t want the world to know so instead of saying it I just replay negative loops in my head.

He continued to describe some deep personal issues involving not knowing how others perceived him, being maligned years ago, and how that led to insecurity. Here is my response, edited to remove personal details.

Everybody has insecurities. Everyone.

The difference between people who are insecure or not is how we handle our insecurities. To me, genetic accidents of birth are pretty easy to handle. We didn’t ask for them or do anything to make them happen. We get the hand we’re dealt and do the best we can. No one will ever know how others perceive him, nor what motivates them to say what they say. We can control how we respond and feel. After you’ve been hurt enough times and don’t die, people en route to eliteness realize they control their resilience and respond to insults with “Thank you for sharing your opinion,” or something like that, and continue to yet more awesomeness.

He wrote back about something we all know but find hard to do — recognizing that sharing our vulnerabilities helps resolve them more than anything. As they say “sunshine is the best disinfectant.”

Thank you, I know my negative experiences in my past are just negative loops and it’s true that I can choose how I want to react to them. This is similar to what Tony Robbins says, and I have been reprogramming my thought patterns. I know I’m not fully confident yet but thanks to support as well as my diligence on getting better I know I’ll overcome this to the point of talking about it openly in front of many people. It’s already amazing how good I feel when I’ve opened up to you. It’s a weight feeling as though I have to hide something from people. Thanx again and feel free to post it on your blog.

I hope this helps others.

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