You ever hear the expression, “feeling comfortable in your own skin”?
Maybe it’s a maturity thing but I feel like more than ever I have a clearer understanding of what it means to feel comfortable in my own skin.
I realize now, more than ever before, that being comfortable in my own skin has little to do with my physical appearance and everything to do with my mental emotions and state of mind.
It’s about my own sense of self-worth, something I struggled with and didn’t have much of (if any) for years, more like decades.
Because when you’re told you’re too skinny, too dumb, too disruptive, too much of a punk, too impatience, too short-tempered, too much of everything that’s bad as I was told, it makes sense why my sense of self-worth was non-existent.
Worse yet, years later when I was no longer a skinny kid but instead a healthy, muscular guy with proud six-pack abs who graduated with honors from graduate school, was a successful business owner by the age of 24, and a regular socialite at the beach bars and volleyball courts of Southern California, my self-esteem was still non-existent.
Regardless of who I’d become and all I was doing, my internal measuring stick for my own self-worth was based on what others thought of me.
Sad, I know.
And while these were some of the most fun-filled years for me, they were also some of the emptiest.
I thought having fun meant I was happy.
I found out that wasn’t true.
I was having fun yes, happy no.
It wasn’t until I made the commitment to better myself mentally by beginning to read more and surround myself with people who supported, encouraged, and motivated me that I began to believe in myself and concern myself more with what I thought of myself than what others thought of me.
This shift changed my life.
I’m now able to have fun and be happy at the same time because my happiness and sense of self-worth is no longer dependent of what others think of me.
It’s now solely dependent on what I think of myself.. who I am and what I do.
Lots more in this episode of my Mornings With Mike podcast.
You’re awesome…
Cheers!
Mike
