Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

My dear darling friends, and you know who you are:

Please receive, accept, internalize and integrate the affirmations, admiration, adulation, and love offered in earnest by others.  Know and trust wholeheartedly in your complete and total worth, just by virtue of your existence, before anything you think, say, or do.  And when we express how wonderful you are for the latter, how you impact and contribute your awesomeness to the world and make all our lives better, take a deep breath, relax a little more into openness, and let it in.  Allow the full truth of your value as a member of humanity to seep in and saturate your being. 

I know it can be uncomfortable—what is that about, anyway?  Social conditioning?  Imposter syndrome?  Whatever the source of this resistance to being loved and lifted, I’m not sure we need to dissect it much.  We can simply practice navigating life and relationships around it, like a shapeshifting, creeping haze that seeks to thwart our full thriving.  Maybe we can even think of it as a game, a clever adversary to be parried with childlike agility and joy, like Peter Pan with Captain Hook.

You have told me you understand in your thinking mind that accepting others’ praise is the ‘right’ thing to do, that dismissing it hurts people’s feelings.  Thus your conflict and ambivalence create a niggling internal distress:  You sense the love, know it’s valid, and want to accept it—to complete that circuit of connection.  But something holds you back from opening fully to the reflection of your own light back onto you, your spirit, your soul.  You may feel guilty for how your denial, earnest and humble as it may be, makes others feel rejected.  Maybe that guilt turns back onto you, as if to say, “See?  You make others feel bad, so of course you’re not worthy of praise.”  How fascinating, this delusional, circular, self-fulfilling prophecy!  How can we break it? 

Alton Brown has described hospitality as what I take to be a reciprocal act of connection.  Receiving another’s offering is not just about making yourself or them feel good.  It’s about strengthening relationships.  Offering and accepting connection weaves and tightens our social fabric, moving the needles of words and actions back and forth, over and under, honoring our bonds in vibrant color and dense texture.  How wonderful.

What if we all owned our awesomeness and power to connect, uplift, and shine, from within ourselves onto, and in reflection of, one another?  What if we all sought first the light in ourselves and others, focused on meeting each other shining that light in front, then refracting in reciprocity out onto the world?  Wow, maybe that’s why we’re afraid—it’s a lot of light, like gazing into the sun.  But that’s what cool shades are for, no?

So, how can we do this?  What practices will make a difference?  My nascent ideas:

1. Breathe deeply and slowly.
2. Get still.
3. Recall self-love and self-compassion—its words, images, tactile and visceral sensations, and the people and environments with whom and in which we have felt them deeply and unassailably.
4. Connect—to those who matter most and uplift us genuinely, those who can sit with our confessions of discomfort and resistance to praise and patiently, lovingly hold the light for us to step into, one toe at a time.
5. Lift others: Act bravely and joyfully on impulses to acknowledge, validate, admire, praise, and otherwise amplify their light.  Any small word or act counts, even the awkward and stuttering ones.  People can sense our sincerity and appreciate it.  When you shine your light, then feel it fully accepted and radiated back by another in a smile, taller posture, or simply knowing you made their day better, what happens for you? 
   Soak that up; amplify that.

I know many of you know all this already.  I know many who practice and model the skills of receiving graciously, openly, humbly, and lovingly, leading us all by example.  But we all have moments of self-doubt, or even longer periods of self-disbelief, when we perceive our own light to have dimmed.  Perhaps this is precisely when we need to open ourselves to receive the light we have consistently shone on others reflected back on us.  Hmmm.

Thank you to the people who inspired this post—creators, carers, artists and just straight up wonderful humans I have the pleasure and privilege to connect with and know.  May you all know how much you are loved.  When you need reassurance and validation, may you be still and find it within yourselves, and may you reach out early and often to those of us who stand ready to recharge you.  Plug into that power grid of connection, participate in that alternating current, so we may all carry the spark of love and relationship that saves us. 

We each have a bright and unique light.  There is no ‘too much.’   Shine on, my friends.