How to feel better inside
I wish that I would have discovered self-help / personal development books in my early twenties. If I could go back in time and change one thing about my life, I would nudge my 20-something self to set down her college-bred snobbery that she had picked up to cover over her insecurity at questioning her religious upbringing, and I would hand her a self-help book. Snobbery is for people who want better for themselves in comparison to others; in my twenties, I just wanted to belong.
I didn’t know how to belong to myself.
When I look back over the years, and recall moments in which I encountered self-help books, I see one in particular calling to me from the aisles of two different bookstores in Seattle. Loving What Is by Byron Katie. I must have picked up that book at least five different occasions. Something about the title and the lively, peaceful presence of the woman on the cover, pulled me in. I would see the book, and like a magnet, it would end up in my hands, and I would flip through it, wanting to understand why I felt like I needed to read it. But each little passage about The Work, as she calls it, only confused me. And wanting to see myself as a serious scholar, one with proper detachment, I allowed the confusion to give me permission to put the book back onto the shelf and walk away.
I did not know how to recognize that this magnetism was my soul calling to me, my pleasure bidding me to awaken and grab hold.
It took twenty more years for the call to become deafening, and for it to feel like bleating in my heart which started hurting in my chest. I knew then that something in my life was very wrong. “Is this all there is?” I wondered. Soon I found myself in the aisle of the public library, starting at self-help book titles, no longer the would-be snob, the serious scholar, or the detached one. I just wanted to feel better inside.
If this is you too, if you’re someone who has realized that you just want to feel better inside too, then welcome. We belong together. Thank you for finding me, and for joining me on this journey.
