The Road to Success is a Growth-Centered Mindset

“To thrive, to express ourselves…we have to know ourselves.” - Ethan Hawke

From the newsletter dated Friday, January 31, 2025 (sign up here for weekly updates sent straight to your email!)

I learned two new things this week!

The first one is the story of when the Dalai Lama first visited the United States. He sat down with several philosophers and teachers and leaders to have a discussion and answer questions. One of the main questions that was asked of him was how to overcome or deal with self-hatred. The Dalai Lama was confused by this and spent several minutes asking the translator what had been asked. The translator confirmed the question and the rest of the room nodded enthusiastically. The Dalai Lama was still stunned, thinking there was something he wasn’t understanding. How could a group of this many people all be curious to know and understand how to “deal with” hatred of the self? And finally all he said was that he couldn’t believe it was a question and something everyone there had dealt with and experienced. Because it is to ourselves that we should have the most compassion and understanding and grace and love, or else how can we present those values to others?

So, I learned that self-hatred is a very western concept, rooted in capitalism and a patriarchal society. Yay. But I also learned that this was something people who would be considered in the sphere of “wise ones” in our society are also dealing with and have dealt with for decades.

You are not alone in this feeling. I am not alone in this feeling. Now, how to overcome the feeling is going to need a deeper dive and way more time than we have right here, right now.

The second thing I learned was the concept called “the fear of being perceived.” It’s the idea that you struggle to do something or find paralysis in attempting to do something when there is a chance that other people will see and notice you doing that thing. For example, not being able to do your laundry when your roommate is also home. It’s something that’s apparently rooted in shame and guilt, the feeling of somebody is going to notice that you’re doing something wrong and you will be punished in some way for it.

Maybe this is an old concept that I’m just now coming around to, but it put words to a feeling that I have had for as long as I could remember. And if it helped me be able to categorize and label a feeling, maybe it’ll help you, too.