Trade Self-Fear for Self-Love and Dance in the Sunshine

“What you feel you lack on the inside will be sought from people 

and things outside your approval…”

Howard Falco, I AM

“… Until the day arrives when you realize you no longer need it.” Oh, for that day to arrive… again! Yes, again. That day arrived the day we were born. No baby is born self-conscious. No baby needs outside approval; help, yes, but approval, no. Children between the ages of one and 10 are rarely self-conscious. They may consider themselves to be the center of the universe, but they aren’t neurotic about it. That particular neurosis doesn’t develop until we hit puberty.

Once we reach our teen-age years, many of us become the center of the universe in a very needy way. If we didn’t receive the proper love and affirmation we needed as small children, then puberty can become our worst nightmare. Every self-conscious bone in our body pricks against our inner-emptiness sans mercy. We find fault with our faces (even before acne sets in), with our bellies, our knees, our legs, our feet, our fingers, our hair, et al. And all of that faultiness is magnified a dozen times over by the fact that the whole world is now looking at us in a way we never noticed before.

I remember being so self-conscious about my tooth-pick legs that I stopped wearing shorts. That fear stuck with me from high school until I was 33, when a friend helped me break through my neurosis. A group of us had gone to King’s Island up near Cincinnati for the weekend. On Friday night we were shopping after dinner, and my friend Brent needed a pair of shorts. As we were looking through men’s shorts he remarked that he had never seen me wear shorts. I told him I couldn’t wear them because of my skinny legs. He looked at me as if I was crazy, asked me my waist size, rifled through various shorts and then handed me a pair. “Here,” he said, “Go try these on.”

Part of me was anxious about my pubescent embarrassment concerning my legs, and part of me was anxious to put the shorts on, love them and be free of my fear. So I took the shorts, went to the dressing room, put them on, looked in the mirror and cringed for five minutes. Then I mustered up the nerve to wear them out into the store and to show Brent my toothpick legs. He looked at me with a relaxed and amazed expression. “Turn around,” he said. I did and then he continued “There’s nothing wrong with your legs. Those shorts look great on you!”

Brent’s encouragement helped me to see myself through new eyes and I released my fear long enough to buy the shorts. The next day, I felt great at the amusement park. No one was gawking at my legs. No one noticed me in any negative way. It was a warm June day and it felt good to be cool in my new shorts. It took me back to my early childhood when I wore anything and never thought twice about how I looked to anyone else. I had my own approval from within again and I didn’t need anyone else’s any more. It felt fantastic!

Regain the naturalness of your early youth. Drop your resistance by facing your fears about how you look to the rest of the world. Truth is that most people don’t care about how any of us look. We’re in their eyesight for a flash of a moment and then we’re gone—and we’re in their memory for just as long. As Howard Falco goes on to say “All human beings are as beautiful and as loved as they believe themselves to be.” When we tend to our own inner-emptiness and fill it up with the spirituality of self-love and acceptance, we don’t need anyone’s approval to be, love or accept ourselves just as we are.

Give yourself the freedom to live unencumbered by self-conscious fears. Put those shorts on and allow your hair to blow with the wind; dance across the sidewalk as you enjoy the sunshine and allow your soul to shine!