Changing Perspective from Shame to Selfworth
so as i stand on stage of
one of america’s most prestigious
colleges
for a world-class speaking platform
i’m thinking how did a little girl from
south auckland new zealand get here
and then it occurred to me that i’m
about to tell you
i’m about to tell you my greatest shame
i didn’t finish high school
trust me the irony is not lost on me
right now
i formed a solid belief system
and an identity around this and i just
felt not good enough and i didn’t know
why and my fear was
not that you would think i was stupid
it was that you would think i was not
good enough
and i grew up working class and
uneducated
and i wore this perceived inadequacy
like a cloak of shame and this
inadequacy it showed up
badly in every area of my life
and my income my body my career and in
my relationships
and honestly at 15 what chance did i
have
i was worthless and the world
was reflecting that back to me
i bounced around you know community
education for about three years
when i turned 18 i found photography
i fell in love and i found my path
i am a portrait photographer and i have
been so
for 30 years i spent the first
10 years just obsessively
mastering my craft and i found
my value in mastery and let me tell you
something about mastery because it
doesn’t matter
who you are or where you come from
or where you were born no one
can take mastery away from you
mastery gave me the confidence that i
did not get from
education and i worked my way up
to become an associate photographer all
of a sudden i’m 23 years old
and i’m photographing wealthy
successful high profile people lawyers
doctors
surgeons athletes nobody
seemed to care that i did not have an
education in fact they were
elevating me all of these smart
accomplished people were sitting for me
and they taught me something you see the
camera
is a remarkable tool you can talk to
someone for
any length of time in complete comfort
but the moment i bring my camera up to
my
face the moment it covers my
eyes i see you go to
vulnerability
sorry i just lost my slime so this time
i’m nearly 30 years old i have a really
cool job but i’m a minimum wage
and i dreamed of starting a business
i had no money i had no education
i had no value i will be a screaming
success
and at the time of starting my business
and unlocking my value i went to my mum
and i asked why didn’t you two ever
start a business
my mom looked at me and she said we did
we lost it this was news to me i did not
know this
and when i think about it they were 21
and 22 years old with three small
children they were children with
children
and then my mom said the one line
to me that would profoundly
change my life she said
dad couldn’t ask for money
and that broke my heart and i distinctly
remember
in that moment thinking
that is unacceptable to me
my parents are good people hard-working
people
they deserve more but it doesn’t work
like
that does it i soon learned
when i started my own business that i
was exactly the same
i could not sell my own work
i could not ask for or receive
money in equal value and i absolutely
could not honour myself
now i understand value for my craft i
was already working on that but this is
beyond
that it seemed to come
from me it gave me physical
and emotional pain to put myself
out there and put my work out there and
again
it showed up in every part of my life
why do we constantly ignore the fact
that we carry all of our emotional pain
on our bodies it’s pretty obvious the
ego
tells big grandiose lies
but the body does not lie it’s always
reflecting your pain
we carry so much shame over debt
so many wounds from our childhood we
carry so much
pain and shame in our bodies
but debt and unwanted weight and
battling your own self-hate are just
classic
symptoms of avoidance and you see
the shame isn’t our enemy
it is the guiding light to your
self-worth your
pain simply comes from resistance
and non-acceptance of yourself
sales is a value metric in business
and money is a value metric to self
that’s why you cannot create abundance
without
self-worth because you have to be able
to receive it
money follows value success follows
self-worth
and this was my turning point
abundance is not a metric for good and
bad
bad people make money but
rather it’s a metric for worthy
and worthless and when you’re trapped in
a debt
cycle you feel powerless
and it just feels unfair
and then you find out this abundance
that is available
is not decided by birthright
or social assessment in fact
nobody decides you’re worthy the
only person that can decide to be worthy
of
anything is you
and when you live month to month
you don’t dream and you don’t make
big plans you just try to survive
and there is no expansion
when you dwell in a place of survival
make
no mistake this is self-value
work and it’s hard this is mirror work
and this is about you
and the worst and the best part of it is
you are the poison and you are the
antidote
and when you come to full acceptance
of your now and take
responsibility for what you have and
take back ownership of all
areas of your life until you
disable your old story and learn
a new way to perceive and
present yourself to the world it will
continue
to disempower you so how do you
rewrite this story
come back to the moment right when you
feel
fear before you take action
number one question everything
fear says and if you can stay
in conscious awareness and just
observe your own thoughts in this moment
you will see yourself searching
for the old story and whatever you do
in this moment do not numb
it do not numb this pain
don’t eat it don’t drink it don’t shop
it
we’ve become a numbing culture
just feel it and observe it
and when we disable our avoidance
we not only feel in control we start
evolving and this is where you create
a new story just come back to observing
the pain there is a lesson here
for you you will become as successful
as the amount of pain you are willing to
endure
and the faster you accept the pain
the faster you move through it it’s
very important that you learn to stay
here
because if you go back to the past right
now
you will bring in resentment and then
you will empower their resentment
right now if you go into the future
right now with
worry and imagination you will bring
fear in and you will empower it in your
now
and instead what i want you to do
is comfort yourself stay present
feel the feeling watch your reaction
this is where you learn self-care
the longer you stay in any focus
the faster you attract in that
energy good or bad watch your
own pattern you created it
observe yourself until you realize
that you have complete control over how
you’re responding to it
i want you to try to master the focus
of self-acceptance self-awareness
and pure self-love because
this is where you challenge the old
identity
and i promise you there is
more power in emotional mastery
than in any skill you can learn
you know i thought the world was against
me for a really long time
until i realized i had nothing of value
to bring this world make your
daily practice self-awareness
self-acceptance self value and
self care every day in everything you do
and watch it transform your life
i’ve learned that you can be born
into poverty but not be poor
in here don’t carry poor me
around with you it’s about being able to
walk into a room so filled with value
to give you can do so in equal exchange
i learned the tremendous game-changing
transformation
that is open to each of us
is understanding and rewriting
our greatest shame our weakness
our failure of character the parts we
most
hate about ourselves and bring them
into the light i found no
physical barrier to success that was not
created by me
and i truly believed there was
i suffered deep shame from being
uneducated and ironically i built an
education company i empowered
my greatest shame and it became
my superpower you know this is not about
amassing millions although i’m okay with
that
it’s about going beyond survival
okay it’s about
getting past just enough to get by
it’s about abundance in all areas of
your life
deeper relationships and more
importantly
it’s the life i wanted to live i
deserved more
so i created more i built an incredible
business
and i found my confidence in the service
of my gifts
and i learned how to attract
manage and keep money breaking my own
debt cycle
i decided what i really wanted
and i declared it with certainty and
conviction
and then i focused on it every
single day and i did that
with obsessive focus and a heart
full of service to give and grow
and as i built more value in myself
and in my business i thrived
and it showed up in every area
of my life and every time i went back to
fear
and avoidance i remembered my
declaration
and i honored myself because the
antonym of shame is
honor and here’s the thing
you will never attract
more than what you believe you’re worth
so i challenge you find your value
and i promise you it is never
too late to rewrite your story