Even in your inner circle, few will speak the truth. Facades, walls, fortifications, illusions, masks. They are your daily armor, second nature to you now. It’s hard to feel that life was once real, long before this. You were real, so full of passion and dreams and belief. The Calling coursed through your blood with every breath, you were willing to work harder, fight harder, sacrifice more, claim and sustain your own belief, over and over again, until…you made it. Though, as you well know, there is no “making it” – no permanent summit to reach. You win an Oscar or a Grammy and you go back to work. You keep climbing.

Or you don’t. And you live in denial of your fear that you’ll never attain such heights again, and everything you do from here on out will disappoint.

No one is ever prepared for the true cost of a highly visible creative career, of fame. It’s so seldom acknowledged even among your peers. Why? Because to attain high visibility, to play at the top of your game, to get to do your art for audiences of millions… it’s a gift. It still humbles you. It’s still surreal. You get to do what you love. It’s a damn good life, right? Right. Without a doubt. You are blessed.

So why does it fucking hurt so much? When did you become a commodity? When did you lose ownership of your own life? When did You disappear?

You slid into the grey the louder the applause got.

 ~~~

Hearts that are tremendously blessed, and broken inside, feel that they have to hide their pain. Or drown it, party it away, numb out. Creatives who have experienced deep wounds because of the creative gifts they’ve been entrusted with in this lifetime, often feel too ashamed to admit that they are deeply hurting. And let’s face it, where can you openly admit it, anyway?

You are simply and utterly disallowed and denied the right to feel anything but happy by the public. How many times have you been absolutely devastated by lies in the press, or a nasty review/critique/tweet, or from a broken relationship or your own depression and have had to swallow your tears and smile? How many times have you told yourself: “You got what you dreamed of, you’re living a life most people can’t imagine, you have no right to complain“?

And the loneliness got worse.

Oh, but this isn’t about complaining, love. This is about finding a sacred space where you stop being a brand name, stop being numbers to negotiate over, stop being a public commodity, and be You.

This is where you are allowed to open your Self to your inner truth. The hard truths. The ones you experience, but cannot reveal, let alone discuss. Like how vulnerable you feel. Or how your heart cracks when your kids read the lies that “everyone” claims are true. Or how no matter how loudly you scream your truth, no one believes you and now, you see doubt in the eyes of those you thought trusted you. Or how perpetually alone you are, because your life is big, fame is burdensome and heavy, and the idea of how your life would impact someone you date convinces you that you don’t have the right to do that to someone. So you don’t.

The more you are seen by the public, the more invisible you are. In this amazing journey you’ve been pummeled, stripped, fucked, killed, threatened, abandoned, crushed, decimated, shattered, pierced, broken. Praised, glorified, thanked, admired, adored. All the while people have you living their dream life, disallowing yours to ever be less than glamorous. The people who make your career possible are the same people who have consumed you like piranhas. Your bones and your craft are all you have left.

Or so it seems.

You put on a smile, crack a joke, appear lighthearted, do all the right things, show up in the right places, be seen with the right people, play the game the way it’s rigged, and wonder how You disappeared.

The echo of emptiness in you gets louder.

It’s true though. You are invisible. Recognized everywhere; never truly seen. Inside your circle, everyone thinks you are doing better than you are. You think everyone else is doing better than they are. No one breaks the illusion. You drink to feel something real, get high to defy the powerlessness, plunge yourself into the only place you feel you still have some control: work.

It’s time to break the illusion. Not with the public, they don’t know the illusion exists. No. It’s time to break the illusion in your own heart.

~~~

Not breaking the illusion and isolation of fame is why we lose amazing people to suicide. It’s why we lose amazing people to addiction. It’s why people with brilliant gifts of creative expression stop taking risks, play it safe, and climb the same mountain again and again. It’s why you’ve already thought yeah, right, what the fuck do you know and why should I believe you? Why you’re searching for the catch, waiting for me to tell you how much this is going to cost you (it’s free), why you are sure I want something from you because everyone wants something from you (I don’t) …and yet your heart and soul… keep reading.

You know in your soul these words resonate.

You may have never had anyone willing and capable of seeing the real you, beyond your fame and the illusions. You know as well as I do how rare it is to find anyone who can see what lies beneath and who has no interest in what your brand name has to offer. (You can read why I created this site here.)

Listen. This is real. This is about you. There is no catch. There is no cost. There is only you reading the words I offer here.

Not being able to make yourself heard or being seen for who you really are may feel like just something you have to live with for the rest of your life. I know firsthand the liberating blessing that comes when you bring truths to your own surface. When you start to get your sense of Self back. When you remember Who You Are. And while you cannot change the weight that fame places on your life, you can change how you live your truths and how you carry that weight.

This is your sacred space. And who you are beneath the illusions is a beautiful soul who only ever wanted to make art.

It’s time to leave the grey behind.

It’s time you reclaim your Self.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver

Fame is an energy that wraps itself around you. It is inseparable from your life. When it first arrives, it shows you visions of belonging and ease. It caresses your ego, whispers “you’ve made it” over and over. The highest of heights await you.

Until.

The first threat. The first sense of being trapped. The first time you are misunderstood and find yourself powerless to make yourself heard. The first horrifying realization that you’ve past the point of no return. Suddenly, all you’ve worked for, the excellence of your talent, skill, dedication, effort…is cast into a dizzying array of doubt: Is this worth it? This isn’t what I wanted. 

Fame shifts everything. The power it markets itself with soon becomes a high-security prison. And no, I’m not being melodramatic here. And yes, I know that there are blessings of opportunity that come with fame. But those blessings are professional blessings. The wounds of fame are deeply personal.

They are, in fact, spiritual wounds that ripple out into your physical life. How does fame impact you spiritually?

Fame:

• Obliterates your ability to be truly known for who you are
• Silences your authentic, personal voice
• Disallows you from receiving empathy, since you are not allowed to struggle or have a less than “perfect” body/life
• Robs you of your ability to trust
• Isolates you

The paradox of fame is that the more visible you are to the world, the more invisible you become. The greater your circle of fans, the smaller your circle of trust. The louder you speak from your authentic voice, the less you are heard.

Fame generates its own version of you, molded by the illusions and perceptions of the public. It writes a story that casts you in the leading role, except that role is not who you really are. And this is your life and this story is supposed to be about you.

Spiritually, we all have a deep desire to be seen, known, and understood for who we really are. To be able to speak our authentic voice and be heard. To struggle, suffer, hurt, find empathy and support from others because they struggle, too. To trust people generally. To belong and partake and freely be part of the human family.

Fame takes you aside, and says: not you.

~~~

The deepest wounds of fame stem from not being able to make yourself understood while you are being gravely misunderstood. It hurts when people decide who you are and their perception does not reflect your spirit at all. It hurts when you attempt to express who you are and they refuse to accept it.

This disconnect between who people think you are and who you feel you are inside is excruciating to the spirit, as you know, love. You’ve been there, you are there. You know that spiritually you often feel as if you don’t exist.

You are so buried under the weight of fame that you don’t know how to be You or where to be You in your life. You feel so changed by all you have been through that you can hardly recognize who you were before all of this began.

The intrusive, threatening nature of fame (for it is ultimately a violent energy), erodes your natural sense of safety. Not only are you silenced and disallowed from being who you really are, your movements in this world are restricted and your freedom limited. Having to live life with security details, staff, paparazzi takes its toll on your spirit.

No doubt you’ve gone through phases where you try to be who they believe you are and rebel against it. Try to live within the world fame creates and try to retain some sense of normalcy. Keep up the facade, hide what you really feel, surrender mostly to the fact that you can’t change it, lash out in desperation or lash inwardly …usually, in the end, you find you are absolutely lost to yourself.

Being lost to yourself is the ultimate price of fame. It is the deepest wound of all. The entire purpose of this site is for you to reclaim your Self. And yes, it is possible to do that.

Before you can begin, though, there are additional wounds that need to be acknowledged. Because in order to heal and transform, you need to know what the wounds are and how you’ve been wounded.

Read The Spiritual Impact of Fame, Part 2

Before you can heal, you need to be able to understand what needs to be healed. As I’ve mentioned before, fame is a pervasive energy. Losing your sense of Self is the core wound of fame.What are some of the other ways it impacts you spiritually?

Constraints, lack of safety and trust, denial of your right to be who you are,  the way people assume they have a right to you and that if they know you, you owe them a favor, constant interaction with the energy of strangers — all of this impacts your energy and mood.

Resentment, anger, fear, anxiety, shame, feelings of powerlessness — these are normal human reactions to having personal freedom severely limited and to being under constant surveillance.

Being swept into fame suddenly, as most creatives are when their work takes off, brings up a ton of conflicting feelings and social contexts to navigate and those complexities continue. But the greater issue at play is the toll this takes on your spirit, on your sense of personal radiance as a being who is here to create impact and make a difference.

Your spirit feels the continual drain and weariness that fame exacts, and in the busyness of life, what our spirit needs gets ignored, neglected, or abandoned. We lose touch with what truly nurtures us, what makes us feel lit up inside with light, we feel weighed down and heavy and slave to effort.

In my healing conversations with combat veterans, I remind them that as much as war takes, it gives. That there are blessings to be found, and sometimes the biggest blessing of excruciating experiences is that being lost gives you the opportunity to be found. As much as fame takes, it gives, and I don’t want to lose sight of that. Because your personal power and influence in this lifetime are magnified by the fact that fame chose you to mentor.

That said, if fame was easy to deal with there would be no reason for this site. And we all know that fame is one of the loneliest and most oppressive experiences that no one will acknowledge.

You know what you’ve suffered, love. But you may not have been able to put it into words. The following are some key areas where fame takes a steep toll.

~~~

Broken friendships

Fame makes you powerful because of your marketability, but powerless because you don’t usually control the budgets or executive decision-making that governs your work. You are viewed as influential, sometimes appropriately, oftentimes not. Fame plucked you out of your circle of creative friends, most of whom were still struggling to “make it.” Overnight, you became their ticket to success, because they assumed on the basis of your friendship that you could pull the right strings to make them successful, too.

When you didn’t or couldn’t (because really, you often just don’t have the power to do that), you’re the bad guy, they get hurt, the friendship ends. While your mind knows the rationale behind why it happened, your heart still feels a sense of shame and regret for having been seen as selfish or arrogant or unkind when, in reality, you are none of those things.

So much is riding on belief and hope and keeping the dream alive, that when someone “makes it”, those in your close circle feel an ecstatic relief that success is possible. Unfortunately, that momentary relief usually turns to self-criticism, discouragement, and despair. Your friends are happy for you, and then they start to wonder “why you and not me?” and since you are successful, they want to skip over their true fears of inadequacy and make you their golden ticket to achieve their dreams.

They’re not bad people, love, they’re just tired people. Tired of keeping the dream alive, tired of being rejected, tired of not being able to pay the rent, tired of having to listen to mom and dad tell them to get a “real job”, tired of having to talk themselves into one more audition. They look at you and assume that you can rescue them. And they don’t believe that you can’t.

There is a deeper truth here to uncover, though, and that is this: you don’t owe anyone anything because you are successful. Even if you can empower someone else, it doesn’t mean you necessarily want to and it certainly doesn’t mean you have to. You did the work yourself, you chose to sustain your faith and belief in your Self, you struggled, you defied the naysayers, you went without, you invested in your Self because everything in you knew that this is why you are on this earth. 

You had people who believed in you along the way or maybe you didn’t — but in the end, it was because of your refusal to give up on your Self when all outward appearances indicated you should that you are where you are today. Your success is Yours. If there is anyone you owe anything to now, it’s to YOU. Those friends you lost who thought you were a selfish prick because you didn’t (and couldn’t) bring them all along on your journey, they fell prey to the illusions of fame. Be gentle toward them in your heart, and try not to see their anger at you as intentional.

~~~

The assumption that you belong to the public

Because people can identify you, and they form emotional bonds to you through your work, they believe they know you and have a right to you. Granted, our paparazzi culture fuels this belief because they make you fodder for people’s escapism and fantasies. This assumption that people have a right to you is intrusive and makes it nearly impossible to find the objectivity to see the boundary of where the public ends and You begin.

It forces You inward and into enclosures, away from prying eyes and cameras, but also away from life being everyday life. Where many people would take a walk through a park, go shop at the mall, or nestle into a cafe for a few hours of contemplative alone time… you’re not able to do things like this without being a spectacle and causing a commotion.

The public believes the scope of your life is unlimited and that fortune must afford you any luxury experience you want. They fail to realize that the scope of your life shrinks dramatically (far more than they could ever tolerate) and the luxury you often most crave is normal, pedestrian life. Living in a shrunken life with severely limited freedom of movement makes it very hard to keep a sense of perspective. Everything is magnified in significance and feeling when you’re in a small room with locked doors.

~~~

Empathy does not openly exist for you

This is a tough one, because it’s not just the public that fuels this phenomena, but it’s perpetrated within the industry as well. Because fame is so rare and so glorified by the public, it creates a mental barrier in people that goes along these lines: a famous person’s life is so blessed and so great and affords such luxury and opportunity that they have no right to ever complain or claim they suffer. Any celebrity that whines is just being an ungrateful bitch. Celebrities have no idea what real life is like, and no idea what it is to suffer. Life is always easy for them.

You’ve had thoughts like this yourself, haven’t you? I know you have. Because there is a thread of truth in the fact that you have been greatly blessed, and the disparity between your problems and that homeless person on the street is so great that you feel ashamed to call your problems “problems.” As if it’s a sign of ungratefulness.

Anyone who has what appears to be the life of most people’s dreams is never allowed to have “real” problems. Celebrities who suffer with addiction, run-ins with the law, mental illness, “scandals”, and other tabloid headlines are relegated to being entitled, whiny, elitist rich people to laugh at.

Don’t let this mindset invalidate what you’re experiencing. Every person’s pain is valid. You are a human being with a real heart, a real soul, real emotions, real fears, real dreams, real anxieties, real vulnerabilities. Your pain is not less significant because someone else’s pain appears worse. Your pain is your pain and it impacts your life.

What do you think happens to you when your heart really is broken, you really are struggling with the weight of fame, you’re worried about whether or not you did enough at work, you suffer from depression, your kids are missing you, you feel lonely — and you are denied the right to openly feel any of it?

That’s right: addiction, depression, suicidal thoughts, reckless partying, boundary-less relationships. Without the empathy of other human beings, and under the pressure to hide from prying eyes, you turn the pain in on yourself. Self-destructive behaviors are just that. They destroy the Self. Because the pain and emotions are not allowed to be safely expressed and held sacred by others.

The other thing that happens when pain is not allowed to be expressed is that it intensifies. When you keep it all inside, it grows stronger. Anytime you can express it, you diminish it’s power because you move the energy of it out of the confines of your mind.

~~~

Not having anyone you can trust

When everyone wants to use you for what you can do for them, finding real friends and intimate relationships built on trust and generosity feels impossible. You get burned enough times and your heart shuts down to protect itself (and your ego, too, since most likely your “mistakes” in trusting someone were flaunted in the public eye). That expectation that you belong to the public and that people have a right to you, means that everyone and her brother shows up to use your influence for their ego, career, or financial gain.

Even friends you thought you could trust sometimes fall into beliefs that basically go like this: she has so much, and it all comes easy to her; meanwhile, here I am still struggling, still nobody. She doesn’t deserve to have all that she has, no one deserves that much. She won’t miss it. She owes me. I have to look out for myself and I am going to use any advantage I can get.

Obviously, “friends” who fall prey to these kind of beliefs stop seeing the equality between you as human beings. Their own sense of self diminishes and they don’t take enough ownership of their own life. But when you think they are a real friend, and then you find out they used you, it cuts deep.

Not only is it disappointing to find this out about their character, but it hurts because it’s one less person you feel safe with. Your ability to trust shrinks. It can send you into a spiral of self-doubt where you blame yourself for being “naive” or used, or for failing to see the signs or realize your friend’s deception. This is why cynicism becomes your defense.

~~~

No one will tell you real shit

Most of the people around you depend on you for their welfare. Which means very few are willing to tell you real shit or give you honest perspective. Even your circle of trust may tend toward wanting to protect your friendship rather than risk being truthful. This makes it hard to get raw feedback that would help in your personal and professional development from people who have access to your life.

These are just some of the ways fame takes a toll. You know better than anyone else how it’s impacted your spirit.

So the question now is, how do you find your way back to You?

Reclaiming your Self is not only critical to your soul’s journey in this lifetime, but to your professional life as well.

But while the focus here is on the hidden wounds and pain that fame creates, the bigger picture is the entirety of your Self. And to become more of who you really are requires that you honor the gifts of fame as deeply as you acknowledge the wounds.

Fame is an energy phenomena. It is cast upon you by others. It is not a reflection of the quality of your skill or your talent, or your worth as a creative. It is an effect of being highly visible and widely recognizable. Often it comes because of a broad acceptance of your work. But not always. Lives have been hit with fame for acts that were unintentional or deeply regretted. So, it has very little to do with your actual ability, talent, or Self.

By and large, fame is regarded by the public as an incredible gift that graces only a handful of people on this planet. It’s akin to winning the lottery. So amazing that it most certainly blesses with a life of carefree ease, fortune, unlimited opportunities, happiness, the best of the best. Utopia. This perception of fame is the initial illusion.

You know the experience of fame isn’t at all like that. The weight of it is burdensome, intrusive, paralyzing, inescapable, imprisoning. It’s true effect is severely limiting. It takes more than it gives.

But, in order to become more whole we have to acknowledge what it does give. Because it has shaped who you are now.

Fame affords two primary gifts:

1. Fame forces you to turn inward. Now, depending on how you respond, it will either crush you or crack you open (or crush you until you crack open). It gives you a strong reason to find a way to become deeply grounded in your authentic self and live from your heart.
2. Fame gives you the opportunity to use your personal influence and power for greater good. Your platform is wide and while you may have no interest in being a leader, the gift of fame sets you up so that you have the ability to do so. I recognize that as a creative, making art is at the core of what you do, but you are a whole person with a variety of interests, callings, passions, things that matter to you in this world. Fame gives you the ability to influence large numbers of people toward their highest good, if you choose to lead them.

~~~

I would argue strongly that the opportunity to lead others by becoming a soul that is deeply grounded in its authentic Self is your true calling in this lifetime.

We are each called to be a liberating blessing in this world. And while there is nothing wrong with living a life focused on your small circle of trust, you are meant for more. You are capable, by the blessing of fame’s attention on you, to become a life-giving force in this world. The nature of creativity is to bring forth that which does not exist. The purpose of a star is to radiate light and warmth. You are both.

One of the reasons it’s so important for you to heal your wounds and reclaim your Self, is so that you can show up in your authentic power and have an impact on people’s souls. You have this ability, love. You weren’t born just to act or sing or write or direct or leave a legacy of your work. You were born to create hope and light and faith and courage in souls.

Your work is a vehicle for that. But YOU are the one who has to step into the vehicle and radiate that.

And to radiate that, you have to be lit from within by hope and light and faith and courage.

Who you are now is someone with an incredible opportunity to change your relationship with fame, to waken, to dig yourself out from all that has buried You, to heal the hidden wounds, to learn how to manage your own power and show up in ways you’ve never shown up before.

Life becomes far more meaningful when living it brings light back into other’s souls.

And you start with You.

~~~

How do you become a soul that is deeply grounded in its authentic Self?

The short answer is you learn to love your Self.

The long answer is that you make a commitment to your Self to do the continual work of paying attention, digging yourself out from other’s definitions of you, returning again and again to ask your Self: what brings you most alive? And then you go and do what makes you most alive.

Loving your Self is one of those phrases that gets lost on us because we don’t really know what it looks like in practice. Most of us are indoctrinated to believe that “self Love” is the same as “not loving others enough.” It’s a false doctrine, but we’re still fooled. Most of us are more afraid of being labeled selfish than of being called a liar or a fool.

Self love is never selfish. True self love (like any authentic love) is generative, it’s giving. It affirms and broadens and expands Life and generosity. When you love your Self as deeply as you would love someone precious to you, you come alive. You take your place as a liberating blessing to others.

Self love is not entitlement, though it will give you the guts to say out loud what you do and don’t want to experience. It’s not acting like an asshole, nor does it make others feel less than. It fills you up, brings you alive, aligns you with ways of being that empower you to be a source of strength and guidance to this world, and to those in your life.

Most of us abandon our Selves, lose touch with who we really are and what makes us come alive. We conform to the expectations of others, to the identities others create for us. We take on roles – spouse, partner, parent, provider – and forget that we have a Self that deserves as much attention. If we’re lucky enough to wake up to how we’ve abandoned our Selves, we get the chance to meet our Selves anew.

~~~

Self love really is about creating a relationship with your Self, as if your Self were a being entitled and in need of your attention, time, kindness, generosity, and care.

Becoming a soul grounded in your authentic Self means you need to intimately know your Self – not in a psychoanalytical way, but with the familiar intimacy and understanding that you’d have with those closest to you.

Sometimes this means you become your own family. Sometimes this means you take on the role of being the parent you never had. Sometimes this means you become your own lover. Whatever it means to you, it means you show up, willing to address the ways in which you’ve abandoned, neglected, abused, been cruel to, said horrible things to, shut down, silenced, scared, and doubted your Self.

It means when fear takes over or when everything in you rebels against changing your ways of being, that you step back and recognize that there is an inner child in you who is just terrified and needs your reassurance that as an adult you can take care of You. It means you keep returning over and over to your Self.

You build that relationship with You.

What does this look like in practical terms?

• You let what you want matter as much as what others want.
• You stop saying mean, belittling, abusive things to your Self.
• You start asking what makes You come alive, and you choose that.
• You say no when your gut tells you something is not for you.
• You respond to what moves you.

This whole process is a journey. You have to surrender to the process and trust that you will be led. You have to remember that grace exists for you, that you’re allowed to fuck up, that you are only ever meant to move at the pace of creation.

And what you are creating, love, is the gift of your presence in this lifetime.

Be brave, love. Give your life the gift of You.

How do you get your Self back?

Before we dive in, if you’re in an airplane right now, I want you to look up at the thin skin of metal that is keeping you from being obliterated into particles of the atmosphere. It’s thin, isn’t it?

What keeps all the pressure from the outside from collapsing this thin barrier? The integrity of the pressure inside the plane. That means what is inside the plane must be strong enough to push back against the outside pressure in order to maintain the plane’s shape.

The integrity of the inside must be capable of maintaining a positive pressure in order to not collapse in on itself. You are the plane. Fame is the atmosphere. Managing the pressure of fame comes down to maintaining your interior integrity – your sense of Self, your own energy, your innate wholeness, and your ability to be truly known, seen, and understood.

That’s the goal here. To restore and maintain your internal integrity so you can withstand the external forces. Healing wounds really comes down to changing the way you think, your perspective, your beliefs about your Self, your life, and your capacity to expand, grow, and become more of who you really are.

~~~

Let’s get clear on one thing. Once you’re famous, you can’t undo it. Obviously. You can’t control the fact that you are famous. (Well, you could hide out in Bali and wait until people forget about you.) But we’re going to assume here that you are still working, still want to work, and that your work will keep you in the center of fame’s spotlight.

So, nothing we do here is about changing the fact of fame. This is not about running away from it or escaping or hiding. It’s all about changing You in order to reclaim your Self and live a life that feels more spacious, authentic, and self-directed than you do right now. While you are famous. Under the same oppressive weight of fame.

Another definition of integrity is “wholeness.” As in, the sum of all parts. Healing is about accepting our wholeness again. We never stop being whole, we stop feeling whole. Being whole means holding within our sense of Self the light and dark aspects of ourselves. The pain and the joy. The beauty and the ugliness. The power and the vulnerability. Every aspect of who we are.

We are not trying to push out or stop being any aspect of who we are, but trying to find balance so that everything is allowed to exist, but not any one aspect is allowed to control us.

~~~

Where do you begin? Start by questioning everything.

The first goal is to dig you out of all the definitions that others have of you. To do that, you have to find out what it is you are thinking and believing about who you are. Because these voices from outside have influenced your perception of yourself, you are, no doubt, at least partially believing some things that are not true about you.

Open a blank document and write down two columns:

• Who they say I am
• Who I really am

Now, write down every response your mind comes up with when you answer them. Everything. From the roles in life you have, to the positive and negative things you call yourself.

Next, go through each response and question each one hard:

• Where did I get this belief?
• Is this true?
• How do I know this is true?
• What would it mean if it was not true about me?
• What is true about me? 

Write down what comes up. The answers will quickly open your eyes to what you are believing about yourself and where those original beliefs came from. (We do this same practice when we are looking for limiting beliefs around any subject.)

Take a bit of time to think through each one, but don’t start wallowing in the ones that trigger you and make you sink into self-rejection. The goal is to see what you are believing.

Next, realize that you have the power and authority to decide which of these things you will choose to believe and you can stop believing the things that are NOT true about you.

~~~

You see, the only reason any of these beliefs have any power to make you feel bad is because you believe they are true or you feel powerless to make others stop believing what isn’t true about you.

The turning point in reclaiming your Self comes when you take back your innate power to define your Self, and let your Self matter as much as you allow other people to matter.

To reclaim your Self, you have to give your Self authority. To do that, you need to go back in time to around the age when you were eight or so. Who were you then? Looking back, how would you describe who you were then? What were your truths about your Self back then? If eight doesn’t resonate for you, think back to the last time you really felt free to be you, that you were in charge of your life.

Look for those same truths in you now. How would you describe your truths now? If you were transported to a country where no one knew you by fame, how would you describe who you are to someone there?

What have you hidden in the dark that is craving the light’s warmth? What did you stop believing about your Self because everyone else denied it to be true or disallowed you from being that? All of these lost, broken, missing pieces of you are all still You. They are not gone, love. They are in you. They need you to gently notice them and make them matter again.

I know this brings up a lot of emotion.

And it’s okay if this exercise moves you to tears. Let yourself cry it out. Don’t be afraid of what comes up. This is the beginning of reclaiming your Self and feeling compassion for the tender, sweet, open, kind, trusting, courageous, bold, daring, tenacious, sensitive self that you are is where you begin.

… will always harm you.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been carrying the weight of fame, cruel words hurt. While you learn to ignore a lot of it, every now and then a barb catches you. And some of the worst ones are still in you.

You read a headline that completely distorts your words, your life, your relationships… and it changes your energy for the day. It doesn’t matter how much your brain knows that you shouldn’t let it bother you, it’s not your brain that hurts. It’s your heart. What hurts more than misrepresented facts, are blatant lies about your character.

Words are energy. Highly focused energy. And they impact you at an emotional, physical, and energetic level.

~~~

But why do they hate me so much?

One of the great enigmas of fame is that people love to hate you.

The energy of fame creates a division of “us vs them” — this energy keeps you from seeming like a real person to the public. People believe that you are immune to the hurtful things said about you. You will never be just another fellow human being to the public. And because you are not one of them, you are fair game for words that they’d never have the balls to say to someone they know.

Among the public and within the industry, people who do not know how to own their own lives and manage their own innate power, view anyone who has what they don’t have with envy, jealousy, and a belittling attitude.

The majority of people live from an energy of fear and scarcity beliefs. People tear down those they envy, because it’s easier to do that than to face the fact that they have not and may not achieve their own potential. That, and well, some people are just assholes.

But why do they hate? Why don’t they just leave you alone? And why does the hate sometimes seem obsessive?

~~~

Do you remember in grade school, how when someone was picked out by the cool kids as a victim to bully, pretty soon most of the kids hated on that kid? Even though no one really had a reason why, and most of the kids, if you talked to them individually, would say they didn’t really agree it was right to hate that kid.

It’s a mob mentality, and again, an energy phenomena. Predominant energy, that is continually fed, attracts more of the same energy. It’s hard to stop it once it starts. No amount of pleading, begging, defending oneself, or screaming one’s truth will overcome it.

Bullying is rooted in a lack of self-worth and a predator style of getting high off of power. It takes a potent, heart-felt jolt of compassion and eye-opening kindness to topple these people from their ways, but unfortunately, that rarely happens.

Everyone in the public eye has haters, yet some creatives end up being chosen as the kid to bully. And yes, it is bullying, en masse, by adults. Inexcusable. But it’s real, and if you are the kid being bullied, it is damaging. I don’t care if you’re 19 or 59, bullying can destroy you and your career unlike anything else. One of the reasons why is because those who are bullied have no way to stop their aggressors. That mob energy is fed anytime you react.

And what happens? You retreat further and further into yourself, cutting yourself off from your own voice, and end up being so isolated that you are, for all purposes, silenced. If you lash out, it fuels them. If you speak quietly, it fuels them. Your very existence fuels them. If you’re the target of bullying, read this.

~~

It’s true that it’s not the real You they are hating. It’s your persona — a you that does not exist at all and yet, it is who the public believes you are. You learn early on that this persona is created and owned by your fans and marketing, and if you even attempt to redefine who you are, you risk your career.

They buy into their illusion hook, line, and sinker and they will turn on you if you attempt to dissuade them from their fantasy. They don’t really care who you are, they just want you to be who they believe you are. Even though it hurts the same, there is some comfort in knowing that it’s your persona they hate on.

But, guess who carries the persona? You do.

If you are a Law of Attraction believer, you know it teaches that you are attracting this hateful energy to yourself and if you change your predominant energy, it will change. I disagree. You are not the one attracting and fueling this energy. The haters are doing that and promulgating it. You can’t control their energy. Their mindset. Their decision to bully and hate. The persona they have invented. Their existence. Their reactions. Their beliefs about you.

~~~

So what can you do?

Control your own energy. Your mindset. Your spiritual beliefs. Your sense of purpose in this world. Your reactions. But most of all, what you believe about your Self. And what you choose to believe about others.

Remind yourself that the choice to react is always yours. It’s hard to know where and when to draw the line between ignoring negativity and standing up for your dignity. Usually, starving negativity drains it of energy. Engaging with a hateful person will not make them less hateful, but it will fuel their ego when a “star” gives them attention.

There may be times when you can simply shock them and perhaps influence their spiritual life by responding from an energy of higher compassion. They won’t expect that. The old adage, kill them with kindness sometimes works. But only as long as you are standing in your own power and not getting baited into futile battles. And if you aren’t in a place where you can offer higher compassion, you need to be careful not to get baited.

Plan ahead when and how you will respond. Have a playbook and know ahead of time what your conscious response will be. What subject matter will you respond to? What will you avoid? Don’t leave this to how you feel each day. Be mindful about it. Make sure your social media team is clear on this, too.

Don’t fight fire with fire. I know, it hurts, and it sucks that for the most part, you have to just take it. But at the end of the day, knowing you stayed true to who you are as a caring individual and didn’t get baited is worth it.

Don’t let those who don’t “get you” distract you from those who do. We give negative energy more importance than positive when it comes to what people say about us. Negative words are threatening and can easily cast us into self-doubt. Usually because we don’t love our Self as much as we would a partner or child — even though we must learn to do so in order to protect our Selves.

The negative words get our focus, our mind latches on to them, we ruminate. The positive words are accepted with gratitude or dismissed if we do not truly believe the praise, but they don’t eat at us.

Often it isn’t the words that trigger you, but the attitude behind them. And even more so, the way it makes you feel misunderstood and incapable of making yourself understood. That’s where the real triggers are. Because a few cruel words take you right to that place where it all swirls inside.

I ended a marriage to someone whom I could not make myself understood. This was particularly frustrating after I separated, because I wanted so badly for him to understand my reasons for why things had ended. I finally had to accept that it was not going to happen.

That sense of not being able to make yourself understood is infuriating and makes you feel invisible. In the end, you’re left to pick up your sense of Self and realize that the Other doesn’t get to decide who you are.

Their version of you is their version, but it’s not Who You Are.

~~~

You get to a point where you choose where to focus your attention and energy. If you do the work of inner-reflection to own everything that is yours to own in the situation, you can get to a point where you can train your mind to not focus energy on the situation.

When I start to mentally argue the same old issues with my ex, I tell my brain, “thank you, but no thank you,” and remind myself that I am not going to give him any more of my energy. Then I focus on something else. It sounds elementary, but you can do it. When you starve a situation of energy, it eventually deflates and dies a quiet death.

We all know we can’t stop haters (well, you can block them on Twitter, lol) but overall, they are going to show up. Elizabeth Gilbert has a great analogy that we can tweak here. It’s about fear and how fear is part of creativity. She says fear always gets a seat in the car, but it never gets to drive. The same can be said for haters. They’re part of your life, but they don’t get to define who you are, or drive your reactions.

~~~

This makes sense, but… it still fucking hurts.

All said, we still come back to the fact that cruel words hurt. Damage has been done. It’s normal to ruminate. It’s normal to be affected by it. It’s normal for the energy of those hateful words (especially if the sentiment is widespread or comes from someone you assign authority to) to seep into your sense of Self and wreak havoc. What are you supposed to do with the pain?

Take their power away by giving it back to your Self.

Anytime someone is mean to you, or directs mean energy at you, it knocks you down a bit. But here’s the thing. Do you know how when you don’t give a shit about someone, nothing they say can bother you? You just don’t care because their opinion has no authority over you. They can say whatever they want and it won’t rile you, because you don’t care what they think. They don’t matter to you. You don’t hold them in esteem.

You can take this same indifference and apply it to your haters. No doubt, you already do. So, try doing it with those few that still really get to you. Change the dynamics of your relationship with them.

But more importantly, change the dynamics of your relationship with You.

Haters can hate all they want and it won’t influence you, unless you believe what they’re insinuating. That’s when it gets to you. When there is something in the sentiment that, on some level, you fear is true or believe is true, that’s when it festers. Same goes for when your relationship with the hater is one where you expect that person to like you or support you (when you have esteem for them).

The biggest critic and hater you will ever deal with is your inner critic. When the inner critic believes something the hater has said, it will chime in and start harassing you, and run intensely hurtful thoughts through your mind.

Managing haters often comes down to really looking at what negative beliefs and fears you hold about your Self, and deciding to change them. Sometimes the only way to set yourself free from haters, is to set yourself free from the hateful self-talk.

~~~

See yourself through softer eyes

You won’t ever forget the words that stung the most, love. They are part of your journey. But you can rethink what you believe about who said it, why it was said, and most importantly, who you were when it was said. Those words changed you. They either made you hide a part of your self or they propelled you to dare to become what you weren’t.

If they made you hide or retreat, don’t berate yourself now for how you responded then. We grow into our Selves and the important thing is that you are here now, with the insight to see how hurtful words shaped you. It is not too late to reclaim those parts of you that retreated. They remain in you, waiting for you to be gentle with them.

Self-compassion is something we rarely feel. We are, all of us, by upbringing, self-haters. But compassion is what You need most from You. Compassion, not pity. Anytime you are dealing with painful words, I want you to take a step back, and imagine the situation as if someone had said that to a partner you love or to your child.

Don’t go to anger and righteous indignation. No. Look at their innocence. Look at their soft vulnerability. Look at how strong and beautiful and capable they are. Feel in your heart how much you would want them to NOT believe the painful words about them. Because you know those words are not true about them. You see the bigger picture.

Now, gently take these feelings back to your Self. You deserve just as much kindness, compassion, and to NOT believe the painful things said about you.

Always keep this in mind: painful words can’t fuck you up unless you believe those words are true about you. You hold the power to choose if they are true about you.

You are beautiful and you are loved… not for your brand name, but because you are a precious soul upon this earth.

We’ve talked about the energy of words and how everyone in the public eye has haters, but some creatives seem subjugated to a phenomena of bullying. This is an incredibly painful experience to have in life and while it doesn’t apply to some, there are those who have been nearly destroyed by this.

If you’re one of them, I want you to know that this post is written specifically for your heart, with compassion and respect for how deep these wounds cut.

Bullying sucks the Self out of you. It denies you the right to publicly define who you are. It makes you feel powerless, vengeful, furious, helpless, and often, as if there is something inherently wrong with you, but you can’t figure out what it is.

It sets you up as all alone against the world and makes you face difficult inner choices: do you shrink, hide, and keep silent, or do you lash out, fight back, and go down fighting? It makes you face parts of your Self that you wouldn’t face any other way, including all those voices inside that tear you down.

Part of the illusion of fame is that it asserts that you don’t struggle with self-worth. Ha! Where did this come from?! High-performing creatives by nature are sensitive, open, and deeply feeling people. You got where you are in your career because of your ability to feel and express emotion.

Many creatives are also empaths, which means they are exceptionally in-tune to emotional energy and highly intuitive. You often sense and “just know” things, and pay close attention to how you are guided. Emotions are your lifeblood, and the currency of your creative profession. If the phenomena of bullying has silenced you from expressing your true Self, it’s damaging your spirit.

You most likely cannot stop the bullying; but you can stop the damage.

~~~

Here are some things your soul needs to hear:

You could not have prevented them from choosing you to bully, and

there is nothing intrinsic in you that makes them hate you.

I know you have wept more tears than anyone will ever know trying to understand what it is about you that is so bad that you deserve this. I know the question “Why do they hate me so much?” haunts you. The truth is you do NOT deserve this. You never did. No matter what you did that may or may not have instigated their negative attention.

For the most part, bullies choose people who are brave enough to be themselves. People who are different. Smart. Talented. It’s the sensitive, feeling hearts that get targeted for bullying. When you are highly successful and excel at your craft, you also get targeted for being…Different. Smart. Talented.

But sometimes, there is no reason other than the fact that you just happen to exist.

I don’t care if you did something first that seemed to cause them to target you. You still didn’t and don’t deserve it. You do believe that, right? You don’t deserve this. Sometimes you make one mistake, lash out because you see yourself being drowned, and from that moment on your mistake puts you dead center in their cross hairs.

Again, they don’t see you as a real human being. But you are one. Whatever you did does not give them the right or the cause to hate and bully you.

This is all about their energy, love, not yours.

Unfortunately, once the energy of bullying begins, it’s nearly impossible to stop it. Efforts to lash back, resist, set the record straight — only fuel them. They can’t and won’t hear you. Any move you make will feed them.

~~~

What can you do to heal from this?

There comes a point where you have to let go of the idea that you will ever change their opinion of you. It’s not a defeat, it’s a choice. To disengage from their energy; to reclaim your own. You can’t stop them from behaving as bullies and haters. You can stop allowing them to beat you up inside your own heart.

How? By letting go of the belief that there’s something wrong with you. By letting go of the belief that other people define who you are. By letting go of the need to have them understand who you are. Bullies will never know who you are, and furthermore, they don’t give a shit who you really are.

There comes a point where you have to change your opinion of yourself.

 

You can become grounded and centered in your Self. Your true Self. This is where the work of reclaiming your Self is so essential, because for you to heal the wounds of fame, you must have a Self to heal. And bullying strips you of that self even more so than fame does.

But the truth is that Self– that feels so gone and so invisible –it’s still there, love. It is.

Let’s take your attention off of them, and turn it back to your Self.

Let’s look at where you can reclaim your power.

~~~

Believe in your heart that who you are is not who they make you think you are.

I know your brain knows this. I know your therapists have said it. I know the clergy and spiritual leaders you’ve consulted have told you. I also know that when others believe things about us loudly and long enough, we fall under their spell. We start believing them, even unconsciously.

So until you truly believe that they are wrong about you — absolutely, completely wrong about you — you won’t get your power back.

I know you try to hide how much this has hurt you. I know you do your best to live your life. I know that you won’t let them defeat you. And I know that deep down, you’ve been more hurt by this than anyone will ever guess. But you are not a victim. And you don’t need pity, just compassion.

~~~

Break the spell of beliefs.

There are, no doubt, specific beliefs bullies have thrown at you and cast you under. Things you struggle deeply with, and try as you might to not be impacted, those beliefs still make your heart contract in pain.

They are highly personal, and often humiliating to admit. I’m going to talk about some of the beliefs you may have. Remember, these things are NOT true about you, even though they feel true.

You’re mean, cold, uncaring, a bitch, an asshole.

You’re selfish and ruthless.

Your best is never good enough.

You’re so fucked up no one real could love you.

You’re a bad person.

You’re stupid, fat, out of shape, too skinny, too young, too old, too this, too that.

Your talent is a joke. You’re a fraud.

You’re too sexy, you’re not sexy enough.

You are not a loving person.

If you weren’t so fucked up, your marriage/relationship would have survived.

You let people down.

You’re not a good parent.

You don’t know how to love.

You’ve hurt people who’ve loved you, so it’s better if you don’t let anyone really love you.

You’re lost and you’ll never be found.

If people knew the real you, they’d never want you.

All of these sound like self-talk, right? These are the kind of things your inner critic whispers. These beliefs are transmitted to us by others; we take them into our hearts as truths.

They hold their power as long as we keep believing them to be true.

~~~

Left unexamined, they will forever be true. But when you surface what it is that you are believing about your Self, they don’t seem so true in daylight. Write down everything that you believe about your self. Good and bad, but especially bad.

Now look at each phrase and ask yourself where did this belief come from? Is it true? How do you know it is true? What would it mean in your life if it was not true?

Taken down to their skeleton of words, beliefs are just strings of words that we call thoughts. Thoughts we keep thinking. We assign meaning to them based on the emotional trauma we experienced when someone first said them to us.

They ingrain themselves in us as truth because:

1) We never stop to realize that we don’t have to accept them as truths and,

2) We replay them over and over in our mind until the groove is so well worn that just the slightest nuance of the thought leads us right down a predictable emotional response.

This is why remembering what someone said to you 18 years ago can put you into a depressed mood within minutes now. It’s an automatic response.

But it only has that power over you because YOU actually believe it to be truth.

~~~

Beliefs are not solid or permanent. They have to be continually kept alive by reaffirming them and by never challenging their veracity. Once you lay them out in the open, your mind has the chance to look at the facts, to see them without the intense emotion, to open up space for the possibility that they are NOT TRUE.

You heal your heart by healing your beliefs.

You reclaim your power to own who you really are when you stop letting these nasty lies go unexamined and you make them stand up to your interrogation. It doesn’t take much time before you will realize that so much of what has been cast on you by others is simply not true, nor has it ever been true.

You set yourself free when you wake up to your power to stop believing strings of words that have never once defined who you really are.

And then you start to fill in the holes left by these missing beliefs, by choosing new beliefs that DO assert your truth.

I know it’s all easier said than done, but I also know, love, that it can be done.

Reclaim your Self from these cruel lies.

You are worth it.

They have an insatiable need to consume you.

To stop and stare. To trespass. To capture you. To devour every aspect of your life, vomit it up, eat it again. They can’t stop watching you. They can’t stop following.

They can’t stop fabricating and believing lies about what you said, who you’re with, how you reacted, what you believe, how your heart is cold or broken or happy. They love you. They hate you. They take you.

They gnaw at the edges of every space you enter. They linger around the corner. They are always there. Waiting. Snarling. Salivating.

You have nightmares of being chased, cornered, attacked. You live with a constant sense of unease, mask on, shield up, this never-ending battle between what you will reveal, how much you can conceal, what they will steal.

Sometimes you wonder if there’s anything left of you.

~~~

No where is ever truly safe, though you put your trust in security and hope that those guarding you and your loved ones are strong enough to withstand the pressure to betray you.

The threat to your safety and your wellbeing is perpetual and credible. Sick, infatuated minds fixate on you. Unstable personalities. Unpredictable behaviors. Stalkers. Weirdos. Creeps. Lurking. Always. Out there. You never know how close they are. That thought never fully leaves you. Especially when your kids are with you.

People have no idea what it feels like to be one sole individual, no different from any other, made of flesh and blood, faith and fear — and to live at the mercy of millions. Naked and vulnerable. To enter any public space and have life freeze, people gawk and whisper. To be stared at is unnerving for most.

To have everyone stop and stare and keep staring, to have them assume that you in some way belong to them, that they have a right to you — is beyond unnerving. It strips you of a natural barrier that anonymity provides human beings. And that shifts your energy field.

~~~

Managing fame is all about managing energy. Yours and the masses. It’s about deciphering which energy belongs to you, which doesn’t. It’s being aware and perceptive to how energy flows, responds, and how you can shift it.

It’s about understanding your energy field and how you can expand or contract it, depending on what you need. It’s understanding how intrusion into your energy field — on a physical, emotional, psychic, or spiritual level — impacts your inherent sense of safety, and how prolonged exposure to intrusive energy can wreak havoc on your energy field.

In my healing work with combat veterans, my warfighters have had prolonged exposure to life-threatening environments. The sustained drain on their energy systems leaves them with energy fields that are quite literally riddled with holes. Permeable energy fields cause an inability to regain a sense of safety. Most don’t have a language to discuss this, but when we talk about it, it makes perfect sense to them and to how they feel.

Prolonged exposure to intrusive, threatening energy can leave your energy field in tatters.

Unlike warfighters, you already know how to focus your energy to perform. You know how to manage the energy on set/stage to deliver. You are already perceptive to intrusive energy from dealing with it day in and day out.

But you may not be making the connection between feeling drained, depleted, dizzy, lethargic, tense, sore, achy, “off”, moody, unmotivated, worried, unable to sleep, mentally cloudy, blocked, insecure, shaken — and the influence on you of the energy of your fans, followers, and haters.

~~~

The intrusive, threatening, persistent lack of privacy tends to shrink your life so that unless you are 100% alone in an unbugged, shade-drawn room, you are never free from it. (Kind of ironic that you spend so much time in hotel rooms, huh?)

What it does to your energy is keep you in a chronic low-grade state of anxiety –  even if you feel calm – your nerves, muscles, and spirit are in a constant state of tension. You are never fully allowed to be you, and this is crippling to the spirit.

Never having true privacy is just part of the cost of fame though, right?

Yes. But what you may not realize is that fame is traumatic.

Most people don’t truly grasp that because fame is supposed to be a positive thing, right? We don’t associate trauma with positive things, but it most definitely can be. When fame first hits you, it’s shocking, exhilarating, terrifying, alluring.

As with any prolonged exposure, after time you adapt and to some degree it becomes your normal state of being. But just because you get used to it, doesn’t mean it stops doing its damage. The fact that fame is supposed to be positive also makes it that much harder to confess that it’s suffocating you.

You may secretly struggle facing crowds, have anxiety when you leave your secure space, find yourself wanting to isolate or imbibe more. And, no doubt, try to hide all of this from those around you. If you are living in a quiet state of chronic desperation, you are not alone. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Remember, it’s easy to fall prey to the illusions of fame that disallow you from struggling because everyone believes your life is too privileged for you to ever complain. Bullshit. Please don’t allow yourself to believe this.

How do you manage the intrusive energy of fame? How do you deal with the pressure of it? How do you not let fear make your choices for you? How do you deal with the way it has changed you?

~~~

Get clear on your calling. No matter where you are in your career, delve deep inside your soul and get clear on why your art is worth tolerating the intrusion and the security risks. You have to be grounded within yourself, certain of your calling and your purpose, in order to stand firm in facing this violent energy (and it is violent to the soul).

Let me tell you, it can’t be for the money and it can’t be because it’s what “they” expect of you. You have to be deeply rooted in your creative calling to justify these risks and costs to your soul. And that calling needs to be true and valid here and now. Not 20 years ago. Now. Dreams change. Creative callings change.

It’s important to know that at any point in your career you have the authority and the option to quit living your current story and change your life. You get to a point where quitting does not seem possible, the pressure so great, the expectations, the years of effort it took to get here, the sense that you’ve locked yourself in to something you can’t get out of, you can’t stop being your public persona, after all, fame will always identify your face.

But strip those thoughts away, all of them — and you are an individual with the right to choose how you will spend your time on this earth. You answer to no one but your Self. And yes, your soul and your life are worth forfeiting a career and fame and income if that’s what you need to do to reclaim your Self. So you can stop. It IS an option.

It would be a radical change, but don’t believe the lie that you are trapped. Contracts can be broken, income forfeited, marriages ended, lifestyles changed. You are the only one who can change your life.

~~~

Take care of your energy. The natural effect of intrusive energy is to confine, shrink, contract, make you smaller, cause you to hide. Your job entails that you step before the masses and be visible to millions. What you need to do, energetically, is visualize expanding your sense of Self so that you are vast and far-reaching. Imagine that your spirit reaches across continents, that you are not bound by time and space.

From this vast You, there is room within your sense of Self for millions of people AND for the real You AND room to spare for newness. By broadening the energetic borders of your Self, you give yourself more space and room to be. Try it. See how it feels.

Secondly, your tattered energy field can be smoothed and healed and repaired as a protective force field around you. Imagine that your energy field is a second skin that hovers about six inches away from your physical body.

Visualize calm healing energy gently pouring over your head and down toward your feet (think of it like a bucket of thick paint). As it moves toward your feet, it fills and repairs all the rips and tears and holes in your field, leaving your energy field whole, complete, and strong. Leaving you feeling calm and protected.

You can do this anytime you feel you are getting pulled off-center, or worn down.

You can also “zip-up” your energy field to close out the energy of others and protect your own. Imagine a zipper from your genitals extending to the crown of your head. Mentally or with your hand, “zip up” this force field to block others’ energy from entering your main energy centers (chakras). I am hypersensitive to others’ energy, to the point where even spending too much time in an antique or vintage retailer will overwhelm me. I zip up my energy and it prevents me from picking up the energy of the hundreds of people who owned the antiques.

Cut energetic cords. You have hundreds of thousands of people interacting with your energy whenever your work or presence connects to them. You also have a smaller group of fans fixated on you. All of their energy will congest yours and can make you feel dizzy, nauseous, “thick”, worn out, insecure, fearful, on edge, bothered by something you can’t pinpoint.

Be aware of the energetic influence on you and cut the cords from all the energy that is not yours. I take my hands and literally make chopping sweeps from head to toe about six inches from my body, and do this on all sides of me. You can do it mentally, the main point is to remember to do it.

Breaking these energy cords helps you reclaim your own energetic space. Be mindful of this especially during press tours, premieres, and anytime there’s spikes in publicity.

~~~

Ask yourself “whose feelings are these?” When you have the collective energy of millions impacting your energy, you will run into feeling emotions that aren’t yours. If you’re an actor, you also have the emotions of characters impacting you. Get into a habit of asking yourself “whose feelings are these?” when you’re upset, down, sad, angry, irritable, apathetic, discouraged, fearful.

Start separating out what you own from what you don’t.

A good portion of what you pick up emotionally is not going to belong to you. Recognizing that gives you back your power. Let go of what is not yours. Disown it. Refuse to carry what is not yours to carry. This can be incredibly liberating, especially when crowd sentiment is negative. You can do this with your characters, too, when they linger or when you’re disengaging from them.

~~~

Mindfully decide what fame is and isn’t allowed to take from you. I know you’ve tried fighting and resisting and have ended up battered and bruised and defeated. Fame is not an energy that you can overpower.

Do not try to fight fame. Instead, fight for your beliefs about who You are as someone entrusted with fame.

Fight for the small wins, the little ways that you decide you won’t let fame take control. Begin with your own mind. Where can you gain control by changing how you think about things? Start there.

~~~

Honor your wounds. This is something I teach my warfighters and it applies to you as well. It’s too easy to dismiss the reality of invisible wounds. It’s too easy to turn the true anger and pain and loss caused by the energy of fame into abusive, cruel, and incessant self-hatred, inferiority or rudeness to others.

It’s easier to berate yourself for resenting your fans, or fall into depression because you can’t reveal how vulnerable you feel, or be mean to people, than it is to squarely face the reality that fame has wounded you… and that you feel hurt.

There is no shame in feeling hurt and in being wounded. It is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you have been dead center in the midst of battle and you’re still in the fight. When you begin to accept the fact that you ARE wounded, and you avoid self-pitying narratives, you start to shift your energy back to a place of empowerment, and that opens you toward healing paths.