The 3Ps of Shame can be found in People-pleasing, Perfectionism and Procrastination.

People-pleasing – refers to seeking approval from others and pleasing others in their needs and wants and often at the sacrifice of our own.

Perfectionism – the need to be perfect in the way we are, do or have and the refusal to accept flaws, imperfection or mistakes.

Procrastination – refers to the continual delay and postponing of things so that we keep ourselves from doing what matters.Many of us show up with one or more of the 3Ps. What drives people-pleasing, perfectionism or procrastination could be the belief of “not good enough”. We create shame stories about ourselves. Our stories are about our failures, inadequacies, faults, mistakes and imperfections and we try to cover them up with people-pleasing, perfectionism or procrastination. 

Refer to the infographic below on how we could be shaming ourselves on the inside…

No one like to openly talk about their shame. Nor may we be entirely aware of them unless we are willing to sit quietly with ourselves and be brutally honest. Shame is often shrouded in secrecy. It requires us to be vulnerable when we share from a heart-space and no one likes the idea of being perceived as weak. Yet, if we are to leave shame unaddressed, we are only passing it on to the people around us and our children too. We manifest it through shaming not just ourselves, but others too. 

Thankfully these can be addressed.

How You can Let Go of Shame

With mindfulness, we become aware whenever…

• [People-pleasing] we put our needs second or last and we get into our burnout.
• [Perfectionism] we become self-critical when things do not live up to expectations.
• [Procrastination] we are in resistance to doing what truly matters.
  

Inner work with letting go of the 3Ps of shame can help a lot! Sharing it with a trusted friend or working with a practitioner helps too. It’s when we give ourselves the permission to be vulnerable and to reveal how we have been shaming ourselves. The opportunity to  process our feelings and the roots of shame arise. 

Brene Brown, researcher on shame and best-selling author, shares that shame is “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

Shame is to be distinguished from guilt. Shame is “I am a mistake” rather than “I made a mistake.” To let go of shame, we need to be vulnerable and own our stories.

When we feel shame, our energy is in contraction. Shame has the lowest vibration, according to the Map of Consciousness by David Hawkins. Compared to Enlightenment of 700+, shame is only vibrating 20. Releasing shame helps us to shift into a more expansive energy and the only way is up, since shame is already at the lowest. 

If Your 3Ps of Shame Are Deep Rooted

If we are experiencing deep shame, it is imperative that we let it go using a somatic approach like EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). Shame is often embodied in the body. It can manifest in conditions such as eating disorders, mental illness and so on. It’s why a body-based approach for healing is most helpful.

Shame often arises from something that we’ve learned in the past especially in childhood. Releasing deep shame will involve courageously facing up to our fears of “not good enough”. We may need to reconnect with our wounded inner child in order to help her release shame. 

Letting go of the 3Ps of Shame leads to Greater Self-worth!  Alchemy happens when we make the shift from shame into our authentic selves. We are no longer held back by the need for people-pleasing, perfectionism and procrastination. Instead, we show up courageously, ever-present and embodying enoughness.

Love and Abundance Always, 
Evelyn Lim
Abundance Coach
Self-Love Healing Specialist 
Apply for a Discovery Call to find out more about working together. 

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“We will never make a journey of a thousand miles by fretting about how long it will take or how hard it will be. We make the journey by taking each day step by step and then repeating it again and again until we reach our destination.” -Joseph B. Wirthlin

Life passes one day at a time. The sun rises by the hour. An hour passes by the minute. Minutes fly by in seconds. Walls are built by the brick and distances are travelled by the mile and miles by the step.

Life, in fact, is all about taking next steps.

Progress and improvement, goals, repentance and our very discipleship are about the nature and direction of those steps. We talk about the covenant path. Christ reminds us that He is the Way. He invites us to come, follow Him. We enter in at the gate and travel the straight and narrow on our metaphorical Road to Damascus.

All such phrases imply steps, incremental progress, a gradual process of growth and improvement. Where you or I find ourselves along the covenant path matters much less than whether we are striving to take the next step from wherever we happen to be at the moment.

The Widow’s Mite

In the lesson of the widow’s mite, Jesus taught that the poor widow offering her two mites (worth only a few cents) put more into the treasury than the much larger donations from the rich who added only from their surplus wealth.

In other words, the absolute amount seems to matter less than the degree. What the poor widow gave was more than the rich by comparison to what each had to give.

Similarly, your stride along the covenant path may be the equivalent to the widow’s mite in length, but may likewise be a treasury of gold to the Lord who looks on the heart and knows the reality of our lives, the limits of our abilities and the histories and circumstances no one else but He and you know about.

So if you find yourself on a spiritual plateau, flat-lined, empty and stuck, my call to you today is not to revolutionize your life. It’s not to start all over again or leap forward in a giant Saul-like change, doing everything that can be done. It’s to simply choose a single area of your life that needs improvement (every one of us has many such areas), and just take one step in that direction.

What Doesn’t Really Matter…

It doesn’t matter how many different steps could be taken. It doesn’t matter how far behind you are from where you think you should have already been or where you perceive others are. All that really matters is that you identify the needed step and that you take it, no matter how small that step needs to be to get yourself moving. Baby steps are still steps forward, after all!

Ultimately, it doesn’t even matter how many times you’ve tripped and fallen, wandered off course, rejected the path itself, pretended it wasn’t there, disbelieved in its reality or intentionally ran straight into the mists of darkness in a rebellious spit in the eye.

None of that matters in the end. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow hasn’t come. Today awaits. The only thing that matters is that you are here today, looking down the road, figuring out where to place your next step, wanting to follow Christ. 

Our incremental improvement isn’t about becoming acceptable to the Lord (He already accepts you) or qualifying for blessings (you can’t anyway) or averting celestial punishment. It’s about loving Christ and Heavenly Father and wanting to show that love by taking steps toward them. 

Just Take the Step

So from wherever you are today, take a step. Just one. Even if just nudging your little toe forward along the covenant path is all you can muster for now in your discipleship. Even if no one else can see your improvement or growth, your repentance, the lessons learned or your spiritual stretch, the very act of leaning in the right direction is a success nonetheless.

Perhaps it is finally confessing a secret sin, or apologizing for an offense, enrolling in an anger management course, forgiving a grudge you’ve held onto, praying if you normally don’t, or reading scripture if you haven’t for a while. Whatever your next step is, now is the time to take it.

So don’t worry where you’ve been, how long you’ve been there, how far off-road you’ve gone or how hard it is to be consistently moving in the right direction all the time. Just take the step.

Then, when you trip, stumble and fall, move back three spaces or face plant on the sidewalk of your life, just know that it’s all fairly irrelevant to the greater concern knowing that if you fall back three spaces this week, but get up and step forward 4, that’s still progress worthy of celebration.

The Prominent Sound in Heaven

Remember the parable of the prodigal son. What did his father do when his wayward son came back after riotously losing all his inheritance in his prodigal life of sin? He threw his arms around his neck and then threw him a party. He celebrated his return, his new direction and the steps he took to come back.

Note what is glaringly not part of that parable. The father did not question him about motives or sincerity, about how much he squandered or the degrees of sin he committed or levels of true repentance he displayed over what duration of time. He just loved and celebrated his son.

That, I’m convinced, is what our Heavenly Father does too. I believe the prominent sounds in Heaven are not tearful groans for the sins of the world; they are shouts of joy for every time someone takes a better step today than yesterday.

No Straight Lines

The truth is that life is not a straight line from birth through all the covenantal markers along the straight and narrow path to exaltation and eternal life for anyone.

No, life looks a lot more like a stock market line graph with zigs and zags, peaks and toughs, surges and crashes, ups and downs. But if you look at any 10-30 year period of time, the general direction, the trend-line, the trajectory is up, even though interrupted by periods of recession and depression.

The stock market is not the only place of volatility. Life and our progress through it has its fair share as well. That’s why Heavenly Father sent us His Son to lend His stability to our volatility, His immortality to our mortality and His perfection to our imperfection.

Next Time you Fall

So look down the road of your life and ask yourself these questions: Am I on the right path?  Am I moving forward? Am I learning? Am I growing? What, then, is my next best step? How can I best take that step?

Once the answers to those questions have been identified, shift your weight forward to your lead leg and lean into your personal growth, not as an expression of shame driven by self-contempt, but as an expression of gratitude and love for God, Christ, their gospel and yourself.

And just remember that your Heavenly Father is there to guide you and your Savior Jesus Christ is there to pick you back up the next time you misstep and stumble along the way. 

Photo from Pixaby

“Love is the greatest of all the commandments—all others hang upon it. It is our focus as followers of the living Christ. It is the one trait that, if developed, will most improve our lives.” —Joseph B. Wirthlin

Nephi said the righteous love truth. Alma calls us to remember the song of redeeming love. Mosiah asks us to become as a child, patient and full of love. Mormon warns us of loving money more than the poor. Moroni tells us that the Comforter fills us with perfect love and that love never fails and casts out all fear.

Joseph Smith reminds us that love qualifies us for God’s work, that sanctification comes to those who love and serve God, to be not partial in love, that the priesthood is maintained by love, to show an increase of love after a rebuke and that blessings await those who love the Lord. He warns us not to let love wax cold.

Mark tells us that God is love. Christ said that loving God is the greatest commandment. He instructs us to love our enemies, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love Him by keeping His commandments and reminds us that God’s love of the world is why He sent His only begotten Son to it in the first place.

In fact, there are over 200 references of love in the Bible—more than 500 depending on the translation you use.

Love Fills our Emptiness

So what’s all the fuss about love? Well, here’s some random thoughts on the most written and sung about topic by poets and songwriters around the world from any generation:

Love fills our empty places. It motivates change and growth. It softens the impact of childhood trauma and helps steady long-held insecurities. It fixes and repairs and overcomes. It even keeps infant’s hearts beating. It sets the stage for our development and determines the difficulty or ease by which we trust and forgive others.

Love conquers, redeems, reforms, uplifts and inspires. When ours is lacking, we stumble more and fall harder. Its lack hurts marriages and damages children and breaks up friendships. Its failure is the author of hate and the womb that gives birth to enemies.

What Love Is and Isn’t

Love deepens the foundations of our psychology, the connections in our sociology and the kindness in our philosophy. Love sees beyond exteriors. It notices the lonely and the friendless. It exercises courage to stick up for the defenseless and reaches out to those who need more than they currently have. Love beautifies and expands. It reaches outward and invites inward.

It is slow to judge and quick to forgive. It is not selfish or proud or unkind. It does not covet or hate or steal or lie or turn a cold shoulder. Love, despite claims insisting otherwise, does not hurt. It’s the real or perceived loss of love that feels so bad. Jealousy is its enemy, not its proof. It doesn’t demand, it gives. Our immaturity, weaknesses, misunderstanding, insecurities and emotional histories can make it difficult to spot even when it is standing right in front of us. In that blindness, we can inadvertently pour cold water on its still-burning embers.

Love Begets Love

So, how do we develop more of it then? First, we recognize that love doesn’t come easily. It’s not a cheap trinket we pick up at the swap meet for pocket change. It requires something of us, even demands it. We can chase it away by trying to pin it down. We can diminish it by stomping on those we want it from. But we must pay the price of love if we want its benefits.

That price includes letting go of fear and grudges, forgiving and repenting, extending ourselves and seeking opportunities to develop more of it. We must push against the outer edge of comfort zones and come to the realization that the best way to get more of it is to give more of it away. Love, in fact, begets more love.

The most certain path to it is by following Christ and doing as He does. We serve and bless and minister to others. And so we work at it, fail at it, repent and work some more on it. We pray for it and pay the price for it. We study it in scripture and Conference talks.

Practice, Practice, Practice

But most of all, we practice love. Over, and over, and over and over and over again. When we get it wrong, we apologize, make amends the best we can, and try again. We learn from our mistakes and chip away at our hardened exteriors, breaking down walls and healing trauma. Authenticity and vulnerability inspire it, so courage is a necessary precondition for it.

When we open our hearts to Christ and give Him the burden of our pain and let Him lift our sins from us, we make room for more love in its purest form. That allows patience with ourselves and for others going through that process, acknowledging that we all improve gradually, by degree, one step at a time, not in a straight line, but by falling back, then stepping forward, only to fall and step forward again.

We fuel our love by looking for the best in others and ourselves. We spend time in uplifting and inspiring endeavors. We go to the temple as often as we can to serve those on the other side of the veil and to feel God’s love for us in that sacred environment as we absorb it’s light and beauty.

We invite others sitting alone to sit with us at church or in class. Or we go sit next to them. We look for opportunities to be kind and thoughtful, considerate and encouraging. The needs and wellbeing of others fills our hearts and prayers.

We recognize unity in diversity, oneness in difference and togetherness in acceptance. We recognize the importance and urgency of gathering all to Christ, no matter the background or current set of circumstances. We see the person beneath the hurt and the softness beyond the rough walls they erect to shield their pain. We celebrate and encourage all those scattered along the covenant path, no matter where they are in relation to where we are or wish they were. We joyfully welcome those returning and keep loving those who never do.

Love is Not a Tool

Love is not a means to an end. It is not a tool to manipulate a desired outcome from its target. It is an end in itself, perhaps the end. It undergirds God’s work and glory. It permeates Christ’s atoning sacrifice. His mission and His glorious redemptive work is infused and encompassed by it. His grace is extended by, through, and because of it.

It is at the heart of the Plan of Salvation and the reason for our creation. It is the great motivating force for all that is “virtuous, lovely, or of good report.”

Where Love Blooms

If you remove love from the world, we are left in a cold, barren, dark and lonely place. But a world (or a ward or family) where love reigns, life comes alive.

It opens and blooms, endowed with purpose and meaning, where weaknesses and mistakes are accepted as part of life and part of the learning and growing process, where differences are embraced, where enough room is given to falter, and encouragement is extended to try again, where intentions are honored even when execution falls short.

Love certainly doesn’t remove life’s challenges or prevent imperfect fails in its expression, but it does make them a whole lot easier to endure. Love is the glow of kindness, the warmth of acceptance and the encouraging nudge toward next steps.

Fine-tuning Love

There is not a single style of love, but there is one necessary expression of it. Remember that Jesus asked Peter three times whether he loved Him. Each time Christ answered Peter’s protestations of love with the injunction to “Go feed my sheep.”

Love, it turns out, is not merely a feeling of the heart. If love stays expressionless, bottled inside, we cripple it and undermine its potential impact on our own and others’ lives. Love was never meant to be hoarded or tucked away in the corner of our lives. Love that’s kept locked in the heart is a neutered, muted, impotent and empty kind of love, a shell of what it could be. Feeding His sheep is at the foundation of its true expression.

For love to reach the impressive heights of its full potential, it must be loosed from the prison of the heart and directed into our feet and hands and mouths. Feelings of love have to translate into words and actions and expressions of love. Love is not so small that it can be reduced to a mere emotion. It is a character trait as well. It’s not simply what we feel. It is fine-tuned in the act of service, nurtured in thoughtful expressions, deepened in warm embraces and sanctified in selfless prayers.

Love His Sheep

So reach out to those around you. Feed His sheep. The visitor. The old timer. The child. The returning member. Everyone!

Accept them. Resist the very human temptation to judge others. See them. Deeply. Charitably. Look beyond the exterior and see them as their Heavenly Father sees them, as His dear beloved children. Nothing more and nothing less.

Then say hello. Get to know them. Love and embrace them in all their glorious imperfection. Invite them. Pray for them. Smile at them. Befriend them. And then watch what happens to our already-loving ward family as love increasingly becomes an even more natural expression of who we are, disciples of Christ in search of His sheep to feed. 

Your Turn!

What does love mean to you? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Photo by Pixaby

“There is no obstacle too great, no challenge too difficult, that we cannot meet with faith.” -Gordon B. Hinckley

Faith is not only the substance of things hoped for which are true, and not only a principle of action, but faith is also the engine behind a righteous life and the foundation on which the gospel of Jesus Christ is made the center of our individual lives. 

It undergirds repentance and motivates progress and inspires needed change. It is the wall on which the paint of testimony is applied and the nails that hold the structure of our activity together. 

Confidence

Faith is hope for the future, confidence in covenants and promises made, power in the priesthood, fruit of the Atonement, and the step in our discipleship. It is why we open scripture and bend knee and serve and bless and persevere. 

It’s the door to baptism, the hand on the iron rod, the gas that propels us to temples and activities, on missions and the magnification of our callings and ministry. It is the cause behind the purpose and meaning of our lives and the belief in our goals and in our God.

Turn to the Source

It sturdies our walk and amplifies our commitment, lights our way and turns us to Christ, the source and substance of our faith. 

Faith points us down proper paths and opens us to innumerable blessings. It restores us and improves us and saves us. It is the substance of grace and the context of salvation. It deepens love and encourages kindness and connects us to its object.

Ebb and Flow

Faith is not something you have or have not. It exists on a scale, a range, a continuum. We experience it in degrees. It can ebb and flow, in part depending on the attention we give its ingredients. As we water it, it grows. As we neglect it, it eventually recedes. 

If yours is weak, strengthen it. If it is tired or soft and empty, awaken, embolden and fill it. Make it impervious to Babylonian temptation and Rameumptom-like rigidity and the mockery of half-truths and full lies and the drooling foolishness of faithless legions trapped in tall spacious buildings of self-congratulating pride.

The word of God is its handrail. The Spirit is its source. Prayer is the ladder that reaches it. Love is the fuel that propels it. Acceptance of the messiness of life is the undergirding context that allows it.

Now is the Time

Now is the time to commit to exercising more of it. Now is the time to secure it on eternal principles. Now is the time to question our questions and doubt our doubts and firm up our faith and step forward as a disciple of our Lord, dedicated to feasting on His word, saturating our lives with prayer, taking upon us His name, and serving as He serves, thereby refurbishing and polishing the faith that propels us forward. 

This is what faith is to me. It is a life-long quest with rich rewards along the way. It is worth the journey and the effort. I invite you to begin or to continue yours. 

Your Turn!

What does faith mean to you? Please share in the comments below.

Photo by Pixaby

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If you’re explore doing studies at home, here are some helpful time management tips for your online program. As recently as a few year back, few people knew about online education – and even fewer were using it. Everyone starting […]

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