How to Love Your Child (and Everyone) with Dr. Shefali

Time to read: 4 minutes

Article at a Glance:

• We can’t fully accept others if we haven’t accepted ourselves. Unmet personal expectations and self-judgment often get projected onto our children, coworkers, and partners.
  
• “Shoulding” blocks love. Rigid standards about success, performance, and being “extraordinary” create pressure instead of connection.
  
• Ordinary doesn’t mean insignificant. Meaningful contribution often looks simple, and becomes extraordinary through collaboration.
  
• Curiosity and Ubuntu open the door to real love. When we release labels and get curious about who people truly are (including ourselves), deeper connection becomes possible.

Have you ever heard the saying that you have to love yourself in order to love someone else?

Those words might resonate, but they don’t really tell you why, or how to do it.

We love this short video from clinical psychologist and author, Dr. Shefali.

In this video she states that the reason parents can’t accept their children for who they are, is because those parents haven’t accepted themselves for who they are.

It makes sense when you think about it. We struggle to accept others for the same reasons we struggle to accept ourselves. If we don’t accept ourselves, we’re going to project that onto others. If we judge ourselves for not meeting some expectation we have for ourselves, we naturally judge others for not meeting that expectation too.

While this video focuses on how to love your child, we see it as how to love everyone, including ourselves.

What Gets in the Way of Loving Others and Ourselves?

Dr. Shefali states that most love is fear-based. We all love conditionally. Love is about the self more than the other person.

What we think is love is actually pressure and deficiency.

Let’s look at what gets in the way and what we can do instead.

“Shoulding” Others (and Ourselves)

We hold others and ourselves to impossible standards.

We think they should try harder. I should do more. I should be smarter. They should be more athletic, more organized, kinder, more accomplished…the list goes on. We take whatever we’ve been taught about success and failure and use it as a measuring stick.

We do this to our kids, our coworkers, our partners, and ourselves, and it’s a big stumbling block to love and acceptance.

The Alternative: Question our idea of success and contribution.

This is part of why Redmond has thrown out the corporate ladder in favor of the Three Circles and being Leaderful. When we aren’t stuck on a narrow definition of success (in this case, formal leadership roles we might not be wired for, hierarchy, or being “well-rounded”), we can redefine what success looks and feels like for us, and explore where we can make a real contribution.

We can embrace our uniqueness because we no longer have to meet a set of requirements to earn acceptance.

Fear of “Ordinariness”

In a world that celebrates the extraordinary, “ordinary” can feel inadequate.

So many of us live online, where we’re constantly exposed to edited photos and videos, and highlight reels of others’ lives and accomplishments (which, btw, might not even be real).

When we’re kids, we’re perfectly fine with who we are, with our ordinariness. While we might dream of being astronauts or ballerinas, we mostly do that because it sounds fun, not because we think we have to measure up to earn love, or because we’re told we should.

Ordinary doesn’t mean we aren’t making a meaningful contribution. It doesn’t mean stagnant or inadequate.

It also doesn’t mean we don’t grow and strive to be better.

"I don't need to make a difference in the world, I just want to make a contribution" -Dewitt Jones

The Alternative: Collaboration and Contribution

Our contribution doesn’t have to be huge or extremely visible to be impactful.

It can look small. It can be simple. It might only impact a small circle of people.

However, our chance to be truly extraordinary happens when we collaborate because we accomplish so much more together. Also, small things make a big impact over time. So when lots of people contribute, the effect is huge!

For example, if one person were completely in charge of all the culture content we make, that would be super overwhelming. But some of us focus more on ideation, some more on video editing, some on filming, some on writing, etc. Each of those pieces might not move the needle much on its own, but together, adds up to a lot of content!

We know that we can only do so much on our own at Redmond, which is why we emphasize our core values, our Three Circles, being Leaderful, etc. The better we can practice these things, the better we’ll collaborate, and the more extraordinary we’ll be as a group. Extraordinary impact is the natural result of living by these values!

Failure to See

It’s so easy to get stuck in our idea of who someone is or used to be and completely miss who they are. We can also miss who WE are.

We can do this with people we’ve known for a long time, people we’ve just met, or people we don’t even know based on the bits of information we have about them.

The reality is, our high school friends, children, and longtime coworkers grow and evolve and change, just like we do. We might feel and act very differently than we did in childhood or even a few years ago.

Labeling people can also obscure who they really are. While we find personality profiles helpful at Redmond, we don’t want to fall into the trap of reducing someone to their “type.” Those profiles are meant to be starting points, not shortcuts or stereotypes.

The Alternative: Ubuntu and Curiosity

Our core value of Ubuntu (I see me, I see you, I am because we are) can help us accept ourselves and others so we can collaborate and grow together.

This is why we talk about personality profiles, why we work through collaboration, one of many reasons why we have so many retreats and activities and why our teams are so cross-functional. When we meet new people, when we work and play together, we can get to know them and ourselves, not just perpetuate our idea of them or stick with our first impression. We can leave room for people to surprise us!

Reflection can also help us stay in touch with who we really are, and how we grow and evolve.

So, get curious. Who are you really, without all the “shoulds”?

Can you get curious about the people in your life and who they really are, without the shoulds or hoops to jump through?

A Final Question

What drives your desire for growth? Is it a desire to improve and contribute, or are you running away from inadequacy?

If you realize it’s a fear of inadequacy, it’s time to get curious. Explore your Three Circles. Take the personality profiles. Talk to people who see you. Get to know yourself and where you’re strong and pay attention to how you impact those around you.

The more you love and accept yourself, the more you’ll know how to love and accept others!