How Your Insecurities Can Guide You To Happiness And Love [EP 244]

Do you know that your insecurities actually point directly toward your greatest gift? The very qualities that make you most magnetic, powerful and loving? Stay tuned to this episode, where you’ll learn how to use your insecurities to discover the profound gifts that lie within them.

Listen For

00:04 How Your Insecurities Reveal Your Greatest Core Gifts
05:29 The Three Categories of Essential Core Gifts
12:07 Unlocking Inward Authenticity and Aligning With Your Mission
16:11 Recognizing Your Byproducts of Disintegration
21:42 Learning to Bear and Wield the Power of Your Gifts

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How Your Insecurities Can Guide You To Happiness And Love

How Your Insecurities Reveal Your Greatest Core Gifts

Do you know that your insecurities actually point directly toward your greatest gifts? The very qualities that make you most magnetic, powerful and loving. Stay tuned to this episode where you’ll learn how to use your insecurities to discover the profound gifts that lie underneath them and how those gifts can change your life.

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Deeper Dating® Podcast. I am Ken Page. I’m a Psychotherapist. I’m the Author of the bestselling book, Deeper Dating, the creator of the new app, Deeper for Good, which is, if you’re watching this on video, you see my new background here with the logo. Hopefully, this app will be live at the time that this episode airs. Today, I am really excited to speak about something a little bit scary for me. It’s about the discovery of your Core Gifts and how that relates to your intimacy journey, your spiritual journey and your mission in this world.

First, I just want to say that if this work calls to you, just go to DeeperDatingPodcast.com. There, you can find transcripts of every one of my 244 episodes. You can join my mailing list and become a part of this journey and this community. And, hopefully, at this point you will actually be able to download our beautiful app, Deeper for Good™, where people who are single get to meet through events and environments that are inspiring, kind, positive, and useful for the world, that make a difference in the world, and then meet and connect on the app in all of these different ways.

Inward-facing authenticity is the most powerful and seminal place of all. It's about your relationship to your very core. Share on X

There’s been nothing like it. It’s been a dream of mine, and it’s coming live now. With that, what I want to talk about today is the radical power of two kinds of authenticity. One is your front-facing authenticity; the parts of yourself that you show to the world. And then, how you can use your understanding that you’re going to gain in this episode to discover your inward-facing authenticity, which is the most powerful and seminal place of all. It’s about your relationship to your very core.

My friend Chip Conley, the creator of the Modern Elder Academy, had a wonderful quote, which I am not remembering exactly, but it’s about the power of questions. It says something like, “The right question can lighten and enlighten a conversation, a room, or even a lifetime.” The questions I’m going to ask you to consider in this episode, and I’m going to answer some of these for myself too, for you, to kind of give an example, can enlighten your intimacy journey and your life. You will see what because we’re going to go on a path together, answering some very specific questions that are designed to lead you on a journey to your most sacred self. We find that in a really interesting way. Let’s dive in.

The question I want to ask you first is, what are the parts of you that really feel like important and true parts of you that you are very likely to hide or airbrush for the world? Because you have learned that they will set you apart. That people won’t understand that you’ll be judged for these qualities. That is question number one. What are the qualities that you have been trained that the world won’t really treasure? Now, I’m going to say something first before you dive into your own answering of that just to help you with this.

There are three kinds of general areas that Core Gifts fall into. I’m just going to bring these up for you and you think about the one that kind of clicks for you the most in terms of parts that you have been trained to airbrush that you’ve been timid to show because you’re afraid of the world’s reaction. One is Core Gifts of Intensity. Parts of you that are very powerful, ambitious, truth telling, fierce, hungry, hungry, hungry for whatever it is that you are hungry for. Qualities of Intensity. That’s one set.

THE DEEPER DATING® PODCAST | Insecurities

Insecurities: The parts we are most insecure about point to our greatness, point to our potential, point to our genius, which has scared us and probably scared other people.

The Three Categories Of Essential Core Gifts

Another is Qualities of Sensitivity and Vulnerability. A place where you feel not that you’re too much for that world but that you’re maybe not enough. That there is a tenderness, sensitivity, and you can be knocked down on your knees by things that you see and you feel that other people might not even notice or you can be brought to a wonderful state of joy more intensely than other people as well.

These are qualities of tenderness, of sensitivity, of deep, deep sensitivity. That’s a second category. What qualities might apply to you there? Then once you pick your quality, which I’m going to guide you through. We are going to go on a really cool journey together with this to perhaps your greatest treasure.

The third one, the third general category, is Qualities or Attributes of your being that make you feel really different. I’m going to give one to myself, which is a quality of sensitivity. It’s embarrassing and hard to talk about and so I’m going to be like living this at the same time. Which is a quality of spirituality, of being touched by spirit so deeply that I am easily moved to tears. That my heart is touched. That I have an intimate love relationship with spirit that has felt like it set me apart from the normal world.

That’s an example for me. But I want you now to take a minute and think, what is a quality of, and maybe it doesn’t fit into these three categories, or it does loosely. Think of a quality of yours that the world has taught you, “Don’t give this to me in its full intensity.” It could be qualities of sensitivity, of tenderness, of vulnerability, of ferocity, of passion, of ambition, of aliveness, of somehow some kind of differentness that makes you feel like you don’t fit into the herd. Take a minute and just think of one.

Core gifts are deeply essential parts of you that the world has taught you to hide, mostly because they're genius parts of you. Genius is threatening. Share on X

Feel free to pause the recording so you could think about this really, really, really important question, as you will see in a moment. Good. The quality that you thought of actually points to the quality that you thought of, that you are kind of afraid to show, is actually your treasure map to what might be your most important Core Gift is certainly one of your most important Core Gifts. This is such an amazing thing. The parts we are most insecure about point to our greatness, point to our potential, point to our genius, which has scared us and probably scared other people.

Unlocking Inward Authenticity And Aligning With Your Mission

That quality, what is yours and how might that be true for you? I’ll say something about my own personal experience. Spirituality has always been really important to me, and it’s one that I’ve talked about in general ways, but there’s some way that in this work, in talking about dating, I haven’t really let myself share. This, for me, is the scariest thing to talk about, is my relationship to my higher power. To my deep intimate relationship to my spirituality.

That for me is embarrassing, awkward. I don’t know if people want to hear it. That is one for me. However, it is the very center of my being. Here’s the way this works, because the same thing we’re going to say is true for you. This quality is a core essence part of your being. It is your genius. When we try to domesticate our genius, it goes into hiding. It does a whole bunch of different things, which I’m going to describe. I’m going to describe this quality of yours. What happens when you fully embrace it? What happens when you don’t?

When you embrace it, a bunch of things happen. One thing that happens is you get aligned with your own spine, with your own deepest essential back into your deepest authenticity. This is how we use the concept of authenticity because your forward-facing authenticity, the part that you’re afraid to show, points to your inward facing authenticity challenge. The part you’re afraid to fully love or embrace or only do it in some way privately.

Insecurities: When you don’t live with that in your center, you create a vacuum inside you where your very essence is supposed to be.

When we only do it privately, there almost always is an element of shame or minimization because it can’t be shown to the public. Yet it’s such an essential and beautiful part of you. What’s yours? That’s a question I would like you to answer. I want to propose a few different things. When you know what that is, there is a coming out that happens, that’s terrifying, fiery and tender, and it links you to your deepest sexuality. It links you to your language of romance.

It links you to your mission in the world because, and this is really what I believe. Is that quality is one of your heart languages given to you by the Creator, however you perceive that. That it is a language of your heart. It is connected to your mission. It is the language that has been given to you that is the language of spirit that is meant to be loved and lived with and damn, that can be scary. It can be scary in sex, it can be scary in love, it can be scary in dating but it is, I believe, the spine of your being.

Recognizing Your Byproducts Of Disintegration

And, the fact that it’s something that you choose to hide means that there is some kind of place, probably, where you have not yet fully allowed yourself to love it, embrace it, champion it, see it as perhaps your greatest treasure. Because of that, when we don’t do that, there’s a cascade of things that happen that in self-psychology are called byproducts of disintegration. When you don’t live with that in your center, you create a vacuum inside you where your very essence is supposed to be.

Nature abhors a vacuum. That vacuum becomes filled with masochistic, sadistic, diminishing, depressing, angry qualities that are your particular byproducts of disintegration. For me, one thing that my spirituality asks of me is that I go really slow. I’ve been a really serious meditator for over 40 years and I have access to places that are very precious. I often don’t live like that’s true because it’s embarrassing. It feels awkward.

The more you live through your Core Gifts, the more likely you are going to find someone who can really love you for who you are. Share on X

One of the ways that it comes out is in allowing myself time and allowing myself slowness. One of my byproducts of disintegration is rushing. When I rush, when I move away from this capacity for deep spiritual experience that I feel like I’m really coming out in this one, when I move away from those qualities of mine, I hurry. I rush. I try to kind of act like everyone else. What I experience is I feel smaller. I feel diminished. I was the young one in my family. I start feeling like the kid again.

I don’t feel like a full adult. I feel dwarfed. I feel diminished. With that, I feel resentful and I feel angry. Those are my beautiful byproducts of disintegration. I’m sharing that with you to say, now you might want to take a minute and think about what are your byproducts of disintegration. What happens for you when you don’t have a central and primary love relationship to this attribute? How do you kind of disintegrate around that? Take a minute and you can pause and you could think about that, too.

Here are some things that I want to say to you. One thing you might be thinking is, “Yeah, but.” This might be a good quality, but I have this immature quality that comes up too, or I’m using this quality in ways that are not good, or this quality has gotten me in huge trouble, and I’ve used it in intemperate, immature ways, or I’ve been punished for it. I would say to you, yes. Your immaturity around this quality does not disprove the gift. It confirms it because our biggest immaturities swirl around our deepest gifts.

Why? Because they are so charged. It takes a lifetime to learn to bear the power of your gifts. This is a really important thing. The quality that you are thinking about. If you fully allowed it, don’t you feel in some ways that it’s vast? If you really allowed it, that there’s a kind of bigness to it, that there’s a depth and vastness, take a minute to think about that. I think there’s a reason for that because I think it is the language that you have been given by your Creator to speak, to love through, and to live through.

Insecurities: The more friends you are with this part of you, the more fun, the more amazing, the more incredible your life is going to be.

The more you do that, the more likely you are going to find someone who can really love you for who you are. I know for me, these qualities have been ones that I’ve been embarrassed about. God knows I was not going to show them in my dating life. Are you kidding me? How unattractive are these qualities? The bottom line is, the more I embrace them, the more I started meeting men who were kind, decent and who could love me for who I am. I swear to God, it’s the truth. This is a formula that is the deepest physics of dating.

Learning To Bear And Wield The Power Of Your Gifts

That’s one thing that happens as you embrace these qualities. Another thing that happens is you step into your mission because if this is the language of your essence, of your being, of your heart, then that’s your mission. There will be joy, meaning, an increased magnetism. There’ll be all of these beautiful things that happen with that. There will also be challenges, of course. One of the challenges is that as you meet this gift more fully, you will meet your immaturity that surrounds it more fully but even more than just immaturity.

Here’s the deal. In addiction, when people have an addiction, let’s say a substance addiction. They use that substance to help them deal with things that they can’t deal with. When they hit an obstacle that they don’t know how to deal with or that’s really upsetting or really triggering, the instant reaction is, whatever the compulsive or addictive thing is that we do. For me, I end up in the refrigerator. I hear the latest thing that Trump has done and I’m in the refrigerator.

When we go to that compulsive behavior, whatever that is, we don’t grow. We never grow the capacity to deal with that challenge because we have chosen a cheap substitute. The same is true when we don’t champion our Core Gifts because they scare us too much because of their tenderness, their expansiveness, their ferocity, their challenge, and because of all those different things. We don’t help them grow and they remain immature.

It's a task of a lifetime to learn to bear the power of our Core Gifts. Share on X

It’s a task of a lifetime, I believe, to learn to bear the power of our Core Gifts. For me, I have been meditating seriously for like 40 years. In every meditation, I flee. I flee from certain experiences that I feel I don’t deserve. This is like a sad thing but I think that it’s one that you probably can relate to in your own way, that maybe you too have fled from the beauty of this Core Gift that you are thinking of because that’s what we do.

One thing I want to say about that is that it’s not like we could just say, “Oh yeah, this is my Core Gift. Boom. Now, I remember. I’m just going to live in it.” No, because it’s vast because we need, little by little, homeopathic drop by homeopathic drop to be able to learn to bear the power and wield the aliveness and the challenge of these gifts. We don’t have to be as big as our gifts. We’re not going to be as big as our gifts because our gifts have roots in a vastness that is indescribable.

What we just can do is feel awe. That’s how we begin our love relationship or continue our love relationship with these parts. It’s like if you’re standing on top of the Grand Canyon and looking at it. You don’t have to be as big as it is. You don’t have to own its expanse. You can just be in awe. That is a state of love. That is a love response. When you can be in awe of your gift, then an osmosis happens where your gift’s beauty begins to kind of feed into you and change you. That is the love relationship.

We’ve taken a few really simple, but really huge steps. I’m going to go over them with you and ask you to remember your answers and pause and reflect for as long as anything isn’t clear yet. Until the answer comes to you. And they’re really simple questions. The first, and it’s big, is, what are you timid about showing to the people close to you? The parts of yourself that you feel like the world wouldn’t fully accept? I’m not talking about things that happened to you, or things that you did. I’m actually talking about parts of your personality, if you let them fully shine and express. What’s the thing that you’re thinking of with that? So we’re naming a part of you that there’s some insecurity about. From that insecurity, this feeling like, “I can’t really show this part of me fully in all of its color because the world wouldn’t accept me” – how would that quality, that quality fully alive, actually potentially be beautiful, be a gift, be a Core Gift? How have you been afraid to embrace that Core Gift fully? And again, pause whenever you want to pause. Just pause the recording so you could think about this.

When you can be in awe of the size of your gift, then an osmosis happens where its beauty begins to kind of feed into you and change you. Share on X

What have been your, what I call, what self psychology calls byproducts of disintegration, in other words those parts that emerge when we’re not integrated, when we’re not honoring ourselves for who we are. When we create a vacuum where we’re supposed to be. What have been your byproducts of disintegration, when you didn’t fully honor that gift, and then got into a kind of behavior that really didn’t work for you? That led to attractions that didn’t work for you. Gave you defensive, immature behaviors. What are those immature behaviors that have surrounded this positive quality of yours, that has been challenging to embrace? How might this quality, now, actually be the language of the great spirit talking through you? A language that you have been given that no one else has been given in the same way.

The Inner Mentor Process: Visualizing Your Highest Self

How might that be true? If you let yourself see this as a gift and a gift to the world. If you allowed it, how might there actually be a vastness at the roots of this quality? How might it be really big if it was allowed to be? Or really tender, or really vulnerable? Or really sensitive or really alive? What would it be like if you let yourself really embrace that? Because that’s the mission place. Who would you be in the world? How would this speak to your mission? How would it speak to the way that you would speak? How would it speak to how you would contribute to the world? How would it speak to the way that you’d feel in your day to day life, in your heart? If you were bold enough to live this one more fully? Now, we are going to do a very powerful, transformative, really simple and research proven to have a real impact, practice. Here’s what it is. It’s what I call the Inner Mentor Process, and I adore it. And I teach it everywhere.

And I do it pretty much every single day. If you want to go to episode three, I teach it in great detail there or if you go to DeeperDatingPodcast.com and join my mailing list, you’ll get a book called The Five Keys to Deeper Intimacy. I teach it there and it gives you action steps on most of the things that I speak about. So anyway, this is the Inner Mentor process. And we are going to do it now. I just want to ask you take a moment and notice what you’re feeling from the things we talked about today. Maybe some fear, some awe, maybe some more hope. Maybe a different potential picture of yourself? Hopefully some glimpse of this innate beauty that is yours, or potentially yours. Some sense of touching that.

Now, I would like you to picture a you that lives that way. You’re just picturing this. This is like a more evolved and expressed version of you. This is living like the enlightened you. This is you and your kind of amazing genius, with these qualities alive, matured and integrated. You don’t have to be there yet. You don’t have to earn it. You can’t, you can’t be there yet. And you don’t have to be. You do not have to be this. All I want you to do is imagine it. Fantasize it. If you think you need to fit into those shoes, you’re going to feel intimidated. Don’t do that. Just fantasize. Let yourself imagine this you. Living from your essence. So, as you imagine this, what does your face look like from this place? What does your face reflect? If you’re letting yourself really be this you. What do your eyes show, What do you feel in your face? In your cheekbones?

What do you feel in the rest of your body? Just imagine, and if you were full-fledged that, how might you play more freely in the world? What might you say? What might you do? What might you reach for that you’ve been afraid to let yourself reach for? You don’t have to do these things. You do not have to be this you yet, but you can love this you just like you love the Grand Canyon without having to be as big as it. Picture this you, and what would be the message that this you, this semi-enlightened you, this Inner Mentor you, would want to give to the you of today? Would want to call out to you right now?

Just take a minute and think about that. You can pause this recording. Now, just imagine opening your arms and you and this Inner Mentor you that you’re meant to be get to hold each other because this is a primary relationship. It’s a love relationship, a friendship and a mentor relationship and the more you become friends with this part of you, the more amazing, the more meaningful and the more love filled your life is going to become. Thank you so much for listening. I hope to see you on the Deeper for Good™ app, which is just launching and where you’re going to get to work with me and many other thought leaders, meet a lot of really amazing people in inspiring events, and get to connect with them on the app in a totally different way. So that’s the Deeper for Good™ and you can just go to DeeperforGood.com. Thank you so much. I’ll connect with you on the next episode of the Deeper Dating® Podcast.