PR Straight Talk

“Self Matters:  Creating Your Life From The Inside Out” by Dr. Phil McGraw is the best self-help book, both written and audio versions, I’ve ever read or listened to – and I’ve read and listened to many.  Dr. Phil starts out with an essential premise:  we all come into the world with an “authentic self” – and that organic self, filled with natural God-given unique talents and attributes, becomes marred with negative programming and influences from key people in our external lives, at crucial points in our growth and development, that distort who we truly are in terms of how we see ourselves.  We develop a false self-concept.

Until we can break down these key moments, and key influencers in our lives, and the negative messages and belief systems about ourselves we’ve bought into – the path along the journey of life can be rocky and problematic.  Dr. Phil then provides exercises and questions we can give ourselves that help us isolate those moments, and allows us to come into contact with the false messages and false beliefs we’ve absorbed – and by becoming conscious of them – our path to releasing them, and coming into a healing realignment with our authentic selves, can begin.

It’s not that the information is glaringly new – but it is brilliantly and simply presented – from a man who’s obviously not only gone through the process in his own life – but who’s deeply thought through the cause-and-effect relationships, and presents his findings in an upbeat, confident, centered and inspirational style of delivery.  The book reaches, and has impact.

I recommend the book to anyone who’s been through therapy, self-therapy or no therapy.  Dr. Phil seems to be the therapist we all deserved, but didn’t necessarily get.

Some time ago, I realized why I probably chose public relations as a career, and publicity, specifically.  First, I was enough in touch with my “authentic self” to realize I loved to write, and loved to communicate.  I also enjoyed the art of persuasion.  Second, my false or inauthentic self had a great need for approval from the outside – beyond the norm.  Public relations provided a certain satisfaction for the fulfillment of my talent – and my need.  But the latter was somewhat out-of-whack.  I craved getting the approval of editors and producers on a story I had pitched.  And I felt a real down when the proverbial “rejection slip” came along – the “no, not interested.”

I think this is true for a number of my colleagues in this field, as well as literary and entertainment agents.  We live for the approval, and “die” when the rejection comes.  We confuse the approval or disapproval of our pitch, for ourselves.  We believe we’ve been rejected when nothing could be further from the truth.

The way out of this, for me, was to come into greater touch with my authentic self, and develop greater self-respect for who I truly was, and to disassociate rejections from rejection of “moi.”  Perhaps strains of this false belief, that I had to count on approval from journalists for my own self-affirmation, came from the fact that I am the child of parents who survived the Holocaust.  Perhaps I inherited a semi-conscious belief that we are “not good” because society once said so – and that we are embarked on a path where we constantly seek society’s approval.   

The story of how I moved through that is too long for this blog entry – but the turnaround comes from a moment, and recurrent moments – of realization that my self-concept is affirmed by me, from the inside out.  I don’t ultimately need anyone to approve of who I am, or what I’m worth.  My worth – and our worth – is inherently God-given.  I am – and we are – individualized creative expressions of a Higher Power; and so I am perfect just as I was created. 

That led to a moment as a publicist where I no longer invested my own self-definition or self-worth on the approval or disapproval of a journalist’s reception to my pitch of a story idea.  I became “unattached” to the outcome of that pitch.  And when I did that, I noticed that I gained increased respect from journalists – but most important, from myself.