How I learned to stop worrying and began to love…myself

From an early age, I was drawn to the concept of magic.

I fully believed that everyone had magic powers and were meant to create magic in our lives. I had seen the Sword in the Stone.

I knew that, like those young adepts, for me to awaken my true power and create the magic I was meant to create in life, I would need to understand, and then use that understanding to master myself.  

Thus started a quest for self-understanding and self-mastery, a lifelong immersion in self-improvement, spirituality, and anything esoteric. It began with ancient, then newer systems: the Chinese zodiac, astrology, palm reading, tarot, the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, Human Design, and Strengths Finder.

If it could explain me better, I was into it.

I voraciously absorbed all I could from these systems so I could understand 1) how the universe works, 2) who I am, and 3) how these two (the universe and I) are meant to coexist, or even better, play together.  

Learning about my virtues, tendencies, strengths, weaknesses, triggers, and downfalls from these modalities was helpful. But eventually I gave up on each of them. I’d lose interest as I realized the broad stroke-approaches and archetypes weren’t nearly as deep and specific as I’d hoped.

I wanted something that would guide me and help me develop what I sensed was already inside me: my unique power.

In parallel, I was pursuing a professional music career that started out like magic. The power of creating a beautiful experience together that we can’t create alone was going to be my job, wow! Five years of professional conservatory training and subbing in a top-five orchestra later, the scales fell from my eyes. The magic that had attracted me to music, looked different in career form. I realized my permanent role would include some magical moments, but the bulk of it would be as a constant receiver of critical feedback.  

I realized that, as a career musician, someone would always have an opinion about what I was doing, and how I could be doing it better.

Mostly, that criticism came from others. First, my teacher. Then coaches, conductors, juries, audition panels, critics, audience members, peers.

I became so attuned to anticipating criticism that I became adept at creating it even before it happened. I trained myself to be hyper critical. Mostly of myself, and not just my playing.

My self-criticism was usually 50-99% more negative than what any decent human would have allowed to cross their lips. And oh, was it ever negative. Scathing, in fact.

It was demoralizing. And I’d created it, for myself, by myself, through constant negative self-talk about myself. On and on, a spiraling stream of self-created harshness spinning out into the universe through my cyclical thoughts. Seeking validation wherever I could, always from the outside.

Stepping into this inner world caused a lot of internal suffering, loneliness, neediness, and rejection. I was desperate to be shown kindness, to be loved, to be accepted and understood. To be seen as valuable.

But that never showed up.

No one came to rescue me.

So I doubled down. I became the worst version of myself. Arrogant, defensive, highly insecure. Sensitive and self-protective, ready to lash out at anyone who wanted to help. Needing to be right, yet afraid that someone would notice I didn’t really know what I was doing. Wanting to be loved. Being not-full.

And that’s how I treated others: like a not-full person seeking fullness at the expense of herself, her dignity, and that of others.

What came next? A short series of crash-and-burn, codependent relationships. Traumas. Suicide attempts. A divorce. Narrowly missing getting fired. A new relationship, a new job, a new city.

Rinse and repeat.

This was certainly not the magic I was meant to create. I just wasn’t sure how to find it again.

I knew to keep on and expect different results was an exercise in insanity, so I did something radical.  

I chose to notice I was not whole, and to believe I could be.

It took being as far from my desired life as I could be, a broken, half-full person, to realize this was the best possible moment for me.

I could choose to reignite my personal magic and see where it took me.

I decided, for the first time in years, to look not outside, but within, for answers.

To show up for myself.

This was the wild unknown! It went against everything I’d practiced.

I was out there by myself, operating without the old playbook.

But decided to let my heart guide me. To trust it, while recalibrating the self-talk that wasn’t serving me.

So I used my big, wild imagination to create new magic.

I dreamed and envisioned what it would like to feel whole, full, and loved.

To be enough.  

I used my imagination until it felt solid, felt real, felt unwavering, to the core of my being.

Then I did what I knew how to do best: I practiced.

I practiced that feeling of fullness. 

I practiced grace, empathy, and forgiveness—toward myself.

Over time, this revolutionary, unfamiliar act of self-kindness and grace ended up becoming the catalyst for my own transformation and the bedrock of my personal practice.

It brought out my light, and it helped me realize why I am here:

To use my light to help amplify the light in others.

Now, that’s what I call magic—and it only comes from within.