If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here.

You may not have been around long enough to remember this, but when I was young (oh, kids, don’t you love stories older people tell that start like that?), Sally Field gave an Oscar acceptance speech that became famous. Clutching her statuette for her role in Places in the Heart and looking joyful and overwhelmed, amid her handful of thank-yous she blurted, “You like me!”

It was earnest and vulnerable and dear. It was deeply, deeply relatable.

And it became a much-mocked meme long before actual memes.

The lines are often misquoted as “You like me! You really like me!” and almost always taken out of context: This was her second Oscar win, but, Field says in the speech, this one meant more. “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect.” The first time she won, she continues, she didn’t feel it. “But this time I feel it. And I can’t deny the fact that you like me! Right now—you like me!”

Maybe it was too raw, hit too much of a chord with people, came too uncomfortably close to our own fears that maybe we’re not terribly likable, but poor Sally took a bit of a hit over her spontaneous, genuine admission. Some called it pathetic; others mocked it as self-aggrandizing.

But I don’t think it was either one of those things. I think she was taking a moment to celebrate an accomplishment, and relishing the regard of her peers, and feeling as if she’d proved herself—to herself, to others—as an actor of substance when some (maybe even herself) hadn’t taken her seriously because of some of her past work, like The Flying Nun, Gidget, and even an episode of The Dating Game.

---

It’s always a little surprising when we hear that people we admire, or who have achieved success by standard metrics, experience many of the same doubts and fears and demons that we all do—I always think perhaps creatives most of all.

Artists tap into the most naked and vulnerable places within themselves and then put it into the world for anyone to see…facing constant rejection and even indifference. Authors tune in to the world perhaps more closely than most in their keen observation of it for their craft, and their emotions and sensitivities tend to be pretty close to the surface.

Or maybe I should say it’s always surprising to hear people express those demons. So much of how people perceive you in the business of art—in life, really—seems based on how confidently you can swagger through it, how much you present yourself as a success. That means, often, hiding those little bobbles of insecurity and doubt.

So I was charmed in a recent interview Adam Grant did with actor Ed Helms about failure when Helms candidly admitted to his own dances with these demons, his own oh-so-human need for validation and approval that Sally Field owned up to in her Oscar speech.

Actor Ed Helms recently admitted he records messages to himself on his phone, basically pep talks to himself for “specific moments of difficulty.”

“This is crazy. I’ve never, I don’t, I’ve never told anybody this,” he stammers, and then he reveals that he records messages to himself on his phone, basically pep talks to himself for “specific moments of difficulty…like if I feel like I failed in some social context. Some of them are in a more professional context.”

He gives examples—times when he’s ruminated about an interview or appearance, assailed himself for his performance, castigated himself for things he said. Moments any writer—any creative…any human—can probably relate to.

I loved not only his sharing it, but his compassion for himself in doing so, and in how he handles it: “We all do that. That’s so normal. And I, I’m there for me, like in my phone. I’m right there. And I can literally check it in those times. I also will sometimes watch it going into a thing, before the thing. Where it’s like, ‘Hey, you belong. You’re where you’re supposed to be.’” 

The revelation is at around minute 30 of the interview—which is worth listening to in its entirety for Helms’s thoughts about failure and what it means, and how to handle it, and how we define success. I’ve listened to it a few times.

I’ve had my fair share (and more!) of dances with the demons, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Helms’s way of dealing with his.

---

Not long ago I found myself in one of those unfortunate spirals, lost in anxiety and self-castigation.

My first approach, as it almost always is, is to look for ways to fix the problem, and immediately I started strategizing how I could do better, be better.

And then, thanks to a great many years of therapy and concerted efforts to maintain a healthy mindset, I noticed what I was doing. I stopped the process and distracted myself with things guaranteed to make me feel better: calling my best friend, getting out in nature for a dog walk with my husband, playing pickleball, even reading and watching something enjoyable that took my mind off of the endless shame spiral.

Treating ourselves with so little kindness, approaching ourselves as a problem to solve, something to be fixed, of course implies that in some way we are broken.

And then when I had my right mind back and could be rational, I thought about what I had been doing. I had been treating myself with so little kindness, approaching myself as a problem to solve, something to be fixed, which of course implies that in some way I am broken. Of course I’m not going to make any positive headway with whatever I’m wrangling from that mindset, any more than you would imagine trying to help your child or a loved one or a friend by first berating them or reminding them of all their shortcomings and then helpfully pointing out ways they could improve all their faults.

I think this is why I love the idea of Helms’s pep talks so much. Most of the time I am in my right mind, able to be rational and see challenges and setbacks and even failures as what they are: normal ups and downs in every life, indications that you are pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, trying things that will help you grow. I’m able to understand that that road is not always smooth and to expect it not to be, and to have faith in my ability to traverse it nonetheless.

That’s the healthy version of me that can feel so hard to access when I’m in one of my demon spirals, and it’s the exact right frame of mind to be in to be able to help myself when I am in one of those.

Like Helms, I want to be there for me at those times. I so love what he says about his practice of recording himself, which I used as the title of this blog; “Seeing me like me is a damn good thing.”

Isn’t that what those spiral moments are about? Moments where we suddenly don’t like ourselves very much, deciding that we are unworthy or incapable or in some way defective?

I decided to try it. Maybe recording myself during my confident and capable and content moments could give me tools to access to help myself through the more difficult moments.

---

I assure you I felt ridiculous the first time I tried making one of these videos. I was self-conscious. It felt stilted and way too Stuart Smalley.

But like any other thing we try that’s outside of our usual comfort zone, you have to fail a bit before you figure out how to succeed, so I kept reminding myself of my intentions, one of the many tools I use when I’m in a challenging place. I wanted to do this to help and encourage myself, to be my own cheering squad and support system, the way every creative must be.

I combated the self-consciousness and the feeling of vague ridiculousness or self-indulgence by asking myself if I would feel that way if I were offering a similar pep talk to someone I cared about. Of course I would not; my only concern would be how best to help and support them.

Yet I kept putting it off. It was too embarrassing. Too awkward.

Then one day, while out running errands, I realized I was feeling a moment of simple contentment—with life, with myself, with the moment—and figured it was as good a time as any to send a message to a potential future version of me who might be struggling.

Helms talks about bringing some lightness to it, introing one of his own videos with, “Cue the cheesy music,” and then literally doing so before commencing to encourage and bolster himself in the video, so I started in that vein too: Humor is my go-to in general, so it felt organic. There I was, sitting in my car in a crowded Walmart parking lot, talking to my hypothetical future self—it was sublimely ridiculous.

It’s one thing to hear from a book or a professional or even a friend that you’re okay just as you are and that what you’re feeling will pass; but it’s another to hear it from yourself.

But that let me not take the whole thing—or myself—so seriously. The spontaneity and setting let me focus more on my intentions than making it look or sound just right, and it came out easily: warm and kind and with the perspective I had in my relatively good state of mind.

I’ve watched it several times since then, and Helms is right—that puppy packs a punch. It’s one thing to hear from a book or a professional or even a friend that you’re okay just as you are and that what you’re feeling will pass; but it’s another to hear it from yourself. It makes you believe it a little more readily: There’s the evidence, right in front of you, of you as someone with their shit together. Someone who clearly knows their own worth and is comfortable with themselves, and content.

And if your personal shitstorm happens to involve denigrating or attacking yourself (as too often these squalls do), it’s pretty powerful to see, as Helms says, you liking you.

---

Helms says he has several of these recordings, all for different situations. We tend to know what our particular demons are (hey, fellas! *waves*), and they tend to recur, living as they do with a lifetime lease on their little cave in our psyches.

If you’re going to try some pep talks of your own, it can be helpful to think about the common denominators of your own dark nights of the soul, and plan a few targeted topics. I started with general existential ennui, those times when I lose sight of purpose or meaning and begin to wonder why my efforts really matter…or why I do.

My first recording is just a few minutes long, but in it I just describe what I’m doing that day—I was out putting together a care package for a bereaved friend, and had just delivered some baked treats to a  neighbor newly living alone after losing her husband last year—and that I’m feeling pretty good: connected to people I care about, under a blue, blue sky, doing something for someone that made me feel good. And then I remind myself that these malaises are natural and cyclical; that they aren’t reality; and that they always pass. “Buck up, girl,” I finish. “You’ll get to the other side of this.”

It’s what I’d tell my best friend if she were feeling the same way, or my husband or brother or mom, or anyone else I love—or a total stranger: I know this sucks, but everyone feels this way sometimes. You’re okay. This too shall pass.

Or as compassion researcher Kristin Neff says, “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is a part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.”

Now, thanks to Ed Helms and my new recordings, I know for sure that I will.

This week’s question is a challenge instead: Make at least one of these videos for yourself. No one ever has to see it. They don’t even have to know you did it (although if you would like to share what you pep-talked yourself about or how it went, I’d love to hear). Even if you think it’s stupid and you wouldn’t watch it, just do me (and you, and future you) a solid and try, would you? Even the act of recording “you liking you” can unlock some powerful compassion and grace within ourselves for ourselves—something that every single one of us can use. Something that might even help make the world a better, kinder place. I’m pulling for you. See if you can give yourself just a few minutes to record you pulling for you too.

If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here.