Episode 147 – Why Your Self-esteem Has Such a Big Impact on Your Relationships
The way YOU feel about YOU affects the way you treat other people and the way you show up in your relationships. Your worth is not something you create, it’s something you discover. But, unless you know some tools to manage your brain, you will keep judging yourself and others, and your worth will be a moving target. When your worth is a moving target, your relationships are too.
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Full Transcript
00:04
Are your family relationships feeling disconnected? Maybe contentious. If you’re ready to begin repairing relationships, and connect on a whole new level, so that you can feel more peace and love in your family? Then come with me. I’m going to show you how. I’m Tina Gosney, a certified life and advanced relationship coach. And I’m so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.
00:34
Hey, welcome to the podcast today. This is Tina. I’m going to start off today with a story. I love a good story. I hope you do too. This is actually got a couple of stories today. So here’s the first one.
00:48
I have a friend. We’ve been friends for a couple of decades, a long time we are good friends. Still good friends always have been good friends. This friend happens to be a bigger person than me. And one day, this is at least 10 years ago. We were getting together and I brought some cookies over to her house. And I said, Hey, I brought you some cookies. She got really mad. And she said are you trying to make me fat and she threw them on the counter wouldn’t eat any of them. And the rest of the people that were there ate some, but she refused. And she was mad at me the rest of the night. Okay, my friend is a little bit dramatic. We’re still good friends learned how to deal with her drama. But that’s okay. Because sometimes I have my drama too.
01:32
The harder thing for me, though, was about a week, I think it was a week or maybe two weeks later, we got together again, I did not bring cookies. That time I knew better. I had learned my lesson. But another friend of ours, who’s also a bigger, heavier person than me, brought rice krispie treats. And she walked in with this plate of treats. And my friend that hadn’t refused to eat the cookies, looked at the Rice Krispie treats. And she said, Thank you so much. These are my favorite. And she immediately picked up one and ate it.
02:07
Okay, did this affect our friendship? Does it affect our relationship? Yes, in a lot of ways that are seeing an unseen, it affects our relationship? Of course it did. It was like my friend was saying she has this belief inside of her brain that a smaller, thinner body is better. And she’s looking at me saying Tina has a smaller, thinner body than I do. Therefore, my body is not as good. Okay, so we do this all the time, with much more than our bodies and our weight.
02:42
Anytime we are looking at someone else, and measuring ourselves against them, we’re asking yourself, am I better than or am I worse than, is my life better? Or is my life worse? Am I better than them because of what I’ve done with my life? Or am I worse than them because I haven’t done those things with my life. Or so many different ways that we measure ourselves.
03:06
One thing I hear quite often right now and lately is women who are becoming empty nesters having a lot of self esteem issues. Many of these women have decided to years and years ago decided to stay home and to be a stay at home mom and raise their kids and they put their whole heart and 100% 110% effort into raising their children and they were awesome moms when their kids were in the middle of being raised and all of the schoolwork and the activities and the friends and the teaching all the things that come to that and they were awesome moms. And now their kids are gone. And their kids have lives of their own.
03:51
And the moms role changes. She’s not needed in the same way. She doesn’t know who she is anymore. She starts to look around at other women who have made different choices with their lives. Some of these women have big careers. Maybe they have a degree or to this other stay at home mom didn’t get and the empty nester mom starts comparing herself to those women and begins to feel very inferior.
04:36
Okay, I’m going to take a break from that stories once you let that sit in your brain for a minute. Because the day that this episode airs will be the first day of Boundary Boot Camp. It’s a three day boot camp three day class. If you missed it, if you missed getting in on that. I’m gonna give you another chance to join. Just stay tuned for next week and I’ll have another offer that you
05:00
You can get that class in a different way. But I do have another bootcamp coming up on this one is on self esteem, that will be in a couple of weeks, it’s in August, we’re going to work on gathering up all your worth, from all the places outside of you, right? That places that you look to, to say, I’m okay or I’m not okay. And we’re going to start moving it to inside of you, you don’t have any control over what’s outside of you, you have all the control, where you can learn to have all the control for what’s going on inside of you, you’re going to come away from this self esteem boot camp with more confidence, feeling more empowered in your own skin, you’ll know how to talk to that harsh inner critic that wants to tell you all the time, that no matter what you do, you’re not going to be good enough.
05:52
And I have a special surprise challenge inside this boot camp, that I’m not going to give away. Now it’s gonna come inside the boot camp. It’s a really good one. I’ve done this challenge myself. And it was difficult, but it was so it was so good for my self esteem and for my brain to have that challenge. So it was pivotal in the way that I see myself in the world.
06:29
Have you noticed that we are in a self image crisis, a self esteem crisis in this country, in our communities, and especially within our own homes? Let’s start doing something about this, let’s start changing the way that we are operating in the world the way that we are measuring ourselves in the world.
06:53
Here’s another story. I was online last night, I don’t look at a lot of news, I don’t look at a lot of you know, like what things are going on in the world, I just kind of will grab maybe a headline here or there. But I was looking online last night and noticed an article that caught my caught my attention. Because it was on ozempic. Do you know what ozempic is? It’s this new weight loss injection that a lot of people are taking. And it’s helping a lot of people lose weight, a lot of people really need this, this weight loss drug. And it’s been very, it’s helping a lot of people deal with weight, they haven’t been able to take off any other way.
07:36
There’s a lot of people who are getting very, very thin on ozempic. And it has other names, you know, so if you want to know those go Google on but I’m not going to go into those today. But there are a lot of people that are getting really, really thin on ozempic. And so this article was on ozempic, and an actress who is not taking ozempic. And she is looking around and comparing herself to all these other people that are losing tons of weight, and getting really, really thin by being on ozempic.
08:13
And she talked about how now she feels really bad about herself. Because she also has this belief and this is a common belief in our society, that a thinner, smaller body is better. This woman has a curvy body. Not She’s not fat, she is curvy. She looks like a swimsuit model. But she sent her she is working so hard. She’s working out more than ever. She’s dieting more than ever. But she is still struggling, comparing herself to other people that are on ozempic. And her mental health is struggling, she said. So anytime you compare yourself to other people, you are placing yourself, there’s like a scale in your head. And you are placing yourself somewhere on that scale. And you’re placing the other person that you’re looking at or thinking about on a different place in that scale. And that scale is only determined by what you believe to be true. Is it true that a smaller, thinner body is better? No. It’s a belief that a lot of people have right now. But what we believe and what we how we put ourselves on a scale and how we put other people on this scale will definitely affect our relationship with them. So what is going on here? Why do we do this? There’s two main issues here that are going on with our brain and we do not have the ability to turn off either of them. So we really need to be aware of them if we’re aware of them. We can make we can have tools that help us to deal with what our brain is naturally doing. So the first thing is our brain is designed to make judgments I like this, I don’t like that. I like salad, I don’t like seafood, I like red, I don’t like blue. I like this kind of person, I don’t like that kind of person. So we are designed to make judgments, our brain judges, the judges all the time worse than better than. So how many of these judgments how many of these scales that we create, in our mind come because of the culture that we live in.
10:32
Because of what is just commonly accepted and promoted in society, there have been many times in the history of the world, in many cultures, that having a smaller thinner body was not better, was not attractive. So that is not a fact. It is something that we have adopted, there have been times where it was better to have a bigger curvier body. Also, that’s not a fact, that was just a sign of the culture in the belief at the time. But right now, we live in a culture that says a smaller, thinner body is better. It has not always been that way. So it cannot be a fact, a fact is something that’s true all the time. This is not true all the time.
11:41
And that was funny, just because she decided that seat was the best. All of a sudden, if you didn’t get that seat, then there was something wrong with you, you had to get that seat because you had to have the best.
14:11
So these are just some things that we measure ourselves by some really common I made a list and this is not an exhaustive list. This is just things that I came up within about 30 seconds of brainstorming. We measure ourselves by the amount of money that we make, the job that we have, the car that we drive, the house we live in, the level of education we’ve attained, how busy we are. Our life choices, our kids life choices, our accomplishments and achievements, our kids accomplishments and achievements, how much service we give and how much of our time we donate, how many followers likes and shares on social media. Now, all of these things are not fixed. There is nothing that says, this is a good way to measure yourself by, and by the way, here’s the norm, there is no norm.
15:11
You could be in a family where you were the first to go to college and your family is so proud of you. And you are so proud of yourself because you worked so hard to get there. And then you move into a neighborhood where everybody around you doesn’t just have a bachelor’s degree, they have a master’s degree, maybe even a few of them have a doctorate degree, and they have a better job than you do.
15:38
What happens to your self esteem, then you’re feel pretty good, when you were the first one in your family to do something, and you saw your achievements, and you saw how hard you worked and how proud your family was of you. And then you’re moving into a different culture, a different space, a different expectation. And then all of a sudden, you’re not as good as you’re less than if we keep measuring ourselves this way.
16:24
So if we only feel worthy, if we’re measuring ourselves as better than the people around us, then we will put ourselves one up or one down. And we will act accordingly, we will act like we are less than we will act like we were better than we will never feel solid inside of our own skin.
16:48
Interestingly enough, rarely, when we’re putting ourselves above or below someone else, rarely do we see ourselves as the same as because the value is always moving.
17:04
That’s not what our brain wants to do. It doesn’t want to say, Oh, I’m the same as this person, it wants to say, Oh, I’m doing better, or I’m not doing as good as that person. What we do in this point is we don’t see where our real worth and value comes from.
17:21
We’re not seeing our absolute infinite eternal value. And if we can’t see it in ourselves, we won’t see it in others either. And this will affect our relationships. Because until and unless we see the absolute, infinite, eternal value of each human being on this earth, as the same as ours, we will be unable to truly enter into a healthy, intimate relationship with another person. And by intimate, this is what I mean, I’m willing to let you really know me. And I really want to know you, not the fake you and the fake me, the real you and their real me. I want to know the real you, the good, bad and the ugly. Until then, until we can do that our relationships will live on the surface.
18:18
So how do we combat this? Well, we have to know what our brain is doing. And we have to know why our brain is just doing its thing. It’s just doing what is programmed to do. But just because your brain automatically does this does not mean that you just have to throw up your hands and go, Oh, well, I can’t do anything about it. We do not have to resign ourselves to letting it go unchecked. We can learn tools, we can direct our brain to what we want it to think about and focus on. And whatever we do focus on we will create more of in our life. So imagine that you’re just so you know, still focused on creating that arbitrary measurement scale, and putting yourself and other people on there. If you’re focused on that, you’re going to create more of that. If we’re focused on doing something different, we’re going to do less of that arbitrary measurement.
19:18
So I want you to learn some brain management tools that help you to know how to refocus how to talk to your brain, more than you listen to your brain and how to manage your emotions around failures. We also need to discover that internal infinite worth, no one can give you your sense of internal worth. If you weren’t born with a real sense of your worth, and most people weren’t, then you have to discover it. And notice that I didn’t say create it because you can’t. It’s already there. You just can’t see it. It’s blocked. Its blocked by all the garbage that is masking yet, you came to Earth with your worth, it is not something that you earn, you can’t subtract or add to it by anything that you do or you don’t do.
20:11
Discovering your internal worth is a process that you can work on and go through overtime. But so what if it takes time, it’s gonna take time. If you worked on this for a year, let’s just imagine you worked on it for a year. And at the end of that year, you’re feeling pretty good. And you can see, hey, I am feeling a lot better about myself, and I’m measuring myself and others a lot less. Well, even if you didn’t work on that, that year, that year is gonna go by. So you get to decide how am I going to spend this year? And where do I want to be at the end of it. Make it a year that you do something about this. Another thing that we can do to help ourselves with our own self image and self esteem, is to connect with other people and lift them up. And I don’t want you to just say and do nice things for other people, because you’re like, Okay, if I do this for them, then they’ll do something and say something nice for me, I want you to do it, because Oh no, this is just the person that I want to be in the world. I’m a person that lifts others. Because when you lift others, you can’t help but lift yourself. And the process is just, you don’t have to try to do it. And nobody else has to reciprocate. For that to happen. It’s just a natural byproduct of you lifting other people.
21:35
And I know that, you know, this can make people uncomfortable to like, really give someone a true and genuine compliment. And to really truly see the good and the value in other people and express that to them. That can be uncomfortable sometimes. But being uncomfortable, is the currency that you pay for that life that you want, where you’re not measuring yourself against everybody else.
22:02
You have to get out of your comfort zone and lift another person, I don’t care whether you send a text, you mail a card, like you know, real actual mail that you put like an address, an envelope and a stamp on, you can call someone on the phone, you can just like help somebody at the store, or smile at a coworker just express appreciation for something and someone be a person who sees value in others. And it will help you to see the value in yourself. I did an episode a few weeks ago on our relationships being ecosystems, how what we breathe out, we actually also breathe in this directly applies to that ecosystem. This is what contributes to it, you will breathe in whatever you’re putting out. It naturally happens. So contribute what you want to get back to that ecosystem, it will help you.
23:30
But I don’t know, even though so many of us hear this, I don’t know how many of us have actually internalized that value, including in my own faith tradition, I don’t know how many of us have internalized that. We can believe it intellectually, we can say it, we can say we believe it, you know, we can teach it, talk about it on Sunday and teach it to our children. But if we haven’t metabolized that belief, and live as if we actually are worthy, infinite, that’s our value, then it hasn’t made its way into our heart. If it has, if it’s not making its way out into our life. It hasn’t made its way into our heart.
24:15
You know, you might be asking, So then how do I? How do I do this? And how do I help? Like I really want these people that I love my kids, my spouse, my sister, I want them to know how valuable they are so easier for us to often see value in others without seeing it in ourselves. First of all, you can’t give somebody else their value. You can’t internalize that for them. Each person has to internalize that for themselves. But if you internalize your own value, that can actually be super helpful to another person. Because especially when we don’t know our own value, we are looking to other people to find it. And so we look at other people as if we’re looking in a mirror, and if we see what we like we can feel good about ourselves. If we don’t see something we like, we don’t feel good about ourselves. We call this a reflected sense of ourselves.
27:01
Having a bunch of knowledge inside your head doesn’t produce change. If you’re ready to move your knowledge into action, then let’s talk set up a free 30 minute consultation with me by going to Tina gosney.com. Click the “work with me” button on the main menu. I’m looking forward to having a conversation with you