[00:00:00] Here's the connection and why growing up in a shame based culture is so debilitating is when you're used to that shame in essence is the opposite of confidence. It's the opposite of self worth. It's the opposite of believing in yourself, letting yourself enjoy the feeling of abundance of happiness, joy, all those wonderful things in abundance.
[00:00:23] Right, because shame says, I'm not enough. I'm not worthy. Something's wrong with me. I don't deserve good. And when that is your pervasive filter as a kid, anything that is fun, anything that is peaceful, anything that gives you joy, for a long period of time is going to feel uncomfortable.
[00:00:47] Welcome to Asians Breaking Ceilings I'm Jeanny Chai, founder of BambooMyth.Com and confidence coach for multicultural professionals. The goal of this podcast is to ignite your confidence, to empower you to overcome imposter syndrome so you can decide on, create, and ask for what you really want in your career and in your life.
[00:01:08] In this episode, I give you a real look into what has happened into my life that ended up creating a long gap in my podcast and how shame affects all of us. Many of us who grew up in a shame- based society are so used to chasing our dreams and not meeting them that when we experience happiness, when we have set a new milestone, it's awkward and uncomfortable Just like you, I have a hard time receiving. And I go into detail about why this episode took so long to produce.
[00:01:38] Please do leave me a positive review wherever you're listening to this podcast or on Podchaser.Com and spread the word. I'd be so grateful. Let's jump into today's show and have a real discussion about shame.
[00:02:00] I know that one of the false beliefs I've had about myself is that when things go well, it just means the other shoe is going to drop. Another way of saying it is I don't deserve long time happiness. The way I became like this probably was from early childhood. At one point, things were really chaotic, things were difficult, and whatever you go through as a kid, you kind of get used to.
[00:02:23] And so if you're wondering what happened to Asians Breaking Ceilings podcast, I had an episode of extreme shame and I'm going to describe that today. The good news is, um, that was supposed to be the next episode. And so I'm sharing with you real experiences, real learnings from my own life and what I learned about patterns of self sabotage and how they are connected to shame.
[00:02:48] What happened to episode 14? Where did the podcast go? I was wondering that myself for a very long time. As one of my clients described, it's as if this purple cat came into my life. undetected and just sat on my stomach and stayed there for about two, three months. And it prevented me from the same level of comfort and joy in creating this podcast.
[00:03:11] We're going to talk all about that today. We're going to talk about why, why this happened. It's going to help you understand your patterns. The most important thing is it's fixable. It's changeable. And I've come back stronger than before, and I'm going to show you, I know a technique that works, that is going to help you eradicate shame from your life because that is one of the core issues, right?
[00:03:32] It's not just learning to communicate. It's not just learning how to lead and negotiate, but many of us growing up in an Asian background, cultural background have have this long standing shame in our lives that somehow we don't deserve good things that we are used to stress, we are more used to chaos and a lot of emergencies happening throughout our day.
[00:03:55] From my work and conversations with hundreds and thousands of Asian American females and professionals, I know I'm not alone in this, where when things are relatively peaceful, when things are calm, when things are easy, we feel uncomfortable because most of our lives for a majority of our lives, we have lived in anxiety, we've lived with an enormous amount of stress, we've had to be independent and we're used to that.
[00:04:23] Especially when the source of stress is feeling like we could be disappointing someone at any time, that at any moment someone might get mad at us. We have this internalized shame. When I ask women, how old were you when you began to feel this way? Many of them say, as long as I remember, I've always been this way.
[00:04:45] And that's conditioning. None of us are born ashamed. We come out, we are naked, we are loud, we are gross, we are a mess, and we're not ashamed. And it's only when you watch little kids grow up to be seven, eight, especially by middle school. All of us have become self conscious, all of us, especially those of us who have had a hard time fitting in, or who've had to go to new schools and have new environments, be the new kid, any of us that has lived under criticism, perfectionism.
[00:05:17] Um, being controlled or being told what to do a lot, we have a huge sense of shame. And being Asian and having grown up this way, this is the only culture I really can talk about. But I know that, uh, Chinese culture is a shame based culture. If you speak Mandarin, when you were a little girl, how often did you hear" diu lian, Biao dui lian!" Right? Don't, don't toss your face at it. Don't lose face, right? Don't lose face. Losing face means you, you do something behaviorally to embarrass your family and to embarrass your parents embarrasses your entire community. So there's a sense of don't do anything wrong. The other way of saying that is don't make mistakes.
[00:05:59] Be perfect. And not only does this affect that particular behavior, it's as if your entire identity has been obliterated. It feels like your entire person has been obliterated. is a failure. And that's why so many of us, even when we're 40 or 50, we're, we're afraid of failure. We have this immense fear of failure.
[00:06:23] When did that start? It started when you were a young child, right? Take a moment with me and let's go back and recall. And I know all of you have these. Some of them were so painful we don't remember. Recall some, some circumstances in which you were told what to do. I will share some anonymous scenarios from real people that I've coached, and these stories break my heart, but I want you to know you're not alone.
[00:06:51] I heard that one little girl was a complete extrovert, loved to perform. And she walked into a grocery store one day and just stood there, held out her arms like little orphan Annie and sang loudly. And her mother, instead of knowing what to do with that, what a huge personality, right? She said, stop, stop, don't do that.
[00:07:12] And the unintentional, or perhaps intentional, consequence was the little girl became very quiet. And even to this day, as an adult, she is afraid to speak up. And this is completely connected to an event that never got processed, that scarred her so much that it set a new precedence. It's like she got a virus in her mind and the virus is still there until we intentionally get rid of it.
[00:07:38] Another girl. total tomboy, extremely spunky, fun, um, lived with her other relatives for a while. And then when she moved in with her own parents, she would go to the closet, you know, that hanging bar for hangers. She'd hang on that like a little monkey and swing. She was just happy, but she constantly got in trouble for stuff like that.
[00:07:59] Or someone would make a pie and she would go sneak a bite and, and she'd be humiliated. And so she learned at a young age, I'm not allowed to be me. She felt like she herself was a bother. She was a bad child. And now as an adult, she still deals with anxiety, an enormous amount of fear of disappointing her boss, disappointing other people on her team.
[00:08:24] And again, we, after doing a few weeks of work together, tied it to those incidences when she was a child. The good news is there is a way to fix this, even if it's been 20, 30, 40 years. And I know because I just had an episode. Now onto my story, I feel like I owe you an explanation of what happened to the podcast that was going so well.
[00:08:47] Most of my life as a little girl, I was not used to long periods of peace, of freedom, of safety. of feeling loved, of feeling a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, quite the opposite, right? I think you've heard my, if you listened to the earlier episodes, I talk about living in Taiwan, being undisciplined, yet being extremely happy.
[00:09:11] And I had a big personality. I would talk to adults as if I were an adult, and there was a ton of confidence when I moved to the United States at age four, English was not my first language, and so I pronounced things wrong, like the fruit, the pear. I call it a peer. And then when they said, what? What do we need?
[00:09:29] What's the white powdery stuff we need for making cookies? I said floor. And the entire class erupted in laughter. And again, not intentional, but the consequence for me was I felt really uncomfortable. And that's what shame is when you feel like something's wrong with you, versus having an adult explain to you, You know, you're one of the only immigrant children.
[00:09:51] You didn't grow up like everybody else learning English. It's okay. I was too embarrassed to have that conversation. I didn't have the skills to tell an adult. And so I, took that embarrassment home with me and it left a scar and Or maybe an open wound and the more it happened the bigger the wound got and as an adult the wound didn't heal and so Now even though I achieved so much even though I got straight A's for many of my school years Even though I got into Stanford, there is this open wound inside my heart that is invisible that is susceptible to To these kind of situations.
[00:10:29] Not all the time, but there are certain situations that bring this up. And so when I got into corporate America finally had a seat at the table where I was the only female and the only Asian, I, I made a joke and no one laughed. And immediately I felt, oh no, here we go. I'm in an environment where I don't fit in.
[00:10:48] And all that shame, that open wound just just opened up. And here I was again feeling like I was five years old. And I think many of you listening know what I'm talking about. Well, guess what? The same thing happened again, right around October of last year. And as I think back, it's a little bit foggy because when it's happening, you don't notice it.
[00:11:09] One of my false beliefs is that progress should be linear. And it's part of the habits of someone who's a perfectionist, a recovering perfectionist. And so as I am recording my episodes, I can see how many views I'm getting. And so They weren't linear and I felt a bit like they should be getting higher and higher views And so I started to doubt myself I also made the huge mistake of looking at some other podcasts that were highly successful that made the Apple whatever, you know Best new podcast list I certainly didn't make that list and I started to feel that imposter feeling coming back like are you sure you're good enough for this?
[00:11:50] Are you sure this is ever gonna get traction? Is anyone really caring about these podcasts and it became all about me In that time also, I had some other difficulties happen in my business where I got a slew of refunds for reasons I won't go into now. And I started to doubt myself. And then without being very careful and noticing it, I suddenly had this huge hurdle, I of excuses, a huge bunch of excuses as to why I couldn't record any more podcasts.
[00:12:22] One of them was my kid got sick. I got sick. Oh, this weekend, I'm too busy. Blah, blah, blah. And then, and then it's four months later. And so in that time, I saw this happening and I wanted to get over this feeling once and for all that when things are going well, I, actually become anxious. I actually don't know how to relax and enjoy that sense of success, that feeling of being proud.
[00:12:50] It's kind of foreign to me because in my past life, there's been enough examples where I achieve something and then it doesn't feel so good. There's more hurdles. It gets taken away. I'm so used to raising the bar. and not enjoying the peace, the celebration that I was beginning this cycle again, probably subconsciously.
[00:13:11] This is not the only time I've done this. When I came out of cancer treatments, one of the things I knew I wanted to embrace again was singing. So I took opera lessons. At first it didn't sound that great, but as I got better and better, I had one,
[00:13:30] I had one recital in which I was proud of myself. I sang something pretty well. I had been two years into the lessons and many people in the audience congratulated me and said, we're so proud of you. And what a great story that you can start anytime. And you know what I did? I quit my lessons about two weeks later.
[00:13:52] And to this day I'm baffled at to how, how this subconscious part of me self sabotages.
[00:14:00] Here, here is the connection and why growing up in a shame based culture is so debilitating is when you're used to that, shame in essence is the opposite of confidence. It's the opposite of self worth. It's the opposite of believing in yourself, letting yourself enjoy the feeling of abundance of happiness, joy, all those wonderful things in abundance.
[00:14:24] Right? Because shame says, I'm not enough. I'm not worthy. Something's wrong with me. I don't deserve good. And when that is your pervasive filter as a kid, anything that is fun, anything that is peaceful, anything that gives you joy for a long period of time is going to feel uncomfortable. Have you heard of cognitive dissonance?
[00:14:48] It's something about when our beliefs. don't match up with our behavior, humans become very agitated. And so we have to do one of two things. We have to either change our belief or we change our behavior. So going back to the opera scenario at that recital, my belief was, wow, I'm good at this. I'm having fun.
[00:15:10] And that was such a foreign concept for me because most of my childhood, I choose to remember the really difficult traumatic times where when something goes well, the next thing I know, it gets taken away. And when I love somebody, they disappear. I had enough experiences of that, that that's what my brain was used to.
[00:15:28] And so I had cognitive dissonance when I had an amazing recital and I actually got to choose something I like and I'm good at it. And no one's saying, you know. Stop. You can't do this. You have to study. That was foreign to me. And because I didn't realize the belief was so strong and the behavior was different from the belief, the belief being, I don't, I don't deserve happiness.
[00:15:52] And the behavior was that I was loving my opera lessons. I had to, I had to change one of them and that's why I quit. And so the difficulty with shame is that we will end up self sabotaging over and over and over. Let's talk about what that might look like in your life. And again, I'm not doing this to shame you or to criticize, but this folks, we're now getting to the heart of why leadership for Asian Americans is difficult because there's so many layers.
[00:16:19] And unless we deal with the core issue, we can work on communication. We can work on negotiation skills. We can try to do yoga and mindfulness, but none of those addresses the real core issue behind why some of these behaviors are hard to change. And that is the prevalence of shame.
[00:16:41] If you are experiencing in your life, repeated patterns of difficult situations, repeated burnout, repeatedly having people in your life who take advantage of you, who don't support you, who say one thing and do another. Who don't have your best interests or who use you a lot, you probably have shame at the core of what's going on because this pattern is repeating itself over and over again.
[00:17:10] I'm not saying right now you feel ashamed. I'm saying in your past. You've experienced it so much that you have become a guardian of chaos, right? You are more a guardian of chaos and you don't know what it's like to have freedom and joy.
[00:17:24] It's a bit like PTSD. If you want to get into the psychology of it, it's called childhood PTSD, it's something where, Like in the, what is it, the movie Frozen, water has a memory, your brain has a memory. And so whatever you started out with as a young child is usually the standard. For instance, I learned to speak Chinese and I still speak Mandarin.
[00:17:45] You learn whatever language you learn and you still speak that. So whatever gets taught to you at a young age becomes the foundation on which everything else is built. And so in a family where there's warmth, safety, security, happiness, you're used to that. And so when you experience that in your life.
[00:18:00] You're in alignment. If you're used to stress, worry, anxiety, fear, getting yelled at, and then suddenly that goes away and you're happy, you're going to be uncomfortable because now your brain is not used to that. An analogy is this, and I use this all the time in my coaching. Let's, which side of the bed do you get out of in the morning?
[00:18:17] For me, it's left, right? And let's say for the next 30 days, someone says, I want you to go to the other side, right? So tomorrow you wake up, you get out on the right. It's gonna be uncomfortable, not because something's wrong, or it's illegal, or it's dangerous. It's just you're not used to it because you've only been doing the other side all your life.
[00:18:37] And so cultural norms are the same way.
[00:18:42] If these episodes have been resonating with you, I have a Super exciting event to invite you to I'm doing my own event virtually so you can join from anywhere in the world. It's June 7th 8th and 9th We would love for you to come and get a taste of what it's like to finally discover what you want, How to gain confidence even if you've had years and years of low confidence and how to start speaking up so that you can go from invisible to influential. Go to the show notes, find the link, get more information, and register.
[00:19:12] You can still access early bird pricing, and I'd love to see you there.
[00:19:19] Whatever way we're taught is what we're used to. It may not be healthy. It may not be good for you. It could be really damaging and dangerous, but you're so used to it. That's what you're going to experience and be comfortable with and do and keep seeking for the rest of your life. Now, it makes sense, doesn't it?
[00:19:35] If you've had a certain kind of boyfriend and it was not a good relationship and you date again, you're like, why is this happening again? Am I a magnet for this kind of stuff? And the answer is no, you're not a magnet, but subconsciously you're so used to it that it's familiar. I will share with you that when I was working in corporate, I kept looking for the most difficult, demanding, intelligent, um, driven bosses.
[00:20:04] Because guess what? They reminded me of my mom. That's the kind of person I was used to being with. And so it was familiar. And when I interviewed and they were a little bit rude, or they were very driven and demanding, it felt familiar. And I go, okay, I should take this job. If I had grown up differently, and I was used to kindness, and respect, and someone asking me what I want, and being being very supportive, then that's the kind of person I would gravitate towards and I would probably pick those kinds of bosses.
[00:20:42] And so I say all this not to scare you to say that you are doomed, but to show you where you got to where you are today, how you got to where you are today. And the good news is when we are able to identify. Identify the core of what's causing our stress, causing our cycles, repeated stress and burnout and lack of recognition or even toxic relationships.
[00:21:04] I know many of us listening have had these cycles and you know what I'm talking about. It's so relieving to finally discover what the core issue is because now you can fix it. Right. Let me give you an analogy. Let's say you have a leak in your roof. You can get a bucket. Right? You can also get some towels.
[00:21:24] You can also move to a different part of the house so that you don't have to sleep in a room with a leaky roof, but none of those solutions actually solves the problem. What you need to do is fix the roof. And I feel like much of our training nowadays, meditation, mindfulness, DEI, it doesn't really, it does not deal with the source.
[00:21:49] Inclusivity does not fix a lack of confidence. Inclusivity does not fix self doubt. Inclusivity does not fix the inability to say no. Inclusivity does not help you with your communication and make you speak clearly and ask for help without feeling guilty. Inclusivity does not bring work life balance.
[00:22:11] We're not getting to the core issue, which is how do you deal with, and how do you finally get rid of the shame? When you graduate from childhood and you have felt not enough. You have felt bullied. You have felt like you don't belong. You have felt like you made too many mistakes and you're embarrassed about any part of your life.
[00:22:36] That is a sign that shame has taken hold of your heart. And if no one teaches you, and again, this is not something they teach you, not even in therapy, uh, not, not in classes, not in college. If, if something doesn't get resolved, you're going to carry this. The shame in your heart, all the way in your relationships, in your parenting, if you become a parent and into your work and corporate life.
[00:23:06] If you don't believe me, let me tell you what it looks like. When you have shame, you end up looking for validation from other people. You're very concerned what other people think, what they believe, whether they're talking about you at dinner table and whether they're judging you when you're speaking.
[00:23:24] When you have shame taking up residence in your heart. You are very concerned about disappointing other people. You tend to put their needs first because you want to make sure that you come across as being careful, responsible, useful, productive. You can't bear to make mistakes and have other people see you and confirm that you are indeed worthless or that you are indeed not enough.
[00:23:51] And so what we, what this is, is you're constantly proving yourself. And you're constantly worried that you might do something wrong and get in trouble. I know this only because I lived like this for the first 40 years of my life, and I thought it was normal. The scary thing is when I got cancer, I looked up shame, Google this, shame and breast cancer.
[00:24:14] There is a connection. I kid you not. And so shame is the gift that keeps giving us all the things we don't want. When we feel a sense of shame, the ways that I see Asian Americans try to, uh, Compensate for this in the working world is we try to make ourselves better, right? Whenever you don't feel good, it's natural that you want to make yourself feel better.
[00:24:38] So what do we do? Our coping mechanisms, our solutions are usually one, work harder. Unfortunately, working harder does not take away shame. Working harder does not Rebuild your confidence, which is the opposite of shame, right? Self worth. The other thing we do is we get more certifications. We get the MBA.
[00:24:59] That's exactly what I was doing when I got cancer. Trying to get night classes and trying to raise four children. The pace was insane, but I wanted so much to get rid of that shame feeling. I thought if I just get more degrees, I'll be, I'll finally be okay. The other thing we do is we take on all kinds of responsibilities and tasks thinking that somehow this is going to get me to a place where I finally get recognized and I'm good enough.
[00:25:27] I hear this all the time from women who say, you know, I took a lateral move. They said, do this and then we'll promote you. These empty promises and somehow they don't work out and you end up being stuck in that position, doing stuff you don't like, getting underpaid and feeling, uh, stuck in a place that's not fulfilling.
[00:25:48] Do you start to see now how shame is so prevalent in our culture? And that's not your fault. So don't feel ashamed that you have shame. All right. It's not exclusive to Asian culture, but it's, it's definitely prevalent in most people I speak with. And the good news is I spent the last four months intentionally and ruthlessly trying to recover and get rid of this sense of shame once and for all because I know that's why I quit podcasting. I know it's why I was in a funk and I didn't want to have this cycle continue and sabotage my life anymore. I know that my deep, deep sense of shame has also caused me financial problems where I don't feel worthy to be making the kinds of money I want to make.
[00:26:42] And so I'll keep putting on the brakes and keep resetting and keep sabotaging. Here's what I tried. I wanted to try every avenue possible. And so one, I started listening to my coaches and listening to my own coaching that says you have to do mindset work every day. This is much easier when it's gamified, when you have a community that does this.
[00:27:05] And so I began to say these three truths to myself. I started to say number one, I attract amazing people into my life who bless me, which is different from the old belief, which is man, the people in my life are so difficult and they make my life harder. Number two. As I said, my success is unlimited. I'm allowed to feel happiness.
[00:27:27] at all times, which wasn't the default belief. The default belief was if I'm happy, something bad's going to happen next, right? That's a terrible, scary feeling. And the third one was things work out for me. My life gets to be easy. I know that's not how I grew up and I started to believe that things are harder for me or that shit will always hit the fan.
[00:27:52] Those are terrible beliefs that are going to scare anyone and cause you to have these cycles of success followed by disappointment. And so I wrote that every day. I believed it. I meditated. And that was one of the things I tried. I also threw religion at it.
[00:28:15] If you are a believer in God, a Christian or some other religion, it's really important that what you believe is supportive of you having success. Here's what I mean. At some deep level, I didn't have a trust that there was a kind God who absolutely loved me. I, because I was ashamed of myself. I certainly felt he was ashamed of me too.
[00:28:37] And I felt like there was no reason he would give me continued success. And that for me, things were going to be harder than for the average person. That's not a nice thing to believe about a higher being, isn't it? That's not something that is going to be comforting. It certainly doesn't make you feel safe.
[00:28:53] And so I had to get prayed over by many, many, many people. And the prayer was that I'm allowed to believe in myself. I'm allowed to believe in success. And I don't have to live in fear that something bad is going to happen just because something good happened. Like logically, that does not make sense.
[00:29:12] There's no logic to that and yet that's what I believed at a subconscious level and so after three four months of this, I truly believe I was freed and here's how, here's how.
[00:29:23] The third thing I did was, I let myself face my fears instead of coping and running away from them.
[00:29:30] When I compared myself to other people. It was a trigger. It was a trigger for all the times when I was little and I felt criticized and unwanted, unheard, unloved, and that I didn't matter. And I let myself finally process a lot of these old feelings. And what I mean by that, honestly, is to cry and to go, wow, that was really painful.
[00:29:53] There were times instead of making up a new rule. When, when I went through those refunds, uh, my clients requesting refunds and my bank account was in the negative instead of making up a rule that, uh, you know, bad things always happen. When good things happen, I said, wow, this is really painful. This is hurtful.
[00:30:12] These people are not trusting me and it really, really hurts. And I let myself feel not something I've practiced most of my life. When I felt the fear and the loss of control, uh, And just let it be, almost like watching a train pass, somehow the feelings passed and I moved through it versus evading it.
[00:30:34] Again, this is stuff I teach to my clients, right? One of the main pillars I teach into how to deal with the source is to stop evading your emotions and start empathizing, start feeling for yourself. And that's exactly what I had to do in these core areas that I had not yet dealt with. And I can't tell you that I know exactly when the change occurred, but I certainly can tell, and I know you can tell, that this episode, I have a newfound confidence, I have a joy, I have a conviction, I have a drive in me that wasn't there four months ago, because I've overcome some of these fears that have been bugging me my entire life.
[00:31:11] I will share with you that I wrote an entire 28 page e book. In two days, and in the past, I've been procrastinating for four years, trying to get the right words, trying to get the right messaging, trying to get it just right. The overthinking was unbearable. And yet, when you start to overcome the shame and you feel the fears and you conquer them, you can do things at light speed that you could not imagine. Procrastination is no longer an issue. I no longer have the incredible urge to go clean my garage right before I record a podcast episode. I am proud of myself and these changes can happen for you too, because if I have figured out the secret of overcoming 40 years of shame in just a few months, I can teach those to you and I have taught them to other people and I would for you to keep listening to these episodes and.
[00:32:04] Like me, be freed up, be freed up, not just of poor communication or not being promoted or trying to break through the bamboo ceiling, but on a deeper level where you start to be yourself and you have full access to your talents, to your skills, and there's no more self sabotage and there's very little procrastination because now you're not living in fear, But you're living in full self confidence and in self worth
[00:32:38] From having intimately lived this way myself. And from speaking and working with hundreds of Asian American women, here are the signs that there might be some leftover shame in your heart. Do you find yourself with these kinds of thoughts? I should have known better. I should be grateful. I should have done that last week.
[00:33:02] I'm behind.
[00:33:05] Do you make plans for yourself to exercise or to take care of yourself? And then when someone else has a need, you quickly discard and sacrifice your own plans for others.
[00:33:17] Do you find yourself overthinking about decisions or presentation notes or what to do And you feel like you have to ask other people's opinions, even though you kind of know what you want. You still want that validation.
[00:33:35] Do you find yourself putting yourself last?
[00:33:39] Are you too quick to take responsibility for things that weren't even your fault? Do you say sorry? Do you start sentences with sorry a lot, hoping that it will soften whatever it is you're going to say? When you ask for help, do you feel like a burden?
[00:34:00] Do you feel really uncomfortable when people say thank you or they praise you and they compliment you?
[00:34:08] When someone promises you something and they don't end up giving it to you, do you blame yourself or feel like maybe you didn't deserve it? Do you have these beliefs that I don't matter? I'm not worth fighting for. If people knew who I really was, they wouldn't like me.
[00:34:30] If you're lonely, even though you've been around people a lot, there might be some latent shame and I have a solution for you. So do not fear.
[00:34:41] Here's an affirmation for you.
[00:34:42] Even though I've been criticized or bullied
[00:34:57] or been told that I was I was a bad boy or a bad girl. Even if I lived in fear of disappointing others, I was made perfectly. I was created in a way that was just right. There was nothing wrong with me. I wasn't a failure. I wasn't a burden. And any parent would have been so grateful. And so thankful to have me and all the personality and all my quirks, all the things that I was.
[00:35:38] I am not a failure. I am not a mistake. I am not unacceptable. I am not unwanted. There is something pure and unique and wonderful about me that no one else can take away. And my value is not up for debate. My worth as a human being is Is not limited to my to do list and how much of it I got done today.
[00:36:11] My worth, my value is the same every day.
[00:36:18] I don't have to be productive. I don't have to be working at 150%. I don't have to do everything someone else asks me in order to be an amazing human being. I am not a human doing. I am a human being with inherent worth and value. I have so much to offer. I have so much light to give. And no one, no one can make me feel bad.
[00:36:45] No one can call me a failure. No one can tell me that I ruined their life or they're disappointed in me without my permission. From now on, I accept myself. For all my imperfections, I accept myself and I allow myself to try new things, to make mistakes, to go through trial and error, and give myself the permission to feel free, like a child again, with no fear about being criticized or judged, or should have known better, or shouldn't be wasting time.
[00:37:20] These are rules made by people who wanted control, but I am in control of my life now, and I choose to be free, to give myself permission, to find out who I am, to be the real me, to speak about my needs, to ask for support.
[00:37:41] I get to love me. I get to treasure me. I get to value me and I get to take up space. I get to say no to things I don't want that hurt me. And I get to say yes to things that fill my soul, that make me happy, that give me joy, that make me laugh. And when things are difficult, I am not stuck. I'm allowed and I have permission, actually, it's my right to protect myself, to love myself, to create safety and comfort and a life full of fulfillment and joy and impact.
[00:38:26] And if I don't know how to do those things, I'm allowed to go learn and find out what those skills are so that I can live my best life. I no longer have to be subject to sacrifice and stress and shame ever again. I am freed to be me.
[00:39:17] This is the end of episode 14 and I'm super excited to announce our new season starting next week. It's going to be called Stop Living By Default And I'm going to share with you all the secrets of how your life could be not what it should be. So that you can start living with brand new optimism, with joy, and realizing you have so much unlived potential That's just waiting for you.
[00:39:44] I can't wait and I'll see you next week.