In this episode of the Choose Hard podcast, I'm going to show you what research shows determines your self esteem and self worth as a human being. And then I'm going to give you a simple four step system to ensure that you are improving yourself worth and self esteem so you can live a more successful and a more fulfilling. And happy life. Welcome to the Choose Hard podcast. I am your host Cody Mcbroom.
I am a trainer, I am a sports nutritionist and I'm the founder of Tailored Coaching Method, a world renowned online fitness and nutrition coaching company. If you are new here, thank you for being here. Thank you for tuning in and listening. This podcast is all about fitness, nutrition and mindset. Everything you need in order to choose Hard on a daily basis, develop your character, grow as an individual, and just live a better life.
That's what this is all about. Free value to make sure that you do the hard things that lead you to an easy life. If you're a returning listener, thank you for coming back. Thank you for listening and respect. Congratulations, you're about to grow again. Today's podcast episode is something that I've actually never discussed. I I shouldn't say I've never discussed, but I've never doven into on this level.
So this this is a topic that I have not ever dedicated a single piece of content to. And that topic, that category is self worth specifically. And this kind of came about because one, I think it's, I mean, it's evident that today's world, we are an at an all time low of self worth. I mean, it's very, very apparent that depression, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, lack of identity, lack of standards, work ethic, everything is just dropped through the floor.
It's it's, I don't think that's anybody that won't take anybody by surprise, but self worth is something that is going to be dropping lower and lower and has already dropped low and lower for most people because of the way things are going in the world with regards to these other aspects. So as we you know. Have a lower. Work ethic, as we put in less effort as we don't work as hard,
our self worth drops. As we worry more about what other people think, our self worth drops, right, As we have a lack of clarity or, or a blurred sense of identity and standards in our life and values, our self worth drops.
So it's a very, very obvious thing, but it's something that's not discussed enough and I want to dive deep into it, specifically with what research shows to be the truth, the answer, the the reason for this, as well as what research has provided us with to create a solution in a pathway. So I'm actually going to give you a four step process to improving yourself worth by the end of this podcast.
Now this also, I want to give a shout out to the author of this book because I've been reading this book and it is phenomenal. I actually am reading and listening, so I have it on my phone on my Spotify right here. So I know the title exactly. And that is the first rule of mastery. Stop worrying about what people think of you by Michael Gervais. I have no idea. He has a podcast as well.
In fact, I'm going to go to his podcast and shout that out too because his podcast is great and he's had it. For a while. He is like a performance specialist coach finding mastery. That is his podcast. So really, really good book. I, I purchased it a while back and I never dug into it. And if you're anything like me or you just have ADHD and you haven't figured out how to, you know, stick to the book better and actually get through it and read it and stay focused.
Try listening and reading. I think I've mentioned that in the podcast as a tip, but it is such a good hack for anybody who has ADHD or struggles with distractions in general, you know, and I do have ADHD. So I take any hacks I can get to make sure that I am staying productive, I'm staying focused, staying on task and, and I'm learning, right? And so I read as I'm listening to them talk at like 1.5 speed, which helps me read faster and I can absorb the information
better. So anyway, self worth is the topic we're going to dive into today. OK, so the first thing is, you know, the definition of this, like what is self worth? If we really look at self worth and self worth stems from self esteem and self esteem can be
looked at in different ways. And sometimes people I, I find that a lot of people avoid using this word because sometimes it can almost be. They actually did a study on this as well as I was doing my research for this episode where they looked at the differences of basically self esteem, high levels of self esteem and narcissism, which is kind of
crazy to think about. But if you have a high level of self esteem for some people who especially those who have low self esteem and tend to point the finger and blame, we can look at that as a, you know, and judge that person with high self esteem and call them a narcissist, call them cocky or arrogant because they have a high regards for themselves, which sounds kind of cocky and arrogant, right? And that's why they did this study.
But it's different, right? A high level of self esteem is more so attached to your values and, and your beliefs and your standards of life and what you think is right and wrong versus narcissism and cockiness and arrogance is like literally just, you're not wrong, everybody else is wrong. And you actually thrive and feel better when not not only are you
right, but others are wrong. So even if you're not right, you will actually force and change the story to make others wrong so that you feel better about not being right, which is crazy to say, but like, that's literally what it is. So when we look at self esteem, the definition I, I kind of took from, you know, Webster, but also just tweaked it a little bit is self esteem is your confidence in your own worth or abilities. It's somewhat synonymous to self
respect. When I say tweak it, I really just adjusted it to make it more readable and understandable. Not so literal, but self esteem is your confidence in your worth, your own worth and abilities. It's somewhat synonymous with self respect and that's why I love this because we talk a lot about self respect and part of the journey through the coaching process with us is this self transformation, right? The self formation we talk
about. And it's like you gain self-control, which helps you develop self-discipline, which leads to actions that get results and those results take you to self belief. And once you have self belief, you can begin to develop self respect because you have this high level of self esteem and confidence. So when we look at self esteem, it is your confidence in your own worth, self worth and your abilities as a person.
And it is somewhat synonymous to self respect in the sense that you really don't have one without the other. You accomplish self respect once you have a high level of self worth or self esteem, so on and so forth. OK, so that being said, how to improve self esteem? That's really what we're diving into today and there's four things we need to figure out and consider and and really look at. And so we're going to get into these all individually.
But when you're when you're thinking about self worth after this podcast and you're trying to remember, how do I improve myself worth? How do I focus on developing a greater sense of self worth and improving myself esteem? I want you to think of IDDDDIDDD. That's it, right? ID think of ID your identity right? And part of your identity is going to be built off of IDDD and that's what this. And I like using acronyms or frameworks like this so that it
just clicks and remembers right. The last one was actually an S but I just changed it to AD just so it was more remembral. IDDS isn't as remembral. So identify personal contingencies, diversify sources of self worth, develop non contingent self esteem, and determine and achieve intrinsic goals. So internal goals, internally motivated or meaningful? Goals. So identify personal contingencies, diversify sources of self worth and develop non contingent self esteem.
That is how you improve yourself esteem. It's how you improve yourself worth. But we're going to get into all of it. So before we do, we're going to look at research. So I want to look at research and this, but and, and again, like, you know, this podcast, my, my goal with this podcast is first to get people understanding where self worth comes from and why it's so important. To have a high level of self worth.
Ultimately, if we want to have a high regards for ourselves, if we want to live a meaningful life, a happy life, if we want to be satisfied with life, we need to have a high level of self worth. Because ultimately I heard this really good quote. It was from Chris Williamson of Modern Wisdom. He said that it's something to the effect of it. It's crazy to know that we chase in the pursuit of chasing the thing we want, we sacrifice the
thing we want. And what he's talking about is in the pursuit of chasing success, which you ultimately think is going to give you happiness, you sacrifice your happiness along the way. And so you have no happiness because you're sacrificing it to achieve this, you know, status or level of success that hopefully gives you the happiness that you didn't realize you already had.
Right. And if you read the the book, The Alchemist is all about this, like the boy goes on this journey looking for this treasure, and the treasure was actually back at home. So he takes a journey around the world, basically all to just find that the treasure was right where he started. And it's to say that look around you, you have value in your life right now. And if you see that value, you're going to be happier and you're going to have a greater sense of self worth.
So I want people to understand that and then I want to show people how we can accomplish a greater sense of self worth. And again, that's going to come from identifying personal contingencies, which I'm going to show you what are diversifying sources of self worth. So you're not relying on one single source to provide you
with self worth. You're developing non contingent things to create self esteem and self worth and then you're determining and achieving intrinsic goals, not just extrinsic external goals, things that don't really matter. They're more materialistic, if you will, status focused. OK, now I want to touch on the research because I just typically like to dive into the research. I think the research is a good way for us to have proof going into anything we discussed, right?
So when we think about something like fat loss, we want to have proof of concept around energy balance, metabolism, cardio, energy expenditure, stuff like that, right? I treat everything else the same way. I want to have research to back up what I am, what I'm tracking, to see what I'm teaching, what I'm thinking, what I'm coaching. And so the, the study I chose, there was a a handful on and probably more, but there was a handful that I went through on
self worth. And the one I chose is called Contingencies of Self Worth and it's by Jennifer Crocker and Connie T Wolf. It's back from 2001 and it presents a model emphasizing the domains in which individuals base their self esteem, known as contingencies of self worth, right. So these are the things that yourself worth is contingent on is what it's getting AT. And they believe that there are specific contingencies that most people have. This is very, you know,
synonymous with everybody. This is very common across all people that they put through these research studies is that everybody kind of has these they call domains and I'm going to get into these domains, but everybody has a contingencies in which they determine their self worth. So they only have self worth if blank, they only have self worth if they have enough blank. They only have self worth if they accomplish blank. They only have self worth if so. And so thinks blank of me, right?
All of which are wrong, obviously, but that's the point is first identifying this right? And so that's why the first thing was identify personal contingencies. So looking at the study, just doing an overview, the objective for them was to explore how self esteem is influenced by successes and failures in domains where individuals have
staked their self worth. The methodology was that the authors reviewed existing literature to develop their model focusing on how self esteem fluctuates based on personal contingencies. So they went through all the research on self esteem and and self worth and then they started. Actually. Creating a rubric if you will. And and they just were looking for how does self esteem go up and down when we categorize these variables and these variables were the
contingencies. When these contingencies are in place, what happens with people's self worth? The findings The model suggests that individuals self esteem rises and falls in response to outcomes in specific domains they deem important. It highlights the role of contingencies of self worth in effect cognition, behavior, regulation, social issues, and psychological vulnerabilities like depression. So self worth is dramatically impacted based on these contingencies is essentially
what they said. And the conclusion was that understanding contingencies of self worth provides insights into self esteem's role in various psychological processes and social problems. The authors propose that some individuals may possess non contingent self esteem, which is less susceptible to fluctuations based on external outcomes.
And that's exactly why I want to help you figure out what your non contingent domains are for you personally listening to this to help you develop more self worth. What can we outline that is, you know, creates a higher regard of self esteem and self worth because yourself worth is not contingent on the domains that they found to be most important and under the individuals, and I will categorize this as some of these domains were just negative impacts in general.
If blank person is, you know, basing their self worth and value on blank contingency for lack of better terms, they're screwed. They're basically it's a it's a no sum game. They're just not going to win. It's not going to work out. That's never going to provide self worth and value that you want. And the reason is pretty simple. Some of the factors are uncontrollable. Some of the factors are opinion based, not fact based. Some of the opinion, the
factors. Rely on other individuals or external factors you are not in control of again. And I'm going to go over that at the end when we go through the four steps to help you fix this. But some of them actually did provide. A greater level of self worth and it wasn't it's in a way it is contingent on those factors, but there's flexibility and, and a dynamic nature to that contingency or that domain that allows them more freedom and.
It creates more diversity. So I'm going to get into that, but this is really, really, really important. OK, now the the domains they study for this, these are the domains that or the contingencies. If you will. People's contingencies were all regarded in these domains, OK. And so for example, if you know, approval is the first one, so approval is the domain. Well, approval in general isn't the thing because you could not get to my approval and you could.
Not give a shit. You're like, I don't care. It doesn't matter that you don't approve of me or my actions. But if your father or your mother or your husband or your wife or your coach or whatever your client is, you know, if somebody important to you and, and somebody that like there's this one person that their approval does matter and dictates too much in your life. The problem with that is that it is. So first of all, that's the contingency. Approval is the domain.
And I'm overly explaining this 'cause I really want it to click in your in your head and your mind. So that you can take action and change approval is the domain. Susie right. Or husband or coach or influencer or teacher or somebody like the person itself. That's the contingency. Approval is the domain and this person is the contingency. OK. Or this group that's huge, especially in youth.
Does this group approve of me? We see this especially true in the world 'cause it's so divided in these like cliques in these groups. It's, it's pretty crazy and there's so much predicated on approval, people will dramatically change who they are. They change their identity, they change their life goals, they change their life actions. They change your environment, they change how they act, how they show up, their attitudes, everything based on whether or not a specific social group
approves of them, right. So approval is the domain, the group or the person is the contingency. So I hope that makes sense. And this is so unbelievably important because we have to be able to look at these domains and the contingencies we have within them and determine what gives this thing person, you know, level of approval, domain contingency, the right to determine myself worth. Can we even validate it right? If somebody says they don't
approve of me, why is that? Is it because of something actually truly wrong? Am I doing something wrong? Or is it because of a judgement, an opinion they have or an insecurity they have? So they're projecting their insecurity onto US by putting us down and not approving of us so they feel better about themselves and now we have lower self worth because of that? That doesn't make sense. That's not OK. We can't do that.
That's not how it works. And This is why we have to really, really assess these things. The other aspect is that we project our own insecurities and emotions. So somebody might everybody listening to this because going to get this, this analogy, you, you, for example, you send a text and somebody just sends you back, K or like likes the messages even better. They just like the message and you're like, damn, they got an
issue. Is everything OK? And you get this sense of disapproval, but maybe they're just busy, maybe they're driving, they're trying to avoid it, or maybe they're literally talking to text in their dashboard, right? They're like Siri, like this message. And that's what it does. You know what I mean? Like, who knows? Like we cannot determine our self worth or lower our own happiness and value based on the approval of others. OK so these domains there is 7 of them.
Approval. Physical appearance outperforming others, academic competence, family love and support, being a virtuous or moral person in religious faith or God's love. These are the seven studied domains that were in this research study as well as what they were when they extrapolated from all these other research. These are the categories that they kept getting back and basically everybody in these in the studies and in the, in the studies they looked at could be broken down into these.
Like when they saw fluctuations in their self esteem and self worth, it was based on one of these domains. The contingencies within that that fluctuated their self esteem and self worth were within these 7 domains, one of, if not multiple. And so just to go through them all real quick, approval is going to be the approval of others and or a social group like I mentioned before.
That was the one I kind of started with as an example, physical appearance is going to be obviously your physical appearance. Now that can be the physical appearance based on your role. This can be misconstrued too, because in some ways it's not about and I'm going to get into this more at the end when it's about application. But you know, if you've been a long time listener, if you've been following me for a while, I've said multiple times that
trainers need to be fit. Trainers need to look like trainers. If you're a strength coach, if you're a trainer, if you're a health coach, nutritionist and you are helping people with their health, you better be healthy. If you were helping people lose weight, you better be lean. If you are helping people get stronger, you better be pretty strong yourself. You don't need to be the strongest guy in the world, guy or gal. You don't need to be the leanest
guy or gal in the world. You just need to be relatively healthy and relatively lean. You need to be like approval on your own standards, right? And this is just a, this is more of a moral code because you took on a responsibility right now for everybody else. You do not need the approval of others to be the way you are, right? Like if there's one good thing that can come out of body positivity, that's it Is just accepting where you're at now the problem with most body positivity?
Things or gurus or people, influencers out there is that they tell you to accept where you're at and not change it. Don't change where you're at because you should love yourself. No, you should accept where you're at and you shouldn't shame yourself. But then you should change yourself because if you're overweight, you're unhealthy, right?
And so I say this because with physical appearance, there's an aspect that you should focus on your own standards and physical appearance and approval, not the approval. Others not how lean do they think I need to be? How lean do I need to be? Not how healthy they think I need to be. How healthy do I need to be? How healthy do I want to be? How lean do I want to be? How do I want to live in this body, right approval, physical appearance, outperforming others.
Outperforming others is going to be again a know some game. Because now you're basing it off of negative aspects for them. Because if I outperform others, that's good for me, bad for them. There's a competitive nature in life that is good. Because if I can correlate winning and competing with me getting better, me accomplishing my goal, that's good. But in this research, a lot of this is outperforming others, meaning I want them to lose so that I'm highlighted. That's ridiculous, right?
That's not going to help people develop self esteem. It's actually in a very empty level of fulfillment. There's no fulfillment. It's a very empty sense of, of accomplishment, academic competence. This is the you're basing yourself worth off of your test scores, off the grades you get off of how your teachers help you, how many certifications you have, so on and so forth.
And, you know, the reality is, is again, it's just not, you know, this is a completely different discussion, but I think it's, it's no common, you know, it's not a uncommon thought to say that the public school system is probably not the best anymore. You know, and a good way to think of that too is I heard this the other day and I was like, Dang, I never thought about it like that. You know, in high school you have to learn like Spanish or sign language or something like that.
I don't know about you, but I don't remember anything. I took Spanish two years in a row, didn't get good grade, but then less. I don't remember any of it at all. So like, you know, algebra, I'd have to really sit there and figure out how to do algebra if anybody took calculate, like, do you remember? So I say that because the grade I got in algebra didn't determine myself worth or value because it didn't do anything for me to create self worth and value in my life.
It didn't, it didn't, you know, provide meaning in my life. So, you know, academic competence is, is not going to provide you with anything because ultimately it it's a again, it's an empty achievement or goal based on a system that you know, is arguably not correct. But even then, it's a system that's not yours, so you can't base your value and worth off of a system that's not yours. Family love and support. This is one that I think has a
good and a bad side. But family love and support is just being, you know, your worth is based on your family love and support. And, and I'm going to talk about this later, but finding the proof and finding the facts because if you know you grew up or currently have like a troubled family and there's evidence of that, you can't base yourself worth off of the love and support of a family that it is not, it's not a good place. It's not a good person.
Like you said of people like it sounds really rough and I'm not really in a place to discuss this kind of thing. I'm not a family therapist or anything, but you get the point. You can't base yourself love, worth, value and esteem off of the love and value others are giving you if those other people don't also have their own self worth and value at a high level. Right. Hope that makes sense for
people. But the on the flip side, there's a lot of very, very happy, meaningful, passionate, loving, supporting families and that can add to yourself worth because that's meaningful to you. So if their love is meaningful to you because you aspire to be someone who is similar to your parents or your family, whatever, then that's I think there is some positives in that right. Being a virtuous or moral
person. This is this is probably the last two tend to be in the research shown as the most beneficial and the most likely to have a wide range of dynamic and flexible a lot of flexibility within it so that you can accomplish a higher level of self worth, value and esteem. If you are focused on being a virtuous immoral person, and the reason for that is because you are developing you, you cannot become in your head.
You cannot become a virtuous or moral person if you are not living by a moral code, which means that you have standards in your life. You cannot develop and become a virtuous person if you don't have virtues and core values in your life. Those provide meaning that are non extrinsic, non materialistic, non status
related. It's a really good thing and also you are creating meeting in other people's life because everything you do in order to become more of a moral and virtuous person, it 99% of time is going to be involving helping others and growth and development as a human. So this is one that I do think helps a lot.
And when we attach our self esteem more closely to becoming a virtuous or moral person, it's going to be better off because there, there's a lot of range in this and also there's no cap to it. There's no define like what is a virtuous person? What is a moral person? The only way you can actually define it by like a one word statement or a definitive word or explanation is to say that it's a good human being. That's it. So, so it's a great way because the bar is just up.
It's not like a set thing. It's just better than you are right now. And it's a constant and it's a continuous process. And when you have a continuous process that is leading to more growth, you are going to have a higher and higher level of self esteem and self worth. And then the last one is religious faith in God's love. And this is also very, very synonymous with being a virtuous or a moral person because at the end of the day, it's, it's a bar
that really can't be met. And it's not supposed to be. It's, it's just being better. That's why you know, there's a lot to talk about grace inside of having faith because being a virtuous person, being a moral person, having religious faith or, or accomplishing God's love. All those things are really just a continuous journey that you can reflect.
You know, failing and doing the wrong thing isn't always like there's limits to this, obviously, but doing, you know, screwing up every once in a while or, or not being your best is it's, it's acceptable. You have grace for that, you are forgiven, and then you can get better because of it because you're learning. And then you. In fact, one of the best ways to become more virtuous and moral is to fail, learn, and then use the lesson you learn from
failure to succeed. Because wisdom is basically knowledge from what you have learned through failures. If you read any kind of Stoic quote or parable, proverb, things like that, it is almost always going to be based on things that you should avoid. Avoid this. Don't do this. Like skip this. Like try to avoid this and stop this because it is based on. I. Failed. Here's the lesson. Avoid this at all costs now, so you don't have to learn the hard way too.
OK, so approval, physical appearance, outperforming others, academic competence, value or sorry, family love and support, being a virtuous person or moral person and religious faith or God's love. So those are the study domains. Now again, we're going to, you know, summarize this these domains and we're going to summarize the study and then we're going to, you know, go over what does this mean? And then just practically apply it with four simple steps.
So the summary is pretty simple. And 1st we let's define it again. Self esteem is your confidence in your own worth or abilities, and it can be synonymous and really parallel with self respect. Self esteem and this is the summary of of the the you know what I boiled that study and everything into in a couple quick things statements. Self esteem lies in what people believe they need to be or do to have worth as a person.
These contingencies of self worth are both sources of motivation and areas of psychological vulnerability. Meaning if you have psychological vulnerability because you have a contingency for yourself worth, then that is a very vulnerable place to be in because you are going to lead to a place of anxiety, depression, stress, overwhelm, low self
worth. If we want a high sense of self esteem, a high sense of self worth, self love, self acceptance, self respect, we cannot have predefined contingencies on what gives us that. We are going to be chasing things to create self worth that are extrinsic to what matters to us, extrinsic from the inside.
We need intrinsic morals, values, standards, goals that we can chase and become better from and in the process of becoming better, reflect and then gather our self esteem from these these non contingent areas of life getting better. It means I'm a good person. It means I'm constantly chasing improvement. It's not I got an A on this test. I made this much on my paycheck. I have this many followers, I lost this much weight. Those things don't define you and therefore they will not give
you self worth and self value. And that's why a lot of times when people chase weight loss on the scale and they finally hit that number and they're like, oh, I'm still not happy. They're shocked. But the reality is, if you would have reflected along the way and been more focused on, yes, losing weight and getting to your goal, but more focused on the process that led you there. And extrapolating all the things
you learned along the way. The person you became along the way, the values you gathered, the standards you set for yourself, the proof you have of accomplishing goals and taking actions beyond what you used to believe you could do. That's what creates a higher level of self worth. That's what provides confidence. This is a shocking fact, but the, the risk of, of committing suicide dramatically increases after gastric by gastric surgery. So I, I believe it's gastric surgery.
It's a weight loss surgery. The band, when the gastric sleeve is put on there is, I mean, obviously a lot is going on physiologically, but essentially when we have this weight loss surgery and we have a gastric sleeve put on, what we're doing is shrinking the stomach, right? And so we have less room for food.
So it's not only like you don't really want to eat because you're not hungry because those signals aren't being sent to your brain, but you literally can't because you can't put any more food in there, right? And This is why weight loss is accomplished. It forces you into a calorie deficit. Literally. The problem is, is that we take people who have had years and years, potentially decades and decades of using food as a coping mechanism and we remove their ability to eat it.
So what we also did, yes, they lost weight, maybe got healthier because of it, but what we also did is we removed their coping mechanism for stress, anxiety, overwhelm, depression, sadness, anger, and now they don't know how to cope. And so really think about this. If people who get gastric sleeve surgery, shrinking their stomach, being able to eat less, are more likely to commit suicide later on in life, it's
likely. There's no definitive answer here, but it's very likely that the reason for this is because they have essentially been forced to remove their coping mechanism. Their coping mechanism for stress and overwhelm and emotional states of being have been has been removed and they don't know how to cope with the
feelings they're having. But if we diet and we train and we do cardio and we slowly lose weight over time, we literally develop new coping mechanisms that help us create endorphins for happiness. They help us create coping mechanism for sadness and for emotional states that we are not ready to handle. Because you're still going to screw up and and overeat during the process of dieting. That's part of it. You're going to screw up and
you're going to learn. But over months and months and months and months of trying to lose weight, you will eventually have new coping strategies because you learn new habits, new practices, new tools. You got accountability. But somebody with a gastric sleeve is basically we're just ripping those coping strategies right away.
I found that study like I find that fact like that statistic just so crazy and it's so obvious why this is just like people don't zoom out and think of why you should not get weight loss surgery. This is why there's.
More to weight loss than just losing weight, weight loss is a journey that provides you with traits, characteristics, coping mechanisms, tools, practices, habitats, life strategies so much that leads to not just success, but new ways of dealing with the stresses that life's going to throw at you. And if somebody doesn't have anything but food in order to deal with life and the stress that comes along with it. And you remove that from them, what do you expect to happen?
All right, I'm going to get off my soapboxes. That's it's a touchy subject, but it just hits me hard. So my summary that was supposed to be quick. These contingencies are self worth of self worth are both sources of motivation in areas of vulnerability. And I just explained why. These are psychological vulnerabilities in a very extreme way. But in domains of contingent self worth, people pursue self esteem by attempting to validate their abilities and qualities.
This pursuit of self esteem has cost to learning, relationships, autonomy, self regulation in both mental and physical health. So we need a great change. So what's this mean? It means we need to find a different way of achieving and possessing higher levels of self esteem, self worth and self respect. Ways that don't rely on other people, ways that don't rely on potential uncontrollable factors, and ways that don't rely on potentially non factual
opinions. OK, we need to rely on facts, proof, and we need to find a way that we can essentially define what leads to having a greater sense of self worth, OK. And so if we look at that, that list of seven and we kind of expanded, there's even more things that can impact your self esteem and self worth that you need to be aware of. OK. And so I'm going to read these kind of slow because just in case you can write them down.
If you're driving, don't stop. Well, you can stop if you want, but don't try to write and drive. Core beliefs and values, thoughts and feelings, emotions and mental well-being, Experiences and interactions with others. Relationships both past and present. Health and physical fitness, Career and profession, activities and hobbies, Community and social status, Financial position, physical appearance and childhood experiences.
So on top of the seven that I listed before, which were approval, physical appearance, outperforming others, academic competence, family love and support, being a virtuous or moral person in religious faith or God's love, which are the primary domains. Some of these other categories that I listed fit into those domains and also these are the
most common of all. There is just an expanded list that I wanted to put here because there's a lot of things that can impact our self esteem and self worth. OK, so the, the four steps are really simple here. So the first one, I said them at the very beginning. And so the first one is identify personal contingencies. And in order to identify your personal contingencies, I think the, you know, like I said, there's these, there's these domains and you can start looking through these domains.
If you're a very self aware person, you have a lot of practice with coaching and therapy or mindset work, then you can definitely just take those domains and just start reading into it and really journaling and meditating and trying to figure out where within these domains do you find the contingencies in your life. But you can also just ask
yourself these four questions. OK, so questions to ask yourself in order to identify your personal contingencies #1 how much do you like, respect and value yourself? That is a hard one to answer, but you need to answer it. Which words would you use to describe yourself to a stranger when you self reflect and think about yourself? Are your thoughts generally positive, negative or somewhere in between? And do you believe you are worthy of others love, respect and consideration?
So most important part about this right now that we've identified personal contingencies through asking yourself these questions, how much do you like yourself? Basically like respect or value yourself. How would you describe yourself to a stranger? When you reflect? Are your thoughts about yourself generally positive, negative, or somewhere in between? And do you believe you are worthy of others love, respect
and consideration? We need to move into Step 2, which is to develop non contingent self esteem. OK. And so this is where we create proof. We need to develop new ways that determine our self worth. Because based on those questions, you're most likely fitting into the categories of some of these contingencies that lie within these domains that are determining yourself worth and whether you know it's right or wrong. Right?
We can sit here and say, Nah, like that's not OK for I can't determine my value and self worth based on the opinions of others or the approval of others. But you do it. So if you're doing it, that's the problem. If you generally feel less worthy when somebody doesn't approve of you, that's a bad sign. You can respect somebody's opinion. You can't let that dictate. You can be upset. They can be like, man, I really wish that they did approve me, but you cannot let it dictate
yourself worth great proof. OK, so number one, with all these questions, the answer needs to be hell yes. Like if we want to seek a hell yes. OK, so if anything was not a hell yes in any of those four questions, you need to ask yourself why without judgement. So why are you not answering hell yes? And when I say hell yes, think about it like this. How much do you like, respect and value yourself? Hell yes, a lot. Which words would you use to
describe yourself to a stranger? Hell yes isn't a good description of yourself, but you get the point. When you reflect and think about yourself thoughts, are they generally positive, negative, or somewhere in between? Positive and I would say hella positive let's say. Do you believe you are worthy of others? Hell yes right. So it's it's hell yes. Is is is a generalized. Vibe. Let's say to answer these questions, then you know you have to answer. You have to answer them.
And if they're not a hell yes, if they're not a very positive answer, you need to ask yourself why without judging yourself, because it's very normal. Then you need to remove the false narrative and contingency that you are placing on yourself worth and you need to go create proof by getting the result that will create more self worth. OK, so if we remove the false narrative, which would be like my physical appearance needs to be this way. Why?
Because this person believes that or this group of people only accept those who look like this or this person on social media that I follow says that you need to be this way. You need to remove that statement, that fact that that opinion and that false narrative in your head and you need to then go create the proof and the proof is. Going to be what you think. Because maybe it's somewhere in
between, right? Maybe you are 40 lbs overweight and you're feeling judged and you are lowering yourself worth based on the opinions of others and how lean you should be, but you also don't agree with their opinion, but you also don't think you should live 40 lbs heavier. OK, we'll meet in the middle. Remove the false narrative and, and really figure out what matters to you and then go
create the proof. Because what I don't want people to do is remove all the false narratives and then not go do the work to create what is actually going to give themself worth or value, right? This is a, there's two sides of this. There's the side of this that gives you grace and it feels good and we're like showing ourselves love. And then there's a side that's like, get busy and get to work. Don't make excuses.
OK, so that's step three or two. Sorry, Step 3 is going to be diversifying sources of self worth. We can't rely on solely one domain, right? And so remember the domains approval, physical appearance, outperforming others, academic competence, value, love and support, being a virtuous and moral person, religious faith or God's love. If we look at all seven of these and you're all in on approval, everything about yourself worth is based on the approval of others, that's an issue.
If everything is based on being a virtuous person, that's an issue. Right, because your virtue signalling or your definition of moral might not actually be aligned with the people in your family who love and support you or with God or with, you know, the academic goals that you've set or the career professional goals that you set, right.
And so don't rely on one domain. You should not be completely neglecting if, if you know, 20 out of 20 people don't approve of how you're being, you're probably not being a very virtuous or moral person. You're probably not being a good human being. You're not showing love, you're not showing support. You're definitely not outperforming anybody. You're not being competent with your work environment, with your, with your schooling,
whatever you're in, right. So we have to look at all these and like, am I generally approved by people? Yes. OK, cool. Then I don't need to rely all on approval of others or even one person. If generally people approve me because I'm a good human, Am I healthy and do I look good? Do I feel confident if I remove the judgements of others or or these images that I assume I'm supposed to look like, yes, OK, physical appearance check we're good, right?
So diversify your sources of self worth. They can't all come from one place. That's the most dangerous and vulnerable place you can be in is if all yourself worth and self esteem is wrapped up into one thing, right? Especially if you accomplish that thing because you're not going to be happy and then it just comes shattering down on you. And then the last thing, Step 4 is set intrinsic goals. This is, you know, setting standards for each domain.
And so if we go back to when I said the IDD, identify personal contingencies, diversify self sources of self worth, develop non contingent self esteem, which I just covered, and then determine and achieve intrinsic goals. So we want to determine and achieve intrinsic goals. And I say achieve because when you achieve it, you have the proof. When you determine the goal, it
sets you in a direction, right? Again, if we have the domains of approval, physical appearance, outperforming others, academic competence or I would say professional competence and growth, family love and support, being a virtuous moral person in God's love, like we have all these domains. We need to set a goal cuz it points us in the right
direction. Because just going in the right direction and working on ourselves develops more self worth because we see ourselves getting better and we see ourselves accepting where we're at and embarking on the challenge, choosing hard and deciding to grow. That increases self worth. If you just do one thing and you just decide that you're going to head in the right direction and you're going to work on yourself, you will immediately improve yourself, worth and value as a human being.
I promise. Then we want to achieve the thing. We don't want to just determine what our goal is and the path we're going to take. We want to achieve stuff. Because once you achieve it, that's how you have proof that you are capable. And when you are capable, you gain more self respect, plain
and simple. And you gain more self belief, which allows you way more confidence, gives you way more confidence and motivation to set the next goal and keep moving forward because self belief is literally confidence to keep swinging and taking action. OK so really really simple here guys. Number one identify personal contingencies #2 develop non contingent self esteem 3 diversify sources of self worth and #4 determine and achieve intrinsic. Goals.
These are intrinsic goals because they are goals that matter to you internally. They're not based on others. Self esteem and self worth is at an all time low in the world and there's a lot of reasons for it. But I hope and Bray, that this podcast gave you just a snapshot of what research shows to give you proof of what the facts are and what actually works to improve yourself worth and esteem and the practical
application. So you can just take it, you can run with it, and you can do it. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please leave us a five star rating review. It helps us so much more than you know. And go share this with a friend who needs help in this domain, in this category as well. I appreciate you guys. Listening, I'll catch you next time.