When you meet someone who's arrogant or overcompensating, as I was saying, often it's because they're feeling and insecurity. So when you send some arrogance from someone, you can actually if you really pay attential and you notice that they're actually dealing with a deep insecurity. And what that changes is that you now realize that it's not that that person is overconfident or that they think that much of themselves,
it's actually that they probably don't think enough of themselves. Hey, everyone, welcome back to our purpose to number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now today we're talking about insecurities. We all
have them, we all experience them. And whether you're someone that considers yourself to be confident or as most of your life together, I'm still sure that you have moments in your days, your weeks, your months, your years where you feel insecure. Think about it for a moment. When was the last time you felt insecure? Was it this
week at a dinner table over a conversation. Maybe it was about a subject that you don't know so much about, and you felt that everyone around you was highly educated or had an interesting opinion about it, you didn't even know what they're talking about, Or did you feel insecure on a work zoom call because someone had lots of great questions, lots of great ideas. Maybe they came up with something that was rewarded or talked of highly by
your colleagues and peers. But maybe people didn't love your idea, or you didn't even feel that you had something to offer, or maybe you felt insecure in your partnership. Maybe you weren't feeling the attention from your partner, Maybe you were feeling a sense of discomfort and they didn't notice or they didn't recognize it. The incredible thing about insecurities are
they show up in so many different places. They show up personally, professionally with our partners, with our parents, they show up in each and every area of our life. And the interesting thing about insecurities is that if you do nothing about them, they continue to grow, They continue to get worse. If you ignore them and just hope that they're going to go away one day, Unfortunately they don't. Now.
I was reading an article on Vogue that I found to be really, really fascinating and they were talking about how the survey that they did found that approximately nine people could remember the first time they experienced an insecurity and where they were when it happened, and the average age that respondents could recall first developing insecurity was sixteen.
And the finding show that men were thirty five percent more likely than women to have first been insecure about their personalities or abilities, while women were sixteen point eight percent more likely to have first developed insecurities about their bodies. And I know you can relate to that. I know
we can all relate to that. Now. The study and the article went on to say that about fifty nine percent of people who responded that they deal with body image issues said that insecurities were initially brought on by other people's comments. However, in contrast, most people who struggle with feeling insecure about their personalities, abilities, or aspects of their personal life responded that those negative thoughts have largely
been self imposed. Notice how fascinating that is that if it's about your body, it's based on other people's comments, and those comments mayn't even have been directly to you. Sometimes they are I saw this great video on TikTok i came across the other day and I was scrolling through my four you page and I found this guy.
But he was talking about how he posted a video a couple of days before, and it was a video, I believe at the No Time to Die Double O seven premiere, and it was one of those cameras that kind of goes around the base, right, it does this three sixty thing and you stand in the middle. So he'd posted that, and he said that that post got over ten thousand negative comments, ten thousand negative comments, and they were all directly towards him, and they were all
making jokes about his body. And so he was reading out some of the comments and I'm trying to remember what some of them said, but some of them were called yet this wasn't Casino Royal, It's Chicken roy out the man with the Golden Gut. There were just so many examples of negative comments, and he said something. He said that he could take them as lighthearted, banter and fun, but he said there are people out there who will
be thinking about this until they go to sleep. And he said, please, everyone who's leaving these comments, please please please take a moment to realize there's a human on the other side of the screen. And we can see that through this study that so many of our body image issues, sixty nearly say it comes from other people's comments. So that's when the comments are directly at you, but often it comes from comments about weight, about physical image that is just said in your vicinity. And so what
does this teach us? What are we learning here when we have an insecurity about our body image. What we're learning is that what we hear, what we read, what we see is going to inform what we think we should be. What we hear, what we read, what we see is going to inform who we think we should be. So if we're only reading gossip magazines, if we're only seeing what the mainstream media wants us to see, if we're only hearing and reading that, we're going to feel
pressure to be that. This is group think bias because you're surrounded by a group that thinks or feels a certain way, and therefore you adopt the same behaviors and mindsets. So have you been struggling with your body image for a long time? I want you to think about what are you reading, what are you hearing, and what are you seeing the most and how could you now this week read here and see different things. I want you to expose yourself to campaigns that have a positive body image.
I want you to follow people on social media that you believe are impactful towards you and your beliefs on body image. See, we can't always change from the inside out if we don't start from the outside in. Sometimes can be either all. But if you're someone who struggled for a while, we need to start changing your environment.
And I want you to deeply think about this because body image is something that we all struggle with and it's something that we're constantly identifying with as ourselves now. In the bugared Gheta, which is the book that I talk about, the first lesson in the bugwad Gheta is you are the soul, not the body, and C. S. Lewis interprets that best, in my opinion, he said, you don't have a soul. You are the soul and you
have a body. And it's amazing that something we have has become what we use to define how we feel about ourselves. It's like saying, I let my clothes define who I am, because your body is just simply something you're wearing on top of your consciousness, and you're letting that which is simply material and physical, define how you feel about yourself. Imagine you let your clothes define how
you feel about yourself. It's incredible to think that. But we're doing that with our body, which is a garment, which is a set of clothes. Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of our clothes. It doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of our body. But we also have to realize that we are not our bodies. So when it comes to body images, again, it's coming through other people's thoughts, other people's comments. Let's really reflect on that.
But it then says that our nargative thoughts about our personality or abilities usually comes from our own mind. So now it's not even about everyone else out there. Now, it's not even about the opinions, expectations, the reflections, the projections. It's about us. That voice in your head, that inner critic that says you didn't come up with a good idea, you don't know what you're doing, you're not good enough, you're not smart enough. What do we do about that voice?
What we have to do with that voice is we have to communicate with it. If you try to ignore that voice, it will get louder and louder and louder, like an alarm, because what that voice is doing is showing you something that you may want to improve. It's a signal and an alert. So if I'm at a conference and I'm about to speak, I've been invited there to give a keynote, to do a Q and A, to do a fireside chat, and I'm listening to the speaker before me, and let's say the speaker is speaking
about something I know nothing about. My insecurity signal goes up and I think, oh, maybe I need to know about this. I know nothing about this, and in that moment, the alarm is so loud you can't make a clear decision. So what I'll do is I'll sit with that later on and I'll say, well, do I really want to learn about that. This actually happened recently. I was at
a conference. I was hearing someone talk about crypto and NFTs and blockchain, and I know a fair bit from my digital background, but I haven't immersed myself in it. And I walked away thinking that's what I need to know, And then I started spending more time on it, and I realized that as much as I find it interesting and I want to be involved in the space, it's not something I want to obsess over. And so the
first point is you're opened up to the signal. You then want to make time for yourself to reflect, consider and really what I would say is assess your desire to be involved, and then you get to make a decision. Don't make a decision before it's moved on from being a distraction. What we do is we make the distraction our decision, but you can wait a bit longer and decipher whether it truly is something that you want to
care about. So this article is brilliant by the way that I'm sharing some of the studies from it says that the good news is that developing insecurities when you're young doesn't mean they'll stay with you forever. In fact, the survey found that over fifty percent of women and over fifty nine percent of men surveyed now feel that they fully come to love and accept themselves and so
dealing with insecurities. Their study shows gets better with age, and it talks about how actively working on loving things about yourself one step at a time may help to find self acceptance. And this is something that really blows me away. It's the definition of confidence. I checked this a few years back and it really stuck with me. So confidence is a feeling of self assurance arising from
one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities. Notice how confidence doesn't come from other people valuing you, validating you. It comes from you valuing and validating yourself. So let me ask you that question. Now, when was the last time you did that? When was the last time you sat down? And I want you right now to own a piece of paper, And I'm going to do this while I'm talking to you, because I believe it's so important.
I want you to grab a pen and piece of paper sitting at my friend's desk, so I'm about to do this on his but I'm about to just put a line down the middle of the page, and I want you to write on one side abilities, and on the other side, I want you to write down qualities. And I want you to make a list of your abilities that you value and your qualities that you value. So one of my abilities that I value is my ability to communicate effectively. I believe that I'm able to understand, synthesize,
make things really simple, accessible, practical, actionable. And by the way, it's hard for me to say that, because I start thinking about it, I said, oh wow, am I being egotistic? A? Am I being arrogant? Are people going to judge me? But I'm not saying it from a place of arrogant. I'm trying to just live up to this definition that is given of confidence. I want to be confident. I don't want to be arrogant. I don't want to be narcissistic.
Confidence is a feeling of self assurance, arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities. Now, let me think of a quality. I believe that I'm a loyal person. I really believe I'm a loyal person. I stick by people. I know your loyal listeners, and I appreciate you for that. Loyalty is a very important quality to me. So I want you to make a list of the abilities and qualities that you have, and I want you to appreciate
yourself for a second. Now, you may not love yourself when you say these, but I promise you that the more you notice this, the more you learn to love yourself. You're practicing it. See, first we have to be aware of who we are. Then we have to practice that. So now that you're aware of these you're going to beat them more. You're going to be more loyal. I'm going to be more communicative. And what that leads to is love. Because now I've made myself aware, then I
practice it, Then I love. Love starts with awareness and then practice. When you write down what you're aware of that you love about yourself, then you practice it more, you become it more, you love yourself more. It's a beautiful methodology. So first you have to become aware. Now on this list, I want you to choose one quality every single day, one quality for a week to share. So let's say my quality, as I said, was loyalty. I can think about lowerty and I can say, how
can I experience loyalty? How can I share loyalty with this person? How can my loyalty help them? Or another quality that I may say that I have is my ability to listen or that's an ability. There you go. I said ability to listen. So if you have the ability to listen, let me now be more of them. I of myself for listening. This is how we also detach from our body when we realized that we have qualities and abilities beyond our body to offer to others,
to offer to ourselves. See, we've been brought up to believe that the only thing we have to offer to someone is our body and our appearance. And when you feel that way, you question yourself at every step. But when you really dive into what are my abilities and qualities that I can offer to others, beautiful things can happen.
One key finding from the survey shows that sixty two percent of people who felt positively about their personalities and abilities above their bodies or other aspects of their life felt best about themselves. The study proves that how fascinating is that no matter how you feel about your body, if you really value your qualities and your abilities, that will supersede how you feel about your body. Again, that doesn't mean you neglect your body. It's just learning to
love yourself for who you truly are. Now, this is really really interesting to me. Approximately forty five point nine percent of survey participants cited caring less about other people's opinions as the reason they've come to accept themselves nineteen point six percent of people said their religion or spirituality helped them, and fifteen point seven percent had help from family or friends, and eight point eight percent of respondents said they got help from a therapist. Now, let's just
look at that, not thinking about other people's opinions. Spirituality which has community, family of friends, in therapy right down those right now? How strong are those for you? Are you seeing a therapist right now or a coach? Are you spiritually connected or religiously connected? Do you have family or friends around you that deeply understand you. Remember, it's not about the number, It's not about the amount of people. Remember, it's all about the depth, right, It's all about the depth.
So what I really want you to consider here is what are the habits that you practice that you think are signs that you are experiencing insecurity and you want to address them in this way. One of the first signs of insecurity, which isn't often seen, is saying yes to everyone, being a people pleaser, Because what we're saying is that I only feel secure when someone else feels that I am making them secure. How amazing is that
we are feeling. We're trying to say that our sense of security is based on us feeling like we make someone else feel secure, But how can we help someone else feel secure if we don't feel secure within ourselves. Another one is that we always criticize others. I find this to be fascinating. Sometimes I'll be appreciating someone and I can tell that someone may not even know this person, but they can't bring themselves to appreciate them because they
feel that it somehow reflects negatively on them. Right. So, I have a friend who's very ambitious and driven, and a lot of people around him will criticize him because his ambition and drive reminds them of their own lack of it. And when you start criticizing someone, start asking yourself, am I criticizing them because I'm insecure? And what your mind will do is you will justify in another way. You say no, no no, no, they're a bad person, they've
done bad stuff. No, no, no, they're the right person. But then think about it, sit there and think about it. Are you really doing it because you have and insecurity. I've done this exercise myself and I realized that it helped me understand that I was insecure because I wasn't conscious of my own abilities and my qualities and I wasn't practicing them enough. Actually, when you let yourself criticize someone else, you become those qualities. So now you lose
yourself completely because you start to do that. Let's say you don't like someone complains, Now you complain about them complaining. What have you become? You become a complainer. Let's say you don't like someone who criticizes, but you're criticizing them, You've now become someone you don't love and like. Let's say you don't like someone one because of how they treat their friends. Ask yourself, honestly, have you ever done
that to someone that you were friends with. It's so important to remove insecurities from within ourself by pulling out the route and trying to change ourselves, not forcing it to be changing anyone else. So when it comes to your insecurities, please don't avoid them and look out for where they start to grow. Another way they start to grow is in our constant seeking a validation. Right, how many people do you know where they're constantly checking how
everyone feels about everything they do. Right, You're always trying to be like, well, what do you think about this? Do you think it's a good idea. Yeah, I should do this right. And so when you see yourself falling into that trap, ask yourself, why am I doing this? Why am I going through this? Why am I checking with myself? Why don't I feel confident in myself? And the third way we do it is we do it
through overcompensating, right, overcompensate for how we feel about something. So, to me, insecurity is something that I've dealt with throughout my whole life. And you actually find that a lot of people, their careers, their journeys are compensating for an insecurity they felt. So some people chase success and fame because they felt unwanted when they were younger. Some people chase money because they felt unstable when they were younger.
So our pursuit is based on our insecurity. Now, this is something that we really have to think about because if your pursuit is based on your insecurity, when you conquer that pursuit, when you get to the top, you will still feel insecure. Think about that for a moment. If your pursuit is based on an insecurity, even when you accomplish that pursuit, you will still feel insecure because the insecurity did not come from a lack of that thing. The insecurity came from a lack of you feeling you
had that, a feeling that you can create that. Right, It wasn't that you didn't have fame or success. It's that you felt rejected or you felt isolated or lonely. So you believe that successful fame would feel that, But actually it was a different healing that was required. You're almost applying the wrong medicine to the wrong thing. When
you make money. What that gives you is money, which is great, but it doesn't give you stability, security, a feeling of confidence, because that can only come from that thing. It's like saying I'm flying to New Orleans, but I'm expecting to land in LA. It doesn't work like that. It's a different ticket, right, Developing confidence and becoming successful are different planes, and we're taking one hoping for the other one to happen. So I just really don't know
how that ever became the way we live. But as you can see, it's a recipe for a lot of long term challenges and issues in our lives. And I wanted to share this too that a lot of people when I first met them, I thought that they were egotistic, or I thought that they were arrogant, or I thought that they were cold, and I realized they were just insecure.
When you meet someone who's arrogant or overcompensating, as I was saying, or you meet someone who's cold, or you meet someone who's kind of feels cocky, often it's because they're feeling and insecurity. So when you send some arrogance from someone, you can actually if you really pay attention, and you'll notice that they're actually dealing with a deep insecurity. And what that changes is that you now realize that it's not that that person is overconfident or that they
think that much of themselves. It's actually that they probably don't think enough of themselves. Right, we think that people think too much of themselves. Actually they don't think enough of themselves, and that's why they end up in that position. So, if you have a friend who's dealing with insecurity, you may think telling them that they're amazing or telling them
that they do something really well will solve that insecurity. Now, the reason that doesn't work is because when you give that glorification or those statements to someone, they now think they have to constantly give up to that, so that creates another sense of insecurity. So let's say they did something well and you said you did that really well, They're now insecure that they won't be able to do
it again. So actually, when you're working with someone who has insecurity, or you have a friend or family member who has high insecurities, and from your outside perspective, you're confused because they look amazing, they're doing amazing, successful in their own right, and you're wondering, how is this person anxious? Let me remind them of how great they are. It's actually helping that person remember how great they are. You reminding them or remembering how great they are is not enough.
They need to develop that muscle, right, They need to develop that skill. You telling someone you believe in them is different from them believing in themselves, and you believing in them sometimes actually makes themselves doubt themselves more because they're scared they can't live up to your belief. And I did this for a long time. I literally should tell people how amazing they are, how incredible they are.
I'd be specific about it, and I started to realize that was part of it, but that didn't solve the issue. I had to help them build the skill. That's why this activity I've given you today, write down your abilities, write down your qualities. If you encourage them to do that, If you do this, if you share this podcast episode with your friends, and you do that together, you'll start
to see incredible benefits even in your community. Because guess what, if all of you are discovering your passions, if all of you are understanding your strengths, your qualities, You're going to be in an atmosphere of a group of people with high self esteem. And when you're in that group, you're going to learn from each other, You're going to grow together. There's going to be a lot more abundance in that space. I want to thank you so much
for listening to on Purpose, for your ongoing commitment. I deeply appreciate each and every single one of you so much, and I want to share with you some incredible reviews that you all left. And here we go. So, I mean, there's so many, I'm just scrolling through trying to find one. Here's Murlock Holmes. I really enjoyed listening to this podcast. First of all, Jay's voice is so soothing and motivating. Thank you so much. Secondly, the topics covered and guest
speakers are great for real world applications. I've sent so many links to my friends they probably think I'm a sponsor. Love the information and practicality of it, and sometimes I just laugh because it feels like they are speaking directly to me in my situation. Great podcast, definitely worth a listen, Merlock Holmes, Thank you so much. This one is from t Perry. Someone suggested I Rethink like a Monk about a year ago, and I've been hanging on every word
j she has said ever since. This podcast has changed the way I communicate, spend my time and energy, what I eat, how I view my challenges, everything. I'm so truly grateful for each episode and learn so much every time I listen. Thank you so much. And this one's from Mel crying right now because there's so much I relate to here. We all go through trauma, and I've really been bad at putting myself down and accepting that I was that woman. I'm seeing the woman I am today,
against all the odds. I deserve love and abundance, and so does everyone else. The beauty held within me is so much more than anything else I see it when I look at people walking by genuine love and empathy I have for others have many layers, and every layer is important. I hope you'll remember that I see you, I acknowledge you, and I appreciate you, and I can't wait for you to apply one thing from this podcast and watch how your life changes. Thank you so much. I'll see you next week