I won't let my body out be outwait everything that I'm made done, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm learning love who I am again, strong, I feel, I know every pardon me, it's beautiful and that will.
Always out way if you feel it.
But you all, she'll some love to the view. I get there.
Take you one day and did you and die out way?
Happy Saturday outweigh Amy here and Leanne Hello, and it's ingredient four day. The last few Saturdays we've done ingredients one, two, three, an hour of four, which is your version of self worth? We are working through a series called do you Know Your True Value and Worth? So your version of self worth? Leanne take it away?
Yeah, for sure. And it's so different for all of us obviously. That's why I want to invite all of you to personalize it, individualize it because I know that for anybody who is stuck within the confines of an eating disorder or disordered eating, it feels like our weight, our body, what we're eating, what we're not eating is like almost like the central focus of our lives. It becomes this bubble of obsession. At least it did for
me and by extension. It's like if I'm not weighing a certain amount, or if I didn't eat a certain way, or if I didn't have a certain amount of discipline, it was like, who the heck am I? Because I was only valuing myself and measuring myself by those things. So my question for you is really to just and again this is all coming from a place of getting really real with ourselves, but with love and compassion, no shame, but just acknowledging, like what am my measuring and weighing
to comprise my own self worth? Okay? And for a lot of us, it's these external quantifiables things like gene size, calorie count, bank balance, likes on Instagram, number of matches on a dating app, whatever it is, compliments you got that date, like whatever it is right that you're using outside of you to really comprise your self worth. And for the record, there is nothing wrong with these things contributing to your self worth. We are all human and it is so natural and normal for us to care
about those things. But what happens is when that's all that we're using, and that's all that we have taking over our like our worthiness bank account, so to speak, When we don't have those things, or we can't find those things, or those things transform or change, or maybe
it's out of our control. We don't know who we are if our identity is so rooted in idols, like I know, for me, I was chasing skinny, or I was chasing in a relationship, or I was chasing you know, fame at one point in my life, you know what I mean? That seems like moons ago. But again, like we don't know what we don't know, and if that's all that we're chasing, and we can't comprise it within ourselves and the soul, the essence of the identity of who we are, it's not pretty. It feels empty.
You know, I'm thinking too of like chasing people's approval affirmation, making sure you're too could like I like to hear that a lot, and I've had to check in with, well, where does my self worth come from? Does it come from someone else saying something to me? And it could be truly from someone that I don't even maybe necessarily respect, But it didn't matter. As long as I was getting affirmation, it was fine. But then when I backed up, you know,
I could start to see a bigger picture. I was like, Oh, I maybe don't even respect the people or the person or whatever that I'm craving this from. And I don't even know that I can trust what they're saying anyway, So why am I putting so much emphasis on what they're gonna tell me? And this goes back into my childhood. Words of affirmation are my love language. But I think that even can get unhealthy. You can't you can sort of use that as an excuse I did. I'm like, well,
it's no big deal. Words of affirmation are just my love language, so of course I need that as fuel and it'll be great. But I had a very unhealthy relationship with it, and a lot of my self worth would come from what I was hearing from other people, when at the end of the day, some of the people that I was wanting to hear it from I didn't even respect or think they told the truth. So why would I want to hear it from somebody else when I can't even trust them, Like, it has to come from within me.
Yeah, and to be able to receive it when you do hear the things that are good, you know, and you unknowingly created a couple of really important distinctions. You know, first and foremost, there's this difference between desire versus require, right, and it is the human part of us to desire all of those things, the affirmation, the numerical things to go in the direction that we want them to go in, to look a certain way, feel a certain way, all those things, like it's human of us to desire them.
But when we require them to feel a certain way about ourselves and we don't know who the heck we are without it, that's where it gets to be really dangerous, you know. So the desire versus require.
It makes me think of, you know, whether or not you can trust what the person is saying. Like my example is words of affirmation and just taking whatever I can get, soaking it all up right, even if it means nothing. Like when it comes to a gene size, what does that even really mean? Like there is no across the board. Society has told us at times certain sizes might be desirable, but we're moving past that, we're evolving, thank goodness. But also even within a company, two sizes
of a gene might fit differently. Or if you line up five different companies, their version of this size and their version of that size, they're all totally different, So we put all this weight into something we can't even trust that this number is even is what this number is, it's just what it's been assigned.
Yeah, And it's a great example of like, where are you using other people's measuring sticks as a measuring stick to measure yourself but you don't even agree with that measuring stick or you don't even know what it is that they're measuring you, know what I mean? And we touched on this a bit in the fashion series that we just did about finding your self worth and your self image through fashion, and that's one of the things that comes up too, like and it's so relevant to
this conversation. If you are if your entire mood is dependent on whether you are in a certain size, like you know that your self worth and not that that's bad or wrong. We want to just really reiterate that it's not bad or wrong. We're not shaving you for it,
but it's probably not serving you. And that's why I talk about this idea of your version of self worth and the other thing that you mentioned that or really just show these patterns, all of these ingredients that we're talking about whether it's self care or self acceptance, or self esteem or self worth, or we're going to talk
about self endorsement. There's so much connectivity and crossover because what you're weighing and measuring in your self worth could also be where you're looking for endorsement or affirmation from other people. Right, So there's so much crossover to all of this. But that being said, it's really important that we have our own measuring stick and almost like our
own value system. Like kind of what you were just saying, you're like these people that I'm trying to get affirmation from, we have different values, Like they don't vow you what I value. You know, So if you're trying to get somebody who God love them but is obsessed with their weight and has their own body dysmorphia to think that you have a beautiful body or a pretty it's like, what value system or measuring stick are you using to
try to gain somebody else's affirmation? Whereas what would it look like for you to feel beautiful and worthy and powerful independent of other people's measuring sticks. But also a lot of times it's not other people, it's our own I know for me, you know, the scale was a big thing for me. If I weigh a certain amount, oh, I can feel awesome. And if I weighed a half a pound more, I was my self esteem and self worth went down the tubes.
Well, so what's something that we can do to process through our version of self worth or trying to tap into that which I know each ingredient of this series is very important. They're all players and eventually getting yeah to our true value, but for self worth specifically, Yeah, So you know, just to give you a couple examples
of what this could look like. And again it's so individualized for each person, but we'll just stick with the example of like gene size or weight, because I know that's a big one that comes up with people that have body dysmorphia or any type of disordered eating eating disorder. You know, I want you to think about, like in your mind, you might have this idea of what your air quotes perfect body is right, but really outside of
the body, like how do you want to feel? And most women I talk to you, they want to feel peace, right, they want to feel freedom, they want to feel beautiful, Like beautiful is another one that comes up, right, peace, freedom, peace of mind, worthiness, beauty right, and so yeah, absolutely connected to yourself, connected to others, feeling connection from others. So when you think about what you're weighing and measuring, I want you to think about what do you really want?
Things like what we just talked about, connection, freedom, peace of mind, and what can you start weighing and measuring to actually get those things? Like how can you reverse engineer those things?
Because the truth is is that at the end of the day, I mean, this was so much love, Like weighing a certain weight and being a certain sized gene is not going to make you feel the way that you think you want to feel. Only feeling though those feelings and integrating with that value system so to speak, is going to help you create that so instead of you know, part of it. Again, it's a bigger conversation
than this, but this is where I walk through. I invite people to walk through their values of what are they truly weighing and measuring and is it serving them? Is it put in a happy face or a sad
emoji next to it? You know, and literally just having that awareness of like, wow, weighing and measuring my gene sized, calorie count, carb count, whatever it is, is actually not making me feel beautiful, powerful, happy, free, connected, peace of mind, all these things, and just again it's a pattern interrupt of just acknowledging that and seeing the data, because the drama is, oh, when I lose the weight, then I'll feel powerful, beautiful, happy, free, all the things. And it's like, no,
that's the lie. So just set apart, setting apart the truth from the lie.
And I'm just thinking of how much time I missed out on connection with others. That's probably why that's a big one for me. That stood out because when I was so consumed with other things, I didn't have space for that. And then therefore I was like, I didn't know was I even worthy of certain relationships and connection
and you know, true happiness and joy and whatnot. So I think, yeah, making a list of what you want and then weighing and measuring, Okay, how much time did I maybe spend with friends this week or someone outside of me? How much time did I spend potentially serving someone else this week in what way? How much time did I spend you know, with nature today or this week,
whatever it looks like for you. Starting to put more emphasis on the other things that can actually have a positive impact on your overall well being and your overall self worth.
One thousand percent. Yeah, and you mentioned something too, you know, the connection piece of the puzzle to yourself to others, but then feeling worthy of other people feeling connected to you. Like that's a big thing too, you know, and when you're so in your head about but wait a minute, if only they knew that my gene size went up asize this past six months or whatever it is, you know, but also like noticing when you're around people that don't
weigh and measure what you're looking to weigh measure. So a big thing that happens with my clients when they find freedom within themselves is they notice that sometimes there are around friends that are you know, nitpicking on their bodies or being like oh I can't eat that, and presenting with more of the disordered habits, and they realize like, wait a minute, like actually, what I'm now valuing is
a bit different than what my friends are valuing. And that's okay, not making it bad or wrong, but realizing that sometimes the connection that we were seeking, like you were saying, is not always the connection that's going to really feed our souls.
I like that and I think until you give yourself that permission to start looking for it, or you give yourself the space or the bandwidth or the capacity to even tap into what true connection will look like and what really is going to help fill your cup up when you're in the throes of it, you just don't have the you don't have the space for it, but you will. You will.
Yeah, and you can't see what you can't see, like, trust me, there is connection and belonging like you wouldn't even imagine on the other side of this, But you've got to feel it for yourself first.
Love it, LeAnn. Where can people find you?
You can head on over to Leannellington dot com. I'm also Leannellington on Instagram. If you want to hear more about the rewiring your brain side of all of this food and body stuff, you can check out my free masterclass over there as well.
And Leanne also has a podcast It's called What's God Got to Do With It? And I'm at Radio Am on socials if you want to find me there.
Bye bye,