BEST OF: Self-worth 🥰

lot of people out there. So hopefully we can identify what self sabotage is and give some really practical steps by speaking to an incredible clinical psychologist about how we overcome it. I'm Sam Wood.

I spent the first decade of my younger life obsessed with trying to weigh less and exercising more, and it didn't matter how much weight I lost, I still hated how I looked. I still hated myself. I still didn't feel like I was good enough, and so I kept chasing. I kept going, well, if I just try harder, if I just try, maybe this little thing is going to, like suddenly get me to a point where I accept

and like who I am. But it never happened. I would lose weight, and i'd you know, be able to sustain that for a small period of time, and then very soon afterwards, I started emotional eating, where I would completely lose control around food, and I was just in a really bad place where, you know, I'd wait for everyone else to leave the house and I creep into the pantry and I'd eat all these forbidden foods, foods

that people, you know, I'll consider bad and unhealthier. I just couldn't control myself, and then someone would come home and I'd be sprung. I'd be caught, and I'd have to just pretend and hide wrappers and do all those kinds of things. And it's interesting because I spent so much of my adolescence thinking there was something very deeply wrong with me, that if only I had more willpower, if I tried a new diet or whatever it was, that I would finally be able to stick to it.

And then I started talking to a lot of people and I realized this whole emotional eating thing, there's hating out bodies, never feeling like we're quite thin or pretty or good enough. This is a very universal feeling. In fact, it's very rare that I come across someone who I kind of refer to as a unicorn. You know, they

have this like perfectly healthy relationship with food. They've never dieted, they eat when they're hungry, they stop wing there full, And I just think there are the exception and not the rule. And I would like to live in a world where it's normal for us to like our bodies, where healthy eating feels easy, where we exercise for enjoyment, not as punishment for eating something, and where we don't feel shame around our bodies. That's where I want to live.

in her head of what she has decided. Now, that's what I should be chasing, or I should be aiming for. I should be looking like. What's far more important, and that's the healthy body image, accepting your body the way that it is, training to actually love your body and take care of yourself, and exercising and moving and eating well to nourish yourself, rather than worrying about what you look like in the mirror.

just think about how widespread this problem is. We have mannequins in our stores that are so thin that even the smallest size needs to be pinned into play so that they can actually fit into the clothes that they be put on. We have photoshop and filters, which is

completely normal on social media. When you turn up to go and get a photo shoot on the front cover of magazine, you have a model, a very beautiful person who's probably died and trade really hard to actually look like the picture of health for that magazine, and then they still get photoshop with the lighting and the makeup and all that jazz. And one of my friends, she's a model, beautiful girl, and when she was modeling clothes, they stick a stomach on her like a belly bump.

And so even as pregnant women, what we see is what a pregnant woman looks like as someone who's completely modelly everywhere else and then has this perfect little bump. So we're constantly getting told that we are not enough. I feel like we've just been handing down disordered eating advice from generation to generation. It's one of the things

that can get passed down through mothers doesn't always. But you know, these little comments that we accidentally make when we talk to our kids, It's like, should you really be eating that?

these judgments that we make about other people's appearance. So even if we're not directing those comments to them, they're still listening. And it can create the sense of if I'm just perfect enough, then I'm going to protect myself from the discomfort of being human. And I think that it's such a protective barrier that we try to put out to try and stop ourselves from ever getting shamed

or judged by anyone, which is an inevitability. But when you create a culture in your family and your world and your life where they realize people are really judgmental, it can create a lot of residual insecurities.

to lose weight. Maybe the weight where you're at is exactly where your body feels comfortable, where you fall asleep easily because your brain's free to think of things other than calories or reps of the gym. Maybe that's where your hormones are balanced. That's where you have the energy to do the things that you love doing. Maybe this weight is exactly where you're meant to be. But because of all the things that have conditioned you to think you always have to weigh less, be more lean, be

more toned. You're striving to something that's actually making you deeply unhealthy, making you unhappy, and you are sacrificing your life and no one. We know this. No one at your funeral is going to go, oh, he had such great arms or it's such a flat stomach. No one's saying in these things right, and you won't be there to hear them, even if if you have such strange friends.

So I think we need to change what's happening in health, what health looks like, needs to shift, because right now we have this problem where you know, when you see a photo of yourself from like a few years ago, and you're like, I looked so good. Look at me, I'm a hearty and you remember at the time loathing yourself, going oh, I should have trained harder, I should have weighed less, I should have done something else. You know, this just shows us that body image and liking yourself

hasn't got to do with the goal weight. We can hate ourselves at any weight.

their bodies. From a food perspective, and they actually do need advice that you need to lose weight, because I can't be hypocritical and sit here and agree with everything you're saying when a big part of my job and my life is actually helping people that are at an unhealthy weight with a very unhealthy lifestyle make a change in a positive direction from that perspective.

healthy eating so much harder. So for example, let's say I'm like, Okay, I'm going to start running. I really want to lose weight. Now I start running, I'm doing the thing. But if I hop on the scale a week later, two weeks later and it's not going in the direction that I wanted to do. You think I'm going to keep running, true, I definitely won't. I'm going to stop running because what was the point of doing that If the only reason I was doing it was

to lose weight and I wasn't losing the weight. That healthy habit, it's gone. But let's say I said, oh, I want to start running because I really like how it makes me feel. It gives me more energy. I like that person that I am. That's awesome. What we currently have at the moment is a culture where we keep telling people you need to lose weight, you need

to lose weight. Research shows that it doesn't actually lead to sustainable weight loss, and it's like, you know, maybe for a few months, we can do it, we can stick to the rules, stick to the plan. But after a few months, and we know from research, within two years people typically have regained the weight plus more. So does that mean that I think that we should all just live these you know, unhealthy lives. Not at all. I mean I think when we change our motivation for

why we do things, like everything can shift. So, you know, finding exercise that you really enjoy is so fundamental. Some people are gonna love doing a circuit. Some people need to be okay with the fact that just going for a walk and turning up and moving your body and all the endorphin benefits that come from doing that, that is so useful. So I have this saying it's twenty minutes of like a gentle walk, it's better than an

hour at the gym that never happens. So we have this idea that we need to be perfect in order to be healthy. And I think if we just lowered our standards a little bit and we just accepted healthy enough, we stop putting the pressure around weight, I think we'd be a lot more consistent when it comes to doing these healthy things because we realize when we eat healthily we do feel good, and when we move our bodies

we do feel good. But if we keep doing it to look good, that doesn't actually serve us.

We paid attention to potential danger and avoided the emotional discomfort and sometimes physiological discomfort that showed up as a result to say get out because this could potentially be

a bad situation. Now twenty twenty two, we're not necessarily living life or dead situations in first world countries like Australia on a daily basis, but we still have prehistoric software in our brain, and that means that we're operating with brains that don't particularly like hard they don't like things that are uncomfortable, and so it's actually really normal to avoid effort to avoid something that just feels uncomfortable,

and it's not even really a problem. But it becomes self sabotage when the things, the behaviors that we start doing on a daily basis, those behaviors that occur more often in our lives than not. So we're probably talking about the forty to forty five percent of behaviors that make up habits. When those habits start becoming habits of self sabotage, habits of avoidance, habits that actually push us away from where we want to be, then it becomes a problem. But it means that we get very confused

about what is discomfort for growth? And what is discomfort for discomfort's sake? So quite often we're actually creating a cycle where we are making ourselves feel ever more uncomfortable because we're trying to avoid initial discomfort, but we're not actually stopping to go. Hold on, if I just got up at six o'clock in the morning and went for a walk like I said I wanted to do, then my hips wouldn't be aching from sitting on the couch.

of time. If those things keep happening more often than not, then it's likely that you're self sabotage, and we can call those things. We can give those things labels like procrastination. Sure, the most common form of self sabotage I see is procrastination, and you would see it too. Oh it's a bit cold this morning, I won't go for a walk, but I'll do it this afternoon, I promise I will. And then it gets to the softernoon, youtobo busy and the kids need something, so you just don't do it, You

don't go. And so if it's making excuses, procrastinating, negative self talk, managing time ineffectively, managing your own emotions ineffectively so that you end up creating your own stress. I mean I could sit here for probably the next twenty minutes of our chat and list off ways that we can self sabotage. But the ways listeners can identify it

within themselves is do you feel out of integrity? Have you been promising yourself that you would do something when it comes to your health and your fitness, and yet you're now in a position where you don't trust what you say. Your relationship with yourself is out of integrity now because you've lost trust with you. But before we pathologize it, before we pathologize you, before we pathologize every

single listener. The key here is when I procrastinate, when I promise myself this, but I don't follow through, when I make excuses, is it actually stopping your life from going in a direction that you want to go, Because then we have a problem. We have a disconnect between where you are and where you want to be. And if that cycle keeps showing up that there's a promise that you're making to yourself that you're not following through on,

then yeah, it's self sabotage. When we're talking about Natalie and she's at the stove thinking, this is the fifth time this week that I promised myself I would walk the dog, And here I am trying to get the toddler to stop putting Plato into the carpet, and I'm trying to pay the mortgage on my phone app while I'm stirring the sauce, and I still haven't managed to get out the door or put my running shoes on. And this is where the shame comes in. The quality

of our relationship with ourselves is what suffers. So you don't wake up in the morning with your wife saying, Sam, get up and go and do your workout, because otherwise I'm going to do X, Y and Z. No one makes you do that. That's a boundary that you keep with yourself, and it's the same for all of us. We have these internal boundaries, and if we constantly disrespect our own boundaries, what happens is we end up in a shame spiral, and that shame spiral further perpetuates the

cycle of self sabotage. So let's say Natalie wants to go for a walk, and she promises herself this afternoon that she will go for a walk, but it's cold by then, and the kids need dinner, and it's just easy to put dinner on now it is to do it later. So she starts doing that, and then it feels kind of relieving. It's very seductive, So self sabotage is super seductive. It actually feels better to go, you know what, I'll go tomorrow, And so in that moment

she does feel better. There's one thing that's come off her shoulders that she doesn't have to deal with right now. She can just focus on everyone else. But then dinner done, the kids are bathed, she's sitting on the couch watching a murder documentary. It might be me but you know, if you need recommendations, come let me know. She's watching a murder documentary on the couch and she thinks, this is not really where I want to be, right, I've promised myself that I would go for a walk, and

it's I didn't do it, and she feels guilty. And not only does she feel guilty, but she feels super frustrated with herself because she knows that this is not the life that she wants to live, This is not what she wants to be for her future self. And so then she starts to feel shame because something pops up. It's a library of mental images about all the times she's promised herself this year, because you know, January one,

she made a new Year's resolution. She said that it wasn't going to be like this because she wasn't going to have another year like this, because she's had five years like this prior. And this library of images comes up in her head and it makes her feel so shit about herself that that shame takes a hold, and

then she needs to avoid the shame. So she goes to the pantry and in the pantry is a little packet of that's hidden up the back so the kids can't see them, and it's mint slices, and the packet hasn't yet been opened because she bought them today, this afternoon. Wall Is, she wasn't going to open them though they're just thearing the case, the kids need a snack. But the shame is so big and it's so unwieldy by this time that she needs a band aid. So she

eats half the packet of mint slices. And then on top of that this internal rage, this internal anger at herself that she's done it again, and what happens is a continuation of the erosion between herself and herself. No one else is involved in this, Sam, You know that because you've seen this with your clients, right. No one else sees or hears this. It's just her with her.

kilos or fifteen kilos, whatever their Natalie situation is. And I hope there aren't Natalie is listening who are getting offended?

That is bullshit. So the first thing we must acknowledge is that you are worthy for being you, just for existing. And the second thing we need to look at is you're not changing because you need to because there is something wrong with you, because there is a part of

you that is defective. No, you're changing because you want to run around with the kids in the backyard because it's actually much bloody easier to get up off the floor when your knees don't hurt, it's because you actually really want to walk dog because you enjoy it, because there's whipbirds that sing outside and it makes you feel like you're truly living. You want to change because your eighty year old self is looking back at you right now and says, isn't there a little bit more to life?

That's why you want to change. So we change from that place. We don't change from a place of shame.