Unlocking Self-Worth: The Power of Self-Love and Confidence

Hello and welcome to another episode of Words With Myself.

A common phrase many of us will have heard when we were younger is, treat people how you want to be treated. And this was typically used to make children more empathetic and understandings of the needs and wants of others and how other people feel.

But as we develop and we grow, we tend to bastardise this phrase into treating other people better than we treat ourselves when really the inverse of the phrase is true and maybe even more importantly so in that you need to treat yourself how you want others to treat you. You need to treat yourself with respect if you want to be respected. Your self-worth produces your boundaries, your honesty produces trust. All the ways that we work on ourselves has this outward manifestation.

We believe that we need to change the outside world to feel better but actually we need to change within us to change what is outside of us. For instance if you have low self-esteem and you go out in the world and you're going to notice people looking at you and you might think oh my god that's they're laughing at me they're criticizing me they're judging me or all these terrible things and in turn that makes you more self-conscious and anxious.

It deepens that belief until it corrupts us the color drains from our face we begin to sag we begin to look gray our hair looks withered our skin dries all of that anxiety and stress begins to make us into that belief that we have when when you have a good self-image your color begins to return.

And you feel strong and you feel confident and your skin looks healthy and you're not getting spots your hair gets thicker and your nails begin to grow there is a real visceral reaction to that negative self-belief and things change just as much when you think positively when you love yourself the world can see that i'm sure we've all seen someone at some point maybe that a complete stranger that we didn't know and we see how they carry themselves and

that confidence and that aura and it's very magnetizing and it's because that self-belief that self-worth draws you in and it draws people in and it makes it that much more attractive it makes it that much more rare and special but people will say and justify it by saying that no it's because people are beautiful and that's why they're confident or they're in shape and that's why they're confident that's why they have this magnetic charm or this aura

or this draw but it's not that because there are plenty of attractive people who don't have that because they have low self-esteem or negative self-worth because the love that they have for themselves the respect that they have for themselves the care they take of themselves that's what's so attractive that's what stands out and the reason this is so prevalent in our society is because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Once you believe it, or once you get teased once when you're a kid, everything onwards from there becomes a confirmation. Each experience that you have that's negative, maybe someone teases you, or someone looks at you funny, or it doesn't even have to be real, but it's real in your own head. You are believing this myth about yourself that you're ugly, or you're stupid, or you can't do something.

Any negative belief that you hold, you didn't believe that when you were born, you were taught that about yourself. And then, even if it's not true, even if it's something that they're completely wrong about, we then make that true. There are people that were teased for being dumb who are really smart, but because they were seen as stupid or because they were teased, they didn't have the confidence in themselves, so they never applied themselves.

And then, lo and behold, they never reach their potential, and that belief limits them for their entire life. Because they have no confidence, they don't feel like they can do things, and because they don't do things, that means that they get nowhere. And all of a sudden, that self-talk that you've had for your entire life saying that you're no good or that you're worthless or that you're rubbish, you're proving that to yourself.

You believe that you are a certain person. I don't know what person that is or what the characteristics are of that person, but you know for you, you would label yourself in a certain way. You would say, I'm strong or I'm weak. You know, I'm a positive person or I'm a negative person. I'm an honest person. And even if you were being honest with how you felt about yourself, that doesn't make it a true reflection. Someone else might have completely different perspective of how you are.

You might see yourself as quite a timid person and then someone sees you as really assertive because you are assertive in ways that they are not.

For many of us, we would do well to just forget the idea that we know ourselves, that we have an accurate understanding of who we are. Completely erase that from our memory and go again and try new experiences. See what you can do because if you could literally do this, a weak person would go to do something that required strength that they probably couldn't believe that they could do and would smash it just because they didn't have that doubt.

If you didn't think that you couldn't do it, you would probably do it. For many people, if I just said to them, go run a 5k race now, they might not believe that they could do it. But if they didn't have this belief and they just went, okay, well, I'll see what I can do. And they went and went and went and just gave it their very best attempt. There is a high chance that they would be able to do that.

This idea of I can't do this is often very skewed because if someone was to be chasing after them with a gun, the chances are that would be incentive enough to be able to complete the race. And that's because people don't frame Kant in a way of absolute. Like, there's no way I could do this. We may say statements in that idea that...

Truly we know that if we were really pushed or really incentivized you know if we had to do it for a million pounds or something like that we would figure out a way to get it done or even something not skill-based if we talk about somebody getting up on stage and talking in front of 5,000 people people say I can't do that and you know that they can all they have to do is walk their two feet onto stage and talk and they can do both of those things

so there's no physical limiter preventing that from happening.

It's all psychological. And this psychological profile that we have comes from our belief and what we believe of ourselves, what we believe ourselves to be capable of. And the chance of you having an accurate indicator of what you're actually capable of is very unlikely, probably close to 0%.

You can only really know what you're capable of when you're put in that position and tested and most people have not been tested to the fullest of their capacity they've not been tested to see the absolute feat of strength that they can achieve or the absolute feat of bravery or perseverance or courage most people are not coming across these opportunities regularly so they don't know what they're capable of and even if they knew what they were capable of at one point in time that doesn't mean

that they know what they're capable of at a different point in time. So what we end up doing is this sort of guesstimate. We try to be sort of accurate when we're talking about what we think we can do and what we don't think we can do. And if you're a pessimistic person you're going to be very reserved in what you think you can do. And if you're a really optimistic person with yourself you're going to believe that you can do a lot more than you're capable of.

You don't really have an accurate indicator unless For instance, if you do something really regularly and you compete in something, you're going to know pretty well whether you're good at it or not or where you kind of rank in terms of global skill level. But if you don't do something often, or if you don't challenge yourself and compete often, you're going to have no idea what you're capable of. And most people don't compete at all, maybe even ever in their life.

They've never seriously competed for something. They've never gone head to head with somebody who wants it equally as much as them, or is fighting for that position as well as them.

This idea of competition has been taught to us as being unhealthy and combative and aggressive and you shouldn't be like that but it is healthy it's healthy so that you get that sense of self-worth so you know that you're capable and you have proof of that but many people avoid competition so what they're left with is this anxiety this uncertainty of who they are or what they're capable of and they're either arrogant and they believe that they can do more than they really can,

or they are anxious and have low self-confidence because they don't believe that they're capable of much.

So in order for you to gain that confidence, gain that self-worth, you need to be competitive. And that can be with yourself. You don't have to compete against other people. You can compete with yourself. You can set yourself goals and challenges and make them so that they are unrealistic and try and get as close as possible because you are going to get far closer than you believe.

And that will start to rewire things in your brain from where you believe that you weren't capable, you weren't smart, you weren't funny, you weren't this, you weren't that. You will begin to challenge yourself and see that I was not right about myself at all. I was not accurate.

You may think that you wouldn't be able to run that 5k, but if you ran 100 meters every day and then worked up to 200 meters every day and then 300 meters every day, then 400 meters every day in enough increments to get you to that 5k. Sooner or later you'd be like, wow, I didn't even think that this was possible and now I'm actually doing it.

Oftentimes it's more about breaking up a task into, you know, if it's really complex, break it up into as simple increments as possible and then you can slowly work your way to the goal and slowly build up your confidence over time.

It's much harder to build confidence in something that is like your physical appearance because you have all of this messaging around you telling you what is attractive and what isn't attractive and you have to completely disregard that completely detach from the outside world and outside feedback you don't have that feedback loop because some people will find you attractive and some people won't what is important for you to do is build that relationship within

yourself so that it's not important what other people think it's not important the feedback you get because you know but if you were eating your favorite meal and somebody come over to you and said that that was disgusting you would know that it's not and it's just that person's opinion you would know that you enjoy that meal and you enjoy the flavors and appreciate it but you don't treat yourself with the same certainty you allow others feedback to override

your own whereas you need to know that you are capable and strong and beautiful and amazing you need to know that and you need to appreciate yourself.

You need to love yourself for who you are. You need to appreciate the fact that you're a good person and that you're honest and that you try to help people and that you're kind and considerate. The second that you begin to appreciate yourself and respect yourself and care about yourself, to treat yourself as a close friend or as a loved one, to treat yourself with the utmost love and respect. You will begin to change. Your body will change. Your physicality will change.

Your mental state will change. The amount of stress you have will change. Your hair, your skin, all of it will change. Your physical manifestation will change because of that self-belief. If you believe that you are ill, you're ill. If you believe that you're sick, you're sick. If you believe that you're stupid, you're stupid. All of that, You need to believe the things that you want to see from yourself. You need to work on that relationship that you have with yourself so that you

are everything that you want from yourself. You are kind and considerate to yourself. You love yourself. You listen to yourself. You respect yourself. You take time to understand yourself and you listen to what's important to you and you make that happen. You enforce those boundaries. You stick up for yourself. You make sure that your needs and wants are taken care of. Not only will other people begin to see it, but it won't matter to you what they see. Because you have you.

You take care of you. You have your love. And everything else becomes a bonus, additional. You don't depend on it. You don't need it. So it has no power over you. People can't take something away from you. They can't make you feel terrible or make you feel unworthy or unloved. Because you have you. And nobody can take away that relationship. Thank you for listening.