00:00 

This is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 35, "Self-Esteem." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Well, happy day to you. I hope you're having a great one or if your day is just starting, I hope that you have a really terrific day. I know that most of my podcasts that I listen to, they show up in the morning and I listen to them while I'm getting my hair and makeup done, while I'm getting ready and it's a great plan that works for me and I love that I get them done and I'm listening to something positive while I'm getting stuff done. So if you're like me, you listen to them in the morning, that's great. Happy morning to you. If you listen to them later in the day because that's more convenient then I hope you're having a great day. 

00:54 

Alright, we are going to start off today by talking about self-esteem. So this is a continuation of the theme from the last two podcasts. So we talked two times ago about forgiving ourselves and then last time we talked about self-compassion. And within self-compassion we touched on self-esteem and so today I want to talk a little bit more about that because I think that self-esteem is something that our society really gets focused on. It always seems to be a hot topic in the media. I don't think you can ever like go through the line you know at the store and see these magazines where there's not something about how to have greater self-esteem, especially among women focused media. Those women's magazines especially seem to have a lot of stuff about self-esteem. We hear a lot about how vital it is for parents to give their children good self-esteem or for teachers to instill self-esteem in their young students or for us to recite positive daily affirmations so we can feel good about ourselves. 

01:56 

While all of these situations can enhance the development of a healthier self-esteem, the real solution for developing a self esteem is a process that begins and grows within the individual's thoughts, which then affects our feelings and behaviors, right? Because self-esteem comes from the inside. It starts with our thoughts, our feelings and behaviors, and never from the outside, such as who we know, or what we wear, or what we're doing on a Friday night, right? A synonym for the word "esteem" is "respect," a word that I really love to use when we're talking about how we feel about ourselves. So self-esteem really is self-respect, and thinking of this topic in terms of self-respect for me is a much more powerful discussion. 

02:46 

So we're going to talk about self-respect, but realizing that it really is a synonym for self-esteem, okay? But I think talking about respect hits home a lot deeper because respect is something that is extremely valued in our society even among younger people. I know as a middle school teacher I see students who crave being respected by adults who work with them. That's the biggest thing for them when they get upset, they always say "well, she's not respecting me" or "he's not respecting me." It's a big deal for them and if for some reason they don't feel they're being respected by a teacher they will go out of their way to make that teacher's life miserable. 

03:30 

And along the same vein, if I don't feel that I respect myself, I have a tendency to subconsciously make my life miserable as well. So the big question is how do I gain or increase my self-respect, my self-esteem right? How do I increase that? So we're going to talk about several ways here. So one of the first steps we can take is to live according to the values we feel are important. So for example, if I feel that honesty is an important trait but I cheat on my taxes or I tell lies to people around me to cover up my insecurities or my mistakes, then I know that I'm being hypocritical because this leads me to not being able to respect myself because I know I'm not living the way that I profess or feel to be right. When I'm living inconsistently with my values, that's a huge issue for me. I'm struggling inside of myself. How can I respect someone who consistently says  one thing and then just as consistently does the other? I can't and that applies to myself as well. If I cannot respect myself because I don't live and breathe the same way that I profess to live, I profess to believe, then I can't feel that respect for myself. And if I feel kindness is incredibly important, and yet I'm more often than not unkind to others, I'm being inconsistent with my beliefs. My soul feels this inconsistency deep down, and it erodes away at my inner self-respect or my inner self esteem. 

05:23 

Now, this is the deal. We're not perfect, right? We've talked about this before. We all experience inconsistency in our beliefs and our behaviors, but when that inconsistency is the norm, rather than an occasional experience, it weighs heavily on our self-respect, and it begins to damage it. Okay, so we've got to be consistent with our beliefs, and we've got to live our beliefs. 

05:51 

Another way to gain or increase our self-respect is to keep promises, not only to others but also to ourselves. Okay, so let's say for example that you've arranged to meet a friend at the movies. Okay, after you arrive at the theater you get a text from your friend and they call and they cancel. You're a little bit irritated, right? But you reschedule because you really want to spend some time with this friend. So you reschedule, you show up the next time, and then your friend calls and cancels again. And the reason she gives for canceling is trivial, yet she insists on rescheduling because she really, really wants to meet up with you. So you reschedule. And when she doesn't show up the third time, she gives you the excuse that she got distracted and forgot. 

06:36 

Okay, so how would you be, what would you be thinking and feeling at this point? You could reschedule once again, but deep inside you know she's probably not going to follow through and show up. But because she's proven that she is unreliable, you will have trust issues with this friend and making plans in the future. And when you don't trust someone, it is really difficult, if not impossible, to have respect for them. Alright, so this works the same way. So I'm sure that that friend starts to lose respect for themselves over time when they know that they keep disappointing you as well. 

07:15 

But how does this work with ourselves? It works the exact same way. Let's say that I decide I'm going to get up 45 minutes earlier so that I can exercise in the morning before I go to work. So when the alarm goes off the next morning, I lay there and I decide that today's just not the best day to start because I ended up getting to bed so late last night. So the next morning my alarm goes off. I talk myself out of getting up because I have a big day scheduled and I just really need the extra sleep. The third day the alarm goes off and I think that maybe I was just a little hasty in deciding to set a goal to exercise before work in the morning and I turn the alarm off again. So that night comes, do I set the alarm that night? Maybe I do because I hope that I'll follow through, but I do it with a pretty good understanding that I'm not going to actually get up. I've already proven to myself that I'm not trustworthy in this particular area. I made myself a promise to do something and then I didn't follow through. I'm learning that I can't trust myself to do things I commit to, and my self respect begins to take a hit. 

08:32 

Definitely this type of behavior happens occasionally to all of us. That's part of the human experience. But if breaking promises to ourselves becomes a habit and becomes the norm, then we begin to erode our internal self-respect. We start learning that we are not trustworthy. So, this scenario can be played out in any number of personal situations with each one having similar consequences, a loss of self-respect. And when this happens over and over and over, when we continually make promises to ourselves that we don't keep, this continues to happen. 

09:15 

So how do we fix that? Well, one, don't do something, don't commit to do something, unless you're really committed to do it. And then you just decide, "you know what, I'm getting up. It doesn't matter if I still feel tired." At some level, we have to provide the self-care that we need for our self-respect. And that self-care means that sometimes we just do what we say we're going to do, regardless. 

09:42 

Okay, let's look at one third way. Finally, let's look at the way that we think. So I know that I did a podcast on this before, Carol Dweck and her book, "Mindset." If you haven't listened to it yet, get over there. What are you waiting for? It's such  good information. Go back to "Mindset." I don't remember what number it is, but you can find that. So that one was based off of Carol Dweck's book, "Mindset," and it is a life changer. If you've not read it, you need to move it to the top of your reading list today. 

10:14 

But this book looks at the way that we think as being either a fixed or a growth mindset. So let's review this information for those of you who haven't listened to the other podcast. A fixed mindset is concerned with proving ourselves, while a growth mindset is concerned with improving ourselves. A fixed mindset sees things in terms of success and failure, while a growth mindset sees things as a process toward improvement. So what is a fixed mindset? Let me give you an example. Let's say that you believe that you are an exceptional soccer player. You've been the star player for years on a soccer team, and your coaches have told you many times how wonderful you are at playing this sport. You know you're good. You have no reason to doubt this belief. And you identify yourself as a good soccer player. So it's part of who you really are, right? 

11:08 

But what happens when you try out for your college soccer team and you don't make the cut? Or you make the team but you spend the season sitting on the bench? All of a sudden, everything you've identified yourself with, being a good soccer player, your self-identity starts to become challenged. And you start thinking that maybe you really aren't as good as you thought you were. So at this point then you become afraid to try again because the confidence you once had in your soccer proficiency has now been challenged and is shaken. Because what if you try and you fail again? Then your self-confidence in regards to playing soccer would take a direct hit. You would become very insecure and afraid to try new things because failure at doing something you thought you were good at equates in your mind to being a failure as a person or worth as a person starts taking a hit when we have a fixed mindset. Because our identity is wrapped up in the behaviors, right? 

12:10 

So a growth mindset, on the other hand, gives us room to move and to grow and to develop. So a person with a growth mindset focuses on the process of becoming rather than already being. So rather than thinking, "I'm so good at soccer," the prevailing thought would be, "I'm going to become a better soccer player. If I keep practicing this move, I'll be able to do it." So we don't see failing at something as a bad thing, but we see it rather as an opportunity to get better or to learn something new. 

12:46 

The greatest part about this concept is that a growth mindset can be learned. As parents, as teachers, as individuals, we can help our young people and ourselves to think differently about what they're experiencing by how we talk to them. So in regards to, say, our children or our students, rather than saying "you're so smart" or "you're so good at soccer," we can try, "I can tell you've been working really hard in math this last week. Look how good you did on that test'." Or "wow, I can tell you've really been practicing your ball control." 

13:22 

So with regards to ourselves, we begin talking ourselves down from the cliffs of perfection insanity, right? We start giving ourself room to make mistakes. We stop judging ourselves by unrealistic expectations and getting down on ourselves when we fell at something. We change our ideas about failure being a bad thing. Rather than telling ourselves we're stupid or we should've known better, we learn to say, "alright, so that didn't work out. Let me figure out something else". Alright, we start to be have more of that self compassion with ourselves, recognizing that we're not always going to get it right up front, recognizing that we're going to fail, we're going to make mistakes, and giving ourselves to pick room to pick ourselves up and try it again. 

14:11 

Alright, so you can say "boy, that was bad parenting. Okay, how can I fix it? What can I do better next time?" A growth mindset is always looking for progress, not beating themselves up for what they didn't do right, but recognizing what they didn't do right and looking for opportunities to improve it. And all of this growth mindset ties right in with our feelings of self worth. When I truly recognize and believe that my worth as a person is fixed, that I nothing I can do will impact my worth, then I can give myself more room for making mistakes and growing. 

14:53 

Recognizing our worth as a person is something that we do want fixed. We don't want us to see our worth as fluctuating because it doesn't. Our worth is our worth. It doesn't matter. A diamond is a diamond, whether it's all covered in dirt or  whether it's not, right? It is still worth. So when I'm understanding that my purpose here on the earth is to learn and grow through my experiences, both good and bad experiences, it helps me to see more clearly that the process of growth is not tied to my worth, right? These experiences I have, the struggles I work through, the failures I encounter, none of these have one thing to do with my worth as a person and the more I come to embrace my worth as a human being, the more respect I can have for myself when I fail and when I get back up. 

15:51 

So although it seems as if everything in our society points us toward outside influences being the source of our self-respect, it is imperative that we understand that no matter how many Facebook or Instagram likes we have, no matter how many new outfits or shoes clutter our closets, no matter what car we drive or what neighborhood we live in, not one of these will make the slightest impact on our worth or our self-respect. Self-respect is and always has been internally motivated and embracing this truth puts us in control of our own happiness and our feelings of self-worth. Learning to foster our self respect by acting in accordance with our values and beliefs, by keeping promises to ourselves and cultivating a growth mindset will inevitably help us to develop a greater self-respect and thereby more happiness and peace in this life. 

16:52 

So if you're one who struggles with having a strong positive self-esteem, it's time, my dear friend, to start paying attention to your thoughts and to get them in a better place. If you need some help with that, this is what I'm good at as a coach. I can help you through coaching. I can help you to see the thoughts that are holding you back from really getting to a place of healthy self-respect and self-esteem. When you become aware of those thoughts, you then can start seeing the impact that they're having on your life and we can start intentionally choosing to create different thoughts that will take us to a different place. And you can start this off with a free coaching session by going to my website, tanyahale.com, under the coaching tab and you can sign up for a free session. 

17:41 

Okay, growing up is awesome! Love it. I love love love it So I hope you do too. If you feel this podcast is helping you out, and you have not subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? Go subscribe, and then you never miss an an episode; it comes right to your phone. And you can just listen to it while you're getting ready in the morning or driving to work or going for your walk, or anything else like this. I would love for you to leave me a review. If you listen to me a lot and you like me and you have not left me a review, okay, repent of your evil ways. Get on iTunes and leave me a review and let me know, and let other people know as well that this is helping you out. And share this with people who need it. I just feel like this message I'm sharing is so important, and I want to help people live happy or peaceful lives and figure things out more. So share it. And on that note, I am going to say goodbye. I hope you have a terrific amazing day and that you create the kind of life that you want. Talk to you later. 

18:49 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!