Ep #46: Self Worth and Responsibility

Welcome to The Life Coach School podcast where it's all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. Now, your host Master Coach Instructor Brooke Castillo.

Here we are, there you are. I've been waiting for you to put those ear buds in and get out there on your walk or in your car to have a listen. What am I going to talk about today? Today, I'm going to talk about self-worth and self-responsibility. Again, I'm taking my queues from you all to decide what to talk about and I think that self-worth is a topic that actually is coming up a lot. I actually have one of my students that's her niche that she's working on and that's who she's going to work with.

I've been talking to her quite a bit about self-worth and what it means to have it and why we don't have it. It's one of those concepts that self-esteem, self-worth it's like what does it even really mean. When someone says love yourself you're like, "I don't even know what you're talking about. How do you love yourself?" It's really worth talking about because your opinion of yourself is what develops your self-worth. If you don't believe that you're worth a lot then it's absolutely going to show up in your life and in your relationships and how you roll basically throughout the entirety of your life.

How we think about ourselves usually starts when we are young but we can't blame how we feel and think about ourselves now on what we were taught when we were young. Because we are adults now people. Okay? Your mommy and your daddy may have totally screwed you over in your childhood and if you want to think about it that way that's up to you but I choose to think that, "Hey, we pick our parents and we're supposed to have the exact childhood that we did." What? What if you're abused?

What if you went through horrible experiences? I can relate to all of that and I would say it's still the perfect childhood for me to become the person that I am today. It couldn't have happened any other way. I will tell you that believing that helps me so much with my self-responsibility which is the other thing that we're going to talk about today and they are very related. Self-worth and self-responsibility are two concepts that go hand in hand. Okay?
Your opinion of yourself is not established by anybody but you no matter what you were told when you were a child, no matter what you were told in your first marriage, no matter what your children tell you, you get to decide how you think and feel about yourself. Now, here's a thought that I have about myself and this really helps me so much with having high self-worth and high self-esteem. I genuinely think that I'm amazing and people freak out when I say that so that's why I'm laughing. I really genuinely do.

I think I am amazing and I think the reason that I'm amazing I can take credit for. I think you are amazing and you can take credit for it either. If you're worried about being someone that's stuck up or someone that's bragging or someone that thinks too highly of themselves, "Who the hell does she think she is?" That's a good thing to remember. You don't establish whether you are worthy or not. That is already established. The moment you are born you are worthy. Okay?

You have to know in your bones that you are created from absolutely worthiness and you can even take credit for it. You're amazing just because you're human being on the planet. You can't negotiate with that. You can't say, "I'm not as worthy as this person." No, equally worthy, everyone. Equally worthy no matter what has happened to you, you are not damaged. You are not. No matter what you've done to other people so many of you are riddled with shame and guilt over things that you have done.

Listen to me, no matter what you've done to other human beings or to yourself you have not touched your worthiness. It is intact. You are worthy. There is nothing you can do that makes you any less worthy. Now, if you look at other people and you think that they are less worthy you're going to think that you're less worthy or that it's possible and it's not. Your self-worth is intact and it's established the moment you were born and it cannot be negotiated. Believe that.

If you believe nothing else, believe that. What that does is it releases you from demeaning yourself, it releases you from believing that somehow you didn't get what someone else got when it came to worthiness or that you've done something that has made you less worthy or someone has done something to you that has made you less worthy. It is not possible folks, you can tell me all day long that you're not worthy but all you're doing is telling me your opinion. I want you guys to imagine a pink diamond.

My girl friend Jody sells jewelry and she's always telling me about how much she loves diamonds, which is so funny for me. I want you to think about a pink diamond, they are very rare, very expensive. Now, it is beautiful. It is worth a lot of money. Now, someone may decide they don't like pink diamonds and they may ridicule the pink diamond, they may say they don't like the pink color, it doesn't make it any less worthy. It just makes that person think negatively when they see the pink diamond but the diamond is still worth what it's worth. Okay?

Deciding that you want to believe in your worthiness will be the most important decision you make in your entire life. Transferring that same belief to the other people in your life will be the second most important decision you make in your entire life. You are worthy. You can take credit for it. Done. If someone else doesn't think you're worthy it's them thinking the pink diamond isn't expensive, isn't worthy. It is. Done. That's what it is.

If someone doesn't think you're worthy you're like, "Look, I don't know where your opinion is coming from but I know that my worthiness is established and it's non-negotiable. Whatever you think about me is about you not me." That will set you free. Okay. Mel wants to talk to me about his worthiness, right? He says he is constantly being confronted with his lack of self-worth through various failed relationships in succession. He no longer wants them to influence him but he is unsure of what to do, "How do I build up my self-worth?"

First of all, here's what you need to know Mel, you don't build up self-worth. You are worthy. Your self-worth is intact. You just forgot. You just have a bunch of negative thoughts about yourself that are getting in the way. Okay? None of your relationships have affected your self-worth. They've affected your opinion of yourself. They've affected how you choose to think about yourself but that's simply it. The way that I like to think about relationships is that you had a relationship and it is now complete.

You've had a succession of completed relationships. If you choose to think of them that way you will be able to think of each of those people that you had a relationship with love and you'll be able to think about yourself with love. You will know that you were meant to meet each of those people and learn what you learned from them. In no way did completing that relationship affect your self-worth. No matter what they said to you, no matter what happened. I have a lot of people in my life that would be thrilled to have had multiple relationships.

You can't even get one relationship, right? You've had multiple relationships. They would think of it that way. At least I'm out there. At least I'm showing up. At least I'm in a relationship. Now, if every single one of those people didn't want to be in relationship with you for the same reason, it has nothing to do with your self-worth and who you are. You are worthy. Those people were lucky to have experienced you in their lives. You were lucky to have experience them. That is the process of life.

We always want to look at other people's relationships and if they last longer than ours then they're more successful than ours. Why would be want to look at it that way? It doesn't serve you in any way, right? Your relationships were all successful, they got completed beginning to end. How you choose to think about those relationships will affect your next relationships. If you choose to think lowly of yourself because of, I think lowly is a word, I see you guys in your cars questioning. I saw you turn your head sideways, we're going with it.

If you choose to think lowly of yourself you're going to bring that to your next relationship that thoughts. Now, it doesn't mean that you're any less of a person, it just means that you're not showing up as the full version of you and owning all of it like a boss like, "What's up? Here I am. I'm good at relationships. How do I know I've had a lot of them?" Right? Honestly, it's like think about in the way that served you, right. I'm not very good at relationships, I only had one.

How do you want to believe about yourself because how you think about yourself is how you're going to feel about yourself. You want to ask yourself, "Why do I have this pattern of relationships?" Because the way that you're thinking about it is so negative you want to use it as evidence against yourself. That's why your opinion of yourself has gotten so low.

If you see that that you are in training, you are in the process of being a human being, you are alive, you are connecting, you are showing up with people and it's not turning out like you expected but maybe it was never going to and it wasn't ever supposed to. Maybe this is your journey and you can fight it and you can resist it and you can use it against yourself or you can really open yourself up to it, to the idea of it. Decide that it is serving you in your life and you are learning about yourself in your life.

You want to know what questions to ask yourself to put you on that is, "How is this serving me? What is amazing about this? What is great about these experiences? What do I love about myself in these relationships? How did I show up?" Focus your mind on that. "Why am I so lucky to have so many relationships in my life?" and I genuinely mean it. A lot of people can't get one relationship. How are you able to be in so many relationships and learn so many different things and meet so many different people?

How you choose to think about it is how you're going to feel about it and how you choose to think about yourself is how you're going to feel about yourself. You are worthy it's none negotiable. All right, let's talk a little bit about self-responsibility. Isabel wants to talk to me about self-responsibility. She has trouble seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. She had a difficult time accepting responsibility for how she feels because she thinks everyone else in her life is responsible for how she feels.

This is similar to Mel too, right? He thinks these broken "relationships" are causing him to have low self-worth. He's giving responsibility for how he feels about himself to someone else to the other in these relationships to what happened in these relationships. You're doing the same thing Isabel, right? You're saying, "Basically these people around me are the ones. It's my students. It's my husbands. It's my ..." Husbands? How many husbands do you have?

I'm just kidding. I'm sure you're talking about ex-husband or maybe you do have a couple of husbands. That's a lot of work. Your kids, you say they drive you crazy and she says, "Other than sitting in a bubble bath crying about how tough life is I'm not sure what acceptance looks like." You're trying to accept the fact that other people drive you crazy and that is not what I've been teaching you.

What you need to accept is that you drive you crazy and I know that you're saying that's a difficult pill to swallow but it's the one that's going to save you. Because if you are responsible for driving yourself crazy you don't have to change the husbands, the kids or the students, you only have to change your own mind. Sitting in the hot bubble bath and trying to accept other people driving you crazy is only going to make you more disempowered and more crazy.

Accepting that you're the one that makes you crazy that's going to be your ticket, okay? Self-responsibility means accepting that you're the one, okay. You're saying, "I feel like I do that, sometimes I can fully accept it but then I find myself back in the bubble bath a week later." This is something that's a huge misconception with so many of my students as they think, "Once I learn how to accept responsibility then I will never have to do it again. I just do it this one time and then I've fully accepted it."

No, we have to accept it all of the time and we really don't want to, "I want my husband to be the one that cause me to feel this way which makes no sense because I've given all my power away to him and I love him dearly but I want my own control in my own life. I don't want to have to control him. He's very hard to control, does not comply," right? You can control yourself and how you feel, okay?

I think what you need to know is that your students and your husband and your kids do not control your feelings, you do, always, okay. Now, when you feel upset, if you blame someone else you disempowered yourself completely and you've given your power away to them. The only way to feel better is to control them. When you take responsibility then you maybe tempted to blame yourself, "Gosh. Darn it. Why do you keep doing this to yourself? Why do you make yourself feel this way? Why can't you get a grip? Why do you have so many negative thoughts? Why are you back in the bubble bath again?"

That added blame on top of trying to take responsibility is going to make you spin. Here's the thing, this is how I do it. I say, "I'm feeling this way because of a sentence in my mind. I'm feeling this way because of a sentence in my mind not because of him, not because of her, not because of them but because of a sentence in my mind. And it's okay and it doesn't mean I've done anything wrong and it doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. Because I'm here again struggling to take self-responsibility doesn't mean that I'm bad. It just means that I'm practicing taking responsibility for myself and for my feelings. When I do that I get all my power back."

Remember you guys, the most powerful tool on the entire planet, the most sophisticated, most amazing thing that's ever been created is your brain. It is the number one resource on the planet. There is nothing better than your brain and you have it and you have the power because it's so amazing and sophisticated is that it has the power to manage itself. When you take self-responsibility you are managing the most amazing tool on the planet. It is yours. You get to keep it. You get to manage it.

Taking responsibility for everything it does and knowing that you are the one that's controlling it is claiming the most powerful tool on the planet. There is nothing more amazing than your brain when it comes to tools on the planet. Self-responsibility is you claiming it so please, please do that. Remember you are worthy, it's not negotiable and of all the tools in the world to have you've got the most important and most powerful one. That's the good news I have for you today. Best news ever. I'll talk to you guys next week. Take care. Bye.

Thank you for listening to The Life Coach School podcast. It would be incredibly awesome if you would take a moment to write a quick review on iTunes. For any questions, comments or coaching issues you would like to hear on the show please visit us at www.thelifecoachschool.com.