Ep #68: Make Yourself Proud

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

Hello, my friends. How are you all? It is right in the middle of summer. Are guys loving summer? I love the summer. I love being up in Lake Tahoe by the lake. I love sitting by the pool. I love golfing with my kids. I love late night walks because it's so hot during the day. I love watching my puppies swim. I love everybody being tan, put on your sunscreen. I love sports. I love everything about the summer. I love, love, love it. It's so hot here. I love that too. Shorts, skirts super fun. I hope you guys are having an amazing, amazing summer, so far for me it has been ridiculously amazing.

Today I'm going to talk about making yourself proud. I want to really tell you that I think the emotion of pride for yourself is one of the best. I think it's one of my most favorite emotions. I love the emotion love, of course, that feels good, but there's something about pride and then feeling proud of myself. I remember, and I've talked about this quite a bit, but I remember when I set some boundaries with my mom. I'll never forget. I sat down. I read her a letter and talked to her about some boundaries I wanted to set. It was such a hard thing for me to do. I was so terrified to do it. It was so hard to do it. I had reason to be terrified. It was very challenging. When I left, after talking to her when I left the house, I was so upset because it was a very challenging situation. I had never felt more proud of myself. I think it was because I had overcome my own fear to do something that was very risky. I can still remember how I felt. I can still remember how amazing that was to be that proud of myself.

I have since practiced feeling that way towards myself a lot. I have practiced feeling that way when I feel like I do a good job preparing for a webinar or I do a good job with a client. I feel really proud of myself about this last coach training group that just came through. I think I did a really good job getting some amazing people there and doing an amazing class. I feel so proud of them for how they showed up and so proud of myself for how I showed up. I feel proud of myself when I take care of myself and my family and I take risks in my business. I think it is one of those emotions that I make a very conscious effort to create.

One of the things that I want to ask you guys is what would make you feel proud? Now, when I ask you that question, my guess is you immediately think about something you could do. I just gave you a list of things that I had done that I felt proud of. It's a good way of thinking about it. One of the things I want you to notice is that it's not doing the thing that makes us feel proud it's how we think about it, how we think about having done the thing or the thing that we are doing or the thing that we're going to do. That's a trip to think about. If you think about your past, I can think about a lot of things in my past that I'm very proud of. I'm proud of making it through my childhood. I'm proud of breaking up with that guy. You know who you are. I'm proud of some of the conversations that I've had, but it's the way that I think about my actions that makes me feel the emotion of pride. It's the way I think about what I'm doing now that makes me feel proud. Here's what's super cool. When I think about what I'm going to do in my future, when I think about my future plans, I feel proud.

Now, the only way for me to feel pride is in this moment right now. Even though I'm thinking about something in the past or thinking about something in the present or thinking about something in the future the only thing that's creating that emotion is my thought right now. That's true for any emotion. For those of you who think you can't feel proud, first of all, you can definitely find something in your past to feel proud about but you can find something in your present and in your future. A lot of times when you are willing to feel proud of yourself for signing up for a course, for doing the work, for being challenged, for showing up every day, that is something. It's a gift you really give yourself because you take out time to feel proud of yourself.

I want you to think about how hungry most of us are for that emotion as we grow up. We want our parents or our teachers to be proud of us. Even when we're in class and we talk about this it's like we're talking about a lot of us seek approval because we want someone to be proud of us because that feels so good. Yet, that's something we are able to give to ourselves. When I ask you the question what would make you feel proud, the only answer can be a thought because thoughts create our feelings. If you think you have to do something in order to be proud of yourself, it's actually the opposite that I have found to be true. It's when you feel proud of yourself that you want to take more action that will beget more pride because you can look at your accomplishments, you can look at yourself and what you've been through and what you've come through and what you do ever day.

I mean sometimes we just need to be proud for getting out of bed, literally, especially if we have been drinking a lot the night before which I think some of you know I'm on a hundred day challenge no alcohol. I'm creating a new program, coming attractions, based on moderating drinking and drinking less. I deal with so many clients. We talk so much about alcohol and how some of us want to drink less, but we don't want to quit drinking. How do we include alcohol in our lives without making it a problem in our lives? I'm creating a whole program based on that. For me I'm in the middle of my hundred day challenge. I have to say it's been one of the best things I've ever done. I can't wait to share all the details with all of you who are interested in changing your relationship with drinking and how often you drink. If you're like me and you're frustrated with how you feel the next day when you've even had one or two cocktails and yet you still want to have them in your life, we will have much more to talk about, so coming attractions.

I digress. I have to say actually maybe I don't digress because I have to say how proud I am of myself for not drinking for so many days because it's something that I'm very tempted to do, something I want to do. I don't consider myself an alcoholic by any stretch. I don't drink to get drunk. I do like to have a glass of wine. It's something that I've continuously said no to for the past few months, many, many days, when it has been quite challenging. I am very proud of myself. I feel really good about myself for that. I feel proud when I go to yoga. I feel proud when I remember to say something very kind to my son and to look in his eyes and say that. I'm very proud of myself when I am extroverted because most of the time I'm very introverted which will surprise some of you. I want you to think about how you can generate that feeling of pride in yourself now, and notice that when you feel proud, you take different action than when you don't feel proud and when you allow yourself to feel that way about yourself.

Now, when you look up self-pride online, when you go to the Google, it says a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction as the result of one's achievements. I think those achievements can be past, present, or future. I don't think they have to be huge. I don't think that you have to completely change the entire world in order to be proud of yourself. I think you just change your little corner of the world and you can feel proud of yourself for that. For me, I want to believe that I'm leaving the world a little bit better than I found it. I'm adding value. I'm contributing. I'm helping in the way that I can selflessly. I feel very proud that I've done that. I have many reasons that I can find to be proud. That's something that I really want to encourage you to do in your life is to look for reasons to be proud of yourself.

I talked a little bit about some of the work that we had done in class with one of the students about self-appreciation. It's very similar. It is training your brain to be proud. It's something that I train myself to do with my kids. I like to tell them how proud I am of them all the time. I look for reasons to be proud of them. That's something that seems to come much more naturally to some of us when it comes to our children but what about with ourselves? Are you able to look at yourself and find a reason to be proud? What are you proud of yourself for? When you think about that question, you're going to come up with lots of thoughts that are going to create that feeling of pride. They're going to create that self-pride within yourself, which will of course lead to many more things that you can do to feel proud of yourself.

The other way that it was described is having a high opinion of one's actions. Now, I think that is a fascinating definition because it doesn't say necessarily in either one of those definitions that you had some amazing accomplishments or that your actions were exemplary or anything like that. It just said that you have a high opinion of your actions. Now, a lot of people will feel resistant to that because they'll feel like that's bragging or that's boastful or that's contrived. I would disagree. I think looking down on yourself is contrived. I think looking at your accomplishments as insignificant is contrived. It's not useful. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't create more goodness in the world. All it does is create a sense of not feeling proud of yourself, of not giving yourself the pleasure of the emotion of accomplishment of being able to feel like I am accomplished. Like I said sometimes you can have that feeling for just getting up in morning, for just taking care of yourself, for just taking care of your family, for eating something healthy.

The other thing that I want to add here is I think a lot of times, and this is especially for my weight lost clients, is we go in this all or nothing mindset. We're either proud of ourselves or we hate ourselves. Just a couple of sessions ago we talked about self-loathing. One of the things that I want to offer is that being a little bit proud of yourself every day or being proud of yourself once a week is better than nothing. It's better than no times a week. I want you to look for those pockets where you can be proud of yourself, where you kept your house clean maybe, you bathed that may be all you can muster for the day, but really taking the time out and not feeling like you either are constantly proud of yourself or you hate yourself but to accumulate moments of pride in yourself. I also want to be clear that when we believe that we're proud of yourself, when we feel proud of ourselves, it doesn't mean we think we're better than other people. It doesn't mean that we think that we should be proud of ourselves at expense of someone else. It's not that way at all. We can be proud ourselves and proud of everybody else. It's not a competition. It's an emotion that we want to develop.

The last part of this, and this is something I tell my students a lot, is to make yourself proud. You make yourself proud by finding a feeling of pride now and then making a plan so you know in your future you will be proud of what you attempted to do. Notice that I said attempted to do. You'll be proud of your effort. You will have a high opinion of your actions. It doesn't have to be the result. You don't have to have a high opinion of your result. You do have a high opinion of your actions. Let me tell you the difference. You may set a goal in your business to make a $100,000.00. Now, at the end of a year you may not have made a $100,000.00. You don't deny yourself feeling proud of yourself because you weren't able to do that. You do feel proud of all of the effort that you put into that process of everything you tried to do, of the risks you took, of the times you asked, of the things that you did.

We talked the last session about dealing with regret and being able to use that emotion as something that we create change for in our future. It's the same with feeling proud. If you fast forward a year or even ten years, what would make you the most proud of yourself? What would you feel the most pride about something that you had accomplished or something that you had attempted to accomplish, some effort you had put in, how you had shown up in your life? Ask yourself that question. Then how do you make yourself proud in your present moment with your thinking, which of course will lead to your feelings? Then what actions will you take? What results will you create? I think the more we focus on thoughts and actions that create that pride for us those emotions that fuel us doing pride making activities the happier we're ultimately going to be in our lives because the more we evolve, the more we put ourselves out there, the more interesting our lives will become the more fear we have to overcome.

Most of us aren't proud of ourselves when we don't do difficult things. One of the things I'm always saying to my students is we can do hard things. That's how we get proud is we decide, "Hey, I'm going to do that." We're proud of ourselves for making that declaration. Then because we're proud of ourselves we do it. We take that courage. Then afterwards we can be proud for having done it. I want to encourage each of you to ask yourselves what would make you feel proud? Start thinking in that way now. Start making plans to do those things that you will then have a high opinion of your actions. Nobody can take away your opinion of yourself. Don't do what anyone else wants you to do. Don't be in an effort to make anyone else proud. What would make you proud? When you can answer that question, I think you'll know exactly the direction you want to go in your life. You guys have any questions for me about pride or you want to share some thoughts we me, please go to thelifecoachschool.com/68 and let's talk more about it. Otherwise have a beautiful, wonderful rest of your week in this summer time. I will see you next week. Take care, everybody. Bye. 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.