You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 65.
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.
What is going on, you guys? Holy cow, we are in the summer. Summer is happening.
I'm so excited. It's so hot here today. Oh my gosh, it's so great.
I'm in my air-conditioned office right now, but I am going to go to the pool. We just recently joined the Country Club, and they have a beautiful pool there, and they bring cold drinks to you like you're at a resort. And that's what I'm going to do later.
So here's the deal. I just came off of teaching the eight-day experience to 25 amazing people, and I can't stop thinking about each of them. It's amazing to get out of our lives and to come together in an environment where we can just focus on each other and ourselves and this work.
It is one of the most powerful things I've ever done, and this is the first time we did the full eight days, and almost everyone stayed. One person had to leave, but then another person came, so we had everybody there, and it was really, really powerful to experience that long of a time together. And so I'm thinking about y'all right now.
And one of the things that we talked a lot about, we break for lunch and I have a couple of hosted lunches, and so we get a chance to just chat. And one of the things we talked about is how we kind of take over this little town we have in El Dorado Hills Town Center. The hotel, I always laugh to everyone because the hotel we stay in is the Holiday Inn Express.
And I'm such a hotel snob that that just sounds so awful to me because I've stayed in some Holiday Inn Expresses that are not so good. But this one is super nice and it's right downtown. So you don't really, and when I say downtown, it's a very small little town.
It has a really she-she grocery store called The Nugget and has a movie theater, and it has a gym literally right next door that has yoga. And then it has, I would say, seven really good restaurants right around there, and you can get your nails done, and there's a spa. And so we kind of take over this little town when we're all there.
And it's great because not only do you see people in class all day, but then we see each other walking around town, and we can go work out together, and we run into each other. It's kind of like a little campus. So I had actually thought about maybe moving it because, not because the hotel isn't great, but just because a lot of people are like, Holiday Inn Express, really?
But after talking to everyone this week, I'm like, no way. It's just such a great, amazing environment. And so everybody's flying home today.
And so I'm thinking about all of them flying home. And I just kind of want to give a shout out to each of them as we go through this podcast, because I think it's important for those of you who are listening to the podcast, many of the people that came to this class were once like you listening to the podcast, trying to decide if this was right for them. And so many of them said that the more they listened to it and the more they heard about it, the more they realized it was for them.
And so I kind of want to give a shout out to them and mention them as we go through. Now, this topic that we're covering is self-loathing. And I think this is one of those topics that doesn't come out to play very often.
A lot of people don't talk about it unless, you know, it's kind of some deep dark thing. And I want to bring it out into the open because I think it's really important that all of us acknowledge the areas where we do loathe ourselves and loathe is such a good word. Because I think it's important to not push that away and say, oh my gosh, I don't want to have negative thoughts about myself, so I'm not going to acknowledge those parts of me.
Because that is what creates the shame and persists the issue with it. And we talked about this a lot over the last eight days, and we talked about, you know, where it comes up for us is in a lot of our body image and eating and hiding our eating and stealing food and not acknowledging what's healthy for our bodies and not eating what's healthy for our bodies and treating ourselves in really self-destructive ways. And so, you know, I was doing work with one of the students, Michelle, and we were talking, she was talking, hi Michelle, we were talking about her body, her relationship to her body and how she feels about her body.
And one of the things I really wanted to help her see was that when you don't trust your body, when you hate your body, it's very hard to have any authority over it. It's very hard to create any kind of intimacy where you can listen to it and know when it's hungry and know when it's full and know what food serve it because you're in this adversary relationship with it. And I talked to another amazing student, Carissa, who was there, and we talked about how for her, it's really hard to look at a picture of herself because she judges her body and she feels good about herself until she sees a picture, and then she goes immediately into judging.
And one of the things we talked about with her, which was kind of interesting, is I told her that I had made a commitment a couple years ago that whenever I saw a picture of myself, I would look at it as if I was looking at a picture of my child or of my puppy. And she has a puppy too, and we were talking about how she would never look at a picture of her puppy and think, oh, that's a horrible picture of him. I don't like that angle, right?
She just would unconditionally love any picture of him. And we talked about that maybe being a practice for her and looking at herself. And when we look at a picture or we look at our bodies or we think about our bodies, it's important to pay attention to what comes up because we want to acknowledge the knee-jerk thoughts that we have.
And so when you think about self-loathing, it really is what is your opinion of yourself? How do you think about yourself? And of course, how you think about yourself is going to determine how you feel about yourself.
Now, you may be one of those people that most of the time, when you think about yourself, it's positive, wonderful thinking. And sometimes when you think about yourself, you say really mean things. But you won't really know this unless you start increasing your awareness and really thinking about what is it that I think when I think about myself, when I think about my body, when I think about how I am in relationships, when I think about how I am in my career and in my business, when I think about how I am athletically, when I think about how I am socially.
It's really worth paying attention to your opinion of yourself. Why? Because it will determine how you feel and how you feel determines what you do.
And what you do will either increase the evidence that you have to hate yourself or loathe yourself, or it will decrease that evidence. So for example, if you have a thought that something is wrong with me, you will feel probably some level of shame, which will make you act in a way that is quote unquote wrong in your opinion, which will give you more evidence that there's something wrong with you. And as we went through these eight days, there were just example after example after example of how we do that to ourselves, how we create our own evidence to prove our own belief systems right.
And some of the thoughts that came up around self-loathing were, there's something wrong with me. I'm different. I'm not OK.
My body is not OK. And sometimes it's just maybe a subtle thought that you wouldn't even notice, or it's just like, yeah, I'm all right. I guess there's some things wrong with me, but overall, I'm all right.
Just that thought, there's some things wrong with me, is something that you probably wouldn't ever think about someone that you love unconditionally, like a child or a pet. And so those little thoughts are really important to pay attention to, because those little thoughts create little feelings, which create little actions, and that just spins us and creates that cycle there, which it's really, really important to notice. One of the students that came, CJ, we love having dudes in the class, by the way.
We had two guys in this one, and he drove cross-country to come to the class. It's funny, sometimes people tell me that the reason they can't come to the training is because they live across the country, but we have people coming from all over the world. And CJ came from maine.
He actually drove across country. And he was one of the people in the class that has, you know, kind of a general good opinion of himself. But there were these little like pockets we found where he was able to, you know, notice that his thoughts about himself, that he had been practicing, weren't necessarily ones that created really positive, wonderful emotions.
And that's fine, but what I want to do, and what I want to teach you all to do, is make sure you're doing that consciously. Make sure the thoughts you have about yourself are conscious. And a lot of times, we think there's something wrong with us.
We think that's just an observation. We don't remind ourselves that that's an optional thought. We don't have to think that there's anything wrong with us.
We can believe that everything is wonderful with us if we practice thinking that. Okay, so one of the things that's important is a lot of us have been taught that it's important to accept ourselves. And I really do believe that we need to accept the thoughts we have about ourselves.
But we do not have to accept that we hate ourselves. Okay, that's a really important distinction there. Hate is a choice, loathing is a choice.
Wishing we were different than we are is a very kind of sneaky way of thinking that there's something wrong with us and we should be better. So really paying attention to those thoughts. One of the things that I had talked about with Carissa, the woman that I talked to you about before and about how, when I look at a picture of myself, I say this is what we have today.
This is what I am today. This is what I look like today. Just really being in that space of knowing that what I am and how I show up and what my body looks like is exactly what is meant to be.
It is what is necessary. It's what important. It's what's good for me in my life today.
And when I can look at it in that way, it really changes the way I feel and therefore the way I act, which of course creates more evidence that there's absolutely nothing wrong with me. There's nothing in my life worth hating or not liking or not appreciating. One of the practices that I recommend that you do in order to really discover these areas is looking at a picture of yourself and really seeing what comes up, standing on the scale and seeing what the thoughts are.
That's just a number on the scale. What are the thoughts that come up? Are they negative?
Paying attention when you're alone, how do you speak to yourself? Paying attention when you make a mistake, how do you speak to yourself? Do you speak to yourself with kindness or do you speak to yourself with self-loathing?
Do you treat yourself as if you aren't worthy? Now, one of the exercises that I encourage my students to do, one of the students in our class, Donna, totally fantastic, amazing woman, one of the exercises that we had her do was, and we had everybody do it, but it was one that we were using her as the example to demonstrate, is come up with 12 things that you appreciate about yourself. And one of the things that you might think about when you're listening to this is, is it easier for you to come up with things that you don't appreciate about yourself?
And Donna struggled a little bit with some of the things because she said, well, I could think about some things that I would like to appreciate about myself, but I don't believe them necessarily. And so it was really challenging. And one of the things that I told her, and one of the things that's important to remember is that when you practice thinking thoughts that are negative about yourself, that's what you're good at.
When you practice appreciating yourself and thinking thoughts of appreciation, and that's what you get good at. So if it's difficult for you to come up with 12 things that you appreciate about yourself, what that means is that you just haven't been practicing. You haven't been practicing thinking about all the ways you love yourself, all the ways that you're fantastic.
And for many of you, that will be very challenging. It will be like a hard workout. And one of the things that I like to say and teach my students is that, yeah, it is like a hard workout.
It is like going into the gym and practicing getting stronger. That's, it's like the mental gym, like you're going to go and practice getting nicer and kinder and more loving towards yourself. Think of it as a difficult workout.
So maybe you'll only be able to come up with five things that you appreciate about yourself. And then next time you come up with six, and then the next time you come up with seven, and you increase your reps, you increase your ability to come up with things that you appreciate about yourself. And one of the things that I had said to the students in the class was for me, it's easy for me to come up with things that I appreciate about myself.
It's not a problem. I practice appreciating myself. I practice finding things that I do like about myself.
I practice the things that are hard for me to love about myself. I practice loving those parts. I make room in my life for the parts that I don't think are as pleasing or wonderful.
And I love myself anyway. And I practice loving myself anyway. And so I had some people in the class say to me, like, I would like to be more like that.
I would like to be able to appreciate the things in me. I'd like to be able to say it's easy for me to come up with 100 things that I appreciate about myself. One of the students in the class, Corinne, had told me that she was going to work on coming up with 100.
I think she said 100 things that she appreciates about herself. She's working with somebody else and really coming up with a practice of doing that. And I think that that is an amazing idea.
It makes me think about Ashley, who was also one of the students in the class. She owns a gym and she's a personal trainer. And I had told her kind of in passing that one of the things that's really challenging for me is to do a pull up, like to pull my body weight.
And she's like, Oh, I could totally teach you how to do that. And I said, You could? That's awesome.
How would you teach me how to do multiple pull ups? And she said, I would have you do pull ups. And it was like such an obvious answer, right?
I mean, doing kind of assisted pull ups in the beginning and then ultimately doing one pull up and then trying to do two pull ups. It's whatever it is you want to learn how to do, you have to do it. And I was laughing hysterically and I was thinking about that.
If you want to learn how to appreciate yourself, right? You have to start appreciating yourself. It seems so obvious and it seems like you need to prepare yourself to get ready to do that pull up.
But really, the best way to learn how to do it is just to do it. The best way to learn how to appreciate yourself is just to do it, is just to start appreciating yourself. No matter how hard that first pull up is, right?
Being willing and able to do that pull up that first time, that assisted one and to do it terribly. That's the same with appreciating ourselves is the opposite of loathing ourselves. Can we stare at that picture of ourselves where maybe we think we look heavier than we want, or maybe we don't think we look older than we want, or our hair doesn't look the way we want?
Can we be in the space of appreciating what is there instead of judging it? If we haven't practiced doing that, it's going to be challenging for us to do it, okay? So that's a really, I think, a worthwhile practice.
And the other thing to remember is that loathing ourselves is not something that is inevitable. It's actually a choice. And we think that, oh, well, it's just something that I am.
There is something wrong with me, and I'm just noticing that. But the truth is, thinking that there's something wrong with you is a choice. And it's not a good one, right?
It creates that negative emotion, and it creates us taking action that perpetuates that. So if we can notice that every time we have a negative thought about ourselves, it's a choice. If our thighs are bigger than we want them to be, that may not be a choice in that moment, but how we think about them is.
If we make a mistake, we may not be able to undo that mistake in that moment, but how we choose to think about that mistake is a choice. And it's a really important choice. If you think about making a mistake, the mistake is no big deal until we make it mean something.
We make it mean that we should quit doing it, or we make it mean that we'll never get it, or we make it mean that, like we said, there's something wrong with us. So when I'm trying to do that pull up, and I can't do it, and I make it mean that I'm not strong, or I make it mean that I won't be able to do it, or I'm not as good as somebody else, or there's something really wrong with me, or my body is too heavy for my arms, right? If I make it mean all of those things, then I'll probably quit trying to do it.
But if I make it mean that I'm a beginner at this, and I'm learning how to do this, and this is the first time I've tried, and maybe I'll only be able to do a half a pull up for six months, but I can make it mean I can do a half a pull up, and I'm going to keep doing half a pull up until I do a full pull up. And maybe that's what you need to do instead of saying, I hate my body or my body's ugly. Maybe you just do a half of an appreciation.
You say, I have a body. I'm in my body. My body is alive, right?
And really being in that space of trying to appreciate as much as we can with what we're able to do. Because like Donna had said, telling yourself that you feel a certain way about yourself when you aren't really feeling it is not going to serve you because you're not going to believe it. You're actually going to believe the opposite of what that is.
And so just taking yourself to the point where you can feel a little bit of appreciation. One of the things I offered is you can appreciate that you can see, you can appreciate that you can breathe, you can appreciate that you can afford to eat, that you're the kind of person that has friends, you're the kind of person that is kind to the person that's serving your food. If that's true for you, right?
And if it's not, maybe you could say, well, I appreciate the fact that I didn't scream. I appreciate the fact that I don't hit people. If you're the person that doesn't hit people, right?
Look for and it requires some creativity because your brain will block you from finding that. If you've believed for so long that there's nothing redeeming about you. Okay?
So notice those areas where you do practice self-loathing. And if you have a hard time finding them, look at the results in your life. That you hate.
Okay? If you have a result that you loathe in your life, it's probably coming and starting from a thought of self-loathing. Right?
If you have an action, something you do that you loathe, it's probably coming from originally from a thought of self-loathing. And you can track yourself back to it. If you notice that you feel awful about yourself, it's always because of a thought that you're having about yourself.
Find those thoughts. Notice how you're practicing them. And then think, what could you believe and think about yourself instead?
Could you find a way towards the opposite or even just a little bit better from loathing to neutral? Can you go to a neutral place? Can you focus on the things that you do like about yourself?
And let's talk about when you find the thoughts that are of self-loathing. Ask yourself why you are thinking them. Because one of the things I noticed when I was working with some of the students, like we actually had two Michelles, there was another Michele in our class.
And when we talked about one of the things that she had said was that it was really hard for her to not loathe her body. You know, it was really difficult for her to love it. And one of the things that was really helpful for her was to think about her body in terms of loving it as an action, as something she could deliberately do on purpose, not as something that was supposedly just supposed to come over us.
And that's a lot of times the work that I do with clients who are in relationships, right? They talk about, I just don't love my husband. I just don't like my husband.
And when I show them that that's actually a choice, it's not like a default, it's not something that that person is causing. That's really helpful for them because then they can do something about it. They don't feel like they're at the effect.
And so when I was talking to Michelle about this, one of the things that she was saying was that when she thinks about loving her body in an active way, like as a practice is something she can put on her to-do list, it really changed everything for her because if she felt like it was something that she could actually do. And when you do it, when you think about your body in a way that feels good, you get to experience that. And it's difficult at first because your brain wants to stay in the old pattern of hating because it's familiar and comfortable.
But as you practice the new thing, even though it may feel awkward in the beginning, the more you do it, the more it will feel natural, the more you will get proficient at liking yourself. One of the things that I had said is that it's just not an option for me to hate myself. Another one of the students, Jane, hi Jane, how are you?
Came up to me and said that that was really helpful that you had said it's just not an option to hate my body. That's what I had said and I said I haven't hated my body in 10 years and I used to hate it pretty actively. But now it's just not an option.
I don't give myself permission to think negative thoughts about my body. And, you know, I'll say sometimes I look in the mirror and I'm like, really? What's happening back there?
Why is everything falling? I don't understand it, right? And the temptation is to go into a spiral of hate and go into a spiral of judgment.
And it's just not optional for me. I know that there is no upside to doing that. It doesn't serve me in any way.
It doesn't feel good. And I will not do it. Now, many times when I used to do it before, I had this belief that if I hated myself enough, if I hated my body enough, then I would change it.
And a lot of people think that they think if they could just hate it enough, then it would motivate them to change. And what I have found is that the opposite is true, right? The more I hate my body, the more I sabotage myself.
And it was an illogical belief, but the reason I bring it up is because I want you to understand that it's coming from a well-intended place. A lot of times, what we tend to do is get mad at ourselves for hating ourselves. And then it becomes a double whammy.
And in fact, we can start hating ourselves because we hate ourselves. It's one more reason to hate on ourselves. And what I want to show you is that a lot of times, the negative thoughts we have towards other people and towards ourselves is because of a well-intended, well-meaning place where we think that that will help us to hate ourselves.
And even though it's illogical, it feels powerful. And what's important to remember is that we're doing it for a good reason, but it doesn't mean we have to keep doing it, right? I never found hating my body to end up in a good place.
Like it never served me. And as soon as I decided that that was no longer an option because there was no upside, I started creating evidence. I started looking for ways where I could love my body and I could appreciate it.
One of the thoughts that really served me and helped me, and maybe some of you all could borrow it, was the idea that I did not create this body, right? I am not the creator of it. I really do determine how much it weighs by how much I eat, but I did not create my body's ability to gain weight or not gain weight.
And so, it has really helped me to know that, yes, it is my body, but I didn't create it, and it was created this way on purpose. And it's the body that I am meant to have to fulfill my ultimate destiny in life. And so, when I'm able to kind of release it as a gift that was given to me, as something that was created for me, then I get some really clear perspective.
If this body is for me and not against me, then how can I find the ways that it is for me? And for those of you who don't have the self-loathing towards your body, but you have it towards your mind, towards your abilities, towards the way you are socially, you can just apply it in that way. You can look at it in that same way to find, okay, I'm an introvert.
How is that for me? I am socially awkward for some of you. Why is that?
How is that for me? Like, for me, one of my characteristics is I'm very intense, and I can be bitchy sometimes. And instead of trying to push that away and hate that about myself, I've tried to find how does that serve me?
How can I embrace that part of me? How can I see what's good about that? And when I'm able to do that, it completely changes how I show up.
It completely changes how I feel about myself, and therefore what I do about myself. So, I want to encourage you all to do that self-appreciation exercise. I want you to look at yourself in a way that maybe is different than the way you've looked at yourself before.
And maybe you can start appreciating yourself and seeing the effects of that in your life. I also want you to look at the spaces where you are loathing yourself and have compassion. Maybe you're doing it for a really positive reason.
Maybe it's just a habit that you learned when you were a small child, and you just haven't unlearned it, and that's okay. Use this as an opportunity to get to know yourself. One of the ways that you will have a happier life is by finding out more about yourself and what makes you happy.
Going into the crevices of where you aren't treating yourself in the best way, and understanding that from a place of compassion. Notice the results that self-loathing is giving you in your life. And most importantly, understanding that it is a choice.
You do not have to loathe yourself. And if you do loathe yourself, it's okay. And even in those small areas, those little things you quote unquote hate about yourself, those little areas are worth working on.
So keep your ears out for more mentions of my students who I just spent time with. I learned so much from them, and they have so much to offer, and so much of their work and their examples. I want to share with you in upcoming episodes.
So have a wonderful, amazing, beautiful week, and I will talk to you next time. 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.
