The best way to have a healthy relationship with anyone else is to have a healthy relationship with yourself. So, why does this seem difficult? Why do most of us struggle with self-worth and self-love? The full answer to that would be a 9-part book series. Limiting beliefs were created decades ago for most of us. Some of the situations that created the feeling that we’re not worthy or we’ll never be enough we might not even remember. And I’m sure you do remember a few painful ones. I do know that social media doesn’t help. Most people only show their “greatest hits” highlight reel showing perfect pics of a seemingly perfect life and perfect home and perfect kids.
That. Is. Not. Real.
You know that.
I struggled with self-esteem and self-worth for years. It impacted my personal relationships: I didn’t value myself, so I was attracting others who also didn’t value themselves. It impacted my professional relationships: I wasn’t confident when I first started out in marketing, so I wasn’t attracting new clients because they didn’t have confidence in me.
True love starts in the mirror. If you want healthy relationships with your kids, your significant other, or your work colleagues, it’s imperative to have a healthy relationship with yourself. The secret sauce is the internal work.
This is Aristotle’s famous quote and one of my favorites of all time. So I asked myself, “If excellence is just a habit, which habits do I need to embrace in order to feel better about myself and feel confident?”
And so it began. I made a commitment to do the work. And you can too. Here are the five successful habits I’ve implemented that helped me improve my self-worth, and can help you too:
1. Address your limiting beliefs
What is a belief? A belief is merely a thought we repeat over and over again. Guess what?
When I was younger, I was a young media buyer at the beginning of my marketing career, and my boss was on speakerphone with our client. They were chatting about the media buy I put together, and she summoned me to the phone to explain my rationale. I was horrified. My face turned red. I was flustered. I knew what the client needed, and I knew I had recommended the best strategy for his budget, but all I could think about was, “What if he will hate it and did not want to do it? What if he thinks I’m stupid if I don’t explain it right? What if I get fired?
What if? What if? What if?…..
There’s a reason I believed those limitations about myself. I needed to work on my self confidence and self worth. So think about the limiting beliefs you have about yourself. Write them down. And then write a new chapter. Find physical manifestations in your life that disprove those beliefs, and work on a new habit of forming new ones. It’s hard at first, just like anything else. And just like everything else, you get better with practice.
2. Stop comparing yourself to others
I have fallen into the comparison trap many times. Comparing bodies, incomes, followers, vacations …anything. Guess how that impacted my self-worth.
Instead, we can put all that energy into working toward our dreams and be so immersed in creating what we want to create in our lives that we simply don’t have time to compare. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. You’re on your own path. So, what dreams are you working toward? Write them down and work toward them so you spend time tracking progress not wasting your time wondering how you compare to anyone else. Every human has their own path, and while your paths may cross from time to time, yours is completely different from everyone else’s.
3. Make time for your mindset
I was honored to be a guest on the podcast Beyond the Image. I love how James, the host, described the importance of a healthy foundation. He was running a trail called Squaw Peak here in the Arizona desert and saw a beautiful massive saguaro cactus. From a distance, it was stately and impressive. But as he got closer, he noticed that while the top of the cactus was strong and vivacious, the bottom was almost completely rotten. Its foundation was faulty. Everything built on it – no matter how strong and healthy it looked – was eventually going to crumble.
James shared with me, “I built this really great business but I won’t live long enough to see it succeed because I’m not healthy.”
If we don’t take time for our mindset and take care of our bodies, everything we have worked toward might fall over. To live a vivacious life, you need a strong foundation, and one can only create a strong foundation if we take time for our bodies. And our brains are part of that body of ours.
It was a huge turning point in his life, and I loved hearing that story. That mountain holds a special place in my heart, too. And I also know I feel amazing when I exercise. Over the years, I have had periods where I didn’t work out regularly. And I had less energy, less drive, less patience, less calmness, and less joy. Now I just try and move my body most days. We just can’t feel our best unless we take care of our bodies.
But it’s even more difficult for me to sit and be quiet. That’s why I love hypnotherapy and the subsequent recordings to listen to in between sessions. It forces me to sit and relax. Reset. I call it-
My day is a thousand times better when I spend some time in the quiet. So I’m committed to my daily quiet time – prayer, meditation, reflection, and journaling. You can create more positivity and more patience when you take a few minutes in the morning to reflect on the progress you might have made toward your goals. Then solidify them and create the awareness that you have made progress, and it helps to write it down daily.
I like to say, “If you want to change your life, change your morning.”
So, every morning I try and find a few things that went really well the day before. I call them “wins” from the day before. When you review your journal and re-read all the little daily wins, you will feel good about yourself. It helps take your focus off the challenges you’re facing and keeps you focused on moving toward your dreams.
A few years ago, my husband and I started writing out our goals every morning in our daily planner/journal. Writing them keeps your focus on where you’re going, and takes the focus off of the past. You know the saying, “Don’t look back; you’re not going that way.” Seems cliché, but little tiny habits help you do just that. Focus on one small win per day for 30 days and see what happens. You start realizing that so many things are going RIGHT when you stop and take notice. 30 things that went RIGHT is an awesome feeling. You’re already doing way more than 30 amazing things a month – just start writing them down every day and take notice of them and just see how you you feel.
And the last thing I write each morning is what I’m grateful for. I know, sounds simple, and maybe sounds silly. People have been shouting BE GRATEFUL from the rooftops for decades. But what really happens when you write down three things for which you’re grateful each morning? Only one way to find out!
It’s physically impossible to be stressed when you’re focused on gratitude. Train your brain to focus on everything you have, and you’ll attract even more amazing things. If you have a bed, you live in abundance. If you have a heartbeat, you’ve been given the gift of life for another day. If you have a roof over your head, you’re very fortunate. If you have food for breakfast and you can feed your family, you’re wealthy beyond belief. The daily practice of acknowledging these things with gratitude will transform your life.
My favorite quote about gratitude is from Greg Bear, who wrote the book, Real Love.
“Gratitude is not a trick of positive thinking. Gratitude is a choice we make to simply acknowledge the truth about what we have, which greatly amplifies our enjoyment of everything we receive.”
4. Audit your inputs
Everything we hear impacts our beliefs. What’s amazing about my conversation with James is that I had a similar epiphany on the same mountain where he had his experience with the cactus. Years ago, I started up the same trail with my earphones in, and the song “Bittersweet Symphony” came on. I had never really paid attention to the lyrics before that moment and for some reason that second I was tuned in, he said “We’re a slave to money and then we die.” And I thought, “Wait, what?” That’s stupid. I don’t believe that. And I know how important it is to keep garbage out of your brain, especially when you’re working on transforming beliefs and creating self-worth.
Listening to music helps you focus on the life you want to create and changes the way you feel! My Love Playlist is a playlist exclusively of songs with inspirational, aspirational messages. If it doesn’t have lyrics that inspire me, it doesn’t make the cut. I put the whole playlist on Spotify and made it public if you want to check it out. I keep adding to it all the time, too! What kind of beliefs are you exposing yourself to?
Inputs are also the people we surround ourselves with most of the time. Are the people we spend time with enhancing our lives and helping us create more energy? Or taking away from our energy? Are they helping us get closer to our dreams? Or further away? We all have that friend who’s constantly complaining. They’re energy vampires, and before you know it, we’re sucked in. We’re complaining too. Misery loves company. Well, the opposite is also true. Big dreamers and big thinkers LOVE other big dreamers and big thinkers! Master “manifesters” (I don’t think that’s really a word. It’s giving me the red lines underneath it) love other master “manifesters”! What you focus on and surround yourself with either gets you closer to your goals or further away. Nothing is neutral. When we listen to positive messages, have positive conversations, read positive books, our life will change in positive ways because we change. So, being relentless about all of your inputs: everything you’re reading, listening to, watching, and surrounding yourself with, and making sure they’re helping you grow, is like getting off the side street and onto the autobahn (I’ve always wanted to drive on the autobahn). Don’t you want to get to where you want to go faster? Read books that will make you better. Spend time with people you admire. Listen to a podcast a day of someone who has created what you want to create.
5. Define your why
John Maxwell said that anyone struggling to create healthy habits hasn’t fully identified their “why.” I don’t love waking up at 4:30am to go to the gym every morning. I’m freaking lazy! I love my bed! I LOVE sleeping! And after work, I love to come home, put my pajamas on, and find a show to relax with. But, sleeping in, not working out, and watching too much Netflix won’t help me accomplish my goals and feel good about myself. My why is to live a long healthy life. My why is to help others. My why is to run around with my future grandchildren and dance at their weddings.
Back to the story about me as a young media buyer talking to a client for the first time. When my boss called me over, I took a deep breath, put on my big girl pants, walked through my plan with the client, explained my recommendation, and he said…
“OK.”
Once I’d reminded myself that I had done the work and put in the research and the effort, my confidence happened naturally as a by-product. You don’t have to force it. And the same is true in life.
So, are you putting in the research and doing the hard work? If not, today’s the perfect day to get started.
Thank you for being here and for reading my blog!
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