 We want to stay in our armor because opening up makes you feel naked. You gain your power over it and it becomes your superpower. The only way to truly love yourself is to realize that as you currently are, nothing needs to change. One thing we're going to talk about very, very deeply today is vulnerability. Yep, we're going to go there. Why? Because we're so afraid. Every human is afraid of vulnerability in some sort of way. And the reason why is because in people's heads, we think of the word vulnerability and we think vulnerability as weakness. We think it's a dark emotion. We think vulnerability at its core is fear and anxiety and shame and disappointment and the most difficult emotions that exist. But also at the core of vulnerability is love and joy and happiness. And it's hard nowadays because we see all of the ads on TV that tell us that we're not good enough. We see, you know, little girls nowadays seen magazines that show them what perfectionism actually is. People get on Instagram, children get on Instagram, teenagers get on Instagram and they see everybody Photoshopped in some sort of way. It is so easy to edit yourself on your iPhone right now. And so what do we do? Because of the fact that we look around us and we think, oh, everybody else is so perfect. That person's not, I'm not. We numb ourselves. We numb vulnerability. And we don't want to open up because we don't want to be disappointed. We want to stay in our armor because opening up makes you feel naked. And it makes you feel like you are coming out of your skin and it's only gotten harder with social media because obviously everything's so edited and then people are looking at how many likes they get. And if they don't get as many likes as somebody else and they don't feel like they're good enough and all of advertising and social media makes us feel like we're not good enough. We're not good enough. We're not pretty enough. We're not smart enough. We're not fit enough. We're not successful enough. We're not thin enough. And it makes it so hard because then we're looking at our imperfect selves because everybody's imperfect and we're comparing ourselves to standards that are basically impossible to achieve unless you have a computer to fix it, right? Women see ads and people are unattainably skinny and through Photoshop, they have perfect skin, quote unquote, perfect skin because they can edit everything out. So then they start comparing themselves and comparing their lives to near perfect standards, right? And then you watch movies and you see marriages and love stories and rom-coms that have these perfect lives and these perfect love and these perfect marriages that ours could never compare to to how great they are on the big screen. So what do we do? We hide and we try to make ourselves not be seen because we're not that. We're not that perfect person in the advertising. We're not that perfect person. That's on Instagram. We're not that perfect relationship, that perfect love that we see in all of the movies. So what do we do? We hide from everybody, from ourselves, from our friends, from our family, from our significant others because it's easier to hide. So we hide behind an armor and we never let anybody see the real us. We hide all of our blemishes. Women hide their blemishes behind makeup. Men hide all their bald spots but behind hats and we get into relationships and we get into friendships and all of them are just surface level and they never grow and they never become deeper and really deep relationships or really deep friendships because everyone is just afraid of possibly letting somebody in and possibly being let down. And it's easier just to hide than it is to hide and to never be let down than to truly open yourself up for possibility in what could be and then be let down. So we don't even enter the race because we're afraid that we might lose it. So we close off. We close off and we close off more and more and more as we get older. But here's the problem with that. In order to experience the best emotions as a human, we have to experience vulnerability in order to experience true love, true joy, true happiness, true hope, true authenticity. We can't experience those without allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. But the problem is this. We see vulnerability as weakness. We see vulnerability as weakness. It shows us being weak. It shows us being imperfect. It shows us not being as good as everybody else. But when you're open and you're honest and you're vulnerable and completely emotionally naked, do you want to know what people actually think of you? Think about it for a second. They think, wow, that person's courageous. I don't know how they just did that. I wish that I could open up. So what's interesting is though, we think courageous, stepping on and being vulnerable is weak. Other people view as courageous. And I think that one of the main problems with being vulnerable is that it leaves us open to uncertainty. Most people are uncomfortable with uncertainty. Most people want certainty. They want definites in their lives. You know, what if we love someone and we open up to them and we show them our true selves? Who we truly are behind all of the armor and they see it and they don't love us back? Or what if they judge us? That's what we worry about. It's too risky. We don't want to open ourselves up and possibly be hurt. That's just going to hurt even more. So we stay close. We keep our armor up. And it's not just love in relationships. It's many things. You know, vulnerability is many things. Vulnerability is starting a business. Vulnerability is finding your passion and following your passion. Vulnerability is doing what other people think that you shouldn't do. Sharing an unpopular opinion. Calling a friend who might have cancer. That's vulnerable. Saying, I love you first. Saying, you know, that you have art that you want to share with someone. Sharing your music with somebody. Trying something new. Exercising in public when you're overweight. Being accountable. Having faith. Admitting that you were wrong at some point in time. Asking for forgiveness. All of those are vulnerability as well. And the word vulnerable. Just so you know, it comes from the Latin word, vulnerable, which means capable of being wounded open for attack. And that's what we feel like when we think of the word vulnerable. I could possibly be wounded. I could possibly be attacked. And we want to be strong. We want to be courageous. So we don't allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We don't allow people to see that side of us. So we think it will open us up for some form of an attack with the possibility of being emotionally wounded. And that sounds hard. It's emotional exposure. We want to hide behind that. We don't want to get out there and let other people see us. But in reality, when you're vulnerable, you're not emotionally weak. You actually become emotionally stronger. No one looks down on someone who's vulnerable. They look up to them. To be vulnerable is to truly be alive. And it all starts when you're a child. When we come into this world, we're vulnerable. Children don't care what you think about them. They don't care. They don't care about clothes that they wear. You know, Dean's child was over here. He's a year and a half. He was over here this weekend. Kid was walking around my house naked. Did not care about anybody seeing him naked. Didn't even pop into his head, right? Children don't care. They are vulnerable. They're the epitome of vulnerable. But then as they get older, they get reprimanded. What they should and shouldn't do. They learn what they can and cannot do in the world. And what happens is they realize what they can't do and what they can do and they start to close off because they're like, oh, that's who I truly am. I'm not allowed to be that. So they close off in elementary school. You get older. You share secrets with a friend. They're thinking that they'll never tell a soul and they tell people and then you get made fun of. So what do you do? You close off. You learn to close off from these things because it's easier to close off than it is to be made fun of. That's also why breakups are so hard, right? You find your first love. You show them your true self because you don't know any better. You allow yourself to be emotionally vulnerable with this person and it makes you so happy. It makes you over the moon in love with that person. Love and happiness and all of that good. But then you see that person kissing someone by the locker and you feel like your heart's been ripped out. Whatever it is, right? It's emotional. Treason is what it feels like. So you learn to close off. I don't want to show my true self anymore, right? So it's raw emotional years that we learn to close off rather than being hurt. So we're certain that if we close off that we won't be hurt. So we want certainty over uncertainty a lot of times. If we open up, it allows us to be hurt and possibly, you know, be scarred by somebody else. But everybody has to deal with vulnerability at some point in time, not just a few people. We all have to figure out that vulnerability is something we need to embrace or die without truly being seen as who we are. See, we're human. We all struggle with feelings of not being good enough. We want to feel loved. We want to feel like we're good enough. We want to feel like we're good enough and smart enough and pretty enough and successful and happy and thin enough and fit enough, whatever the hell it is that you want. We want all that stuff. But to be vulnerable is to be alive. And to open yourself up to being seen. To open yourself up to being happy. Open yourself up to being loved. To open yourself up to possibly being hurt. And if we want to truly be happy, then we have to figure out a way to embrace that vulnerability. So how do we, how do we possibly allow ourselves to be open to those things? Well, vulnerability is the only real thing that's going to allow us to set us free to love truly and to be loved. And typically we tend to run from it. So we need to learn to be comfortable with letting our armor down. It's like anything else. It becomes hard the very first time, but it becomes easier with practice. As adults, we need to learn to be courageous. I can't even speak. You need to learn to be courageous to follow what our purpose is, to find connection, to feel what true love is, to see what true love is. And in relationships, vulnerability is the last thing that we want other people to see in us, but it's the very first thing that we want to see in them. Think about that one for a second. Isn't that interesting? It's the very last thing that we want people to see in us, but it's the very first thing we want to see in them. We want to know the real them. We want to see the person that they hide from everyone else. But we don't want them to think that we're weak. We want them to think that we're strong, right? But some people have been wearing a mask for so long that they don't even know who they truly are. They don't know who they are because they've never been that way in front of their friends, in front of their family, in front of their kids, in front of their partner. So they don't know who the hell they are. But one of the things that makes us so much more advanced than animals is our emotional capacity, that we can constantly expand that emotional capacity. And we can't worry about not being accepted. We have to step out into the unknown. There's a quote that really works well with this, and it's be the changes you want to see in the world. You have to realize that in order to have true deep connection, relationship with someone that you actually might have to be the first person to open up. You might have to be the first person to be vulnerable. You're the one that's listening to this episode, not them. So maybe you have to be the first person. The first person that opens up, that's vulnerable in the relationship that you're in. The first step is really being open and vulnerable is to believe that you are enough, that you are good enough, that you are pretty enough, that you are fit enough, that you are successful enough, that you are smart enough, that you are thin enough as you currently are. Not to say that you couldn't get better, but as you currently are, you have to be open to just loving yourself and accepting yourself as you are. Because you might not be where you want to say physically, but it doesn't mean that you can't start looking at yourself as if you are fit enough right now and tell yourself that you are enough. Because when you believe that you are enough, it makes it easier to be vulnerable because you truly believe that you're enough as you are and you don't need someone else to accept you because you are good enough as you are, that you are worthy enough, that you are comfortable with the way that you look, that the way that you feel, that you're comfortable with that and you learn to be more confident in yourself and you don't need anybody else to tell you how you are, how you look, how you feel. That's one step to getting more confident with being vulnerable is being confident in yourself. And when you look at yourself, you can be happy with the way that you look and with the way that you look and you're happy with it and you can be vulnerable and you're confident. You can be confident showing it to others, knowing that you're perfect just the way that you are. You allow yourself to be happy and you stop hiding. Like when I first started this podcast, one of the things that was so terrifying for me was that I remember writing down on a piece of paper that I was gonna be true and authentic and real and raw and vulnerable. And that was scary for me because I never really practiced vulnerability. Like when my father passed away, he passed away on a Thursday, I went back to school either Monday or Tuesday, right? I didn't tell anybody. I was 15 years old because what 15-year-old boy is allowed to show emotions, especially around his friends? I didn't tell anybody. So I always struggled with opening myself up. And when I started the podcast, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna actually talk about it. I had so many friends that didn't know my father passed away. Didn't know my father's an alcoholic. I never talked about it. And I went, you know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and start saying it to people. If I can be open, honest and vulnerable, then people maybe can listen to me and go, you know what, me too. Maybe I can connect to, maybe they can connect to my story in some form of a, you know, some way or another. And in turn, it will help them deal with whatever it is that they're dealing with, right? What I can tell you now that I'm almost 900 podcast episodes in is that having a podcast and saying these things out loud has been one of the most cathartic things that I could possibly do. It was so hard to record podcast episodes though and say some of the shit that I had really gone through my life. Say some of the really stuff that was really hard because I hit it from everybody. For years and years, for 15 years, nobody knew any of that stuff. It was hard for me to be vulnerable. Guys aren't supposed to be vulnerable. That's what we're told, right? And I was reading a book called Daring Greatly by Brené Brown and I saw it and I was like, you know what, this is right. I do need to try to actually try to be more vulnerable and to actually share what I thought was my quote unquote weakness. And what was interesting about it is as I shared my story, I started getting so many emails from people that were like, oh my gosh, I love this. I connect my story with yours. Thank you so much for being vulnerable and courageous and all of this stuff. And the funny thing was is that people started reaching out to me, these podcasts that I was so afraid to put out, so afraid to talk about, you know, my father's issues, my father's death. I did a podcast episode, literally a few days after my grandfather passed away and I remember literally crying in the episode and I was like, I'm going to put it out anyways. Now it's terrifying. And then I got so many emails of people being like, thank you for being vulnerable because it gives me the confidence that I can go and be vulnerable as well. It shows me that a confident person can be vulnerable, right? And some people don't even let anybody know to that side of themselves. Some people don't even know that side of themselves. Some people joy is something that they don't allow themselves to experience. Vulnerability is something that they don't allow themselves to experience in the happiest, most amazing moments in your life. The happiest, most amazing feelings in emotions that you want to feel are all being held back. If you can't feel your lowest lows and you definitely can't feel your highest highs, so you're restricted emotionally if you can't fully open yourself up ever, right? And some people, the most joyous moments of their lives are held back because they're still too worried about what could possibly happen and they have armor up. Like a good example I always think of is parents. They see their kids on the first day of school and they worry about when they're going to be 18 years old and leaving for college instead of just fully being in that moment and thinking about their child going to school, right? Or they see their child going to school for the first time and instead of being like, oh my God, this is a beautiful moment, they immediately start thinking about, oh my gosh, what if they're bullied, right? Or they watch their kids sleep, I've heard this many times and they think about instead of thinking about how beautiful they are and how amazing that child is and how lucky they are to have them, they interrupt those what could be beautiful thoughts with worrying about losing them. So instead of having a moment of joy, they have that moment, they hold that joy back with worry of what could happen if that person's not always around. They ruin great moments because they worry too much about being vulnerable of what could possibly happen. They don't enjoy the moment too much because they think about what could maybe possibly someday down the road happen with that person. They don't let themselves fully experience joy. They don't let themselves fully experience those joyous moments and fully become alive because they don't want the possibility of somebody leaving them, dying, something happening to them. So once again, they put up the armor. You have to allow yourself to be happy. You have to allow yourself to feel joy. You have to allow yourself to be okay with where you currently are. You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable. Stop trying to be perfect. As a self-admitted perfectionist in my past, that's a hard one for me to realize that I will never be perfect, right? And as quote unquote perfectionists, which really perfectionism if you heard my podcast episode not too long ago, perfectionism is just a mask that you're wearing that cover up a fear and insecurity. We believe that we have to do things perfectly. So we avoid and minimize all of the things that could possibly give us judgment or shame or any of those things because we have to be perfect, right? Perfectionism is not self-improvement at its core perfectionism is trying to earn approval from others by looking perfect. Perfectionism is not the key to success. It actually hampers your success and it's correlated with depression with anxiety with addiction because we try to be perfect but it's literally impossible to be perfect. There's no way to do it. Perfectionism is self-destructive and it is an unattainable goal and it will hold you back from being vulnerable because you're like I'm not perfect so I can't show people who I truly am. You will never be perfect. Nothing that you ever do will be perfect. Nothing that you ever create will be perfect. Remember this quote done is better than perfect. Just do whatever is you need to do. Another thing you need to do in order to feel more vulnerable and to be able to open yourself up stop numbing yourself. What do I mean by that? I mean smoking. I mean drinking. I mean working too much keeping yourself too busy to actually feel the emotions that you feel. So many people work their asses off or work too much so they don't have to feel feelings. So many people drink so they don't have to feel feelings. So many people smoke so they have to feel feelings. So many people eat so they don't have to feel feelings. People smoke, they drink, they eat to minimize the feeling that they have of just being this vulnerable object that's floating through space on an organic spaceship that's going to die one day. And I don't just mean like alcoholics. I mean the casual like oh today was a stressful day. I need to take the edge off. Take a drink or have a smoke, right? I'll just have a glass of wine to relax. Think about that for a second. Why can't you just mentally relax and you have to have some sort of substance to relax you? There's something going on behind the scenes or oh, I'll just have a piece of cake to relax. I deserve it after a hard day, right? Sorry to say it but that in itself is hiding. You're hiding from something. You're running from feelings. You're running from emotions. Believe me, everybody does it. I do it myself. I'm not perfect but we need to be aware. Numbing the feeling of the real world because the real world is too much for us to handle at the current moment. So we can start by opening ourselves up. If we can start with these steps we can start to feel a real connection between us and other people because it's what makes us human. It's what makes us different. You know, it makes what makes our species different than all of the species is the ability to make real deep emotional connections and we as humans, we're hardwired to want to feel those connections to feel emotion, to feel spirituality, to feel physical touch. We want to feel, we want to be seen. We want to feel heard. We want to feel valued. We want to give in and receive without feeling judgment. But in order to do that we have to learn to become vulnerable and realize that vulnerability is something that's going to be powerful for us not something that's going to open us up for harm. We need to learn that it's necessary. It's a necessary thing to be truly happy to allow yourself to be seen, to allow yourself to be open, to allow yourself to be vulnerable. Believe that you are enough. Believe that you have enough. Believe that you're perfect just the way that you are in order for you to make real deep lasting changes in your relationships and your life realize that somebody needs to be the first to have courage to wake up to open up to step up and to be vulnerable and have the courage to say what needs to be said. Don't be afraid of being looked down on. Being vulnerable is never a weakness. Being vulnerable is always a strength. People always look up to someone who's vulnerable. People always want to think want to be courageous and want to be vulnerable as well. So if you are going to change your life you're going to have to realize you are going to have to be okay with letting your armor down because letting your armor down is the only way that you're truly going to feel what you need to feel in this world. So realize that vulnerability is courageous. Vulnerability is power and vulnerability will never, ever be weakness. You are not broken. No matter what's happened to you in your past you're not broken. One of the things that I see a lot of in my line of work is I've seen every type of terrible thing that could possibly happen in this world. So many different things from murders to suicides to abuse to physical, mental, emotional every type of sexual abuse, rape everything that you could think of all of the terrible things in the world people have come to me and presented to me and I've had to try to help them deal with these things. And one of the things that I find is very common throughout traumas is people have the feeling of being broken they have the feeling of not being good enough they have the feeling of not being whole they have the feeling of something being wrong with them. And when I talk about traumas I don't want you to sit there and go well my trauma isn't as big as someone else's but you know my life was pretty decent my parents were at least around nobody abused me and I want you to realize this there is no gauge of how severe a trauma is compared to another one all trauma in the brain is trauma and so for you it might not be that you were you know physically, mentally, sexually abused but maybe your dad never told you that he loved you maybe your dad was just working all the time maybe your mom was so full of fear that she instilled all of her fear into you maybe it was that you know whenever you would do something wrong one of your parents would pull their love away from you and you know not give you their love and that was the way they used to control you maybe it was you know that that you were just neglected emotionally, physically, spiritually whatever it is from people that were around you there's so many different types of trauma maybe it was that you were bullied when you were in school there's so many different types of trauma and so I want you to realize this there's a lot of people that I've heard the worst things in the world but there's also a lot of people that feel like their lives were not that bad and so they don't deserve to accept their trauma as trauma they can look past it not realizing that that trauma that they have is still seen as trauma in the brain and so that's what we're going to dive into today is how to heal the feeling of not being good enough how to finally feel like you're enough how to finally feel like you're worthy of love, success, happiness, joy, peace whatever it is that you truly want in this world and the thing that I find that's really interesting about the whole thing is that people feel like they're broken like I said they feel like they're not whole they feel like they're not worthy they feel like there's something wrong with them and the interesting thing and I remember the first time I ever did this a woman came out to me and she was telling me a story about some terrible things that happened to her in her life and I had to help her reframe what she had was thinking about herself and when she came up and she told me I won't tell you but it was some pretty terrible things and she says I feel like I'm not whole and so to help reframe and click her out of her story I looked at her and I was like oh interesting and I was looking at her legs I was looking at her arms I was looking at her and I was like where what part of you is missing and she's like what do you mean I was like well you just told me that you're not whole what part of you is missing and she's like well no it's and as I repeated her story that she was telling herself back to her she was able to kind of get herself out of the story and realize wait I'm telling myself I'm not whole but there's not a part of me that's missing there's not a part of me that is not like I'm missing a finger I'm not missing a hand I'm repeating this story back to myself which isn't even actually true but because of fact I continue to repeat this story I am accepting it as true and I'm living my life that way as true as well and one of my favorite things in the entire world that kind of clicked this all into place was three-legged dogs I love three-legged dogs and the reason why it's because number one they're cute as shit when they hop around and they hop all over the place right but they're they're never any less happy than the other dog they never are any slower than the other dog they never have anything holding them back they they literally have a leg that was chopped off a quarter of their legs are gone but they don't see it as not being whole even though physically I guess they aren't whole right so even though they are missing a piece they don't see themselves as less than any other dogs they still have the same amount of joy they still have the same amount of peace they still have the same amount of spunk and happiness every single day but that's interesting because if you think about a dog that loses a leg somebody can have something happen to them in their life and they automatically feel like they're not whole and they accept that pain that circumstance in their life as true and they live out that story forever the only difference is a dog doesn't know how to tell themselves the story of not being whole you have been able to tell yourself the story of not being whole and so many humans say I'm broken you know this happened to me in my past I'm broken I don't feel like I'm enough I don't feel like I'm worthy of happiness or success or love or joy or peace I don't feel like I deserve to make the money that I want to or have the business that I want to I don't feel like I deserve to have a spouse that loves me fully unconditionally and so what happens is we take actions that line up with the way that we view ourselves and our identity the way that we view the world and so you know some of might have this feeling of I don't deserve love and they have this feeling of I don't deserve love and so when they get into a relationship with somebody who could be perfect and amazing they take actions to ruin that relationship most of the time unconsciously so that they've ruined the relationship and therefore that person leaves them which then lines up with their paradigm of I don't deserve to have love because we take actions with the identity that we feel that we have whether we realize it or not most of the time we don't realize it and so people think oh a part of me was stolen you know this thing happened to me in the past and there's I get it there's tons and tons of terrible things that happened to people and I've heard all of them and they're fucking hideous and it's terrible of these people can do things to other people like the things that I've heard and the things that I've seen people talk about but they happened and there's nothing that we can do about something that has happened in the past the only thing that we can do is we can think about it differently and reframe it so that we can then go on and have the life that we want to there's either that option or we can accept you know oh yeah I'm broken I'm never gonna be whole and it's gonna be like that to the day that I died but if you listen to this podcast I'm assuming you're the type of person who wants to grow you want to improve you want to get better at everything that you do and so now what we need to do is we need to reframe the stories that we've been telling ourselves for so long and that's it all it really is is it's a story and it's a fiction story but you're accepting it is true and there's a famous quote by a man that says if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it you know who said that Hitler said that Hitler said if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it some of us are like the hitlers of our own minds we're telling ourselves a lie over and over and over and over and over again but we've been saying it for 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years so long that we believe that we are not whole we believe that we are not worthy we believe that we don't deserve love, success, happiness and so we believe that there's a part of us missing we believe that we don't deserve to have what we truly want in this world and nothing can be further from the truth but you have accepted it as truth only because of the fact that you've been saying it for so long and so the first thing I want you to do is I want you to identify the story that you've been telling yourself if this hits home with you if you feel like there's a part of you that doesn't feel like you're enough or doesn't feel like you deserve happiness, success, love that you're unworthy that you're not fully capable of everything that you want to do what is the story that you're telling yourself behind all of that I want you to identify that right now and then what I want you to do is I want you to identify how that story is not actually true for instance somebody can be emotionally abused and because of that they feel like they're not deserving of love because their parents didn't give them the love that they wanted to so then you look at that story and you identify the story and then you ask yourself how is that not true? Well just because I don't feel like I got the love I needed to for my parents because I was neglected emotionally or physically or whatever it is for my parents doesn't mean that I'm not worthy 100% of love and what you do is you start to figure out the false pieces of the story that you've been telling yourself and start telling yourself the true and empowering story that you want to because you're not broken there's not a piece of you missing you know you are fully whole you've got all your toes and fingers most likely most of the people out here that are listening do have all of your toes and fingers some of you guys are missing them but you are whole exactly the way that you are either way and it's not that you're broken it's not that you're unholy it's not that you're unworthy it's not that there's something missing it's that you won't stop repeating a bullshit story to yourself that isn't true but you keep repeating it over and over and over again and this episode is to number one identify but then also to make you realize I know there's a lot of people out there that are now for the first time listening to this and going oh my God I have been telling myself a false story my entire life or since that event happened or since that person broke up with me I have been living a lie and now I want to step into the truth of who I truly am if you were to you know I'll give you a perfect example if you were to have a child that was here in front of you let's say it's a three year old child and every night let's not even not even nighttime let's say every single day you tell them about the monsters that hide in the dark and you tell them the detailed stories about the monsters every single night that child will eventually believe it and guess what's going to happen that child is going to have trouble sleeping that child is not going to want to sleep alone they're not going to have the lights off they're going to be afraid of something under their bed they're going to be afraid of something in their closet all because you made up a story about monsters that are hiding in the dark how many monsters are hiding in the dark of your mind that you need to identify and get rid of you need to remove because there are no monsters that are hiding in the dark of that child's room same way that there are no issues with you you are not not worthy of love you are worthy of everything you are whole you are complete you have nothing missing inside of you so if you tell a lie to a child they're going to eventually believe it if you tell them enough if you tell a lie to yourself then you're eventually going to believe it if you tell them enough and this is something that I notice as much as I love personal development and it's been the number one thing that's changed my life and the number one thing that's changed many people's lives that I know on a very deep level is that a lot of people live their lives very unself-aware they're kind of going through the motions and as they wake up and become somebody who gets into personal development they start to notice things that they need to change about themselves to become better and when they look at those things that they need to change they see those things they need to change as problems, as deficits, as ways that they're not good enough and so instead of feeling like they're normal and they're up with everybody else they look at all of their deficits when they become self-aware and they see themselves as less than everybody else because of all of the things that make them you know, not normal like everyone else so they think, oh yeah, I feel like I'm not worthy so therefore I'm less than everybody else I'm not waking up when I want to so therefore I'm less than everybody else and they put themselves mentally below everybody else and so the personal development journey now doesn't become a journey of becoming better it becomes a journey of just trying to get to normal and that's not motivating nobody wants to just get to normal but when you realize that everybody that you know has something that they're dealing with successful people, unsuccessful people people that you love everybody has something that you're dealing with you realize that you're on the same playing field there is no difference and to have quote-unquote, lack of better words issues makes you normal not less than, it makes you normal and so therefore when you overcome these little tiny things that are holding you back and you notice, I need to wake up earlier I need to have a morning routine I need to meditate I need to eat healthier I need to work out more when you notice these things that's when you actually start to become better and so just to let you know a lot of people who get into personal development do have those feelings of something's wrong with me as they start to see things they need to change about themselves and I want you to be very aware there is nothing wrong with you there is nothing that you need to try to avoid there is nothing that you need to stay away from and all of these things that you might think are the monsters that are in your closet that make you less than you are not less than just want to let you know on the personal development journey see that happen all the time so you're normal exactly where that you are if you've been mentally, physically, sexually abused you're normal if you've been neglected you're normal if you've been unloved you're normal if you don't feel like you're good enough you're normal if you don't feel like you deserve money and success and happiness and joy and peace you are normal everybody has somewhat of that different it's all the same it's all ice cream it's just different flavors we all have some ice cream that's what I want you to know so now that we've identified these things how do we get past it? how do we work to become better not to become normal not started from a deficit to become normal but to become better the first thing that I'll say is this and this is the hardest for a lot of people is to talk to someone talk to someone it doesn't have to be a therapist it can be a therapist it could be a coach it could be a life coach it could be your fitness coach it could be anybody it could be your best friend it could be your spouse talk to somebody why? most people the thing that they're most afraid the thing that's really holding them back the most is the thing that they're most afraid to talk about and shame breeds in the dark when you bring it to light it no longer has power over you and the more that you're able to talk about it the less you're going to stop crying the less you'll cry and the less it's going to have its power over you and eventually this thing that has its power over you the more that you speak about it you gain your power over it and it becomes your superpower I can't tell you how many people I know that have been mentally, physically, sexually abused and it's in the dark they don't tell anybody because they're so afraid of being judged and all of these demons that they quote-unquote demons that they have that are hiding in the dark and when they bring them to light that becomes their superpower because they're finally able to be open, honest and vulnerable and people see them as courageous by doing so and so what I want you to realize is talk to somebody shame breeds in the dark but if you put light on that thing it will make you so much better one of the biggest things for me is this podcast when I first started this podcast I had never talked to people about my father being an alcoholic I was super embarrassed of him when I was a child I didn't tell anybody when my dad passed away I went to school four days later after the funeral didn't tell anybody didn't even tell my best friends because I was just so there was so much shame around my father when I was a child for me that was the story that I was telling myself when I started this podcast I wanted to be completely open, honest, vulnerable, authentic show all of my shit to everybody to make them realize that it's safe to show all of your shit and what I've come to realize is that the most therapeutic and the most cathartic thing I've ever done was talk about those things in this podcast because what had its power over me I was able to talk about it and then gain my power and it became one of my superpowers to be able to be vulnerable and authentic and we're afraid that if we're vulnerable people are going to see us as weak but nobody will see you weak when you're vulnerable everybody will look at you and see your vulnerability as courage because everybody wants to figure out a way to get their skeletons out of the clouds and be able to speak about it so you think that by speaking about the things that are really tough make you weak but that vulnerability people actually see as courageous and they think, man, I wish that I could do what he's doing I wish that I could do what she's doing so the first thing is to talk to somebody about the things that you feel are quote-unquote not right with you or broken about you or unworthy about you the second thing is to tell yourself a new story so you've identified the story you've been telling yourself now it's time to reframe and to change that story so that it doesn't have power over you anymore you know, stop telling the old one when you notice that the old one comes back up and you're telling yourself again click yourself out of it in the moment and go, okay, hold on I got to tell myself my new story over and over and over again and you repeat it all day and the more that you tell yourself the new story the more that you're going to start to believe it and the less you're going to start to believe the other one okay? number three accept it whatever happened to you in the past no matter how bad it was and I know there's some people out there that were listening that have had some terrible things happen to them in the past I know some people that are out there listening have had some decently bad things happen to you in your past some traumatic things some things happen bullying and it might not seem severe to you but whatever it is whatever scale you want to put it on which is not what the brain puts it on it's what us humans like to put scale or degrees of trauma on them accept them they happened there's literally nothing that you can do about that right now you can't go back and change what has happened to you the only thing that you can do is you can change the way that you feel about it the story that you're telling yourself and reframe it as a way that we were saying it so number three is you have to fully 100% accept it if I were still sitting here wishing that my father were alive and wanting to change that story it would make me anxious it would make me sad it would make me frustrated it would make me feel all the negative emotions that come with wanting to change the past and that's something that I can never do number four this can be hard when everybody you need to forgive okay forgive whatever it is forgive the person that did the thing forgive yourself whatever it is and most people are like I don't want to forgive that person for that terrible thing that they did to me because it wasn't right by forgiving you're not saying that it's right by forgiving you're actually relieving yourself from the attachment to that thing that's been holding you back forgiveness is never for that person I don't need you to call them and forgive them I need you to forgive them energetically and mentally and release it because that's when you gain your power back forgiveness is never for the other person forgiveness is always for you so you can release it and you can move on so that's number four and number five is to f***ing realize that you're not broken you're not you're whole you're fully whole you're normal we've all been through some shit we've all been through stuff we didn't want to there's a pretty good chance that sometime in the rest of our lives we're going to have to go through something else that we don't want to but you have to realize that you're not broken you're whole the way that you are there's power in going back and taking your mess and turning it into your message and there's power in taking your power back and saying I'm going to make this something that's not going to hold me back anymore but it's going to propel me so many people struggle with self-love so many people struggle and we could be so cruel to ourselves and not struggling in the self-love category is holding us back from everything that we want to do because we're mentally thinking that we're not good enough we don't love ourselves enough so therefore maybe we don't deserve this life that we want maybe we can't create this life that we want and we need to learn before doing anything else how to love ourselves more and so what might actually be a better phrase than self-love because so many people talk about self-love and so many people struggle with it is how can we accept ourselves more instead of self-love how can we have self-acceptance right because it's not really about love it's about acceptance see the barrier to self-love is self-acceptance we have judgment that we place on top of everything but if you were to just clear out all the judgment clear out all the things you think about yourself and clear out all the negative things that you say below it is self-love the actual natural state of a human is love have you ever been around a child before a toddler is just love and happiness and joy but what happens is as we grow up we get judged we have societal pressures the way our parents raise us all of these things that can happen advertisements, going to school, getting bullied and we end up placing all of these judgments on top of ourselves and the opposite of judgment is acceptance so instead of just self-love let's talk about self-acceptance and why it's so hard for us to love ourselves why it's so hard for us to accept ourselves and where it actually came from because if we can get to the root of it we can start to work on it because behind all that self-judgment is the love that you're looking for that acceptance is the doorway to the self-love so let's talk about first off why it's so hard to accept ourselves well, there's a couple things one of the biggest things is the way that we're socialized so, you know, we have to be socialized by our parents now let me say this before I talk about parents at all everybody, your parents whether they did an amazing job or they did a terrible job they did the best with what they had and children also don't completely understand the world around them so they might perceive things incorrectly and so people always ask me how can I not screw my children up like I hear that question all the time I'm gonna be honest with you I don't know if there's a way to not screw your children up because you might be the best parent and I've heard many times of these incredible parents but the child's perception of the parents or the way the world works around them was actually skewed when they were younger and they built their own perception which took them away from self-love that took them away from self-acceptance but most of the time what happens is in order for us to quote-unquote fit in we have to be socialized as child as children, right parents are under pressure to socialize you to make you fit in, right it's not okay to have a temper tantrum and to scream or to run around inside and have you can't just run around and have fun inside of a nice restaurant so you have to that doesn't fit in with the way society is so a child that doesn't fit in has to learn our social constructs and let me tell you why that ends up being such a big thing that really I don't want to say messes people up that kind of messes people up, right one of the things that people don't realize as parents is that the thing that your children worry about more than anything else and really have in the front of their mind consciously or subconsciously is does my mom love me does my dad love me, right and one thing that a lot of people a lot of parents don't realize is that they will either give love to their child a lot of times depending on what they do if they do what they want or they accidentally retract their love which is the scariest thing for a child they retract their love from their children which make them feel like what I'm doing right now my mom doesn't love me what I'm doing right now my parents don't love me and the children because of the fact that us, we were all children at one point in time we don't have any real reasoning process for this the child doesn't fully understand everything it realizes okay, the way that I'm acting right now which is my natural state is not acceptable, right and obviously the child a two-year-old or a three-year-old is not saying this themselves but subconsciously it's just going on I'm playing around I'm having a whole lot of fun inside of this place but my mom's yelling at me to shut up my mom's yelling at me because what I'm doing right now is not acceptable and they think my natural state having fun running around being joyful maybe being loud is not acceptable and so we learn that what we did was not acceptable so my natural state is not acceptable which gets in the way because then we have no self-acceptance which turns into no self-love right an interesting statistic to kind of give you guys an idea about this is that the average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised right I understand as a parent that shit is hard right and you're trying to keep your child alive I get it it's hard so but if an average child is reprimanded eight times more than their praise that means that the average child is thinking I'm not good enough more than they're thinking I'm good enough they're reprimanded eight times more than they're praised so the child is thinking in a lot of parents reprimand their children whether they're conscious of it or not by retracting their love from them so they're thinking eight times more than they're praised if I act this way my mom doesn't love me if I act this way my dad doesn't love me and so we think the way that I as a child they don't consciously think this but this is kind of under the subconscious there right the way that I am is not okay so I have to change the way that I naturally am in order to be okay in order to be loved by my parents so the child has to change itself it has to let go of certain aspects of itself based off of what the parents tell them does this make sense to everybody now? so as we grow up in order to be socialized in order to fit in we have certain aspects of ourselves that we have to change and in turn we subconsciously think I'm not good enough that's everyone's number one fear in the entire world I'm not good enough lives under the surface of every single fear that every single person has the reason why I think we're not good enough is because as a child we were reprimanded in order to be socialized because there's certain ways that we can act and there's certain ways that we can't act and we think does my mom love me well when I do this my mom doesn't love me if she doesn't love me should I love myself? right these these aren't consciously going through the child's head but this is all subconsciously happening so we have to as adults learn to love ourselves learn to accept ourselves even if we didn't get it as a child right and once again maybe your parents were amazing maybe you viewed something differently because a child doesn't necessarily understand everything so now it's our job to kind of pick up the pieces and to rebuild the way that we want you know we can think as a child oh my gosh I'm having fun I'm running around in public and my mom yells at me my dad yells at me therefore this aspect of myself is wrong this having fun this running around this aspect of myself is wrong and I'm not accepted the way that I am and if I'm at the way that I'm acting naturally is not right then I must be wrong make sense? it's deep when you can fully understand this concept number one it's going to make you a better parent number two it's going to be able to help you heal your past number three it's going to help you start to accept yourself more it's okay your parents are the best they could but also besides parents we have all of society we have all of the advertisements we have bullies in school all of these things on top of it so we learn from a very young age during the socialization process that we're not good enough as we currently are we realize that we think that and we don't really think that consciously once again it's all subconscious but we must act a certain way in order to fit in we must act a certain way in order to get our parents love and even if that way isn't really me I'll do it because it's what my mom wants I'll do it because it's what my dad wants and the result of it is unworthiness the result is the way that I am naturally is not enough and so what happens is our personality from a young age is now built upon repressing who we truly are does that make sense get that for a second our personality from a very young age is about repressing who we actually truly are at our most natural state and somehow I've realized that I'm bad and I need to look to my parents to see what is good I need to look to my parents to see what is to get their validation to see if what I'm doing is okay because in my natural state it's not okay my running around is not okay and I get it if you're a parent I get it believe me they can be loud they can put themselves in danger because they don't understand but this is what's happening subconsciously in a child's head and this is what happens subconsciously when you were younger as well so as we get then we end up getting older and what happens is because we learn that we have to learn from our parents what is good and what is bad and we have to seek their approval then what happens is as we get older we have to seek other people's approval the same way same way that we're thinking does my mom love me does my dad love me then we subconsciously think does this person love me does this person love me do you love me you know if I got good grades will I be loved if I get number 1 in the class will I be loved if I get number 1 on the baseball team will I be loved if I beat everybody else in the spelling bee will I be loved you know if I look sexy enough for you as you get older will I be loved if I do this will I be loved if I and the strongest person here will I be loved you know if I get more instagram likes will I be loved if I get more face book likes will I be loved and you start to realize if I make more money Money, will I be loved if I get a nice car, if I have a nice house, if I have nice clothes, if I speak a certain way, if I come off more confident, will I be loved? And we realize that a lot of the things that we're doing throughout our life, once we wake up to this, is to get other people's approval. We're trying to do or become anything that will make us feel accepted sometimes. That's why school can be so hard, because we're trying to fit in so that we can just feel loved and accepted by other people. The issue is that we're seeking validation for everything outside of us. And if you're seeking for validation outside of you, you're never gonna find true validation, because true validation comes from yourself, in loving yourself and fully accepting yourself. Nobody outside of you. So it's kind of like the acceptance and the love that we're looking for from ourselves. We're actually trying to find another people thinking that that's going to solve the problem that we actually have inside of ourselves. Not your looks will not change how you feel about yourself. Your money will not change how you feel about yourself. Your cars will not change how you feel about yourself. Your job, your title, your body, your social media following, your social media likes. None of those things will actually change the way that you feel about yourself. And you have to realize that. The only way to truly love yourself is to realize that as you currently are, nothing needs to change. What needs to change has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with your acceptance of yourself. You have to learn first off, before you change anything and before you become the person that you want to become, you have to fully love yourself. I should take that back. Fully accept yourself as you are. If you're short, if you're fat, if you're skinny, if you're broke as hell, if you've ruined all of the relationships in your life, whatever it is, you have to learn to go, all right, can I love myself? Can I accept myself right now? All of my negative thoughts, can I accept myself? All of my short temper, can I accept myself? Acceptance first, no judging. This is who I am. This is where I'm working off of. This is my baseline and I love you for who you are, Rob. Can you say that to yourself? You know, the thing that's interesting is that we can judge the hell out of ourselves and we can judge the hell out of other people. But we don't really judge anything else besides ourselves and other people. Like you don't walk into a forest and just start judging the trees. You know, you got a fat one, you got a short one, you got a skinny one, you got a broken one. You just look at them and you just accept them and appreciate them for what they are, right? But we judge ourselves and we judge others. Oh, this person's better than me. This person's worse than me. I'm better than that person. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to do that out of our own insecurities for just being accepted, right? We live in a state of constant judging, whether that's judging ourselves or whether that's judging others. Am I good enough? Am I not good enough? Do I deserve love? Do I not deserve love? You have to allow yourself to just be a human being. You have to allow yourself to just be a human being. Be who you truly are. Learn to accept yourself as you are. All of your flaws, all of your ups, you're not achieving all of the things that you lost, all of the things that you do, the money that you don't have, all of that stuff. You have to accept yourself for that. The person that's under all of the makeup, the person that's behind all of the edited social media posts. You have to rediscover who you are. And think to yourself, before I lost this innocence, before I was socialized, who was I? What was my true heart as a child? What was my true soul as a child? How was I? Right? Like if I think back to myself before, you know, life happened, before bullying happened, before seeing advertisements that made me feel like I'm not enough, who was I? I was just a sweet little quiet kid. I used to go get rocks and bring them to my mom and get flowers and give it to her. I was just a quiet kid. And then I learned what was right, quote unquote, right. What was wrong, all of that stuff. And once again, it's nobody's fault. It's not your parents fault, it's not your fault, any of that stuff. But it's about rediscovering who are you. What do you love? Maybe part of the thing is you've gone down a path of doing things that you don't love because you've been seeking acceptance from other people, from your parents, because that's what you thought they wanted you to do, what the ones you go to school for, maybe because you wanted to make money to impress people or to have security. But it's a real rediscovering of who you are. And the question that goes to that is, what do you love? What do you love to do? What makes you excited? What makes you feel alive? You know, children don't do anything that doesn't make them feel alive or that they don't think it's fun unless they're forced to do it. Let's take all the forcing that you've been doing for the past 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years and go, damn it, what do I love? What makes me feel alive? And what I want you to do is make a list of it, write all that down and do more of that. Wake up every morning and look at that piece of paper and say, how can I bring more of this into my life? The path of self-love and self-acceptance to do more of the things that you actually like. Don't give a damn about what anybody else thinks about you. What anybody else says about you, what you should and shouldn't do. Don't care about that. What do you wanna do? Man, what do you wanna do, woman? What makes you feel alive? Do more of that stuff. You have to learn to fully accept yourself. There is nothing that you need to do. There's no one that you need to prove yourself to. There's no change that you need to make. There's no weight that you need to lose in order to be loved, in order to be accepted. The path to self-love is self-acceptance. And at some point in time, you learned that as you were, was not good enough. Something happened. I don't know what it was. It's different for all of us. Maybe it was your parents, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was cool, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was society, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was Instagram. I don't know. There was some point in time where you broke off and said, as I currently am, is not good enough. You need to go back, think about that. Think about how you currently are and say, how can I accept myself more? Because under all of the judgment is all of the self-love you're looking for. You don't have to work for self-love. You just need to remove all of the things, all of the judgments that are getting the way of self-acceptance. Because when you can fully accept yourself in all of your glory, that's when you find that you already love yourself. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you wanna learn even more about Master Your Mind, click right here and watch this video as well. You are your abuser. Let me say that again for everyone in the back. You are your abuser. If you talk down to yourself, you're your abuser. You are the abuser.