Ep. 37 The Golden Thread - Dirty Chai with Chio

The podcast discusses the importance of self-perception in personal, professional, and social life. Self-worth is defined as the belief that one is inherently valuable and deserving of love. Self-esteem is the confidence and belief in one's abilities. The concept of confidence is explored using a story about two marathon runners. Confidence is seen as the belief in doing one's best, while grandiosity is an unrealistic overestimation of oneself. It is important to have a balanced and realistic view of confidence. Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Dirty Chat Podcast with me, your host here, a podcast where we focus on holistic, personal, and professional success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between, you. It's about the mindset, emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today we're talking about the golden thread that runs through the decision making that defines your life from your personal life to your professional life to your business life to your social life, whether you realize it or not. The golden thread, or the terribly not golden thread, that runs through all of these things is your perception of your own self, your self-worth, your self-esteem, your confidence, or lack thereof. And I have said self-worth, I've said self-esteem, and I've said confidence separately because they are three separate concepts that are constantly or regularly conflated and used to mean one, one is used to mean the other, and the other is used to mean this one. But they are not the same thing, and the nuances are important. So we're going to run through the nuances of the definitions of each of those concepts, and then we're going to talk about why they matter, and why they're the golden thread that runs through everything, how they affect your social life, the friends you're choosing, the spaces you're choosing, how they affect your professional life, the things that you're putting your hand up for or not putting your hand up for, perhaps even your ability to negotiate a salary or to grow yourself, how they affect your love life, and the people that you choose or you allow to choose you. Let's start with defining the concept of self-worth. And who better to help us define it than Brene Brown. Brene Brown defines worthiness as the conviction that you are good enough as you are, flaws and all, and that you deserve to be loved. In simpler terms, you are born with an intrinsic sense of self-worth. You are born with value. Self-worth is not something you then earn. Self-worth is not something you need to achieve. You are already worthy. And that's a very difficult concept for a lot of us to understand, especially I can only relate to people, I can relate more easily to people who have grown up like me. And if you grow up in a household where you have to earn approval, where you have to earn the well done, where you have to earn the good job, you start to think that the good job, the well done, the you're great, is what makes you worthy. No, you were born worthy. The thing though, is because we have come to associate worthiness with external validation, we then step outside of a worthiness that we already have. And we hustle for that worthiness outside. And that's something we should not be doing. Let's not confuse concepts. Self-worth is something that you are born with. One of the most defining reads of my life was the Four Agreements, which is how I started to build back, to build my self-esteem after coming out of a crushing divorce and a crushing relationship. And one of the founding concepts is the idea that you are born divine. And that runs through religions and everything spiritual, that God gave birth to you, that you are a part of God's divine plan, that you are put on this earth with a purpose and a goal by God himself. And that means that when you were decided, when you were spoken into existence, you already had divine value. But the more we are domesticated, the more we are exposed to how to live by other human beings who have already been on the planet for a really long time, we lose sight of that divinity that we understood that we had as children. Have you ever... So I have a niece, I suppose we're not in touch anymore, but when I was still married, I had a niece and she's absolutely gorgeous. And I met her when she was three. And I said to her, she was three at that time. And I said to her, my goodness, you are so beautiful. Why are you so beautiful? I don't know why I asked her that question. She looked up casually from what she was doing, made eye contact with me and she said, I don't know. I think Jesus thought it was a good idea. And I thought, oh my God, when do we lose this? Because that for me is absolute proof that we are born knowing that we are worthy. It is only later when we start to get confused by society's narrative that we start to doubt that worthiness, that we start to think maybe if I was more of this and less of this, then I would be worthy. No, worthiness is not something you need to hustle for. You came with the worthiness built in. You just need to reconnect with it. And that's concept number one. And we'll talk about self-esteem. Self-esteem is how highly you think of yourself. It's when you look at a situation, do you think, okay, I can do this or I can do that. It's the idea of being confident in doing something. That's self-esteem. It's am I the right person to do this? Am I sure that this is something I can do? Is this something I can deliver? Am I the person that I think I am? Am I the girl that I think I am? That's where self-esteem is. That's what self-esteem is. Self-esteem is your confidence, your sureness in yourself, your understanding of the fact that you are worthy already, and also being confident in your abilities to do something. And we're going to talk about, I'm going to define confidence for you in great detail because I think it's important. And I'm going to use a story to do this because that's where I thrive the most. And that story comes from the Dale Carnegie Training College, Dale Carnegie's book, Make Yourself Unforgettable. So let's talk about what confidence is so that we can then discuss what security and insecurity are. So he uses an illustration, two people, right? So it's an important distinction. Confidence and grandiosity are not the same thing. We want to be confident. We do not want to be grandiose. And grandiosity is things like arrogance, it's things like overestimating your own ability. We want to find a balance. And let's talk about what that balance looks like because sometimes the presentation of confidence is very similar to arrogance, and that's not right. A lot of what has happened to the story of confidence is that it has fallen into the danger of a single story, where only one type of confidence is portrayed to the world. And people start to think that that's what confidence is in its entirety, when it is much more complex. Now to the book. So Sean and Michael, who are the protagonists of our stories, work together. They're bond traders for a major investment bank. Sometimes there's a lot of pressure. So although they work side by side for several hours, Sean and Michael have never really talked. Until one day, it comes out that they're both planning to run a marathon, and it's going to take place a few months later. Neither of them have ever run a marathon before, so perhaps they could train together, they think. However, Sean doesn't think he needs to train for the marathon, while Michael knows he needs to. So they plan to run together when the marathon actually takes place. When the day of the marathon comes, as they decided, they meet in the crowd of runners a few minutes before the race starts. Michael confesses that he's feeling nervous. He knows he has trained, but now the idea of actually running 26 miles seems pretty outlandish. He tells Sean that his goal was just to do his best and to finish the race. If he didn't make it in time for the cutoff, there would always be another race. No one could really predict what could happen. And as he told Sean, I guess we'll find out soon enough. Sean had a very different attitude about the race. He was only allowing himself to have totally positive thoughts. He was not only picturing himself crossing the finish line in front of thousands of other runners. He was convinced that he would finish first. Sean's idea was, you can do whatever you think you can do. Many great athletes have proven that to be true, have they not? We've all heard the story of Michael Phelps and the tape he plays in his head. When the race started, both Sean and Michael decided to go really slow at first. After a few miles, though, Sean confessed to feeling bored. He felt a little silly trotting alongside grandmothers and overweight people who had no real chance of finishing. Sean apologized to Michael, then took off much faster. As Michael had anticipated, running a marathon turned out to be really tough. After about 15 miles, some of his worst fears started to come true. What had he been thinking? He should have trained much harder. Before long, Michael was hardly running at all. He was just slowly jogging, and for a few minutes he even walked. But he did finish the marathon. Michael was not surprised that he didn't see Sean anywhere along the course. He figured Sean had reached the finish line much sooner, but something quite different had happened. Sean had dropped out before he got close to the end. A number of unfortunate things had happened. First, he had run out of gas from going too fast. Then, when he was forced to slow down, he was getting passed by those same grandmothers who had been so annoying earlier. He was even passed by people who had slowed down to nearly a walk. This was quite a hit to Sean's ego, and one that he had not anticipated. Sean has no plans to run another marathon. Michael is looking forward to a better performance next time. In these two runners, the difference between grandiosity and confidence is clear. Confidence doesn't mean certainty that you are going to succeed. It means certainty that you will do your best. Confidence is also the ability to recognize your limitations without becoming preoccupied with them. Grandiosity, on the other hand, is an unrealistic inflation of who you are and what you can do. Those people ignore the possibility of anything but success. When setbacks occur, these people are taken by surprise and have a hard time recovering. What is the difference between Michael and Sean? What is the main difference? The main difference is Michael had a clear understanding that he was going to attempt a hard thing. He had a clear understanding of the fact that he had to work to do the hard thing. That doesn't mean that he didn't experience imposter syndrome. He knew that he was going to do something. He worked towards doing it, and he kept moving towards the goal. When he finished the marathon, he knew that he was going to run again and that he needed to maybe train a little bit more here and train a little bit more there. That's where he would bolster his strength. Michael understood the assignment. Confidence is understanding what you can do and what you can't do and bolstering what you can't do to support what you can. He prepared, and he went in with an, I can give this a fair shot. When he experienced his insecurity, he didn't hide from it. He gave it space, and he slowed down where he needed to, but he kept moving. Confidence looks like that. Grandiosity is what most of us are being peddled in the name of confidence. Grandiosity is the delusion that purely thinking positive will turn you into Michael Phelps. Yes, Michael Phelps plays a mental tape in his head, but he also works exceptionally hard. He shows up to make that tape a reality, and that is where your confidence comes from. I'm going to tell you something that was life-changing for me here. Before I started dealing with those issues, I did not appreciate the fact that the relationship that I have with myself is quite similar to the relationship that I have with other people. When a person that I'm in a relationship with who is external to me, so let's say a friend, disappoints me, I lose trust in them. I feel hurt. I realize maybe I cannot rely on this person for this. If they disappoint me again, I'm thinking, okay, we have a problem here. If they disappoint me a third time, Houston, we have a problem. This is not a trustworthy person. When they tell me they can do this, or they are going to do this, or they will do this for me, I know that they are not reliable. I know that they're not the person I should be calling. I know that they're not the person who's going to show up when I need them to because they have shown me that that is who they are. Here's the mind-blowing thing. The relationship you have with yourself is the same. We sometimes forget that the voice that we hear in our head speaking for us, our thoughts, are not the entirety of who we are. We have a subconscious brain that is so large and so expansive that you don't really operate in there consciously. You have a part of your brain that is conscious, which is where you do the things that are on autopilot, the day-to-day things, the thing you're dealing with now. To help you understand the fact that you have a subconscious brain that is doing much more, think about the number of times you're on autopilot. Who's flying the plane? Who is telling you what to do? Your subconscious brain takes over anything that has become automated. Your subconscious brain takes over all the details that you've come to know and are sure of. It deals with those things. And then it only lets through enough information for you to stay sane. And the way that it lets through enough information for you to stay sane is something called the reticular activating system. If you were to experience, think and see everything that you go through on a daily basis, you would lose your mind. You would never have time to exist as a human being. So think about it this way. If you were to smell every smell, to hear every sound that actually passes by your ear, if you were to see everything, so if you're walking and you look and you see the blade of grass and then you see the ant and then you see that and then you see that, that is way too much information for a human brain to process on a daily basis. But you do see it. And what your brain does is it separates irrelevant information and shows you only the relevant information. That determination of what is relevant and irrelevant is determined by your reticular activating system, the filter. The filter is informed by what your subconscious brain knows to be true, not the lies you tell yourself, not when you say with no work, effort or plan, tomorrow I'm going to turn into a millionaire. Yeah, we can hear you, we, the people inside you, and we don't believe you. And therefore, nothing changes. Therefore, your reticular activating system is not activated to show you something different. This is the easiest demonstration of a reticular activating system is something called the red car, yellow car, I think it's called the red car experiment or the red car thing. So let's say you buy a red vehicle or you decide that you want to buy a red vehicle or you have a particular passion for red vehicles. The next time you go on the road, you will see so many red vehicles. It's like all of a sudden, everybody has a red car. Those people have always been there. Those red cars have always been there. What's happening is your subconscious has received a new instruction. We are now the red car gang. Show me the people in my tribe, and then it will show you, aha, you have expressed an interest. Here's a red car. Here's another one. Here's another red car for you to see more people for your tribe. That's how your brain works. And if you want to build your self-worth and your self-esteem, if you want to reconnect with your self-worth and build your confidence and self-esteem, what you need to do is learn to trust yourself again. So someone on Instagram said to me, can I give them a pill recommendation or something that I've taken to rebuild my confidence? And that gets me to get going and to do 75 hard. And I said, try keeping small promises to yourself. Don't start big. Don't start by going 75 hard. Start by saying to yourself, I'm going to do something, and then you do it. And then you do it again the next day. And then you do it again the day after. That is how you build confidence. That is how you build certainty in the fact that the person that you're dealing with, you, is trustworthy. You don't start by burning the house to the ground or declaring that you're going to be a millionaire tomorrow. Why would you believe yourself? When was the last time you told yourself you were going to do something and you believed it? Right? When was the last time you told yourself that you were going to do something and you didn't? That time frame will correlate with the one before. Now do the hard work. And remember, your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your subconscious brain is quite like your relationship with an external friend. So if a friend has let you down multiple times, you need to work extra hard to prove to them that you are committed to changing. And that's what you need to do with yourself. So start with something you know that you can trust that you will do. You tell yourself you're going to wake up at five every day or at six every day. Do it. And you'll be amazed at how quietly and slowly your self-confidence starts to build up. Because as you are faithful in the small things, you begin to believe yourself in the big things. That is how you build your self-confidence. That is how Michael built his self-confidence in running. He told himself he's going to do it. He trained as best as he could. He showed up. He finished. Yay. He's going to do it again. And then he's going to identify as a runner. And then he is going to show up for race after race after race. And at race number 20, he's going to say, oh, running is a breeze. Of course I'm going to finish. I might even come first. But he is not saying it from a place of stupid grandiosity like Sean. He is saying it from an inherent understanding of his own capacity and the work that he has put in. Do that in building your relationship with yourself. Show up for yourself. Believe yourself because you're telling the truth. Do the things that you said you will do, and you will find yourself growing a remarkable confidence that will shock even you. And as you learn to keep your promises, layer new promises on top and layer new promises on top. If you say to yourself, you're going to set aside a self-care day, set aside the self-care day on the schedule that you said you will do. If you said you're going to go work out, go. Don't set yourself goals that will trip you up. If you're going to set a goal, create a system for it. That's now a different discussion. Let's have that discussion next week. Let's talk about how to achieve big goals. Let's talk atomic habits. Let's talk 12-week year. Let's do that next week. But let's understand the principle first. The principle is you need to be trustworthy with you. And when you are, you will build a healthy, grounded confidence. So then what is security or insecurity? Insecurity or insecurity is an indication of how stable your confidence is. Insecurity doesn't mean you're not confident. It doesn't mean you're not worthy. Insecurity is an indicator of whether that self-worth or that self-confidence is stable. The more insecurity we have in a particular moment, the more unstable our confidence is feeling in that moment. This is why it's important to ground your confidence. There will be moments where you waver. But the more grounded and rooted your self-confidence is, the quicker you are able to recover. So Adam Grant says something interesting. When we were young, our mothers used to say, oh, he's a bully because he has low self-esteem. Oh, he acts awful because he has low self-esteem or she has low self-esteem. But the truth is, bullies actually have a high self-esteem. It just wobbles a lot. So their self-esteem perhaps is external. They are superior to you because they look at you as a weaker person. Maybe they think you're not as smart as they are. And then you say something smart, and that causes their self-confidence to wobble. And the resultant insecurity gives birth to bullying behavior because you must then shrink again so that I can feel superior. And here's an important nuance that I said in a different podcast for a different reason, but it also applies here. There is a thing that we do where we externalize responsibility, right? So what the bully does here is they build their self-confidence on being told by other people or external information that somehow they're more special. And the result is whenever that external factor wavers, so does this confidence that is built on unstable ground. And a lot of us do that. We want someone else to say, oh, well done. I spoke about this earlier. We want someone else to say, oh, great. And when they do that, then we say, yes, I am secure in this moment. Yes, I feel great. But understand this. As long as you give that power externally, this is where we talk about going outside to hassle for work. As long as you've given that power away, as long as it is they who are doing things to you, as long as it is they who are saying yay or nay to your ability to be confident, then they will always have the power to determine what level your confidence will be at. You have to take personal responsibility. You have to be radically personally responsible. I remember making a decision that I would not blame anyone, not my ex, not other people, but the decisions I had made in entering and exiting the relationship. And when I made that decision, no one was able to come and say to me, oh, you should be ashamed of this. Oh, you should da, da, da, da. I was sure. I was sure of the decision I had made and why I'd made it. The roots were within. And so whatever wind blew, I was able to keep moving. And even if I had a moment of insecurity, I was able to reground because home is inside me, because the roots are inside me. I am my own touch tree. We have spoken about this. Touch tree is from Glennon Doyle's book, Untamed. The understanding that those external things are not what you should be making your touch tree. A touch tree, if you don't remember, is if you get lost in the woods or if you're hiking, you need to find a massive, defining feature like tree. And that tree is the one that you will come back to every night or you come back to on your way back. It grounds you. It keeps you in a safe place. It's that place where, you know, if you are, if people are looking for you or you need to give directions to where you are, you will say at this tree and they will find you there. That's what a touch tree is. It's for lost people to stay rooted or anchored to a particular place until people who are trying to find them and rescue them find them. And a lot of us make our touch tree things that are external to us. You need to make yourself home. You need to take all of your experiences, good, bad, ugly, beautiful and divine, and appreciate them for the monumental and gorgeous tree that they are. And those are the things that root you and remind you of who you are when you need it the most. When your security wavers, when insecurity knocks, then you must remember that you are your own touch tree. But that touch tree doesn't grow out of nothing, that you do the work like Michael did, that you show up for yourself, that you show up for the things that you say you will show up for. You show up for yourself and you show up for your goals. And when you do, your selections as far as friends, your selections as far as love, your selections as far as sex, your selections as far as situationships, your selections as far as jobs, your selections as far as putting your hand up or down, or even negotiating your salary, come from a different and rooted place. The concepts have taken much longer than I had expected for me to explain, so the how-to will have to be in a separate episode. We'll do the how-to in maybe the next episode or the episode after, but I'm hoping that understanding the difference between self-worth, which you are born with, self-confidence and self-esteem, which is something you build, and insecurity, an indicator of how grounded or not you are in your self-esteem. Those three things, understood and harnessed to work together, are a golden thread that will bring magic to your life in every area, even how you interact with your children. I have to stop here, but I'm so excited by this topic because I love it so much. I hope one day I get to speak on it in a public forum and to engage with people because I would love so much to have people talk back to me about this and to just hear whether what I'm saying is making a difference, and I hope that it is because, my God, if someone had told me these things just 20 years ago, 10 years ago, they would have done amazing things for me. But someone did tell me these things, a book did tell me these things, maybe five years ago, and God, life is beautiful, and I hope that your life is beautiful too or that you're well on your way to making it beautiful. Let's grab hold onto that self-worth, grab hold onto that self-esteem, and understand that insecurity is a passing wind, and as long as you are grounded, you will feel it, it will pass through, and you will remember that you are your own touch tree and that your tree is made up of everything that you have been and that you are yet to be and that you are already worthy. Have a beautiful week. Let's talk again about this topic next week. I'm so excited. Oh, I forget every time, please, if you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review. Thank you so much to everybody who has done so. I read them and my heart just warms up, especially Apple Podcasts, I think it's the one that has the feature that allows you to comment, Substack also does, but if you can't comment or if you can't leave a review, please just leave a rating, makes a world of difference. I can see that I'm starting to be recognized by the algorithm. I am ever so grateful. Thank you for spending this time with me every week. Thank you for showing up for me as I show up for you, and may our virtual friendship continue to feed both of us. Grow and be great.