Life, Lessons & Laughter Podcast: Self Esteem

The topic of this podcast episode with Glenn is Self Esteem, something we all deal with and manage in our lives to varying degrees. How do we raise our self esteem? By doing esteem-able acts! In this episode, Glenn discusses the common pitfalls we all face, and how to consciously work to maintain healthy self-esteem.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to the show.

Today we are talking about self-esteem,

Self-love,

Self something else that's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're talking about self-esteem.

I think I've developed a catchphrase.

When people talk to me about- Can we put it on our t-shirt?

Yeah.

Yeah,

You can.

People talk to me about how do I raise my self-esteem,

And I always tell them then do esteemable things.

I literally,

Before we started this podcast like 49 seconds ago,

Went,

All right,

If he's like trailing off at the beginning in the first minute,

I'm going to say that you need to do esteemable things.

I hope we- Not that.

I hope you like it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I tell people that all the time.

It's like do esteemable things.

Well,

What are esteemable things?

Things that would raise your esteem.

So show love,

And you can use whatever you like.

What do you like?

Well,

Do that for yourself.

Do you like to take bubble baths?

Then take one and go,

You know what?

I'm taking this bubble bath because I love myself and I enjoy it,

So I'm doing it.

It's an act of self-love.

Buy yourself flowers.

Put them on the table.

Every time you look at them,

You go,

Oh boy,

You know what?

I bought myself flowers because I enjoy looking at them and smelling them.

They make the house look nice,

And I like that.

So I did that as an act of self-love.

Go get a massage.

Go see a movie.

Go play a sport that you like.

Go see a band.

But whatever you're doing,

Slow down for a minute and understand that you're doing it because you love yourself.

Understand that you're doing it as an act of love towards yourself.

I try to do that when I meditate in the morning.

Just remind myself that the fact that I'm taking time out of my day to meditate is an act of self-love.

And sometimes my meditation goes well,

And sometimes it doesn't.

And if it doesn't,

That's when I really remind myself,

Well,

Hey,

Maybe the meditation didn't go that well.

But the fact that you took time out of your day to put some effort towards being a more calm,

Peaceful,

Happy,

Loving soul,

That's good.

That's an act of self-love.

So way to go.

All right.

So what I think of when I say do a do a steamable acts,

Do a steamable things is I do,

I generally will do things to help my self-esteem that are either good for me specifically.

So like,

If I need a self-esteem boost,

I will work out or eat a healthy meal or get some work done that I need to do,

Or I will do things for others because I do things of the person that I want to be.

So that builds my self-esteem of like,

You're a good person.

You're living up to what you want to live up to.

Right.

And that,

As long as you do everything that you said very consciously,

Then it works.

If you do it unconsciously,

Then it doesn't.

Because if we look at what are the typical problems of somebody who doesn't love themselves,

Well,

They work too much,

They put everybody in front of themselves.

So that's the type of stuff that.

.

.

So we run around helping other people and we go,

See,

I'm a good person.

No,

You're not.

You're not paying any attention to yourself.

What you're doing is you're being a martyr and you're putting all your attention on other people in the name of being a good person.

But that's just an ego stroke.

See I help them,

So therefore I must be good.

So that's why doing it unconsciously doesn't work.

Doing it consciously does work because it's a wonderful thing to help other people and it can make you feel good about yourself every once in a while,

Sometimes in a healthy way.

Can I ask you a personal question that I want you to answer honestly,

Not that you wouldn't answer honestly?

Sure.

Would you call me a martyr?

Yes.

Let me think about it.

Yes.

Sorry,

Dave,

We just peaked for sure with that laughter.

But yeah,

So it's.

.

.

Yeah,

I mean,

I know that you have a tendency to lean in that direction,

But there are also times that I've seen you do something for others consciously and I think it has raised your self-esteem.

Okay.

You know,

So that's why I didn't want to.

.

.

Honestly,

The unconscious stuff is more stuff that I do for people in my everyday life,

But the things that I do generally for other people.

.

.

And I don't.

.

.

You know what?

I don't do this consciously to raise my self-esteem,

But it does raise my self-esteem is a lot.

.

.

And again,

This is the second episode in a row where I'm like,

I want to use an example,

But I don't want to say I'm patting myself on the back here.

Why?

Because I don't want to.

.

.

Because this is a really.

.

.

I hate.

.

.

I don't like mentioning what I'm about to say ever.

I have a habit.

It happens several times a year at least of paying for things for people who I have no idea who they are.

There was an elderly couple at a place in town where we get lunch,

We get takeout every so often,

And they were very confused by the menu,

But they were very sweet and they were sitting at the bar next to where the register was to pick up.

And I just pulled the owner,

Because I knew her from theater.

I pulled her over to the side and I was like,

Can I just.

.

.

If they've already ordered,

Can I pay for that?

And don't tell anybody.

And I just want to.

.

.

I'm just going to leave,

Just tell them it's taken care of.

It's fine.

And I probably do that like a dozen times a year or something.

Is it something like that?

So is that healthy or unhealthy?

Well,

I mean,

The biggest test is if you can afford it.

I never do it when I can't afford it.

Well,

Then that's a good sign.

There is nothing wrong with doing stuff like that.

Because there is definitely times I can't afford it and I don't do it.

But when I can afford it,

I don't usually think twice about it.

Yeah.

And I think that that's a nice thing to do.

We do have to be conscious of why we're doing it.

And it's that martyr thing that we have to be careful of.

It's that the patting yourself on the back,

I think,

Is a good point.

Because when we pat ourselves on the back,

Nobody likes to pat themselves on the back.

And it's because we have this subconscious,

Old-fashioned belief that if we actually love ourselves or like ourselves or are proud of something that we do,

Then we must think that we are better than other people and we are selfish jerks.

So we can't pat ourselves on the back because if we do,

Then what we're saying is that we're better than everybody else.

And that's what the consciousness needs to bring in.

We need to understand that patting ourselves on the back does not mean that we think we're better than everybody else.

We can actually.

.

.

It's just how you do it.

There's a big difference if you say.

.

.

I've used this example before.

Whenever I'm talking about this,

I think of this little video clip.

I don't even remember where I saw her.

It was two or three years ago,

I think.

And I saw Pink,

The artist,

Talk about some songs she sang somewhere.

And she was just kind of reflecting back on it.

And she really enjoyed it.

And she was like,

Man,

I rocked that.

And I was just.

.

.

As soon as she said it,

I was like.

.

.

I could feel her self-love.

It was just joyful.

There was no ego attached to it.

She was just thinking back and going like,

Wow,

That was so much fun.

I really rocked that.

And there's a big difference between that and going,

Oh,

I completely rocked that.

You know,

You can hear it.

You can hear it in the words.

There's a different energy.

There's a different tone.

There's a different energy that's attached to it.

And if you say it egoically,

Oh,

I'm better than you.

Well,

There's something wrong with that.

But if you're just sitting there going,

Oh,

I really like myself and I did that well,

There's nothing wrong with that.

That's very,

Very healthy.

So we have to understand that there's two things.

And of course,

We don't want to get caught up thinking that we're better than other people.

But that doesn't mean that we can't love ourselves and appreciate ourselves and think that we did good things in our lives.

We have to give ourselves credit for that.

Otherwise,

How are we ever going to have any self-esteem or love ourselves in any way if we can't even acknowledge that we did something nice or good or that we're a good person without feeling,

Without subconsciously fearing the egoic,

I'm better than you.

We need to be able to separate those two,

Be able to tell the difference and feed the self-love without getting caught up in the ego.

And once you're conscious of it,

It's really not that hard to do.

Well,

I make sure that I tell myself that,

But I really have a problem telling other people.

Right.

So you're scared how they're going to react.

Sure.

So it's just a matter of getting more comfortable with that.

And it's not that we have to run around saying this stuff all the time.

Honestly,

It's not going to come up that often in everyday conversation because part of the reason that you do that and you do it in an anonymous way in this example is because you're not looking for a pat on the back.

You're not looking for the accolades from other people.

So it's not naturally you don't have to run around once a week and tell people something good you did and try to separate the ego because that kind of is ego.

But when you do something,

But when it does come up in conversation,

We shouldn't have to apologize for it.

I do believe I know what you are saying.

You do?

Yes.

But this reminds me of an episode of Friends where I think it's Joey and Phoebe.

It's definitely Phoebe.

Phoebe is talking about doing things for like doing it out random acts of kindness.

Yeah.

And Joey's like,

There's no real good deed that's not selfish.

And she's like,

That's not true.

So she does a bunch of things and he's like,

No,

You get joy from that.

No,

You get joy from that.

That's not really a selfish,

A selfless good deed.

And I think that she ends up letting a bee sting her in the park because she's like,

It wasn't good for me.

It hurt.

And he got to show off in front of all of his little bee friends.

And Joe is like,

All right.

And then a couple seconds later,

He's like,

The bee probably died after he started.

But I literally have always thought about that when I think about doing good deeds and not telling anybody about them.

Yeah.

And I mean,

There's naturally a good feeling doing something good for others.

And that's because we're supposed to be doing it.

So there's nothing wrong with that.

But if we start thinking that we're better than others because we do those things,

Then it turns egoic.

This is one of those things that it sounds tricky until you stop putting attention to it.

But if you stop putting your attention to it and start learning to be honest with yourself and kind of do what I call gut checks,

It's really not that difficult to figure out what you're doing.

You can feel if you think you're better than other people.

And you're like,

Oh,

I did that.

So I must be a good person.

Well,

Are you looking at it that way?

Or did you do it just for the joy of it?

Did you do it just because it was a nice thing to do?

If you pay attention,

You can decipher between those two things.

And which one are you trying to do?

You want to do it just for the joy of it?

Just for the joy because it's.

.

.

Okay,

Cool.

No,

I'm good.

I'm good.

That's me.

And we just don't want to depend on.

.

.

I think that that's the other piece.

I'm looking at it going,

Okay,

How can we keep this healthy?

It's like you don't want to depend on that to prove that you're a good person to yourself.

If you're walking around and you're not really feeling good about yourself and you have to go buy somebody lunch,

Then you're just putting a bandaid on it.

You should be able to feel good about yourself without going and doing something good for somebody else.

So work on that first.

And then see what you want.

You want your random acts of kindness to be an expression of the self-love that you're already feeling.

You don't want it to be a way of attempting to get self-love.

Okay.

So what are the ways to attempt to get self-love?

Well,

It's all about working on yourself.

You can't get it from outside of you.

You can't go do something and get self-love.

It's all about turning within and doing things for yourself.

And another way is to stop judging yourself.

You want to raise your self-esteem,

Stop judging yourself.

That will create a gigantic leap in self-esteem.

If you just stop being hard on yourself.

And if we really look at it,

Being hard on ourselves has zero benefit.

It really does not induce us or push us into better living.

All it does is makes us feel bad about ourselves.

We can look back at a situation that we didn't handle appropriately and we can go,

Okay,

Let me look at this.

Now why did I get triggered?

Why did I not handle this well?

Is there a way that I can handle this better in the future?

Is there something that triggered me that I need to look at and maybe process so I don't get triggered by the same thing in the future?

That's learning from your past and that's wonderful.

But saying,

Oh my God,

I can't believe I did that.

I'm such a bad person.

I'm such a moron.

Why do I always do that?

There's zero benefit in that.

All it does is lower your self-esteem,

Beat yourself up and you'll continue to feel like crap about yourself.

Beating yourself up,

You never go,

Oh,

Okay,

So I feel empowered and enthusiastic about my future and I know I'll do better next time.

You don't get there from beating yourself up.

You can get there from learning from your past,

But by judging yourself,

You never become a better version of yourself by judging yourself.

So that's one of the biggest things that we can do to raise our self-esteem is to stop judging ourselves when we don't handle something perfectly.

What are some things that you personally do to raise your self-esteem?

Nowadays it's mostly about just listening to myself and continuing to not judge.

If I'm having a bad day,

Which I had a bad day yesterday.

Oh,

It was fun for me.

I had to honor that.

I had to be like,

You know what,

Glenn?

You're allowed to have a bad day.

It's okay.

Maybe you can,

Whatever's coming up,

Maybe you can feel it,

Process it,

And grow from it,

But don't judge it.

So I try to honor what I'm feeling.

Sometimes if I see myself that I've been working too much for a period of time and I go,

Gee,

You know what?

It seems like I go to sit down at the end of the night and five minutes later I'm back up doing something else.

Well,

That must mean that I'm having a hard time unwinding and I'm kind of caught up in doing too much.

So I need to make myself sit here and not do anything.

Or I need to,

What do I have on my schedule for social time?

Do I have any plans this weekend?

Am I doing anything fun?

When was the last time I did things fun?

I need to make sure I include fun in my life.

Being a single parent and owning my own business,

Fun time is the smallest part of my schedule.

Those are the types of things that I do.

I try to live consciously and make adjustments to whatever I feel I need and that's going to help me bring a more balanced life.

So that's the type of stuff that I do now.

But I've done a lot of things in the past.

I've literally taken bubble baths.

I've picked flowers and put them.

As a general rule,

I think I'm kind of a masculine guy but I think I'm in touch with my feminine side too.

You know what?

It's nice to see flowers or smell flowers in your house.

It's nice to sit quietly in a bubble bath and not do anything.

Maybe have some chill music on and meditate.

I've done all that stuff.

I've gotten massages.

I've sat there and I was challenged years ago by somebody to do something nice for myself every day.

Oh yeah.

And boy,

You got to get creative when you're doing that.

Some days it was just sit down and write a gratitude list because that brought joy thinking of all the things I have to be grateful for.

Set time aside to read a book that I wanted to read or sit down and watch a half an hour TV show that was a comedy that I could laugh at or like anything.

It's just anything.

It's more about the intention than it is what you're doing.

If you find joy in it,

It counts.

So whatever you think might bring you joy,

If you say I'm doing this with the intention of bringing myself joy,

Even if it doesn't bring you joy,

Even if you watch a half hour comedy and you go,

I'm going to do this because I want to bring joy into my life and you watch that show and you're like,

You know what?

It really wasn't that funny.

That's not the point.

The point was that you took a half hour out of your day to show yourself an act of self love.

So it counts.

So when you stop bringing that consciousness to what you're doing,

That's really how you can raise your self esteem.

That would be a fun challenge for us to do.

And document.

For something,

An act of self love every day.

Do you think that people would do it with us if we did it on like your Facebook page?

I don't know.

The problem is I would say let's do it from the day that this episode comes out,

But I just looked and we have because we have a couple in the bank.

When this episode comes out,

It's going to be 30 days from then.

You're probably going to be like moving.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

And plus I don't think I would,

I don't think I would agree to do anything on a podcast like that because I mean,

You know,

Because then I can't do my gut check.

Like it's,

You know,

I need to sit down and go,

Okay,

Is this something I want to do?

Am I willing to make the commitment?

You know,

And then come up with my answer and then I'll do it.

But generally I just don't agree to things on the fly.

If,

If we did agree to something like that,

Then there's going to be a point at the end of this show where I'll come back in later at a different day and go,

Hey guys,

So we did agree on that.

And if that doesn't happen at the end of this episode,

Forget everything.

Go do it for yourself.

You should do it for yourself.

Absolutely.

And you can do it with a friend or if you do have a life coach,

Do it with the life coach so the life coach can hold you accountable.

So you know,

You just carry a little,

Have a little piece of paper and just jot down what you did that day.

You know,

Whatever it is.

That's awesome.

So that is an awesome idea.

It's a,

It's a,

It's a great practice.

It's you know,

And,

And I've had people do it,

You know,

I've had clients do it in the past and like I said,

I've done it in the past.

So it's,

You know,

It really is helpful and it will raise yourself.

So you're doing something nice for yourself every day is the purpose of this.

Correct?

Yes.

Okay.

For how long?

Oh,

I don't know.

It depends.

Your whole life.

Yeah.

That's the challenge.

Glenn,

I would like for you to,

Um,

To accept this challenge right now to do something nice for yourself every day for your entire life.

And I'd like you to document it all.

That ain't happening.

All right.

I mean,

I will try,

Try to do my best to live up to the challenge.

I already do,

But I am not documenting it.

So but that,

That's,

It is the same idea of a,

Of a gratitude list.

You know,

It's just bringing,

Bringing things up to the surface and living consciously,

You know,

We should be doing things that,

That are good for ourselves on a daily basis.

I think,

You know,

I meditate every day.

So to me,

I'm already doing it,

You know,

And that's not the only thing I do.

Like sometimes what I do to tell people,

Like if they need to bring some structure into their life to,

To expand their spiritual growth and,

And it kind of,

You can do it with just raising your self-esteem too.

You can do something small every day.

You can do something that's a little bit bigger,

Like maybe a half an hour to an hour once a week,

Then you can do something that's a little bigger.

That might be like an hour and a half to three hours once a month.

And then you can do something bigger.

That might be like a day or a couple of days or something,

You know,

Like a couple of times a year or maybe even a week or something like that.

You know,

You can go on a retreat or,

Or take a class,

A day class or,

You know,

Something like that.

So it's,

You know,

Having,

Bringing in that structure is kind of a good way to make sure that you're,

You're continuing to expand,

You know,

The,

The self-esteem and your personal growth.

Yeah.

I think that,

I think that having those things to go do and,

You know,

Measuring them in different,

You know,

Something small for yourself every day and to make sure that you do something,

You know,

That's kind of bigger for yourself,

Like once a month or,

And something big once a year.

I think that's awesome.

I think it's Tim Ferriss,

Make sure that he takes his family on a vacation every six months because it's something that they can put on the calendar and everybody can look forward to as a,

As the big thing that they're going to go do.

That's,

That's the,

That is an important part too.

It's just that it holds the accountability and it does give you something to look forward to,

But you have to plan that,

You know,

And sometimes you're planning things that you don't even know how it's going to come about,

You know,

And you're like,

Okay,

Well,

We've got to put this on the calendar and we've got to work towards it to make it happen.

And that can keep us focused,

Give us direction to,

To experience things because this,

There's lots of people that are like,

You know,

Oh,

You know,

Well,

We didn't make a vacation last year.

Well,

Why?

Because you didn't plan it.

That's,

You know,

I mean,

That's,

That's most of the reason.

I mean,

You can do something.

I mean,

If you have a week out of work,

You can do something,

You know,

You can drive 30 minutes from your house and pitch a tent for a week.

You can do something,

You know,

But,

But people don't plan it.

So then it doesn't happen,

You know,

And I've seen that with my own life.

It's,

I didn't take vacations for years and now like every year I plan on one definite vacation and I'm working in creating a second one,

You know,

And some years I've done that and then like this year I don't,

I'm moving so I don't,

That kind of throws everything.

But you did go on a vacation.

I did go.

Yeah.

I did go on a vacation,

Which spurred the move,

Which catapulted it.

Right.

So,

So now,

You know,

I'll be on permanent vacation.

There's a,

There's a,

There's a Jason Maras lyric that I'm not sure you necessarily grew with,

But it's a,

You don't need a vacation when there's nothing to escape from.

Right.

Yeah.

I actually love that.

And it's,

And you know that I love the mentality that,

You know,

You,

You want to create,

Create a life that you don't need a vacation from.

That doesn't mean that you don't go anywhere.

It means that you don't need to go anywhere.

You know,

You're not sitting there going,

Oh my God,

I'm so burnt out because I'm beating the crap out of myself that I have to go take a vacation.

You know,

That's not the life that we want to create.

And that's,

That is something that,

That I'm working on.

You know,

That's always part of my mentality when I'm building my business is I'm not,

I don't work myself to the bone trying to build my business because,

You know,

One,

As it gets bigger,

Then you just have to continue to work to the bone to maintain it.

And that's not the lifestyle that I want to live.

So I try to work having a balanced lifestyle while I'm creating my business.

And then I'll have a balanced lifestyle as it's more successful and,

And just live that way all the way through.

I can't believe we're at the 30 minute mark and I'm just now thinking of this,

But definitely another way to maintain your self esteem and self.

Stop comparing.

Don't compare yourself to others.

Right.

Do not compare yourself to others.

And the reason that made me think of that is last episode you ended by yelling,

Get off Facebook to everybody.

And I was like,

I wonder if I could work that in.

Oh my God.

Comparing yourself to others is like one of the main horrible things that,

You know,

Social media has done for people is everyone now curates a life that they put on social media.

So you see,

You know,

There's a friend that you see that you're like,

Man,

They're always on vacation or going to the beach or like in like photo op moments.

And then you feel bad about yourself.

And like,

First of all,

That's not their life.

For sure.

That's not their life.

Right.

There are definitely other,

Other aspects.

And two,

If you are still on Facebook,

Check us out at Glen Ambrose Life Coaching.

So it's yeah,

That that's true.

And that I think for me falls on under the umbrella of not judging yourself.

Yeah.

But but it's true.

Don't compare yourself to others.

You know,

We do.

We get caught up comparing our insides to everybody else's outsides and you know,

And what they show us and go,

Oh my God,

You know,

Like look at them.

They've got it all together and they're doing all this wonderful stuff.

And it's like they have a whole life that you're not seeing.

They have inner turmoil that you're not seeing.

Everybody has struggles and difficulties and confusion and anger.

And everybody has those aspects of of of things that go on in their lives.

So it's yeah,

That that is a good point.

Just don't compare yourself to other people.

Just be the best you that you can be.

And to do what it takes to raise your self-esteem.

Thanks,

Glenn.

Absolutely.

So thanks for listening.

And we will talk to you soon.

Glenn is available for life coaching sessions in person or via phone and Skype.

To book an appointment or for more information,

Go to GlennAmbrose.

Com,

Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or click the link in the description of this episode.

Reviews

really good episode

Excellent, down-to-Earth points! One of my family agreements is that we’re supposed to constantly give to others, to the point that we’re supposed to anticipate others’ needs without any responsibility on their part for expressing them. It’s exhausting and certainly a recipe for martyrdom. It also doesn’t exactly help anyone’s self esteem! I’m learning, difficult as it is, to develop boundaries, to say no when necessary, and to allow others to be responsible for themselves. I feel much better about myself than when I allow them to steamroll over me. Thank you so much, Glenn!!

Yaaaiiiii!!! So happy to have you back. Great podcast ☀️

Thanks for this talk. Simple but effective

Excellent podcast with excellent, actionable suggestions to raise your self-esteem. Thank you.

Interesting Good information
thank you

Interviewer was weak but Glenn Ambrose made some wholesome points linking self care to self esteem

Love the part about creating a home you don’t want to escape from. I love staycations💜