Breaking The Shame Cycle: Living A Shame-Free Life

In this episode, we will delve into the world of shame and its impact on our lives. You will discover the power of self-acceptance, mindfulness, and self-compassion as we guide you through actionable steps to foster a shame-free mindset. We'll explore the importance of practicing vulnerability and learning from setbacks. Our podcast is a safe space for personal growth, offering valuable tools to help you recognize your inner strength and overcome the obstacles that hold you back. Together, we'll celebrate your successes, no matter how small, and celebrate your journey toward living a life that is shame-free and truly empowered.
Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

What would we like to talk about today?

I feel like we were going to talk about judgment and everything that goes around that.

Yeah.

Awesome.

For everyone on the hive,

We have our coaching group and we had a coaching call the other night and the subject came up and so it's been rattling around in my brain.

So I thought it would be a really good idea to have a deeper conversation around judgment,

Specifically around shame and all of the things that connect to those types of emotions or feelings.

The word shame came up the other night,

Like I feel ashamed of myself and that just doesn't sit well with me.

I don't want people in my energy field to ever feel shame.

Now I'm not saying don't have feelings or emotions in my space,

However,

Let's get really clear because again,

Language is the house of being and our thoughts and our words create our reality.

So when somebody is talking about shame,

I really like to kind of get in there and go deeper and say,

Is it really shame?

What is shame?

What is your definition of shame?

And is it really what you're feeling or is there something else that we can get to?

And the other night,

I think that we drilled it down.

It was really disappointment and those are two very different things.

And I also,

You know,

Side note,

I also know that in society,

We have a tendency to have dramatic languaging.

We're used to having dramatic languaging.

So I really want to be clear on what the languaging is.

And I just never want to have people think that they're experiencing shame.

And humiliation is another one that when it comes up in the trainings,

I work with people because I think shame and humiliation,

At least the way that I have it in transformation,

Is 100% on you,

Meaning other people can't make you feel shame or humiliation.

You have the power to let them do that,

Which then also means that you have the power to not let them do that.

And I think that that is a very empowering place to stand.

I wanted to give a little context of why this is coming up and what I want to talk about and certainly hear your opinion on all of it.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

I believe all of us are so,

So powerful.

And when we go into,

Again,

The language of shame and things like that,

Shame is really a state of hopelessness,

Of being alone,

Of being unworthy,

Of being stuck.

And in shame,

There aren't solutions.

So we get to change the languaging and go deeper on it and find out what the actual core of it is.

And we get to use our powerful selves to elevate and to realize we are whole,

Perfect,

Incomplete and what's actually coming up.

We were talking where people feel disrespected,

People feel self-hate,

Dishonor.

Those types of words come up when we're talking about shame and when we're talking about humiliation.

And again,

Really getting clear the one truth that we operate from in transformation is that we're born whole,

Perfect,

Incomplete.

And with the events that happen in our lives,

We start building walls and putting armor on to protect ourselves and stuff.

But underneath all of that armor,

We're still born whole,

Perfect,

Incomplete.

So when we're talking about shame,

Humiliation,

Self-hate,

All of those things,

It doesn't fit into the paradigm that transformation is.

Therefore,

It cannot exist.

We think it exists,

But it doesn't actually exist.

It cannot occupy the same space,

Which again,

I'm bringing this up because I want people to hear this,

Because if you can take a pause and really think about what that means,

Then you are the chooser choosing your experience all the time.

So why then would we choose that?

You know what I'm saying?

I found this awesome little chart.

I love charts.

And it's like shame versus guilt.

So shame focuses on self and guilt focuses on the behavior.

Shame says,

I am bad.

And guilt says,

I did something bad.

And shame says,

I'm sorry,

I am a mistake.

And guilt says,

I'm sorry,

I made a mistake.

Shame can arise without doing anything and can lead to the loss of self-respect.

Guilt can feel bad about our behavior,

But you still respect yourself.

Shame is feeling small,

Worthless,

Or powerless.

Guilt is feeling tension,

Remorse,

Or regret.

And then the last one on here is shame is a desire to escape or become defensive.

And guilt is a desire to confess,

Apologize,

Or repair,

So drastic.

That's a really great distinction,

Because we all feel regret and guilty over things.

And with the distinction that you just read,

Understanding that you can feel that way,

And you can have guilt,

And you can make mistakes,

And you can make bad decisions,

You know,

In all of those things.

That is life-lifing,

And that is us being human.

And you don't have to attach any of that to who you are as a human being.

That's a very masterful conversation.

Betty Sproul,

Who is a master trainer,

World-renowned trainer,

Wrote this workshop.

It's a two-and-a-half-day workshop called The Master's Course.

And there's a really deep dive conversation,

Like rabbit hole kind of conversation that happens in there based on this exact thing.

I can do something,

Quote,

Bad,

But that doesn't make me a bad person.

Or I can do something stupid,

And that doesn't make me a stupid person,

You know.

But a lot of people attach that to who they are.

Now you might be making poor choices,

And you might do that over and over and over and over,

But that still doesn't make you a bad person innately,

Because we're all born whole,

Perfect,

And complete.

Now,

This is the world of transformation,

The modality.

If you're coming from therapy or a psychological modality,

They have things differently to say about this whole entire conversation.

So just disclaimer,

That's not where we're coming from.

And I don't know if I even really agree with those conversations.

Some of it,

They might have some points,

But I don't know.

In life,

I'm just all about finding what works for me,

And ultimately,

What is the best for humanity.

You know what I mean?

I'm not trying to bury my head in the sand and go,

Well,

I'm going to go to this kind of conversation because it works for me,

Meaning that the other stuff I don't want to look at,

Like,

Oh,

Let me just put on my blinders,

That's not what I'm talking about.

Take from each thing.

There's so many different religion,

Spirituality,

Recovery,

Therapy,

There's all sorts of things.

And I know people that take from each thing and kind of make their own recipe out of all of those ingredients,

And it works for them.

So what we're saying here and what we bring on a weekly basis isn't necessarily like,

I'm not asking you to buy into anything that we're saying,

I'm asking you to think about it.

And if it agrees with you,

Maybe you want to own that.

And if it doesn't,

Go do some other research and try on what fits for you.

But this fits for me and I've come from a position of power only always.

And again,

Just dissecting everything.

I love linguistics and picking apart words and really dissecting them.

I'm such a dork because this is the stuff that I do just for fun.

These are the conversations,

These are the conversations that Danny and I have just on a Tuesday.

It's so true.

And then we're like,

Let's do it live for other people to be so great about this work too,

Because of the level of consciousness that you have.

So wherever you are,

Like the master's course,

They have that happen like once a year.

And you can take that course every year because of where you're at,

What's happening in your space and your environment.

At this particular time,

You'll hear the exact same types of conversations as last year.

And it's going to hit you differently.

This to me is the brilliance of transformation now,

And this is what we bring in Thrive too.

You can hear the videos,

You can hear the conversations.

And if you're having issues in a relationship,

You're going to hear it and take what you need and the very next person can be building a business and hear the same conversation and take what they need out of it.

This is the brilliance of transformation for me,

Which is it never gets old for me.

And I absolutely love it,

Which is going back down into the spiral of shame,

Humiliation,

And that type of vocabulary is what do you really mean?

You can be disappointed and you can have regrets and you can feel other emotions around these things.

And yet our brain or our society has our brain think that it's shame and that's heavy.

Like that's too heavy to put on people sometimes.

And if I can support people in not feeling those feelings and support them in having conversations to really get down to what the issue is,

I'm always going to do that.

And again,

That was the case the other night.

What do you mean by shame?

What else could it be?

And we always,

And I do this in my life,

In my every day,

And it's not always fun and it's not always easy,

But it certainly works for me getting committed to what it is that I want to create.

And if I'm in this moment,

I want to create love and kindness,

Or in this moment,

I want to create connection or whatever,

I want to create vulnerability,

Then the next question is what is the risk I'm willing to take?

Or what is the price that I'm willing to pay to have that actual thing get created?

And I never let people say humiliation or shame like,

Oh,

Well,

You know,

I'm willing to be humiliated for that.

No,

Hold on.

Let's go deeper.

Usually when we get down to it,

They're afraid that they're going to look foolish.

But do you hear how like looking foolish versus humiliated is so heavy.

And when we can pick that apart and we can process it and we can ask the questions and then the students get to the,

Oh,

Well,

I don't know how to do this.

And if I go for it in front of people,

I'm going to look foolish or I'm going to look silly that I can work with.

What if you do look silly?

What if you do look foolish?

Do you think every other person in this room isn't going to look foolish at some point?

Even me as the trainer,

I'm going to probably say something or I've tripped in front of people before I've spilled my coffee all over the table before I've done things that are embarrassing.

And did you die?

No.

I have that meme in my head all the time,

But did you die in my head all the time?

And then that lightens up everything because our ego wants us to be like,

You're going to be humiliated.

You're going to make a fool out of yourself.

And it's like,

Lighten up,

Bro.

Like,

It's not that fucking serious.

And I'm not taking away from serious situations,

But most of the time it's not that serious.

Yeah.

And I will say feedback that I get because y'all have seen me.

I'm a little crazy.

And I've had people that are asking like,

Do you even get embarrassed?

I'm like,

Well,

I guess I could,

But I'd rather just keep doing the fun stuff.

Like,

You know.

There's a mastery to that as well.

There's a confidence and a knowingness.

I can do the silliest thing.

I can do the most embarrassing thing.

And I'm going to be okay.

It's all part of it.

If you can realize anytime that you're feeling like you're being judged,

You're feeling like it's embarrassing or you're doing something foolish or any of that stuff.

That's also just a really great indication that you are inward focused and you're not making it about the other people.

These are also things that you can feel in your body,

Like as to take away some tools from this conversation.

If you're feeling any of that stuff,

Start practicing pausing.

In that pause,

Notice,

Are you making it about you?

And can you shift it and start being outward focused?

Because when you're being outward focused,

When you're in that whole perfect and complete you,

All of that other stuff can't live there.

So you absolutely are in charge of not having those feelings stay.

We can't really be in charge of if they come up.

But once they're up,

We're in charge of what we do with it.

So we can keep it.

I don't know why you would want to,

But you're also in charge of getting rid of it.

That's an empowering place to stand and start practicing these tools of transformation outside of a training room.

Absolutely.

And I know,

Again,

We went down a rabbit hole yesterday,

As we do,

Because we were talking about Brene Brown and I had brought up a quote that we both just loved.

If you can't ask for help without self-judgment,

You cannot offer help without judging others.

That is so good.

Mind-blowing and so true.

Something that I heard time and time again is when we negatively judge someone on something,

We see it as a character flaw,

As they're a bad person or that that's who they are instead of the actual action.

And then we tend to,

When we judge someone's success or wins,

We tend to think,

Oh,

Well,

They're just lucky they had more advantages or,

Yeah,

They won because of their teammates are so great.

Right.

So we view success as someone else's luck.

And then if they mess up or do something,

That's a character issue.

So we get to look at how we're judging.

Yeah.

I mean,

It's again,

This is the water that we swim in and we just don't set ourselves up or set other people up for success,

Whatever definition of success you have.

We just don't do that a lot in this society.

And our commitment is to,

To shift the conversation.

I'm clear that my purpose on this planet is to support in shifting the narrative because,

You know,

It gets to happen.

I don't want my grandchildren or my grand babies,

Babies to grow up and feel like this,

Feel like they're humiliated or feel like they're being judged all the time.

On some level,

We are being judged all the time.

People are like,

Oh,

Well,

I'm afraid of being judged.

We're being judged all the time.

As soon as you walk in a room,

You're being judged one way or the other.

So if you know that,

And then that becomes an of course for you,

It just frees so much up because you're like,

Yeah,

They're judging me.

Like I can't do anything about that.

No matter what I do,

No matter how much energy I devote to not having people judge me,

It's never going to stop.

So why not devote my time and energy to something else?

Because I don't have the power to control what other people do.

I only have the power to be in charge of what I do.

This has happened more times than I can count where I have been in a space for several days or so and without even having a conversation,

Day two or three,

People will come up to me and say,

I just want to let you know that when you first walked in,

I had one picture of you and I thought this,

This and this about you and wow,

Was I wrong.

You're actually did it.

I'm like,

Thanks.

Like you want to have a chat?

Like,

And it's,

So we do,

We judge.

And I think it's,

It is beautiful though,

When we can be like,

Wow.

And even just verbalizing that,

Hey,

I judged you and now I see,

Or I just think that's beautiful.

That's self-awareness.

And again,

Saying it out loud is another level.

Yeah.

Busting yourself.

There's so much power in that too.

And there's so many lessons.

It's beautiful.

A takeaway from listening to this is it's not even about you.

It's not about me.

Notice when you're using the dramatic languaging,

Specifically,

You know,

We're talking about shame and humiliation,

Judgment and self-hatred off.

That just breaks my heart.

When I hear people saying these words,

Noticing the dramatic languaging,

And then also noticing,

Are you personalizing it when it may not have anything to do with you,

But the situation and we're human.

So of course we're going to take things personally,

Like,

But it's in those moments when we realize it,

When we have that awareness of it,

We always have a choice.

Are we going to keep it?

Are we going to own it?

Or are we going to not own it?

Because that's where all of the power is.

You're never going to be in control of anybody else's thoughts or energy or any of those things,

But you're absolutely in charge of your own.

So why spend time trying to change something that you have no control over?

Well,

Anyway,

So until next time,

Let's keep learning and growing and exploring the world around us together.

And I'm going to end this like I do every week.

So remember you are in charge of your happiness.

So go out and create something amazing today,

Just because you say so.