Changing Perspective from Shame to Self-worth | Sue Bryce | TEDxPepperdineUniversity

so as i stand on stage of one of america's most prestigious colleges for a world-class speaking platform i'm thinking how did a little girl from south auckland new zealand get here and then it occurred to me that i'm about to tell you i'm about to tell you my greatest shame i didn't finish high school trust me the irony is not lost on me right now i formed a solid belief system and an identity around this and i just felt not good enough and i didn't know why and my fear was not that you would think i was stupid it was that you would think i was not good enough and i grew up working class and uneducated and i wore this perceived inadequacy like a cloak of shame and this inadequacy it showed up badly in every area of my life and my income my body my career and in my relationships and honestly at 15 what chance did i have i was worthless and the world was reflecting that back to me i bounced around you know community education for about three years when i turned 18 i found photography i fell in love and i found my path i am a portrait photographer and i have been so for 30 years i spent the first 10 years just obsessively mastering my craft and i found my value in mastery and let me tell you something about mastery because it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or where you were born no one can take mastery away from you mastery gave me the confidence that i did not get from education and i worked my way up to become an associate photographer all of a sudden i'm 23 years old and i'm photographing wealthy successful high profile people lawyers doctors surgeons athletes nobody seemed to care that i did not have an education in fact they were elevating me all of these smart accomplished people were sitting for me and they taught me something you see the camera is a remarkable tool you can talk to someone for any length of time in complete comfort but the moment i bring my camera up to my face the moment it covers my eyes i see you go to vulnerability sorry i just lost my slime so this time i'm nearly 30 years old i have a really cool job but i'm a minimum wage and i dreamed of starting a business i had no money i had no education i had no value i will be a screaming success and at the time of starting my business and unlocking my value i went to my mum and i asked why didn't you two ever start a business my mom looked at me and she said we did we lost it this was news to me i did not know this and when i think about it they were 21 and 22 years old with three small children they were children with children and then my mom said the one line to me that would profoundly change my life she said dad couldn't ask for money and that broke my heart and i distinctly remember in that moment thinking that is unacceptable to me my parents are good people hard-working people they deserve more but it doesn't work like that does it i soon learned when i started my own business that i was exactly the same i could not sell my own work i could not ask for or receive money in equal value and i absolutely could not honour myself now i understand value for my craft i was already working on that but this is beyond that it seemed to come from me it gave me physical and emotional pain to put myself out there and put my work out there and again it showed up in every part of my life why do we constantly ignore the fact that we carry all of our emotional pain on our bodies it's pretty obvious the ego tells big grandiose lies but the body does not lie it's always reflecting your pain we carry so much shame over debt so many wounds from our childhood we carry so much pain and shame in our bodies but debt and unwanted weight and battling your own self-hate are just classic symptoms of avoidance and you see the shame isn't our enemy it is the guiding light to your self-worth your pain simply comes from resistance and non-acceptance of yourself sales is a value metric in business and money is a value metric to self that's why you cannot create abundance without self-worth because you have to be able to receive it money follows value success follows self-worth and this was my turning point abundance is not a metric for good and bad bad people make money but rather it's a metric for worthy and worthless and when you're trapped in a debt cycle you feel powerless and it just feels unfair and then you find out this abundance that is available is not decided by birthright or social assessment in fact nobody decides you're worthy the only person that can decide to be worthy of anything is you and when you live month to month you don't dream and you don't make big plans you just try to survive and there is no expansion when you dwell in a place of survival make no mistake this is self-value work and it's hard this is mirror work and this is about you and the worst and the best part of it is you are the poison and you are the antidote and when you come to full acceptance of your now and take responsibility for what you have and take back ownership of all areas of your life until you disable your old story and learn a new way to perceive and present yourself to the world it will continue to disempower you so how do you rewrite this story come back to the moment right when you feel fear before you take action number one question everything fear says and if you can stay in conscious awareness and just observe your own thoughts in this moment you will see yourself searching for the old story and whatever you do in this moment do not numb it do not numb this pain don't eat it don't drink it don't shop it we've become a numbing culture just feel it and observe it and when we disable our avoidance we not only feel in control we start evolving and this is where you create a new story just come back to observing the pain there is a lesson here for you you will become as successful as the amount of pain you are willing to endure and the faster you accept the pain the faster you move through it it's very important that you learn to stay here because if you go back to the past right now you will bring in resentment and then you will empower their resentment right now if you go into the future right now with worry and imagination you will bring fear in and you will empower it in your now and instead what i want you to do is comfort yourself stay present feel the feeling watch your reaction this is where you learn self-care the longer you stay in any focus the faster you attract in that energy good or bad watch your own pattern you created it observe yourself until you realize that you have complete control over how you're responding to it i want you to try to master the focus of self-acceptance self-awareness and pure self-love because this is where you challenge the old identity and i promise you there is more power in emotional mastery than in any skill you can learn you know i thought the world was against me for a really long time until i realized i had nothing of value to bring this world make your daily practice self-awareness self-acceptance self value and self care every day in everything you do and watch it transform your life i've learned that you can be born into poverty but not be poor in here don't carry poor me around with you it's about being able to walk into a room so filled with value to give you can do so in equal exchange i learned the tremendous game-changing transformation that is open to each of us is understanding and rewriting our greatest shame our weakness our failure of character the parts we most hate about ourselves and bring them into the light i found no physical barrier to success that was not created by me and i truly believed there was i suffered deep shame from being uneducated and ironically i built an education company i empowered my greatest shame and it became my superpower you know this is not about amassing millions although i'm okay with that it's about going beyond survival okay it's about getting past just enough to get by it's about abundance in all areas of your life deeper relationships and more importantly it's the life i wanted to live i deserved more so i created more i built an incredible business and i found my confidence in the service of my gifts and i learned how to attract manage and keep money breaking my own debt cycle i decided what i really wanted and i declared it with certainty and conviction and then i focused on it every single day and i did that with obsessive focus and a heart full of service to give and grow and as i built more value in myself and in my business i thrived and it showed up in every area of my life and every time i went back to fear and avoidance i remembered my declaration and i honored myself because the antonym of shame is honor and here's the thing you will never attract more than what you believe you're worth so i challenge you find your value and i promise you it is never too late to rewrite your story

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 61,455

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Arts education, Entrepreneurship, Photography, Self improvement

Id: 5_Tq5A0m7_U

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020