Why You Should Never Feel Sorry for Yourself | Amy Morin on Women of Impact

there's this huge misconception that venting makes us feel better Oh misconceptions yes people say I have to get it out cuz if I get it out then I feel better but almost every research study will show that commiserating complaining keeps you stuck because you're not thinking about happier things you're just thinking about all the awful horrible things that are going on and it keeps you stuck in a state of misery I'm Lisa binnu and I went from housewife to co-founder of a billion dollar company question nutrition and now president of impact theory our mission with this show is to empower you and all women to recognize you really can become the hero of your own life welcome to women of impact today's women of impact thought ahead life all figured out she graduated from college landed her dream job as a psychotherapist got married bought a house she'd jumpstart and success what could go wrong I mean she had everything but the white picket fence until that one fateful day when the phone rang at this little house on the prairie her sister was calling to tell her her mom was unresponsive and within 24 hours due to a brain aneurysm she was gone then three years to the day she got another call it was her friend inviting her on a husband to a basketball game coincidentally it was being held at the very place where she'd last seen her mother and she hadn't gone back since so maybe this was the best way to honor her memory well it was and she was thankful she went but surely after her and her husband returned home he said I didn't feel well and after collapsing he was rushed to the ER at the age of 26 he had a heart attack and died now a widow she clung to the hope that things would one day get better and they did meeting fall in love and Marian game was like starting a new chapter in her life until the wolf huffed and puffed and blew her house down a game her father-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer and soon after passed away why why her all her knowledge from her profession couldn't console' her why were bad things always happening to her but she realized that drowning herself in self-pity was draining her strength when she needed it the most so she wrote letter to herself with all the things that could keep her stuck during her time of misery and when she was done she had a list of 13 things mentally strong people don't do she read that list over and over and over again and who reps and heavy lifting new habits her mental strength eventually flexed bigger than army shorts and [ __ ] bicep she then decided to post the list online if she found the list helpful there maybe others were too well 50 million people did just that now a mental strength trainer prominent psychotherapist licensed clinical social worker and speaker whose TEDx talk the secret of becoming mentally strong became one of the most top 25 TEDx talks of all time with close to 11 million views as well as the author of three smash hit books including the international bestseller 13 things mentally strong women don't do a step-by-step guide to owning your power channeling your confidence and finding your authentic voice for a life of meaning and joy so guys please help me in welcoming the woman whose articles are featured literally everywhere from Oprah calm to Cosmo Forbes Inc and Time magazine attracting over 2 million readers every single month the woman the Guardian dubbed the self-help guru of the moment the mentally strong Amy Moore in thank you so much I'll go welcome to the show I'm honored to be here this story is incredible and what you the takeaway message is that you have then learnt and to other people is so incredible and so where I would like to start is in the moment where you've just heard about your father-in-law yeah it's been knock after knock after knock if anyone could have self-pity and wallow in their own sorrow it was you no one would ever judge you for it right you almost had every quote-unquote right to do that because everything that's happened but in that moment is when you came to the like the most clarity talk to me about that how that came about and then we can dive into the actual tips ok yeah I remember in those own words just think this isn't fair I've grieved for so many years life was finally starting to feel good again why why me and I had those moments of you know if only I could dig in my heels and make this not happen but as a therapist you know I learned that self-pity isn't helpful I'd seen I've been studying people in my therapy office for years to try to figure out how come some people go through tough times and they come out on the other side stronger and how come some people go through tough times and they feel like they just got stuck like life was never good again and as I watch these people I realized it wasn't always about what they did sometimes it was more about what people didn't do which is why number one on my list was that mentally strong people don't feel sorry for themselves and in that moment I came to that point of thinking okay my father-in-law has maybe a couple months probably more like a couple weeks left on earth how do I want to spend it do I want to sit around feeling sorry for myself or do I want to figure out how do I make the most of the time that he has because I knew if I just felt sorry for myself I'd regret it later on I wanted to make sure that if I was going to spend time with him I was going to be present with him in the moment and I wanted to be present with my family not just sitting around thinking this is horrible awful and unfair and and I knew those were the two choices I had and that if I just sat there and you know isolated myself I didn't spend time with him if I didn't embrace it if I didn't talk to my family then you know how those were to it three weeks of his life that I would have completely wasted so I thought you know I'm gonna even though this is tough I'm gonna face it head-on and immerse myself in it and know that it's okay to be sad but thinking about how my life is so horrible and awful and exaggerating how bad it is wouldn't do me any good I actually totally get that during while he's alive like make the most of it but I think where a lot of people then fall is after right is now everything is like it the reality has hit you right there and no longer around so what allowed you to then not fill the pity party after he passed so it was a matter of knowing okay grief is the process by which we heal you have to go through the pain you have to allow yourself to be sad you have to let yourself be angry go through all of those emotions but that self-pity is different that's when you start to think my life will never be good again there's nothing I can do to make this better and it lends itself to learned helplessness and you won't actually do anything to make your life better so he knew on an intellectual level that that's helpful I saw all the time from people in my therapy office and so that helped just knowing it but of course knowing something and doing it his difference so it was about catching myself when I was in those moods there when I was having a bad day to just remind myself you know I have a couple of options I can be grateful for what I've had at the same time as I'm sad and I can choose to honor his memory I can choose to do things that are helpful or I can just sit around and think about how often my life is and not do anything so just knowing that I had options and choices and it was up to me to say how do I feel sad without getting stuck in a place of self-pity and taking action sometimes even when I didn't feel like it to pull myself out of that was really important all right so let's go down that rabbit hole so how do you avoid feeling self-pity but allowing sadness like where is there a fine line and where do you see people kind of stumble into going from sad to self-pity because I think it can also be an evolution right right it's like you feel so sad so long that now you've moved into self-pity right so you know when you're sad you still have hope that things could get better later in life when you are stuck in self-pity you're thinking this life will never get any better or you start to think nobody can help me I'm beyond help I can't help myself there's nothing I can do sadness is about knowing okay I'm sad but I can stand it I can tolerate being sad it's uncomfortable but it's not the end of the world and when you know that and you know okay some day life could get better you can picture a better life you can think about all right when I'm feeling better I'm gonna do these certain things you can imagine a life that still has some hope in it then you know all right this is sadness but self-pity is when you start to just imagine bleak grim future there's nothing you can do about it and nobody can help pull you out of it Wow so it really is the Hope factor yes hope is a big part of it all right so now take me through the 13 things that you wrote down at the time that like I said in the intro 50 million people ended up reading it and Counting so talking me through those and which ones are the moment the ones that you feel have been the most impactful so number two on the list which was that mentally strong people don't give away their power so that one's really about saying all right you're in in control of how you think feel and behave so often just our language that we use where we say somebody makes me feel bad about myself or somebody drives me crazy I love that one and when you start to throw those around you think well then you're giving somebody power over how you feel or when you say somebody ruined my day you give them power over what kind of day you're gonna have taking back your power is really about saying no it's up to me to decide if I want to how I'm gonna think about myself how I'm gonna see the world how I'm gonna feel about myself what kind of mood I'm gonna be in I'm gonna spend my time who I'm gonna spend it with and for a lot of people just changing their language makes a big a big difference when you say I have to do something you're implying somebody's forcing you to do it just don't know it's up to me I'm choosing to do this today can really make a big difference in your attitude and you see that that has that knock-on effect on how them people act in accordance to it right you walk around looking like a victim because somebody's making you feel bad about yourself your boss is making you go to work or is saying no gosh you know this is my life I get to create the kind of life I want to live in here are the things I want to do and so often we put so much energy into trying to control things that we can't like oh I wish this person would behave better or wish this person would change or wish my circumstances are different and just knowing well you can't control a lot of those things in life what can you can show well yourself you can control your respond to people which you can't control how they act or you can control how you perceive circumstances which you can't necessarily stop every bad thing from happening yeah that's true so how do you first acknowledge that you've learnt the helplessness because if that's just almost like a matter of fact of how you are how do you recognize it and then how do you unwind that to then take the control other things that you can actually control yeah so when you're stuck in that it's hard to see all of us get into patterns in life and we think this is a fact this is the way the world is so it boils down to knowing that just because you think something doesn't make it true and you have to challenge your thoughts and so we what we do in therapy is often a behavioral experiment so when somebody comes to a conclusion such as I'm beyond help or people don't like me I'm socially awkward or I can't I'm too shy to give a speech then you say well let's let's challenge that how do you know if it's true you won't unless you go out there and do it and when you go out there and you try something then you can often say okay well just because I thought that was true and maybe it's a belief you held on your whole life you go out there and act the opposite say I'm gonna act confident even though I don't feel confident I'm gonna try to do something I think I can't do and after a while your brain sees oh maybe you are more competent incapable then I gave you credit for and you can literally train your brain to start to see yourself differently but in order to do that you have to kind of I think embrace some vulnerability yes and I love that you talk about vulnerability is seen as a weakness but it shouldn't be like thats actually it can be a superpower how do you allow yourself to become vulnerable in order to then do exactly what you just said so it's really I guess boils down to knowing that you can tolerate being uncomfortable I think a lot of problems in life come from our fear of thinking I can't handle that I can't handle being embarrassed I can't handle being rejected I can't handle it if somebody doesn't like me and so it's about facing affairs one small step at a time and knowing that those things are uncomfortable but they won't kill you you can put yourself out there you can tolerate a little bit of distress develop the skills that you need to handle it and then you can put yourself some put yourself in an even more uncomfortable situation down the road and you just take small steps well what about people who have let's say tried that and they put themselves out there and they show some vulnerability and they weren't met with a positive experience and so now they always retreat more and more how do you unwind that so then it's about knowing well what went wrong and is there something you could do differently so sometimes people in my therapy office will say I had a woman who came in for example and she was abused as a child so she thought okay every time I go on a date with a man I'll just come right out from the beginning and I'll tell him about my horrific childhood and that will be the test if he still likes me then I'll know that he's good enough for a second date and she came in and she said you know all of these men just can't handle this information so I'm flawed and it sort of reinforced her belief that she was unlovable nobody would ever love her we had to have a conversation about it well you know when you meet somebody and within five minutes you dive into your horrific childhood you're repelling them that you need to make sure that you build a trusting relationship first and then you can talk about that kind of stuff and so for a lot of people when it comes to vu it's it's not really about being vulnerable sometimes it's more about a shield of armor of how do I protect myself I'm gonna tell you all the bad stuff about me just to see if you still like me and and then they end up ultimately making their biggest fears comes true because they repel people so sometimes it's about taking a step back and saying is there something I could be doing differently am I being vulnerable in the in circumstances that aren't helpful am I being vulnerable toward the wrong people do I need to develop a better healthier relationship first or you know maybe we see sometimes people announcing things on social media that maybe are better left a little bit more private interesting so talk to me about that like where do you see that line where it's like okay now it's it should be kept secret or private versus being open and showing your vulnerability where's that line so you know I think there's a big difference between secrecy and privacy and it's okay to be a private person but what's not helpful is when we have secrets when we feel like we can't share something because we think you know there's something wrong with me something flawed with me that's we sort of keep it shrouded under all this shame and and we walk around hoping that nobody ever finds out these certain things about us but then knowing okay privacy is about having a choice knowing I could tell people but I'm choosing to either protect them protect myself I'm doing this in a healthy way because I feel like sharing this information right now wouldn't be helpful in some way shape or form but knowing that you could do it if you wanted to versus secrecy is really about thinking I can't I can't ever let anybody know this because they won't like me or because it would ruin everything it's really about that attitude that you have that's such a great definition yeah I never thought of it like that and one thing that I find that at least for myself I definitely had when I was younger was just doubt self doubt do you find that that's more common in females and if so why and then how do women can they use it to serve them or is it just a tremendous yes so definitely we see it more in women when it comes to confidence self doubt women experience more of it and you know when I wrote the book for women I had so many people ask me why would you write a book for women isn't don't men and when and build mental strength the same way which the answer is yes however women have different experiences and I think one of the studies that sums it up best is when we ask little girls and little boys at age five to pick out a picture of somebody that they think is brilliant and they have all of these pictures of professional looking men and professional looking women almost all the little boys point to men that person's brilliant almost all the little girls point to pictures of women and say that woman is brilliant well then they asked the kids at age seven point to somebody who's brilliant and almost all the little boys and all the little girls point to men from just two years difference yes whoa and so then you think well what happens between the ages of five and seven well that's when kids go to school right mm-hmm and so who are we showing them pictures of when we talk about famous scientists and politicians and historical figures it's almost all men and so then you think well how what kind of impact does that have on little girls as we're growing up and we're told you can be anything you want but by the way there's never been a female president or by the way here all these astronauts and they just happen to be men and so I think there's so many subtle messages like that that we grow up thinking about knowing about and that we're taught and so it affects us how do we see ourselves well there's and we're told we're not as good in math and we're not as capable in science and we're giving that message in lots of subtle little ways but I think it really sinks in and we start to have more doubt about ourselves there's so much pressure to our appearance in the way that we look that men don't have that same pressure on them and all these cultural things that we experience I think creates this a culture of self dealt with in ourselves yeah right now I'm really kind of diving into imprinting at a young age and how impactful it is and I heard you say about how blame where as a young girl or yeah as young girls get told that it's basically your fault and young boys get told that it's other people's four and a perfect example is when you say oh don't make him angry yes so talk to me through that yeah just again it goes back to the language that we use and and that will often be what little girls are told don't make your brother angry don't upset your brother versus what we tell boys about you know that it's okay to express their anger we tell girls it's okay to cry but then as an adult if you're 30 years old and you cry at work we tend to apologize because crying isn't okay all of these bizarre messages so when we look at self blame toxic self blame women are much more likely to blame themselves about things that aren't even our fault and then when they've looked at studies it's no secret that women apologize more than men so we say well why is that why do women always say oh I'm sorry even if I mean I'm sorry I'm late I'm sorry about that email I didn't reply to you on time why are we more apologetic well one reason is when they took a look at different social experiments they found out that when men and women commit the same offense women find it to be horrific and men ever think oh it's not a big deal so they feel like they don't need to apologize so somewhere along the lines as women we think any sort of social blunder or any time somebody's upset that somehow it must be our fault and we become apologetic and then there's all of these negative results that come from blaming ourselves too much so how would you do in that situation where let's say someone has noticed that and they're like I just apologized all the time I think is that you need that true mental - the way that I think how do you stop saying it because then it almost like at least for me because I have tried to get to that point where I stopped apologizing but like the guilt like inside me is like I just start feeling guilty about like I actually want to apologize but should I be apologizing and then the guilt just like what like builds up and builds up so yeah talk to me about that and the guilt element of it right so I think one thing is to remember that just because you feel guilty it doesn't mean that you did anything wrong whoa okay because as women I think we're taught if you feel guilty it must mean that you've messed up and you have to apologize you have to make amends you have to make things right but the truth is guilt is just a normal emotion and it's often irrational and comes out of lots of other things not necessarily the fact that you did something horrible so part of it is just sitting with the guilt and knowing that you can stand it and that it doesn't mean you did anything wrong and if you want to change how you feel it's about changing how you think and how you behave so maybe you just need to evaluate some of your thoughts so you're beating yourself up are you thinking this person it's gonna be so angry with me I've ruined the relationship then you take a step back and think is that true did I actually ruin the relationship because I was two minutes later because I didn't reply to that email sometimes we predict terrible things are gonna happen if I don't answer every email that comes in my inbox then people are going to think of a mean person whatever it is it's about changing that script in your head and knowing that that you can't handle feeling a little bit of guilt and just because you do feel guilty doesn't mean that you need to take immediate action to try to rectify it mmm yeah that's true I want to go back and just something that you said earlier about control and I subject I'm personally just fascinated over is that line between what you can control and what you can't control so I find the word control or everything's my fault I find it very empowering and I I actually realized look everything isn't in my control and no everything isn't my fault but by telling myself that it doesn't empower me as much as it does saying the opposite but some people find that trigger words to then retreat to you does that just come down to language that the people should be using or is there a clear difference to you about what isn't isn't people's rules and what they can and can't control right so a lot of people that come into my therapy office still be so worried about something that they can't control like having this family barbecue on Saturday and it's supposed to rain and so they spend their whole week checking the weather thinking that somehow you know if they can just keep checking the weather that's gonna be helpful so then our objective becomes okay you can't control whether or not it's going to rain but we can control what you do is what's a plan B how am i how else might you handle this or if they think you know it's completely up to them if people come to my house and we're not able to do what we had planned for an outdoor activity then nobody's gonna have any fun well you can't control whether other people enjoy themselves which you could control what sort of a party that you throw don't put your energy into into things that you worry about just because it might happen put your energy into what you will how you'll handle it if it does happen that's a really nice framing I like that especially I think as the holidays come up like you were saying like I said you know if it's like your mother-in-law or sense situations you're going to be a people that you may not jell with right handling those in those types of situations like what's your plan what's your plan beanie eyes we do a lot of if-then planning's oh yeah totally tumor by that I love you know if if this happens then what am I gonna do about it and something that we often use in public speaking because people will say well what if I get up there and I get so nervous I don't remember what I'm gonna say let's have a plan for that if I get up there and I get really nervous then maybe I'll take some deep breaths maybe I'll check my notes maybe I will think about something positive for a few seconds or I'll excuse myself for a minute so it could collect my thoughts whatever it is as long as you have a plan things seems so much easier in life otherwise we spend so much time and effort just writing off what if this happens what if that happens we'll finish the question say if that happens then here's what I'm gonna do once you know you have a plan to deal with an uncomfortable emotion or a or a challenge that you're likely to face then it becomes much easier to just dive in and move forward yeah and you had a post which I love how to avoid toxic people relationships and I wrote a couple of things I really love Raziel of the tips that you had given these were the ones that really struck me but resist complaining um how do you resist complaining because your instinct is to complain right right we spend so much energy and time most of us complaining about things that are out of our control but also then complaining to people who can't fix it and there's this huge misconception that venting makes us feel better Oh misconceptions yes people say I have to get it out cuz if I get it out then I feel better but almost every research study will show that commiserating complaining keeps you stuck because you're not thinking about happier things you're just thinking about all the awful horrible things that are going on and it keeps you stuck in a state of misery and you know there's one thing about emotional processing if you have a friend and you call your friend and say hey I'm dealing with this issue with my with my mother-in-law with my co-worker and you're trying to develop a solution or at least come up with strategies how am I gonna cope with this I have to go to work tomorrow and I work with this person what can I do about it that can be helpful but just complaining for the sake of complaining isn't it's not about getting it out or about venting and releasing pressure it's not like you're stuffing all your emotions if you don't about it it's about saying how am I going to spend my time and my energy let's spin it on something more positive instead of calling your friend to complain about all the bad stuff that happened today and then getting in this conversation that's ruminating about awful stuff let's talk about something pleasant and see what happens to your mood where's that fine line then about doing that or just sidelining the problem and not dressing it so you know if you have a toxic person in your life and you find yourself wanting to complain about them all the time it's probably a good sign that you need to do something different right you need to set some boundaries whether that's a physical boundary where you're going to say I'm not going to allow this person to to call me and monopolize my time I'm not going to allow this person to to say certain things to me anymore I'm gonna speak up or I'm gonna protect myself somehow so it's really about knowing ok who is this person I want to complain about and what does that mean I need to do differently in my life and how can I set some boundaries around me so that I don't feel so angry and resentful about what I think this person's taking from me I think in most cases having a conversation with somebody you want to know why am i complaining to people and can this person I'm complaining to do they have any power to fix the situation or not more often than not we complain to people who have no power to fix it instead of complaining to the boss we complain to a co-worker or we complain to a friend or a partner and maybe they don't have any wherewithal to fix it so who can fix it and how could I go to that person so sometimes it's about confronting somebody and saying this is what's going on I think I'm gonna make some changes in my life here's what I'm going to do differently how do you approach those confrontations because I think that that's where so much anxiety gets built up we're like ok I've heard what you're saying I shouldn't just stop complaining to the people that don't have the power or help to actually change it and which I think then maybe there's a safe Pollak that's a safe place which is why people do it right so how do you confront somebody in a situation like that without feeling like you're being defensive because at least who my own sake when I confront if I'm going to confront someone I normally work myself up like I'm about to step in a boxing ring right and that never solves it right right so sometimes it's about just saying here's what I'm going to do differently and maybe it's something small maybe you have a co-worker who tox comes in your office sits down and talks for three hours every day and as a result you can't get your own work done so you might say gosh I'm having trouble getting my work done and so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna start shutting my door I just wanted to let you know that in the mornings now my doors going to be shut because I I can't have too many distractions just say what you're going to do differently and to try not to turn it into something big it's if you say to somebody we need to have this big meeting and we're gonna sit down and and you make it a much bigger deal than it needs to be then it's gonna turn into a big confrontation that probably isn't going to be helpful and so before you go in you want to make sure that you figure out how do you calm your mind in your body might be some deep breaths maybe you watch a funny video for a few minutes sit by yourself quietly maybe listen to music something so that your mind isn't racing and that your heart's not beating a hundred miles an hour because if you walk into the situation like that your adrenaline gets running you're much more likely to to raise your voice or say something that you don't mean and then see it to have a game plan what are you gonna say how are you going to say it rehearse it in your head and then walk through walk through it visualize it imagine it going successfully what would you say what might they say how how can you respond to them and then maybe have one of those if-then plans if the person gets upset what will I do if they start to raise their voice then I'll speak calmly or I'll walk out whatever it is but knowing that confrontation doesn't have to be a bad thing I think for so many of us it's built up in our head that confrontation is bad and that it's about disagreeing and yelling and not going well but that confronting someone is sometimes the most loving thing that you could do and that it's a really kind thing and knowing that's being kind to you but it could be really kind to them and it doesn't have to be bad it's about saying I respect myself but I respect you enough that I think we need to talk about these talk about these things that we have enough of a relationship that I want to address it and not just pretend it's not a problem that's amazing I love like tactics like that was like if you say in this way it still gets the results you're looking for but hopefully avoids the problems that you found in the past right exactly yeah I love that there was something else that you spoke about which I find fascinating I've personally struggled with this is don't downplay your success yes it you had said that more women typically do this so do you have a reason or an explanation why women do this and then let's break that down because it's still something that I struggle with and find it difficult to have those barriers of like I don't know if I'm going too far if I'm going to you know light so let's start with the why I think we're taught to be really humble and you don't want to look arrogant especially nowadays are talking about narcissus and nobody wants to look like that and so because of that we go so far to the other end of the spectrum we think I'm just being humble or I'm not bragging about myself but to the point that we really do have trouble just acknowledging yeah I put in a lot of hard work and I am successful and you can see it in compliments when men get compliments they're much more likely to say thank you when a woman gets a compliment they're much more likely to say no you're amazing and we give somebody else a compliment or we say no it wasn't a big deal we minimize it and really try to pretend like it's like it's not something huge or you know we just downplay it to the extent that it's almost like we insult the person giving us a compliment we say no it wasn't a big deal or we almost offer something back that sounds kind of crazy when somebody says I really like your shoes we say oh these you know and I got them on sale for 99 cents but why do we do that I think because we just again it comes back to feeling guilty like no no I don't want to acknowledge that I have good taste or I don't want to acknowledge that I that I have something that's kind of cool so we talked about the really small price tag or we try to say it's you know I found this on sale whatever it is it's almost like there's part of us that feels guilty to just say thank you like we if just saying thank you somehow means that I'm implying yeah I know I'm awesome so I okay so yeah how do you avoid that coming across like that if you say thank you so I think it's okay sometimes to just say thank you and somebody says I really like what you said today and I'm meeting you just say oh thank you thank you for noticing something else you can do if you if that feels too uncomfortable is to acknowledge the hard work that got you there so when somebody says I love that you got this promotion or I'm so excited for you that you have all success instead of just saying thank you or thinks it's no big deal say thank you I put in a lot of hard work and when you acknowledge our hard work that got you there it doesn't come across as arrogant but also just gives you credit for the fact that you didn't just wake up and become successful you put in a lot of hard work to get to where you are and it's ok to acknowledge that you put in the time and the effort to get there yeah god I still struggle with that knowing where the difference is between owning it if someone's giving you a compliment right and then let's say the humble brag right like because here's what I struggle with I don't want other people to feel badly about themselves yep but at times I'm freakin proud of something that I've done and so it's like I especially if they're close to me I wonder Blake say oh my god did you see this I'm really proud that I had gotten myself to this point I've worked hard I've taught myself whatever it is but if it's to somebody that potentially isn't in a good place I find myself just not saying anything right because I don't want to hurt that person's feelings and so I really struggle with that because especially some people who are close to me they're like no I want you to tell me but I know it's still gonna hurt their feelings right so I think it's about knowing you know you can be tasteful and so if somebody's going through it's really specific struggle and you just succeeded in that exact same area then maybe you don't want to say it that day but that's okay I think to share your success with people and to know that that maybe you're inspiring them to maybe you give them hope if they know that you succeeded in an area you achieve something and they know you they may want to learn from you too so that and that it's not your job you're not in control of how other people feel about themselves any more than they're responsible for how you feel about yourself so it's okay to talk about it and maybe everyone surround somebody else will feel bad but at the same time there's probably plenty of other people that you'll inspire and even if they do feel bad that's up to them to figure out how to take care of themselves and it's not up to you to shrink yourself minimize yourself or try to protect other people it's okay to be proud of the successes that you have how much do you think social media has eaten played into these types of things that we're talking about so you know success the jealousy things like that oh I think it's a huge factor because now we just look around and it only takes 30 seconds of scrolling through Instagram before you feel like everyone else is happier wealthier more successful they're out there doing things that you only dream about and and then you start to easily start to think oh I'm not good enough I can never achieve that and studies will show that too that women are more likely to experience that than men are that men sometimes are more likely to be inspired by other men whereas women tend to think I could never be like that how do we get for that so one trick is to say I'm gonna look at other people as opinion holders rather than competitors so if you just looked at another person who is out there and they're crushing it rather than thinking that person is better than I am or they're doing things I'll never be able to do and just remind yourself know that person has information knowledge skills that I could learn from and that you aren't in direct competition with them that their success isn't taking away from you but instead you can learn from them you can choose to follow them you can choose to be surrounded by people who help motivate you and just take a look at what can I learn from this person in my life and once you make that switch or you can say okay I'm gonna learn from these people rather than look at them as as though they're taking away what I want or that they are somehow gonna hold me back just knowing there's plenty of room and that we can all succeed and that you can learn from other people who are out there crushing it yeah and I love the definition of comparison I've never heard of this before but you said that there's two types of comparison one is upwards and one is downwards comparison and talk to me about I'd never heard it and phrase like that before so sometimes we look upward to say okay how am i doing and then you look around at people who are really successful and you think okay I'm not doing so well and then sometimes we think well if I want to feel better I'm just gonna remember that at least I'm not down at the bottom of the barrel there's a lot of people below me and we tend to think that looking doing a downward comparison will make us feel better but studies show that that's not necessarily true how come like that really surprised me when I had you say that right so you know we start to then feel bad for those people we start to then experience some some form of pity for them something that maybe somebody's parents you know they feed you your parents feed your dinner and you don't want to eat it all they're like well just remember there's starving children all across the world and that would love to eat your food nobody feels better after their parents says that right it doesn't make you then want to finish finish all the food on your plate it doesn't make you think gosh how lucky am i that I have broccoli so I think to keep that in mind that even now when we start to think well at least I'm not as bad as those people or I don't have it I'm not struggling as much but that's probably isn't helpful either we're not in competition with people above us or below us that we're just running our own race and to resist that urge sometimes to try to temporarily give yourself a boost by doing it downward comparison hmm doesn't it help give context though look I'm fascinated by this because I've been suffering from a lot of health issues for like four years and you know very initially it was why me like I feel sorry for myself you don't understand and then when I started to frame things of like yeah but least you don't have Crohn's disease but Lisa you don't have cancer like all these things are other people are suffering from it almost puts it allowed me at least to put things into perspective so I actually found it rather helpful but at the same time I actually hear what you're saying about downplaying it so do you see that there's a fine line or do you think that that's just down to an individual on the fact they're like hey if it works for you then do it or do you think like it's still a dangerous thing you know I think for everybody knowing what works for you specifically I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all in anything I think about experimenting and figuring out which things work best for you and I hear what you're saying about saying you know at least I don't have this or at least I don't have that and I think that that's helpful for a lot of us of saying okay well at least I don't have this specific problem and I think that's different than looking at specific people maybe oh and saying at least I'm not as bad as that person versus just saying at least I don't have that specific problem huh you're white actually because as you were saying that I was thinking okay I would pity a certain person but making it abstract in an essence or saying at least I don't have cancer there's nothing to pity someone specific raise that what you're saying right oh that's fascinating that's really powerful and one thing I love that you said which I'm like I try this I don't know if it's gonna work for me but schedule time to worry yes I love that so much it sounds counterintuitive so if you attend to be a worrywart and you worry 24/7 what the research will show this it's something I've worked with a lot of people in my therapy office but to take 15 minutes a day and say I'm gonna schedule my time to worry so put it on your calendar maybe I'm gonna worry from 7:00 to 7:15 every night when you catch yourself worrying outside of that time you just say okay it's not time to worry and then when you're worrying time comes around 7 o'clock rolls around sit down and worry your little heart out for 15 minutes where times up you remind yourself ok times up I'm gonna get back to business as usual and research will show after a while that it trains your brain to know ok there's time to worry and I'm gonna set aside that time so I'm gonna do it later and instead of worrying all day long you can contain it to just 15 minutes but I find most people who worry a lot they tend to think well I have to worry about this for a while because they'll either develop a solution or I'll prevent something from happening and if you told them don't worry at all that doesn't work why would he ever said ok I won't worry anymore now that you said that and that you're so right and that you're their brains want to and you know a lot of people tend to think well if I worry enough I'll somehow prevent something bad from happening even on an intellectual level people who know that that's not necessarily true will say well 90% of this stuff I worry about doesn't happen so therefore somehow it's effective my worrying must prevent it so they want to worry a little bit and so you don't want to take that away but to know ok if you schedule time to worry then it sort of frees up your brain the other 24 hours out of the day outside of those 15 minutes so that you can focus on other stuff and you have more mental energy to devote some more productive things I'm so gonna give it a shot and see if it was because it actually does make sense when you break it down like that so I want to just touch on some things about parenting because going back to what I said earlier about imprinting I think it's so important and God this is one of those things one of the like number 732 of why I don't have children is the fear that there's so many little things that I fear I would do that would have an imprint on the child in our you know old life and I'm sure every parent has this worry but what are like two or three things that you think parents can adopt immediately and to not do so one big one is to not take responsibility for your kids emotions Oh today is a world I think it's there's so much pressure on parents to raise happy kids and we think that that means making them happy all the time and so when kids upset we tend to be like all calm down we tell them to calm down but we don't teach them how to calm themselves down or we when they're upset we want to cheer them up if they were sad or they got cut from the baseball team we're like let's go out for ice cream and we just automatically want them to be happy but we don't give them the skills that they need to control their own emotions and studies will show that when they ask college kids were you ready for college like 98% of them say Oh academically yeah I was prepared for life after high school yet the vast majority of them said but guess what I don't have the skills to deal with anxiety loneliness fear I'm not emotionally prepared to be here so I think we're doing kids a big disservice we're not teaching them coping skills we're doing it for them so how would you teach a kid coping skills like you know I'm thinking you've got a five-year-old kid you and again I'm not a parent so I actually don't know but it would seem difficult to teach kids stuff so right so I think it's about experimenting with kids okay when you're upset what works maybe you have a kid who should go run around the house twice and then they feel better or maybe you have a kid if they sit down and they color when they're sad that cheers them up and it's about sort of doing all these experiments to figure out how do you manage your emotions and get your kids involved in coming up with strategies and ideas and knowing your child's personality some kids can play quietly for a few minutes and they feel better for other kids they play quietly for a few minutes and they they then get sad whatever it is just knowing your child experimenting with different things and making sure that they know how to do it I've had parents that create a calm down kit and it's got a coloring book of crayons or maybe a joke book something like that that helps kids feel better and so when they're upset instead of saying calm down the parents say why don't you go find something that will help you calm down the kid goes over to his little shoebox opens it up and it's filled with stuff and NES real life coping strategies right there in front of him and then they grow up knowing okay when I'm upset I have the ability to calm myself down and as an adult maybe it's more like a mental toolbox rather than a physical one but then they have the skills that they need to manage their own emotions that's genius and if I was a parent I would make the Box really colorful and happy looking right it was an exciting thing to go into the box exactly and what other thing do you think that parents need to stop doing losing sight of their values is another big one and so we know that there's so much day-to-day hustle and parents are frazzled and we're working on things like making sure that you get your homework done or that you brought your soccer cleats to practice that we lose sight of the big picture so when they asked kids in the classroom would your parents rather that you be the kindest kid in the class or the smartest kid almost every kid says oh my parents would want me to be the smartest kid in the class and then when they ask parents do you want your kid to be the smartest or the kindest almost every parent says I want my kids to be the kindest kid in the class interesting so there's a lot of research on that that we're just kind of losing that disconnect we don't talk about kindness we talk about the importance of getting your homework done or that we don't talk about studying and trying hard and that it's okay to fail we talk about the importance of getting an A and so then when they looked at how many kids cheat I mean the statistics are like the vast majority of kids today have cheated on a test and when they ask kids about it the kids say well my parents are more concerned about my grade rather than how I got there and so we aren't teaching kids know it's okay to fail it's okay to make a mistake but it's not okay to cheat and I heard you actually talk about grades and how everyone around you depending on how they performed and has a implication or an effect on how you feel about that grade right right if you got to see on a test but that was the highest grade in the class maybe you think oh I did I did a good job if you got a C and he found out everybody else in the class got an A you're probably gonna feel pretty bad about yourself thinking how come I am not as good as other people so just knowing how do you measure yourself up against other people and we do that with kids you wanna know are you the smartest kid are you the best are you the fastest one are you doing it better than everybody else and when we measure their success against other people we're not teaching them how do you become your personal best yeah god I literally could talk to you for hours sell you your tactics your message freaking amazing um what is your superpower I think facing fears I'm at the point in my life where I sort of like to be anxious I feel like okay a lot of bad things happen to me and I survived them so what's one more thing I love to just face fears and conquer things I didn't think I could do I love that and the web can people find you and all the books that you're writing and your articles and everything like that my website is Amy Moore in LCSW as in licensed clinical social worker calm nice guys I literally am like a giddy child talking to this woman like this stuff that she's been telling it's so powerful go back and watch this episode again get out a note and pen a pen and write down everything it is so powerful so if you're not following her if you haven't read a book go check it out go pick it up and if you're not following me following me at Lisa bill you and if you're not subscribed click that subscribe button if you find that this episode was bull you value please do share and tell all your friends about it and until next time go be the hero of your own life guys peace out [Music] what up guy is Lisa here thanks so much for watching this episode and if you haven't already subscribed if that little bone one in front of you click click click away we release episodes every Wednesday so be sure to get notified until next time go be the hero of your own life

Channel: Lisa Bilyeu

Views: 78,652

Keywords: women of impact, woman of impact, lisa bilyeu, tom bilyeu, impact theory, quest nutrition, motivation, inspiration, Amy Morin, Lisa Bilyeu, Women of Impact, Impact Theory, Tom Bilyeu, mental strength, psychotherapist, self-pity, 13 things, mentally strong, grief, sadness, hope, guilt, apology, self-blame, self-doubt, secrets, privacy, complaints, envy, social media, worry

Id: MqpOlHTx-MY

Length: 45min 59sec (2759 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 20 2019