Cultivating the belief “I am worthy”

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Today on the podcast I am celebrating my 40th Birthday! And to honor the past decade of my life, I want to share one belief that I worked on throughout my 30’s that changed me from the inside out. I am going to dive deep into why this one belief was so transformational to me, how I learned to cultivate it and what you can do to adopt it yourself.

Topics in this episode:

  • The importance of believing “I am worthy”

  • Why you want to boast about yourself and your amazingness

  • Why other people can’t fill your “worthy-cup”

  • What it takes to believe in yourself at a higher level

  • Specific questions to ask yourself to help build up belief in your worthiness

Show Notes & References:

  • Schedule a free coaching call if to start believing “I am worthy” no matter your successes or failures in life: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book

  • Don’t forget to leave a rating and review to help spread this resource to other working moms!

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Transcript


Intro

Welcome to the ambitious and balanced Working Mom podcast, a place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.

Working moms, hello. Yesterday I celebrated my 40th birthday. Yes, I have officially entered a new decade and I have a whole lot of feelings about it. But mostly I'm feeling really excited. My mom and my cousin told me just the other day that their 40s were their favorite years. In your twenty’s and your 30s, those are times where you're doing a whole lot of learning, a whole lot of pushing, a whole lot of kind of building up your life to what it is you want it to be. And then by the time you turn 40, a lot of the things that you've been building toward start coming to fruition and things start to get easier and you care a whole lot less about what other people are thinking and your perspective changes. There's a little less hustle, and it's just more about experiencing and relishing and finding the joy in life and the fun. So I'm just really excited about what the next decade holds for me.

For about the last five years, I have said that I've really only wanted one thing for my 40th birthday, and that was to go skiing. Now, my birthday is obviously in August, so this trip is being planned with three of my best girlfriends and we are going in January of next year. But I'm just really excited about this trip coming up and doing something I haven't done in like 20 or 25 years. I asked my husband if he wanted to go - this was like years ago, and he has really wide shoulders, a lot of girth to him, and he said, no way is he getting on a pair of skis that are going to take him down a mountain where his momentum and girth are just going to plummet him down a hill. And so I said, all right, fine. I'm doing it for my 40th and I've taken my friends that I know want to go. So super excited about that. 

Receiving love.

I know a lot of women's birthdays come with mixed feelings. Some people love to celebrate birthdays, other people almost kind of wish that they weren't in existence, that nobody acknowledged them. And I would say that I'm not super over the top about my birthday, but I definitely do want it and myself to be acknowledged. I want to feel special and I want to feel loved. It doesn't have to be a big party or anything, though I did celebrate in a park with a whole bunch of friends and kids yesterday - but there's something about celebrating birthdays that I understand this year, or probably in the last couple of years, I've really understood this more than I ever have in my life. And that is the deep down understanding that I deserve to be celebrated, I am worthy of it. And that feeling of being loved and special, that comes from me. Yes, of course it's nice when my husband acknowledges how amazing I am, how special I am, and it feels really good to be reminded by my friends and my parents how loved I am and how special I am to them. But at the end of the day, I would never be able to receive their love and their delight in me if I don't already love and delight in myself.

The most important thoughts I choose are the ones that I have about myself.

And we as women have been somewhat indoctrinated over the course of thousands of years due to suppression and all these different things that we don't need to go into in this podcast, to not think highly of ourselves, to be more submissive. And certainly we should not be sharing our thoughts about ourselves with others, right? That would be boasting. We're taught as women to not boast and instead to value humility. I looked up the word humility in the dictionary. Here's what it means ‘a low view of one's importance.’ Do you know what boasting means? It means ‘to talk with excessive pride and self satisfaction about one's achievements, possessions or abilities.’ Now, I don't know about you, but when I think about what I want to instil in my children, it is certainly not to have a low view of themselves. I certainly do not want my child to think of themselves as not being very important. Instead, I want my child to know that they are unique and special and have amazing abilities and capabilities. I want them to take pride in what they do and who they are. I want them to feel deeply satisfied and sufficient. Not that they are lacking anything, but that they have great importance and are bound to do great things in their life. And I know now, at the age of 40, more than I ever have before, that I get to feel the same way about myself. The things I want for my kids, the way I want them to believe in themselves, I get to believe about me. 

That's why this birthday, I spoke up, maybe more than I ever have before and said, this is exactly what I want. I told my husband this is what I want my party to look like. This is what I want to do, this is how I want to invest in my birthday. This is how I want to celebrate. I deserve to be celebrated in exactly the way I want. And I'm not conceited for wanting it. I'm deserving.

Accomplished value vs human value.

This is a conversation I have a lot with my clients and it feels really appropriate to talk about this particular podcast while I am in the middle of celebrating my birth month and my birth week and my birthday yesterday to feel deserving or worthy. A lot of women don't feel that about themselves. And most people point to their achievements in order to really determine this. The things that they've done in their life, their successes, the way they've impacted the world, the money that they've made, the house they have. - A lot of people see that as what determines their value, their worth. I call that your accomplished value and it is something that's really important, but it does not determine how deserving you are or how worthy you are. In fact, I don't think it plays a part at all. Your babies were born and they came into this world and they brought so much joy, they made such an impact in your life and other people's lives. They are worthy and were deserving of love, but not because they did anything, because they hadn't really they were just simply born. I call that your human value. It's the value that you possess and that every human possesses simply because they exist. You don't have to prove yourself to get it. You don't have to do anything for it. You are inherently valuable. You are deserving and worthy of love. Not because you've done anything, but because you just simply are.

My life coach a couple of years ago, a phenomenal coach named Judy Brower, she had me do this exercise once where I visualized myself just living in my everyday life with my value and my worthy cup just overflowing. She really wanted me to see how life would be different if I wasn't constantly searching for something or someone else to fill me up. How my interactions with my kids would be different, conversations I'd have with my husbands, topics of conversations I would have with people, the way I would operate my business, how I would show up on social media, how I would talk to my grocer or my neighbor.

Feeling secure and sufficient in who you are.

It was really hard for me to see this and to do this exercise because I had actually done quite a bit of work around this. I knew where my human value was but I wasn't clear on where I was still searching for it outside of myself. But my coach at that time, she was really trying to push me to this next level. And I remember the moment that it hit me, there was something going on with the client or a potential client in my business in some way and It held a lot of emotion, and in this instant, I saw how differently I would be approaching the situation with way less emotion, carrying a whole lot less because my identity wasn't wrapped up in it, my confidence wasn't wrapped up in it. I wasn't trying to prove myself in any way. I would have been able to see way less emotion, but problem solved differently and all sorts of things I could see in an instant how different I would be if I felt 100% secure and sufficient in who I was.

And then several years ago, I had this visualization that it almost just happened to me…maybe during a prayer time, I can't remember - but I saw myself holding this cup. And when the cup was overflowing, I felt amazing about myself and when the cup was lacking, when it was low, I felt myself trying to prove myself. And in this visualization, I had an image of myself holding the cup empty. And I was going to all the various people in my life: my husband, my friends, my coworkers, my boss, my mom. I was desperately asking them to fill it up, to fill up my cup so that I would feel better. But it seemed that whenever they would put something in my cup, it never really filled up. It was almost as if there was a hole at the bottom, it would immediately go dry. It wasn't until I started going to myself to fill it up, and for me - because I believe in God, when I started going to God to help me fill it up, that things really started to change. I knew that this visualization many years ago was super significant, but now I see it in such a different way.

You control how amazing you are.

At this age of my life, I see how insightful it really was. What you believe about yourself either fills you up and makes you feel amazing and creates this foundation of confidence that's unshakeable, where what other people think of you doesn't matter, if you fail, it doesn't matter. You feel truly sufficient and enough at all times, or what you believe about yourself makes you feel like you're not enough, like you should be doing more, like you're flawed or incapable. You are the keeper of those thoughts. You control how amazing you are, how enough you feel, how loved you feel, how worthy you feel. You control how your bucket is filled. Most women are out of practice of thinking amazing thoughts about themselves. It's not that there aren't amazing things. It's not that there's not phenomenal things to be thinking about yourself. It's just likely that you haven't practiced bringing them to mind.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I did a training with a company because I do speaking engagements sometimes with companies. And I had them do this exercise where they had to fill in the blank. I am amazing because I am exceptional at. I just gave them a couple of prompts just like that. And I took maybe five minutes to answer some questions. But one woman piped up and said, is it a problem that this is really hard for me? And I just laughed and I said no. Most women aren't taught to think this way. We are not taught to think highly of ourselves. We are told to value humility. So this is going to be hard until you get in there and just start practicing thinking it over and over and over and over again. 95% of your thoughts are the same thoughts that you had yesterday, which means that if you want to think new thoughts, you're going to have to intentionally put some effort behind them. You're going to have to practice something new so that it becomes a habit in your brain.

And this is a practice of mine that I have easily done for a decade or more. I feel like on some level, I have always understood that my biggest challenge in life is belief in myself and my human value. And for many, many years, I have had this regular practice, usually in the morning quiet time that I have, where I make a list of things I either believe about myself or just want to believe about myself. Sometimes the question changes a little bit, like the list changes a bit, but it always centers around just one thing: who am I? And I write down a list of things that I believe about myself.

Believe amazing thoughts about yourself.

On a foundational level, I practice believing amazing thoughts about myself all of the time. I actually went back and looked at a journal from five years ago and found a list that I wanted to share with you because a lot of women make this way more complicated than it really needs to be. This exercise is very simple, and your thoughts can be very simple about yourself. You could rewrite the same list every single day - I've done that practice before. Or you could make up a new ist every single day. It's a very simple practice, it doesn't need to be super complicated. The goal of writing this list is simply to let each one of your thoughts about yourself, your amazing thoughts about yourself, sink into the marrow of your bones.

So I wrote this in August 2017. Here's the list:

  • I am creative.

  • I am a great speaker.

  • I am courageous.

  • I make people laugh.

  • I am funny.

  • I am full of joy.

  • I am vibrant.

  • I am passionate.

  • I am a business owner.

  • I am successful.

  • I am a leader.

  • I am a mother. 

  • I am a thoughtful wife. 

  • I'm sexy. 

  • I'm intentional. 

  • I'm a feeler. 

  • I am worth it. 

  • I am a go getter. 

  • I am motivated. 

  • I am ambitious. 

  • I am anointed.

  • I am a risk taker.

Do you see how simple these thoughts are about myself? But very, very powerful. In some seasons of my life, I'd write a list like this every single day. Imagine the power of writing this list every single day, reminding your brain who you are and what you believe about yourself. These things are unchanging. These things that I wrote then and the things that I write now, they're unchanging. No matter what anybody else thinks or how much I fail, I believe these things deep down to my core. Why? Because I have practiced believing them. Not because I'm some shiny unicorn of some kind that's better than you or more successful than you in any way. If you don't believe these things, it's just simply because I practiced it.

The ‘I Am’ List.

I encourage you this week, just for this one week, to commit to seven days of this practice in believing in yourself. Write a list just like this one for yourself. I call it the I am list. Everything just needs to start with ‘I am’ and it needs to be in the positive, right? Doesn't have to be complicated, doesn't have to be over the top. It can be very simple statements. I encourage you to write 20 things. Don't stop at the easy ones, because for sure the first few that are going to come out of you will feel kind of easy and then after that, maybe even just after five, you're going to go, oh, I don't really know. But you want to push your brain to as many as possible. Write 20 amazing things about yourself. The goal is to just practice, to practice building up a set of beliefs about yourself that make you feel worthy and enough always. You are not dependent on your spouse or your friends or your loved ones or your boss or your successes to make you believe these things. You are amazing working moms simply because you are you.

It was my 40th birthday wish to remind you of that today, and my hope is that you receive it.

Okay, working moms, here's to the next decade and let's get to it.

Hey, before you go, I want to take a moment and tell you about an opportunity to speak with me directly. If you've been listening to this podcast and still feel like you need help balancing a fulfilling career with motherhood, then I encourage you to schedule a free breakthrough call. On this call we will get crystal clear on exactly what it is you want out of your career and how you want to balance that with motherhood. And then we'll craft next steps for you to start moving toward a more calm and fulfilling working mom life. Head over to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to apply for this free call. Till next week, and working moms, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson