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This episode was sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy.
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Big thanks to Hasu Jo, licensed therapist and head of clinical operations at BetterHelp.
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Hasu Jo is not my actual therapist, and we are not in a therapist-client relationship.
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Also, just because you might hear something on the show that sounds similar to what you re experiencing, beware of self-diagnosis.
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You ll want to find a qualified professional to assess and explore diagnosis if that s important to you.
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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Here s another question.
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How do we continue to come from a place of compassion, humility, love, and empathy, even when we find ourselves navigating difficult situations that require us to stand up for ourselves and set firm boundaries?
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It can certainly feel challenging to be a warm and kind and nurturing person to somebody else when we feel like we re kind of all out of sorts in ourselves.
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So if you re really concerned about continuing to show up as this, what you re describing, like really wonderful person, you are working on yourself.
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You know, even when we re navigating difficult situations,
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So give yourself time and space and put in the energy and invest in yourself to navigate those difficult things before trying to help a bunch of other people.
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Advocating for ourselves and setting firm boundaries is not the same as not being compassionate or having humility, love, empathy, all those things.
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These things can happen in parallel, but I do think it s very important and beneficial to continue to prioritize yourself.
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And remember that doing that doesn t make you a self-absorbed or selfish person.
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If anything, like, it means that you re wanting to put in the care to continue showing up as the best version that you can be to anybody else, especially for yourself.
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Yeah.
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And as a recovering people pleaser, this is one of the hardest things because I ve always wanted everyone else to like me.
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I ve been overly compassionate and overly giving and overly whatever you need.
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And here I m here for you.
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And, and I, and I didn t create great boundaries for myself.
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And therefore I would feel overextended, I would feel frustrated, resentful,
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because of that.
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And so, again, this is probably one of the hardest things for a lot of people to do is to create these boundaries and know that you might ruffle some feathers and you can be loving and compassionate and, and kind in your communication with people, and people still may be upset, they still may be frustrated and push you and push your buttons.
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and you get to be clear.
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It doesn t mean you have to be mean or hard on people, but you get to be clear to create your energetic boundaries with self.
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And I think you may lose or frustrate some relationships over time, but I think at the end of the day, you have to live with you.
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And that s the most important relationship.
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And if you re resenting and frustrated and exhausted,
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then you re not going to live a joyful, peaceful life.
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So it s, it s a dance.
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It s an art on how to do this.
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And I think you can do it.
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It s just takes practice.
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Yeah, and you know, when you re when you re setting boundaries with people, you re modeling something, you re showing them that you respect your own time.
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And you re communicating without saying it explicitly that you re hoping that in this relationship, they can be someone that respects your time too, and you will be someone that respects them.
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And, you know, this ruffling of feathers, losing people sometimes in our lives, which can happen when you are prioritizing self.
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But you know, I would challenge folks to think of it this way.
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It s like, I would hope that you want to surround yourself with people that want to be around who you are authentically, rather than just constantly trying to be around people that only like a version of yourself that you re curating for them.
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That s great.
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A few more questions.
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This one is
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has to do with parental rejection.
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As many queer folks experience, myself included, being rejected or not accepted for who we are, it can create a deep sense of unworthiness or not good enough that can bleed into many areas of your life, like self-care and self-love and repeating patterns of needing to earn love in adult
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relationships.
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So my question is how do you overcome this feeling of not good enough and replace the lack of belonging and acceptance that you didn t feel as a child and maybe still don t feel from your parents?
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Thanks for your time.
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And I know you touched on this a little bit before, but if who you are at your core is not accepted by your parents or your closest family members,
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How do you learn to overcome that feeling of, I m not good enough, because everyone in my life has told me I need to change, I need to change, or they don t accept who I am at my core.
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How do we learn to say, I am good at my core, but there are just certain people that don t accept that?
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I think the answer is going to look a little bit different for each person, depending on like where this core belief of not being good enough came from.
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And I am afraid that I m not going to be able to answer it sufficiently for everybody listening to this, even the listener that asked this themselves.
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So my encouragement really is to get into therapy, especially for something like this.
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Because I m not sure if you re referring to
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abuse, trauma, or is it something that s a little quieter but just as damaging, which is childhood emotional neglect?
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Was it that your emotional needs were not being met or nurtured by the folks that we now know are supposed to be the ones that love unconditionally?
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So, you know, part of this journey of healing for something that s happened to us as children, especially something like parental rejection, is rediscovering and reconnecting with that inner child.
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We ve all heard that phrase.
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and learning how we can be the adult and the parent for that child that we didn t have.
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How can we become this parent to extend the love, the acceptance, and the unconditional, you know, everything for the child within us, we can reparent ourselves.
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And that s something that you can learn in your journey in therapy.
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This is one of the most important things I learned in therapy.
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And I went through a process for
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every week for six to nine months, it started to be every two weeks, maybe after six months, but it was almost every week for six months.
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And then it was every other week for for the next few months, specifically focusing on inner child healing.
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And I thought this was weird when I started.
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You re talking to a, you know, a former jock athlete from the Midwest growing up.
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We didn t, we didn t have these types of conversations where we, we said, okay, go back and have a conversation with the five-year-old you and be the adult in the room and ask your little self what he needed in that moment.
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what he was struggling with, how he was feeling, because we didn t get to say those things to parents at those times.
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So we never said those things that we actually needed.
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But now we can go back and create new meaning, healing, and congruency from the five-year-old, the nine-year-old, the 12-year-old, whatever it was where you felt neglect, abuse, abandonment, or a lack of love.
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You can go back now as the adult in the room
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and have a conversation with that young boy or girl inside of you.
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And start to create peace, create home, create safety if you never felt safe.
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And a place to talk to someone.
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And again, it might sound weird of having this kind of out of body experience with younger self, with current self.
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But for me, this practice of about six to nine months of specifically, I mean, I had a screensaver on my phone of my five-year-old self for almost a year.
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So there was a constant reminder to check in with the wounded part of my childhood, the psychological and emotional wounded part of me that I was running away from, that I was masking, that I was overworking to compensate from, that I was people pleasing because I didn t want him to get hurt again from.
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And if we can, with therapy, and I really believe that this is a thing you do with support.
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I think it s really, really hard to do this on your own.
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I just don t think it s as wise.
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We need
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that environment with a trained professional to support us in this process, to create a safe environment, to give us the tools, to give us the research and the science behind why it s so powerful and meaningful, and to allow us to process authentically.
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And if we just do it on our own, I don t know, maybe it s possible, but I just think it s going to take a lot longer and it s going to be a lot harder.
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So again, I really am such a big believer in
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therapy and specifically with BetterHelp.
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And I want people to go to betterhelp.com slash Lewis, you get 10% off your first month, even if you feel like life is really good.
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It s still worth going, even trying for a few months to see how can it be better?
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How can I outgrow certain things, shed the skin of the old and reinvent myself and in my relationships, in my career, in my health?
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If something feels like, okay, life is good, but I know I m missing something.
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I feel like this is a great opportunity for you to get clear on your meaningful mission,
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really process with someone who s trained, a trained professional from the comfort of your own home, and start taking action steps to getting the results that you want.
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Again, to break free of the different pains, the different stress, the different overwhelm that has maybe kept you at a certain
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level and kept you safe and made sure that you feel protected.
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But you know, there s something more for you.
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There s no something more freedom, more peace, more abundance.
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And so again, I want people to check it out at better help.com slash Lewis.
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So you have that support doing it on your own.
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It s just so much harder.
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So again, if you re looking for a clearer direction in your life, if you re looking for some healing, if you re looking for just more joy and freedom and peace of mind, then I encourage you to go to better help.com slash Lewis, again, you get 10% off the first month when you do that.
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So you can try it for a month.
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and explore it, check it out.
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You can find a therapist and you can switch, I believe at any time.
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So if you re feeling like maybe this isn t working for me, let me try someone different.
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You can do that as well over at BetterHelp.
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They ve got, again, online support.
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So if you have any questions, you can ask them questions right on the website.
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Again, betterhelp.com slash Lewis.
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I hope today s episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today s show with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as add free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on apple podcast.
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Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes.
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I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better.
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And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.
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And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.