How To Develop Unshakable Self-Worth - The hidden Connection Between Attachment and Confidence

What if I told you that one of the most damaging things to your self worth is not the terrible decisions that you've made, not the way that you talk to yourself, not even the consequences of horrible choices and actions that you've taken in your life, not the regret, not the lack of action or motivation. What if I told you that one of the biggest determining factors is in your sense of self worth had nothing to do with anything that you've actually done? You see, I've been working with men for so long, over a decade, and one of the things that I've come to see and come to know and come to understand is that so many men who feel like they have a broken sense of self, a broken sense of worth or value, it's not actually something that they created. Maybe they perpetuated it for sure. Maybe they accentuated it by making terrible decisions and choices. I did the exact same thing, you know, making bad decisions, lying to myself, lying to other people, having zero impulse control, not pursuing the things that I knew I needed to do in order to actually respect myself as a man. Of course, all of those things contribute to a lack of self worth. But the truth is that for many of you, you struggle with self worth because of something so much deeper. That's what we're going to explore today. I'm going to lay it out for you and talk about how you can actually begin to rectify and develop this sense of self worth that maybe has eluded you or has felt very hard to achieve or attain. So in order to lay this out, I need to tell you a little bit about attachment. Because. Because for most of the men that I've worked with, when we really get down to the brass tacks, when we really get down to what is causing your lack of self worth, sure, there might be some things in your life that you could do better. Maybe you need to clean up your room, as Jordan Peterson says, or you need to take some extra risks, or you need to apply for the job, you need to make a little bit more money, get your body into shape, be more disciplined. All of those things can be true. I'm not negating any of those things. So if that's you, please know that those are things that you can do to develop a little bit more of a sense of self worth. For many of you, though, you've been doing those things. You are getting more disciplined. You're waking up on time. You have the morning routines starting to get dialed in. You have the relationship that you really love and care about. But for some reason, there's still something fundamentally missing inside of you that with regards to how you view your sense of self. So where I want to begin is attachment and development. In the first few years of life, you go through some very important developmental shifts from a physical, neurological and psychological foundation. And these shifts are very, very important for how you relate to the world and how you relate to your sense of self. And these things, these moments in your life, can deeply impact and influence your sense of self worth. So I'm going to lay out two very important developmental stages that you will go through in the very beginning of your life. And here I'm using a bunch of different forms of psychology. But there's a good friend of mine, Dewey Freeman, who's been a therapist for a very long time, and he has a developmental model that I think is one of the more and most robust developmental models out there. The pulls from a bunch of different developmental psychologies. But for the sake of all of the jargon and the technical details, I'm just gonna give you the first two stages. When you're born 0 to 18 months, you go through a stage of trying to relate to the world. And there really isn't much difference in those first 18 months between mom and you, between your primary caretakers and you. What you experience, they experience, and what they experience, you experience. So there's a lot of mirror neurons form. Your brain is getting a sense and your nervous system is getting a sense for is my world safe? Is my world okay? Is my environment safe? Is my environment okay? And what a lot of the research shows is that for babies in this stage, there's not much difference between their environment and what they feel and experience. So if your environment growing up when you were an infant was extremely hostile or volatile, or there was a lot of grief and sadness and depression or a tremendous amount of anxiety, depression that can filter in to a base foundation of how you feel about the world. The next stage that you enter into, around 18 months to two years and goes on to about three or four years, is a stage where you start to develop a sense of self. Now, this is really crucial and important. This formative period in your life from 18 months to about three or four years, is where you start to. Individually, you start to realize cognitively and psychologically and mentally, oh, there is a difference between mom and me. There's a difference between dad and me. I want certain things that dad doesn't want, right? Like my son, he's four and a half. He just went through this stage, wants to Put, you know, wanted to play with trains all the time. These are my trains. He doesn't want to share them with his baby sister. He wants, you know, he wants to play with trains in a very specific way. So there is an individualizing that happens in this stage. And what we call this is the terrible twos, the three major. Right, the terrible threes. And this is generally where you see a kid starting to say, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to eat that. They're starting to set boundaries. They're starting to express themselves. They're starting to have their own needs, wants, and desires. Now, this is where it can get sticky and tricky. Okay, for many of you, as you went through this stage, you will have not only experienced the pushback and the no, that is sort of typical. That happens, right? Where parents are like, no, you can't do that. No, you can't have that. You can't just eat chocolate for dinner. Like, that's not what you can do. But that's not going to disrupt your sense of self. However, many of you who struggle with self worth, what happened in this formative period of your life where you were generating a sense of self? Am I okay? Is what I need okay? Is what I want? Okay? Is it okay for me to express my needs and my wants? Is it okay for me to say no to the things that I don't want to engage with? Is it safe for me to take certain risks? All of those things will maybe have been met with punishment, with harshness, with violence, criticism, hostility, dominance. And you see this in many of the ways that children are raised, sometimes by certain parents. So you may have grown up in a household where whenever you said what you wanted, dad would come over the top. What's wrong with you? Why would you want that? You know, don't be such a baby. You know, big boys don't cry, that kind of stuff. Or when you started to express what you wanted or needed or what you didn't want and need, mom would start to shame you, and she would guilt you, and she would make you feel bad about what you wanted and needed. And a good indicator of this is if those things happened later on in life. Right. So a lot of guys are like, I don't know what happened at 2 or 3. I don't remember that. Correct. But you can look at how your parents parented you, you know, at 4, at 5, at 6, at 7, at 8, at 9, at 10. Generally, that is the method that they were deploying when you were two or three years old as you started to voice your expression. Now why is this important? It's important because for many of you, you lack a sense of self worth. But you don't know what, why. You can point to some of these actions or behaviors, some of these decisions that you've made over the year and you can say my sense of self worth is eroded because I made those bad decisions. I, you know, I made bad choices and I chose, you know, bad women to date and be in relationship with. I made bad relationship or financial choices or whatever it is. But the truth is that when you really get down to it, you're not really too sure why you made those bad decisions in the first place. Now here's the kicker. When you are two or three, for the most part, people do not have conscious memory of what that experience was like. So imagine a sense of separation is happening from your environment. You are just waking up from not knowing that you are separate from mom, that you're separate from dad. And you start to individuate. You start to oh, I have my own needs, I have my own wants. Let me express those things. I want to eat cereal at night for dinner, right? And maybe mom and dad yells at you, what's wrong with you? Why would you want to do that? Or you say no to something and what you're met with is punishment, extreme discipline, being hit, being criticized, being shamed for saying no or shamed for put down. That is going to damage the individuation process or the individualization process where you start to develop a sense of self. And because children are little bundles of egos, you're going to take this response to your needs, to your wants, to your desires, to your boundaries, to your no. And, and what's going to happen in a very basic way at this age is there must be something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with my needs, with my wants, with my desires. There must be something wrong with my boundaries, with what I'm saying no to. There must be something wrong with me. And it interrupts this developmental stage of you deeply knowing and understanding that your needs, wants, desires, boundaries. Your no is valid. Now these things, your needs, wants, desires, boundaries and no are all core things of what make up your sense of self worth, right? Because your self esteem is how you feel about yourself in mostly any given moment. Whereas your self worth is a deep inherent sense of value. Now what is that value predicated on? It is predicated on knowing that your needs, wants, desires. What you value, what you want, what you desire your boundaries and your sense of no matter to other people that you can express. I have a need, I have a want, I have a desire, I have a boundary, I don't want that. And those things can be respected, they can be validated, they can be accepted, there can be room for them. And for some of you, you will have grown up in a household where as you started to express a need or a want or a desire or a boundary or a no. It was met with hostility, it was met with shame, it was met with hyper criticism or, or ridicule or some type of maladaptive response that taught you there's something wrong with me. My sense of self worth is broken because my needs, wants and desires. And broken's a strong word. It's interrupted.

It'S been stifled. It's not broken, it's just interrupted and stifled. So my sense of self worth has been interrupted and not able to fully come online because my needs, wants, desires, my boundaries, my no are met with such hostility and such aggression or dominance or criticism or shame that I must be wrong for having them. There must be something wrong with me or I'm not worthy, I'm not valuable enough of having these needs and wants, of being allowed to have these needs and wants. So this is the case for many, many people. This is the case for many people that I've worked with. Now obviously some of you are probably thinking, well, what am I supposed to do with that? I don't remember that happening. You know, I don't have a cognitive memory. Correct. Right. This lives in what's called a preverbal state. This lives in a precognition state within you, which means that it lives largely in your unconscious. The, that's really what the unconscious is. It is a non verbal experience. It's something that lives in your body. It's something that feels like a deeper sense of knowing. Right. Again. Remember, self esteem is how you feel about yourself in any given moment. Self worth is a knowing that you have inherent value. It's something that you experience as a knowing, not a question. So what do we do with this? Well, you don't need to go. The good news is you don't need to go and dig up some, you know, magical memories from being 2 years old or 3 years old. You likely have some recollection of how your family, your parents, your mom, your dad, a step parent, your grandparents, whoever were your primary caretakers, how they responded to your needs, your wants, your desires, how they responded to your boundaries, how they responded to when you said no. So just think about that for a moment. Reflect on that. Right? Maybe you were met with hostility or aggression, maybe you were dominated and shut down anytime that you expressed a need or a no. Or a boundary, maybe you were criticized, maybe you were ridiculed and made fun of. Whatever that is, just reflect on that. That is likely in the formative years from 2 to 4 years old, the same experience and response that you got as you were just starting to form this sense of self. I have needs, I have wants, I have desires. So good news is you don't need to go get the memories. The other good news is there is a path that you can start to develop self worth without having to go back and try and remember memories or try and remember experiences from what you went through at 2, 3, 4 years old, right? Yes, you can maybe take a recollection of how your family responded to your needs, wants, desires, boundaries and no when you are a little bit older. But the next step is being able to do a couple things. Okay? You have to be able to do a couple of things. First and foremost, everyone needs to know in order to have a sense of self worth, in order to have a sense of self value, that they can express their needs, wants and desires and have them met. Everyone needs to know that that is a part of secure attachment. Every human being on the planet needs to know I can express what I need, want and desire. And not every single time, but more often than not, my needs, wants and desires are going to be heard, they're going to be understood, they're going to be met. Right? People are going to prioritize what I need, want and desire or at the very least they are going to confirm that those needs, wants and desires matter to them. Okay? Very, very important. The other piece is that as you start to express some boundaries for yourself and towards others and that you start to express a sense of no that is going to start to reinforce I have value, I have worth. People can receive what I'm saying. This is a mirror and a reflection of what it is that you stand for. So being able to express your needs, wants and desires, being able to say no, being able to set boundaries. The next piece is pretty critical and important, okay? And it's what my, what my good friend Dewey Freeman says, being able to go through a hard time in relationship with somebody else and coming out the other side. Okay? So part of the hard time that you might go through is expressing a need in your relationship, right? This is so common for people pleasers and nice guys and usually people pleasers and nice guys. You lack a sense of self worth. Right? You are a people pleaser. You are a nice guy because your sense of worth is predicated on taking care of others so that they will hopefully reciprocate and meet your needs in return. It is a diminishment of prioritizing self and. And a over prioritization of another in the hopes that they'll prioritize you in return. So part of this is that you need to learn. I can go through a hard time with you and come out the other side. Okay. And that is a fundamental qualifier, qualification for secure attachment. So that hard time for you might be being able to say, you know what? I don't want to go to that restaurant that we always go to for dinner on Friday night for our date. I want to take you somewhere different. I'm going to plan it. Are you okay with that? You good with that? Right. Being able to express what you need. That might be a hard time. It might be you saying, you know what? I would really love more physical connection in this relationship. Are you interested in that as well? Right. Being able to communicate what it is that you want and what you desire. That might feel like a hard time. Or it might feel like a hard time for you to say, no, I don't want to do that. I'm not. I don't want to go watch the Bachelorette with you. I'm really not interested in that. It's just not something that I want to do. Like, you can enjoy it. If you want to watch a different show. We can find something. Right? So being able to say no without the fear that love connection, relationship is going to be taken away from you. So these pieces are part of the core of being able to reestablish self worth. Now, the last piece that is pretty imperative that a lot of men struggle with is being able to take risk. Being able to take risk. What happens for many of you that lack self worth is that you either take no risk at all, which is very common, and then you swing the pendulum to, I'm going to take catastrophic risk, really unhelpful risk, potentially dangerous risk. And you see this, I see this happen all the time with men where they don't take the little risks of expressing what they want and what they need because they feel like they don't deserve it. They don't feel like they're worthy of it or valuable of it in a relationship. And then all of a sudden they're out, you know, banging a hooker without A condom and taking this massive, monumental risk. That's super, super dangerous, right? Maybe. That's a terrible example. I'm sure I'll see it in the comments if somebody doesn't like how I just phrased that. But you end up swinging the pendulum and taking what you know are stupid risks. And that's a mirror for I'm not worthy, I'm not valuable enough to take meaningful risks for. So I have to oscillate back and forth. Because all of us know it's a risk to communicate our needs, wants and desires. It is a risk to express a boundary. It's a risk to pursue something that's deeply meaningful to you, to pursue a goal, an ambition, to pursue a certain discipline or practice or level of mastery. It is a risk. There's a risk involved to starting your own business or pursuing an art, whatever that is for you. So pursuit and ambition inherently have risk. If you believe that you are someone that does not have value or worth, you do not believe that you are someone that can risk pursuing your ambition, pursuing your goals. So the last piece of this is being able to start to take action, healthy risks towards your aims, towards your goals. As you do that, you will start to reconcile with this notion that I'm not worthy of pursuing what I want, need and desire. What I would encourage you to do is take a kind of stockpiling, an audit, if you will, of what are all the small risks that you are avoiding in your life right now? Maybe there's a conversation, an email, maybe it's, you know, not asking for the raise. Maybe it's not starting that product that you want to build. Maybe there's a conversation that you know you want to have that's kind of risky in your relationship. And then look at what are all the big risks that you are taking as a result of avoiding all of those small, healthy risks. So take an audit of that. What are the, what are the risks that you are avoiding? And then what are the big risks that are really damaging your life and your sense of self? And the last thing I want to say on this risk front is that for many of you, your, your risk tolerance will be so low because when you lack self worth, you've learned very early on in life that you shouldn't take the risk to ask for what you need or you want. You shouldn't speak up and voice what's true for you, what you desire, what you want to work towards. And again, lots of that, the majority of that will have started very, very early on in Life when you started to voice here's what I want, here's what I need. And you started to take the risk to say, no mom, I don't want to do that or I no dad, I don't want to eat that or you know, I really want to do this, will you come and play with me? And what you were met with was hostility, shutdown, rejection, criticism, et cetera. So you sort of were trained to have low risk tolerance. And that damages anyone's sense of self worth. Okay, it damages people's sense of self worth. We all, in order to have a healthy, strong sense of self and self value and self worth, we all require the knowledge of I can do hard things and come out the other side, okay, I can do hard things with others, but I can also just do hard things for myself and take risks. And that is a signal and a kind of mirror or a so what I'm looking for, it reinforces that our needs, wants and desires matter. Reinforces that we matter, that we are valuable enough to take a risk for. So that's the final piece is beginning to take some solid, healthy risks. And you might get this a little wrong at first. You might have to, you know, really trial and error it. But I like to say I failed my way to success. I did not have good self worth growing up. I was sort of the classic, you know, verbally put down, emotionally put down, physically put down and grew up with a deep, deep disconnection from a sense of self value. So in doing this work you can also, it's kind of a twofold. You are simultaneously sort of fixing your attachment to be more secure and you are also developing self worth. Those two things go together. As you develop a deeper sense of self worth, you are naturally and natively doing the work to be more securely attached. So share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it, man it forward. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And if you are a man that is looking for a community, sign up for the Man Talks Alliance. We have a thousand members from all over the world that are a part of the alliance. I have my courses in there that you have access to as a member. You get pathways where we teach you how to be a self led man, how to have better self leadership skills, relational leadership skills, and you get to do it with a whole bunch of other men. We also have in person meetups and chapters that are popping up. So get in there. If you are doing your own work, it is the number one place for a man to do his personal development and therapeutic work. All right, see you soon. Bye.