The Power Of Self Recognition And How To Develop It

This show, in case you are new, in case you're new to the channel, whether you're watching on YouTube or downloaded the podcast, the Mantalk show is all about bettering yourself as a man. Whether you are trying to be a better husband, father, leader, or you're just trying to develop a deeper sense of self respect. Now, on that note, what we are going to talk about today, which you could probably tell by the title, is the importance of self recognition and how you actually go about doing this. So one of the things that I've been talking quite a bit about lately is this. You know, you probably have heard a lot about nice guy syndrome, right? And nice guys are needy and nice guys, you know, seek validation from women and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One of the things that's not necessarily talked about is that that neediness, that seeking of validation from women is happening because that's a trait or a skill that that man is lacking within himself. Or at the very least, it's a skill and a trait that is woefully underdeveloped. And so there's a tremendous amount of value in you as a man developing a sense of self recognition. And this can be really hard. You know, for a lot of years I was incredibly, incredibly harsh with myself. And I wouldn't give myself any credit. No matter what I accomplished, no matter what I achieved, no matter how good something was, I just would not give myself recognition. And this was incredibly damaging and detrimental to my sense of confidence, my capacity of knowing, the impact that I had on other people, my ability to see where I was influential, where I had strengths, where I was contributing to others. And what it led to in general was me doing the nice guy thing, which was seeking out validation and attention from women. Why does this happen? Why do we as men operate in a way where we lack a sense of self recognition? Well, we could probably go down a number of different rabbit holes, right? Like maybe you're a man who grew up with a really abusive parent or a really critical parent who is constantly criticizing you and telling you nothing was ever good enough and you know, et cetera, et cetera. Or maybe you're a man who just has incredibly high standards of himself, which, you know, is not necessarily a problem in and of itself unless it's coupled with. Unless it's coupled with this unrelenting self criticism, right? So the notion of I have very high expectations of myself coupled with I won't allow myself to recognize or validate my efforts, my endeavors, my attempts, my successes, my Achievements, my accomplishments is going to create a really internal challenge. Some people might call it a toxic environment, an abusive internal environment, but essentially what it's going to do is one, it's just going to make you feel like crap internally, and two, it's actually going to hinder your ability to produce the results that you want in your life. Whether those results are a stronger bank account, right. Having more savings, being able to earn more, being able to have a really connected sexual intimacy with your wife or girlfriend or partner. It's going to get in the way of you being able to recognize not only your skills and your strengths, but the outcomes that you are actually producing in your life. So this is how important it is. And if we don't develop this skill, then what we do is we need that vacuum that we feel internally of not being able to recognize ourselves for our accomplishments and our achievements and who we actually are. But it creates an internal chaos of, I don't really know fully who I am as a man. So it actually hinders our capacity to see who we are. And then we actually need other people to fill in that void that we feel internally. So this is where we will, you know, ask and kind of become needy with the women in our lives, or we'll constantly be inadvertently seeking attention from other men, trying to get them to verify that we are a good man, that we have good strengths, that we bring something to the relationship or friendship. And this behavior will permeate into all aspects of our lives. I've even worked with some men where it's permeated into their parenting, where they're needing their children to reinforce that they're a good dad. So this is something that is so impactful that if we spend some time on it, it can radically change many different avenues of our lives. And for me, it radically changed pretty much every avenue of my life. So how do we actually go about developing the skill of self recognition and self validation? Well, the first thing that we have to do is look at our expectations. So we have to look at, do we have realistic expectations? Right. Are we using things like smart goals, which can be very helpful and really set a tone for do I have realistic expectations of myself and what I want to achieve? Or. Or am I setting the bar so astronomically high that I know I'm not going to hit it? You know, do I expect myself to do more than any other person? And that's why I continue to fail? And so we can't recognize ourselves for what we know we can't accomplish. Right. So that's step number one is begin to look at the expectations that you have of yourself in a really kind of clear, transparent way. And if you're not really too sure about some of your expectations, and ask some of the men around you, you know, say, do you think that I have unrealistic expectations of myself? And they're going to be honest with you, you know, they're going to tell you, yeah, you know what? Sometimes you're just really fricking hard on yourself. You expect so much of yourself that it seems debilitating. So ask the people around you. So that's step number one. Step number two is create some kind of practice every single day. And I had to do this for. You're probably not going to like this, but I had to do this for like six to eight months where religiously, every single day I would wake up and I would do a series of gratitude journaling where I would ask the question, the thing I'm grateful for right now is, and why this matters to me is, and this makes me feel. And then I would go to. I'm most proud of, and then I would go to the thing that I did that I want to recognize myself for. And I would ask myself these three simple questions and. And after each one of them, I would use the prompt, this matters because. And it makes me feel. Now the. The reason why I did this is because in many ways, where people fail with self recognition, where people fail with a gratitude practice is that they don't actually register it on a rational and emotional level. And so for things to actually sink in to our body, to our psyche, to. To our emotional body, we have to send the message, this is why this matters in a very logical way. And then we have to send the message, this is how it feels. So that we anchor that experience into our logical processing, but then we also anchor it into our body and into our felt experience so that we can begin to embody that self recognition, self recognition and self validation. Because just saying, oh yeah, I'm really proud of myself. Oh yeah, I did a good thing. Oh, you know, I went and worked out and that's great. You can say those things and feel a disconnection, you know, you can say those things and feel the undercurrent of. But it doesn't matter, you know, but I could have done better, but I should have done something different, you know, so we have to send the signal and practice rewiring the patterns that are built into us. So start this practice today and maybe you use voice memos Maybe you use a journaling app, maybe you use a journal, find something that works for you. For me, it was just pen and paper, man. It was just like sitting down, you know, every single morning or every single night. At the end of the day, I gotta let myself have some flexibility with when I did it. But I realized that not doing this was one of the most detrimental things that was holding me back in my life. That it if I wasn't willing to give myself and to develop some form of self recognition and self validation, that it was going to continue to really incapacitate my ability to go out and produce results that I gave a shit about. And it was really going to hinder my ability to see the value that I was bringing to a relationship, to a business, to a work environment, to a friendship, to my family. Try this every day, you know, and maybe you'll miss a day here and there and that will happen, but try and build a very specific time during the day where you're going to sit down and you're going to practice the art of self recognition. You're going to force yourself to do it. And it might feel awkward at first and you might not want to do it, but if you are wanting to build more confidence, if you are wanting to stop outsourcing your own sense of value and self worth, and this is where a lot of men that I've worked with struggle, is that they feel like they don't know what their value is. They feel like they don't know what their worth is. And they don't know those things because they aren't recognizing themselves for their worth and their value. They're not recognizing their behaviors and actions and decisions and choices that are all producing the outcomes and results that they're ultimately wanting in their life. And they're not tethering it to an emotional underpinning. That feels good, you know, because when I recognize myself now, when I achieve something, you know, good, like when I finished writing my book, I finished writing my book last year and it's, you know, it's come out January 31st. After I was finished writing that book, I sat down and really thought to myself, like, what have I accomplished? And I remember I was in my office in our old house and I grabbed my pen and paper and I walked outside. I put my shoes on, my jacket on, and I walked outside and I walked down to the lake and there's a little dock there and I'm sitting down by the lake. We were living at the time right by a lake. And I just started writing about the accomplishment that I had just achieved and just wrote, not in a egotistical way, but I wrote the reality of the weight of what I had just accomplished. Because the truth was, is that I failed grade 12 English. And so for me to write a book was a huge undertaking. It was massive. Now I could have sat there and said, oh, you know, no one's going to like it and the, you know, the book's going to get torn apart and what if people don't like this chapter or that one? Or I could have done better or I could have edited it for longer. You know, if I had sat there for that time, then I would actually be robbing myself of the joy of recognizing something so meaningful and substantial in my life. And so I sat there and wrote out like, you know, I worked hard every single day to write this book. I got other people's opinions. I opened myself to really direct and harsh feedback from friends and people that I respect in the industry, people that are phenomenal authors. And I just made a list of all the things that I was proud of, all the things that I wanted to recognize myself for within that process. And it really allowed me to kind of soak in a little bit the meaningfulness of the accomplishment that I had just achieved. Honestly had eluded me for a little while after finished writing my book because it was such a big accomplishment that I was like, I don't actually know how to celebrate this and I don't actually know how to recognize myself for this. So start this practice today and, and what you'll find is that eventually this process will become second nature. Like this morning I went and worked out. Didn't really want to. I went and did legs, I went and did squats. You know, I went and did goblet squats and you know, I did a whole bunch of leg workouts. And at the end of it I was like, yeah, that felt great. I'm glad that I went and did that. You know, I appreciate that I take the time to work out and hone my body and keep my body in really good shape. And it's so. It's become this second nature process. Whereas before the. The second nature process was self deprecation, tearing myself down and really annihilating myself, which was hindering my ability to contribute to the world in the way that I ultimately wanted. So. Comment below if you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel. Hit the bell notification so that you get notified of future videos when I drop them. If you're on the podcast or wherever you are, man, it flies forward. Man it forward. Share this video Share this content Share this conversation with somebody that you know could benefit from it. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. Be well.