Why your SELF-RESPECT and your HEALTH habits are directly related!

As one's self respect and self worth go up, their health habits improve. In fact, often when their health habits improve, their self respect goes up. I really believe it is a perpetual evergreen loop. Someone with greater self respect and self love. Of course, they want to care for their temple because they care for their life. They care for their energetic force. They see themselves as stewards of the temple or stewards of the energy or the spark inside. They care for their energy levels because they care for themselves. My first point today is health is luck and self respect. Whoo. The first time I ever said that was by accident on stage. And I heard myself, ooh, I. And the audience kind of hushed out a little bit, oh, I'm in trouble. But here's what I mean by that. Health. We have to understand there is a evolutionary and a biological reason that you feel the way that you do, right? There is. It's very important to understand in both, I really believe, mental health and physical health. It is that kind of 50, 50 kind of thing. And when we blend it together, by the way. But there's no question that some people biologically feel more fatigued or more depressed or more anxious. We have to understand that you and me are not the same biologically in how our energy might be. And I hope that that always introduces empathy and compassion, that there's a big luck card that we get. I have friends, literally, who are born without limbs. I have friends who are born with conditions in which their brain functions in very unhealthy ways. I have friends who've died so early of cancer. I have friends who have struggled with mental health. I have friends who've committed suicide. I have friends and family who struggle constantly with all sorts of biological health issues that is, quote, unquote, not their fault. And it's important to realize that some of you, you feel terrible biologically, even though you're drinking all your water, you're eating all your greens, you do move and you do exercise. And so I'm here to say there is no preaching. We all have to take the cards we've been dealt and figure out how to care for ourselves, how to optimize the best that we can, how to improve, even if it's little bit incremental by incremental. But it starts with a biological understanding of where we are at. And this is why, again, as a person who's not a medical professional, I'm like, listen, if you don't understand closely how you feel and why you feel the way that you do, please, please, please, if you've never done it. Go get a full workup of every friggin health test you can as an adult, as somebody who's accountable for your health. Go get the blood tests, go see the nutritionists or the dieticians, go work out with the trainer, go literally do all the genetic testing that you can do to understand what's up with you. I always tell the story of I friend of mine who's one of my partners in one of my businesses, one of my best friends in the world who discovered at the age of 40 that you know, every morning he always had the sniffles and his nose was running and he's clearing his throat and everything and found at the age of 40 that he was allergic to eggs. At the age of 40, didn't know, spent 40 years having these reactions that made him fatigued and blowing his nose, everything because he was allergic to eggs. And I think that's a sad thing about our society is that we're not taught or trained or honestly empowered or equipped or served with some simple health support when we're young that says, hey look, seems like you're allergic to this thing, don't eat it. I mean, how is that not part of our educational process, right? Or healthcare system that of course we would all find out very early on and be tested multiple stages of our life, including every new decade. What are we allergic to? What preconditions might we have? What's our genetic makeup leading us towards? So this is where I say health is luck, right? Health might be luck, but it's your job to be aware. Your job, no one else's, no one's going to come and save you here. You've got to do the testing and see the medical professionals and dietitians and people who can help you optimize and care for your body. I believe that has to be something we demand of ourselves. It's not served to us, at least not in the society I live in. So we have to take accountability for that. So health is luck. But here's the thing, it's also self respect and self love. This is a hard thing. I have to deliver to a lot of clients. I've had to deliver it to teams and employees all around the world. It is a very tough thing to say to people and I get why people don't like when I do and when I say it's self respect, what I mean, like this is, I'll give you an example, maybe a metaphor. Would you go to, you know, one of your random neighbor's house Would you go there and you know, pull up in a big, with a big dump truck of garbage and shovels and, and just go start shoveling in and breaking their windows and vandalizing their house? Of course everyone says, well no I wouldn't. Unless you hate your neighbor. But most people, what are you talking about, Brendan? Would I vandalize my neighbor's house and throw garbage in? Of course I wouldn't. And yet we vandalize the very temple that we have been given. We throw garbage in the very temple that we have been given. And what I found through years of studying psychology, but also actually doing the academic research and also doing the field testing with all our millions of high performance clients over the years is as one's self respect and self worth go up, their health habits improve. In fact, often when their health habits improve, their self respect goes up. I really believe it is a perpetual evergreen loop. Someone with greater self respect and self love. Of course they want to care for their temple because they care for their life. They care for their energetic force. They see themselves as stewards of the temple or stewards of the energy or the spark inside. They care for their energy levels because they care for themselves. And I've been there. So if you think I'm preaching here, for those who don't know my story, when I was 19 years old, I had suicidal ideation and planning. I'd had a huge breakup in my life. I did not have the emotional tools needed to deal with that situation in my life. And so I fell into a deep pattern of self hatred and stopped taking care of myself entirely. I mean entirely not eating, not showering, not, you know, doing anything. And so I understand that path. I've been down that path, I've coached through that path. And I have to share with you that we have to be attentive to the deep correlation between how we care about ourselves and think of ourselves and our self worth and our health practices. It's really vital, it's very important. If you're not taking care of yourself, there's an emotional reason and an identity reason. Something about yourself that you are blocked by, upset about, angry about, sometimes disgusted about, or there's that self hatred. And so I'm telling here, I'm here to tell you that is one reason, especially in the world of mental health, I'm always like, see a therapist if your health practices have sucked for two decades, if your health practice has sucked for a decade, don't blame it on your sweet tooth goes, go see a therapist, get some emotional Support to understand what's the underlying thing happening here that I'm not taking care of myself. So I begin our health conversation by recommending therapy. If you have not been practicing health habits, well, especially over a period of time, there's sometimes trauma there, there's sometimes negative self talk there, there's sometimes patterns that are hard to break without a professional assisting you. And so I'm always that person who's like, hey, I'm going to tell you to optimize, I'm going to challenge you. I'm also going to say, if you've really struggled with this for a long time, get some help, babe. Sometimes you need that. And so please hear that respectfully from me because I care about your health. What do I mean by this? Other than that with health is self respect. Well, you know what? Sometimes when we keep ourselves accountable, when we say we're going to do something like work out, when we say we're going to do something like eat better, when we say we're going to do something, take a walk after dinner, when we say we're going to do something, good morning routine. When we say we're going to do something, work out with friends, when we say we're going to do something, sleep at a regular time and we actually follow through on what we said we're going to do. We become healthy mentally and obviously physically because we follow the practices. Self respect is earned by following through on what we say to ourselves in a positive light. If we say, I'm going to practice this positive thing and we do it, even if it's just get up, put the shoes on, go for the walk, you said you're going to do it and you did it. Your brain bing hits with dopamine of self respect that says, good job, I followed through. Follow through is self respect. If we want more health, we need more esteem. Self esteem, the respect of oneself, the belief in oneself. Because we have a track record, we say, I am a person who follows through. Maybe I haven't done it before, but I'm a person from this day forward. There's a demarcation line. There was the old me who made a commitment, who didn't follow through there. There's the new me who's going to get help, support, plans of action, routines in place, recalibration so I can reset and I'm going to go, there's the new me that progresses because I said I was going to do it, I'm going to do it, babe. Self respect. Our health is a reflection of self respect. Respect of the temple, respect of the spark inside. Respect of our values and our dreams. To have a sense of aliveness and energy and mental stamina in our life. I've never met someone who said, I just want to be tired all the time. We know we have the biological impulse to want to feel good and have energy and to live life. It's upon our ourselves to respect that impulse, to show up for that impulse, to work for that impulse. To respect ourselves by following through. I know you already know that, but the day you commit to that understanding of following through on what you said you're going to do, I'm telling you what. As your esteem goes up, of course you'll take care of yourself better.