Katy Perry talks about realizing she was her own biggest bully, holding herself back professionally and personally. Therapy helped her learn to speak up. A Toronto salsa instructor discovered people struggle to name one thing they love about themselves, revealing how hard self-kindness is.
Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is stop bullying yourself. Over to you, Katy Perry.
For a long time, people were talking about bullying and that was a big hot topic, and I think sometimes you can forget that you could be your own own bully in some ways. Like, you are the person that is standing in the way of your success, whether it's professionally or personally. And honestly, that was the case for me. I was having a great professional streak, but personally, I was really immature. And so I had to balance them out. Finally, I had enough and I said, hey, you need to speak up for yourself. If you're not happy with something, you change it. You know, change it. Make yourself better every single day. So I went to a lot of therapy, and I guess I put it in the way of like, you're going to hear me roar. Finally, I'm going to be able to speak up for myself.
I think we're too hard on ourselves, not just entrepreneurs, but people. We're just too hard on ourselves. We are our own worst critic, and we are our biggest roadblock to achieve greatness, to achieve that big goal, to have that big impact. The biggest thing that is holding you back is you and your judgments. Because we want to have the perfect Facebook picture, and you spend 2 hours taking that perfect Instagram picture, and your life doesn't match the facade that you're creating out there, and so you judge yourself, and you're hard on yourself. And you don't start that YouTube channel because you make a video and you hate it, and you judge yourself, and so you take it down. You don't take on that next new project because you're afraid of failing, and how that's going to make you feel. You don't say yes to that project, you don't say yes to that creative thing that you really, really, really want to do that's always been burning inside you, but you don't take action on it because you're afraid. Because far worse than anybody else's opinions and judgments of you is your own judgment and opinion of yourself. You don't want to fail yourself, and so you stay living small. I'm reminded of Lily, who's one of our Toronto Dance Salsa instructors, and one of the things that I love that she does at the end of every class is whoever's in rotation, whoever's partnered up, you know, men and women partnered up together, she'll have them at the end of class share one thing that they really liked about the other person. So yes, we're here to learn dance moves, but it's also much more. It's about being a family, it's about gaining confidence. Nobody comes here to be the best salsa dancer in the world. It's not why people sign up. They want something fun to do, they want to make new friends, they want to gain more confidence. And so at the end of the class, she has the men and the women share one thing that they like about the other person. Maybe they were really funny, or maybe they really laughed, maybe they really liked how they executed one of those moves. Whatever it was, share one genuine thing. For a lot of people, that's the only compliment they've received all day. It's kind of sad. But she did something new this week that I really loved, and she swapped it where at the end of the class she asked them, share one thing with the other person that you love about yourself. And it was surprising how difficult a time people had trying to figure out just one thing that they loved about themselves. Some people struggled with it, some people got emotional about it. We give ourselves way too hard a time, and we need to give ourselves permission to fail, to suck at things, to try things, to explore, to not know the answers sometimes. And it's through that path through that pain, through that discovery, through the falling down, through the failure, through the heartaches, through all those tough times, that that's when you emerge to create something amazing, to create that best version of yourself that you can really own and go out and have a big impact on the world. Because as long as you're living small, as long as you're so afraid to do anything because you're worried about failing and how that might look to yourself, you're so judgmental and critical of the work that you do that you never release anything, then you're never going to have that big impact. So stop bullying yourself and start being your own best cheerleader instead. So the question of the day today is, how are you bullying yourself? Leave it down in the comments below. Hopefully by sharing it, you'll release it and you'll have the support of Believe Nation behind you too. So leave it in the comments below. I'm gonna join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
