The Secret to Tackling Negative Thoughts Revealed...

Hey there. This is Meadow Devore, author of the Worthy Project, and I teach tools to help you build self worth. So I want to talk today about worthiness, the word worthy, why I wrote a book called the Worthy Project. And really about my long time struggle with self esteem, with confidence, with just feeling okay in my skin. It's interesting because I was thinking about topics and where I want to take this particular podcast and, and I appreciate you guys for being there. And I know I've been gone for a couple years and I started the well done podcast and that's really about burnout, which is also about worthiness, but mostly about burnout. But I really wanted to come back and specifically talk about worthiness because I have spent a couple decades really studying this. And so on my walk today, I was thinking, okay, well, what if I go back and I just look through all my old journals and what if I go back and look at how I used to coach and maybe give like old examples about this is how I used to teach it, this is how I see it now. Would that be interesting? And I got excited. So I was on my hike, I was coming back up the hill and I went to, to my storage where I have my, the. The way I keep my lessons plans. And my journals were all the same. They're in these moleskine old going back to 2009. So I opened up 2009 and sat and thumbed through it and it was, it was. I don't even know where to start. It's sad because I was a brand new single mom and so much of my work was written in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep and my daughter had cried herself to sleep. I have pages and pages and pages and pages about the loneliness and the fear. It was also 2009 and there was a major financial thing going on. It was also just me trying to be a coach and trying to kind of figure out the formula. Like what is the perfect string of magic words that I can tell myself that will make myself feel better. I was desperate to feel better. And so I looked at that and over and over and I'm thumbing through it and just pages and pages of pages of I feel worthless, I am worthless. And then strings of reasons why. You know, I thought I was too heavy, which is a joke because I actually put my number of weight there. And I was like, oh, well, that would, that's a nice little dream. Geez. But, you know, I was young, I was in my 30s and also very, very under pressure to feel dateable, wantable. And I didn't know where my value was. I didn't feel valuable. Where I thought my value was was in what I looked like. Obviously that seemed pretty obvious by my journal entries, but, but it's cute because I was a young coach and I, I used to write in my journal and write everything bad that was going on or everything I was feeling or every, every fear that I had. And then in a different color, I'd come back as coach and I'd coach myself in this different color. So I was looking at page after. So this, I'm worthless, I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm broke, I'm a failure, I'm a bad mom. All of these types of thoughts over and over and over. And I can see an entire year devoted to me trying to coach that, trying to find whatever will flip the switch to make me feel okay. So I decided at that point, no, I cannot, I can't teach that way because it didn't work. I can talk about why it didn't work, I can share why I desperately wanted it to work. But at that point in time, I really believed that worthiness or self esteem or confidence, whatever you want to call it, self confidence, self worth was thought driven, belief driven. It was something that I, if I could just make myself thought, stop thinking negative about myself, then maybe I'd feel better. And the worthy project, I mean, Fast forward almost 10 years later is where I wrote the worthy project. Which is very, very different than trying to think magical words that make feel good. However, there is something to magical thinking or to the magical words or to the right string of thinking that might be useful. And I could see hints of that in my journal. So in the, in the early days, you know, I feel worthless. You know, I'd write, you are not worthless. Well, I can guarantee that you've probably done this too. And you've tried to talk yourself out of feeling bad about yourself by telling yourself some positive thought. Unfortunately, if it works, it only works temporarily. And what I was doing wasn't quite taking care of the problem. Underneath it was just really like topical triage. Like, here's a band aid, you're bleeding, okay? Even if your arm's broken, we're just gonna put bandaid out on it and hope that it gets better. So. But sometimes if all you got is a band aid, then I'm going to hand you a band aid and we're going to start with that. So if you do want to start looking at your thought patterns, or looking at your thinking patterns, which I suggest is a great place to start. I mean, you're stuck with your head all day long, so you might as well get used to it, get to know it, start watching it. And what I was thinking about the direction of this podcast and you'll have to let me know if, if you like this direction or if, if it's valuable to you. And I will see that it's valuable because I will see numbers of people downloading it. And that is how you tell me, send it to your friends, listen to it. But what I was thinking is I could do short little tips or tools about like, if it's this, do this. If you're having this, do this where you can just get a maybe 15 minute shot in the arm of a really solid tool that will build self worth. So back to the I'm worthless thought. If you have that thought, I am sorry. And I would not wish that pain on anybody because I know that pain very, very deeply. However, when you're trying to work with your thinking, what's really important to understand is your mind will lie to you. And also anxiety lives in that lie. So when you're trying to say, I'm worthless, no, I'm worthy. No, I'm worthless, no, I'm worthy, or I'm a terrible person, no, I'm a great person. So that's kind of anxious flip flopping. And where I want to. Or the tool to use is to take more of what is true. And where does reality actually sit with this idea? I had a client just this week and I have a client almost every single day. And I could see it in my, in my journal as well of I don't want to be a bad mom is what I had written. And I have the I don't want to be a bad mom client almost every, every session I give. So what do you do with that? I don't want to be a bad mom or I'm trying not to be a bad mom. And so this person was trying to flip it to I am a good mom. And what I wrote was like, this isn't what you do with this thought. You don't try to make a case for how great you are because your mind will already resist that because it already can poke holes in that theory. It can say, yeah, but what about yesterday? And yeah, what about last Christmas when you lost your cool after everybody, you know, was rude at the dinner table or whatever? So any kind of I am worthless. I'm not good enough. I'm a failure, I'm a bad mom. All of these type, I'm not good at my job, I'm not smart enough. I mean, I could honestly, I could fill books and books and books. And it looks like I kind of have already of terrible thoughts. But the answer isn't in the opposite. The answer is actually just to neutralize it and to take it to something in the middle where there's no argument. So instead of going to I'm a good mom, you go to I am a mom. I am a mom. I am Isabel's mom. And that was the only thing that I could do to help myself in those early divorce years of feeling like, just. Just gutted by how guilty I felt because I didn't need to talk myself into being good, and I definitely didn't need to keep beating myself up for being bad. What I needed to be is present moment with myself completely in my skin, looking at my life and acting from that place. And how you do that is to bring yourself really, truly into this moment. Agree with reality as much as possible. So reality is, maybe I'm a good mom. I have no idea. Maybe I'm a bad mom. I really can't tell you. There is no proof. I don't have a way of judging that. The reality is maybe I'm a failure. I've failed at a lot of things. The reality is maybe I'm a terrible person. Yeah, some people think so. Okay, so you bring yourself swinging back into this kind of resting place. And in that resting place, your mind isn't arguing with yourself anymore, itself anymore. And you don't have to feel that anxious buzz or that inner restlessness that's trying to get away from yourself. So this little topic is how to. How to use your mind in a way that promotes worthiness or a way that actually builds self worth. And self worth is built in truth. It is built in reality. It is never ever built by building a fantasy or trying to convince yourself that you're something else. It's never done that way. So even if all you're doing is, I am a woman in California. I am in my car. I am driving on Highway 101. Whatever it is, just tell the truth. And all of that starts to fall away. All the crazy stories and that what. What is called confidence, what you might experience is worthiness. What you. What you experience as this true self starts to emerge. And that is where that backbone starts getting stronger. That's where that seat of strength starts getting stronger. That's where this clarity comes from. This is where maybe. Maybe where you get to in a meditation, where you get to at the end of a yoga class. It's this beautiful state of, like, oh, this is me. Oh, this is true. This is the ground. This is where I'm walking. So try that out, let me know what happens.