180. "I've tried that" | Getting What You Want | Self-Worth and Self-Trust Opened Up

Hey friend, and welcome back to the Momset Podcast. Before we dive in today, I want to share something very clear and exciting with you. I want you to know that if being who you want to be, no matter where you go or who you're with, is feeling seemingly impossible, and you're thinking, Tessa, you don't understand my circumstances, you haven't met my kids, you You should see my husband. They're the reason. Those are the reasons why I'm not being who I want to be no matter where I go or who I'm with. And maybe your past feels like it is overhauling your life and things just come out of your mouth or they react through your hands and you're feeling out of control. I want you to know that I have a proven and solid framework delivered through actual coaching with you to walk you through the mentality and the responsiveness and skillset that it takes to be who you want to be, no matter where you go or who you're with. You are doing an excellent job on your own. And if right now it feels like it's getting harder and it's getting further away from the vision that you want for yourself, take a deep breath and know you've still got this. It's just time to welcome someone into your world that can have a fresh view and teach you fresh and stronger skills. If that sounds like what you need, please email me, coaching in the subject line, to connect, C-O-N-N-E-C-T, @momset.com to explore our coaching options. I know with absolute certainty that you can be who you wanna be no matter where you go or who you're with. If I can do it, you can do it. Now, let's dive into today's episode. We're going to be approaching and going thoroughly into this I've tried mentality and holding it up against I've mastered mentality and self-talk. This is time for us to face what is actually keeping you from what you want most. Before we get started, I want to encourage you to really take the time to decide, is this the best time for me to listen to this episode? This episode's gonna call on accountability and ownership. It could feel really challenging to hear at times, and maybe it would be better to save this episode for a time that your mind feels more steady, you have more energy, more clarity. And I completely respect if that's the place that you're in. This episode will be here waiting for you and ready for you when you feel ready for it. So go walk through some grass, literally do some grounding, drink a glass of water, take those deeper breaths, journal for 5 minutes, and then come back and give this one a listen. I'm asking you to do that on purpose, and I want you to know why. Because I can already see exactly where the bully in your brain— and we've all got one, I've got one too— would take this episode. She'd grab it, twist it, and turn it into fresh ammunition against you. Proof that you're lazy, proof that you're behind, proof that everyone else has figured out something you never will. And that is not what this is. That's the old voice trying to hijack a new road that is being revealed. What this actually is, is a path forward for you. It's a door, a door you can open, a door you can step through. So hear me clearly before we go even one word further. I am here to call you up. If you're feeling this shame, the sense of shame while going through this episode, it's because your mind is used to calling you out. Your mind drags you through the mud. Your mind decides what this I've tried versus I've mastered must mean about you, and it's twisting all of this. So I'm here to call you up and I want you to start being incredible at calling yourself up too. That's where we stay out of shame and we step fully into accountability with grace, love, and excitement. So if you're still with me and you've decided, yes, Tessa, I'm in it, this is the best time for me to do so. Let's dive in. I'm so excited. Here's the one sentence I want to build this entire episode around for us. Write it down if you can. It's not what you've tried. It's what you've done repeatedly, persistently, and consistently. It's not what you've tried. It's what you've done repeatedly, persistently, and consistently. Because that's a phrase most of us live inside without even really realizing. And it sounds so good. It sounds humble. It sounds like effort. And it sounds like we gave it a real shot. I've tried running. I've tried asking for help kindly. I've tried a morning routine. I've tried thinking positive. And every single one of those sentences ends with an invisible period, a silent little clause you can't quite hear, but you can always feel. And it didn't work, so I guess that's just not for me. I want a morning routine. I've tried that. Oh, but it didn't work. It's just not for me. I want to be a trail runner. I want to run trails. I've tried that. I've tried speaking positively. I've tried thinking positively, but it didn't work. It just must not be for me. I've tried asking kindly for help from my spouse, from my kids, but it didn't work, so it's just not for me. The I've tried is a sneaky way that our mind has decided we can't get what we want, and facing that can feel really painful, so we build a whole story around it. So today I want to invite you onto a mission, and I mean mission, not a vibe, not a someday, not a Pinterest board. A mission is something you set yourself on. You commit to it before you know how it ends, how it all works out. You keep marching when the map gets blurry, one foot in front of the other. And the mission is this: to trade the sentence, I've tried that, for two far more powerful sentences: I've mastered that, and I did so good. Now let me ask you the question this whole episode turns on, and I don't want you to rush past it because your instinct is going to be to rush past it, especially if it feels painful. I want you to actually sit with it, feel that discomfort, feel a little bit, a twinge of pain, and sit peacefully in it. Are you ready to face why you stop going after what you want? Why some of these things that you're like, I want that, I should have that. Sometimes why you don't have it yet. Not why she has it. She is in someone else. Not why the timing's been off. Why you don't have it yet. Take a breath because we're going in. Let's be honest together about what I've tried usually means. Not to beat you up, to free you up. You can't change a pattern you refuse to look straight at. You tried thinking positive for about 4 days until a hard morning came and the whole practice evaporated. You tried saying it kindly one single time, maybe 4 consecutive times. It didn't land the way you'd hoped. Someone got a little defensive and you decided, see, that doesn't work for us, and never said it again. You tried a morning routine. Until a kid woke up early or you stayed up late. And by the third missed day, you'd quietly filed it under not this season. I'm not naming these to sting you. I'm naming them because I think you've never actually seen the shape of it before. And the shape is always the same. You wanted the result, but you hadn't yet decided the thing was worth doing when it stopped being easy. That's what trying is. Trying is what we do when we want the outcome but haven't committed to the process past the point of comfort, past the point of what's familiar. And here's the truth living underneath all of it. The things you want most are the exact things you deemed too difficult to persist at. The moment your integrity and your clarity got got stress tested. The things you want most are the exact things you deemed too difficult to persist at the moment your integrity and your clarity got stress tested. The moment it got hard, the moment nobody was cheering, the moment the results didn't come fast, that's the moment you called it tried and set it down. Because here's what is so important for us to recognize. It is not about how you perform when it's easy. It's not about staying committed when everyone agrees with you, the results roll in fast, and nothing costs you anything. Getting what you want means having the clarity to keep pursuing it under stress. For me, the clarity of my values, to hold tight to those values even under stress. The clarity of my mental wellness, the structures in thought that I live by, the beliefs I set my life on, holding true to those even under stress. That is the real dividing line. And I want you to be so clear about where that line actually is, because again, the bully in your brain will lie to you about it. She'll tell you the line is between disciplined women and undisciplined women, women who have it together and women who don't. That is not the line. The line is between I've tried and I persisted. That's it. The persistence is not a personality you were or weren't born with. It's a practice, which means it's available to you. Starting today. So this is what mastered actually sounds like. Let's stay on that word for a second because I think we've made mastery sound like something it's not. When I say I want you moving from I tried to I've mastered, you might picture a finish line, a trophy, a version of who you never— a version of you who never struggles, never skips, never wants to quit. And then you look at your real life, the tired, the messy, the interrupted, and you think, well, that's clearly not for me. But mastery isn't the absence of struggle. Mastery is what's on the other side of persisting through the struggle enough times that the thing becomes yours. The thing doesn't become easy. The thing doesn't become this, this uninterrupted, undisturbed, seamless thing, it becomes yours. You really own it. I've mastered that doesn't mean it was easy. It means I kept showing up when it was hard, and now it belongs to me. I did so good isn't a gold star for a perfect performance. It's what you get to say to yourself and even to others when you did the thing you said you'd do, especially on the day you didn't feel like it. I have a quick story for this. My husband signed me up for the Speed Goat 10K, and I felt so intimidated to be at that start line. They're saying, the people that plan on placing in top 10, you guys line up here. And I'm looking at these elite athletes. I'm hearing their goal times. Some of these people want to get in at 53 minutes. Running this 6-mile mountain trail with 1,600 feet of elevation. I felt intimidated, to say the very least. I started questioning if I belonged there. I started questioning if my training were enough. And wouldn't you know it, the race director asked me to step up into that first group, the people that were striving for top 10. He asked me to step up to this first group because they needed more people up there. And I started to realize maybe there's more than just me feeling intimidated. Maybe there's more than just me starting to second-guess or doubt themselves and compare themselves. And you know what? I can start from here too. I can start from here. I can trust my training and I know I belong. So I started on this race. They said go and we started off and I just focused on one foot in front of the other. I stopped thinking about everybody else's training and everybody else's time and everybody else's appearance and their pace. And I just focused on me, my breathing, my heart rate, my pace. And what I found was about 2 miles into the race, I really elevated that self-talk. I belong here. I trust my training. Tessa, you got this. You want to go a little faster? Go for it. And on those very steep mountain climbs, I just remembered, like, what did my husband tell me about that steep mountain climbing? Oh yeah. Like, here's the power hiking method. I'm going to give that a try. And I stayed in my head and found that there was tremendous safety there. My head was my favorite place to be. And I ended up finishing that 6 miles, my first 10K and anything really signed up for. And I crossed the finish line. I see my boys at the finish line with my husband. I crossed the finish line. And the first thing I said to my husband was, I did so good. Not because I got first place. Ironically, I ended up getting top— I ended up getting 9th. So I did end up getting top 10. And that surprised me more than anyone else. That was not my gold standard for the day. I was not expecting that. I just got in my pace. I trusted myself and I knew I'm worth it. I'm worth putting one foot in front of the other. I'm worth proving to myself and putting my best out on this trail today. And I felt delighted before I knew where I placed. I told my husband I did so good because of where I was at mentally, how I felt physically. The effort I knew I put forward, that I started at a place of feeling intimidated and I ended in a place of feeling completely elated. And that's the whole shift. And I want you to feel how different those two lives are. The "I tried" life is exhausting because you're always starting, starting a routine again, starting the diet again, starting to be kind again. You never get to the part where it gets easier or more clear because you keep quitting right before it would. The I've mastered that life is lighter, not because the work is smaller, but because you've stopped abandoning yourself at the first sign of resistance. When I got a stitch in my side, when my legs were on fire, when my lungs were burning, I stayed with myself in it. I went into the truth. I trust my training. I belong here. I've built proof. And when you go to that I've mastered that life, you've built proof. And proof is what makes the next hard thing possible. So when I ask if you're ready to face why you don't have what you want yet, this is where we go looking. Not at your effort. At the exact moment you keep setting things down, because why you set them down is the real story, and it's usually not the story you've been telling. So let's get into this story on the surface. It's time to get specific, and let's use the example so many of us know in our life, in our very bones. You want to move your body, you want to go for a run. Let's say you want 2 trail runs a week. 90 minutes to yourself out on a trail, sweating, breathing hard, feeling like the whole entire person again. And then you tell yourself a story about why it isn't happening. My kids won't let me work out. My spouse wouldn't really support me being gone for 90 minutes or close to 2 hours. There's no time. There's no help. It's just not the season for me right now. And I want to be so gentle here because those things can feel completely real. The logistics are real. The nap schedule is real. The mental load you carry, the invisible list of, of who needs what and when is real. Your circumstances are real. And I will never stand here and pretend it isn't. Just stay with me because underneath that surface story, my kids won't let me, my husband wouldn't support me, I don't have that kind of help. There are almost always two much quieter things running the whole show, and the second you see them, you will always remember them. That's not me being harsh. That's me handing you the key to that door I mentioned earlier in the episode that you could choose to open up and walk through. So what's actually underneath? We're going to explore two things. Let's start with the first one: a self-worth issue. Underneath "my kids won't let me," there's usually a belief that sounds like this: I'm not worthy of taking that time just for myself. I'm not important enough to have two, two activities on the schedule every week just for me. That would be so selfish of me. Sit with how quietly that one runs. You don't actually feel in your body that you deserve 90 minutes that are just yours for something you're merely interested in, something that serves pretty much only you on the surface, something that produces nothing but your own aliveness. Because somewhere along the way you absorbed the rule that rest has to be earned, time has to be justified, and a run— a run is a luxury, and you haven't done nearly enough to deserve a luxury. Not with the laundry undone, not with everyone else's needs still on the board, not with a grocery run that needs to happen. So watch what happens. You don't even fully ask for the time. You bring it up sideways, or you float it as a someday. You know, someday I'd really like to get into trail running. Or you never mention it at all because some part of you already decided the answer is no. And not because of the kids or your spouse or your circumstances, because of what you believe about your own worth. Are you worth it? The kids just became a convenient place to hang a no you'd already written. The second way that comes up for us, that's deeper than that surface story of my kids won't let me work out, my husband wouldn't watch the kids for those 2 hours, or I don't have support, I don't have community, I don't have a village, I don't have the time. There is a second one, and this is the tender one. So go easy with yourself here. Remember, I'm here to call you up. I'm here to pass you a key to a door you could choose to open. You say you would love the time to go run, and at that very same moment, a quiet voice underneath it whispers, "If I actually had all the time and all the support in the world, would I even use it the way I say I would?" Because part of you suspects that if someone handed you those 90 free minutes, you might spend them lying down scrolling your phone instead of out on that trail, sweating, out of breath, facing your own thoughts with no distraction, confronting your current level of fitness honestly, trying to hold on to the vision you have of the woman you're becoming while your body protests sometimes every step. So you don't trust yourself. To spend it well. And here's the painful, sneaky part. Rather than risk finding out, some part of you would almost rather not get the time at all. Because if the time never comes, you never have to watch yourself squander it. You get to keep believing you would have if only they'd let you. I would have been the trail runner if only my kids would have let me. If only my husband would have supported me. Do you see it? The lack of time protects you from a truth you're scared of. That's not weakness. That's a very human way of avoiding pain. But it's costing you your run. And your run was never really about the run. When we allow our mind to keep us from these occasionally painful truths, we fail to see just how much it costs us to sacrifice the run to believe that we're not worth it, to doubt if we can even trust ourselves. This is so much bigger than a run. You may have zero interest in running. I just use it as an example because I absolutely love it. And it is to me a rather large time commitment every single week, a financial investment, absolutely, into the gear that it, that it takes. So it's an enormous energy investment. Like, I know that about running, and it— if I didn't have the belief that I'm worth it and I trust myself to really follow through, I wouldn't do it. And this is where blame comes in. Here's the mechanism. This is the hinge the entire episode swings on, so I want you to really catch it. If you don't believe you're worth it and you don't trust yourself to go after it— and we're talking it as in what you want your mind will go find someone or something else to blame every single time just to try and protect you. Your mind doesn't realize the long-term consequence of blaming other people and blaming other things to try and protect you. It doesn't realize that. It just wants to get you out of that feeling as quickly as possible. So your kids, your spouse, the season of life, the weather, the budget, the schedule that just never seems to open up. And not because those people are actually the problem or wouldn't support you or wouldn't be happy to hear and play a part in what you really want, but because blaming them spares you the discomfort of facing the deeper truth about how you see yourself. And I just want to add in here one more time, if this is landing deep for you and you're like, oh my goodness, the way I see myself is an enormous obstacle in my life. I want to improve my self-worth. I want to improve my self-trust. Remember to email me in the subject line coaching to connect@momsset.com. I would absolutely love to help you through our proven frameworks, to develop these skills and clean up all these lies that you've been living in. Blame is comfortable. Blame keeps your self-image perfectly intact. Blame lets you stay the good woman who would, if only they would let her. She's a martyr, not a quitter. She's noble. She's stuck. But She's innocent. And I've told you guys in so many episodes that the victim mentality is so frequently driven by the idea of innocence. You just want to be innocent for once. You don't want it to be your fault for once. You want it to be someone else to blame, something else at the helm. I completely understand, and I lived there for so long, so I can only tell you this with complete confidence that it's better on the other side. Because I know what it's like to be on the prior end of it. I wanted it to be someone else's fault. I wanted for once someone else to take the blame. I get it. I grew up that way. I lived there. And now that I'm on the other side, I can just see the full picture more clearly. I love you far too much to let you keep buying that comfort with the currency of your own life. Your self-worth, your self-trust, your joy, your peace. That trade is too expensive. You are paying for a clean conscience with your actual dreams. And I'm not going to sit here and let you pretend that the exchange rate is fair. It's not. So let's just imagine for a moment that some of this is landing, that it resonates in a place you can't quite argue with. You're starting to think, maybe I do lack a little trust in myself. Maybe I don't fully believe I'm worth it. Maybe I've been blaming the people I love most. Maybe I've quietly built obstacles in my own path just so I'd never have to see the places where I haven't yet built the discipline or the perseverance or developed the vulnerability and the courage to get what I say I want so badly. Friend, if you are right there right now, I want you to hear me because this is the most important thing I'll say in the whole episode. That is a doorway. When you notice that you've put this obstacle here, it's an opportunity. When you are able to really see that, wow, I want more perseverance. I want to live vulnerably. Vulnerably. I want to have courage. It is a doorway. The bully in your brain is going to try to take this realization and beat you black and blue with it. She'll say, see, I knew it. It really was you the whole time. You've been fooling everyone. Please, please, please understand, we all have a bully at our table, and you never have to hand her the mic. Keep your best friend at the mic. Keep the authority over yourself at the microphone. And sometimes you're going to have a bully shouting in the audience, accept that she's there. Just be really intentional with who gets the microphone, who's writing the script, who runs the program, because here's the truth that, that she doesn't want you to have. The woman who can see this clearly is the only woman on earth who can change it. You cannot heal what you refuse to face. You cannot rebuild on a foundation you won't look at. And you just looked in this episode. You stared straight at the thing most people spend their entire lives dodging. That's not your weakness exposed. That's the bravest, strongest thing you'll do all week. Facing it is the strong-minded move. Everything from here is just building. So let's get into our building steps. I have two practical, doable ways for you to start rebuilding your self-worth and your self-trust. Not someday when the season is calmer. Today, this afternoon, right as you're listening to this episode, you can absolutely do these two things. Both of these are available to you before the sun goes down today. Action step number 1: Say what you want out loud to another person. Not in your head, not buried in your journal where it's safe and no one can respond. I want you saying what you want out loud to a real human. It can be your kids, it can be your spouse, it can be a friend. Just say it out loud. Here's exactly what that can sound like. I want to go on 2 trail runs a week. It'll take me about 90 minutes each time, and it aligns with how I want to feel about myself and my role in our home. Would you be willing to support this by watching the kids or by agreeing to a form of childcare to help make it happen? Now look at everything that just happened inside those few sentences. This is the whole framework and it spells one word on purpose. When we ask for what we want like this, we are being safe. S in SAFE is for specific. We said exactly what we want: 2 runs, 90 minutes each. Not a vague apologetic, "I think maybe I need a little more me time at some point," or, "Oh wow, did you see that Kristen went for a run this week? She looks great. I bet she feels so happy." We need to be specific to feel safe. The A in our framework for SAFE is aware. We named the potential obstacle out loud instead of pretending it away or pretending that it's bigger than what we want. The kids need care. Yes. So we put it right on the table as something to solve, not something to be defeated by. The F in SAFE is for fiercely aligned. We tied the ask straight to the vision. This isn't a random want. It's connected to who we're becoming and how we want to show up in our home. We asked from conviction, not from guilt. The E is effective communicators and problem solvers. We didn't demand. We didn't grovel or over-apologize. We invited a real partner into a real solution. So follow the SAFE framework for this communication: Specific, Aware, Fiercely Aligned, Effective Communicators, and Problem Solvers. That's SAFE, and that means you are safe. Here's why this simple act rebuilds worth and trust at the very same time. When you say what you want out loud to another person, you are declaring to them and to your own nervous system, this matters. And therefore I matter. What I want matters. I'm worth it. You stop hiding the want. You stop pre-answering it with no before anyone else is even given a vote, let alone an opportunity to support you. You want it real enough and solid enough and that it can actually be supported. And I need you to release the fear underneath this because I know it's there. Saying what you want does not make you selfish. It does not make you too much. It does not make you a burden to people who love you. It makes you honest. It makes you an incredible leader, a wonderful example, someone that's vulnerable enough to let other people Watch her, learn from her, support her, play a part in the vision too. It is the exact soil that self-trust grows in. You cannot trust a woman who won't tell you what she wants. And that includes when the woman is you. So it's safe to want things out loud. You are safe. Say the thing. Action step number 2, follow through on the smallest things you want. This is the one that quietly changes your entire life, and it costs you nothing but your attention and a little action. From this moment forward, you are holding yourself responsible to follow through on every little thing you want, from who you want to be to how you want to feel to the tiniest thing you want to do. If you want it, you now go after it immediately, especially especially in the small, unglamorous moments when absolutely no one is watching. Let me make this painfully concrete because the smallest is the whole point. You notice a sock on the floor and you want it in the dirty laundry. Not when I do the big clean. Now. You saw something you want. Get it. You think, I should add vanilla to the grocery list. You write it down the second the thought arrives, not after it's already floated away and then beat yourself up later when you forgot it at the grocery store. You feel tired and think, I'm going to go to bed early tonight. You actually go to bed early. You keep the appointment you made with yourself. You decide your hair needs washing. You wash it that day or night with intention because you said you would. You said you wanted it, and you are now a woman that does what she said and gets what she wants. There's a hobby you've been aching to start. You set aside a specific time, a real time on a real day, not eventually, to learn about it or to actually begin it. You buy the little paint-by-numbers kit. You set 20 minutes to work on it. You watch a little YouTube video to learn about it, or a podcast episode to hear how other people are fitting in their day. You take action towards what you want immediately. I know these look almost laughably small, and they are enormous. They're everything. The mechanism that I want you to notice is the exact mirror image of the blame mechanism from earlier. Every single time you pass by and betray even a little thing you want, you are teaching your mind and your body that you don't matter. Doesn't it make sense why you'd stop trusting yourself? Doesn't it make sense why you'd question if you're worth it? You are training yourself rep by rep to treat your own desires as optional, as the cherry on top, something nice you'll get if there's room, if everyone else is handled first, if there's a scrap of time left over in the day, which of course there rarely is. When the truth, the truth you have to take back is that your wants were never meant to be the cherry. They're the whole dang sundae. Living as if your own desires are the garnish on everyone else's day is completely backwards. And you don't fix it with one heroic gesture and to flip your whole life upside down. You rebuild self-trust the exact same way you lost it. One small kept promise at a time, in the opposite direction. Where you were breaking those small observations and small commitments, you now keep them. Follow through on the sock, and you become, in that tiny instant, a woman who follows through. Do it again with the grocery list, again with the early bedtime, again and again in 100 moments no one will ever clap for, And here's the payoff. The day you finally stand at the trailhead, laces tied, 90 minutes of support arranged, your own body already knows the truth about you. When she says she'll do a thing, she does it. You'll have the proof on file. You'll trust the woman lacing up because she's been keeping her word to you all week, all month, all year, and eventually for a decade and more. That's how the 90-minute run stops being a fantasy you resent and becomes a Tuesday morning. So let me bring us all the way back around. It was never really about the run. The run is just the place it shows up for you. It might be the run. It might be the business, the boundary, the book, the quiet morning, the hard conversation you keep almost having. The shape changes. The mechanism doesn't. This was always about the woman who's been telling herself, I tried, so she'd never have to find out what happens when she persists. It's learning. It's about learning in your body and not just your head to see yourself as worthy of the time and trustworthy with the time once you have it. And you do not build that in one grand cinematic gesture. You build it in two ways. You say what you want out loud and you make it SAFE. Remember our acronym? And you keep the smallest promises to yourself one after another until keeping promises to you is simply who you are. At the very top of this episode, I asked you whether you were ready to face why you don't have what you want yet. And here's the thing, you already answered. You didn't turn it off. You didn't let the bully talk you out of it. You stayed for the whole hard, tender thing. That is the answer. That's a woman on a mission. I trust you with this. I have trusted you the entire time. Now I need you to start trusting yourself too. And the beautiful part is you get to start earning that trust back in about 90 seconds. So go pick up the sock. It's right there on the floor. I'm sure of it. Pop the dish in the dishwasher, put on the mascara, wash your hair, keep the little commitments to yourself. And remember, when you're interested in receiving more deeper and personalized coaching for you, to experience the entire framework, I want you to email me coaching in the subject line and send it to connect@momsset.com, and I will personally be reaching out to you and connect from there. I'll see you later.