In this solo podcast episode, Travia Steward addresses a client’s question about how to stop letting other people’s words and actions crush one’s confidence. She first enumerates common ways people make us feel bad—judgment, criticism, mocking, unsolicited advice, guilt‑tripping, and peer pressure—explaining how each can be a form of emotional manipulation. Travia then introduces a central metaphor: each of us has an internal “thermostat” that regulates our emotional temperature. When we give permission to others, they can turn the thermostat up, making us feel hot, cold, or icy. She breaks down the mental process into three steps: (1) what we focus on, (2) the meaning we assign, and (3) the action we take. By attaching negative meanings to others’ words, we hand over power over our emotional state. To reclaim that power, Travia offers practical steps: pause before reacting, decide how the best version of yourself wants to respond, consciously filter out poisonous language, avoid ingesting negative statements into the subconscious, and trust your own judgment. She emphasizes that no one can affect you without your permission and encourages listeners to identify who they are giving power to, to stop letting those voices live “rent‑free” in their heads, and to actively choose empowering responses. The episode ends with a call to share the podcast and a motivational sign‑off encouraging listeners to rock their confidence.
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Have you ever felt like someone's words or actions crushed your spirit? Today we're uncovering the various ways people use language and words to make us feel bad. And sometimes that's intentional. So what I wanna talk about is how do we stop allowing those things to happen? This is Lead with Confidence Now, the podcast dedicated to helping you grow your confidence and live your best life. I'm Travia Steward. And for the past 27 years, I've been on a mission to help you reinvent your relationships and career. And my goal with this podcast is to show up so that you will, you will be able to rock your world with all the confidence to make the decisions in your life and the big changes that you really want to make. All right, my peeps, let's get into it. What's up, my peeps? Happy Podcast Thursday. This is what we're talking about today. How to not allow others to make us feel bad. Because truth be told, no one can make us feel any kind of way without our permission. We give people permission to mess with our thermostat. So in answering this question this week, how do we stop allowing others to make us feel bad? Let's get into ways in which that happens to begin with, right? So you're in conversation with someone and it may be, you know, they're saying something that, you know, that it's, you feel judged, you feel criticized, like they are expressing some level of disapproval of maybe your actions, maybe, you know, something that you did, maybe a belief that you don't align with them on. You know, it may come across as they may be mocking or belittling you for having a different opinion. You know, it also shows up when people give unsolicited advice, right? Because we know these people in life who are always giving advice to others without even being asked. A lot of people give advice that is based on their own beliefs and values, and then they expect others to just fall in line with their beliefs and values because that's their beliefs and values, and everybody's different. And so when people suggest or insist that others follow certain rules or guidelines, that's another place of allowing other people to make us feel a certain kind of way, especially if you fall in line with that. Another way is guilt-tripping. So that can look like some emotional manipulation where we, you know, use guilt to make someone feel bad for not doing something, make someone feel bad for not saying something or taking the action that, you know, we thought they should take in this situation. Because again, imposing our moral judgments and beliefs onto other people. So guilt tripping could also be something that comes across in language and makes us feel a certain kind of way because we've given permission for other people to have that power over us. And so the other thing that, and I know I've been guilty of this myself, is peer pressure. And so whenever someone is like coercing you or, you know, just, oh, come on, man, let's do it. Oh, come on, girl. You know, let's really, really do it. And then we attach meanings to that because we don't want to, quote, let other people down. So just by peer pressure, we can allow other people to manipulate how we feel, and we can allow other people to make us feel bad because now we're feeling guilt. Now we're feeling like we're letting other people down. We don't want to give other people this power over us. We want to begin to look at it like, what is happening when these things happen? So you hear me talk about on this podcast about your check engine light. I believe we all have a metaphorical thermostat that is set at a certain level, you know, just like your air conditioning is set at, you know, like right now I'm in Arizona and today I think it's like, it's cloudy outside. And so it was, it was only like 112. We have an air conditioner in the house. And so if the, if the thermostat is set on 75 degrees, then no matter how hot it is, and it basically, when it gets hotter outside, it gets hotter in the house. So the air conditioner is going to kick on to keep us at that 75 degrees. And so you have a thermostat that basically is calibrated based on how you've reacted to things pretty much in your whole life. What kind of patterns, what things trigger you, what things you allow to change the way you think about yourself. Because in all things that we do, we're always deciding on what to focus on. Sometimes that is in, like, if somebody's saying, you know, you know, these certain words to us, you're focusing on whatever they said and how they said it. Maybe it's one word, but we're always deciding what to focus on. And the second thing we're doing is we're concluding what it means. And so we give our power away when we conclude what someone else said means a certain thing that makes us feel bad about ourselves. Once we attach a meaning to it, we conclude that because that person said this thing, it means this. Now the action that we take is based on how we feel. So we're always deciding what to focus on. We're always deciding and concluding what it means. And then we take action based on that. And so what happens is we allow, again, people to mess with our thermostat. That is metaphorically, your thermostat, taking away your power. It's like you're giving other people permission to turn the heat back on, to make it cold, make it icy in the house, the house being in your brain. So I want you to think about How can we take this power back? How can we begin to control how we take in information so that we don't allow others to make us feel bad? Because again, we don't want to give permission and give other people that kind of power over us. So the thing about it is when you think about someone else's words, when someone's saying things to you, Have a moment where you pause and think about how is it that I want to respond to this? How do I want to respond in this moment? And can I respond from the best possible version of me? And then I also want you to think about what are the words that you are allowing in your brain? So if you are receiving ugly, nasty, critical words from someone else? Are you letting those things in? Are you ingesting it into your subconscious? That is allowing things to be programmed. And we know what happens when we start believing other things people say. And for whatever reason they say it, sometimes we tend to believe it. So if somebody says something negative about it, or you look fat in the outfit, We tend to believe it, right? So that messes with our self-esteem. It messes with our self-concept, our self, our self-worth. It lowers our confidence. So we've allowed someone else outside of ourselves to have the power over us. And so when it comes down to knowing your worth, having confidence and stepping boldly and proudly in declaring who you are and not allowing other people's negative, divisive words and language to penetrate into your brain, into your mind, into you, that, you know, you don't take the action based on what other people have said to you. And so think about it as, you know, programming and not tolerate this. The stuff, you know, we want to avoid giving our power away. And so when you stay in power and full belief in who you are, we don't allow these poisonous words into our subconscious and we don't believe what other people say. So what I want you to do in these situations is when you find yourself in a place where, you know, other people are, you know, saying these things to you. Pause for a moment and decide from the best possible version of myself, how do I want to respond to this? Do I want to just walk away? Do I want to stop them in, you know, mid-sentence? Decide in that moment what it is you want to do. Because when we allow others to control us with their words, the impact is profound in the effect that, that control has on your whole life. So I want to leave you with this. Who are you giving your power away to? Who are you allowing in your brain? To keep you up at night? Who are you allowing to live rent-free in your head because they're saying these things to you that make you feel bad? And then you ruminate on it all night. You think about it, you know, first thing in the morning when you get up. And so I want you to always trust your own judgment because we individually, you individually, you know better than than anybody else what's best for you. We don't want to continue to live from when someone else tells us something, we believe them. We wanna question everything, but we wanna come from a strong version of who you are and how you wanna show up. Don't allow other people who are trying to harm you with their words to penetrate and affect who you are and how you see yourself and how you show up. That's what I have for you, my peeps. That was a question that one of my clients asked, how do I stop letting others make me feel bad? And so we, I creepster on that and we talked about taking back your power and not allowing and not giving permission to do this to begin with. If you're finding value from this podcast, I really would love if you would share it with someone. Leave a review on Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you are listening consistently, because it helps other people find the podcast. Thank you so much for being a listener of this podcast, and you are why I do it.. And I really, really want and hope that you're getting value from this podcast because I believe it's my mission and this is what I was created to do. All right, my peeps, it's not about me. It's about you. Go out there and rock it. All right. We'll talk next week.
