Episode 49 don't weaponize the self-improvement. Welcome to the first year married podcast where we get real about building the marriage of your dream. I'm marriage Coach K 11, and I take newly married and engaged women from anxious insecure too confident and connected through practical tips real-life inspiration and more than a little self-awareness along the way. Hi ladies, I am very excited and enthusiastic about sharing this podcast with you this week. This is one of those topics that I think we need to hear over and over it a little bit breaks my heart when I hear how many of you are using the material of self-improvement to come down on yourselves and to be so hard on yourselves. Not just for the fact that it's painful and it's sad and it makes you sad but also because it doesn't even work. Right like this huge waste of energy. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. But first I have to tell you the most unbelievable and exciting news and I've been holding out on you because I wanted to make sure it was really happening and it really happened and we really got the recording and I want you to know that those of you who have been listening and reaching out and cheering me on from the beginning. I so consider you a part of this like celebration that I'm having right now, which is okay. I have to tell it as a story so basically My husband and I were sitting around at one point and talking about the podcast and how the enthusiasm around the podcast was so much more than we had expected and we realized that what we had planned for this podcast was a lot smaller than it needed to be that we could maybe dream a little bit bigger. And so we kind of were just like playing with this idea and my husband said well if you could get anybody anybody on the podcast who would it be We made this, you know, like list of like dream podcast interview. He's yeah. Number one on that list was the amazing Allison Armstrong who if you've been listening for a little while you've heard me refer to her work is in my mind totally Exquisite. She breaks down the differences between men and women in our motivations and how we function and how we think differently and how we respond differently in a way that is so full of love and compassion and respect. T' and appreciation for both genders that I don't think any I've never seen it anywhere else on this level of her work was beyond life-changing for me and has been trickle-down effect. Very very life-changing for many of my clients. So she was like very top of the list. And for our 50th episode next week, you will be hearing my interview with the one and only Alison Armstrong. So I am so excited if you're not subscribe to the podcast yet. Absolutely. Make sure you are subscribed is also not going to be released just in one it's going to be released over two episodes. So it's really important you're subscribe so you can get both of them because I know some of you when you get into these longer episodes you start like beating yourself up that you're behind and I'm not okay with that. So I'm not releasing a full hour long episode. You guys so again, make sure you're subscribed. I am just so beyond thrilled to be sharing this episode with you guys and all of her wisdom and her sweetness and her compassion and her respect and she's just amazing amazing. So it's not fangirling now and you'll hear it next week. Okay, so let's get back into this episode. So as I said, I recorded an episode a while back. I was actually episode 8 called Shame won't make you a better wife and in that episode. I was trying to prove to you. I think I did a pretty good job, by the way. So that the emotion of Shame is not what compels us into becoming better versions of ourselves, but we seem to think that it does we all fall into this trap right where we think that if we just a really good wife would really beat herself up over it when really feel bad for all that bad behavior. I've done that episode came out a while ago and it's very clear to me. Y'all need to hear it again. So that's what we're going to be doing today. So the way I want to look at it this week because I do want to make it a little bit different. Is the way I titled this episode which is don't weaponize self-improvement on explain what I mean by that weaponizing self-improvement is that I'm taking the concept and the objective of self-improvement and I'm turning it into something that dictates my worth that dictates my ability to love myself or to respect myself. I'm using self improvement as a barometer for my own worth. I am weaponizing it against myself. I don't think this is what self-improvement Is for I don't think this does anyone any favors. So first I want to talk to you about how you know that you're doing it and then we're going to talk about what to do about it. Okay. So how you know, you're doing it number one. If you are more conscious of what you're doing wrong, then what you're doing, right? Then you are weaponizing self-improvement got it. So you've got an idea of what you're doing wrong. We all have an idea of what we're doing wrong. But are you paying as much attention to what you're getting right? Are you giving yourself any credit for what you're doing right at? All, right. You got to have some balance here. The problem with weaponizing self-improvement is you're not going to get anywhere cannot improve something that is being blown up right in front of you. Okay, number two, you know that you are weaponizing self-improvement when the perfect wife has shown up when you are no longer comparing yourself against a normal human being who has normal strengths and weaknesses who sometimes make mistakes and you were only ever comparing yourself to the perfect woman who doesn't exist. Who was basically a character development and physical Photoshop of all the good things that you ever saw in any person make-believe or real all conglomerate it into one fake perfect wife. And that is what you are comparing yourself to. Okay, then, you know you're doing it. All right number three. This is an interesting one. I think this is when your emotional reactions seem to be worse than what would really make sense. Okay, when we're really beating ourselves up when we're making this about our own worth then when we make a mistake what we loses the ability to shake it off and try again, right because the stakes get so high when this is about my worth. So your emotional reactions will be overblown. They won't be in proportion to what's actually going on because you've created such a high stakes scenario for your own behavior that it's almost impossible to succeed And the last one in the most important is how do you know that your weaponized self-improvement? It's you're not making any progress in self-improvement. You're spending all of your time and energy on what you're doing wrong and beating yourself up over it and thinking about how you should be better but you're not actually doing any better. Right? And this is basically the whole concept of shames not going to make you a better wife though. This beating yourself up. It's generally not. I mean, I don't even see generally not it doesn't work. It doesn't work with ourselves. It doesn't work with our husbands. It does for sure. Does not work with our children beating ourselves up criticizing. It doesn't Inspire growth. It doesn't Inspire motivation. It does not Inspire our best selves to show up more than that more than that when we're so down on ourselves and beating ourselves up and feeling so gross about ourselves because you can convince yourself of anything. Right? So if you want to convince herself that you're a terrible human being you could do it. And you don't actually have to be a terrible human being to do that. So when we're coming from this place where we feel so gross and we're so down on ourselves and then then we try and show up the way we think the perfect wife would shop right? So then we try and show up with connection and sweetness and understanding and compassion and patience. You know, what happens? You become really gross. You become this weird robot version of a human being right because you're faking it you're behaving in a way that is completely out of alignment with where you're at because As you're taking this gross Ness and you're just covering it up with this Behavior. Which look sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes you just need to show up and you need to do the right thing and you don't feel like you're there mentally fine. But if this is what's happening normally in your relationship that your brain and your emotions are in one place and then you're sort of putting on a show on the outside. That's not a relationship right? You're losing the connection. You're losing the authenticity. He's not married to you. He's married to the character that you're playing. Right. And so that this is a huge loss. This is a huge huge loss that happens when we really start beating ourselves up like this never fear. I'm going to give you some things you can do about it. Okay. So number one is named the shame and I don't just mean call it shame. I mean call it Polly or whatever name you want to call it? Okay, really big on naming things. You guys need my insulin pump for me. By the way. We went with Thumper the pumper that was an amazing suggestion, but there were some very good ones also. We're all about naming things here at first remarried. So I don't just want you to name your shame. That that is the emotion of shame. I want you to create an entire character that exist inside your psyche. That speaks the shame to you. Okay, so is it you know, the little second grade girl who's just so wants to do everything perfectly and she thinks she's not so she speaks the shame. Is it the sort of maternal or teacher type figure or principal type figure or drill instructor or coach or something? Is it coming from more of an adult perspective just create almost a cartoon character. Who is it? That keeps bringing up shame for you? Who is it? Who's accusing you? Who is it? Who's beating you up? And really create a visual for it if you want to go on to clipart and like literally this sounds crazy but it works going to clip art and find a little picture and give it a name and and talk and think for yourself. What is this one do this one comes to me and says, I'm not good at what I'm doing. This one comes to me and says Bubba Bubba. Okay when you named this shame when you've named this character that shows up for you. So then what we're doing is were saying when these thoughts are coming up for me. They're coming up through this care such as I'll just use poly because that's the thing that I randomly blurred it out a second ago. So that's really just Polly talking right? And yeah Polly's part of me and Polly has a perspective and I can even listen to Polly but it's not the Voice of Truth thundering through my psyche that you're a bad wife, right? It's just Polly who tends to talk about things she tends to accuse other people a lot she tends to talk about Things that she thinks people should be embarrassed about that's what Holly does and I'm happy to listen to her and I'll even thank her for her contribution because she's really out for my own good, you know, she wants to make sure that I'm taking care of myself and then I'm living up to my potential. She just doesn't really have a lot of tact. She wouldn't make a very good coach. She doesn't do a very good job of actually getting me there but you know, maybe she maybe it's good for me to hear sometimes sort of where my bar is, but she gets a little out of whack. She tends to compare me to people that don't really exist got where I'm going with this. Okay? Again, the main point of this is that instead of this sort of feeling like this. Great truth when I hear it. I I'm I'm lightening the whole thing. Okay, I'm playing with it. I'm making it a lot more flexible in my mind, right and you can take this out and do more with this. Right? Some people will take this and they will do this for everything right? They'll have the lover and the mother and the friend and the coach and the you know, like they'll have all the different, you know, the voices and the the different characters that come and they Their contributions and I think that's great if that works for you for sure. I want you to try this with shame for this week. Okay. Number two. I want you to consider the possibility of a life without shame and what I mean by this is just that when shame comes up, you're like, yeah, I don't do that right now, maybe just for a week or maybe for a month. First of all, what concerns you about that? Like are you worried that without shame you would just stop making dinner for your husband. Are you worried that you would just start? Saying horrible things to him all the time. What do you think you're holding onto the same for and then I would just wonder if you could sort of just excuse yourself from that for a little while and I would even suggest giving it a specific time period this is a little different but I think it will maybe help you understand what I'm saying with this is that when we made the decision to move to Israel, so I just decided like in a very casual way. This was not like any deep coaching or anything, but I just decided that, you know, actually my husband. The first one he said that for a year, we're not really going to worry about when we spend money by mistake. Okay. Now we're not making any really really major purchases by mistake, right? So what I mean by this is oh the meat is half the price at that grocery store than where I bought it or I bought this thinking that it was this kind of soap. But actually I didn't know that word in Hebrew. So I got that kind of soap. Okay or a good example is my kids have tutoring and sometimes we don't make it to school on time and they miss it, but I still I pay the tutor all that accidental spending. We just decided for the first year. This is just were not really worrying about it. We're just excusing ourselves from worrying about it for a year. So what will happen is that I will realize suddenly that I just paid for something I didn't need to pay for or I missed something that I was paying for in my immediate reaction is to tense up and stressed out about that because I tend to be somebody who really likes to be on budget and likes be responsible their money and I can very quickly go into a place with a lot of stress and a lot of frustration. Vision that then I remember we this year that's not something I'm worrying about and so it's just a very gentle but simple redirect for the brain like oh you thought you were going to go there but we decided actually not right now, right and it is so helpful. So I want to see if you can challenge yourself to try that with shame for the next week or month or year or you know your lifetime, that'd be good too side note because the Candy situation is pretty phenomenal over here in Israel. So I also did this for kids nutrition, okay. I just decided the only thing I'm worried about is helping the meat vegetables and any other roles that I had about what they do and don't eat and what we do and don't allow I'm just taking a sabbatical. Okay, I'll get back to it. I think they can handle a year and I'll get back to it right and same thing with the accidental spending but we just decided we're like we're just going to take a break from worrying about that. We're going to take a break from all the rules that we have about that very similar to what I talked about with bringing home baby. Right? Sometimes you're in a phase where It's just good to kind of opt out for a little while. So what I want you to try is to opt out of shame to see what happens as an experiment. I think you can do it. Okay number three, so I want you to consider that these actions that you're feeling so shameful of Might not be coming from being a horrible human being as your mind would Polly would like you to believe but there are often coming from a place of fear or insecurity maybe not always but a lot of times when we react very emotionally or in a way that feels out of control. It's coming from a place of fear or insecurity. So what I would encourage you to do would be to speak those out loud or alternatively write those down. What were you so scared of When you did that, okay, so sometimes it'll be I was scared that he didn't love me as much as I loved him. Sometimes it's I was scared that he would never help me as much as I need to function. I was insecure compared to other people at that moment. Okay. So again number three is just to consider that those actions that you are shaming yourself over might be coming from a place of fear insecurity speak them out or write them down. And then also look at the reverse of them. Okay. So what would the reverse be I was scared. He didn't love me as much as I love him could be. Wow. I love him so much. So I got really insecure there. That's much more empowering than going into a shame spiral, right? He might not love me as much as I love him and that's really scary. And so now I'm overreacting and I'm acting very badly and now I'm going to feel shameful about it versus. Well. I really love this guy. I might even love him more than he loves me. That's how much I love him. Okay, that's the reverse okay, or he might never help me as much as I need help. The reverse that could just be like, wow, I feel like I need a lot of help right now. Hey, so now I can take that and I can bring it to him and I can say I really need so much help right now and I'm really freaking out about that. What should I do? Can you homie you have any suggestions for me? That's a very very different animal than he might not help me as much as I need. And so then we're going to go into criticism and blame and then we're going to go into shame. The next one number four is to clarify your vision as you would if you were speaking to a beloved younger friend for those of you with daughters. I would even consider these daughter here. Okay, when you're creating your vision for yourself as a wife when we do this in a vacuum on our own again, we create this image that Simply isn't what we would suggest to anybody else right if you had a friend who let's say you've been married for five years and someone came to you and she's a newlywed and she said I'm just trying to understand how I'm supposed to show up. What should I make sure I'm doing what's important but you be like, well, you should always have a gourmet meal on the table at six o'clock, of course never be in your pajamas past 9:00 a.m. Ever if he's going to see it unless you're throwing up. No, but that's how Enoch to ourself Yeah, so if you were talking to a beloved younger friend, you would explain here some things that are good to do when you can do it, but sometimes you can't and that's fine. So when you're creating a vision for yourself do it with at least as much love and compassion as you would for someone else why because when we're doing it that way for someone else then we want it. We want to give them something they can work with we know that they would be paralyzed if we gave them something so outrageous. Right, but with ourselves we think only just beat myself over the head with this image of a perfect wife. And then finally I might behave no just like you would with a beloved younger friend create a vision with compassion. It can still be a vision. It's still what you're working towards right? But it's a vision for a human being the last one number five is consider what you would need to believe and I mean truly believe something you really could believe. That would let you just make a step towards your vision. Okay, so it might not be that you think that you are an organized person and your vision includes being a bit more organized, but you might be able to believe that you're a person who values who sees the value in organization. Yeah, so I would just consider that probably you're functioning right now from a model of like I'm crazy to organize and I totally don't have my act together. If this is an issue for you, right you can we can replace this with whatever issue you're working on and if you can replace it with something that is just a tiny step towards where you want to be going. You know, you don't have to say I'm super organized if you don't have the evidence to support that but you could say I value organization I see how or Is Asian really helps everything run better? Do you see how now you are in a totally different place than I'm a hot mess. We can't get her act together. Right. I mean even just when I think about this line, I'm a hot mess who can't get it back together. I immediately need a nap. I'm like, so tired by that. That's the degree that the most draining thought to me. It's going to be different for everyone. But for me, that's such a draining thought but if I'm just thinking like well, I really value organization. So then I'm like, okay, I could probably just like at least put you know those dishes away. I could do something something little not super organized, but I could do that. Right and then you're making a step in that direction and then you could even maybe try the next thought but you want to spend some time with each one first. I just want to give you a final thought of like how this can look for you. We all have this image of like the perfect wife and usually when we make a mistake where we're comparing ourselves, or we're despairing that we're not that we're not doing that great. We're not perfect. That can lead into an over reaction. It can retell like a very strong emotional response. It can lead to shame it can lead to you know, trying to blame other people because we can't take responsibility for all these feelings that were having basically just not really a fun place to be for anybody you or your husband. Okay. So what does it look like for me now? I've been working on this for a little while. I started with this experiment of like what if I just kind of don't do shame. Okay. I still do sometimes more with my parenting than with my wife Aang. Hey. But that doesn't mean that when I make a mistake, I'm like way to go you're doing great. Okay. So the last time that I felt like I just totally didn't show up as my best self in my marriage. What did it look like? So I did what I did. I spoke like really really to my husband, right and then afterwards I kind of just was like first of all I didn't deal with it right away because I was still to triggered and frustrated and upset about the whole event. I went I did something else. I got my mind off of it. And then I was like well, yeah, I was having a lot of really really negative thoughts right then and some of them I might think are true and some of them I might not think are true. But those thoughts are for sure going to put you in a bad place and Kayla you could have done a lot better. You know, you probably could have just pushed yourself to keep your mouth shut until you got out the door and save yourself the headache of now you're going to have to go apologize. Now, you need to go apologize. You're gonna apologize to him. You're going to move on. Take responsibility for what you did but that's normal because when you have a whole bunch of terrible thoughts you're going to feel terrible and next time maybe just try and keep your mouth. Shut if you can but then we're going to have to go look at those times. I'm gonna have to go look at them. And I'm going to have to sort of see how those facts made you really unhappy and really cranky and get some clarity about what's going on in your head. Okay? Because this is the thing, you know, if someone's like eating a bag of cheese, it's every day. We're not cheese. It's what I mean Cheetos, right if you're eating like a bag of Cheetos every day and they show the doctor and you're like shocked that you have bad cholesterol. Yeah, so that's a person who doesn't see any correlation between what's going into their body and how their body is reacting. Okay. Our thoughts are like the diet for your brain and if we're not paying any attention, we're just letting like whatever pops up to just be there unquestioned. So that's the opposite of mental health and without a basic sense of clarity and health and our minds and an awareness of what's going in and how it's affecting us. We can't make progress right? We can't move on to the next place other than self control which yes, you can develop more self-control you can work on your self-control but it is so much easier and it is so much more effective to start looking at your thoughts get them down on paper question them, see how they're affecting you. See how they're showing up in your life, right? And from there we can escape this blame trap. We can escape the shame Polly all this stuff. So I want to just really encourage all of you to take some time have some compassion for yourself get your thoughts down on paper. Look at them have some clarity about what's going on your head. If you need some coaching email me. Let's get you some coaching. All right, we'll figure out if you should be doing a program or if you would do one-on-one meeting monthly. We'll figure something out for you. But I want all of you to be able to feel like have clear steps. You can take to work on your mental health to work on your Clarity, and I hope you all have an amazing week and oh my gosh next week. See you there. Bye.
Announcement: Next week I will be having the amazing ALISON ARMSTRONG on the podcast!!! Make sure you are subscribed because it’s going to be split over two episodes and you are not going to want to miss this interview. I recorded an episode a while back called “Shame Won’t Make You a Better Wife.” Episode 8 You need to hear it again. Because I keep seeing you all using the idea of self-improvement as a way of attacking yourself and your self-worth. You are weaponizing self-control. Against yourself. How you know you’re doing it:   You are more conscious of what you’re doing wrong than what you’re doing right. The Perfect Wife has shown up. Your emotional reactions seem to be worse than makes sense. You aren’t making progress. When we are so down on ourselves and then trying to show up as the perfect wife, it’s totally inauthentic. What to do about it. Name the shame. (Sidenote: accidental spending and kids nutrition sabbatical)    Consider that your actions may be coming from a place of fear or insecurity. Speak those out loud. See the reverse of them. Clarify your vision as you would if you were speaking to a beloved younger friend. Consider what you would need to believe, truly believe, to make a step towards that vision. 