When I asked a woman a while back why she was interested in coaching she said, “I don’t really like me.”

I think this is more common than we realize. I could certainly relate.

But often we don’t realize the reasons WHY we don’t like ourselves. We think we don’t like us because of the way we behave, the circumstances that we live in, or because we feel so burned out and overwhelmed.

We don’t realize we have options and we CAN like ourselves despite all of the things I just mentioned.

And this is so important because at the end of the day that’s what we have. And when we DON’T have a good relationship with us – it’s exhausting!

When we have our back, like our ideas and decisions, and are kind to ourselves it changes everything.

I can’t wait for you to join me. I’ll see you inside. xo, Janeen

> >> CLICK HERE to WATCH on YouTube!

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If you’re loving the content of the podcast and are interested in coaching I would love to work with you. All you need to do is book a call with me to figure out the best option for you. Just click here to book a call and get started!  Or copy and paste this URL: https://janeenalley.com/breakthrough

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Oh and! I’m teaching a free, LIVE workshop next week called The 5 Productivity Mistakes Busy Moms Can’t Afford to Make – Especially if They’re Feeling Burned out and Behind. To register, head over to workshop.janeenalley.com and I’ll see you there!

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Janeen: Hey, they’re my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am Janeen Alley and today I am talking about how to like you. I think that is really important. I know I like you, but I’m not sure if you do. So that’s what we’re talking about today. So before I dive into the content, I have something super special for you.

[00:00:19] If you’ve been loving the content of the podcast, I want to encourage you to book a call with me. I want to hear from you. I wanna hear about your story. I wanna hear about how I can help you. I have many ways to serve my clients who come into my world. I know that there’s something for you, and so if you are wondering about coaching, please book a call with me.

[00:00:42] You can do that at janeenalley.com/breakthrough. I have all different levels of support that will literally work for you, I promise you. So just book a call with me. I’d love to hear from you. Do that right now while you’re thinking about it. I will also drop the link for that inside of today’s show notes, either [00:01:00] on my website or

[00:01:02] on the app itself where you’re listening. So that’s janeenalley.com/breakthrough. Okay, so I was actually on a sales call with a woman who was interested in coaching and I asked her why she reached out, and her answer surprised me a little. Not that she said it because it was relatable to the old me, but it surprised me though because she recognized it and she was so aware of it. So what she told me was, I reached out to you today because I don’t like me. and I asked her why and she said she was acting in a way that she didn’t want to. She was yelling at her kids and she just wasn’t proud of it. And I totally get that.

[00:01:44] If you are familiar with my backstory, you know that I have been in that exact same spot. I think I did an episode of the podcast, I think it’s episode 1 0 6, all about my story. So you can go back and listen to that and how I was outside of my [00:02:00] mind talking to one of my kids or yelling at one of my kids, and it just wasn’t pretty.

[00:02:03] It was a, an experience that I had that I felt a lot of shame and pain and self-loathing around, and I think that that is relatable. But I also know that when we behave in this way, when we’re not proud of ourselves, we do have options. Beating ourselves up usually is our default option, but besides that, we have options.

[00:02:24] But I do wanna talk about the beating yourself up option first. Because so many of us do this, we end up hating on ourselves when we behave in a way that we don’t like and there really is no upside. We think there is.

[00:02:40] But there isn’t. We think if we beat ourselves up enough, then we’ll change, and that isn’t true. In fact, I have an example of a thought model about this just to show you that this is not the result that we get when we talk to ourselves this way. So if your [00:03:00] circumstance is that you interact with your kids and you say words to them and you use a tone of voice that you don’t like, that can be, we’re just gonna put that as our circumstance today.

[00:03:08] When we do this and we’re beating ourselves up, we have conversations in our head or thoughts that sound like this. I can’t believe you behave this way. You are out of control. No one talks to their kids this way. Okay? And on and on and on it goes right. When we have that conversation in our heads. In fact, you can kind of rethink those thoughts with me.

[00:03:30] I can’t believe that you behave this way. I can’t believe that you just said that or just did that. . Think about the emotion that you feel. For me, it’s shame. That is the emotion that comes up. It could also be self-loathing, it could be disappointment. There’s a lot of emotions that are there, but I’m just gonna stick with my emotion cuz that’s how I’m doing this model.

[00:03:51] And of course when I feel shame, and I’m thinking the thought, I can’t believe you behave like this. What our brains do is it [00:04:00] goes to work trying to find evidence to prove that thought true, because it’s something that we’re believing in the moment, and that’s what our brains are good at. They’re, they’re really good at finding evidence for thoughts that we think.

[00:04:12] So, of course we’re gonna continue to beat ourselves up. We’re gonna continue to find fault with ourselves. So much of our focus is thinking about how we stink at being a parent , for sure. Okay. And of course, the result that we get from those actions is we just continue this punishing and vicious cycle.

[00:04:32] We’re not learning how to be more in control of ourselves. That’s not where our energy is channeled. Not in this model anyway, and oftentimes when this is our default, this is the one that’s leading out. Okay. Now we do have options. I mentioned we can use this information to change. That is an option. Okay?

[00:04:52] So we can take a look at our behavior from this place of curiosity and compassion, and we can make changes [00:05:00] we can read books, we can talk to professionals, we can get coached. But when we’re feeling shame or self-loathing, we just wanna hide. But that’s not how we learn how to be more in control of ourselves when we’re hiding.

[00:05:14] Okay, so let me do another model just to show you how this would look. Okay. So our circumstance is gonna stay the same. We have interaction with our kids. You say words to them, or you use a tone of voice that you don’t like. Your thought can be, I’d like to change this. I’d like to get some help, and in this space, I know when I think that thought to myself, I’m super curious.

[00:05:36] I’m feeling more empowered. And from that space, the actions that I’m taking is I’m looking for solutions. I’m asking questions. I’m doing some research on the internet. and when I start to gather some resources and bring them into my world and I’m studying them, and I’m applying them, my result is I start to change.

[00:05:56] I just shared with you two different thought models. If you want different [00:06:00] results, you want to be looking at your thoughts. And as human beings, we are complicated. We have thousands of thoughts, right? We’re always living in more than one thought model at a time.

[00:06:10] So you’re probably thinking both thoughts. You might even be thinking, I wanna change this and I can’t believe you behave like that maybe at the same time, but I want you thinking, what is the dominant thought? What is the thought that is your default when you’re not paying attention? I know I used to default all the time to the beating myself up conversation.

[00:06:33] That’s where we’re usually more reactive, and I think one of the things that was really hard for me, and I think it’s hard for a lot of women who are feeling burned out, is that they feel like the real them is buried under their stress and their overwhelm. I want you to know that even though these are thoughts that you have in your head, They are not you.

[00:06:58] We have patterned [00:07:00] thoughts that continue to recycle and are rehearsed in our mind over and over again because at one point they served us and so we think, oh, this one’s useful. We’ll keep thinking it, but it doesn’t mean that that is your intentional thought. . And oftentimes when we illustrate these thoughts, when we shine a little bit of light on these thoughts, we’re like, Hey, that’s not a thought that is serving me anymore.

[00:07:22] That’s when we bring our conscious brain to the table. That’s when we bring ourselves to the table and we can start making choices. But I know for myself when I was behaving way more reactive than I behave now, I wished my kids knew the real me

[00:07:37] and I spent a lot of time wishing things were different, wishing I could change my circumstances. Not that I wished that my kids would go away, but what I wished was that I wasn’t so busy. I blamed a lot of the way that I felt, the stress and the overwhelm that I was feeling on my circumstances, [00:08:00] which felt overwhelming to me. But do you see how I skipped a step? I felt like my circumstances were creating overwhelm, but your circumstances can never create overwhelm.

[00:08:10] Your circumstances generate thoughts that generate overwhelm. when I was overwhelmed, I was thinking things like, I’m so busy. My life is so crazy. I have so much to do. I just recently did a masterclass, it was actually a masterclass that I did last month on being an emotional child. So when we are in emotional childhood, we think our circumstances dictate our results.

[00:08:37] It’s not an insult. We all live in emotional childhood from time to time. But I’m so busy is not a circumstance. That’s a thought that we think. Another thing that I was thinking is, well, someone has to be the responsible one. I’m so busy or thoughts like that left me with my game face on all day, every day, and I felt really far removed [00:09:00] from who I really was because all I was focusing in on was getting stuff done and orchestrating the grand plan of my life and making sure that people were fed and people had clothes to wear and people were kept alive.

[00:09:13] really. , but I was not super focused on who I wanted to be or how I wanted to show up when I was thinking I’m so busy all the time,

[00:09:23] and because that was the life I was living day after day, I felt like my kids didn’t really know my fun-loving self because I wasn’t thinking fun-loving thoughts. and it wasn’t because of what I had going on, it was because of the way I was talking to myself all the time. I remember talking to my sister one time, this was many years ago, but this conversation has stayed with me.

[00:09:49] We were talking about what we were like as kids, not super young kids actually, but like high school kids. And I remember she said she was so mad at me when we were in high school. My sister is adopted, so she’s only nine [00:10:00] days old than I am, and we were in the same class, the graduating class in high school, and she was so mad at me because I didn’t seem to care about all the serious stuff or the things that she took really seriously in her life.

[00:10:12] She took grades way more seriously than me. She took tests and, and getting into college and making sure that her resume looked really good way back in high school and I was just out having a good time, . I didn’t care. about that nearly enough. I don’t think I, I did fine in school, but I remember having this conversation with her and her talking about me like that, and I’m like, Yeah, that’s not who I am anymore.

[00:10:38] I was kind of shocked. I kind of went into denial for a second because I was so far removed from that. I’m like, no, I, I think I took, I think I took life more seriously than that . And I remember getting off the phone and just being like, you know, she’s right. What has happened to me? Where did that go? But here’s the thing.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] I’m always going to be me. I’m always going to have that fun-loving piece of my personality, but over time my thoughts shifted and I became super focused on keeping people alive and staying on top of things and not getting behind and all of that stuff.

[00:11:18] And I took that very seriously, and because I took that very seriously, I became a lot more serious than I had been before. What I think is that the relationship that we have with ourselves is the second greatest relationship that we can have and of course the first relationship is going to be with God, right?

[00:11:39] But I think the second greatest relationship should be ourselves because at the end of the day, that’s who we have. And I know that you might be thinking, but I have my spouse and I have my kids and, and all these things, That’s an amazing blessing that I have in my life too. But I don’t want those people in my life

[00:11:59] [00:12:00] to solve for my emotions. And I don’t want those people in my life to feel like I depend on them. That creates kind of a needy relationship that just doesn’t feel good. You know what I mean? We’re not thinking about how to have our own back, how we can love on ourselves. And I think sometimes we feel selfish for doing this or we just feel like it’s fine we don’t need to. But then we end up one day being like, you know what? I don’t really like me. I don’t really like me , and that’s not the relationship that I want you to have with yourself because when you love yourself, then you know, no matter where you go, you’re gonna have an amazing companion to be with you.

[00:12:46] The two greatest commandments are to love God and then to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that implies that we love ourselves. I think the relationship that we have with us is so valuable, we just don’t even realize it. [00:13:00] But at the end of the day, like I was saying, this is what we have. Other relationships that we have can be taken.

[00:13:06] But when we have an amazing relationship with ourselves, it’s so much easier to have amazing relationships with other people. We are the hardest person to love for real. We are the hardest person to forgive. . But when we can forgive ourselves, we can do it for others more easily.

[00:13:26] When we can see how we’re striving and when we can see how we’re human, it’s so much easier for us to do it for other people. When we have an amazing relationship with ourselves, we do the work that we need to make space to feel all of the emotions. And we’re not using other people to solve for our uncomfortable emotions all the time.

[00:13:48] When we don’t have a great relationship with ourselves, we often use other relationships to try to solve for our emotional pain. We don’t usually think about buffering [00:14:00] with relationships, but this is what we do, right. Anytime we’re buffering, we’re trying to use something to feel better.

[00:14:05] We can use food to buffer, we can use Netflix to buffer all of it. When we feel hurt, what do you do? Do you call a friend to vent? When we feel like there’s been some kind of injustice, do we dial up our mom or our bestie or our sisters to hash it out. sometimes we do feel better after we get off the phone, but not because of the friend.

[00:14:25] We do feel better because our thoughts have changed. And you might be thinking, yeah, but it’s because of the conversation no it’s because you were able to change your thoughts about it. Something in that conversation helps you to see it in a different way. So let me just give you an example of this. This is the personal example. When we lived in Germany and I was really struggling to feel my emotions and manage my mind around homeschool and the kids and myself, and the weather and the depression that I felt over there.

[00:14:55] I was in emotional childhood all the time. I wanted to [00:15:00] blame my circumstances for my emotions. I’ve mentioned this all before on the podcast. It took me about 18 months before I was only crying once a week. It was a really challenging place for me to live. We lived there for four years. It was rough.

[00:15:13] And the first year that we lived there, I would call my husband in the middle of his work day, usually at lunchtime and just unload. And I’d be crying and I was just a mess, . And I would get really frustrated because I didn’t feel like he would say the right thing. I mean, he was in his office that he shared with other coworkers.

[00:15:30] He wasn’t gonna be super verbose, I guess, on those conversations. But the thing was, was I was expecting him to solve for my emotions, when I got off the phone, I still felt like garbage and I’d get really mad at him, and it was not awesome.

[00:15:45] I was not awesome. I was expecting, like I said, my husband to do something for me that I couldn’t do for myself. The interesting thing is we know what we need better than anyone else. . We are the only ones that can change our thoughts [00:16:00] and our emotions. That is our job to do. But when we try to make it someone else’s job, we become needy.

[00:16:09] Don’t get me wrong, having a sounding board sometimes is important, but what percentage of your interactions with other people, whether it’s friendships, whether it’s your marriage, whether it’s a parent involve you venting or requiring a sounding board so that you will feel better. What percentage are you showing up and finding out about what’s going on in your friend’s life or in your spouse’s life or in your mom’s life, and being genuinely interested in them.

[00:16:38] I think having friends is important a hundred percent. But what kind of friend are you? Are you trying to use your friends or your spouse to feel better? When we have friends who do this, what does this do for our relationships? I want you thinking about that. It’s usually not very awesome. The relationships usually erode over time because there’s always [00:17:00] gotta be some kind of drama going on and it feels heavy over time.

[00:17:04] So when we show up with our own emotions managed, we can just focus on having a fun time. The reason why I’m focused on this is because when we learn to manage our own emotions, we have a much, much better relationship with ourselves. Because in order to manage our emotions, we have to love ourselves. We have to love ourselves enough to be able to hold space for what’s there, whether it’s shame, whether it’s humiliation, whether it’s disappointment, whatever it is,

[00:17:39] we have so many emotions as human beings. The greatest friendship that we can have is with ourselves. No matter where we go, who we can get ahold of, we will always have us. We know we can feel and process any emotion.

[00:17:54] So focus on building this relationship, strengthen this relationship with yourself. [00:18:00] Think about what makes you proud of you. What do you like about you? What are some things that you’d like to change? Take time to really think about this. Loving yourself is one of the greatest gifts that you can give to you.

[00:18:14] Even when we make mistakes, even when we mess up, own it, move on. It’s not a big drama fest. do the work to move forward with love for yourself. Another reason I think that we don’t like ourselves is the not good enough conversation that we have. So we just talked about the beating yourself up conversation and the drama conversation, but I think also just feeling like you’re not good enough around something. So we try something new and we tell ourselves that wasn’t good. It’s not good enough. You have a dream maybe to write or to paint or to start a nonprofit or to start a business or to become a teacher of something, and you try it out and you’re like, , you’re just not good enough.

[00:18:58] You’re not good enough for that. It’s [00:19:00] usually because we’re comparing ourselves to somebody else. You might not even want to monetize the dream, but in your mind, for some reason, it’s not good enough. For who? For what? , if you’re doing it for fun, for the sake of learning and growth. And let me just tell you, you can have that same kind of attitude even with a project that you wanna monetize. There just isn’t an upside to this kind of conversation. You might be right. If you’re a beginner and you want to go pro, you might not be in a place where you can make any money off of what it is that you’re creating yet, but the only way to get there is to keep going. So you might as well change the conversation and be like, you know what?

[00:19:38] I’m loving what you’re creating. Let’s keep working at this. If you had a friend who talked to you this way, you probably wouldn’t be friends for very long. But the interesting thing is, is we don’t ever analyze the same conversation that we have in our own heads. We do this to ourselves. We talk to ourselves this way.

[00:19:54] We put ourselves down. if this is you, I want you to stop. This good enough [00:20:00] conversation is super sneaky. It shows up all the time when we’re trying to reach a goal, whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s a business, whatever it is. We make a mistake and you’re like, I told you, you’re never gonna get this. Because you have this underlying belief you’re not good enough.

[00:20:16] It’s interesting because so much of what I do as a coach is because we all have this deep-seeded, I’m not good enough kind of thought about things that we do. We go deep enough, it’s there. And it’s also there in the coaching work that I do with myself. But what I have found to be far more helpful than finding all of these not good enough thoughts is just recognizing the patterns and redirecting your brain to something more empowering.

[00:20:45] Something that feels good. So with this, I have developed a habit of being kind and encouraging to myself. I tell myself, you know what? We’re gonna get there. I love doing this, and that’s what matters. I’m getting better at this [00:21:00] as I practice. You’re looking good. I give myself little winks, . I focus on my gains, like all of that.

[00:21:07] Those are the kinds of things that I tell myself. So do whatever you can to create a beautiful relationship with yourself. Because when you have your own back, you enjoy being with you. You genuinely love your company and your ideas and all the amazing things that are you. You know that you don’t have to be perfect in order to move forward or to be lovable. It feels so much better to stay objective and to keep learning instead of blaming yourself or beating yourself up or not taking responsibility. Okay. That is what I have for you guys today. I hope this episode of the podcast was helpful.

[00:21:46] If you loved it, I would love it if you shared this with one of your friends, just blast it out. Blast it out to social media if you feel like, oh my gosh, I totally relate to this conversation about not liking me , [00:22:00] because I think we all do it. I think we’ve all been there where we just don’t like ourselves very much.

[00:22:07] So hopefully this was helpful and I’d love it if you shared it. And lastly, if you would love to get coached by me, I would love to coach you. So head over to janeenalley.com/breakthrough to book a one-on-one call with me and I will help you to figure out the best way you would love to be supported on your journey.

[00:22:25] Okay, my friends, have a beautiful rest of your week, we’ll catch you guys soon. See ya. Bye.