Seize Your Destiny: The Importance of Confronting Your Inner Critic

Seize Your Destiny: The Importance of Confronting Your Inner Critic

Hello, hello. Welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina and I am your host. This is the podcast where we talk about living a life that is all the way up to your dreams, your potential, your vision, your desires without guilt and regret. Because we don't need that. And the goal of each podcast is to address a different part of how can we live a life that is really worth living?

Because the number one regret of the dying, and this is year after year, when they, uh, pull people and they do the surveys, the number one regret of those people facing death head on because they're on hospice or they're, they know their time is short, is that they regret. Living the life that they really wanted.

They lived the life and the roles that someone else wanted them to live. And it's the number one regret over and over and over again. And so while we have the opportunity to face our life head on without that regret, I believe we owe it to ourselves. And we owe it to everyone around us to live a life in which we are full of our own potential.

Now, one of the ways that we do that is with self confrontation. It's when we acknowledge ourselves, and I know, I know most people hear the word confrontation and they get a visceral response to it because the first thing that comes to mind is a fight. Hands on, brutal face-to-face, yelling at one another.

And it's just such a, it gets such a visceral reaction because confrontation always has this negative con connotation to it. It's a clashing of forces, and that's all of the, the definitions, you know, half the definitions use the word in it, which should be bad, but. What I love about confrontation, on top of the definition of the act of confronting face-to-face meeting between a suspect and a victim, the clashing of forces is that it also has additional, additional definitions, and one of them is a bringing together of ideas and themes for the sake of comparison.

And the other one it's called, it's a technique that they use in group therapy in which one is forced to recognize one's shortcomings and their possible outcomes. So those last two definitions I feel have more of a overall positive consequence as opposed to this, you know, full out brawl out. But why would I talk about that?

What, what is confronting or confrontation? What is self confrontation really? How is that good? And what does that have to do with self-care, self-love, and living a good life. Um, especially when we have so much negativity, criticism, and confrontation from outside sources. You know, friends, not friends, coworkers, families.

Why would we need to then add that? To our own list. I mean, who wants to do, who wants to do that? And the reality is, most of us, most of us don't like confrontation. And you, we all know someone like that, right? We have a coworker, friend, family, it might be us. And we don't like confrontation that we don't, we'll never speak up.

We'll just let things you know, just let it go. Because ultimately we don't wanna ruffle any feathers. We don't wanna rock any boats. We always say we are the peacemakers. Well, you know, the person who's the peacemaker, who's not ever confronting an issue is actually signing the contract to suffer endlessly.

Now, if we're suffering endlessly, are we truly living the life that we are meant to live? Are we truly living our potential? I was listening again to RC Blakes. I so enjoy this pastor. He is amazing. I recommend him for anyone. Uh, he's an older pastor, fifties, and he talks about his life and he talks. He talks just like you're in the room one-on-one.

And he was describing this situation, which, which I really liked. He said, you know, we all wake up in the morning. Especially after a really good night sleep. And we walk up and we look in the mirror and we know. That, that image in the mirror is not necessarily the image we wanna portray out in the world, you know?

And we do something about it. We, we take a shower, we put some other clothes on, we actually comb our hair. And if we don't comb our hair, at least we put it up. You know, maybe put earrings, something, something to look a little more presentable because we have to confront the canvas We get first thing in the morning.

And I confront my canvas every morning, and especially I have curly hair. And that is, that is, that is a conflict. That is a battle every morning with the curly hair. But I have to confront that. My old habit, I. My old stress habit, and when I was studying for my biochem degree, I would sit there and I would pull on my eyebrows.

I would pull them out, pull them out, pull them out to the point now that there are sections missing, and every morning I have to color them back in. Everyone near and dear knows that regardless what happens if I'm in the hospital, I don't care if my hair is crazy, but please draw my eyebrows back on. I have to confront.

My old habit every day, and I have to confront the fact that I'm living with the consequences of no eyebrows, but I have to address it. And why are some of us afraid to address ourselves, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually? And usually it's because we are afraid that we might hate what we see.

And I don't think any of us are really designed to hate ourselves or if we hate ourselves, we don't even wanna acknowledge it. But sometimes if to, to really look in that we have to acknowledge we don't like ourselves, or we may be scared that we have to take responsibility for what we find we might have to take responsibility for addressing, changing, improving whatever we find.

And you know, you can't do addressing and improving without making some changes, and just the word change gets another visceral response For a lot of people, change is not easy. Change is not easy. So why and how can we eliminate some of the, the clatter in our minds and in our hearts and our souls, and invite clarity into our life?

How can we do that? And I do believe that self confrontation is one of those ways that we can, can do that. And number one, number one way I think we can do that, and it's kind of like, I like this quote, I'm gonna start with this, is you don't need to drown the darkness with light. You don't need to replace negativity with positivity.

You bring the darkness to the light like an offering. And what, what I feel this means is that you honor, you honor where you're at right now. You have to honor it and acknowledge it before you try to change it. Meet yourself where you are, you know, score yourself how and how you feel on, on certain things.

Like, for example, on a zero to one, zero to 10 scale. I'm in therapy. Everything's a zero to 10 scale. How are your friendships? You know, zero is poor, 10 is excellent. How are your friendships? How are you approaching those friendships? How are you viewing them? And are those friendships ones that you're letting be a little bit deeper?

Or are you keeping them superficial? What about your appearance? Are you excited about your appearance? Are you happy and proud of the work that you put into it? And what about your faith? Do you have any faith? Do you exercise in your faith? Are you acknowledging your faith? What about are you feeling fueled with love and appreciation by those around you and confront the fact of whether or not you're getting what you need?

Not are you giving what others say they need, but are you receiving, you know, it's, it's both sides. Yep. Kind of like light and dark, give and receive are, are they? They gotta be. They gotta go together. So confrontation does not have to be synonymous with this brawl, but it also just means to acknowledge and address those things.

You don't have to drown out anything. You just have to look at where you are as a good starting point. Number two. Now this quote's from way back, so it addresses men, but. It's from Play-Doh and he says, we can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. But the real tragedy of life is when men and women are afraid of the light.

What is that light for you? What does that light really mean? Like how do you recognize that person you want to be? And how's that person afraid to come out? What about, are you looking at your abilities? Are you looking at your strengths? Are you looking at what you have to offer for other people as well as yourself as opposed to only looking at your weaknesses?

Are you looking at your life in all aspects, spiritually, emotionally, physically? What are you satisfied with? Like, I know I have a group of friends, like we're always, we're trying to, okay, did you work out this morning? I worked out this morning and you know, Our hormones change as life goes on, and weight does not come off as easy.

I mean, it's like, it's like super glue. It's just, it's ridiculous. And so things don't move and shift and go the way they used to. But what are you still satisfied with? What are you excited about? Maybe the body in your body doesn't look quite the same, but man, it still moves. Which is something in itself.

It might be a little noisy when it's moving, but it's, it's going, what are your attitudes and perspectives that are invigorating as opposed to only holding you back? What, what is, what is the light here? And I think that is something that most of us really kind of forget. Like we forget what is positive in us as it is.

That is also confrontation, acknowledge, just acknowledge where you're at, goes back to number one. And this last one I really like a lot. Number three is hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness. And that is Desmond Tutu. And that's just some questions that come up like, you know, despite all the darknesses, well have you given up hope.

Have you, have you given up wanting to be in alignment with your beliefs? What you feel you know, can you create hope in the situation you're in? And sometimes, you know, we feel alone and isolated, but we're not. Sometimes some of our issues are the ones we bring about ourselves cuz we're afraid to be open and vulnerable.

To the very people who are also wanting to be open and vulnerable. We have so much more in common than we do have things that separate us. You know, what is missing in your life that you'd like to add? Or what is in your life that you're glad is not missing? Confront where you're at. Confront. Confront where?

You would like to be today, this evening, tomorrow, next week. You know, don't just do the face-to-face brawl with yourself. Don't decide to suffer indefinitely because you wanna remain a peacemaker not only with other people, but with yourself. Go ahead and do the other parts of that definition of confrontation, which is bringing together your ideas, your themes of life.

Compare that to what your vision is, what your hope is. Don't lose your hope, and also recognize your shortcomings and your strengths, and look at all those possible outcomes impossible consequences. That's another word. Consequences always sounds bad. Maybe it's cuz we grew up that way. You're gonna suffer the consequences, but you know, it, it can also be positive, positive consequences.

And it all begins with confronting the person in the mirror, which might be a better idea first thing in the morning after you've had a good night's sleep because then you know the canvas is empty. You know, especially if it was a night where you didn't forget to wash your face the night before, but you really just get to see you.

And I would recommend at that time, this one exercise that I've, I've read several times is look in the mirror and look into your own eyes. Don't just, you know, look at 'em. Especially for women, you know, we tend to put mascara or our hyper house on and. Just look in the mirror and, and look into your own eyes and just stare, blink.

But just look there for a moment and hold that gaze. And one way to really recognize whether or not you are walking in acceptance with yourself, acknowledging your strengths and your weaknesses, is if you can hold that gaze because. It is easier to look at truth and sometimes, you know, we will look in the mirror and we will end up, end up having a little, a little cry.

Be emotional because it's hard to look into a person's eyes when they're sad and not feel empathy, and it's really hard to look into your own eyes and realize that there's sadness in there. It's a very good exercise to just. Stay in touch with you. At the same time acknowledging and taking care of you and realizing that that confrontation is not to bring you apart from yourself, but to bring you together.

So thank you all for listening today. All of our time is precious. All of our minutes are precious, and thank you for spending your minutes with me. I appreciate it so much. If you enjoy this podcast, go ahead and leave a review and it does not have to be words if you need some stars. I appreciate that.

But either way, I will see you guys next Tuesday and. Between now and then, don't forget " Let's Build one another up!"