The truth about self-discipline improving self-love

 The truth about self-discipline improving self-love 

Hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. This is the platform from which I talk to you about living a life that is meant to be living is meant to be lived by you with the purpose and alignment of what your vision for your life is. Without that additional regret and act and shame and all those things that really is not meant to invigorate and enlighten your life or the lives of those around you.

My name is Bettina and I am your host, and I start off every show by saying that I am not a licensed counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, but I am a student of life and I'm a healthcare professional who loves to have one-on-one build deeper conversations to try to figure out what makes us tick, what makes us work.

So if this is the kind of show that's of interest to you, go ahead and hit subscribe and I'd appreciate a view at the end. So today's topic is about the discipline of self-love. What, what is that really all about? And I did a show, it was one of my first three shows that I put onto. Buzz Sprout that then was uploaded and it was about motivation and discipline.

In fact, it is still my highest rated podcast episode. It was one of my first ones, and I, I started to wonder what is it about motivation or discipline that we are more interested in? Like what draws people to that show? Probably what drew me to the topic in the first place, and that we may know that we need it for our benefit, but it doesn't mean that we like it.

And so today, you know, I'm, I'm gonna talk about the discipline of self-love and I'm using that terminology on purpose because discipline often gets a bad rap. Like it, we think about, I always think about my parents, you know, I'm gonna discipline you. You need some discipline and you have to, um, I did TaeKwonDo for a long time and it was to learn discipline and learn respect and self-discipline and, and, and how to work as a team.

And I looked it up and it's all about the word discipline and it's about obeying rules or a code of behavior, and I wasn't sure, you know, is, is self-love really an a rule that I need to obey? But I definitely resonated with the idea that self-love is a code of behavior. It's a code that we have with ourselves, and it's something where we have to forego like an immediate pleasure.

Or immediate anything gratification for long-term self-respect, because I do feel that disciplining ourselves with self-love is all about self-respect, and that's not always what we have. We may want someone to respect us and get all upset, well, you didn't respect me, and they're not showing me respect and all that you have to respect, but what does that really mean from someone else if we don't share it and.

Demonstrate it to ourselves. So I think the term self-respect is kind of like the ultimate. I love you too much to let you fill in the blank. I love you too much to wear that outfit to work. It isn't your color and know you don't fit in it or it doesn't fit you. But either way, you and your outfit aren't a fit.

Okay? So, all right, Bettina, I gotta go change clothes. I love you too much to wear that much makeup to try to cover up your own beauty. I love you too much to stay in that relationship in which you're playing real life twister, and you're never gonna win that game because it was only designed for you to lose for someone else's game.

Move on. Sister. I love you too much to pay any attention to what those people say cuz they're not important and most people that we come across are not important. I love you too much is more like I love you and the you is you. The you is that person in the mirror. And I don't think that this discipline, this self-respect is any punishment.

In fact, I think it's more like your own truth and that you have to be upfront with this. So I divvied it up into three different components, and I think that one, first and foremost, discipline is all about exercising self-control and having self responsibility. Now, I feel especially in these times in 2020, that the word responsibility is very unpopular.

Everyone has a responsibility except the person themselves. You know, it's your responsibility not to offend me. It's your responsibility not to make my day sad. It's your responsibility to make. Me happy. It's your responsibility to give me more money. It's your responsibility to make me earn more money.

It's your responsibility to provide this. It's your responsibility. It's your responsibility. And yes, I am in alignment with society responsibilities. I am in alignment with helping one another out. I'm all on board with that, but I tend to come from more of a, a psychological and a soul and a heart view.

That your heart and your soul are someone else's responsibility. You know, we, we hear this and, and I've heard this and I quote, you made me feel bad the whole day. You made me feel bad the whole week. You've made me angry for the rest of the week. It's Monday. They already know they're gonna be angry for the rest of the week because I did something.

Yeah, you should have paid my bills on time. You should have. No. Now, you should have No. No, I should. No. I am only in control of one person and that is me and anyone is only in control of themselves. And I think a lot of this pushing responsibility to other people goes back to kind of some martyrdom or victimhood and that, you know, everyone has their own story and their own story of pain, and I have no business up in that.

But what I will say is that sometimes we have to push aside those clouds of pain and that gravel of pain, I mean, Sometimes we have had built, we've built a whole ecosystem of painful experiences, and we live in that ecosystem. We never step foot outside. We see the sunshine, but we're not comfortable in the sun.

We're comfortable in our pain, and it's someone else's fault that we refuse to walk out of that pain. And you know, I would say in hindsight we can see the abusive situations or abusive relationships or dead end jobs that we had, you know, we saw, but we were blind at that time. But then there's a day that we're not blind, you know, we hit that little self-aware button almost like on a blender or, or a similar to a light switch.

We have the light that's on. And we see the scenario for what it was, and we see the scenario unfolding again, and we see it for what it is. We've gone through the days of journaling and meditation and, and counseling and therapy, and we feel free, but then we come right back in that same situation or a person, you know, everything looks different, but is exactly the same, but we have a choice to make.

And it's really in that choice that we are demonstrating our self-control and we're taking responsibility. We're not gonna let our past and the guilt of that past always be the driver of our life. You know, some days you gotta kick that out of the car and you have to drive that. And it is an active experience.

It's not passive. If you're looking for a passive life, then you are going to not fulfill your, your deepest dreams. It's just not gonna happen. But having that self-control and self responsibility puts you in a place where you can achieve your successes. The second thing I wanna talk about is that discipline can also be a place where we can really evaluate our disappointments.

You know, we all have hopes and dreams and we're consistently hoping and dreaming, and that's part of making a vision. You know, we have the popularity of vision boards. There's a reason for that. I love it. I sure do have one in my, I changed my vision from week to week because I'm always adding more stuff to it, but I have a plan now.

I realize that the plan will not end up that way. Exactly. And there can be the disappointment that even though I have something better and greater and more wonderful, it still wasn't exactly what I had hoped for or wished for, but it is still there and it's even better. But how am I evaluating that disappointment?

Where am I looking at it? Am I looking at the disappointment? Well, I made a mistake, now I'm nothing. Or is it, Hey, I made a mistake and I grew from that. Some of our mistakes are quite expensive. They cost relationships. They cost friendships. They cost legitimate money. They cost legitimate money, and we can still gain from that, or the people around us can.

You know, having the discipline to evaluate our disappointment and go from there, evaluate it, but does not mean wallow in it. It doesn't mean sacrifice your future for the pain of your past. It's evaluate and make a decision. Kind of like those old math problems where you had to evaluate it to see whether or not it was truth to to see whether or not it was a proof to see whether or not it would really make a difference.

And a lot of times it doesn't. It makes us grow, but it doesn't have to always pull us down. And the third way I think we can add to the self-discipline is, is actually a work ethic, which I feel can always be improved. And I don't mean work ethic just by, oh, well you're only working 30 hours a week. You need to be working 40, or, oh, you're only working 60 hours a week.

You need to be working 70. No, I think work ethic has a bigger definition in this realm of self, self-love and self-discipline. I think it's about our habits. All of 'em from, are we eating cookies for breakfast, which I did this morning. I sure did have four chips of Hawaii cookies for breakfast. Are we doing habits that are really fulfilling to us?

Are we doing practices? Are we doing routines? You know, the one routine that I have stuck through for nine months now is having a weekly podcast. That was my goal. That was my vision. Even if I am making a presentation and a podcast show, A few hours before it goes live. I am dedicated to that and I'm not just dedicated to it for the people that I'm honored to have listened and honored to maybe may have an impact on I'm dedicated to this because this was my promise to myself.

Maybe I need to make that promise with my morning cookies. Anyway. There are routines that will feed our success and our inner joy, and we need to live in those. We need to write them down if it's physically or if we write them down on our heart. What will really get you there? And what do we do when we get this self-discipline?

Like what happens? You know what we get when we have the self-discipline to love ourselves is we stop this inferiority complex that many of us have. Oh, well, they, you know, they're prettier or they may know more. Or, you know what? They have some more money to buy the nicer clothes. You know what they may have all of those things, but that does not negate that I have value and that I am an awesome person.

That's just as simple as it is, you know, someone else's glory does not affect or bring down the shine of my glory. It doesn't have any effect on it. You just don't have that inferiority complex. When you're self-disciplined, you have that self-love. You are confident and there is confidence that, and no outfit can make you confident.

I have seen some really wonderfully made, put together people and they lack as much confidence as a penny. It's just, it's so, it's almost sad to see it because it doesn't exist. You have that confident and there's an inner glow that you cannot make in any other way. You're not gonna participate in that small gossip stuff anymore.

Like, oh, did you hear this? And do you know this about that? You know what that is? Small minded nonsense. It doesn't help you grow and it doesn't help the person you're talking about grow. In fact, gossip is only designed to make you feel better cuz you have nothing to feel good about in the first place.

The other thing is about you make intentional relationships, and I'm not talking about just as, as a partnership between you and that special someone, but all of your relationships, your friendships, the neighbors you have in your life, the people that you always wave to at the mailbox who always seem to be there at the same time, you are the the environment in which you work, meaningful relationships, and you establish that.

In all levels from the ones in your family, you let your children know that you love them. You let them know that you are there for them and you'll pick 'em back up when they fall down. But you want intention. Not just, well, you know, if they call, I'll do this. Well, I don't really care unless they, you know, if they do this, maybe I'll do that.

No, you put forth the effort and if someone is just not putting the effort into that, you intentionally disconnect. That's an intentional relationship. And when you have that self-discipline of self-respect and self-love, you don't view other people as threats. You just don't, and again, this goes back to that your crown has nothing to do with someone else's.

You are a king or a queen, and it is irrelevant how many people you hang around with. Because honestly, when you have that, when you are at that place, you are only hanging around other people that have confidence that are not into the gossip, that are not looking at inferiority, and you are building one another up.

And so it doesn't matter if there is chaos externally or internally when you are disciplined to yourself. You will recognize that your sustained happiness or joy is only through your own behavior, which is the only thing that you actually can control. So we have to figure out getting a mentor, watching mentors on YouTube, watching mentors in our workplace, what people are demonstrating this kind of strength all the time, and how can we be one of them.

You know what, we gotta show up and first and foremost, we gotta show up for ourselves. So I thank you again for listening to my podcast today. I really appreciate it because you know what? We only have so many minutes and you chose to spend your minutes with me today. I appreciate that. So I do. Drop a show every Tuesday, and in the meantime, I appreciate if you can.

Other than that, I will see you guys next week and until then, let's keep building one another up!