I am your host Bettina Brown and this is the Platform from which I talked to you about living a life without the captivity of guilt and regret so that you can use your self-worth to live an empowered, independent, and free life. Let me start off by saying that I am not a counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, but I am a student of life and a healthcare professional who loves to research and have conversations about what makes us.

If this topic and similar topics are of interest to you, go ahead and click the subscribe and I enjoy receiving feedback. And you can email me at betina@in therising.com. And this is also in the description box below. So, several years ago, a hospice nurse took a survey. She asked several of her clients, ”What.

What are the regrets that you have in your life?” What are the regrets you have about your life? And this was posted as a top five. This was actually in an article, but the number one regret that people reported was, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life that others expected of me.

So, what does being your true self. living a life that's true to you, what does that look like? And so, this was a question I asked myself a while back, and I asked myself that because I had been asked several times, who are you? What are you, what are your goals? What are your achievements? Everything about me seemed to be linked to something outside.

Perhaps this is something you've noticed about yourself. Your role is you are the mom, you're the wife, you're the caregiver, you are the family member. You're the white sheep in the family. You're the black sheep in the family. Your income level is this. You're in brackets, and everything about you is kind of defined from all of these labels.

Well, what about if your label. Actually, just your name, that who you are as a person has very little to do with anything else besides who you are as a person. So, I did a little bit more research into this, partially when I was trying to figure this out for myself and then also for this podcast. And I, I learned a great deal and with many of the things that I talk about with any of these podcasts or anything that I've.

Is that the number one thing, which is number one, is that it starts with awareness. Being aware of whether or not you're even living your true life, you know that this is not a question that someone is going to ask you when you are facing the end or facing a few months left or facing weeks or days. But right now, wherever you are right now, in your thirties, in your forties, you have small kids at home, you have kids graduating, you have kids coming back with their kids.

Are you living a life true to yourself right now? I think that would be an awesome question to, to ask ourselves so much earlier in life, because then we have opportunities to change the trajectory of our life. So the number one thing is awareness. I looked up something from Margaret Sea Hall. The link is in the in the description box.

She talks about identity, religion, and values and religion or belief in something bigger than ourselves, whether it's religion, spirituality, but that seems to be a huge link with those who have a more positive view of their self-worth. It's not a hundred percent of the. But it's enough to be commented on because when people believe that they are a part of something bigger, just that belief gives you a sense of purpose, a sense of identity, and it also is a huge motivator for attaining goals that at first seem impossible for you to.

And it helps broaden your consideration of everyone else's life. It helps you understand the value of life, and you cannot understand the value of life without recognizing the value of your own. I have value because I exist. I don't have any more value because I produce a podcast or not. I don't have any more value because I have a 100% show up rate from my clients, or because I don’t.

And so this power of your own connection to something greater helps view, view yourself bigger, and that is something just across any religion or any spirituality kind of belief, just a bigger piece of the puzzle. The next one, number three, is: What are we doing in our life? And this is a kind of an occupation thing?

This is a role thing, like what you're doing as a therapist, what you're doing as the mom, what you're doing as the sister. Are these really in alignment with who you are and are you acting, behaving and living in a way that is in alignment with. Because the body does not need a lot of help. Like, you know, there are some of us that we like to live in our brain and we know who those are, and there are certain occupations that tend to gather those individuals.

And then there are people that they don't live in their brain. They, they kind of just live with their emotions, right? If, if their emotions are this, they act this way. If their emotions are this, they act that way and they, they tend to be hard to follow because they're all over the place. The body is infinitely wise and it knows if we're in alignment or not.

You know, if speaking in front of a crowd is something that you're fine with or you're not, the anxiety, the chest pain, the feet not wanting to go, that the panic you feel, the cold sweat, the palms, all of that is your body telling you what it's feeling. What you do with that telling is another , but it goes back between your awareness and listening to your body.

Is your behavior as your child's mom in the grand scheme of things, are you in alignment with who you are? Are you in alignment with what your child will say? You know, this is what my mom did, this is the the person my mom was. Is that in alignment with what your daily behavior? . Keeping that in any relationship will help you figure out, am I really being myself in all of the roles that I am, including your occupation?

So the other one, number four, is are you accepting yourself? And accepting yourself means accepting your strengths and your weaknesses, and realizing, for one, you have. You have a lot of strengths. Now, they may not be what you want. They may not be what is in high demand from the group you're hanging out with.

My strengths would never make me a physician. I don't have it in me. I don't have that mental capacity. I can also not be a statistician or a mathematician. I passed with a 69.8. Which the professor called a c minus by having me in their office every day. I think they just didn't wanna see me again. I, I think that was it.

Like I, I was so bad that other students could go ahead of me because they took less time. That is not my strength, but I can talk about the human body and understand the mechanics and see the physics and of, of the human body in my head, but I can't find the area under a curve. Without really having to stop and think, that's my strength.

This is my weakness. How can I use that to my benefit? And number five here, number five, struck a chord with me and it also struck a chord with some of the people I had conversations with, and that is enmeshment. It is really hard to feel full and. When you cannot differentiate yourself from another person, or you cannot differentiate yourself from a situation we have all, most of us, I'm gonna be generous and say all of us have been in some situations where we're not exactly.

proud of the situation, whether we participated in not or whether we were friends of someone or whether we straight up walked into that situation, whether we remember or not. Any of that, we're not necessarily super proud of that, but it's what everyone was doing. It was the okay thing to do. And this goes back to group.

It goes back to that you are just linked to other people, but you're not your own person. There have been some times that I have been so close to a friend that when there was some sort of disconnect or we were not friends anymore, people had a hard time interacting with me alone, and someone finally said, well, you guys were so close that I didn't know where one stopped and the other.

And my heart sank with that because I never began, I never was me. I was a part of something, but I was never myself a part of something. And I don't feel that that's what we are deserve, deserving to be. So having said that, I looked a little bit further into enmeshment and, I realize certain people came to mind for me.

Sometimes situations, you can call 'em, codependency, can call it having my worth being my occupation. That when certain people, and, and perhaps you've met people like this, but when they retire, they don't know what to do because they were not in the position of their occupation. In their mind they were their occupa.

I had one person say that they had a serious mental breakdown because the US government didn't shut down because they retired. You know, it was hard for them to accept that they're a part of something, but that that is not their identity. Does this spark up something from you? Does a certain person or certain situation come up to mind for you?

Are you always the helper at work or the one staying late to the very end to make sure everything is taken care of? Are you the funny person in the crowd or you're the one that everyone goes to advice, you're that solid person. So how does being true to yourself look like? Well, when you've acknowledged the other steps, which are being.

And acknowledge what you're doing. Are you accepting yourself and enmeshing? Are you enmeshing with other people? Well, how do you figure all of that out? And I pulled up a series of questions for Eileen Cohen, and a lot of them made me think myself. And the first question is, what do you love to do unconditionally?

And do you do this in front of everyone? Like are you the. With your, your kids, are you the same person with your friends and family as you are with your clients now? Yes. I understand we have different social norms. You know, there's a different hierarchy, there's a politeness at the cocktail party.

There's a little bit more laid back attitude at certain workplaces, but are you pretty much you and that is your inner self showing up? And the second question is this, if fear of failure or failure or fear alone was not an issue, would I still be doing the things or participating in the activities or hanging out with the people that I am doing right now if my actions are only limited to what I feel I will be successful at?

Is that really a reflection to myself? what? What my life experience needs to be? Am I limiting my gifts? Am I limiting my future experiences? Am I limiting myself? And I read an interesting article by Dr. Carol Dweck on this, and she discusses that some of us have kind of part A or part B mindset. And mindset's.

Something we talk about often. We hear about often. You need to have the mindset to start a business. You need to have the mindset. When you're in a relationship, you need to have the mindset to go to school. Mindset, mindset, mindset, mindset, all sorts of stuff. And he goes, yeah, you need to have the mindset, but acknowledge kind of what your mindset is.

And that's where Dr. Dweck describes two of them. Now, there may be more, there may be less, but I kind of liked it. It was, it was. Not too much, not overwhelming that there are those that have a fixed mindset. They know their talents, they know their strengths, they know their limitations, and so they participate and hang around people where none of that is ever questioned.

None of that is ever pushed to the limits. They're comfortable. They're also more the people that are risk averse, fear of change. They want routines, they want protocols, they want procedures that brings them their stability. Then you have the other ones, which are a little more growth mindset. They're not really risk adverse.

They're the ones like, you know what, if I learn enough about it, I may not be the best, but I, I can do this. And in her des. Of those two mindsets, it does pull back into how does your true self look like? What are you kind of born with or what has developed because of life experiences? Were you all about growth and change?

And then there was a series of situations, series of circumstances, series of failures where you now don't wanna risk anything Or have you been so risk adverse that you feel like you're about to scream because you need change. , you're just not sure how to start it. And the last question is, what is your number one accomplishment?

Do you have a number one accomplishment, or do you have several, or do you have none? You know, figuring out what is important to you. What is important to you? Should there ever come a time that someone asks you what is the greatest regret of your life? Is that regret not having more time to be yourself and showing up for yourself all day, all night, any situation?

Or will you also say, I regret that I didn't show up and live the life that I know my body, my mind, and my soul wanted me to be so. I appreciate you listening today. I know all of our time is valuable and if this was of interest to you can subscribe. New podcasts will be posted on Tuesdays. I hope you have a great day and let's keep building one another up.