3 Life Lessons I Wish I'd Learned Sooner
In today's episode, I'm sharing three life lessons that I wish I'd learned sooner. These are around the theme of self-awareness, personal responsibility and consciously creating the life that we want for ourselves.
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3 Life Lessons That Cultivate Self-Worth and Happiness
The journey to self-worth and happiness is neither quick nor easy. Significant life lessons often come from years of growth, reflection, and sometimes even hardship. Yet, certain insights can be transformative and invaluable when learnt earlier in life. Here are three important life lessons that revolve around self-worth, responsibility, and respect, which, when embraced, can significantly improve your relationship with yourself and others.
You Cannot Outrun Yourself
It's tempting to believe that changing external circumstances will resolve inner conflicts. Whether it's leaving a job, ending a relationship, or moving to a new city, it's easy to convince oneself that a change in scenery is the answer. However, the reality is that internal issues follow you wherever you go. The patterns and core beliefs you hold about yourself are deeply ingrained and will reappear in new situations unless they're addressed.
Understanding this can be empowering. It shifts the focus from external to internal, encouraging you to face and resolve the root causes of your unrest. By addressing core beliefs and undertaking the courageous work of healing, you can break free from recurring negative patterns. This internal work is essential for personal growth and building a fulfilling, stable life.
Inaction is a Choice for More of the Same
Choosing not to make necessary life changes can create an illusion of passivity, as if you're simply staying still. In reality, life is always in motion, and not taking action towards positive changes means you are subconsciously choosing to stay on the same path. This path will lead to more of what you currently experience, be it dissatisfaction, stress, or unfulfilment.
Reframe this passive stance by recognising that every day, through your actions and inactions, you're shaping your future. Evaluating your daily choices and habits can illuminate where you're inadvertently choosing more of the same. This awareness fosters a sense of responsibility and agency, propelling you towards the necessary changes that align with the life you wish to lead.
Self-Respect Must be Earned
Self-respect is not something granted externally; it is earned through the alignment of actions and values. Earning self-respect involves knowing your values and consistently acting in accordance with them. When your behaviour mirrors your values, integrity and self-respect naturally follow.
Reflect on moments where you've felt shame or discomfort after certain actions. Such feelings often indicate a misalignment between your behaviour and your values. While perfection is unattainable, diligently striving to close this gap leads to a more authentic and fulfilling relationship with yourself. Achieving self-respect requires effort and honesty, but it's a gratifying journey that fortifies your self-esteem and personal integrity.
Embrace Self-Responsibility for Lasting Change
Central to these life lessons is the concept of self-responsibility. Only by fully embracing the responsibility for your thoughts, actions, and their consequences can you enact meaningful and lasting change. Recognising that you are the architect of your life brings a powerful sense of agency.
Taking responsibility might be daunting, but it is the cornerstone of personal development. Every decision, no matter how small, is a step toward crafting the life you desire. By actively choosing actions that align with your values and desired outcomes, you gradually build a fulfilling and respectful relationship with yourself.
Cultivate Self-Worth and Thrive
These life lessons—acknowledging that you cannot outrun yourself, understanding that inaction is a choice for more of the same, and recognising that self-respect must be earned—are fundamental for personal growth. They guide you towards a deeper understanding of yourself and encourage a proactive approach to life's challenges.
Embracing these lessons fosters a sense of self-worth and helps cultivate healthier relationships with others. They inspire you to confront internal issues, take meaningful actions, and align your behaviour with your values. As you internalise these lessons, you'll find that your relationship with yourself transforms, paving the way for a more content and fulfilling life.
By understanding and applying these principles, you embark on a journey to greater self-awareness, responsibility, and respect. This journey, while challenging, holds the promise of deep personal satisfaction and authentic happiness. Embrace these lessons and watch as they enrich your life, helping you to overcome insecurity and build thriving, healthy relationships.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Have you ever found yourself repeating the same relationship patterns despite changing partners or circumstances? What does this tell you about the internal work that might still be needed?
Reflect on a situation where you avoided making a necessary change. How did holding back affect your overall sense of fulfilment and self-respect?
Evaluate your current level of self-respect. Are your day-to-day actions aligned with your core values? Where do you see room for alignment and improvement?
Think back to a time when you acted out of alignment with your values. How did this impact your sense of self-worth and self-respect?
How do you currently handle feelings of discomfort or shame? Do you avoid facing them, or do you address the underlying causes?
In what ways do you find yourself blaming external circumstances for your unhappiness rather than taking self-responsibility? What changes could you make to shift this dynamic?
What beliefs or patterns from your past do you find most challenging to overcome? How can you start to reprogram these beliefs to create healthier relationships?
Reflect on an area in your life where you feel stuck. What small, actionable steps can you take today to start moving in a new direction?
How do you define self-respect for yourself? What are tangible actions you can take to cultivate it daily?
Visualise the kind of life and relationships you want. What actions and changes do you need to take now to start moving towards that vision?
These questions and prompts encourage self-reflection and action in alignment with the core themes of self-worth, self-respect, and self-responsibility discussed in the episode.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, I'm sharing 3 pieces of advice or three life lessons that I wish I had learned sooner in life. Now, while I'm grateful to be relatively young and having learned these lessons, at least, you know, I think we're always learning and relearning lessons, but I feel like I've got a a reasonable grip on the 3 that I'm gonna share with you today. And while I'm grateful to have learned them relatively early on in life, I still wish I'd learned them sooner, and I think that I spent a lot of years in my late teens and early twenties flailing a little bit in terms of my relationship with myself and some of my relationships with others on account of not really having a grasp of these lessons. So these are all around the themes of self worth, self respect, self responsibility. And I think they're absolutely integral no matter where you sit on the attachment spectrum, no matter your age or situation or background. These are really foundational to any kind of positive relationship with self.
[00:01:30]:
So I'm looking forward to sharing these with you today. Before I dive into that, this is the final call to join the Secure Self Challenge, which, for those who are not familiar, is my 28 day challenge all about building self worth. We kick off next Monday, so about 5 days from when this will go live. And I would love to have you there. It's really short and sweet. It's very doable. It's kind of action oriented rather than really heavy theory and long lessons and lots of stuff to do. There's a strong community focus, so the community is already open.
[00:02:02]:
So if you were to sign up today, you would get an invite to the community where, you know, everyone is already sharing and connecting and getting to know each other. That's a space where you can also ask me questions and get feedback, and we've got a live call next week. So it's really great value. It's one of my most affordable actually, it is my most affordable live program, and I would absolutely love for you to be part of it. So if you're at all interested, definitely check it out. It's in the show notes. It's on my website, stephanierigg.com, and I would love to see you there. Okay.
[00:02:31]:
So let's dive into this conversation around 3 life lessons that I wish I'd learned sooner. Okay. The first one is you cannot outrun yourself, so wherever you go, there you are. I think this is so important because it's really easy for us to think that when we're in an unsatisfactory situation, relationship, job, whatever it might be, if you're feeling a bit stuck in life, particularly where there's a theme where it's kind of a recurring pattern and you've been there before, you've felt that way before, it's so easy to convince ourselves that changing the circumstances, leaving the relationship, or leaving the job, whatever, that doing that kind of outer work will resolve whatever inner conflict we're experiencing. And that's not to say that making environmental changes can't be part of that shift, that making healthier choices in terms of the relationships we're in or changing jobs if we're in a really toxic work environment, all of those things can be part of self growth. But if we're not actually addressing the root cause of how we got to where we are and what is it within us that has landed us in that pattern again and again, then there is every chance that you will find yourself in some version of that the next time around. It's it's very rare that without the self awareness and the intentional kind of reprogramming of those wounded parts of us, we're incredibly adept at recreating circumstances that bring us into contact with those things, that reaffirm our negative core beliefs about ourselves and that reflects those things back at us. So if you have a core belief that you are unworthy of being in a healthy relationship, there is every chance that you are going to subconsciously seek out partners who reinforce that belief and who leave you feeling like you are not worthy of a good relationship, that you have to prove yourself, that you have to earn love, that you are going to be rejected or abandoned or whatever in favor of someone else who is better than you.
[00:04:32]:
All of these things follow us. Those are unresolved things that really need our attention, and and we keep turning our back on these parts of us rather than doing the really scary but courageous work of actually facing it and opening the can of worms and going, okay, how did I get here? What is it within me? What happened in my past? What shaped me in this way so that I developed with these beliefs that have gotten me to this circumstance again and again and again. Now, it's not comfortable work, and that's why it's so easy to avoid, maybe to blame others or just to keep changing those external circumstances and running away from the problem, but when the problem is within us, there is no running away, there is no outrunning of you. So the first lesson that I wish I had learned earlier is wherever you go, there you are. Your patterns are coming with you unless and until you do the work to resolve them and to really learn a new way of being. Okay. The second one that I want to share with you is by not changing, by not making changes that you know you need to make, you are choosing more of the same. So what do I mean by this? I think that when we are not taking action towards a big life change, or maybe a little life change, right, it could be just habit change, and this isn't just about relationships, this could be something like having healthier habits around, like, diet and exercise.
[00:06:00]:
It could be anything. But I think we tell ourselves that by not making the changes that we know we need to make, we're doing nothing. We're staying still. We're staying stuck. But really, we're always in forward motion. Okay? So you're either in forward motion down the path that is leading you to more of what you want, being the kind of life you want, the kind of feelings you want to have about yourself, about others, about the world, fulfillment, joy, peace, self respect, all of those things, you're either walking down that path or you are walking down the path that is leading you to more of what you do not want. So that might be more of the same. But know that in not making the changes and not taking action towards those changes, you are choosing more of the same.
[00:06:48]:
So just reframing it from a passive to an active thing, I think, really wakes us up a bit to the self responsibility involved in that of, oh, okay. I'm not just staying still. It's not that I'm stagnant and passively existing in my life. Every day that I wake up and I just go through the motions of reenacting all of my habituated patterns, all of my conditioned ways of being, I make the choices that I know are not in service of how I want to live my life and the kind of life that I want. In doing those things, I am actively choosing more of the more of what is keeping me feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, anxious, stressed, burnt out, whatever it might be. You're choosing that by not making the changes that you know you need to make. So that is something that I absolutely wish I had learned sooner because I think that that would have jolted me a little into a bit more self responsibility, a bit more agency, having a bit of a wake up call of, like, this is on you. You can keep, like, living your life in this autopilot mode and making all of those changes, like, a down the track thing, you know, oh, I'll do that, like, next year or later when I have more time, when I can be bothered, or when things get really bad, whatever it might be.
[00:08:02]:
That's not just, like, saving it for later. That's choosing more of the same. It is walking further and further down the path that you don't want to be walking down. So be aware of that. Really audit. Where am I choosing a life that I don't want? And am I contributing every day through my actions, through my tendencies, through my habits, to the formation of a life that is not fulfilling to me? And what do I need to change today in order to change direction towards something that actually sounds good to me and sounds appealing to me in terms of the life that I want to be living. Okay. The third lesson that I wish I had learned earlier is that self respect is something that you have to earn.
[00:08:46]:
Now, I've spoken before on the podcast about self respect. I think that self respect is so, so important. I am far more interested in cultivating self respect than self love, not because I think there's anything wrong with self love, but I just think self respect is much more powerful in a really strong, authentic relationship with self. And for me, self respect is all about value alignment. So, am I showing up in a way that reflects my values? Do I know who I am? Am I comfortable with who I am? And do I act from that place? Or is there this big incongruence, this big gap between the kind of person I say I want to be and the way that I'm showing up? And I think it's a really good telltale sign that there is that gap if you often feel like shame, discomfort, embarrassment, humiliation about the way that you've acted after the fact. So if you've done something that feels really icky and out of alignment and you don't feel good about it, that's a good sign of, like, what is that telling me? Where have I not met my own standards for the kind of person that I want to be? And It's not about perfectionism, it's not about holding ourselves to an impossibly high standard of never making a mistake, but I think we all know when we're out of integrity, and self respect is just such an important thing to earn, and the good news is that you can earn it through the choices that you make and the actions that you take. You might notice that in each of these lessons that I'm sharing with you, there's a strong focus on actions and agency and self responsibility because I think that those things are really what is within our control. And so much of personal development advice is a bit abstract and really suffers from that.
[00:10:27]:
I think it's like, you know, stop comparing yourself to other people, and be kind to yourself, and be loving, and whatever. Those things can just feel so out of reach if all of that stuff is muscle memory, second nature, that's just so deep in your programming that you don't really know where to start. The actions that you take on a day to day basis are much more concrete, and they're kind of easier to shine a light on and easier to see where the choice is. So we can go, oh, there's actually capacity for me to start building out a new branch from the tree here. There's actually capacity for me to choose a new way with this action, and then the action after that, and then the action after that, and really just start that process of compounding that allows us to build out a new relationship with ourselves and a new way of being. So self respect is not something that is just going to magically appear in your life. It's not something that you can think into being. You really do have to earn it, and I think that that is a good thing.
[00:11:24]:
This is not like saying you need to earn someone else's love or earn someone's approval, which I think generally carries a negative connotation. When I say self respect needs to be earned, I think that is really calling you forth into a level of self responsibility and accountability in your relationship with yourself. And to the extent that you feel you're lacking self respect, there might be a reason for it. Okay? And that's kind of a hard truth that a lot of us maybe shy away from, but I think it's an important one. And certainly for me, And I've shared this before at the times in my life when I really lacked self respect. When I look back on it now, I think that that was exactly as it should have been because I wasn't behaving in a way that garnered self respect. I really wasn't, and I think that the discomfort that I felt with that, the lack of integrity, was a really important alarm bell that was pointing me towards where my work was. And I am so fortunate, and I'm so relationship with myself, because I can really comfortably say now that I do have that internal relationship of self respect, and that's so freeing.
[00:12:35]:
It contributes so much to a really embodied sense of self esteem. It's really being able to hand on heart say I'm comfortable with who I am, so that's been a huge one for me, and it's why I'm so bullish on self respect relative to other things like self love. So those were 3 life lessons that I wish I'd learned sooner. Just to recap quickly, it's wherever you go, there you are. You cannot outrun your patterns. They're coming with you until you, turn around and face them and do that courageous work of really tending to the parts of you that need your attention. The second one was by not making the changes that you know you need to make, you are actively choosing more of the same. So it's not just do nothing or make a change, it's continue walking down the path that I don't want to be walking down or walk down a different path.
[00:13:24]:
Okay? So really shifting into more of an active role there in the constant creation of whatever your life is. And the third one is that self respect is earned. So you need to actively do the work through your day to day actions of bringing your values and your choices, your behaviors into alignment so that you have that real sense of integrity. I really hope that that's been helpful. If you enjoyed today's episode, I really do encourage you to sign up to the Secure Self Challenge. This is very much in keeping with what we talk about there and the lessons that we're putting into practice over the 28 days of the challenge. So I would absolutely love to see you there if this is up your alley, as it is mine. But otherwise, thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, guys.
[00:14:14]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
self worth, self respect, self responsibility, attachment, relationships, insecurity, healthy relationships, thriving relationships, life lessons, self awareness, inner conflict, core beliefs, personal growth, environmental changes, self growth, unresolved issues, subconscious patterns, negative core beliefs, relationship advice, self esteem, value alignment, integrity, self respect vs self love, self respect actions, self respect behaviors, self responsibility in relationships, changing habits, choosing life paths, improving self respect, self respect development