Ep 10: Like YOUrself! ||| Washington

Today I talk about learning to like yourself, and also why you have to like yourself before others will truly like you. 

You want others to like you so that you can build the types of close friendships that will lead to you having a better social life! 

One way to like yourself is to be proud of yourself:

Take a minute to think about what you have accomplished in your life. What skills or traits do you have that not many others have? Have you persevered thru tough times? Are you proud of your career accomplishments?

It’s important to think about the things that make you proud of yourself in order to lay the groundwork for having a sense of pride and self-esteem in yourself. 

You should capture some of these things in your mind so that you can feel generally positive about yourself. Think about these things and remind yourself of these things on a daily basis. 

It will boost your confidence over time. And this confidence can make it easier to approach and connect with new people.

This self-confidence in turn allows you to be more authentic with people. It allows you to let your true personality really shine. Confidence can make it easier to approach and connect with new people. 

Confidence is the key to all success. Your best personality skill is being you. 

You can join common interest groups such as meetup groups. 

If you find that people aren’t interested in what you have to say, then they aren’t necessarily the right people for you. 

You have to believe that you can reject people just as well as they can reject you. 

Liking yourself means also that you don’t rely on others to like you or validate you. 

Liking yourself means that you're less likely to seek constant approval or change who you are to fit in. You'll have a sense of independence and won't rely on your friends to fulfill all your emotional needs. 

You can handle rejection, disagreements, and conflicts in a healthier way because you like yourself and you know your worth is not dependent on how others view you. 

When you like yourself, you are able to maintain healthy boundaries in your relationships. 

When you like yourself, you naturally attract good people into your life.

Liking yourself can improve your communication skills. When you're comfortable with who you are, you're more likely to express your thoughts and feelings clearly.

In order to like yourself, change the way you talk to yourself and treat yourself.

No more standing in your own way.

Quote from Daniel Chidiac in his book, “Who Says You Can’t?, You Do”:

People obsess over someone they just met, or think they like someone they don’t even really know. We then crave attention from them, and being ignored by the only person you want attention from is one of the worst feelings. We have all felt it! But when you look deep enough, you realize that the only person you are really craving attention from is yourself. 

Old quote from me in Episode 1: 

I know now that the most likely re

Transcript

Hello there Listeners! Well, here we are at the magic dynamic event of Episode Number 10 of the Shy to Dynamic podcast! Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I am declaring this episode the end of Season 1, and hopefully you will join me on Season 2 whenever it kicks off. I’ll keep you informed of the exact date. 

I hope everyone is doing well on this Leap Day, an event that only happens once every four years which I think is pretty cool.

Today I am broadcasting from a remote location for the first time in honor of my tenth episode. Well, just kidding, I just happen to be here for work reasons. But I am in Richmond, Virginia! Which is slightly ironic because I am only a little more than 100 miles from my dedicated city this week, which is our nation’s capital, Washington, DC! I didn’t plan it this way, but the Universe has a way of making coincidences happen! Is there a deeper meaning?... Well probably not, but you never know! I’ll have to wait and see.

So… for my tenth episode, I wanted to kind of return to the main original goal of my podcast, which is to help others to overcome their shyness and generally their negative emotions that hold them back in life and keep them in that shy, socially anxious state. And to that end, I want to talk about learning to like yourself, and also why you have to like yourself before others will truly like you. 

Of course you want others to like you so that you can build the types of close friendships that will lead to you having a better social life! You will always be held back when you feel that other people don’t like you or that they can’t like you. You won’t believe that others will like and appreciate you until you begin to believe that they have a good reason to like you. This could also apply of course to getting people to love you in terms of romantic relationships, but to keep it simple, I will just focus on getting people to simply like you and enjoy your personality. 

One way to like yourself is to be proud of yourself. Take a minute to think about what have you accomplished in your life? What have you done that makes you feel that you are special? What makes you feel that you are unique? I laid out some things in my first episode that I enjoy about myself and things that I feel make me unique. What skills or traits do you have that not many others have? Have you shown uncommon strength in a certain life situation? Have you persevered thru tough times? Are you proud of the way you have raised your children? Are you maybe proud of places you’ve visited? Are you proud of your athletic accomplishments? Or career accomplishments?

It’s not necessary to tell everyone about all these things during new conversations. Because they may not be relevant to the conversation. But it’s important to think about the things that make you proud of yourself in order to lay the groundwork for having a sense of pride and self-esteem in yourself. You should identify some of these things in your mind so that you can feel generally positive about who you are and what you can do. You may even want to do some journaling and write some of these things down. Post it on your wall. Write it into a notebook. Think about these things and remind yourself of these things on a daily basis. When you feel down on yourself or feel that you are a loser, remind yourself of what you have accomplished or achieved. It doesn’t need to be academic or career achievements. Think of things that just make you feel special and appreciated. Appreciated by yourself. And this will give you confidence when you meet people. Because you have thought about it and have become proud of yourself and who you are. It won’t necessarily happen immediately, but it will boost your confidence over time. And this confidence can make it easier to approach and connect with new people.

This self-confidence in turn allows you to be more authentic with people. It allows you to let your true personality really shine. Confidence can make it easier to approach and connect with new people. Confidence is the key to all success. Some people are afraid to let their real personality shine because they feel their personality is inadequate or even unlikeable. But ironically, being as authentic as possible is the best way to get people to like you. Because no one can be you as well as you can be you. 

Your best personality skill is being you. 

Of course there can be negative aspects of your personality that are not worth showing. If you are constantly doing things that hurt people, you will need to take some time to work on and fix those traits. Learn not to be rude to people. Learn not to say offensive comments. But when it comes to more neutral character traits, such as enjoying certain hobbies for example, or enjoying talking about certain subjects, then feel free to engage people in those topics. I often hear people talk on certain topics and I’m like “Wow, how are they able to talk so voluminously about that subject? I couldn’t do that!” But often you have certain things that you are very capable of talking at length about. But for some reason, you may not feel those things are interesting to other people or maybe that those things just aren’t meaningful or important to the world. You may feel that those things have little value to anyone. But those things do have value to someone! You need to go forth into the world believing that your favorite subjects and hobbies are interesting to someone out there. Of course those things won’t be interesting to everyone, but you have to find people that share some of your interests. People are interested in all sorts of things. Because there is so much diversity in people. You can join common interest groups such as meetup groups if you like.

If you find that people aren’t interested in what you have to say, then they aren’t necessarily the right people for you. 

You have to believe that you can reject people just as well as they can reject you. 

Many people just allow people to reject them, but they never empower themselves to reject other people. They never decide that someone else is not good enough for them because they don’t feel highly enough about themselves to think anyone else is unworthy of them. 

Liking yourself means also that you don’t rely on others to like you or validate you. That’s an important skill you need to have to get thru life. Having the firm belief that you are worthy regardless of how many people around you like you. Obviously you need some people to like you. If no one likes you at all, then you might have some things to work on. But liking yourself is the first step to getting people to like you, and also it’ll help get you thru the times when you don’t have many friends. 

Liking yourself means that you're less likely to seek constant approval or change who you are to fit in. If you like yourself, you're less likely to be overly needy in your friendships, which can be a huge huge turnoff to other people. You'll have a sense of independence and won't rely on your friends to fulfill all your emotional needs. 

Because then you feel worthy enough to be kind to yourself, and forgive yourself for any shortcomings. And more importantly you feel worthy of standing up for yourself because you know that you and your beliefs and preferences are worth defending. You can handle rejection, disagreements, and conflicts in a healthier way because you like yourself and you know your worth is not dependent on how others view you. 

When you like yourself, you are able to maintain healthy boundaries in your relationships because you value your own needs first and foremost. I told one of my good friends a while back that he should set up boundaries in his friendships… that every time someone wants him to do something together, that he can say no. He told me recently that he started doing that, and he is happy with the results. 

I know in one particular relationship I had, I definitely settled for less than appropriate behavior towards me because I really didn’t like or value myself. And after I moved to Charlotte and grew to like myself more, I learned how to let that person exit my life, which is what he wanted to do anyway. So learning to like myself allowed me to fully acknowledge those signals he was giving me and to no longer allow his disrespecting rejecting behavior.

When you like yourself, you naturally attract good people into your life. It’s famously called the Law of Attraction.

Liking yourself can improve your communication skills. When you're comfortable with who you are, you're more likely to express your thoughts and feelings clearly. Because you respect yourself, you understand how to respect others and listen to your friends more actively and show them respect. Mutual respect leads to stronger social and friendship connections.

In order to like yourself, change the way you talk to yourself and treat yourself. Tell yourself that you are an interesting and capable person. Tell yourself that you deserve close friendships and positive relationships. Write it down as a mantra if you want. Convince yourself that you can do anything you want. Don’t put yourself in danger, but do things outside your comfort zone so that you have more things to be proud of yourself for. 

My newfound favorite artist, Katy Perry has a great song called Love Me. And I’m sorry (not sorry) to highlight yet another Katy Perry song, but I’ve been really inspired by her lyrics lately. In fact this one song pretty much inspired this episode! 

The lyrics of the song go: I don't negotiate with insecurities, They always seem to get the best of me, I found I had to love myself the way I wanted you to Love me

No more second-guessing, There's no more questioning, I'll be the one defining who I'm gonna be, I'm gonna love myself the way I want you to love me, 

No more standing in my own way…

End quote. That sums it up perfectly because so much of our inferiority complex comes from seeking love and appreciation from other people when we are really desiring love and appreciation from our own selves.

And once we accomplish that, people can pick up on that self-love, that self-respect, and that self-esteem and they will gravitate towards you. 

And with that, this concludes this episode dedicated to Washington, the capital city of this great nation. Happy Leap Day once again. I’m going to take a little break before I resume with Season 2 of this podcast. So let me know if you have any topic ideas for Season 2!

If you have enjoyed this episode, and you got something useful out of this episode, then please give me five stars and write a review. Also please pass this podcast along to your friends or family or anyone you know that could benefit from it as well! And please contact me if you like!

As always, remember to show up and DELIVER for yourself today and create a NEW dynamic version of yourself.

Thanks so much for being my fans. 

Episode 10, the Washington, DC episode, is now done!