Redeemed and Radiant with Ashley Lutzelberger
Welcome to Redeemed and Radiant with Ashley, where open, honest, and vulnerable conversations about relationships take center stage. Grounded in biblical truths, we explore love, friendship, family, and faith through heartfelt stories and Christ-centered guidance. Whether you’re navigating challenges or celebrating victories, you’ll find wisdom and encouragement to build deeper, God-honoring connections.
Redeemed and Radiant with Ashley Lutzelberger
The Journey: The Importance of Trust and Respect for Yourself
This episode emphasizes the importance of cultivating trust and respect in one’s relationship with oneself as foundational aspects of personal growth and emotional well-being. It explores self-awareness, honesty, and self-respect while offering practical steps for listeners to embark on their journey toward healthier self-relationships.
• Building trust and self-honesty as vital pillars
• Understanding the role of self-awareness in personal growth
• The impact of self-respect on decision-making and resilience
• Techniques for fostering a positive self-image, including journaling
• The importance of setting and maintaining healthy boundaries
• Navigating feedback from others to support self-improvement
• Embracing imperfection as a means of true self-acceptance
Thank you for joining me on Redeemed and Radiant. Remember, no matter where you are in your journey, God’s love can redeem and restore every part of your life. Stay radiant, stay rooted in Him, and I’ll see you next time!
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Hey everyone and welcome to Redeemed and Radiant with Ashley. I know that we took a couple weeks off due to the holidays. I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and New Year's and was able to enjoy it. This year here in Arizona, it did not feel like Christmas just because it was so warm. We're finally getting some cold weather this week, but it has been super warm that it does not feel like winter.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, we're going to kind of pick up where we've been leaving off. We mentioned the seven different pillars of relationships, and we're still talking about our relationship with ourselves, because without a relationship with ourselves, we cannot have good relationships outside of ourselves. Um, so we are going to start off with truth and respect this week, or trust and respect, and that is going to start us off on a couple episode series on going deeper into these things, why it's important to know these pillars and what to they, their key components, are to help you and how to actually start implementing those in your relationships. So, um, if you have not followed me on my socials, I do post stuff on my Instagram and my Facebook page regarding things that we've talked about. Um, I did actually do a post talking about all the seven pillars of the relationship. I'm going to read to you what I posted about trust. So trust is a vital pillar in your relationship with yourself. Without it, self-doubt takes over, leaving you feeling stuck and uncertain. Trusting yourself means believing in your ability to make decisions and learning from your mistakes and grow. It's how you build confidence, resilience and alignment with the person that God's created you to be. When you trust yourself, you create a solid foundation and a deeper love for yourself and grace.
Speaker 1:So, obviously, with me, I do use a lot of the stuff that God has done and that the Bible says when it comes to these things, just because, for me, I am a Christian, I believe in God, and whether it looks one way for you or another way, or in a different, completely different way for you, I want you to know there's no judgment here. I will be speaking from my personal experiences. However, and with that being said, you can take and leave whatever you want and whatever you don't want in these messages. If you prefer self-help books over using the Bible, you can do so. However, I am a firm believer that you want to use the actual Bible, because you will get all of the self-help that you have ever needed or wanted. It's all in the Bible, and then you only need one book, but also devotions. Um, for those of you who are looking to further your relationship with God and yourself, there are devotions that you can get as well. That can help you.
Speaker 1:But we're going to start with truth. So when we start being honest and truthful with ourselves, then we start to become more self-aware. When we start to become more self-aware, then we actually start to understand why we have the thoughts, emotions and behaviors that we have far more clearly, and the reactions that you have to things as well. We can identify our strengths and our weaknesses and work on improving them. And self-awareness is essential for personal growth.
Speaker 1:And that starts with being honest with ourselves. And it can be very scary to be honest with ourselves, because usually when we're lying to ourselves, we're not being honest about something or we change the narrative to make it be where maybe it was something that we were at fault for, but we changed the narrative to where we're now the victim. It's because we were feeling ashamed, or we just don't want to actually own up to the fact that maybe we did something wrong that we are not proud of. But being honest with ourselves allows us to lead to making more informed decisions and ultimately leading into a more fulfilling and authentic life. It is so important to be honest with ourselves Because when we're honest with ourselves, then it makes it easier to start, almost, in a sense, having more confidence in ourselves Like it will trigger a lot of other things. There's a huge domino effect that these seven pillars that we are going to go through will have, and maybe you are really good at being honest with yourself, but maybe you don't necessarily respect yourself. Or maybe one of the pillars you're really strong in but you're lacking in other pillars, maybe one of the pillars you're really strong in but you're lacking in other pillars. This is to help you figure out which pillar you need to work on, so that way you can figure out ways to implement it into your life and then hopefully that will just help continue to strengthen your relationship with yourself and then we will move forward with our next section of all these relationships.
Speaker 1:But it starts talking about self-awareness. Self-awareness is when you are aware of you and how you're feeling, how you are physically reacting, emotionally reacting, what your thoughts are, what you're saying. So these all kind of go into self-awareness, usually as a child. A child doesn't necessarily understand where their body necessarily is at all times. So you might see them, you know, when a kid is learning to walk for the first time, for example, you watch them be very wobbly. You watch them leaning backwards and forwards. They fall down Once they start walking. You see them walking a lot with their hands out in order to catch themselves.
Speaker 1:One of the things that working with kids and stuff that I've learned, and working with people and children with ADD or ADHD or just being on the spectrum of any sort is they need to know their self-awareness and their awareness of their physical self, and that is something that, like we recommend oh, maybe doing gymnastics or some sort of sport like physical sport, will help them realize where their physical body is, so that way it also helps their brain focus. So in the same sense, we need to do that with ourselves. Sometimes we need to talk to ourselves like we're children and we're learning something new for the first time and, as weird as that sounds sometimes, that's just what we need to do and it's the most effective way for us to learn or rewire things in our brain, and a lot of that is due to what's happened in our childhood, what we lacked in our childhood lacked in our childhood. If there was any trauma. Maybe growing up you didn't have that parental figure to tell you how to do something. So now you, as an adult, have these holes and these pieces that are missing and now you have to now go back and, essentially, sorry, talk to yourself as the adult that you always needed. So if you've never been taught how to be honest with yourself and figure out your emotions and having self-awareness, then this might be something new for you. But the key reasons as why truth is important in the relationship with yourself is we're going to talk about self-awareness, the first one being self-awareness. By being honest with your thoughts and emotions and your behaviors, you end up gaining a deeper understanding of yourself, which is so essential for personal development. It's essential for children and it's essential for adults. It's essential for everybody.
Speaker 1:Personal development is something that happens when you're willing to put the work in. Usually, if you have a job, you usually have a yearly review at the end of the year to go over what you've done for that year and what the positives, negatives things, the ways that you need to grow, things like that it's kind of that same essential idea, but you're doing it for yourself. You can't expect personal development if you're not willing to put the work in. All of these things will take work and they will take time and they will take practice, but it's worth it in the end. Another key reason is your personal growth. Being honest with yourself helps you recognize your strengths and your weaknesses, which then allows you to work on the areas where you need to improve, leading to personal growth and a healthier self-image.
Speaker 1:So for me personally, my self-image is not the best, and that's a lot of it has to do with if you've ever watched the movie Duff or the Duff, or you've ever heard of the term designated ugly fat friend. That is how I have felt my entire life, and losing over 130 pounds and now being able to shop and wear clothes that I've never been able to do or wear or fit is very hard for me personally to digest because in my head I still see myself as a 305 pound person. So even though I'm going through all these things with you guys does not mean that I have all these things down packed and I'm perfect and I'm living life on cloud nine and not worrying about any of these things. These are things I am daily working on myself, with me, and my relationship with myself, my relationship with God. So then my relationship with others can be more successful, more healthy, because remember your relationship with yourself. If it's not good, if it's a toxic relationship with yourself, that is something that you really need to reevaluate and readjust, because it's one thing to have a toxic relationship with someone that you can cut ties with, but you can't cut ties with yourself, which is why we're starting with relationships with ourselves.
Speaker 1:Another key reason that truth is important is it brings authenticity. When you are truthful with yourself, you are more likely to live in alignment with your values and true desires, creating a sense of authenticity. If you are pretending all the time, you are not being an authentic person. Okay, I like to wear makeup, wigs, change my style daily, but that does not mean that I am not being me. I do not change my personality with the, with what I'm wearing. Um, they are accessories and things I use to accessorize. So authenticity doesn't have to go based off of how you look, but it has to go with the internal side of you, on, um, how you are being honest with yourself internally and what that looks like, and, in turn, people will notice that there's something different about you. And when it says that it helps you align with your values and your true desires, that means it will help align you with whatever faith you have, whatever your belief systems are. It will help you with maybe you've grown because things have happened.
Speaker 1:So, like I know, for me my love language is changing because, um love language, for my love language, used to be um, words of affirmation, um, but I realized that I was being a people pleaser and not just a people lover, and so words of affirmation and, like people, acknowledging what I was doing, was a way of feeding into that. So, for me, my love language is changing because I'm growing, I'm changing and I'm evolving, and so, therefore, my personal um love language is changing. I still don't know what it is quite yet and I'm working on that, but that goes with values and your true desires. Just like you may have a dream one day to be a? Um a pilot, the next day your dream may change to being a fashion designer. It doesn't matter what your dreams are, they change. God gives us the desires of our hearts when they are true and they align with his word and I had a business that I was super excited about. It still is my business, but the way I thought it was going to go was going to be like this huge thing where I was going to be doing a lot of public events, a lot of things like that, and it is actually going the opposite way, where it's not me doing that, it's going to be just doing personal things for people and helping my church, and that's something that I wasn't expecting. That I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 1:But when we are reevaluating our self relationships, like our relationship with ourself, things change, desires change, values change, and we have to be honest with ourselves when those things are changing, because just because they're changing doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It just means that you're growing and you're evolving. So that's another reason why it's important to be honest and truthful with yourself. Another key reason is decision making. Honest self-reflection helps make you inform, makes you make informed decisions based on your true needs and priorities, rather than being influenced by self-deception. So that's exactly what goes in line with what I was just talking about. So when we grow, things change and that's okay. But we need to be honest with ourselves and be and say it's okay that things are changing. Life is ever changing, we are ever growing, we are ever evolving into a new part of ourselves all the time a better part of ourselves, hopefully, and I don't know about you, but I'm very indecisive.
Speaker 1:I don't like to make decisions. My husband can attest to that. Um, I always hate making food decisions. That was like my worst thing. He always asked me what do you want for food? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. What do you want to do? I don't know. What do you want to watch? I don't know. So for me, sometimes I do know and I still just say I don't know. But for the most part, I really don't know, because I really am just an easygoing, laid back person that just really doesn't care. As long as there's something I can eat, I'm good.
Speaker 1:Um, but we need to be able to be honest with ourselves so that we're not just being influenced by self-deception. Self-deception is so easily done by just well, this isn't what I have always done. So therefore, this must not be real. This must not be who I am. We need to be honest, we need to understand ourselves better. We need to know our self-awareness aspects. Another one is for our emotional well-being and it says to accept your flaws and acknowledge your emotions, even the negative ones, can help improve your emotional stability and resilience.
Speaker 1:I talk a lot about mental health on here because mental health is so important, but mental health also starts with the relationship with you. If you can't be honest with yourself, if you can't accept yourself when you're changing and ever growing, then you cannot have a good emotional well-being. You cannot have a good emotional well-being. We are all flawed. There is nothing about us that is perfect. Even when we have strived for perfection, we will never achieve it. So, acknowledging that we are going to have flaws and that's okay but not just focusing on those flaws. Focus on the good things that we have as well, like what you're good at, focus at the things that you enjoy, focus on those things as well. But be able to say I need to work on this. And maybe it's anger, maybe it's. You just get defensive very easily when someone says something. Acknowledge that. But then you can improve that by being honest with yourself, saying man, I get defensive really easily. I need to work on that. And when you say that, not even just saying it internally, but saying it out loud is is the best way to do these kinds of things, because you are um making it known that I need to address these issues. I need to address what's going on. I am not perfect and that's okay.
Speaker 1:The next one is building trust. When you're honest with yourself, you're building trust in your own judgment and intuition, leading to a greater confidence. If you can't trust yourself, you cannot trust anyone. You will have a very hard time trusting anybody else. Trusting yourself is very, very hard for a lot of things, depending on how your background is. If you grew up with a lack of trust or you grew up with people constantly talking down to you, that definitely does shake the way you feel about trusting yourself, because then you feel like, well, some chaos ensued and I've been told my whole life I'm the problem. I don't trust myself now, when something bad happens, because I have been taught my whole life I am the problem. That is how you need to be honest with yourself then and say, no, this is what I was told, but this is not fact, this is not truth. I am not always the problem. Other people have other issues too, and they are outside of my circle of control. So, therefore, I need to just trust myself. I need to trust how I'm feeling, trusting the judgment of um, who and what you're doing, who you're talking to, um, and, in turn, all of this will lead to a greater confidence, which is great.
Speaker 1:We all want more confidence in ourselves, Um, and I know that, for me, my confidence is not where it used to be. People think that I have a lot of confidence, even when I don't. I'm really good at like, making it look like I have a lot of confidence, but I'm working. It's because I'm working on it. I know that my confidence is lacking, so therefore I'm working on it, but it's not perfect. Again, I'm accepting my flaws. This is how we can start to incorporate and cultivate the truth in your relationship Sorry, in your relationship with yourself.
Speaker 1:First thing is self-reflection Every day. Just take a moment. It can take five minutes. It could be when you first wake up, it could be when you're going to bed at night, it could be once you get home from work. But just take about five minutes and just examine your thoughts, feelings and actions and then identify the areas where you might be deceiving yourself.
Speaker 1:We all deceive ourselves. We live in this world where social media is rampant and we're supposed to look and feel and be a specific way, and that may not be true. You may have had a really hard day at work today and that may have shaken your confidence and your abilities, what you can and cannot do. So, therefore, you just put that smile on your face and you just go oh, I'm fine. You just put that smile on your face and you just go, oh, I'm fine, I'm good. If I show the weakness, if I show that I'm struggling, then that means I'm not perfect. That is deceiving yourself. We need to be, we need to have self-reflection daily and just sitting in a quiet area, even if it's in your car, whatever you can do just to examine some of your thoughts, your feelings and actions and then be honest with yourself and be like man today I was really sad and then maybe it will actually show you why you were feeling sad and then you can go from feeling sad to changing that, because now you understand why you were feeling sad and that, hey, I recognize this emotion because of X, y and Z.
Speaker 1:Another thing you can do to help cultivate this is journaling. You write down your thoughts and your feelings and it can help you gain clarity and identify patterns of self-deception. I am a huge journaler. I love to write notes, I am a note person, so for me that's really easy. Honestly, for me, the only issue I have is just taking the time to do so. But journaling helps too, because then you can always go back and you can see where you were versus where you are and see the growth that you've made within yourself and maybe with others.
Speaker 1:Seeking feedback Now, this is something that you have to do with someone you genuinely trust and someone that you have a relationship with that you know they are going to be loving, honest and kind. But give you the truth. Seeking feedback says asking a trusted friend or family member for honest feedback about your behavior and your perceptions. Remember, everyone on the outside looking in has a different point of view than you looking out. If you're trying to better yourself, you're going to want to know well, how do I come across? Because sometimes we don't necessarily understand. I didn't understand how I was coming across or how I was perceiving things until I got the diagnosis of ADD and autism with OCD and DID, and then I realized, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense as to why I perceive the things I perceive and I act the way I act and I respond the way I respond.
Speaker 1:And then when I would bring that feedback to my husband or ask him for his feedback and tell him, hey, this is kind of like what I'm thinking he would be like. You are exactly correct, and I've thought this too. I just wanted to make sure that you were comfortable, in a good area to accept it. So you also need to make sure that you are in a healthy enough area in your life to ask for that feedback, because sometimes that feedback is going to be harder to hear than you want. We're not going to always get. You are an amazing friend, you're perfect, you're an amazing wife or husband, or a great father, great mother, great child, great sibling, great whatever, because in reality, we can't be great at everything all the time and there's going to be areas that we have to grow and learn from, and that's okay. So, seeking feedback, though, we need to use our discernment and make sure that we are trusting and we are talking to someone that we trust, that we know has our best interests at heart, and we are talking to someone that we trust, that we know has our best interests at heart and that is not going to use it against you.
Speaker 1:Then this one is a very interesting one, because when I saw it I was like, wow, I never thought about this. But it says challenge your assumptions, be critical of your own beliefs and assumptions and be willing to change your perspective if necessary. So a lot of people like to take pieces of the Bible and use it as an example. Take bits and pieces of the Bible and say well, this is truth. Okay, the Bible may say the statement that you're talking about and you say that this is truth. However, in the context that you're using it in is not truth, because you sometimes in the Bible, you need to read the scriptures all around, the verses, all around what you're reading in order to actually get what it's truly saying.
Speaker 1:Also, there are times where I've grown up in the church. I've read the Bible my whole life. I've been a believer my entire life. But since I've gone through some bigger things in my life lately, it's changed a lot of my views and it's changed a lot of areas for me to be able to be more open, to actually understand things instead of making assumptions. I've read stories in the Bible that I've read before, able to be more open, to actually understand things instead of making assumptions. Um, I've read stories in the Bible that I've read before, but I never understood them in a way that I understand them now. Um, not saying that like what I was proceeding was wrong, but what I, what I took in, was just a fraction of what the actual story really was and what the actual true meaning really was.
Speaker 1:So challenging your assumptions is a huge thing because it goes along with not just your beliefs, but also with people around you. You know, if you are a self-critical person, you're going to think everyone's being self-critical of you. You're going to think that everyone is judging you, that people have problems with you, people don't like you, that you don't fit in. Those are assumptions and they're not facts, they're not true. So we need to be able to challenge that, and that's something that, like I, was very surprised to read about and actually study about, because it makes a lot of sense and I just never thought about it that way. One more thing that you can do to help cultivate truth in your relationship with yourself is practicing mindfulness. So mindfulness experiences mindfulness experiences can help you become more aware of your present moments, your thoughts and your feelings, enabling you to be more honest with yourself. So, really, like anytime that you are, you have time to just kind of be alone, be quiet, listening to how you are feeling, what you're going through. Maybe you had a rough day, I said earlier a rough day. That will help.
Speaker 1:Um, there's some verses in the Bible that I kind of want to talk about that include truth, um, truth in action. It says in first John 3, 18,. It says dear children, let us not love with the words or speech, but with action and in truth. Okay, we always say actions speak louder than words, because the words can easily be misused, misutilized or it could be just said to appease somebody versus your actions. Show your true feelings, your true emotions. So that is what that is saying there. There's truth in speech. Ephesians 4.15 says always speak the truth and you can also ephesians 4, 25 as well, um, if you go to church.
Speaker 1:Truth in worship. It says god calls believers to worship him in truth, which is in john 4, 24 when you are worshiping. If you do not go to church and you don't have a relationship with god, you may not understand this, but for those of you who do, worship is one of the most important aspects of your relationship with God because it opens up so much. But when you're worshiping him, you can't worship him by being fake. You need to be honest. You need to be truthful, so honest fake, you need to be honest. You need to be truthful, so honest. He calls you to be honest. He calls believers to worship him in truth. So if you're having a rough day and you need to get on your knees and you need to pray and worship, then do it. Don't just stand there with a smile on your face and pretend everything is fine, because God knows that everything's not fine.
Speaker 1:Another one is truth and character, and it says God takes pleasure in seeing his truth reflected in his character or in the character of his children, which is Psalms 15, one through five, or Psalms 51, six. God looks at us and he wants, he's created us in his image, which means we have his characteristics. One of those characteristics is truth and we need to show that um truth in testimony. So, first of all, your testimony. As long as you are being honest about your testimony, whatever your testimony is, your life story, as you are being honest about your testimony, whatever your testimony is, your life story is. You're being honest in it. This is what this is. This is truth and testimony. So Jesus answered you say that I am king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to be a witness to the truth, which is John 18, um 37.
Speaker 1:Jesus, his whole life, was the testimony that we read in the Bible. It's an answer to, um things that were talked about, um prior to him even coming. Um, you know it, there was a lot of yeah the other word off the top of my head it's going to come a lot of prophecies about him, um, the things that people never saw. But when Jesus came, he, he proved those prophecies to be true and he fulfilled them. Not everyone believed him, but he never lied. His testimony is his truth.
Speaker 1:Your testimony needs to have your truth in it and it's not. There's a difference between the truth and your truth. Okay, it needs to be the truth, not quote unquote. In today's society, your truth, your truth, is a deception a lot of the times and a misconception of what actually happened. So it needs to be the actual truth. Now you can see and feel however you want to see and feel, because God has given that to us. But that's why they always say there's three versions to every story. There's your side, there's my side and then there's the truth.
Speaker 1:The truth is where your testimony leads to lie. It says truth in the word. It says the sum of your word is truth and every one of those righteous rules endures forever, which is Psalms 119, 160. So in the Psalms, david wrote these Psalms to the Lord. He's actually speaking to him, saying that the sum of his word is true. God never lied.
Speaker 1:Everything in the Bible is true, truth in the heart. And it says behold your delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. That's Psalms 51.6. That's God teaching you how to have the wisdom and how to be bold in that in your heart. And then there's a truth in the community, which is Proverbs 6, 16 through 20. It lists the six things that the Lord hates and he detests, and one of the things that the Lord hates and detests is a lying tongue and false witness.
Speaker 1:So if you are working on a relationship with yourself or with others, gossiping and lying and causing deceit in other areas is not what you are looking to do. That is the complete opposite of what we are learning here. It's the complete opposite of having healthy relationships and having healthy boundaries and living a fulfilled life the next one we're going to talk about. So those are the things that we can do when it comes to truth. Um, all of these things take time. I don't expect anyone to overnight be like I did everything and I'm good. Okay, all of these things are a work in progress. That is why there's going to be multiple sections of these. Um, we're going to try to get through the full one of respect, but if it gets to be a really long episode, then we may cut respect in half and, um, pick it up next week. But, um, respect and relationships with yourself. Um, I'm going to also read what I posted on my social media. Like I had mentioned before, I had made a post about all of these things.
Speaker 1:So it says respect is a vital pillar in your relationship with yourself. Without it, it's easy to allow a negative self-talk and healthy boundaries and feelings of unworthiness to take over. Respecting yourself means recognizing your God-given value, honoring your needs and setting boundaries that reflect your worth. It's how you show building a foundation of self-worth, confidence and alignment with the truth of who God created you to be. When you respect yourself, you are created. You create a space for growth, love and grace. So that's a lot to take in for respect. I mean respect is a huge thing. If you choose, you can't respect. Just just like I said with with, like, trusting, you cannot respect other people if you can't respect yourself. You cannot respect other people if you can't respect yourself. And that's something I'm still learning with for myself, too, is improving my respect with myself. So that way, I'm not letting people take advantage of me because I used to be such a big, huge people person or people pleaser.
Speaker 1:So self-respect is key in building confidence and maintaining a healthy relationship with others throughout your life. It's accepting yourself as you as a whole person. It does not mean that you think that you are perfect. In fact we are. We all deserve respect even though we are not perfect. So remember that. It also informs us that the foundation for healthy interactions with others allow you to set healthy boundaries, prioritize your needs and adding to your confidence, which leads you to a more fulfilling life and positive relationships with others.
Speaker 1:However, you can't truly respect others if you do not respect yourself first, which is something I just said. So respect is a huge foundation in this, because we need to know those boundaries with ourselves. We need to know those boundaries with others and we need to. We need to accept ourselves. We are all not perfect. We need to accept that if I have, my teeth are the way my teeth are and they aren't going to be perfect, that's fine. I'm the way I was created to be. I lost weight. Like a lot of people sit there and say, well, you had weight loss surgery. So you can't say that I had weight loss surgery due to medical issues, not due to a physical desire to look a certain way. I've not had any plastic surgery or anything like that. That doesn't mean that I won't have skin removal at some point, um, but, for, like again, health reasons, because without skin removal sometimes you do get rashes and stuff like that and it can cause other medical issues. But I did it due to, um, medical needs that I needed to work on.
Speaker 1:But these are going to be the key points about the importance of self-respect, positive self-image, respecting yourself, fosters a positive view of your own worth, boosting your self-esteem and confidence. That, in turn, will create endorphins in your brain and will help you feel more confident, be more confident and enjoy life better. Healthy boundaries is another key point. When you respect yourself, you are more likely to set and maintain healthy boundaries in relationships, protecting your emotional well-being. All of this again goes back to mental health. If we cannot mentally take care of ourselves, we will allow bad things into our lives and that will cause harm to your mental state of mind. It can cause harm to you physically, emotionally and in other areas. It can cause complete and utter changing in how you go into other relationships. Moving forward, another key point is decision-making.
Speaker 1:Self-respect empowers you to make decisions that are aligned with your values and needs, rather than solely catering to others. So what's really important with self-respect is knowing that you are not a people pleaser. You can love others, but you are not here on this earth to please others. You were not put here to be a walking doormat. You were not put here on this earth to just say yes, ma'am, no, sir, do what you're told, and not have a thought process of your own. You can make decisions. You can be empowered in yourself to make those decisions healthfully and not just do it to appease other people around you.
Speaker 1:Another key point is it helps with resilience. It says a strong sense of self-respect helps you bounce back from setbacks and challenges with greater resilience. Life never goes the way we want it to go. We always have our life mapped out in a specific way and even if it's just how work went today and you didn't like how work went today and that is giving you a huge setback for the rest of your day, if you have self-respect it's easier for you to then bounce back from. Maybe your boss got cross with you today, maybe a coworker said something that just hit a nerve and you were just so over it. It helps you with those setbacks and challenges in life and you can jump right back to being who you are and not being affected by those things.
Speaker 1:Another key point about having self-respect is you attract positive relationships by valuing yourselves. You attract partners who also respect and value you. I have been in relationships where I was not respecting myself. So therefore, the person I was with did not respect me either, allowed them to feel like it was okay to cheat on me in a relationship, that it was okay to say hurtful things to me in the relationship, that it was okay for them to verbally abuse, borderline abuse, mentally abuse me in the relationship because I didn't have the self-worth I needed or self-respect I needed for me. So therefore, if I didn't have it for me, why would they have it for me as well? So, if you are finding yourself in those areas, maybe this is a spot that you need to evaluate.
Speaker 1:Another key point is emotional well-being. Self-respect contributes to a positive emotional state, reducing stress and anxiety, like I said up at the top, boosting self-esteem and confidence. That brings in endorphins. In endorphins, endorphins help your emotional well-being. So a lot of these things help. It's like a circle. They all help each other. I don't know about you, but reducing stress and anxiety is a huge thing for me, because that is what my medical issues I dealt with this year were stemmed from were from things that were due to high, stressful and anxious things.
Speaker 1:Um, I have some ways for us to cultivate and start working on adding self-respect into our, our life. Um, some of them go right hand in hand with the ones that we just talked about for truth. So the first one is self-awareness, understanding your strength and weaknesses and your values. So that can go into your journaling, that can go into when you're meditating, um, or you're thinking about you know your day, your self-awareness. You can ask yourself when you're being truthful with yourself. Am I being respectful to myself? Am I putting myself in respectful positions to be treated the way I want to be treated, or am I putting myself in an area that's going to cause more harm than good?
Speaker 1:Another way to cultivate self-respect is positive self-talk, challenging the negative thoughts and replacing them with positive affirmations, writing positive things on your mirror in the morning, or a sticky note, or, when you're starting to journal for the day, writing one positive thing about you that you know that you're struggling with. I struggle with the way I look, so for me it would be like I look the way that God wants me to look, or I am perfect in my imperfections, or things along those lines. Remember, we also need to accept the fact that we are not perfect and we cannot strive for being perfect, because we will never be perfect, but we can improve. Another way we can do this is prioritize self-care, engaging in activities that nourish your physical and mental health going to therapy, doing face masks, treating yourself to something that you really enjoy, like eating. Eating Um, maybe it's a shop day, maybe it's buying something that you know you enjoy. My husband loves to build Legos, so maybe it's just buying a Lego set so you can decompress and like, just focus on yourself. I like to do face masks or hair masks or you know things like that. Just doing those things, um, just to help your physical and mental health. Um, going for a walk in quietness by yourself can also help with every single one of these cultivations, for both self-respect and trust and truth. So just keep that in your back of your mind. While you are going on a walk, you can think and do all of these things, except for journaling. I could see there being issues with you walking and journaling at the same time.
Speaker 1:Another way to cultivate self-respect is setting realistic goals, achieving goals that are meaningful to you, and then celebrate your accomplishments. It's okay to celebrate when you succeed. That's something I struggle with. I feel like, when I celebrate myself, that it's not something that I should do, because I feel like that that's a selfish thing to do. Do, but you should celebrate yourself in certain times and aspects. Um, hey, just a second, kylo, stop it. No, but it's not a toy and you just witnessed my daily life with my cat, my one of my kittens, kylo Ren. Hey, leave the cord alone, please. He wants to be helpful and play with my charging cord. Kylo Ren hey, stop. No, he is so much like Lando, it's insane. He wants to chew on all the cords. Anyway, now that he is done chewing on the cord, I can finish. But celebrating yourself is always good, you know. Make sure that you make time for yourself. Set realistic goals. It's a new year, it's the perfect time to start that. You know they don't have to be big goals, just small ones.
Speaker 1:Accepting your flaws is another way to cultivate your self-respect Recognizing that everyone makes mistakes. And embrace your imperfections Exactly what I talked about just a few minutes ago. And embrace your imperfections Exactly what I talked about just a few minutes ago. We can strive to be better, but we need to remember that we're never going to be perfect. And then recognize that, like when you make a mistake, that's okay, because, guess what? Someone else made the same mistake, if not a bigger one than you did the same day, and and you just don't even know about it, except your flaws. And then this is another one a practice your assertiveness.
Speaker 1:Communicate your needs and opinions clearly and confidently. You are worth being heard. You're worth being able to talk about what you need in your life. You're in a relationship with someone you deserve to be able to express to your partner or the person that you're with whether it's a friend or anything like that that if you have needs that need to be met, you can say them and it's okay, and say them with clarity, say them with confidence and say them like you believe it to be true. Because it is true, um, I'm going to read some verses that go along with respecting Um.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people um with. Some of these may not necessarily agree with it, but for me again, I believe in the Bible, I believe in God. I am a firm believer that everything in the Bible is true. So I'm going to read all of these because there's a reason for them all. There's a reason. They're in the Bible.
Speaker 1:Verse 1 is about respecting authorities. It says the Lord, god, wants you to honor all human authorities, and this is found in 1 Peter 2.13. You can honor people and respect people without being taken advantage of. That's where the boundaries come in. So if you have a boss that is a toxic boss, you can still respect your boss, but with boundaries.
Speaker 1:Remember that Respecting elders says rise in the presence of the aged, to show respect for the elderly and to revere your God. That's in Leviticus 19.32. I don't know about you, but I feel very I get more offended for the elderly people who don't get treated with respect. They've lived life far longer than I have, they have far more experience than I have. They have far more wisdom than I have and they deserve the respect that they are due, just like you want to be respected. Respect elders. If you see someone who's wearing a veteran hat or who's served in our country, they did that because they love our country, not because they had to I mean a lot of the times back then they had to but like they loved our country, that it was an honor for them to serve our country. So respect those people. Respect the time, the energy, the loss that people had to go through so you could be where you're at today.
Speaker 1:The next one is respecting your parents, which this can be hard for those who've had a really hard, traumatic relationship with their parents, but it says in the Bible to honor your father and mother so that you may live a long life in the land of the lord, your god, that he has given you in exodus 2012. Respect your parents is key again. When we get to that point, we will talk about boundaries, but boundaries still can exist with respect, because we're talking about ourself right now and our self-respect. And having boundaries with other people who don't deserve all of us is setting respect for yourself and boundaries, but still being able to respect those people at all as well. This one is treating others respect. It says with respect.
Speaker 1:Do nothing from selfish ambition or consent or conceitment or conceit. Sorry, do nothing, but do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. Let me actually learn how to read. But in humility, count others more significant than yourself. So, basically, treating others with respect is not being a selfish person. It's taking into consideration. Maybe they're having a bad day, maybe their boss yelled at them just like your boss yelled at you. Maybe they have someone in the hospital and they're trying to figure out life.
Speaker 1:It's the same idea and that's found in Philippians 2.3, by the way Treating others as you would want to be treated. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, also do for them, for this is the law of the prophets in Matthew 7, 12. If you want someone to treat you with respect, then you need to treat them with respect. If you want people to respect you, then you need to treat yourself with respect. It's all in the same thing. But if you want someone to be honest and truthful with you, you need to be honest and truthful with them, and you also need to be honest and truthful with yourself. It all is the same, it all goes around. It's like a Mario go around, where everything goes in circles, but they all hold each other up together at the same time.
Speaker 1:It says respecting government governing authorities. This is something that I know a lot of people will want to be like screw that, I do not respect the government. Our government is corrupt. Yes, I do not respect the government. Our government is corrupt. Yes, but the government has been corrupted since before. The government is what the government is today. Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established Romans 13.1.
Speaker 1:So we need to respect the government in how it's ran, even if we don't agree with it, and we have the voice here in America to actually stand our ground and say this is our freedom of speech and this is our right to do so, and we can say X, y and Z. However, because we also have free will and we also live in a free world in America, just because you feel that specific way does not mean that your neighbor doesn't feel that way or they feel something different. Respect their views. Respect how they feel about their government and how they feel about certain things. Excuse you, no, thank you.
Speaker 1:Um, that was Chloe freaking out because of one of the kittens. Um, almost done, but it's just respect. It's respecting everyone around you, with boundaries, you know. With again going back to yourself, god is the ultimate, the ultimate governor, like his law is the only law that is true. His law is the only law that is just his laws, the only one that is has zero flaws. So if he's telling us to do something, we need to listen. If that's something that you don't want to do, I'm not here to judge you. I am just reading to you what it says in the Bible. And then the last one is treating others with purity. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. In 1 Timothy 5, 1 through 2.
Speaker 1:That is basically saying that you are going to respect those around you, regardless of their age or their status or what they are going through or what they might bring to the table, because, in reality, we all just need to show each other respect, and that's what this world lacks. And it all stems from social media, in my opinion. With how self-respect is? You see, all these people living these specific lifestyles and these specific things, that they look a specific way, they act a specific way, they act a specific way, they spend this much money on certain things, they have these lavish lives and we think that's what we're supposed to have. And if we don't have that, then we don't deserve respect, we don't deserve anything, and that's a huge lie and that's the lie of social media. And it's a huge lie. And that's the lie of social media and it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:And I want you to know that. You are worth respect, being respected. You are worth being told truth. You are worth far much more than what the world says that you are worth. You are a precious stone that cannot be replaced. You are an amazing person that is full of opportunities and dreams and goals and desires and things that are going to come from you, and only you will be able to accomplish those things, and I hope that this section of going through self-relationships and how to better our self-rel, like I know it's. I'm going to apologize. I've not been feeling good the last like week and a half, so like I kind of sound a little blah, um, and normally I have these up way earlier than I am today. I've been struggling and on the struggle bus guys, there's a virus going around and I caught it and it is taking its toll on me. But you guys are worth it.
Speaker 1:Everyone who listens to this podcast, even if it's just one person. You are worth me taking the time to make the podcasts. You are worth me taking the time to make the podcasts. You are worth me taking the time to do the research, because it's not even just for you, it's for me too. These are things I need to hear, these are things I need to evaluate, these are things I need to do to fully heal myself from hurts from the past, because, honestly, it's so easy for me to forgive others, but it's really hard for me to forgive myself, and that's something I'm working on, and I know it's because I don't have the best relationship with myself and I. This is why we're starting with relationships with ourselves, because it then, in turn, will change without realizing it will start to change the relationships you have with others.
Speaker 1:But I just wanted to talk about that for a little bit with you guys. Um, I believe let me double check, but I think the next two that we will be doing, let me just pull it up here. So we're going to be talking about communication and quality time next week. So, for those of you who have not seen the post yet on social media that I posted right before Christmas about it, there's a list of all. Seven are there and they kind of explain why they're important to have for your self-relationship. But communication with yourself is huge and so is quality time. So we're going to talk about that stuff next week and we'll be about, we will be going through all these in each relationship. So each one will each segment will have its own spot for these Before we start even doing interviews with other people. I do have a list of people who've been wanting to do interviews with me. So I did get some new equipment over Christmas so I can do some of that stuff that's going to be coming up in the near future.
Speaker 1:Um, but I just want to say thank you guys so much for following me on this journey. This journey is one that we're taking together and I'm excited to see where it takes all of us. Um, just know we're not perfect. It's a process and every week we will have something new to think about and hopefully you guys can share with me your journey and your story and where you're at. Thank you guys again for joining me today and I look forward to talking to you guys next week. Have a wonderful day.
