Your Worth is Non-Negotiable - Reclaim what they took away!

Have you ever believed your worth was tied to your accomplishments, your appearance, your bank account, your relationship status, or what other people think of you?

If so, you're not alone.

Many of us were conditioned to believe our worth depends on something outside of us. We learned to seek approval, chase validation, compare ourselves to others, and prove our worth through achievement, performance, or people-pleasing. Over time, our "worthiness cup" slowly drained, leaving us feeling not good enough, unlovable, unseen, or somehow less than.

In this episode, we're diving deep into what self-worth really is, how it differs from self-esteem, why so many of us lose touch with our inherent value, and how to reclaim the worth that has been yours all along. You'll learn how childhood conditioning, comparison, rejection, and life experiences can distort the way we see ourselves—and how self-love helps us reconnect with the truth of who we are.

If you've ever questioned what self-worth really is, where it comes from, and how build it or you've struggled with self-doubt, or felt like you had to earn love, respect, or belonging, this conversation is for you.

Just a few things you'll learn...

💎 The difference between self-worth and self-esteem

🧠 How childhood experiences shape your sense of value

⚠️ The hidden ways we negotiate away our worth

❤️ Why your value is inherent, not earned

🌱 Practical steps to reclaim your worth and personal power

This is a conversation I could have every week. It's THAT powerful. 

Thank you for being here and always know, I BELIEVE IN YOU.

Much Love,

KB 🦋

For FREE Resources, 📖 Book Link, 📝 Quizzes, 👚 Self-Love Merch Shop, 🗣️ 1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

Transcript

Kristen 0:01

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome to Self-Healing with KB, where we strengthen the most important relationship we will ever have, the one we have with ourselves. Because no relationship will impact your life more than the one you have with you. All change starts on the inside first, and when you change your inner world, you change your life. There's simply no two ways about it. In today's episode, we are diving deep into what self-worth is, why it's inherent, how we lose our worth, and what to do to get it back. This podcast is for information and educational purposes only. If you are struggling physically, emotionally, or mentally, please contact a medical or mental health care provider. If you're interested in any of my library of free resources, my self-love and people-pleasing quizzes, my self-love merchandise shop, my social channels, or my book link. My link tree is posted here in my Noom Vibe profile and in the description on all other podcasting platforms. All right, you guys, we're going to start out talking about the definition of self-worth. Just so we're all on the same page. Self-worth is a sense of one's own value as a human being. It is the belief that you are valuable, deserving of love, respect, and dignity simply because you are human. It is not about what you do, achieve, own, or prove, or how you look. And there's a little bit of a difference between self-worth and self-esteem. Self-worth is what you believe you're worth. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself based on your abilities, your achievements, your appearance, your performance, or circumstances. Self-worth is what you believe about your worth. Self-esteem is essentially how you feel about yourself. The issue is self-esteem can rise and fall due to external situation, circumstances, things like that. Where self-worth is something that can remain constant. Your worth is not up for negotiation, first and foremost, because it is inherent. It is not something that you have to earn. You are worthy simply because you exist, the end. I could end this podcast right here if I wanted to. However, many of us were conditioned to believe that our worth depends on something external to us. How attractive we are, how productive we are, where we live, how much money we make, the color of our skin, how many people approve of us, how big our butt, our biceps, or or our boobies are, whether someone chooses us, loves us, or stays. But those things do not in any way, shape, or form determine your value as a human being. You might think about it this way: a diamond doesn't become less valuable because somebody mistakes it for a rock. The observer's perception changes. The diamond's essence does not. And the same is true for you. We can get so caught up in believing that what we are producing or who we are or what side of town we grew up in is going to determine our worth. Or perhaps where our parents raised us or how much money they made, or if we're tall or short, or thin or thick. When you negotiate with your worth, you are starting to bargain away pieces of yourself. I'll accept disrespect if you will love me. I'll abandon my needs if you stay. I'll shrink myself if you approve of me. I'll overperform if you'll see my value. Please just see my value. The problem is that once worth becomes negotiable, it is never a done deal. You're going to constantly need more validation, more achievement, and more proving you're going to need more people or the same people to tell you over and over again that they approve of you. I often explain this as having a worthiness cup. And that cup is full when we come here. But at some point in our journey here, the bottom falls out and our self-worth starts to drain. And I want to explain this to you in a way that is that I have come to believe it, that I've come to understand is a better way to say it. Our brain has certain brainwave states. And from birth to two years old, we are in delta. That is the lowest brainwave state. And that is why children and two year old, you know, up to two years old want to sleep so much. And then from two to six, we enter into theta. So imagine theta being the state of right before you fall asleep and right before you wake up. That's the state the two to six-year-olds are walking around in. Then from six to twelve, we enter into alpha. Think about a meditation state. And then 12 plus, we enter into beta. And beta is that high reasoning, problem solving, worrying, comparison, analyzing everything. When we are in our lower brainwave states, when we come here, when we're born, we know our worth. Because our worth is inherent. It's in us, it comes with us, it's part of the structure. And we're not afraid of what people think of us. We're just saying, doing what we're doing, liking what we're liking, disliking what we're liking, or disliking what we want. But as we grow and become more aware of the outside world, as those brainwave states increase, we begin to take in information from the outside world. And sometimes that information is negative. Maybe you heard you're a bad girl, or shame on you for talking like that. Or you are too loud. Or why are you wearing that ridiculous outfit? It could come from eye rolling, it could come from people laughing, it could come from all types of places. So we start to take in this information from the outside world, and that's when the bottom falls out of the worthiness cup. We believe these things must be true. And we want to fit in and we want to belong and we want to be liked and approved of. So we start to change who we are. In one case, there's a young man who went to a wealthy high school, and his friends all had new cars on their 16th birthday. They had massive houses and nice clothes. And this particular young man was attractive and he was well taken care of. And he was in just a you know regular typical middle class family. But he started to compare himself to his friends, and soon enough he felt so unworthy that he wouldn't even try to date. He saw wealth, new cars, big houses, as someone who was worthy. And he carried this feeling well into adulthood because these it becomes unconscious. It's a belief system that starts running the show behind the scenes. And it wasn't so much the money in the cars aspect that he carried, like he had to get there. But the deep feelings of unworthiness contributed to him isolating himself and people pleasing and dimming his light and not speaking up, not having boundaries. And this is what can happen with self when our self-worth is low. This is why, through all the work that I teach, no matter what area you enter from, by the way, whether you enter from trying to heal your own relationship or trying to attract an amazing partner or trying to build your business. Many of these things are dependent on how you feel about yourself, what you believe about your worth. I'm not a business coach. I would never call myself a business coach, but I have coached people through their businesses because it all boils down to the same thing. In fact, one of my clients said to me, I think you're missing your calling. I think you're a business coach. And I said, No, I'm not. I'm a self-worth coach. I'm a reclaiming your personal power coach. I'm a self-love coach because these are the things, these are the foundation that contribute to all of this other stuff in our life. Self-worth says I can improve without believing I'm inadequate. I can be rejected without believing I'm less valuable. I can make mistakes without losing my worth. I can be imperfect and still be worthy of love, respect, and belonging. Right on, guys. Thank you. I see all those emojis. I'm watching. I'm on a roll, so I'm not, but I'm watching. Just please know I'm always watching. Woo! Look at y'all. You guys are the best. From a self-healing perspective, healthy boundaries become more possible only when your worth is non-negotiable. I want you to hear that again. Healthy boundaries become possible only when your worth is non-negotiable. And this is why recovering from people pleasing and moving out of the continuous stream of attracting people who will not will never respect you or value you is all about your worth. And this is what I go into at length in my book, The Recovering People Pleaser. I help people build the foundation. The first two chapters are the what and why of people pleasing. How does this come into place? What is happening here? And the entire rest of the book is the how to fix it. And I know a lot of people that will read the book and they're like, oh, that was a great book. Okay, bye. They're done. They move on to the next thing. For any of you who are reading my book, I want you to highlight the crap out of it. I want you to revisit it. I want you to set it on your nightstand on a moment for those moments where you're feeling something's wrong or you're not strong or you fell into that pattern again. Because we need to refill the worthiness cup. That's where the magic happens. Hi, Nitra. Welcome. Hey, good afternoon. How are you?

Anitra 11:27

Good. Thank you so much for always having these very timely, encouraging thoughts. And that, you know, this topic is so good. Um, I really appreciate being able to talk about self-compassion. Um class two on because that's a whole that's a whole it's it's so much information out here now that is, you know, helping us to understand the difference between the self-esteem versus the self-worth. And I really appreciate how you were able to break it down because a lot of us, a lot of people sometimes can, you know, base a lot of you know what's going right in their life or what's going wrong. Um, it's it's really their self-esteem. But like you say, you know, the example that I liked your example that you gave, but the one I was thinking about too is, you know, with being criticized, because I was talking about this today in one of my classes about self-compassion when you're being, you know, get getting um criticism from work. And, you know, a good supervisor will definitely point out, you know, the positives um in what you're doing with your job, but then they'll, you know, reprimand or correct you on something that you need to improve on. And what what I was saying um in my class was, you know, based on all of that, a person that struggles with self-esteem issues and self-worth issues a lot of the times only will hear the negative. They don't hear anything that they're doing right. And so, you know, that does have a lot to do with, you know, uh your your thought, your thought processes about yourself and your perspective about yourself. And so, you know, again, what I was saying about the self-compassion versus the you know, self- the kindness, because basically it was self-compassion and self-advocacy. Because, you know, you don't if you don't have any compassion for yourself, you're not gonna advocate for yourself. You know, if you don't think you're worth anything, you're not gonna ask for anything. And so we were talking about that. Absolutely. But um, I I appreciate this topic, but um again, just just going on with you knowing my mantra for myself, one of my my my affirmations for me personally, and I always share it with my class, is that when you know who you are, you know who you're not. You know, when you know who you are, you know who you're not, you know what you're not. So when people try to accuse you of things or call you out of your name, you can reject that. You know, you can say, no, that's not me. And I've been in situations like that before where I have been accused of being a certain way, or someone has frozen me in time and and tried to throw something in my face back from my past, and I can say I'm not that person anymore. I've even had people say, Why are you hanging out with her? Because she did so and so to me and da-da-da-da. And I said, Well, when did this happen? Uh 19 such and such. I said, I didn't know her then. I don't know that I don't know the person that you know. I know the person that I know today, and she's a good person, you know. I'm sorry that you had that experience with her. She's talked about she has a past, but she's changed, right? She's changed. And so I don't I don't do people that way. And I don't want anybody to freeze me in time and do me that way. But if they do, it won't affect my self-worth. Nobody wants to be called a name, nobody wants to be wants to, you know, say that you're a bad person. Nobody wants to hear those things. But at the same time, if you have done things, you know, you face them, you learn, you try to go roll through them. What do we say? You know, it's not necessarily the mistake, but what did you learn from it, Anitra? You know, the lessons, the lessons, the lessons. And so I keep that in mind. You know, I even, you know, got out of a situation um recently with a breakup, and I I stepped away from this situation because I said, I don't deserve this. And he said, If you don't, you don't, okay? And so I was able to go about my merry way because I'm like, mm-mm, you don't deserve this, Anitra. And this is, and that's the kind of speech you have to say to yourself. Use that self-kind, patient speech. You don't deserve this, and that's not fair to you. And it's okay to say that out loud to yourself, and it's okay to say that to others. That's another thing I was talking about today, too. We're always expecting things from other people to make us feel better. A lot of times we don't get it, and then when we do get it, it doesn't make you feel as better as you thought it would when they said it. Because again, it's not always followed up by action. So, with that being said, I always teach self-validation is so important that goes right in here with this. Self-esteem, self-worth, self-validation. Give yourself and say what you need to yourself when others don't give it to you. Because that doesn't mean that you don't still need it. You still need to hear that you're only human. Tell that to yourself. You still need to hear that you're worth moving on with your life and growing. You're worth having happiness, right? You're worth having a life of peace. And so, and you're left, you're worth people being compassionate to you when you even when you don't feel it. That's why you have to give it to yourself.

Kristen 16:07

Yes.

Anitra 16:08

You know, and again, all the things you name about the self-esteem is all surface. Thank you for this. I'm gonna get ready to jump out, but thank you.

Kristen 16:16

Oh, thank you, Anitra. You know, the thing that she said that I I was celebrating, uh all of it, by the way, was when you know who you are, you know who you're not. This is so I'm putting a big stamp on that. We need to just really sink into that, you guys. When you know who you are, you know who you're not. And she went on to say that someone was trying to call her things and tell her who she is and this. She's like, that's not me. I've had the same thing happen to me. And I've just sat there and looked at these people like, no. But back in the day, when I was unsure of me, when I didn't have my worth intact, I would almost believe everything that everybody would say. Or even if it felt like it wasn't true, it didn't, it didn't penetrate, like I didn't know the truth, the truth, the truth, like huge font truth. I was like, it doesn't feel like me, but I don't know. And I just really kind of wouldn't question it. But now, when someone tries to say something about me, I'm like, no, that's not who I am. Well, but you did, and you said, and then, and they're processing it through themselves. They're processing it through their filters, and they're looking at me and trying to tell me this is the way it is. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the case. Very well said, Inutra. All right, I got a message from the back channel from Jennifer who said, This is Jennifer, other Jennifer. She said, her mentor shared something that brought a true spiritual awakening. What other people think of me is none of my business. I love that. Yep. Yeah. And that's a big one. I have to say, when I heard that the first time, I was like, oh, that's nice. And that's true. Did it stop me from thinking what other people thought about me was my not my business? No, it didn't. I was still stuck in that because my worth wasn't in place. I hadn't done the healing work yet. So it sounded good to me superficially, but it didn't stick. It didn't sink in. And even still to this day, what people think about me is not my business. If someone thinks something strange about me, cringe, it's not big, doesn't take over, but I'll feel that, but then immediately the truth will come and I'll be like, yeah, whatever. Think whatever you want. All right. So how do we reclaim our worth? Anitra touched on it, and I had to hold myself back from going there. I had to hold myself back, but she already touched on it. And when she was talking about self-compassion, and self-compassion is one of the aspects of self-love. And self-love has five tenets to it. We hear a lot about self-love in the world. Also, self-love and self-care is interchanged. People will say self-care, self-care, self-care. And really, self-care is one of the tenets of self-love. Self-care is one of the pieces of self-love, if you will. It's part of the whole structure of self-love. So self-love has five tenets. And one of the tenets that Aneatra touched upon already is compassion and acceptance of self. And this sounds like, oh, that's so nice and it's pretty and it feels good. Yes, it does. It feels good to say. But until you actually practice this on the regular and you're intentional about it, and you make it your darn job, it's not going to do what it has the capacity to do. I will tell you, when you decide, I'm going to be compassionate and kind and understanding of me, and I'm going to accept all the idiosyncrasies, all the quote-unquote weirdness, because we're all weird in some capacity, right? I'm saying that with complete love, guys. When I accept all the ways that I look, all the ways that I act. I'm not talking about abusive or dysfunctional actions, just who makes me me, all my authenticity. Let me tell you something. Your cup, boom, filled. The bottom popped on and it started to fill. Because we are the only ones, hear me. I'm shouting this from the rooftops. We are the only ones that can refill the worthiness cup. It does not come from the outside world. It comes from ourselves. It was inside of ourselves. We thought it was taken away from the outside world. So we believe, oh, it needs to come back from the outside world. No, it comes from us. My entire healing journey had nothing, absolutely zero, to do with me going to someone else and saying, Can you tell me I'm good enough? Can you tell me this? Can you accept my traits? Nothing. Had nothing to do with it. I had no idea what I was doing. But things started to change. And that's when I was like, whoa, what's happening here? And that's when I reverse engineered and I went back and said, What did you do, Kristen? Because one day, through some uh situation that happened, I responded differently. And I thought, well, that's weird. And it was organic response. It wasn't anything I had to think about. And I said, Why did you do that? That was weird. And the next thing that popped in my head was because you know your worth now. And of course, this had to do with a love interest and all these other things too. I knew my worth. Oh, yeah. I was that girl that put up with a lot. I was that girl that, no, not all the time, but sometimes would be the chaser. I was, I was doing those things because I unconsciously thought that's what I was supposed to do. I thought I had to go find that. I didn't have to find that. The next one is grace and forgiveness. Of self. What does grace mean, you guys? It's for me, grace is just allowing a little bit of space. Saying, you know what? I'm going to give you some leeway. I'm going to give you some space to figure this out. That's what grace is. Give yourself grace to figure stuff out. You're on this journey. You're going to make mistakes. Stuff happens. You're not going to be perfect. It's not a straight line. Just go with it. Give yourself grace. You cannot believe how much a worthiness cup fills when you give yourself grace. Because what's the opposite of grace? Judgment, condemnation. You should know better. It's shaming. That's the opposite of grace. All those things pop the bottom back off the worthiness cup. Grace, boom, fill it starts to fill you up for self-forgiveness. This is huge. This is massive. We I hear a lot of experts out in the world right now talking so much about self-compassion, and they've forgotten about self-forgiveness. There's a lot of things that we are carrying around deep, deep within us, that have embedded in our psyche that are running the show, that are contributing to our shame, to our embarrassment, to our cringe about ourselves. Take the time to go back through your life and allow yourself without judgment, without judgment, make a list of things that make you cringe, that you're embarrassed about. Just make a list. And then go down that list one by one and connect with who you were at that moment. What life had dealt you. What your traumas and dramas and experiences had embedded within you. The filter through which you saw life. Go through those things and have compassion and acceptance for that person. And then tell them, tell you, which is you, tell you you did the very best you could at that time. It's okay. You are still loved, you are still worthy. Let me tell you something, you guys. Self-forgiveness does more for us than forgiveness of another person. Hear me out, because a lot of people think I need, well, they haven't forgiven me yet. So I'm going to continue to carry around this shame and this the this horrible judging feeling about myself. People can forgive us and we still carry around the embarrassment and the shame and the guilt. Even if you do get that from somebody else, you're still in this pickle, in this pickle. We heal when we forgive ourselves regardless of what the other people are doing. Forgive yourself. And even for things that a lot, because of right now I was talking about things that you might have done to other people. What have you done to you? The majority of my self-forgiveness journey, probably I don't even know how many percent, but a a lot of it, 75%, maybe off the cuff, was me forgiving me for how I treated me. Me forgiving me for how I treated myself. I had to forgive myself for that. I had to say, it's okay, sweet girl, you didn't know. You did not know. And then I went as far as to write myself an apology letter. And I invite you to do this. This is so powerful. In one of my courses from Self-Love to Soulmate, I have everybody write themselves an apology letter. And let me tell you, these letters are gorgeous. And every single time, without fail, 100% on the button, when people read their letters out loud, they cried. Because there's this piece of you that needed this so bad. I don't think you know how much you need you. Right? I wrote a letter. I'm like, dear sweet girl, I'm so sorry that you did this and that that I did this and did that and the other and didn't see your worth and just listed the list went on. But this is changing now. I know what you need. I didn't know before, but I'm here. I will never ever leave you. And I am so fully aware, and you are now my priority. And never again will this happen. And guess what, you guys? It didn't. I mean, I may not have caught something in the moment, but then I I went, I was like, oh gosh, okay, I need to go back. Remember, remember little Kristen. Remember little Kristen. And I'd go back and I would go, okay, I see, I see what this person is saying and doing to you. I didn't speak up at that moment, but I'm going to now. I got you. I wish I had the words. Maybe I'll throw this in chat and see if chat can find some words for me. There, I doubt it though, because it's so visceral. And chat's not visceral. Chat just grabs stuff from the internet. But maybe I'll grab something that somebody else said that makes sense. But it is, it fills in all the cracks and crevices. It feels so incredibly balming. It brings you to a zero neutral state. It's it's you feel solid, you feel love, you feel loved. All of the things that feel so good. So imagine uh compassionate acceptance, adding that to yourself, and then adding grace and forgiveness. Oh my gosh, right there, you've won the lottery already. It's that beautiful. The next self-love tenant is respect and protection. And this is all about self-respect and re protecting yourself from other people's harmful behavior. When we respect ourselves, we are more willing to set boundaries. Now, all of these things that I've listed so far work hand in hand because the respect and protect, which really is about boundaries, they're they're difficult to set and maintain when we don't have a full worthiness cup. That's why all of this works together. As we fill our cup, we still need to do this the respect and protection. We still need to speak up. Just filling our cup is not enough because people are peopling. People are gonna be doing things. We're not perfect. We make mistakes, people are acting some kind of a way all the time. Even some of the people we love the most. No one's perfect. And that's where the respect and protection comes in. It's the willingness to set those boundaries and take care of your well-being as if it is the most important job of your life. Will some people fall away? Yes. When they decide they can no longer control you, when they decide that you will not meet all their countless, endless needs like you did before when you were people pleasing and self-abandoning and self-sacrificing, yeah, they're gonna be like, yeah, they're out, I'm out. Why are they out? Because they're in the role, position, I'm not sure the right word to use there. They're in the momentum of making it all about themselves. It's just all about them. And when you no longer fit that spot for them, they're just gonna cash you in and go get someone else. And oftentimes it's gonna feel so painful to us because we're like, why did they throw me away? I was everything to them. I did all these amazing things. I was the only person that really cared and I listened and I helped, and I whatever you did. And then they're like, yeah, done, because you start setting boundaries. Yeah. That's all about them, you guys. That's not about you. Your boundaries say, I love me. And they are an invitation for other people to love you well. Some people are not capable of this yet. Maybe they will be sometime in the future. The next self-love tenant is loving and supportive self-talk. This means that we pay very close attention to that inner dialogue. Are we beating ourselves up? Are we hard on ourselves? You know, there's times while I'll even I'm I'm a jokester, you guys. I'm silly, I'm joking, and I'm like, I can't believe I did that. That was so stupid, you know, something. And I'll even stop myself, even if it was a joke and I didn't feel negativity in my heart about it. I'll stop myself and I'll say, no, it wasn't stupid. Even though it was a joke, I refuse to speak over myself in that way anymore. Again, one of the promises I made to little Kristen, not gonna do it. I will not disrespect her, I will not hurt her, I will not abuse her like I used to. Positive, loving, and supportive self-talk. And all these self-love tenets are outlined in my book, The Recovering People Pleaser. I forgot which chapter it is, might be six, but man, I go into length about these. Circling back to what I was saying in the beginning. If you do get this book, if you do read this book, or if you have it and have already read it, go back to it. This is not fluffy language I'm sharing. Both my books are guides. They are guides. They're giving you techniques and processes and things. And throughout the book, I'm like, and add your own. Add your own. Make this your own journey. But when it comes to self-love, no one will knock me off of this rooftop. I will stand here and I'll watch all kinds of other things go out in the world. And I'm like, mm-hmm. And then I'll watch it slowly trickle back to self-love because it's really where it's at, you guys. And then the fifth and final one is self-care. And that means making your mental, emotional, and physical self a priority. Caring for yourself the way you would care for a pet or a loved one. Who do you care for the most? Who do you who do you want to have a great example for? Now, even saying this, I've known people who really didn't care for for anybody else well either. They were absolutely clueless what caring for and nurturing looked like. And if this is you, let yourself off the hook. You didn't learn it. You didn't know. Your brain did what it did based on your upbringing and those experiences and those traumas and those dramas. And if you didn't know how to nurture, okay, that's all right. But learn it now. What do you like to feel from other people? What feels nurturing to you to you? Well, I love when people, when I'm sick and they get me water and an aspirin and they care for me. Or I love when I'm having a bad day that someone sits next to me and puts their arm around me and validates my experience or comforts me. Go into all the ways of self-care, what it looks like. Yes, it's about baths and pedicures and massages. That's part of it, but that's not all of it. That's, you know, that's just a part of it. How are you truly caring for yourself, mind, body, and spirit? That's what self-leve tenant number five is all about. All right, we're bringing up our sister Truth. Thank you for coming, Truth. So glad to have you.

Truth 33:27

So, your book, I just for anyone out there who hasn't experienced it, it is absolutely amazing. And when I first read it last fall, it was like exactly what I needed to take like quantum leaps in my growth. I was like under the right circumstances and the right place to receive. You had the right messages that were written in the right way. And it was just the universe having my back and helping me to take these massive steps forward that I feel like I was able to do with your book. So, like anyone who hasn't checked it out, please do. Um, because it's just it's such an easy read. It's like so good to read.

Kristen 34:12

I think it feels good, right? Because it's positive. It doesn't feel yeah, yeah. Thank you very much for that testimonial. I I really appreciate that truth, because that was my whole intention when I wrote it. Is I wanted it simple, I want it easy, just the way I talk, not these big, huge concepts, and just actionable, you know, so people could relate to it. I wanted people to relate to it on a human level.

Truth 34:35

Yeah, and I think a lot of books like get really hard. It's like it hits some like really challenging points, which can be good because it's good for your growth. Um, but I think sometimes like I'll shut down because it's asking me to do more than what I can really do in that moment. And that's what I appreciated about your book, Kristen, is that like there was nothing that felt too scary. And that was for me where I was in that moment, and maybe for some people, like it might be a little too big. So, like, that's okay to put it down and come back to. Um, but I found it to be super digestible and really like easy to action out. Yeah. So the main reason that I jumped on was something that you mentioned when you were talking about how oftentimes like you'll lose friends in the process of respecting and protecting yourself and the process of um drawing boundaries and communicating them clearly and holding those boundaries. Um, it's very likely that you'll lose people. And I was just thinking how like ironic it is that like people falling out of our lives is one of the biggest and greatest testaments to our growth. I know.

Kristen 35:46

But it's so hard. It's wild. It's like really, it's there's so many paradoxes on this journey. It's like, you know, you're winning when you're losing people. You know you're growing when you're losing people. What?

Truth 35:58

And it's just crazy because I think like I know that when people first started falling off in my life because of my growth, I started questioning myself and like the new self-worth that I had grown for myself. I started like my inner critic started questioning it and like wanted to like bring me back down and keep me safe, keep me with the old people, keep me with what was familiar. And the most amazing part about it is that by sticking with it and continuing to move forward and continuing to stay grounded in my goals and what I needed to do for myself, all of those people didn't come back, but some of them did. The ones that I was like most worried about. And, you know, they were just at a different place in their journey. And because I've been on this journey for a few years now, and it definitely like it was not quick, it was not immediate. But like years later, now there are other people that I used to consider to be very, very close to me that have started their own healing journeys.

Anitra 37:07

Wow.

Truth 37:08

And it's just it's beautiful because like we're all we're all on our own path, we're all on our own timeline. But because they saw me go ahead and like take those steps forward when no one else in our circles were, and sticking to it and whatever words you want to use for the determination part of it. As some of my other friends have gotten to places where they're in so much pain that they're ready to start their healing journeys, they've started to reach out to me and come back to me and be like, hey, like I saw what you did, I saw that it was hard. I think I want to do something like that for myself. And so, like, that is the greatest testament to like just knowing that it has all been so, so worth it because now I'm in a position where I can actually help the people that I used to care about that I was helping in the wrong way.

Kristen 38:08

Truth, come back, come on back and finish that. Yeah, I want to hear what you have to say. This is so important. Really, really cool that they reached out to you because they wanted to do that for themselves. Wow.

Truth 38:20

Yeah, so it was like some of the people I used to try to like put on the warrior mask or the mom mask or whatever, and like fix their problems for them, take their pain away, control the situation to stop it from ever happening, whatever, all of those really toxic patterns that I used to have within myself, but I was exhibiting because I cared about them. I had to like let them fall away as I did my own growth. Now they're coming back, um, wanting to grow as well. And I am now able to support them in.

Kristen 38:59

Oh, I think Truth's got a phone call. We'll give her a second to come back. We'll see if she's gonna come back with that. But now she's able to support these people in positive ways. I think that's amazing. This is really cool that that she's talking about this because I've had those ring. Oh um.

Truth 39:15

Okay, what's that? I don't know how long my phone was ringing.

Kristen 39:19

How you ended was that you were able to support them.

Truth 39:24

Yes, I was able to support them in positive ways. And had I given up, I wouldn't be here now. And I remember reading at one point, there was like some book in my journey that I was reading, and it was basically like when you get to like the 80 to 90 percent range of like doing all of this work of like whatever this particular book was, it was like most people quit, most people give up, most people gets too hard, and they they're like, okay, that's enough. And then they backslide. And it was like, if you keep pushing through, if you keep sticking with it, then you're going to see the amazing results that you wouldn't be able to see if you only took yourself 80% there. And I don't know, I don't want to go too much into percentages because that gets me back into my whole like perfectionism thing. But it was just like, you know, it was basically saying, like, if you keep going, then you'll keep seeing the beautiful, beautiful results.

Kristen 40:28

And so yeah, I think you've noticed some results along the way as you started going, because that's how it worked for me. So I'm curious how it works for others. Like all of a sudden things were just little things, just little things started showing up that were different. They were outside of typical KB. And I was like, oh.

Truth 40:46

Yes, absolutely. Um, and uh most of it just like in the way that I would handle situations, just small changes to kind of like notice, like, oh, I wasn't as reactive this time, or like usually that would have like kind of like triggered me in this way, or I would have had this experience, but instead I had that experience. Um, and yes, I definitely saw lots of little things and I saw big things too. I just know that like losing my friends was something that was like so hard for me that it made me question if I was doing the right thing. Like that was what really every time made me be like, should I really be doing this? Is this really worth it? Like, is it really worth it to lose the people that I care about to do this thing to like supposedly something that's supposedly for me, but I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable. Like, I'm uncomfortable, but I'm also like set in my ways. Um, so I think like that's why it's so big for me, because it was like losing the people is what had me questioning my path and myself more than anything else.

Kristen 41:55

Yeah, that's amazing. My experience wasn't like that. I didn't know why I was losing them. But here's interesting, I think it's because I lost people through my whole journey. My whole, I've always been someone that wants to grow and heal and shift and more of, you know, I didn't know it. I just was such naturally a seeker that I didn't realize that other people were not. So people started to fall out here and there in the other way. And it wasn't until afterwards like I really got firm. And then I looked back in hindsight because I had a different lens, different knowledge, different wisdom. I was like, oh my gosh, I know what happened. Because I was always doing this, and that was somehow threatening to them, and they didn't like it. And so they started fading away. You know, mine kind of came in a different way. It's really interesting how different everybody's journeys are.

Truth 42:42

Definitely, yeah, different, but yet still similar. Um, and I think like with my piece, there was a lot of like people telling me who I used to be, who I was supposed to be. And that was like kind of where those clear lines came in of being like, no, that's not how I show up anymore.

Kristen 42:59

Yep. And and oh, she timed out. Thank you, truth. That was wonderful. And when you start to do healthier things that perhaps you were doing with unhealthy things with those people, that all of a sudden they're like, Well, who do you think you are? Or they're just like, Yeah, you no longer fit this bill for me. So I'm gonna go hang out with Tom or Jessica instead. You know what I mean? And I'm thinking this like this this happens a lot in the recovering communities where people no longer drink or smoke weed or whatever they're doing that they used to do with their homies, and all of a sudden they don't, they just kind of stop inviting you because you're different from them now, and they don't like that. They don't like the feeling that it invokes inside of them because you're, you know, you're not doing the things that they were once doing. This conversation about your worth not being negotiable is one that we could talk about every single week. And at some point, perhaps whoever. I don't know who's in here. I don't know who's listening. I don't even know where you guys are at on your journey. This is the first time you're hearing this type of thing, or if it's the 200th time you're hearing this type of thing. But it's something that we can talk about all the time because our self-worth is the foundation for how we show up in life. This is unquestionable and it's non-negotiable. It is the foundation. And if you are someone who has walked in the unworthiness realm for a long time and then you start walking in the worthiness realm, you're going to say, Oh, yeah, KB, it's night and day. It's night and day. And here's the best part of all of it is that you still remain the beautiful, glorious person. Your likes, your dislikes, your passions, your your artistry, everything about you stays the same. It's not like you become this completely different person, but you're more settled, you're more grounded, you know your value. And you start saying and doing things from that delicious, deep foundation. The way I've explained this before is I want you to imagine a foundation that you would lay on the ground for a structure. Let's say you're building a 10 by 10 shed. How deep does that foundation need to be? Usually about maybe two inches, three maybe at the most, maybe. I'm not an engineer. But let's say you're building a skyscraper. What does that require? That requires a really, really deep foundation, like probably I don't even know. I'm gonna say 100 feet deep. I don't know you guys. And then all the rebar and all the cement and all the things to support this glorious structure on top. Where your life is the same way. The deeper your foundation is, the bigger, brighter, um, less more courageous, more expansive, more healthy risk taking that you become because you've got this deep foundation of self-worth. You're not stopping yourself every time you want to do something new. You're not censoring yourself. You're speaking your truth, you're being who you are, you're shining your brilliant, glorious light in the world. And that's how we build an amazing life. It's not saying you can't have an amazing life, or maybe you're someone like, I have no self-worth, but I have this fantastic spouse. All things are true. All things are true. But for those of you who are recovering from people pleasing, or you have a history of attracting toxic, narcissistic, emotionally unhealthy partners, and it's just been a little bit of a rough journey, I promise you, when you start building that self-worth, your life is gonna change in the most magical ways, in just undescribable ways. Things that you can describe to other people, but they won't quite get it because it's so incredibly visceral. And you're still gonna be yourself. So don't think anything big, major, crazy is gonna change. You're still gonna be yourself, but you're gonna be a cleaner, clearer, more authentic version of who you are. I appreciate you guys for being here. And until next time, remember you matter, you always have. Your worth is non-negotiable. It's just not negotiable. But yes, your worthiness cup has been drained, and it is going to take some effort in the right direction to refill it. Your worth does not come from the outside world, it comes from you. Much love, everyone.