The Bone Zone

Episode 37: Nothing Is Ever Enough:

• Sara & Richard

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It’s easy to assume that you’ll feel happy, safe and secure when… You have a great
relationship, the perfect job, a certain amount of money in your bank account etc.
No amount of anything external will make you feel enough if you don’t feel enough.

In this episode, we talk about:

  •  How being self-critical can spur you to action but how it leads to a success ceiling later down the road.
  •  Fear of loss stories.
  •  Subtle ways to see when you’re being self-critical (if it’s not obvious).
  •  Acting from “not enoughness” vs. acting out of self-love and a sense of worth.
  •  The fallacy that you let yourself go when you’re happy – we discuss why the opposite is true!

We want to hear your thoughts and questions, so if there's anything you would like us to cover on the show, please drop us a line on

 info@thebone-zone.com 


And if you want to check out Sara’s solo podcast, The Mind Body Spirit Accelerator – where she gives you simple neuroscience-based tips (that actually work) to create the life you want, you can check it out on:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033kZ5sPIbZkkQe6j6xJkH?si=99231cc2e65c4d8a 

or
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-body-spirit-accelerator/id1896793868

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Bone Zone. I'm Sarah.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm Richard.

SPEAKER_01

And in this podcast, we excavate sex and relationship myths and uncover the truth of how it all really works. We bridge the esoteric and practical worlds to bring you grounded, sage, and tangible advice and tools, whether you're looking to attract a soulmate relationship or grow and expand within an existing one.

SPEAKER_02

Hello.

SPEAKER_00

Hello.

SPEAKER_02

She's already interrupted me. I couldn't even say welcome to the bones there. She just fucking waltzes in bang! All guns blazing.

SPEAKER_00

This is like a running joke now.

SPEAKER_02

It is. I think we've had this joke on every single episode.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, let us know if that joke's getting old. No, we don't give a fuck. Maybe you could just send us a message being like, stop interrupting Sarah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's never gonna happen. It's your thing, babe, and I'm fine with it.

SPEAKER_00

Great.

SPEAKER_02

Anyway. Uh a little story for which the inspiration for this episode uh is. Is that is that correct? Saying that? Yes. Um we were having a discussion once, and well, it was recently. It was recently.

SPEAKER_01

It wasn't like once upon a time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you go interrupting, you have no idea what I'm gonna fucking say. And then here you are going, it was recently. You have no idea when it was. It was actually a long time ago. I'm thinking back in the past. Oh, right. You were having a really tough time for various different reasons. And you were a little on the sort of you were down because things weren't happening the way that you had worked for them to happen, etc, etc. And I turned round to you and I said why don't you start celebrating the things that you have done? And it kind of dawned on me that it's not just me or you or but it's also a lot of people. I I observe this, they always tend to pick up on all the stuff that's not working, the negative things. And so many people, um well not so many people, I have turned round to a couple of these people and I've asked them, Well, why don't you start making a list of all the positive things? Tell me about your day yesterday. Go of all the positive things that happened, and a woman smiled at me in the street, and I got a really excellent service from a shop, my coffee really tasted nice, particularly nice. The small little things that were by all means a success, which we often take for granted. I'm almost complacent about them. Oh, it's normal, but when things don't go according to plan, you start to really focus on them. And there is a law called the law of focus, that which you focus on gets amplified, right?

SPEAKER_00

I have no recollection of this conversation.

SPEAKER_02

Is that why you were looking at me blankly for the last I don't know, yeah, two and a half minutes? Um you did because I remember this clearly, and you went, Oh yeah, I did this. I had this really good talk with this potential client, or uh this happened. I got a discount for 30% on this pair of shoes. I don't know. You started going through.

SPEAKER_00

I don't buy discounted shoes, motherfucker.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, you do. You do, you're you have your new fucking obsession, is there's uh Alex called Alice in Wonderland, it's a vintage shop where people seem to it's the consignment store for designer goods. It's a consignment store for designers where designer goods go done.

SPEAKER_01

No, no, no, no, but that is not discounted. I specifically go in there to buy shoes that have never been worn. Okay, so she's going to the consignment store.

SPEAKER_02

She's concentrating. I don't know if she's concentrating on negative or positive here. What she's trying to say is she will not buy shoes that have been worn by some stinky foot in in in the past. These are basically new shoes that people don't want.

SPEAKER_01

No, this is not from snobbiness, it's more from the energetics of who the hell has been wearing your shoes before. And did she have foot fonts? All of those tropisms around take a walk in someone else's shoes, blah blah blah. Okay. I'm not sure if you're shoes I'm walking in, mate.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah, you could be like some like remnants of some Veruca thing going on, and then your foot falls off.

SPEAKER_01

Anyway, so actually, I want to bring us back to the topic of today. The topic of today is nothing is ever enough.

SPEAKER_02

Uh yes, I think that's a very good, actually, very good title for this podcast.

SPEAKER_01

Now, why are we talking about it? And I'm gonna give a few stories around this. Uh obviously it links into what Richard has said, because you can either focus on what you do have or you can focus on everything that is not good enough, perfect enough, exactly as you'd like to do that.

SPEAKER_02

Or that you don't have indeed.

SPEAKER_01

And from an internal perspective, if you don't feel worthy, deserving, beautiful, smart, etc., no amount of outside things, so validation, buying cars, buying whatever is going to make you feel enough if there is some wound that you have that makes you feel not enough. And in some people it's very obvious, right, that they don't feel confident, that they're they feel, I don't know, not thin enough, not pretty enough, whatever. And it was very obvious to me when I was a teenager. It's not so obvious to me now, it's insidious, but there are certainly ways in which I do not feel enough, and these tend to crop up in various ways now.

SPEAKER_02

But why wouldn't that make you think of the positive things that happen in one's day, for example?

SPEAKER_01

Well, first of all, from a from our brain's perspective, if you have always focused on the negative, you have built neural pathways where you tend to always focus on the negative over the positive. So if 10 great things happen in a day and one bad thing happens in a day, you can focus on the bad one over the bad thing that happened in a day.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

The other reason, and this is really interesting, and I've I know this from myself, and I know this from a lot of the clients that I work with who I think I can group into the overall category of high performers. What's interesting about a lot of them, including myself, is that I've built my identity on proving people wrong. So, what I mean by that is whenever I was underestimated or someone told me I couldn't do something, I was like, screw you, I can.

SPEAKER_02

And then you went and did it as well.

SPEAKER_01

And I went and did it, and that brought me a certain level of success. I'm not gonna lie, like, and it's the same for clients, they're trying to prove a point in a lot of ways, whether it's to society, their peers, their parents, their siblings, whether it's because they went to a school where they never felt enough, whatever the reason is, there is something going on whereby they're doing a lot of things that they're doing, and they're spurred to action, they're motivated by this feeling of not enoughness. So maybe they grew up without money, and so they were like, right, that will never happen to me growing up, and they become this amazing entrepreneur at a young age, and they make a lot of money. Now, that money will still never be enough to internally fulfill them, so either they'll end up losing that money at some point, maybe, or another way that I've seen that go is other parts of their life are a mess. So maybe their health suffers, maybe they have no time for their family, maybe they're unable to build functional relationships. So whilst it can be very tempting to be like, but Sarah, I've built so much from not feeling enough, it will only get you so far. And in fact, um, it was one of the reasons, reasons why I had a success ceiling, because I was like, but I'm doing everything I always used to do. Why is it not working anymore? Because it was time for me to find a different way of operating in order to break through the success ceiling in all areas of life. So I'm not just talking about career financial, I'm also talking about my relationships as well. So um my marriage is one area where I can be uber critical.

SPEAKER_02

Who's that to then?

SPEAKER_01

No, but it's it's of things in our relationship, it's not of you specifically.

SPEAKER_02

I was just trying to make a joke. I obviously wasn't very funny.

SPEAKER_01

No, I'm just on a roll, babe.

SPEAKER_02

You're on a roll, yeah. I'm just sitting here pointing to it.

SPEAKER_01

I'm in flow.

SPEAKER_02

So I'm in flow.

SPEAKER_01

I think so. An an area where this does tend to show up is um money. So I have had um clients over the years that you would class as quote unquote financially free, i.e., they're multi-millionaires, they don't have to work, but all of them are choosing to continue work, which is a good thing because everyone should have a purpose, etc. But what's interesting about these people is you think they have millions in the bank, they wouldn't be stressed about money.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yes, you can be stressed as a billion.

SPEAKER_01

Losing that money. And in one extreme case of someone that I've worked with over the years, and by the way, I'm gonna link this back to relationships in a moment. So this is a bit of a tangent, but just to show how this applies in all areas of life. With one of my clients, he was let's put it nicely, a trust fund baby. He um he lives he lives frugally, so he's not super flashy or anything like that. He inherited money, he manages stocks, he doesn't need to work, he doesn't need to earn money. Now, the one of the reasons why he inherited that money was because uh of his family. Now, his dad had died when he was quite young, um, and his dad had died post a stock market crash, so all of the family investments had crashed, and he blames that or he attributes that as one of the factors for his dad's death. Therefore, to him, loss of money quite literally equals death. So this guy, whilst trying to build a business, was really like terrified of losing money, terrified of not making money, even though he could objectively understand I have money, I have more than enough money to live, I'm managing my investments sensibly, I don't have lifestyle creep, I live within my means, etc. etc. But this is to illustrate the point: no amount of an external thing is ever going to be enough if you don't deal with the reason why you're trying to get more and more and more of this external thing. It's not gonna make you feel enough magically one day. And so when I look at our relationship, I can objectively see all of the wonderful things about it, and there is a fuckload of things to focus on. But what I will do is pick on the things that that aren't working at any given time, guilty as well. Um so if our um sex life is going through a bit of a null, which is usually because well it's not usually, it's always because of some kind of reflection or block or whatever that we need to address, deal with, etc., which we're perfectly capable of doing, and actually it's good that they show up so that we can deal with those things, but I'll be like, my god, we're going to tailspin! Like next time is off, and like it's it literally and this this thinking is very familiar to me because I'm like, oh well, if I'm super critical of something and if it's not enough, I'm gonna be more motivated to change it. But the opposite is actually true, you can do things from various energies, and the other way of doing things is to do it from love, and what I mean by that is to see the perfection in everything that you have now, and because you have that level of love and uh sense of worth in relation to the thing, whatever the thing happens to be, like relationship in this context, marriage in this context, you naturally want to do the things to make that relationship the absolute best that it can be.

SPEAKER_02

It's also called growth, right? We're all here to grow. Sorry, um, I'm just gonna say a couple of things because um my wife here, she could talk the arse off a concrete.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, sorry, I have light taken over this whole thing.

SPEAKER_02

No, it's fine, though. When you get flowing, that's great. I I would just if I spoke for all that time, I think I'd just have people confused after like five, ten minutes. Now I've forgotten even more.

SPEAKER_01

This is actually an example, a live example of you being critical of yourself. Being critical of yourself in relation to your speaking doesn't make you any better. No, but being a cheerleader of yourself and you're getting better and better speaking every day is I am a cheerleader of myself, but also it's I have no problem, and I do not beat myself up for you being a really excellent speaker and me not being as good as you.

SPEAKER_02

That's not beating yourself up, that's not being critical.

SPEAKER_01

But you I think you should always pay attention to your language because your language will always give you a way. You're comparing yourself, and you think, okay, well, it's fine to compare myself, but actually it's not, it's just another way of being yourself.

SPEAKER_02

Live, live.

SPEAKER_01

And let's not forget how many years I've been talking because I am do you remember how bad I was when I first started doing that. Oh, you sucked us. Yeah, I was great. Yeah, honestly, I was like really, really bad. Yeah, super.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, yes, I do so for the listeners, okay. A, how could I change my language? And B, how can I reset to because I do believe that I'm not a great speaker. That's why um I do spend most of the time letting you speak, and I even make jokes about how you always interrupt me. Because at the end of the day, it's probably convenient because I know that at this point I could not go on a roll like you do, and have all this information come out consistently and structured, and so that people can understand. Give me a hack of what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01

First of all, that yes, there is an energetic hack. You have to get behind the fact that you are a great speaker and you have to find specific evidence for it every day, right? And it can be tiny, it could be that you had a conversation in another language and they understood you, right? It doesn't have to be like I did a TED talk. So that's part one. But actually, TED talk, but like the practical thing is just as important. It's fucking years of making yourself do the uncomfortable things. I'm sorry, it is. There is no way around it unless you're born the bet and some people are born better speakers than others. Let's let's not be around the bush here. But everyone you see is um has been doing what they're doing for years if they are decent at doing it most of the time. And again, when I was first doing it, I spent years beating myself up about oh god, this is terrible. I'm so I remember that. So when I actually switched to no, actually, I can do this, the practice I did became a lot better anyway, because I had the energetics behind actually let's be nice to myself here.

SPEAKER_02

So there you go. Listeners, um, if you believe, like I was just focusing on the fact that I am not as good as a speaker as Sarah, just focus on the evidence that proves otherwise, no matter how small. Yes, and I was thinking about that at the gym today. I had a conversation with someone, I gave them a little hack for um they they could feel a bit better about themselves. I sat them down for five minutes, and um that's one thing. I have a financial channel which I speak on, and I can talk for hours until people go into a coma.

SPEAKER_01

And for those of you that are like, oh yeah, it's all very nice, but what does it matter what I believe? I think I probably said this before, but repetition is important in great communication. So to reiterate, as soon as you have a thought, your body is physiologically changing straight away. So if that thought, if I'm wandering around thinking, oh my god, I'm so bad at Spanish, like I'm well, since I'm in Portugal now, let's say Portuguese, I'm so bad it, I can't remember any words, people are gonna laugh at me if I talk. Guess what's gonna happen when I start talking? Because my body is my mind and body already preparing them. Like you're stumbling over your words, your body language is like, I don't know why I'm talking about slightly scared. Like your grammar goes completely out of your head. So this is another reason to focus on being kinder to yourself and focusing on the positive because it's likely to have a positive impact. Your mind, body, therefore your actions, behaviours, etc.

SPEAKER_02

So, what we're talking about here is not to sort of not not so much focusing on the um negatives and go and seek out the positives of your day, but it's really about not being critical of yourself, isn't it? Really well you're because if you're focusing on the negative, then you're kind of it leads to self-criticism, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, and another another version of that is um um comparasonitus. Yeah, which is if you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else negatively, you are being critical of yourself.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

If you find yourself being super judgmental of people, you're essentially you've you've essentially got a clue that you're judging yourself. I had a light bulb moment about this recently. I was like, why am I being so judgy of people like at various points? I'm like, oh shit, it's because I'm being super critical of myself and I'm externalizing that to make myself feel better. So anything vis-a-vis you and other people is a clue that you're being critical. Now, as I said, it can get you to a certain level of success because it gets you into action, and action is important to make things happen, but it does have a ceiling, and it's difficult if you've kind of got used to that way of being, but it is worth the effort to start to strengthen neural pathways around being more loving towards yourself. So there's there's kind of a fallacy I want to break in relationships, which goes like along the lines of oh well, I let myself go when I got married because I'm happy.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

I'm sorry, that's supposed to be scrappiness. That's complacency and comfort zone. Let's call a fucking spade a spade. Because I respect myself and my relationship, the last thing I would do is let myself go. And that's not about vanity. And it's not because I think Richard would leave me if I suddenly ballooned like, I don't know, 50 pounds. I'm actually like having a sick feeling.

SPEAKER_02

Thinking about ballooning that, which Well isn't the ultimate of self-love to be able to imagine yourself with 50 extra pounds.

SPEAKER_01

We've all got shit to work on.

SPEAKER_02

And find yourself perfect.

SPEAKER_01

But my we've all got shit to work on, little by little. Um, but this connection that people have made between happiness and settling, complacency, comfort zone, whatever you want to call it, is not self-love, and it's not love for a relationship or a job or whatever else it is you're saying, oh, it's fine too, even though you don't really feel that at some level. So the more you love yourself, what goes hand in hand with love, and this is of myself and my love that I have for Richard and our relationship, because of that, there is the discipline and actions that go behind that. So, yes, I can see that there is so much perfection in the relationship. I can focus on that and use that as a springboard to get better and better and better every day, but that doesn't discount where we are at the moment. Now, is this something I'm doing perfectly all the time? Hell no.

SPEAKER_02

Nothing is anyone?

SPEAKER_01

Hell no. It's it's about catching yourself when you're defaulting into this critical space and really focusing in on here are all the things that are wonderful and perfect right now. And even if they weren't there objectively, you can still find some things, even though in some cases I appreciate it's more challenging than others, and you can use that as a springboard to okay, because I have this level of love for myself, because I see the perfection in where we are right now, because I see and value this situation, this circumstance as it is right now, I can then be like, great. From a place of love and I want to treat myself in the highest possible way, what are the actions that I can do? And I think it's helpful to ground this into a body perspective. If you really have a high level of self-love for yourself, you eat well, you move your body, you exercise, not because you're beating yourself up, because you're like, oh my god, I'm the fattest person on the earth, but because you're like, I love myself, I respect myself, and therefore, this is a manifestation of self-love, and through that, of course, you start to get to the place over time of the optimal of whatever that looks like, and obviously, I am emphasizing over time, and that sort of means also that you're putting yourself first as well, yes, and in the true sense of that, not in the not in a selfish bastard way, no, but also not in the way of people are like, oh, it's always about I don't know, spa days or no, that's just like, yeah, okay, do a spa day, but doing that every month is not gonna change your life.

SPEAKER_02

No, it's not, it's what you do every day that counts in my book, especially you can eat healthily and have one day where you don't eat healthy and you have all the crap that it's addictive, crappy food, and it's not gonna make the slightest bit of difference to you.

SPEAKER_01

And actually, that's a good point, Reef Food, as well. If you are too obsessive about it, that could go the other way, yes. And you you slip up one day. Man, the amount of criticism that you're likely to subject yourself to is likely to put you back significantly.

SPEAKER_02

It's like the story of the twin sisters, the identical twins. I don't know if this is actually a true story, but anyway, it was told to me as if it were. And uh one was there were two complete opposite extremes. One was smoking, drinking, partying, um, doing all the things which are considered unhealthy and wrong for a good uh life, let's say healthy life. And the other one was the complete opposite. It was um the meals were just carefully designed, no drinking, no alcohol, nothing. And guess which one of them got cancer in their 50s?

SPEAKER_01

I'm guessing the healthy one.

SPEAKER_02

The healthy one got cancer because she spent her whole life worried about oh my god, I walked out, uh, I just inhaled the carfumes from uh this big bus which was belching out this black diesel smoke, and I inhaled it. What's it doing to my body? And this thought process kind of amplifies and amplifies, and you do that consistently for everything. Oh, I just walked past the cell tower. Oh my god, I'm gonna get brain cancer. There you go. The other one lived into her 80s.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, um apparently.

SPEAKER_02

So the story goes, but it's a good, even if it weren't true, it's a good story to tell because it really does work that way.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, um, and I as well know someone that died in his 50s who was super healthy, no drinking, no alcohol, he died of lung, he never smoked and he died of lung cancer. Yes, these are outliers, but there it there is a key point. Actually, I want to just talk about Jean Carmont. Jean Calmont uh lived to the age of 120. Oh every day, every day, and she had a um really good health span as well, so she was healthy for the vast, vast majority of her life. She um was riding a bicycle until the age of a hundred and something. She smoked.

SPEAKER_02

Didn't she stop smoking when she was 108 saying it might be bad for my health?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, um, she had a glass of port every day, she had chocolate every day, like in small quantities. I'm not saying she was like having a bottle of port, but she had a zest and a love for life. Yeah. That small memory. And obviously, genetics come into that as well. But well, genetic expression is a sort of a whole different feel, but yes, okay, but you have genes that you can switch on with certain ways of thinking the way you are. Anyway, I think my what I'm trying to say here is if we go back to the success ceiling point, let's take this twin that you talked about, she would have had a certain level of success from doing all of those healthy things. So I'm sure she was relatively um fit and active, she was probably slim, etc. But that's where the success ceiling ends. Because if you are so critical to yourself, remember mind body is connected. This is science, this is not woo-woo crap. Um because of that, the amount of criticism that you heap on yourself basically undoes all of the good work done, but also remember what you think, your body is registering all of it. All of it, right? And so if you think about the cumulative effect, okay, you beat yourself up a bit, you can pick yourself up, move on.

SPEAKER_02

If it is just like literally constantly, yeah, if it's constantly, you know, it maybe this woman lived in fear as well, was always in the survival mode, fight or flight, and like the whole world against her, all these toxins. It's difficult to find a healthy meal, never go out because I'm scared of eating restaurant. I mean, you can the list is fucking endless of stuff that you have to be careful of.

SPEAKER_01

And bring this round to a relationship context because a lot of people are living in fear of my partner's gonna leave me. Well, if my partner leaves me, oh my god, he looked someone else, like all of these things. Again, this is filtering through to your relationship. It might lead to action, right? So it might mean that you, I don't know, make more of an effort to look nice or you wear nice lingerie or whatever. Well, if you're listening, yes, it could they could uh be signals that make you act to make your relationship better, but because you feel deep down or you're doing it from fear, it's not gonna have the same impact as if you had done it from love and respect.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely agreed 100%.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, so I I am aware, darling, that I have spent most of this uh time talking. Yeah, like I said, like I said, be quiet at the 31 minute point.

SPEAKER_02

Now the half an hour's up, and I'm gonna say my wife, if there were an Olympic medal for the ability to talk the arse of a concrete elephant, uh, would be Mrs.

SPEAKER_01

Sarah's. But actually, that's with the caveat. What like I hate small talk.

SPEAKER_02

So we'll get used to it.

SPEAKER_01

No, I could no, no, no, but I'm saying for anyone listening to this that's met me and you're like, Sarah doesn't talk that much, is because I hate small talk. If you if we if we have a conversation like and we get into the deep and meaningful, yeah, I can talk the ass off a concrete element. Yes, otherwise Element Elephant.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, no, and I think it's really time to call it a day. Yes, yes, people have asked me in the gym, uh you know, if we're doing a podcast, your wife is remarkably quiet. And that's because in a gym session she wants to come in, do her session, and then go home. Like a lot of people. Anyway.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You're still not good at small talk, or you don't like to small talk. But sometimes you open yourself up if you have that ability to do it just for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

No, I can do it for a little bit. But I don't particularly like it. I can I can suss out very quickly, like I can lead somewhat in the way of having a more deep conversation, but really the gym is not the place to get into. No, but you don't have deep conversations whilst trying to lift like I don't know, 50 kilos. Like, I don't. I want to concentrate on lifting 50 kilos. I don't even think I left 50 kilos, but that's quite heavy, 50 kilos. Yeah, I think I made that up, but you take my point.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, right, enough of this. Um, we're gonna love you and leave you. Um, we have nearly well, we're getting uh dangerously close to a thousand downloads. And so we thank you all. And if you think that um any one of your acquaintances or friends or family might like this podcast, please do um send them a link.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, do feel free to follow leave a five-star review.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, I am saying five-star specifically, otherwise it's fine, don't. Um, but if you really like this, follow, leave a review and share with anyone that you think it might be beneficial so that we can get this word out.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. Alright, folks, bye. See you in the next one. We'd like to thank you for tuning in and listening to this episode today. If you like what you heard, I invite you to follow our show. And if you really liked our show, head over and leave a review on your podcast app of choice. We also want to hear your thoughts and questions. So, if there's anything you would like us to cover on the show, please drop us a line on the email below. Thank you for listening, and until next time.