Latest / Your Utmost Life / Why "My Needs Don't Matter" Is the Most Dangerous Thing You Believe
Transcript
- 0:00Misty Celli: I want to ask you something and I want you to answer it honestly.
- 0:04Misty Celli: Not the answer that sounds good, but the actual true real answer.
- 0:11Misty Celli: When was the last time you did something purely because you needed it?
- 0:16Misty Celli: Not because it made you a better mother or wife or a more productive person, not because it would help you show up better for everyone else.
- 0:25Misty Celli: Just simply because you needed it.
- 0:29Misty Celli: Because you are a human being with needs that exist independently of what they produce for the people around you.
- 0:36Misty Celli: Take a moment, really think about it.
- 0:40Misty Celli: Because if the answer is taking longer than it should, if you're scanning back through weeks or months or coming up mostly empty, I need you to hear what that silence is telling you.
- 0:53Misty Celli: It is telling you that somewhere along the way, without consciously choosing it, you absorbed a belief that has been quietly running your life ever since.
- 1:03Misty Celli: A belief so embedded, so normalized, so dressed up as virtue that you have probably never once questioned whether it was actually true.
- 1:14Misty Celli: The belief is this my needs don't matter.
- 1:18Misty Celli: And I need to tell you something about that belief today, something I wish that someone had told me before I spent years living inside it without ever realizing it was there.
- 1:30Misty Celli: It is the most dangerous thing you believe.
- 1:34Misty Celli: Not because it makes you a bad person, but because of what it quietly, consistently, and visibly does to you over time.
- 1:43Misty Celli: Stay with me because today we are naming it fully, and naming it is the first step to putting it down.
- 1:51Misty Celli: Are you tired of feeling like you don't know who you are anymore?
- 1:54Misty Celli: Do you look in the mirror and catch yourself thinking, is this all there is?
- 1:58Misty Celli: Even though you know you were made for more, you're in the right place.
- 2:02Misty Celli: I'm Misty Celle and I help women step into their highest potential and design a life that feels true, rich, and deeply satisfying.
- 2:10Misty Celli: A life built by design, not by default.
- 2:13Misty Celli: On this podcast, you will learn the principles and strategic tools that create real lasting transformation in your health, relationships, confidence, your goals, and the deeper parts of you like purpose, growth, love, and parenting.
- 2:25Misty Celli: This is where you begin the process of becoming your utmost self and reclaiming a life that feels like yours again.
- 2:32Misty Celli: Welcome to your Utmost Life Podcast.
- 2:36Misty Celli: Before I say anything else, I want to sit with you in something for a moment.
- 2:41Misty Celli: Because I know that belief doesn't feel dangerous to you.
- 2:45Misty Celli: I know that it feels like love, it feels like devotion, it feels like the thing that makes you a good mother, a good wife, a good woman.
- 2:55Misty Celli: Every time you put yourself last, something in you registers it as proof that you care, that your family matters to you, that you are not selfish, that you are the kind of woman who gives without counting the cost.
- 3:10Misty Celli: And the giving is real.
- 3:12Misty Celli: I want to be clear about that.
- 3:14Misty Celli: The love underneath it is completely, entirely real.
- 3:19Misty Celli: However, there is something else underneath the giving too.
- 3:24Misty Celli: Something quieter.
- 3:26Misty Celli: Something that you might feel most clearly in the moments when the house is still and everyone is taking care of, and you finally, technically, allowed to rest.
- 3:38Misty Celli: And instead of rest, what you feel is this hollow, aching nothing.
- 3:45Misty Celli: Like you gave everything away and forgot to keep anything for yourself.
- 3:51Misty Celli: Like you poured and poured until the vessel was empty, and now you're standing there looking at the bottom, wondering when it got this way.
- 4:00Misty Celli: You feel it in your body before your feet hit the floor in the morning.
- 4:04Misty Celli: That low, heavy weight that has nothing to do with how much sleep you got.
- 4:09Misty Celli: You hear it in the quiet between conversations.
- 4:13Misty Celli: That faint, persistent sense that something is missing, that you are somehow beside your own life rather than inside it.
- 4:23Misty Celli: You see it sometimes when you catch yourself in the mirror and don't recognize the woman looking back.
- 4:29Misty Celli: Not because she looks different, but because she looks so far away.
- 4:34Misty Celli: That is not the price of love.
- 4:38Misty Celli: That is the cost of a belief, and you have been paying it for a very long time.
- 4:46Misty Celli: Here's what I think your inner world sounds like when this belief is running.
- 4:50Misty Celli: And tell me if this lands close to home.
- 4:54Misty Celli: Every time you try to do something for yourself, carve out an hour, say no to something, choose your own need over someone else's want, the guilt fires before you even finish the thought.
- 5:09Misty Celli: Immediately, automatically, like an alarm system that was installed so long ago you don't remember when or how it got there.
- 5:18Misty Celli: And the guilt says, this is selfish.
- 5:22Misty Celli: They need you.
- 5:23Misty Celli: Who are you to take up space when there are people depending on you?
- 5:28Misty Celli: And because the guilt feels so certain, so immediate, so much like your own voice, you obey it.
- 5:37Misty Celli: You put the need back down, you return to giving, and somewhere inside you file it away as more evidence that your needs are, in fact, optional, that wanting more is in fact a character flaw you need to manage.
- 5:52Misty Celli: And therefore, the belief gets stronger because every time you obey the guilt, you confirm it.
- 5:58Misty Celli: Every time you put yourself last, you teach yourself and everyone around you that last is where you belong.
- 6:06Misty Celli: However, here is what I need you to understand about that guilt.
- 6:10Misty Celli: It is not your conscience, it is not wisdom, it is not love, it is conditioning, and conditioning is not the same as truth.
- 6:22Misty Celli: I want to tell you about a moment that I think about often, because it is the moment that I finally understood in my body and not just in my head what this belief was actually doing to me.
- 6:35Misty Celli: We were at a restaurant, my family and I, sitting in a booth, and at some point during the meal I became aware of something so ordinary, so unremarkable that I almost missed it.
- 6:47Misty Celli: I had pressed myself into the corner of the booth against the wall.
- 6:52Misty Celli: I was giving my husband 90% of the seat.
- 6:55Misty Celli: My body was turned inward, taking up as little space as possible, as though my presence at that table required an apology.
- 7:05Misty Celli: And I sat there, the restaurant buzzing around me, my family talking and laughing and fully alive in the moment, and I felt it.
- 7:14Misty Celli: Not just the physical smallness of how I was sitting, the metaphorical truth of it.
- 7:20Misty Celli: I had been shrinking myself, not just in that booth, but everywhere, in every room, in every conversation, in every moment where my needs had bumped up against someone else's comfort, and I had automatically, instinctively made myself smaller so they could have more.
- 7:42Misty Celli: I had lost so much weight by that point that I was physically not taking up space.
- 7:48Misty Celli: And I was not taking up space in conversation either.
- 7:51Misty Celli: I ate quietly, I moved carefully, as though setting my fork down too loud might shatter the atmosphere, as though my presence was something that needed to be managed rather than something that had a right to simply exist.
- 8:08Misty Celli: And the thought that went through my head sitting there in that booth was one of the most sobering thoughts I ever had.
- 8:15Misty Celli: If I shifted in my seat right now, if I made sound, took up space, interrupted the air in this room, would anyone actually see me?
- 8:27Misty Celli: Or would they just wonder what that noise was?
- 8:31Misty Celli: I was sitting at my own family's table and I had made myself so small, so quiet, so consistently invisible that I genuinely wasn't sure anyone would notice if I disappeared.
- 8:44Misty Celli: That was the moment I understood that this belief, my needs don't matter, was not humility.
- 8:51Misty Celli: It was not love.
- 8:52Misty Celli: It was not virtue.
- 8:54Misty Celli: It was the most dangerous thing I had ever quietly, lovingly, completely believed about myself.
- 9:00Misty Celli: And it had cost me more than I had ever allowed myself to calculate.
- 9:06Misty Celli: I want to walk you through what this belief actually costs, not theoretically, specifically, because I think you have been carrying the weight of it without ever fully seeing what you've been paying.
- 9:19Misty Celli: The first cost is to your body.
- 9:22Misty Celli: When you constantly override your own needs, when you run on empty as a matter of habit, when rest and nourishment and the basic acts of caring for yourself become things that you do only after everyone else is taken care of, your body keeps record.
- 9:39Misty Celli: It keeps it in the exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, in the weight that shifts, in the tension that lives in your shoulders and your jaw and the space between your eyes, in the way you move through the world carefully, quietly, as though taking up space requires permission.
- 9:57Misty Celli: Your body is not separate from your belief system.
- 10:01Misty Celli: It is the physical expression of it.
- 10:04Misty Celli: And a woman who believes her needs don't matter will, over time, live that belief in every cell.
- 10:12Misty Celli: The hollowness you feel is not just emotional, it is physiological.
- 10:17Misty Celli: It is what happens when a human being stops being counted among the people who deserve care.
- 10:23Misty Celli: The second cost is to your relationships.
- 10:27Misty Celli: And this is the one that I think will surprise you most because it is the one that runs most directly against the reason you adopted the belief in the first place.
- 10:37Misty Celli: You put yourself last because you love your family, because you want them to have everything, because their comfort and happiness and well-being matter to you more than your own.
- 10:49Misty Celli: That is real love.
- 10:51Misty Celli: And I'm not questioning it for a single second.
- 10:54Misty Celli: However, here is what your family is actually experiencing on the other side of your invisibility.
- 11:02Misty Celli: Your children are not experiencing a mother who loves them so much that she disappeared for them.
- 11:09Misty Celli: They are experiencing a mother who is not fully there, who moves through the house quietly, carefully, as though her presence is something to be managed, who says I'm fine in a voice that everyone in the room knows means something else entirely.
- 11:26Misty Celli: And they are learning, not from your words, but from your example, that this is what a woman looks like.
- 11:33Misty Celli: This is what love requires, that making yourself smaller is how you show people you care.
- 11:39Misty Celli: Your daughter is watching you, and what she is learning about her own worth is being written right now in the daily evidence of yours.
- 11:47Misty Celli: Furthermore, your husband is not getting the fullness of you.
- 11:51Misty Celli: He is getting the version of you that is left after everyone else has been taken care of.
- 11:56Misty Celli: The tired version, the depleted version, the woman who has given everything away and is running the relationship on what remains.
- 12:05Misty Celli: And however much he loves you, that is not the intimacy either of you deserve.
- 12:11Misty Celli: The third cost is you your identity.
- 12:14Misty Celli: And this is the one that brought me to that booth, the one that is the hardest to name and the most important to see.
- 12:21Misty Celli: When you live inside the belief that your needs don't matter long enough, it stops being a choice you make and becomes a fact you inhabit.
- 12:31Misty Celli: You stop noticing the shrinking because the shrinking becomes your natural size.
- 12:36Misty Celli: You stop feeling the weight of the giving because the giving becomes your entire identity.
- 12:41Misty Celli: And one day you are sitting in a restaurant pressed against the wall of your own life, wondering if anyone would notice if you made a sound.
- 12:49Misty Celli: And the terrifying thing is not the answer to the question.
- 12:53Misty Celli: The terrifying thing is that you're not sure you would notice either.
- 12:58Misty Celli: Because somewhere in the years of putting yourself last, you stopped being someone to yourself.
- 13:05Misty Celli: You became a function, a role, a provider of everything everyone else needs.
- 13:10Misty Celli: And the woman underneath all that giving, the one with needs and desires and a rhythm that is entirely her own, she got quieter and quieter until even you couldn't hear her clearly anymore.
- 13:25Misty Celli: That is what this belief does left unchallenged.
- 13:29Misty Celli: It doesn't just cost you comfort or rest or time.
- 13:33Misty Celli: It costs you yourself gradually, quietly, until the booth feels normal and the silence feels like peace and the invisibility feels like just the way things are.
- 13:47Misty Celli: It is not the way things are.
- 13:51Misty Celli: It is the way things became.
- 13:53Misty Celli: And became is not the same as permanent.
- 13:58Misty Celli: Now I want to come back to the guilt because I think the guilt is the mechanism, the daily enforcer of the belief.
- 14:05Misty Celli: And until you can see it clearly for what it is, it will keep doing its job.
- 14:11Misty Celli: The guilt fires automatically before you've made a choice, before you've even finished the thought.
- 14:16Misty Celli: And because it fires so fast, so certainly, in a voice that sounds so much like your own, you treat it as truth, as a signal from your values, as evidence of how much you love your people.
- 14:28Misty Celli: However, consider this a compass points north because of magnetic north, a fixed internal reality.
- 14:37Misty Celli: Therefore, if your guilt were truly a compass, it would point consistently toward what is actually right.
- 14:46Misty Celli: It would fire when you genuinely harm someone.
- 14:49Misty Celli: It would be propositional to the actual impact of your choices.
- 14:54Misty Celli: However, that is not what this guilt does.
- 14:58Misty Celli: This fires when you try to rest.
- 15:01Misty Celli: When you try to eat something nourishing, when you try to say no to something that is draining you, when you try to take up space in a booth at a restaurant, it fires not in proportion to harm caused, but in proportion to space claimed.
- 15:17Misty Celli: The more space you try to take, the louder it gets.
- 15:22Misty Celli: That is not a compass.
- 15:24Misty Celli: That is a cage.
- 15:25Misty Celli: And it was built not by your values, not by love, but by years of conditioning that told you the measure of a good woman is how little she requires.
- 15:38Misty Celli: Therefore, when the guilt fires today, and it will, I want you to ask it one question before you obey it, just one.
- 15:48Misty Celli: Is this guilt pointing to actual harm I am causing?
- 15:53Misty Celli: Or is it pointing to space I am trying to take?
- 15:57Misty Celli: Because those are not the same thing.
- 15:59Misty Celli: And learning to tell the difference is the beginning of everything.
- 16:04Misty Celli: I want you to imagine a version of yourself that I think you have stopped letting yourself picture.
- 16:10Misty Celli: A woman who takes up space, not aggressively, not selfishly, just fully, who sits in the middle of the booth because she has as much right to be there as anyone else at that table.
- 16:25Misty Celli: Who speaks in conversations without editing herself into the smallness first, who eats her meal and sets her fork down and takes up the air in the room without apologizing for her presence.
- 16:39Misty Celli: A woman whose needs are on the list, not at the top of it necessarily, but on it, counted, valid, attended with the same care she gives everyone else.
- 16:51Misty Celli: A woman who whose daughter watches and thinks, that is what I want to look like.
- 16:57Misty Celli: That is what it looks like to know you matter.
- 17:01Misty Celli: A woman her husband experiences fully, not the depleted remainder at the end of the giving, but the whole person present and alive, taking up her rightful place in the relationship.
- 17:16Misty Celli: And here is what I want you to understand about that woman.
- 17:20Misty Celli: She is not more selfish than you are.
- 17:23Misty Celli: She does not love her family less.
- 17:26Misty Celli: She does not give less or care less or show up less.
- 17:30Misty Celli: She gives more because she gives from fullness.
- 17:35Misty Celli: She loves more completely because she is present enough to actually be there.
- 17:40Misty Celli: She shows up more powerfully because she has not spent herself into nothing before the day has even begun.
- 17:48Misty Celli: That woman, the woman who takes up space, who counts her own needs, who lets the guilt fire and then asks a question before obeying it, she is not a fantasy.
- 18:00Misty Celli: She is what you become when you put down the most dangerous belief you have ever carried.
- 18:06Misty Celli: And she is closer than you think.
- 18:10Misty Celli: Here is what I want you to carry out of this episode today.
- 18:14Misty Celli: Your needs are not optional extras.
- 18:18Misty Celli: They are not the reward you get after everyone else is taken care of.
- 18:22Misty Celli: They are not the evidence of selfishness or ingratitude or insufficient love for the people in your life.
- 18:30Misty Celli: They are the non-negotiable requirements of a human being who deserves to be alive, fully, presently, completely alive in her own life.
- 18:42Misty Celli: And the guilt that tells you otherwise is not your compass.
- 18:46Misty Celli: It is your conditioning.
- 18:48Misty Celli: And you are allowed today, right now, without earning it first, to begin questioning it.
- 18:55Misty Celli: I want to tell you something else before you go.
- 18:58Misty Celli: Something I do not say lightly.
- 19:01Misty Celli: I am building something, a space where this work, the real work, the root work, the work that actually changes the belief rather than just managing the symptoms gets done completely without stopping halfway.
- 19:17Misty Celli: I have been whispering about it for a few weeks now, and I am getting close to being ready to share it with you fully.
- 19:24Misty Celli: Stay close because what I'm putting together is built specifically for the woman who has been pressed against the wall long enough.
- 19:32Misty Celli: The woman who is ready to move to the middle of the booth and say, I am here and I am staying there.
- 19:40Misty Celli: But for now, in the meantime, subscribe if you haven't so you don't miss what's coming.
- 19:46Misty Celli: And before you go, say this.
- 19:48Misty Celli: Mean it.
- 19:50Misty Celli: My needs matter.
- 19:51Misty Celli: Not because I've earned it, not because I've given enough, but because I am a human being that has always been enough.
- 19:59Misty Celli: When that guilt fires today, pause.
- 20:02Misty Celli: Ask it, am I causing harm or am I taking up space?
- 20:07Misty Celli: And then take up the space.
- 20:10Misty Celli: You have been pressed against the wall long enough.
- 20:13Misty Celli: You are more than everyone's everything.
- 20:16Misty Celli: You are someone and are worthy of embracing your utmost self.
- 20:21Misty Celli: Stay close.
- 20:22Misty Celli: I'll see you Monday.