Latest / Confident and Empowered Women / Before You Became Hard on Yourself | EP322

Transcript

Before You Became Hard on Yourself | EP322 · Confident and Empowered Women

• 0:05
  You know that moment right after you mess up, even if it's something small, and before anyone else even opens up their mouth, you are already in there dragging yourself, and not in the low-key, that was embarrassing kind of
• 0:18
  way.
• 0:19
  I'm talking the straight for your jugular kind of way, where you say things like, "You're so stupid.
• 0:25
  Of course, you messed it up.
• 0:27
  You always do this.
• 0:28
  Why do you even try?"
• 0:30
  Listen, you did not even give anybody else a chance to react because you already sentenced yourself, and you did not go easy on the verdict, okay?
• 0:42
  And that was the voice of your own inner critic on the microphone.
• 0:46
  If your friend talked to you that way Oh, listen, you would not even be friends anymore.
• 0:51
  That relationship would be over.
• 0:52
  You'd block her, you'd tell everybody what she said, and you'd probably make the whole plot of your next girls trip this very conversation.
• 1:01
  But when it's in the voice in your own head, you just let her live there rent-free with a key to the house.
• 1:08
  That is not a personality trait, friend.
• 1:11
  That is a trained reflex, and reflexes get built somewhere.
• 1:16
  So we're not gonna talk about how to get that voice to quiet down.
• 1:20
  We're actually gonna find out exactly who trained her And why she still thinks this is her full-time job.
• 1:27
  And friend, if you are new here, I'm Letitia, and this is Confident and Empowered Women, we talk about the stuff that you think about at 10:00 PM at night when the whole house is finally quiet.
• 1:38
  We're having the conversations you may not be having anywhere else.
• 1:42
  So hit subscribe right now before you forget.
• 1:46
  Your future self will thank you for doing yourself this favor.
• 1:49
  Okay?
• 1:50
  So let's get into it Hey, hey, hey.
• 1:55
  Welcome back.
• 1:56
  Okay, let's get grounded because this one is going somewhere that we don't usually go.
• 2:02
  We are finding out exactly where the voice of your inner critic actually clocked in for her first shift why she refuses to take the day off even on your best days and even when you're winning.
• 2:15
  And I'm leaving you with something real to do about it before we're done, okay?
• 2:20
  So listen Now friend, nobody is born critiquing themselves like this.
• 2:26
  She got hired somewhere along the way.
• 2:28
  This may not have started with one dramatic origin story and It's not the same hire date for everybody.
• 2:36
  For somebody, she clocked in when you were young, maybe a family member, someone who was supposed to be a friend or even a teacher.
• 2:44
  Maybe it was a manager who who corrected you once in front of everybody And then you decided you would rather tear down yourself first than ever get caught off guard like that again.
• 2:56
  Or maybe it was in a relationship where where the criticism came fast and quick to cut you off, like in 5:00 traffic, so you learned to beat them to it.
• 3:08
  Or maybe it was something that built up slowly, quietly, comment section after comment section, comparison by comparison, Until brutal became your default.
• 3:20
  But here's the part that explains why this voice feels so personal and so undeniably you.
• 3:27
  It didn't stay a memory of what someone else said.
• 3:31
  You absorbed it.
• 3:32
  You started running it in your own voice, but in their cadence, using their exact words until eventually you couldn't tell where the criticism ended and your own thoughts began And that's not just some cute little metaphor, friend.
• 3:47
  That's literally how it works.
• 3:50
  You outsourced the harshest voice you ever heard, and then you hired yourself to keep running it on repeat for free indefinitely long after the original source ever said another word to you.
• 4:04
  She has no kind of self-awareness and doesn't even know she's outstayed her welcome.
• 4:12
  And that's why it feels so impossible to separate from.
• 4:17
  It's not that you're naturally cruel to yourself, it's that you became fluent in someone else's cruelty, And fluency feels like your own voice after enough repetition.
• 4:28
  Think about it like an accent.
• 4:30
  When you spend some time around it and you start talking like that without even trying.
• 4:36
  Not everybody decides to pick up an accent on purpose.
• 4:41
  It just gets absorbed the longer that you're immersed in it.
• 4:45
  Same thing happens here.
• 4:47
  You weren't born speaking her language.
• 4:49
  You became fluent in it.
• 4:51
  Now listen, the when is not the point.
• 4:54
  The why is always the same.
• 4:57
  At some point, being cruel to yourself first felt like protection Because if you took you down first, nobody else would have to.
• 5:07
  Think about it like a bodyguard who got hired during an actual threat and did the job so well, so thoroughly, that nobody ever told her the threat is gone.
• 5:19
  'Cause she has stayed vigilant and on high alert.
• 5:23
  She's still out there patting people down at the party where everybody loves you.
• 5:28
  She is not malfunctioning, friend.
• 5:31
  She just never got the memo that the danger had passed, okay?
• 5:35
  And here's the part that makes this click.
• 5:38
  This is not just a thought floating up on top.
• 5:41
  It is physical.
• 5:43
  When you go after yourself like that, your body reacts the same as if it were actually in danger.
• 5:50
  cortisol, alarm bells, the whole fire drill, all of that for a typo in a email.
• 5:58
  That's why you can lie awake at 1:00 AM replaying one sentence you said wrong, dissecting it from every single angle like it's footage from a game you played, instant replay and all.
• 6:13
  And this is the part that gets me every single time because you would think that landing the promotion, hitting the number, Finally getting the thing would send her home for the day, but no, mm-mm.
• 6:24
  She just finds another angle.
• 6:28
  Bigger win, harder audit.
• 6:30
  Meanwhile, you could pull up with a Beyoncé level performance, and she would still be backstage going, "The third verse was a little pitchy though."
• 6:41
  She's not even proud of you, she's auditing you.
• 6:45
  Those are two very different jobs, and only one of them was ever supposed to be permanent And that's why when you do things like affirmations or your mirror work, those are real tools.
• 6:57
  But if they haven't worked for you yet, it's not the tool.
• 7:01
  because listen, you've done the affirmations.
• 7:04
  You've stood at the mirror and said the words, And maybe you didn't get the results that you thought that you would get.
• 7:10
  Now listen, if those things are already working for you, that's beautiful, okay?
• 7:16
  We are not about to talk you out of something that's actually working for you, so keep those things up.
• 7:22
  But if they haven't quite hit in the way that you want them to, here's the missing piece.
• 7:27
  When you've done the exact same thing and it felt hollow, of course it felt like reading a script you didn't believe a single word of.
• 7:37
  That was never you failing at self-love, friend.
• 7:42
  Think about it like concealer because you know we love us a good facial beat, okay?
• 7:50
  Concealer is a great tool.
• 7:53
  It genuinely works.
• 7:55
  But if you cake concealer over skin that hasn't been cleansed, moisturized, and taken care of, it's just gonna sit weird.
• 8:02
  It cracks by 2:00 PM.
• 8:05
  It draws attention to the exact spot you were trying to cover instead of away from it, and no amount of blending is going to fix that because concealer was never meant to replace skincare.
• 8:18
  It's meant to sit on top of it.
• 8:21
  The affirmations, the mirror work, and all of those tools, that's your concealer.
• 8:27
  The identity work is your skincare, and if you have been applying one without ever doing the other, of course it felt off.
• 8:37
  You were just doing the routine, but in reverse, okay?
• 8:41
  Backwards and all.
• 8:45
  So if you didn't just feel hollow when you tried to be kind to yourself and you felt worse, you said the nice thing to yourself and something in you cracked open and it didn't feel peaceful, and it felt
• 9:00
  more like grief, panic, or tears out of nowhere over something that seemed really small.
• 9:07
  If you've had that experience, I need you to know right now, that was not the kindness failing you.
• 9:14
  and it wasn't you being too far gone for this work.
• 9:18
  That was just the old stuff finally getting some air for the first time in what might have been years, and it only surfaced because it finally feels safe enough to do so.
• 9:32
  So think about it like opening up a window in a room that's been sealed shut for a long time.
• 9:39
  The second that fresh air rushes in, dust starts flying everywhere, and for a second it looks worse and not better.
• 9:49
  It looks like you just made a mess.
• 9:51
  And listen, you didn't friend, you didn't make a mess at all.
• 9:54
  You just let the air in for the first time.
• 9:58
  The dust was always there, it's just that you're now seeing it because the windows are finally open.
• 10:05
  So if the mirror work made you feel things and stirred something up instead of settling down, don't slam the window back shut And decide that you're not the self-love kinda girl.
• 10:18
  Just stop trying to air out the whole room in one afternoon.
• 10:24
  Crack the window for a few seconds, then close it and do it again tomorrow.
• 10:31
  Let her get used to the air a little bit at a time instead of flooding the whole room all at once and overwhelming a system that has been sealed for years.
• 10:43
  Small doses over time is how trust actually gets rebuilt, not one grand gesture you make and abandon when it feels like too much.
• 10:55
  Listen, you're not going to think your way out of a job that was never about logic to begin with, but you can start the actual skincare underneath, the kind she can feel until she does not have to guard
• 11:10
  so viciously anymore.
• 11:13
  That is the whole first move, friend, not silencing her, but doing the work that's underneath her until she finally has nothing left to protect you from.
• 11:23
  One honest question before we keep going.
• 11:27
  If she got hired to guard a version of you who did not feel safe yet, who do you have to become for her to finally stand down?
• 11:40
  Okay, friend, that thing that you just recognized about yourself, listen, most women feel it for five minutes and then they go right back onto autopilot because nobody ever showed them what to do with it.
• 11:54
  So let me just break down affirmations for you real quick, because standing in the mirror saying, "I am worthy," when you don't believe a word of it isn't self-love.
• 12:04
  It's a leap that you're just not ready to make yet, and that gap between where you actually are and the affirmations you're trying to force is exactly why it felt flat or fake even.
• 12:20
  You don't need a bigger leap, you need a bridge, and that's what the self-love script is.
• 12:25
  It's free, it's short, and it meets you exactly where you are today Instead of where some viral quote thinks that you should already be, you'll identify where you're actually standing right now and build a bridge affirmation you can
• 12:41
  actually believe in on your way there and walk away with a powerful line, one sentence spoken from the woman you are already becoming.
• 12:51
  This is not about pretending, okay?
• 12:53
  It's for you to practice until belief becomes identity.
• 12:58
  So grab them in the show notes because, friend, this is how you start building the bridge instead of forcing the leap All right.
• 13:09
  Okay, it's time for our favorite, the self-love two-step with the remix.
• 13:15
  So let's get into it.
• 13:17
  Step one, find her hire date.
• 13:20
  This is where you whip out your journal, your notes app, whichever one gets you out of your head, and think about a moment, what age, what season, where you first remember being crueler to yourself than the moment actually
• 13:36
  called for.
• 13:38
  What was happening around you right before that?
• 13:41
  You're not diagnosing anything, friend.
• 13:43
  You're just finally reading the job posting she applied for.
• 13:48
  And step two, rebuild one, okay?
• 13:53
  Just one.
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  Do one thing that only someone with an already solid foundation would actually do.
• 14:01
  Speak up in the meeting.
• 14:03
  Post the thing.
• 14:04
  Say no without the 12-paragraph explanation.
• 14:10
  Keep it small on purpose, friend, because all we wanna do is one brick at a time.
• 14:17
  Rome wasn't built in a day, and you are not trying to build the whole wall in a day either.
• 14:24
  Let your actions lay a brick she can actually stand on instead of handing her a sentence that she doesn't fully trust yet.
• 14:32
  And step three is the you step.
• 14:35
  You get still, you get quiet, and you ask yourself, "What is my heart telling me to do next?"
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  Because whatever comes up, that is your next right aligned step.
• 14:47
  You don't need the whole plan, just the next move, and trust her, friend, because she already knows Now, let me pour into you real quick.
• 14:57
  Friend, if nobody told you lately, you were never the problem.
• 15:01
  You just had a bodyguard working off of old orders, doing her absolute best to protect you when safety was not guaranteed.
• 15:12
  And now you get to be the one who shows her that it's okay.
• 15:17
  You're safe to recognize the good in you, to be proud of you, and build that self-trust one moment at a time.
• 15:28
  That inner critic adopted the voice of someone who was in a powerful position, someone whose opinion you valued, or someone who said something that had a shred of truth in it, and it resonated with you, attached itself to
• 15:46
  an insecurity or even a belief you already had, and gave it the microphone for way too long.
• 15:54
  And now knowing that, you get to hand her a script to speak to you with a voice that respects and loves you.
• 16:02
  You do that one moment at a time, one hand to heart, one compliment, one positive acknowledgement, one moment of honoring yourself, whether it's speaking up for you, honoring your feelings, emotions, honoring your dreams, celebrating your accomplishments, and loving
• 16:21
  yourself a little more each time.
• 16:24
  This is not a one-size-fits-all, do it yourself type of thing, okay?
• 16:31
  And thinking if you do it once, you're cured, okay?
• 16:34
  This is a way of life, and you build it brick by brick.
• 16:39
  The critic has one job, and that's supporting you, not in a critical kinda way.
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  So let's train her how to support you by checking her when necessary, reminding her of her new job, and reinforcing it.
• 16:54
  You won't go from critic to cheerleader in one fell swoop, but you can start today with the next loving way you can show up for yourself with the love and support that you need from one moment to the
• 17:08
  next.
• 17:09
  This is how you make self-love and identity your new lifestyle.
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  And friend, I'm super proud of you for doing your work.
• 17:19
  This is just one part of the conversation.
• 17:23
  In the next YouTube video, we go all the way into exactly who she needs to become instead, so make sure that you're subscribed over there, too Friend, yes, you deserve to fall in love with yourself, your days, and
• 17:42
  your life.
• 17:43
  Not someday, but right now.
• 17:46
  This conversation right here, this is the work that you showed up for.
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  This is how it happens, one layer at a time, and I'm gonna keep showing up for you just like you keep showing up with me.
• 18:01
  Okay?
• 18:02
  So leave a review and tell me how this is helping you step into your main character energy.
• 18:09
  And no matter what comes your way, together we can encourage over everything, and I'll see you in the next episode