Man in the Arena with Craig Spear

Overcoming Low Self-Worth for Men Over 40

• Craig Spear

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In my coaching I see a lot of guys with a lack of self worth or a low self worth.  I hear it in their voices and it comes out in their thoughts - which then shows up in their actions and the things they do.

I believe that our level of self worth is directly related to the results we have in our lives.  From our health to our careers to our relationships, the opinions we have of ourselves greatly influence our outcomes.

So one of the best things you can do, if you have a low self worth, is to change the opinion you have of yourself.

That's what I am showing you how to do on today's episode:

  1. Self Worth = The Opinion You Have of Yourself
  2. The Importance of Operating from a Place of Strength
  3. Developing a Practice of Enhancing Your Self Worth
  4. Common Thought Errors the Lead to Low Self Worth
  5. 3 Steps to Changing the Opinions You Have of Yourself
  6. Quick Self Worth Hack
  7. 10 Things I Do for My Own Self Care
  8. The Importance of Self Compassion & Self Worth

Enjoy!



Did you find this episode helpful insightful or motivating? If so, let's connect! You can find me on....

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Speaker 1:

If you have a low self-worth or you engage in negative self-talk in any way, then you are in the right place today, because that's exactly what we're talking about. Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Hey guys, welcome back to man in the Arena. I'm so glad you showed up to listen and I'm so excited for you to take the content from today's episode and apply it in your daily life, because the potential impact is going to be so powerful and is such a good way. Today, I'm talking about self-worth. More specifically, I'm talking about the way we think about ourselves and the way that we talk to ourselves. Self-worth seems to be coming up a lot these days, especially in my coaching. I hear things like I don't love myself or I don't value myself. I don't have a really strong self-worth. When you think about self-worth, it's a really simple thing, but it's complex in a lot of ways. What it boils down to is essentially the opinion that you have of yourself. That's what your self-worth is the opinion you have of yourself. It's really important that you remember that, because it's going to play a key role in this episode as we go forward. These opinions that we have of ourselves were formed from a very young age and they continued to be formed throughout our lives. If you have negative opinions of yourself, then your self-worth is going to be impacted in a very defeating way, so much so that I deeply believe that our achievements in life, they're directly tied to our self-worth and the opinions that we have of ourselves. It's foundational to who we are as men, especially when it comes to our personal health and our weight loss. Think about it the amount you weigh, the amount of money you make, the relationships you have they all come back to your self-worth in some way. As I mentioned, this shows up a ton.

Speaker 1:

In my coaching, I work with a lot of men who do not believe they are worthy of a healthy body and a certain weight. Most of the time it's unconscious to them, they're not even aware of it, but I see it, I hear it, the way that it comes out and how they talk about themselves. It shows up how they think, shows up how they feel and act, and then they sabotage their success right when they're close to a major breakthrough. One pattern I see that's really telling in terms of a lack of self-worth is inconsistent swings. One day they might be on fire, they're in a really good place, and the next day the sky is falling and something terrible is happening. I see that quite a bit. It's just like these huge spikes and these big lows, these big valleys. Sometimes this isn't even a daily back and forth, sometimes it's over longer intervals, maybe a week, a month. But this inconsistency is often a tell for a lack of self-worth.

Speaker 1:

And I talk a lot about all or nothing thinking in this podcast and in my coaching, but we know life is not an all or nothing proposition. One of the things that I'm personally working on myself is this idea of operating from a place of strength rather than a place of weakness. Now, I know a lack of sleep, drinking alcohol, being sedentary, eating sometimes foods on a regular basis Things all put me in a position of weakness and the problem with that is it doesn't allow me to perform at my best. So does a low self-worth. It's not helpful, it does not serve me or you in any way to have a low self-worth. It puts us in a position of weakness. So I encourage you to join me in this pursuit of improving our self-worth.

Speaker 1:

Now let me just reiterate that your self-worth is a culmination of years of experiences that you've had, what you've been taught, who you've hung around with, the media that you've consumed. There's a lot to it. The good news is, no matter what you've been taught or the experiences you've had, your self-worth is completely intact. So, in other words, you don't have to build it up. If you've ever heard someone say, I've got to build my self-worth, I disagree with that. If not something that you have to change and it's not something that you can change you cannot change what your value is. The only thing that needs to work is your opinions of yourself. That's what you need to work on.

Speaker 1:

Your value is intact. Think of it this way the most expensive baseball card in the world is a 1921 Honest Wagner card that sold for $6.6 million in 2021. So apparently it's a flawless card and as long as it stays that way, its value is intact. Someone might come along who's not a baseball collector or not a baseball fan, and they look at that card and it doesn't have any value to them, but that's their opinion. When they leave and they stop looking at that card, the reality is, the value of that card is intact, and the same holds true for your self-worth.

Speaker 1:

No matter what someone else thinks of you, your value is intact simply because you exist and you are created and you are here on this earth. You are valuable. The odds of you being right here right now are so incredibly small. You do not need any more evidence to prove that you are a valuable person. All right. In fact, it's not something that you can even take credit for. So if you believe that you've created your own worth and your own value, I'm sorry to say but that's not true either. You just have to accept that you're worthy and you're valuable. And, from this place, knowing that you are valuable, you get to work on your opinions that you have of yourself.

Speaker 1:

Okay, speaking of working on yourself, now that you know you don't have to build up your value, the next step is to work on the opinions you have of yourself. But there's two really important things you need to hear before we go forward. Number one this is not going to happen overnight. If you have low opinions of yourself and, by virtue, of low sense of self-worth. That's the result of decades of programming, and so now we have to get rid of those old opinions. We have to change those old opinions. So you need to be patient, you need to be consistent, which is hard because, by virtue, when we have a low self-worth, we are inconsistent, as I mentioned earlier. But you don't have to do a lot each day. A little bit makes a huge difference. So I encourage you to take the information that follows and develop a practice of working on your opinions of yourself every day. That's the challenge. Okay, start small and just watch those add up.

Speaker 1:

The second thing I want you to keep in mind is that your self-worth is your own responsibility. The opinions you have of yourself have nothing to do with what anyone else thinks about you or what anyone else has ever said to you or done to you. So this means taking extreme ownership, and what's powerful about this is you get to decide what you want to think about yourself, and that is very freeing, okay. You don't need anyone else's help or validation in determining your own opinions of yourself. So, with that, my goal here today is to address one common thought errors that you have that lead to a low self-worth or to your own opinions of yourself. So we all have these kind of errors in our thinking that will disrupt the opinions we have of ourself and then, by virtue, we have a lower self-worth, okay, the second thing is I want you to walk through a simple practice to start building a strong self-worth. So let's talk about common errors in thinking.

Speaker 1:

One of the main common errors in thinking that I see is that we see others as less valuable than us. Right, and we might even see other people as being more valuable than us, but, as I said, everyone else's worth and value has already been determined, it's already been established and intact. We are all the same. It doesn't matter what you do for a living, what you've achieved in your life. Our worthiness as human beings is all the same. And the reason why this is so important is if you look at other people as less than you, as having less worth or less value, and you judge them, then subconsciously that opens the door to you thinking that it's possible that you might be less worthy at some point, and of course, that means you're susceptible to also feeling less worthy, okay, so it's really important that we catch ourselves. When we look down on other people, we see them as being less valuable, because that's going to impact us in the long run, okay.

Speaker 1:

The second error in thinking that I see is I'm not enough. People will say I'm not enough, I don't make enough money, I'm not a good enough husband, I'm not a good enough father, I'm not healthy enough Okay. So very much rooted in scarcity, I'm not enough. And remember your value is already intact. You didn't create it and it's not. You can't devalue who you are in any way. You're a human being, okay. No matter what you've said, you've done, the results of your life none of that matters. Your value is intact. You're sufficient, which is the opposite of scarcity, okay. So I am enough is the opposite of not enough. You are sufficient. You don't need to overinflate your value. You don't need to build it up any more than it actually is. So whenever you have that thought, I'm not enough, I want you to remember my value is intact. I don't have to do anything else to improve my value. I just have to change the opinions I have of myself.

Speaker 1:

And number three the last sort of common error in thinking I see that really impacts our self-worth is I don't want to seem stuck up or overconfident. Okay and this is one of the reasons why we stay stuck is we think that people won't like us if we value ourselves or if we're perceived as self-overconfident? Okay, the healthiest way to think about this is a combination of thought errors one and two, and that is that remember, everyone is equal. You didn't create your value, it just is. So it's okay to think that you're an amazing person because everyone else is an amazing person as well. See that If you don't look down on people and you don't look up to other people and you see us, everyone is being the same. If you think you're amazing and you think everyone else is amazing, then you're not being overconfident. Okay, it's hard to come across as arrogant and overconfident when you see people at your level.

Speaker 1:

Remember, whatever you think about yourself, you will go to work to find evidence that that is true. So why not start changing your opinions by searching for different evidence? And here's how you start to change the opinions of yourself in three steps. All right, number one I want you to create that daily practice of journaling and changing the opinions you have of yourself. If you look at your weight and your body and you notice that your opinions of your body are I'm fat, I'm out of shape, I'm not healthy enough, I don't take care of myself. Okay, how do you think that that's going to impact your self-worth? Instead, you need to start forming different opinions. Like I have a body that gets me to work. It helps me provide for my family. My body does good work, right. It helps me take care of my yard and my house. My body is something that performs all these valuable functions every day. My body is an amazing machine, right. Even though I haven't been taking care of it, it's still taking care of me.

Speaker 1:

So this is all part of the process of journaling and changing the opinions that you have of yourself. Along those same lines, you can start asking yourself different questions, questions like what qualities do I love about myself? Why am I worthy of success? How did I overcome a difficult situation in the past? What am I grateful for in my life? What thoughts and beliefs do I have that affect my self-perception? Who do I often compare myself to, and how do I define success for myself, independent of external validation?

Speaker 1:

Okay, quick side note here I saw this Instagram post the other day where this guy was saying one of the easiest ways or the best ways, I should say, to start to enhance your self-worth is a little hack and basically, whatever hand you are, if you're right-handed, then I want you to start to brush your teeth with your opposite hand, your left hand, okay. And when you're done brushing your teeth, what I want you to do is tell yourself you love yourself 10 times in the mirror while looking into your eyes. Okay, now, I know that might sound a little hokey, but when you do this and you do this every day for 30 days watch what happens, okay. Watch what happens to your own self-worth and the opinions that you have of yourself, because what's happening on a neurological level is we're triggering alpha brainwaves by brushing our teeth with our opposite hand, and that's our sort of learning brainwaves. That's where it primes us to learn and bring in new information, and so you can imagine, by saying I love you, this is something you now are programming using our alpha waves, Okay, so that's just a little side note here.

Speaker 1:

Again, back to the three steps to improving your self-worth. Number one was creating that daily journaling practice and asking questions, changing your opinions of yourself, okay. Number two follow through on your intentions. One of the most powerful things you can do to change your opinion of yourself is to create a short list of what you want to get done each day and then get that done. It's very simple, but it's very powerful. And notice, I said the word short list. I know a lot of you already make a list, but it's too long. Okay, when it's too long and you don't get everything done, it actually has the opposite effect. It actually starts to fracture your self-worth. So, making a shorter list and getting that done is going to have so much more positive impact and, again, this affirms those strong positive opinions that you're working on in step one.

Speaker 1:

Lastly, number three practice self-care. Okay, I want you to identify three ways that you can practice self-care, and this is hard to get when you already have a low self-worth because you don't believe you're deserving of self-care, but what's happening is you're just forming this negative feedback loop. Instead, I want you to make a short list of three things that you can go to when it's time for you to practice self-care. You have some time where you're not working, you're not parenting, you're not doing other things. If you need a jump start, here's my list. These are 10 things I do at some point during the week to take care of myself.

Speaker 1:

Number one working out. Number two go to sleep on time and wake up at 5 am. Number three breathe and meditate. Number four track your finances. Five coach yourself. Develop a self-coaching practice. Number six journal. Number seven have really strong, established habits and routines. Number eight do contrast therapy cold and hot, whether that's a cold shower, hot shower or sauna, cold plunge. And then, lastly, go outside, get a walk-in, get in a run, just as a bonus.

Speaker 1:

Here, how you can improve your self-worth is to practice more self-compassion. Many of you believe that self-compassion leads to complacency, but that just isn't true, and here's how I can prove that. I want you to think of your favorite coach, mentor, teacher, whoever that is from your past Now, whether it was way back in grade three, high school, university, your first job and I'm willing to bet that this person was so influential in your life because they were positive, because they cared, they were kind, they were invested and they believed in you and, most importantly, they had compassion for who you were and what you were working on. That's what gets us to show up as our best, not someone who ridiculed us or yelled at us or belittled us and shamed us, but that's what we're doing to ourselves every day and expecting to lose weight, eat better, to exercise and take care of ourselves. It's not going to happen from that place. So recognize your negative self-talk and start practicing self-compassion instead.

Speaker 1:

All right, fellas, remember your self-worth is intact and the only thing that's impacting your self-worth is your own opinion of yourself. So it's time to take responsibility for the opinions you have and go to work to changing them in the three steps I mentioned journaling, following through in your intentions and practicing self-care and then, as a bonus, practicing more self-compassion. If you want guidance in helping you change the opinions you have of yourself, please connect with me, because I do this work all the time with the guides that I coach. I promise you it's life-changing work. Thanks again for showing up and listening. Guys, until next week, keep doing the work so you can look better, feel better and do better. Now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to thespearmethodcom and discover how I can help you get started on your path better health and weight loss.