Category: Self worth

What is self- worth?
The dictionary defines self-worth as “the sense of one’s own value or worth as a person.”

Self-worth is the most critical component of our ability to truly believe in ourselves and live our life aligned with our best qualities. Without a healthy sense of self- worth, doubts and fears can overwhelm our true potential, greatly impacting the quality of our life experience, as well as sabotaging our life’s dreams, vision and purpose.

Although some of us may not be consciously aware that what is keeping us up at night is a sense of self-worth that needs improvement, I am here to tell you that if you and I can focus on one issue with the highest return on your investment, it is self-worth.

The story of how we develop or do not develop self- worth can be a long and painful one.

Join me as I make every effort to organize where your story of self-worth begins, and how we can make the ending the happiest one possible!

Trust and Betrayal

Trust is one of the most common words in the English language. Although we usually associate it with personal relationships, trust and betrayal are important elements in our professional, as well as in our personal lives.

According to the 2017 Gallup State of the Workplace Report, the lack of trust in the workplace contributes to active disengagement by employees and interferes with the ability of an organization to build a loyal customer base. Companies that have employees who are engaged in their work are 147% more profitable. The bottom line is that lack of trust costs companies a lot of money.

So how can we do better in matters of trust and betrayal? In order to cultivate trust and to know what to do to repair injuries of betrayal it is important to understand what trust really is and why we break it in the first place.

The most practical definition of trust I have come across comes from Dr. Brene Brown, grounded theory researcher and bestselling author of four #1 New York Times best sellers, including Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection.

I am particularly fond of social science grounded-theory research because it involves the construction of theory through methodical gathering and analysis of data. This is in contrast to developing theory by starting off with a hypothesis and trying to find out if the data will support it or not.

Dr. Brown has given us an amazing, measurable framework that demystifies how we can build trust in practical ways in our personal and professional relationships.

She defines trust as “choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.”

She uses the acronym B.R.A.V.I.N.G. to outline the behaviors you and I can do every day to get closer to mastery and away from disaster when it comes to trust. Here is her outline.

B is for Boundaries. We cannot cultivate trust unless we are clear about boundaries and respect one another’s boundaries.

R is Reliability. In this information-overloaded age we are living in, it is hard to keep up with life’s demands. However, if we care to build trust with people, we need to be able to do what we say we are going to do, over and over and over again. If we have a hard time doing that, then we can practice becoming better at saying no to additional demands.

A is for Accountability. We cannot build trust or repair past injuries if we don’t own our mistakes, be accountable for them, and apologize for them.

V is for Vault. We cannot cultivate trust with anybody if we don’t treat others with respect by honoring what they have shared with us. When we do not keep confidentiality as an integral part of the parameters of a relationship, that in and of itself is a corrosive form of betrayal that is very hard to recover from. Even when you share with me something about someone else (aka gossiping), you still disrupt my ability to trust you!

I is for Integrity. We cannot build trust if our actions do not align with our values. We cannot lie about somebody because we are upset with them and then profess that honesty is the cornerstone of our business.

N is for Non-judgment. We cannot trust one another when we come from a place of judgment. It takes courage to ask for help and expose our vulnerability. Judging someone for having the courage to be real with us can pose a significant obstacle to building trust. We need to do better at honoring the courage to be real, and it starts by us doing better in asking for help and not judging ourselves for that.

G is for Generosity. We cannot build trust if we don’t cultivate a model of being with others that leaves some room for mistakes, that does not assume the worst about one another, and that gives each other the benefit of the doubt. If we are all brave in bringing up what is not working and are ready to be accountable for our mistakes, then we can easily recover from betrayals and enjoy positive and wholesome relationships.

When we have so much evidence about the importance of trust in relationships and the great impact it has on the health of individuals and organizations, why would any of us break it?

Research has linked many unhealthy human behaviors to structural changes in our brain that occur as a result of negative early-life experiences. This altered brain structure makes it more difficult for us as adults to process internal negative emotions without perceiving them unconsciously as threats to our survival. This results in our trouble with not being accountable, not having or respecting boundaries, and not holding confidentiality.

We can see this not only at the theoretical level from behavioral science, but also through FMRI imaging techniques that reveal structural differences between people that were raised with positive versus adverse childhood experiences.

When we experience the pain of rejection, (for example, when a client wants to cancel their contract with us) having the ability to process and express our emotions in a healthy way hinges upon our ability to regulate the temporary discomfort we are feeling and not perceive it as a major cue for danger. When we allow an event like the loss of a client to be interpreted as a danger cue, we activate our stress response, which draws our metabolic energy away from our amazing thinking brain to the less evolved parts of our brain.

Losing access to the executive functioning part of our brain means we may slip and slide into the realm of behaving with others in ways that lead to distrust and betrayal.

However, we can train our brain to work with us and not against us by using everyday, simple practices that allow us to improve our ability to make intelligent use of our emotions.

As abstract as this concept may seem, it starts with the single act of being accountable, if and when, we temporarily lose access to our best self and engage in behaviors that are not healthy. I have created five questions to use to easily turn your executive brain back on when stress has overwhelmed it so you can return to being your best self. You can access these questions when you join my online community.http://bit.ly/JoinMyndZen

Although we may have to call upon our self-compassion in regard to having a brain that is more prone to seeing danger where it does not exist because of our past experiences, we have the power to change any part of our life that is not working for us as long as we focus on what we can control. This includes the power to reshape our brain to help us build more trust at work and at home!

Why Love Relationships Fail

Science has provided ample evidence that a healthy love relationship is the cornerstone to optimal health, longevity, happiness, and success.

The findings of different bodies of research are well-aligned in highlighting the power love has in impacting how well we will do in life and on our ability to reach our full potential and become the best versions of ourselves.

However, despite the amazing breakthroughs in understanding the science of human connection, love relationships still have an extremely high failure rate.

More than half of marriages fail! And that statistic does not account for the couples who stay together despite being distressed because of either real or perceived lack of choice.

We have never had as much knowledge, as many medical breakthroughs, or as much access to information as we do today. In fact, we have made such astonishing medical advances that we can cure diseases that not that long ago were fatal. Yet, half of us continue to experience the pain and suffering of a broken heart.

Why do so many relationships fail?

Researchers have tried to answer that question for several decades.

They have done so by studying the physiology and neurobiology of couple’s interactions, putting them through FMRI machines, and monitoring their every movement as they grapple with the day-to-day difficulties that all couples face.

And has science found an answer to the question of why relationships fail?

We tend to defend our relationship failure or our single status by saying it is because we have not yet “met the one,” or even worse, because our ex was a real “piece of work.”

Science, however, has illuminated the truth about what the biggest culprit to success in love is: Fear!

None of us want to admit that fear runs our life to the degree that it does. However, the sooner we face the deep, hidden fears that fuel any and all deadly behavioral patterns that are killing our love, the quicker we can regain control and change the trajectory of our most important relationships for the better.

How do we know that fear is the real criminal? Well, it’s clear by the behavioral patterns that accompany the day-to-day shenanigans of the relationships that unfortunately fail. Dr. John Gottman, recognized as one of the ten most influential therapists of the past quarter century, has completed seven studies that can predict divorce with 93.6% accuracy. The studies link four specific behaviors to relationship failure: stone-walling, contempt, criticism, and defensiveness. All of those behaviors are aligned with the bodily responses that result from our fear alarm going off in our brain.

Here are the top reasons why we are such scaredy-cats:

  1. Our brain’s negative bias

Our brain has evolved with the propensity to assume the worst because, frankly, that is how we have managed to stay alive throughout the history of our species. Underestimating threats can be deadly, so our brain would rather just assume the worst most of the time. Considering that our need to love and belong is as vital as oxygen and water, the thought of losing the vital force of love is very potent in activating our negative bias. We have to slowly, but surely, train our brain much like a puppy to “come, sit, and stay” with this present moment and not go off fighting non-existent dragons. Luckily, our brain can continuously get reshaped based on where we place the attention of our mental activity. Love can become our new default position if only we remain open to it!

  1. Our past hurts that we still need to heal

We behave the way we do in order to meet our needs. Safety, survival, and security are our fundamental needs. When we have a history of getting hurt in a relationship where we depended on another, /data has been stored in the intricate connections inside our 100 billion nerve cells, which will ring an alarm bell when we find ourselves in a position to depend on another again. Thus, when we fall in love, all the alarms will go off—until and unless we make sense of our past hurts in a way that allows us to stop carrying them along with us.

  1. Our injured self-worth

The question, “Am I good enough?” is a universal barrier to our happiness and is also part of our human experience. Issues with self-worth need quite a bit of self-compassion, because they originate in events we had no control over. Additionally, depending upon how responsive or not the external world has been to our needs, we will sculpt our sense of internal value on models of the world. So, whether the environment did not reflect us because we grew up in a dysfunctional family, or because we grew up as an immigrant in a non-ethnically diverse neighborhood, our self-worth can suffer because of the way our experiences have established whether the world is a safe place for us or not.

Love has divine power in pointing us to the path of increasing our self-love and self-worth, as it is now clear and supported by the systematic generation of theory from research: We cannot love anyone any more than we love ourselves!

 Life is such a magical journey and such an amazing experience with a never-ending supply of ups and downs.

There is an undeniable part of life that involves a significant amount of suffering.

It is in those times of suffering when we can feel the most what science is now teaching us about love—that nothing is as comforting to our soul as the tenderness and power of human connection. Nothing other than love can help us heal as fast from adversity and pain and maintain our nervous system in perfect balance in the face of any threat.

It is, perhaps, why when we are in secure, functioning relationships, we are not preoccupied with things that could go wrong, and we soar in all of our personal and professional aspirations.

As much as we resist the thought of falling in love again after one more failed relationship, our embodied intelligence takes over inviting us instead to rise to love.

Because, after all, the only thing that stands in the way of you and the love of your life, is you.

Know Thyself—What You Need to Know About Your Brain to Reduce Stress

STRESSED

A long time ago, when I first heard the famous aphorism “Know Thyself,” by a fellow Greek named Socrates, I had no idea what he was talking about.

Today, I realize that truly getting to know our selves from the inside out is a great path toward optimizing our physical, emotional, and mental health and performing at our best at work and in our personal life.

Do you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed, irritable, worrying, or having a hard time sleeping? What if I was to tell you that you already have the solution to all those troublesome states of being? You just have to learn how to collaborate with the best asset you will ever have at your disposal—your brain.

Meet your brain: Hello, gorgeous!

In the material world we currently reside in, we try so hard to find happiness. We measure our worth in relation to material things, like the size of our bank account, our house, or our car. Or we measure our worth by our external, physical appearance. In reality, our brain is truly the most gorgeous and valuable part of us, not to mention our best ally in finding happiness.

No physical improvements to our body can top what an incredible job our brain and nervous system do as they work tirelessly around the clock to process information in order to keep us as well as possible.

Beyond our cognitive awareness, our brain continuously connects the outside world with our amazing, interior wonderland to assign meaning to our experiences so that we can navigate through the obstacle course of life with as much ease and pleasure and as little pain as possible, and, of course, with the highest chance for survival.

Just like the intricate components of our home security system, our brain uses an amazing network of one hundred billion nerve cells, each one capable of connecting to up to 10,000 other nerve cells, to create an astonishing one hundred trillion pathways (synapses) that can take us to either happiness or misery!

Now, “How is that?” you may ask. Well, the synapses of our brain cells are essentially circuits of the path of least resistance that become our default way of thinking, feeling, and acting based on the meaning we have assigned to any experience.

But let’s look at a specific example to bring this closer to home.

Driving is a skill that involves risk. When we first learn how to drive, we associate elements with actions. For example, we associate a red light with the need to employ the action of stopping in order to stay safe.

Beyond our cognitive awareness of how our actions are driven by the color of a traffic light, mental activity induces neural activity that builds and reinforces connections between nerve cells.

These connections form freeways that we hop on when similar occasions present in our reality. Without much thought, we take the action of stopping when we see a red light time and time again.

Beyond skills like driving, synapses between neurons also build pathways to evoke certain feelings, like warmth and joy when someone buys us a gift, or disappointment when our spouse forgets our birthday. Although, in fact, the only person who ought to feel bad for forgetting our birthday is our spouse, we have formed a circuit that is linked to disappointment when someone forgets our special day.

On a larger scale, this is how certain regions of our brain become more developed than others. And different parts of our brain contribute to different characteristics that we possess. These characteristics can be strengths, weaknesses, fears, hopes, or other elements of ourselves.

Professor Eleanor Maguire (University College London, UK) is well known for her research on the noted structural changes in the brains of London cab drivers due to the extraordinary demand they place on their brains to memorize an astonishing labyrinth of over 25,000 streets. The grey matter of the London cab drivers, in the part of their brain associated with memory and spatial navigation (hippocampus), was found to increase significantly following their training and an assessment of their memory retention.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, shrinkage of the hippocampus has been observed in those of us suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It seems like our brain is trying to protect us from having flashbacks of our traumas by atrophying certain structures to shield us from negative memories.

Our feelings, sensations, and why we do what we do are interwoven inside the intricate connections between our nerve cells that connect based on our mental activity.

I lived in England for nine years, and I still remember how expensive London cabs are many years later.

But the high cost of taxis in London cannot compare to the price we pay every day by wasting our brains’ super powers, when we translate events as threats that are not actually threatening. (For example when our manager gives us a poor performance review). Using our brains power for defense for imaginary threats that are not here now, prevents our brain from performing well in keeping us in balance. (Homeostasis). (Employing our brain for defense at the rate that we do, also changes the structure of our our brain to be more prone to be ready to fight to flee or freeze in the future as well.)

I want to offer you a few, simple, everyday ways to reconnect with your long-lost asset—your brain. You can use these practices to induce synaptic activity to change your brain circuits in ways that promote well-being.

  1. Accept what is without resistance.

Adversity and change are absolute certainties in life. Sometimes we will handle them with grace, and sometimes we will fall flat on our face. But we will certainly not accomplish anything by resisting what is. Imagine swimming against the stream of a powerful river. How could we use our energy better, instead of in resisting an inevitable reality? We could be creating a list of all the lessons we have learned, or journaling about changes we will make. How much energy do we lose in the act of resisting?

  1. Establish a sense of curiosity and wonder.

No matter how bad a situation may seem in the moment, everything in life, including the greatest defeats and disappointments, are here to bring us a very specific gift, lesson, or pearl of wisdom. What if instead of spending several hours ruminating over our friends’ betrayal, we redirect our energy in answering the question: “What is the message this person/event is here to teach me?

  1. Stay present.

According to a Harvard study designed to assess habits and happiness, our mind takes off and thinks about things other than what we are doing 47% of the time. Isn’t it crazy to think that we are not present for about half of our life? The same study showed that a wandering mind is strongly linked to unhappiness. I know we have been trained to consider “multi-tasking” an invaluable skill. Can you challenge yourself to find a reason to stay present every time you catch your mind wandering away from you?

Despite my great admiration for the wisdom of Greek philosophers, I must admit that it has taken me a lifetime to make sense of the practical application of their wisdom for my happiness and well-being.

But if you find yourself navigating life with a degree of dissatisfaction that interferes with your well-being as I did, you can absolutely change that.

Although our Socrates is long gone, it is you who holds the key to how to be your own superhero. And it rests right between your temples.