The importance of self-approval

Dex 0:09

Hi everyone , my name is Dex Randall and this is the Burnout to Leadership podcast , where I teach professional men to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work . Hello , my friends , and welcome to the podcast . This week , we are talking about worthiness and self-approval . The reason I am putting these two together today is that really , in burnout , we are pretty low on self-approval , aren't we ? The cause of this really is a devalued sense of worth or worthiness . We really need to rebound from there before we can do much more work . In order to make a really effective recovery from burnout , we actually need to like ourselves and find ourselves worthy of our own care first of all . Really , you won't recover from burnout without these . They are the fundamental building blocks of recovery .

Dex 1:02

One of my clients asked me last week how to give himself self-approval . He asked me how to begin doing that . What could he do ? If , like him , you are screwing your face up a bit at the very thought

Why we withheld self-approval

Dex 1:15

, then this one is for you . I believe in you , I believe in your worthiness and I am backing you 100% to succeed . Let's start here right . Let's really face up to the truth a bit .

Dex 1:28

I think Burnout is the condition of learned self-neglect Sounds a little bit harsh . What do you reckon ? Those of us predisposed to burnout excellent , smart , capable people who are driven as adults by a constant need for approval we very likely didn't receive the full , unconditional approval , the attention and support that we would have liked as youngsters . As such , we never really found ourselves worthy of support . If that's true , then what we've actually been taught is not to support ourselves adequately . Now , in burnout , we are supporting ourselves nearly enough , even though we might not be aware of that . We might just think it's normal to be that way . This is just how professionals behave analytical , clinical , basically turning off our emotional side . Hence we get this level of unconscious self-neglect . I don't think it's conscious . We don't probably know that we're doing it . It might be commonplace amongst us , but really it sure isn't normal or healthy for humans . We're not going to be able to thrive that way . I'd really love for you to start thriving . You really do deserve it , I'm sure . As a side note , the rise of so-called toxic work cultures comes from this kind of casual neglect of human needs . If you're a leader , I hope you're going to turn up the burners of this open empowerment towards both yourself and your teams , so everyone can rise together . If you would , by the way , like to expand your leadership skills , particularly so that your team can work and perform willingly and creatively and successfully , then have a listen to the podcast , episodes 65 through to 68 , which are all about leadership .

Dex 3:31

Anyhow , coming back to being conditioned to self-neglect , because really I think we do need to dig into it a little bit . Well , if that has happened to you in earlier life , it's not unusual , it's happened to very many of us it doesn't mean anything bad about you or negative about you . You're still a good person , a perfect person . So if you didn't get what you needed back , then it's just something to recognize and correct , not despair over . So , while some of us have experienced this degree of unhealed from earlier life , apart from that there's very little to be gained by thinking into resentment , blame or regret about it once for adults . Please be aware , of course , that if you've experienced trauma in early life , that's the exception , particularly if that trauma is unresolved and has resulted in PTSD or mental health challenges for you . That goes beyond the scope of coaching and this podcast . So if traumatic memories come up for you as you listen today , I strongly recommend that , rather than continue to listen here you seek whatever professional therapeutic support you need . For others , though , a lack of support in childhood can be compensated for with care in adulthood , and that's what I'd like to talk about today , because it's possible , it's available and you can do it .

Dex 5:02

And , like Gabor Marte , I believe it's important to first recognize that our parents were not to blame . They were just parenting in a way . Their parents taught them , and they pretty surely will have done the best that they could given their own circumstances . Of course , parenting is a very hard task that each of us simply does our best with , and if you'd like to read a little bit more about this idea of blame-free parents and parenting , then you might like to read Gabor Marte's book the Myth of Norm . That said , by all means grieve your losses , whatever they may have been , but I do think there's not much in it for any of us to blame our parents anyway , because we can just get lost in anger and victimhood and give away our own capacity to heal , and that doesn't help us feel better . On the other hand , though , if parenting skills do pass down the generations , you can choose that .

Dex 6:02

The buck stops here . You can commit to change in a way you support yourself and others because I don't think it's ever too late to do that . And once you realize that , once you realize all of this kind of picture of how , the way you're not entirely looking after yourself the way that you could

Becoming your own champion

Dex 6:23

, you've basically reached a very useful point in the burnout recovery process and the next step will have already become available to you . And even though that step might be uncomfortable or unfamiliar , it can unlock a new level of ease , confidence and function in your daily life . You can now learn to be your own champion . You can give yourself the support you've always wanted . It doesn't sound like it's going to work , but it does . So you can use some tools that I'm going to run through in a second to help yourself feel stronger , more capable , more confident and more cared for . That self-approval that you've been seeking every day outside of you from your boss , your partner , your family , your friends , your organization , your clients is and always has been available inside you . You just need to give yourself permission to support yourself in a really deliberate , compassionate and direct way every time that you need it , so that you can feel better .

Starting the journey of self-approval

Dex 7:31

And on this topic , you might like to listen to episode 36 of the podcast on championing yourself . I'll go through a bunch of this in more detail there and a couple of other episodes . I'm going to put these in the show notes that'll help you prepare to do the work . One of those is episode 57 on uncertainty and anxiety , and one's episode , number 15 , how to create change in your life . So , coming back to self-approval , then I'm going to talk here about , firstly , how to begin , how to begin with self-approval , and secondly , just how to give yourself that support and approval that you do need until you become your best ally , until you feel the warmth of that inside and you feel , start to feel more worthy , more confident , relaxed Enough to go out and function at your best without worrying too much about what other people are actually thinking . So let's look at that , then . How to start Until now , it's very possibly been beyond your conscious mind to even consider that you can support yourself more , nevermind how .

Dex 8:38

So to

Exploring self-worth and support

Dex 8:40

begin , you're going to need to make a conscious choice . You all need to decide to do it , and then you need to commit to practicing until you get good at it . And if you're going to make that decision , you're going to need to be motivated perhaps somewhat motivated to reduce your own suffering , to liberate yourself from the level of anxiety you have about getting other people's approval at the moment . I'm sure you can think in many instances where you were desperate for that approval , all the while telling yourself you weren't going to get it . So this type of thing can come up , for example , when we have a new task to do . We're not really sure how to do it . We're a little bit scared of being judged in our bumbling attempts , so much so that we kind of freeze up and don't even start to do the work , thereby unfortunately securing the disapproval that we were so keen to avoid . So that's just one way it might come . So okay , you can see yourself in this pain . You will have some motivation to reduce pain . If that was enough , though , you would have already solved the problem .

Dex 9:47

The strongest motivation for change , I think , comes from actively wanting to take care of yourself , wanting to bail yourself out with kindness . Every time you feel inadequate or you're failing , we feel guilty or helpless , you give yourself that gentle support , and , since you probably have this history of self-neglect , if you're in burnout , if you're going to give yourself self-approval now , you're going to have to find yourself worthy first of that support . So if you want to decide to champion yourself and be the support you always wanted , here's what I recommend . When you come up against a problem in work or life that you find distressing , pause and just go inside yourself . So literally just stop what you're doing for a moment , take a real deep breath in and follow that breath right down inside your body and then just notice how you feel in your body . Notice any tension or blocks or tightness in there and also , while you're there , notice the anxious thoughts or the fearful thoughts that are going through your mind .

Practising self-approval daily

Dex 11:00

Notice , if you can , what you're saying to yourself about yourself , because it'll probably be a little bit mean .

Dex 11:10

Then you can consider , when you've got that okay , who do you think is experiencing or is distressed ? Is it the professional adult in you ? Or is it an older memory ? Because mostly when we panic and freeze up in distress , it's habitual and then it comes up we say something mean about ourselves that we learn much earlier in life . Typically that's what happens , and when that memory is evoked we go straight back there to that era , to a time when we felt unworthy . We felt less than we've , often attacked rather than comforted in our distress , and maybe we can even recall when this was , what age we were when that happened . You know , in that memorable moment and if you can do that , imagine that younger you at that moment running towards you , arms flung out , so upset .

Dex 12:08

What would you choose to do if you saw that kid running at you ? Will you give them the approval , care and love they always wanted but didn't quite get ? Will you tell your little self , whatever you think they need to hear . You're looking at that kid , thinking is that little soul worthy of your support ? Will you champion them ? Now , if you can't do that exercise , it's okay . You could also think about if you saw an adult in distress walking to you . What would you do . There are other things that you might do there too .

Dex 12:43

But if you're looking at some version of yourself in suffering and you don't feel that you want to support them or you don't want to champion them , then the question to ask yourself is okay , maybe I don't , but what would make me willing to give that support ? What would have to change , what would have to be thinking about that person for me to be willing to support them ? What is the block there ? What's preventing me from giving that care ? Because what you're really asking yourself there is what are my conditions for approving of myself ? Because this is why you start building the muscle of internal validation , right of having your own back . First of all , you need to become willing to do it , because when you do have your own back , particularly when you develop it as a consistent habit , there's a lot of joy and comfort in that , and that's a joy you're missing out on right now if you're not doing it . So really think about the pros and cons of finding yourself worthy of support and offering yourself whatever support you need in that moment .

Dex 13:49

Sometimes it can help to think of somebody you really admire , some truly great person who's always so relaxed and self-assured , and think about them and think well , imagine how they deal with themselves if they aren't feeling good about themselves , if they think they've done something wrong , if they're guilty or ashamed or whatever . What do you think they , what do you think their process is , how do you think they work with that ? You know , because the question really is how did they get to be so easygoing , so self-assured and confident , open , perhaps more resilient ? If that , if their qualities you admire in that person , how do you think that person created them and also consider the downside . If you don't support yourself , if you choose not to consider the downside , what pain will you have to continue to have ? Where are you limited because you're not giving yourself that support ? Where are you failing to make progress in life , for example ?

Dex 14:46

And then also , what's the upside if you do choose to support yourself , what would change for you ? So just compare and contrast those and see is what I'm doing now working for me ? Would I like to change ? What would I like to change too ? So really investigate within yourself what you think will work better than whatever you're doing now . That doesn't feel good . So I think that's really how you will begin to arrive at a decision .

Dex 15:17

If you can't find yourself worthy or you want to support yourself , then really do some deep thinking about why not ? What does it think that blocks you from wishing to support yourself ? It could be something like fear of being arrogant , or you don't think it's right to love yourself , or whatever your beliefs are about that . Really investigate them and see them and choose if you want to modify them a little bit , because you can , because they're your beliefs . So just see what comes up and see how to work with that to get a better result for yourself . Because really I think it's our job as an adult to support ourselves . It's not somebody else's task to do that . So if we can arrive at a decision to support ourselves , then the next question is well , how exactly do we do that ?

Dex 16:08

And I think the antidote to being a human doing , striving all day for approval

Permission to be human

Dex 16:12

, doing , doing , doing , doing for approval is to approve of yourself unconditionally before you do anything , just for breathing and being a decent human being . And if you decide to give yourself that approval , tell yourself every morning that you approve of yourself . When you're waking up , just do it right away off the bat . And then , every time you're suffering in uncertainty or doubt or worry or anxiety and adequacy or any of those things , anytime you're feeling a negative emotion , revisit that younger version of you if that worked for you , and give them what they need . Just ask yourself , what do I need right now ? And give it . It'll take a little bit of time and practice to be good at that , but just when you ask the question , the answer might flash through your mind right away . So it feels a little bit weird when you're first doing it , but don't worry , nobody's looking right .

Dex 17:04

This is a new gift to self that you can develop just by daily practice . You get better and better at it and over time what you'll find is that your relationship with yourself will evolve . It will soften , be more forgiving , warmer gentler . You're going to start to notice more things that you like and admire about yourself , things that perhaps you took for granted before , younger . You remember has survived some really difficult experiences , chances are , and is still willing to show up in the adult world doing their best . That's a little miracle of human triumph . Support that .

Dex 17:47

So my client asked how to do this . Who asked how to do this had to really pass through some gates of understanding to realize why this might be a good thing to do . But he also sees that as a youngster he was told to basically man up and get the job done quietly , not to be emotional about it . But our emotions , you know and this is common a lot of people are brought up this way not to be emotional . But our emotions need to be felt and heard . They're one way our brains communicate with us . They have emotions , have a function to alert us to what we need to do to survive . For example , sometimes we need to be angry to protect ourselves . We need to be sad , to work through some grief . We need to be fearful something's happening or we need to be offended . So we take a stand or set boundaries . So having emotions is an irreducible human need . Attending to them is attending to our humanity . In effect , we're giving ourselves permission to be human as if there was any other choice right .

Dex 18:56

So if it feels unusual to take this compassionate , self-affirming , supportive role , maybe you could suspend this belief for a little while . Just try it and see how you go . That's my best suggestion for today and because I truly care for you and your experience , and especially your burnout recovery , I would really recommend you do give it a world . It's private , nobody's looking . What harm can you do trying to give to yourself ? And if you would like help with that , if you're in burnout , please listen to the link at the end of the episode .

Dex 19:30

You must come and talk to me about how to recover

Further help and support

Dex 19:32

quickly and sustainably and get back to your best performance , leadership , most of all , enjoyment inside , work and out . And if you enjoyed this episode , please help us reach more people in burnout by rating and reviewing this podcast . I would love that so much . And if you know somebody else who's heading towards or into burnout , please send them the link to this podcast too . I recommend that , for new people , listen to the first five episodes to get started . Okay , thank you for being here . I will catch you next time . If you're in burnout and ready to recover , come and join my burnout to leadership program . You can book in to talk with me at burnoutdexroundcom . Just tell me what's bugging you and let's make a plan to fix it .