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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Living Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. Appreciate you.
You know, uh, people come to me and they're unhappy. Hear a lot of unhappiness, lot of sadness. Um, most of the time they're happy with somebody that they're in a relationship with, unhappy with what the other person's doing, and they want them to change so they can. That's what will get better, so they can feel better.
And today I wanna talk about the strength to love. Okay, so what do I mean by that? What's the strength to love?
Most of us want to feel like we have the ability to love other people. We also wanna feel like we're loved. But we wanna feel like we're there for somebody. Like we're the, we can be there. It's not just about ourselves, but we want to feel like we're there for somebody else.
Like Brene Brown said that we're hardwired for connection. And I think we can all agree that that's true. Part of our emotional well-being is feeling love. We have these emotional needs that we need to feel like we belong, like we're significant, like we're important, and we need to connect with other people.
We need to feel like we're that we can connect with other people in order to be healthy mentally. And if our needs are being met, if those things that I just described, we feel like that they're being met, we have good thoughts about them. We're having those feelings of, of significance, of belonging, of connection, then we're in decent mental health. Okay.
Most of us want to love our spouses, love our kids, love our family, love our friends. We want to, we want to support them. We want to do our best to do what we can so that they feel like we're there for them. And we want to, most of the time we want to help to fill their emotional needs just like we want our needs met.
And all this is hunky dory. I mean, it's just easy when it's easy, but it's not always easy. Okay.
And what about when it's not easy? What about the people, when the people that we love do something we don't like, you know, then what? What about all that behavior that they do that we can't stand? You know, what about all the things that they say that, boom, man, that hurt so much.
What about the broken trust? What about the dishonesty? You know, what about what we think that they think about us. Okay. What about all those things and what they mean about ourselves and our own value? You know, what, how do we, do we really feel like they respect us?
I mean, how much do you think they really care about us and how much we, how much do they really value us and how important is that to us? And how does that make us feel? And why is it so important anyway?
You know, I think that we can, I think that we can agree that we all set out in relationships to have good intentions. It all sounds so good. I'm a pretty good example. I've been married a number of times. I didn't set out to get divorced in any of them, so I had good intention. Sounds good, but then loving somebody and having the strength to love is not all that simple. It's not all that easy all the time. We know that.
How then do we have the strength to love even when it's hard? And the answer is, is they need to start doing what we want them to. And then everything would be fine. Not really. That's not how it works. It's not out there somewhere.
Okay. The strength, the love and the peace and the way that we feel about our relationships is going to come from one place. It's going to come from us, but how then are we going to go about getting it done?
Okay. And I'm going to give you some answers that I think they're going to be helpful. Okay. It would have been helpful to me. I'm going to give you some thoughts and a way to believe about yourself that will change, believe it or not, your relationships. That's right.
What you think about you will change what's out there in your relationships and what you think about your relationships, which therefore you will feel different about your relationships. Remember, a relationship is the sum total of your thoughts about it, about the other person. Wow. Say that again.
A relationship is the sum total of your thoughts about the other person in it. That's what it is. So guess what? The way that we think is what determines the quality of the relationship. End of story.
So I'm going to give you a couple of ideas of recommendations of things that you can learn to believe about you that will, that will help you have thoughts that you want to about relationships that you have so you have less so that you can feel better about them if you want to. You can make better choices at least.
So when a human being genuinely, when you and I and any other human being genuinely believes that we have inherent and complete and total, if we're, if we believe in our values, a hundred percent, okay. Love is a natural byproduct. Okay.
I mean, if you work on and develop a value or excuse me, a belief in your value, a belief in your perfect value. Okay. And this, that's a belief that I recommend. And if you've listened to me, you know that your strength of love, as you develop that will automatically go up. It'll like quadruple.
It's like going to the gym and being able to do all you can to bench press a hundred pounds. Okay. My goodness. A hundred pounds. You went and did it. That was it. I mean, you were maxed out, whatever the number is. And you went back the next time. And you just threw 400 pounds on there and went, boom, done.
That's how, I mean, that's how it works. When you change what you think about you, your strength and your ability to love is a natural byproduct and it just shoots up. And guess what? Your results change incredibly.
So here's how that works. A belief, the belief in your perfect value, what it does, one of the things it does, it does many things, but what one of the things it does is it removes the need to prove your worth, okay?
When you don't need to prove your worth, you're saving a lot of time. It gives you the capacity. Now you can be focused somewhere else besides I need to prove what I'm worth.
It removes the need to defend your identity. Removes the need to be able to like elevate myself to try to prove to you and to myself what I'm worth. I certainly no longer need to elevate myself above someone else.
And so when my value is no longer, your value is no longer something that needs to be earned, doesn't need to be protected, it doesn't need to be figured out or negotiated in either way, then we don't need to do things like we don't always have to be right about everything. We don't have to be superior, feel like we're above. We don't have to feel like we're more important in order to feel secure.
And this internal security that we've created for ourselves creates emotional stability. And what that does is all of sudden now we can accurately and clearly see our own strengths without exaggeration. We can see our own weaknesses without shame. We can see them for what they are because we don't have to attach meaning to them.
That's just it. When I separate this behavior over here from my values, when I believe in my perfect value and I know that nothing I've done or haven't done, none of my behavior, the things that my strengths and weaknesses and all these things that I do, things that I do as my behavior, none of that has to do with any of this.
I can look at my behavior in an open, clear, uncluttered, unslanted, un-what's the word I'm looking for, an honest way, in an honest, slanted, I'm thinking a political, in a, in a clear way, in clear and honest way. That's how I can look at it.
I don't have to make up for my weaknesses and pretend they're not there and do all kinds of stuff to cover it up and feel bad about what I did, my weakness. I don't have to feel bad about it. I can look at it and say, hmm, that's something I'm going to work on. That's something I'd like to do better at.
And I can look at my strengths and I can, I can take it and I can feel it and I can appreciate it, but I don't have to exaggerate it and go around telling everybody all kinds of everything so that I feel better about me, which backfires anyway.
Okay, so when people come to me and they give me suggestions, they give me feedback, I'm working on some stuff in my business right now and I go to my business coaches and they send it back and they say, no, not good enough, Shane, or you could improve here, you can improve here.
Now, I have to take a look at that and say, “Oh man, man, that was my own personal work and you're telling me it sucks.” And see how I just did that? They say it needs work and I make meaning saying it sucks.
If I'm not careful. However, if I don't need to base my value based on what they're telling me about what I wrote in an email, okay, if I can get to that point, then I can look objectively at their feedback.
When somebody is trying to help me that I'm paying to have help me, I can look at it openly and be able to make progress rather than get upset, get mad and pretend it doesn't work and all the things that can happen when people are trying to help you and give you feedback.
So feedback is no longer a threat, okay? Because it doesn't hurt my identity.
Admitting mistakes, I don't have to go around admitting my mistakes and thinking that's a big, it doesn't have to feel like a loss of status, okay? I can admit mistakes and it just happens to be something I did. It has nothing to do with, you know, my value.
I did that and if I did something that I wished I would have did, I can wouldn't have done, then I can, it's easier for me to look at it objectively and say, “Wow, I just did that thing. I wish I wouldn't have done it. I didn't want to do it. I don't want to do it that way in the future. Here's how I can clean it up. And here's what I'm going to do in the future.”
And that's called progress rather than having shame about it, not wanting to talk about it. I feel like it, because I did this and that, you know, I'm not as good as, and all the other things that it keeps on this. I keep practicing thinking that I'm not as good as because I did something wrong then that belief doesn't help me get where I want to go in other areas, including having the strength to love, which is what I'm talking about here.
So even when I acknowledge other people's accomplishments or their strengths, okay, it doesn't feel like it's personal defeat and they're better than me and I have comparison and all that. I have less comparison. Okay.
The only comparison I want to have is my 100% value is in comparison to your also 100%. Okay.
I fit into the rest of the world 100%. So do you and every other soul in it that's ever been here, ever will be here. That's the only comparison. But when I look into the world, when I have, when I know I'm 100%, I'm not 101, not 110, I'm 100. Same as you.
And when I know that, then I don't need to feel better. I don't need to feel better and I don't need to focus on this shame. And when my time and my attention is not focused on this need that I have to feel okay with me, okay, because I've worked on developing a belief in my own value, my own worthiness, my own deservedness.
And when my time and attention doesn't need to be focused on that in the relationship. It doesn't need to be all consumed with protecting myself. What happens is I've given myself the ability to be curious and respectful, more curious and more respectful of other people. It just increased my capacity.
I can listen more. We always hear that, listen, shut up and listen. Listen to what they're saying. Try to understand, be empathetic. And all the time we're sitting there listening trying to decide what they're saying means about us and how we're going to counter and how we're going to make ourselves be okay and the whole thing.
Look, the more that you internalize your perfect value, the more that you increase your ability also to listen openly. You can listen more fully, and you can help people more willingly and with not a lot of, nothing attached to it, not because I need this or it's going to make me feel a certain way.
There's nothing to defend. Okay. And there's nothing to gain in terms of self-worth when I've already, when I'm, when I'm working on that, when I develop my own belief around it.
When you fully accept and love yourself, you need less. That's what it comes down to. You're more self-sufficient. Okay. You are actually filling some of your own emotional needs.
Now I'm not to say that. You can that we don't need other people. We do need other people and we do need to feel connected, but we don't need to rely on them for the way that we feel about ourselves. Period. End of story.
That's called emotional adulthood instead of emotional childhood. It's called emotional responsibility. It's called being more self-sufficient. Okay.
In a belief, we can become more confident, which allows us to stand strong. Be 100%, not above, okay? We don't have to stand, we don't have to ever feel like we're better than somebody else. It's not even a thought that even comes our way, okay?
As we begin and over the course of the development of this belief, okay? And it's not something that you just, “Hey, yeah, I got that now, what's next, Shane?” No, it's something that you work on every day and here's why.
If you forgot, here's a quick reminder, this is a recap. Here's why. Because everything that you're doing right now and everything that's happening to you, all the input that your brain's getting, which includes everything that you do and everything that happens to you, your life experience is being input and your brain's constantly making meaning about what that means about you.
So if you're not intentional about what it means about you consistently ongoing as a part of the skill that you develop over your lifetime, then what's going to happen is your physiology is going to take up physiology or your natural brain.
Your default brain is this, are giving you thoughts in order to try to protect you that are not necessarily there. Certainly they're not. They're not going to, it's with good intent, but it's not going to help the means that you want it. It's not going to help your life.
Okay. That's what it comes down to. The default is that we just don't feel quite as good about ourselves as we could. Okay.
So self-love. You know, I used to hear that and just go, I can't believe you just said that or I even just heard it. Self-love is just sounds so selfish and this and that is like, geez, you're focusing all this time on you. Can't you do something else?
And here's the answer. The answer is you better begin there because everything else is flowing out of that. Your beliefs about your value, everything that you're able to give is coming to it. Have a, have a lot of ideas and quotes about this, but I am serious about it. You must begin with you. Okay.
There is nothing. So spending time on your own personal improvement and your own value beliefs, development is one of the most selfless things that you can do.
Self-love allows a person to see reality more clearly, not cluttered up to be able to see who we are, who others are. You know, that's the amazing part. When I accept me more, I accept other people more. I don't judge their, I don't attach what they do to their value.
I mean, think about it. It's a big deal when you start to see the world the way that you have changed to see yourself. It matters. It changes your whole life experience.
Now I'm bench pressing 400 pounds, you know, where I can only bench pass 100 in my example.
So our responses that we're having with other people, they're not driven by fear that we're not going to, somebody's not going to like us or we're not going to measure up or there we're going to, our life isn't trying to protect ourselves because we're afraid. Okay. Because we're insecure. Okay.
Self-love, comes out, it comes out as openness comes out as accountability. It comes out as respect. It comes out as courage and it comes out as the strength to love in the hard times.
When you need it man, when things are, when the chips are down, you got to be able to have yourself to rely on. This is what I'm talking about becoming more self-reliant. Self-love is what provides us the strength to love.
Okay. And love, my friends, is what it's all about. We need to give love. And be loved. Give yourself something to start out with, my friends. Remember one thing, your value, your perfect value is non-negotiable. Stay with me.
