Being Self-Centered Can Help With Your Jealousy EP 42

Shanenn Bryant: 0:00

I want to read something I recently received and it just breaks my heart when I know you all are hurting like this, but I think it's good to share and a way to help each other. This is part of what they wrote. "Being so insecure like this is exhausting and I hate it. I'm always worried about who my partner is interacting with and who he's seeing during the day at work. It makes me so nervous. I even get nervous watching TV or movies because of the attract of women on there and worried that they'll be naked. Everything feels threatening to me and this is so heavy to carry around all the time. I just hate I am this way. Ugh, it just breaks my heart. It hurts me to hear, and I'm doing my best to put out more free content with the podcast to offer more ways to help. In fact, I just added a small group coaching program and we have a small group that will start working together here soon. We're kicking this off soon. I am also working on adding online courses some free, some paid and many other things. But there's actually a way that you can help too, and it's by thinking back to when you found this podcast. You could finally hear someone else going through what you were experiencing, hopefully getting some relief just knowing that there are other people out in the world just like you. Well, not everyone suffering from this knows about the podcast yet, so you can help them discover it by leaving a rating and review. If you find value in this podcast and you want to help someone else find it as well and stop feeling so alone, leave a review. This helps the podcast get discovered by those who are searching for comfort and searching for support. So, if you are an Apple podcast user, go to the show, scroll down, give a five star rating but then leave a review. You don't even have to use your name, just leave a review. If you don't use Apple Podcast to listen and you use some other method, you can still help by going to wwwtopselfpodcastcom at the top, click reviews and then leave a review there. If you leave a review, grab a screenshot of your review and email it to me at sbrientatopselfcom and I will give you a free 30 minute coaching session with me. So shoot that over to me. I certainly appreciate the feedback and it helps others to discover the show. It's a great way that you can help someone else that's suffering as well. So leave that rating and review. Shoot me a screenshot, sbrientatopselfcom, and I will give you a link for a free 30 minute coaching session with me Now. I have some great guest episodes coming your way, but today it's just me for another quick dump episode, and I wanna talk today about how you need to start focusing on you right now, in the present. I want you to start being really self-centered, but in a good way, and, believe me, there are both good and bad in being self-centered. When you feel really insecure in your relationship. One of the things that you may not realize about yourself is you may be very self-centered, and so, before you get upset, let me explain what I mean, because I'm sure that you're thinking in your head like wait a second. I am the most giving person. I do things for people all the time. I always put other people first and I have no question in my mind that that is you. But what I mean by self-centered and how this came up for me years ago, I had just the best supervisor in my corporate position ever. She was amazing, and in that corporate position, I teach courses, so I would teach employees how to use programs and systems, but also leadership courses and customer service courses and all of that. So there was a lot of feedback involved in that. And one day we were having a conversation, we were having a one-on-one, and she said to me we were talking about some particular feedback. I made a comment and she said, oh my, you are so self-centered. And it really took me back for a second and I was like, okay, rude, that wasn't very nice, and that's right. She wasn't being nice, she was actually being kind and saying everything that goes wrong isn't about you, everything that's bad is not about you. And so because she worked with me so closely, because she spent so much time with me, she could tell that I typically thought if something went wrong it was my fault. If something was messed up, I probably had a hand in it. If my partner didn't agree with me, I was probably the one that was wrong. If people were talking amongst themselves or in a group, they were probably gossiping about something they didn't like about me. I was so self-centered in that way of everything must be my fault, everything must be about me. I'm a mess, I'm not good, I create drama. This is the negative side of being self-centered, and so that's what I mean by you being self-centered in this same way. But where then this flips is we don't take that into loving ourselves. We don't take that and think of that. When it comes to the other side of our relationship, the positive side of what do I wanna do? What do I wanna do with my life? What do I want, what do I believe? What do I stand firm in? What? If I'm right in this argument, and not saying that there always needs to be a right and a wrong, but feeling good of saying, you know what I've thought this through, here are my beliefs and I'm gonna stand firm in it, and you can disagree with me or not, or this is what I want to do with my life, this is what I wanna try, this is what I wanna go for, this is my goal, standing firm in that and not letting somebody else change that. We focus so much on our partner that we forget to pay attention to ourselves. You know, with this jealousy thing and I talk about this all the time it is such a loop. You know everything pays off of each other and this is no different. Because we're so focused on our partner, we can't get focused and have a clear head and take the time to do the steps that we need to do to become less insecure, to become less jealous and I mentioned this before in the other episode that this is where you need to get self-centered. And you need to turn that around and say I'm gonna pay attention to me, I'm gonna focus on me and figure out what I wanna do. I think I wanna try to accomplish this. I want this out of my life. Maybe I wanna try that. I don't like doing this, and so we're caught up in what our partner's doing and we're spending all of our time being anxious about them, that we can't focus on those actions that we need to take to do something for ourselves to be successful and being successful can be whatever that means to you. But having something that you enjoy, having something that you do for yourself, something that you focus on, that is just for you, this is going to help be less insecure, be less jealous in your relationship, because you start to gain some confidence, because, hey, I've set out this goal and I'm achieving it and I'm taking the steps to doing it, and that feels really good. I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I feel like I'm having this transformation. I feel as if I'm getting closer to the things that I wanna do in life, and that helps to build your confidence. It's also less time that you're spending focused on your partner. I know when I was in the throws of my jealousy about that same time, I decided I wanted to move up in my career, in my corporate position, and I set a goal of how much I wanted to make per year and the position that I wanted to be at. When I set those, I felt like, oh my gosh, this is such a lofty goal. And, to be honest, there was that little piece that I questioned, having that imposter syndrome. I don't think I can really ever do this Like. If I ever accomplished this, it would be amazing and it would be something that I never thought I could do in my life. So I did question it initially. But there was also that little piece in my head and I feel that you probably have this too. That's way back there. It's a quiet, meek voice that says, but what if I can? I kind of think I could. I kind of think I have it in me to do it. I'm just nervous about it. I'm just insecure about it. I just don't know exactly how to go about it and to believe that I deserve it. I'm not sure I believe that I deserve it. All of those thoughts went through my head when I set these very lofty goals of how much I wanna make per year and the position that I wanted within the company, and it was a different direction than what I was even doing. So there were some pretty big hurdles that I had to overcome, but I certainly was willing to try to give it a shot. So think about what that could be for you. What is it for you? Is it I wanna go back to school and accomplish this or get a degree in this, or I want to become an expert in this, or I want to read more books? I wanna set a goal of reading 100 books a year. I want to be a better parent. I wanna get a certification and be a personal trainer or yoga instructor. Whatever that is for you, great. Set a goal, have it in your mind and go for it. Put your energy into that. That was the thing that helped me. I put my energy and my thoughts into something else, into something that was actually positive, that was beneficial to me. I did achieve my goals. I ended up making that salary amount that I never in the world thought possible I could make. Where I came from growing up, I never in a million years thought I could make the money that I made. I never thought I could get there and, more importantly, what I learned in that journey to get there far outweighed the amount of money I was making. It just blew it out of the water. There's no amount of money that could compare to what I learned in that journey, what I learned about myself, what I learned about life, what I learned about other topics and improving my skills along the way. But it also benefited my relationship, my outlook on life, my competence. So I challenge you as a way to turn your focus onto yourself, get self-centered, find something that you want to do for yourself. Turn that focus on you in the present moment. Stay more focused on what is happening right now instead of worrying about the future and being anxious about the future or going down that past path. Turn your attention and focus on whatever it is that you want to do. What are you setting your goal at? Where would you get the biggest transformation? And it can be small. I absolutely recommend you starting small. You can have a big fantasy goal, a big overarching goal, but then figure out where you start. What are some things that you can do right now to start to accomplish that? And maybe I know some of you are extremely busy, but it is time we're busy with those other things and not being in the moment. So, even if you schedule out 10 minutes a day in the beginning, like for 10 minutes today, I'm just gonna think about what my goal might be. I'm just gonna think about something that I want to accomplish or that has been on my mind before to accomplish, or that I had started to, and then, whatever it was that happened, life happened and I didn't finish it. What is that for you? And spend 10 minutes writing maybe some of those ideas down and then tomorrow take 10 minutes, pick the one you wanna focus on. Now Doesn't mean that you can't do the other ones later, but let's just pick one right now and then think about what are the action steps that I need to take today, in the present, that I need to focus on? What are those things that I need to do to make that come to life, to make that come true? I do believe in not being so attached to the outcome, so not so attached to the result. So really it's putting the intention out there, because what I've realized, and like everything in life, is it really ends up being about the journey and not so much the end result. The beautiful thing that starts to happen is, if we're not so tied to the end result, then something better, something different, something that you hadn't thought about could possibly happen from you taking those steps. So if it doesn't happen exactly as you had planned, that's okay. We just need to set things in motion Today, be in the present, let's get things going, create an action plan to achieve those things, and when you're doing that thing through like, who do I need to talk to to make these things happen? Who do I need to get in front of? Who do I need to tell that this is my plan? I think that's a really big one and it's something that holds us back, because we may set the intention but we don't put it out there in the world, and that is huge. I know when I first started to think I wanted to have a podcast, it was a year and a half before I recorded my very first episode, before I recorded the trailer to the podcast. Before I did any of that. It was a whole year and a half from the very first time I thought I wanted to have one and for the longest time I never said anything to anyone. You know, I would just think about it and kind of fantasize about having a podcast and what would that look like and how would I make it happen. And, just like I said, I thought I don't know, that's kind of a lofty thing. I just, you know, my guess is I'll never really do it. But then there was that little voice in the back of my head that said maybe I could. So I think a big, huge part of this is, you know, and being present in the moment, is let's put it out there now. Whatever you come up with, let's start putting it out in the world and telling people. So a year and a half before I started the podcast, I just thought about it for a long time in my mind and then I finally told a friend hey, I've been thinking about doing this and that was all there was to it. And then I told my husband and then I started talking about it more. At the time my dad was still alive and because I knew that a lot of the stuff that I would talk about, or at least the root cause of some of my issues were because of my dad and him being an alcoholic. So I had to have that conversation with him to say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this and it's getting pretty serious that I'm thinking about doing this. I just need to have a conversation with you and let's talk about it. And I kept having those conversations and the more I had the conversations, the more that I put my intention out there in the now. Then it became sort of this gentle pull into the direction, like this is right, this is right for me and this is what I need to do. It just became easier to get closer and closer to my goal, because now it was type of mind, now I was thinking about it, now that's where my focus was and I knew that I needed to continue to complete those steps to make it happen. So be in the now, take this opportunity right now, today, because you may have been thinking about this for years. Maybe this is something that has just been heavy on you and that you've kind of pushed to the back burner. Because life, because you're nervous, because you're insecure, because you're always focused on your partner. It's time today. Be in the present, be in the now and let's get going. And if you want help to run through, how do I set these goals? How do I break things down? Help with potential resources, how do I go about this? I'm happy to help schedule your free discovery call and we can talk about the ways that I can help you in this. But the main thing, turn your focus, be self-centered in a positive way. Turn your self-centeredness I don't even know if that's the word Turn your self-centeredness on you. Let's dig in, figure out what you wanna do. Now is the time. The present is the time. Let's get it going. I know you've been wanting to do this and, believe it or not, the more focus you put on you, the more that you grow, the more you believe you can. Growth always follows belief. You're gonna do it. I have every confidence in the world that you can do it. I can't wait to hear what you've decided to work on. Turn that focus and be self-centered. Thanks so much for joining this quick dump episode. Until next time, take care and remember you're not alone. Państwo Baby Sewer.