Ep 70: Four Steps to Stepping Into Your Self Worth

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You need to put your needs first

 

Dawn McGruer:

Welcome to episode 70 of Dawn of a New Era with myself, Dawn McGruer, author, podcaster, trainer and consultant in the world of online and digital marketing. And in this week’s episode, I’m going to be talking to you about something that I have to work on constantly. Now, you might be able to relate with this, but it’s all about stepping into your self-worth.

Now, we hear these terms banded around left, right and center, but what does it really mean? And what do we need to do to really find the self-acceptance, the whole understanding of what we are worth as an individual? I think we get so used to trudging on through life that we don’t stop and think about, “Are we actually operating and performing and giving ourselves the rewards that we actually deserve?”

Now, you can do anything in life. And I just want you to sit with that statement for a minute. Because often with things that have happened in your journey, be it business or personal, they can dent us and take us off a path of success. And it does affect how we perceive ourselves and how we step into our own self-worth.

 

Do you feel worthy?

 

Now, what I’m talking about here is that we need to truly look after number one. And the first thing that we’re going to talk about is when you look to step into your true self-worth is your own self-care.

You actually need to put your needs first. And the most common thing I hear with clients who are busy with work, who are entrepreneurs starting, growing, scaling businesses, running homes, starting families, looking after everybody is that they tend to be last on the list. Now, when we look at self-care, you really need to put a plan together.

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But you need to focus on how you are going to look after you. Number one, the most important person, driving your career, driving your business forward. Because if you are not operating on all cylinders, if you’re not firing on all cylinders and you don’t feel good, then you’re not going to perform in the best way. So, it’s going to be impossible to step into the all-important self-worth.

And we have to understand that if you look after yourself and you start thinking about yourself day-to-day in terms of how does your day serve you? How do you feel day-to-day? Do you honestly feel worthy? And this is something that is a little bit of a tricky topic to address. And this takes me onto self-acceptance because we are all worthy. We all deserve to be on this planet, all deserve to live.

But again, it’s what has happened in our lives. Everybody has been through some form of adversity, regardless how small or how big, but someone else’s pain, it doesn’t matter how big or small, it’s all relative, and so is yours. So, we have to learn to forgive and forget and step past what’s happened. And we have to live in the present because let’s say in business, you’ve had an epic failure or a launch didn’t happen, particularly how you wanted.

Well, it’s happened. And that doesn’t reflect on you. You are not what you earn, you are a person of glory, a person that deserves absolutely all of the love and support in the world. And even if you’ve made mistakes, even if you beat yourself up over things that have happened, it doesn’t mean you are not worthy. And one of the things that I always focus on, because I do feel that I have to focus on self-worth a lot. And it is something that is constantly on my mind is constantly evolving. And it’s not like you just step into your self-worth and that’s you done, things happen.

It could be that your day starts off amazingly well and you’re slightly de-geared or unearthed because a meeting or a presentation didn’t just quite land how you wanted to. So, you start the self-talk. You start talking to yourself in a negative way, beating yourself up. And this is not a positive thing to do because we have to declare that we are not super humans. We’re amazing humans, but we all make mistakes and nothing ever goes 100% to plan.

So, we have to be kind to ourselves and recognize that things will go wrong, things will happen in your life, but your self-worth has to be at the center of this. And we have to keep pushing it up. Because if we think about who we are, this is a really great activity to do. Think about all of the achievements, all the successes, all the good that you have done in the world since you started living and you start to remember how amazing you actually are.

 

Have a firm understanding of who we are

 

And these are things that we forget, we focus on the negative, but I want you to switch it up and start thinking about what did you do that added value to you and others each day? And think about forgiving yourself for all of these things that have happened, forgiving others, right? And really looking at getting a sense of personal integrity and developing that integrity so that it’s going to reignite or ignite your self-esteem. Because self-worth, and self-esteem are not the same.

What we want to do is really have a firm understanding of who we are. How do we want to be seen? How do we want to be perceived? And this is all part of forming a self-worth, because it’s like in business. I’ve had clients over the years who have not priced accordingly. They are selling their expertise, their time for such low amounts of money.

And why do they do that? Because the sense of self-worth is not there. You have to set your stall with your self-worth in mind, looking at the goal, the outcome that you achieve for that client. And start getting a sense of who you are going to be and what you’re going to do for that person.

Now, it may be that you write this down and you have your own personal mission statement. And this helps with self-acceptance, showing what you’ve achieved, what your mission and vision is now, and then looking at all of the great things, the endless amount, limitless, almost limitless amount of things that you could do in your life.

 

Self-love

 

Now, I do believe that self-love is a very important one. And when we talk about the self-talk, that’s one aspect. But I think also we live in a society that obviously we feel like change has to happen all the time. We have to be thinner, leaner. We have to exercise more, we have to put better things into our body. It feels like we’re just constantly changing to be better.

But we have to take stock and draw a line and think about who we are right now. And just because you might think that you’re not doing as much exercise as you wanted to, you’ve not put as much good food into your body as you wanted to, you’re a couple of pounds overweight and you’re not fitting into the right cloth size that you wanted to. That is nothing to do with your self-worth. You are worthy. We have to love ourselves for who we are now and what is happening to ourselves now.

And self-love, on the other hand, is that if something is making you desperately unhappy, is doing something about it and having the responsibility. Because self-worth is recognizing that there are always going to be negatives. But when we think about what there is real time and living in the present, looking at everything that we can be grateful for, at the end of the day, my exercise fluctuates. And quite honestly, I’m trying to do four sessions. I’m laughing to myself here because my exercise doesn’t always go to plan. I’m trying to do four sessions a week. So I’m doing three PT sessions. That’s one hour a time. And then I’m doing reformer Pilates on Sunday.

Now, that’s four hours I have to take out of my time. And on top of that, I was trying to get up in the morning, get on my treadmill, do all those things. Now, not always does that go to plan. But the thing is, with self-love is even if I did one of those, I have to actually recognize that I did one, not none.

So, start with small steps. And I think with self-love it’s like you can’t change the world all in one. And what I’ve realized is that my focus, I can’t be in a busy period of work and always just get everything nailed. And I don’t know many people who can. So, if you are one of them, there are many of us in the same boat.

But what I mean here is that if you are super busy delivering a project and you eat a bit of bad food here and there, you don’t work as much, you don’t do your steps, you don’t do your exercise, don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s just life. But then take action and responsibility that once that project’s done, that you’re going give yourself some self-care, you’re going to give yourself time for some self-acceptance and reflection. You’re going to give yourself some self-love and change the way that you talk yourself.

 

Self-understanding

 

So, it’s often just a case of peaks and troughs. Sometimes we’re better at it, sometimes we’re worse at it. And then my last one, number four is about self-understanding. And this is something that I honestly believe is something that I have honed and honed and honed. I think I’m quite good at it. I think I understand myself. I’ve spent quite a lot of time traveling and spending time in hotels and I think you do start to get that understanding of who you are.

Now, I always think about in a day when I’m looking at my diary, what makes me tick? What makes me happy? What drains me, what lights up my week? All of these things. And when we have a self-understanding of what makes us maybe feel a little bit negative, or a little bit depressed, or a little bit tired, or a little bit foggy, I’ve started to understand that if I go into that, aah, that’s what it is.

So, classic example of this is that if I have loads and loads of things on my to-do list, I literally just go into a brain fog and confusion. And what does confusion do? It halts everything. So, I don’t work like that. I have a book that I write everything down, a brain dump in. And I also use Trello. I get everything out onto there.

And I always work in six projects. I have six projects going and each project I brain dump every action, every activity, every thought that needs to go into that project so it’s out of my mind. And then I start delegating and then I start attaching people to the tasks and offloading. And then I start to feel more in control.

Now, from a self-understanding point of view, I know that when everything is clear on my mind, I feel a sense of control and certainty if it’s all out there. And then I start to feel better about the fact that the project is in motion, because I’ve delegated the tasks. I can see things happening.

So for me, it’s the momentum, the moving forward. When I make a decision, I want something done and I want it now. And I’ve just come back from a mastermind in LA and I’ve got so much to do, but I’m so excited. So, the first thing I had to do soon as I finished the mastermind, soon as the retreat ended is I just literally put the six projects under Trello. I brain-dumped it. And I started to get some of those tasks and actions going. I started to get my team members to be doing other bits and pieces. And the sense of feeling then was like, “Ah, okay, I can actually see my vision turning into reality.”

Now, that’s a big thing for me. And you might be able to really relate to this, that sometimes it just feels like overwhelm. Like, how I’m going to do this. If you talk about doing a big project and doing funnels and ads and online marketing and all these things, it’s just huge. But when you start to break it down of like, well, what has to happen? You don’t know all the answers right now.

So, from a self-understanding point of view, I know that if I get something in motion and I can start to see it evolve. It gets better, and better and better. And then the actuality of that project, when it’s getting nearer, I just feel so much more invigorated. Now, another aspect of self-understanding is understanding what makes you feel low and what makes you feel positive?

Now for me, if I start my day with a bit of exercise and I’m talking getting on a treadmill, doing a 20 minute walk while watching TV. I’m not doing a full-on run. And then I have a bit of breakfast and I start, I just feel clearer in the morning. Now, you have to start thinking about what your self-care routine is and how that’s going to impact.

And if you have an understanding that you operate better in the afternoon, then why on earth are you getting up at 6:00 in the morning? And this is what kills me. I think we come from this culture that it feels like we have to be doing things all the time. And we’re going to be criticized that we’re lazy because we don’t start work till 10:00. If you don’t want to start work till 11:00, and you’ve got your own business, or you’ve got flexy time at work, do what makes you happy.

And if this self-understanding approach does anything, it makes you think about when you’re most productive, when you operate well, how you like working, where you like working. If you want to work at your desk, you want to work in an office, you want to work in your bed, it doesn’t matter. It’s what works for you.

So, stop looking at other people. And self-understanding is about, just because 900 other people are doing something, it’s irrelevant, right? What is working for you? What makes you push forward? And then when we think about going back full circle. At the beginning of this podcast, I said about stepping into your self-worth. You can do anything in life. And literally, the opportunities are limitless.

So, when we create our big vision and we look at stepping into our self-worth, push those boundaries. So, if you’ve got a service and you think, “The amount of effort I put in, the amount of time, I’m just not really getting the rewards.” Put your prices up.

And I’m not saying just inflate prices for the sake of it, I’m thinking about understanding the worth of what you do and the value to the client and pricing accordingly. If you are giving huge value and you are making life- changing transformation, then that can be recognized.

So, I’m not about in the market putting prices up just for the sake of it. I’m talking about making it relative and aligning this amazing expertise. I mean, I’ve worked in online marketing for 20 years. I know huge amounts of things. I have huge amount of expertise. And sometimes we need to sit back and look at what value we can give, what we can bring to that table.

 

Everything to do with self-worth is about feeling good in yourself

 

Because everything to do with self-worth is about feeling good in yourself. So, number one, self-care. Looking at self-acceptance and understanding that things may have happened that have de-geared you or taken you off your path to success slightly, but you can change this. Accept what’s happened and forgive. And make sure your self-care plan is in place.

Now, number three, when we think about self-love, think about how you talk to yourself. If you can’t imagine talking to someone else in that voice, don’t do it. Start rewarding yourself. If you feel deflated, accept that emotion and just think, “Yeah, I deserve a little bit of a hug and a support.” And support yourself by surrounding yourself with other people.

Now, this is a big thing in self-love. If you feel that people are toxic or negative, move them out of your place. For years, I’ve put up with people in my life that literally drained me. The gossip, that literally… I remember having this friend that comes on the phone and just literally outputs. I could have done my dinner, my washing, I could have probably written an essay in the time, but she just offloaded.

And this wasn’t a positive thing for me because an hour down the line, there’s no conversation back from me and you need to have two way. Some people don’t realize that they’re stepping over the boundaries. So, maybe it’s just a case of telling them and making them understand. And thinking that you deserve people that just light you up. And this is why I love spending time on things like retreats and masterminds.

And this is going to be a big part of my journey because what it has done is looking at my own self-care, looking at my self-acceptance and my self-love and the people I surround myself. I have a better self-understanding, right? So, number four. So, this has given me a whole new opportunity, a whole new journey for me. And I am going to be doing some really exciting things.

Now, I’ve got this podcast, Dawn of a New Era, we’re now ranking in the top 3%, top 3% globally. And it’s crazy to think that I started this podcast during lockdown. I feel so excited that out of 3 million podcasts in the world, that I am a top ranking show. And this is because of you guys listening and helping and supporting me.

I have another podcast which is Digital Marketing Made Easy. And the crazy thing was, is it actually came out last Tuesday, relaunched series two. And I perhaps didn’t have the hopes or the self-worth maybe in me thinking it’s not going to maybe rank for a while. And it came in at like 59 in Apple UK Charts for marketing.

So, self-worth is having self-belief as well. And for me, coming back from a retreat, having my podcast, having my business and an understanding of what I want to achieve has allowed me to step into something brand new. And I’m going to be launching Luxury Business Mastermind Retreats. And I cannot wait.

My first one starts in March in 2022 in Marrakesh. If you’re listening to this and it’s gone, I apologize. But guess what? There’ll be many more. We’re aiming to do four a year. So, this is what I mean when we talk about limitless. I was, maybe during lockdown, not growing, not scaling as I wanted to. I was moving forward, but maybe not at the speed and pace.

And that’s okay because I didn’t feel in the right zone to do it, but now I am. Big things are happening and big shifts. So, with the sheer fact that I can see some of these winds coming through, it does help build on your self-worth. So remember, self-care, self-acceptance, self-love and self-understanding are the four key elements that I really want you to keep constantly working on to make sure that you’re truly stepping into your self-worth.

So, I hope you enjoyed this episode and join me on the next one. I cannot believe that we are on episode 70 already, and that we’ve hit the top 3%. But do you know what? Maybe next time I’ll be telling you about another shift, and I’m sure, I know one day we will hit the top 1%.

So, remember to subscribe and give me a little rate and review as well, just to let me know how we’re doing and how you’re enjoying the podcast. It means a lot and it really does help with getting my message out to the masses. So, thanks for your support so far. And remember, you are worthy.

 

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