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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey. I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today.
Today I've got an interesting topic, something that has made a difference in my life and many of the people in my coaching program, Stable Living Coaching, that I see a lot and experience a lot when people, when we internalize, when we really get this concept, it makes a really big difference. And, but it's not an easy one. I'll say it wasn't an easy one for me to get. It might, this may be something that you could relate to.
Because, you know, I have myself, I have studied personal development and been into self-improvement for a long time, for many, many years. I've read lots of books, and I've done lots of study. It started even when I was like, maybe as early in my twenties with my, my grandma was a Stephen Covey fan when, when Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was new. Anyway, and she shared that with me, and I've been pretty, I've studied self-improvement for a long, for most of my adult life.
And one of the things that I've had a struggle with, I'm telling you I've had an internal conflict because I believe it's a contradiction in self-improvement. And that is, self-acceptance. Okay?
And so here's what I mean by that. In personal development, we are told to, that we need to fully accept ourselves, but yet we need to improve at the same time. And so in my mind, these things totally clash. Okay? When, when people have told me previously, and I struggled this idea for a longtime. Okay?
I flat ass rejected it is what I did. Okay. I said that you want me… Okay, I didn't get my goal. Here's my example, I didn't get my goal so you want me to settle. You want me to say, that's okay. “You're okay, Shane. You didn't get your goal. Just forget about it. You're a hundred percent.” When I didn't get my goal, how am I supposed to accept me and the fact that I didn't get my goal, my position, my status, my wherever I'm at, my progress. And how's that supposed to be okay when I didn't achieve my deal, right?
Maybe I didn't do the discipline that was required. Maybe I, whatever, whatever. And then, then I would say, okay well, how am I supposed todo this? Well, you're supposed to resolve it inside your head somehow. So then I'd think, okay, well, how can I make this okay inside my head that I'm 100%and I didn't get my goal?
And so I'd try to come up with reasons. And you know what those reasons sounded like to me? They sounded like, “Hey, Shane, you're making up a bunch of excuses for not getting your damn deal done. So get after it and quit sitting there making excuses.”
I just couldn't, I couldn't get the concept. I heard the words. I tried. But it wasn't, I felt like I was like, if I accepted me, okay, at all times, a hundred percent, regardless of what I did, that I was like settling for wherever I was at. Okay? That I was giving up, that I was making excuses or I was just flat, justifying my, you know, incompetence in the thing that I was trying to do, okay? Or in my position.
You know, I looked at like my net worth, is my net worth where I want it to be right now? No. Okay, it's not. So how am I supposed to accept that as part of me? It's part of me, right? I mean, how does that go?
My weight, you know, how am I, if I'm not at my ideal weight, how am I supposed to fully accept me? Really? How does that go? What do you mean fully accept me, even though I'm not happy with how much I weigh right now? Okay.
And then I actually got to where, as far as my weight goes, I got to a place where I was happy. I could fully accept it. I actually went a little too far on that one one time in my life. I lost a little bit too much weight. I looked so unhealthy people were thinking I was dying. They were coming up to me like, “Hey, Shane, you're going to be okay man?”
But anyway, but I didn't get, when I wouldn't reach my goal. When I didn't have, you know, what I consider to be my success. I didn't fully follow my schedule. I could see that I wasn't, you know, following through a hundred percent being as disciplined as I wanted to be and all this stuff yet I was supposed to be happy with myself in this internal struggle I couldn't resolve it. So I just said the heck with it, I'm not gonna even try. I'm gonna keep going after my goal. I'll accept me when I get it done.
Okay, and you know, I looked around in the way that I was raised, I mean my heroes are tough guys. Like my dad, you know, we didn't, it was like these guys were tough guys… They didn't talk about you know, they, you either win or not. You know what I'm saying? And so it's like, go for it. And keep going. No excuses. These guys, my wrestling coach and I was in high school, you know, all or none. Burning desire. Let's roll.
And so, you know, I tried, and I tried, but these two forces just like kept buttin’ heads like, you know, like a couple of bulls fighting. And, I felt that it was like conflicting instructions for success. I just, I couldn't, I couldn't resolve it in my head for really for a lot of years.
And so I even heard the research, okay? I'm gonna give you some of the research. Maybe this will help you, but this is research. Dr. Kristin Neff, who is a leading researcher on self-compassion, found that people who accept themselves with kindness are more likely to take personal responsibility and improve. Okay, so why this works is that self-compassion reduces the fear of failure, helping you to bounce back from setbacks and persist towards your goal.
See, I heard the research and she said, Kristin Neff said that people who accept themselves with kindness are more likely to take personal responsibility and improve. But see, I thought that I was taking personal responsibility by accepting all of the ownership of me not getting the goal and having that not be okay. That felt like personal responsibility to me. Like the rest felt like making excuses. See, so I heard the research, but I couldn't really, maybe I didn't really get.
More research, okay? A study in the Journal of Counseling Psychology revealed that accepting your flaws help you manage them more effectively, improving your overall being. Why this works: Acceptance removes the emotional roadblocks that come with self-denial or avoidance, making growth possible. So, they're saying that if you don't fully accept yourself for whatever reason, you're kind of putting up your own internal roadblocks that which makes it harder to make progress.
Research in resilience psychology shows that self-acceptance enhances emotional resilience, allowing you to recover more quickly from challenges. So, there's research that says that if you fully accept yourself, you'll bounce back quicker. It says letting go of perfectionism frees up mental energy to focus on problem solving opportunities. Okay.
And the last one, I'm going to one more little piece of research here. And by the way, this is only a fraction. There is mountains of research surrounding this. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs highlights the importance of self-acceptance in reaching your full potential. It is the foundation for self-esteem which drives self-actualization. So he says that self-acceptance is the foundation of self-esteem. Okay. So why did this work? Self-acceptance or feelings of, without, excuse me, why this works without self-acceptance, feelings of inadequacy, undermine your efforts to achieve your goals. Okay, so you're undermining, you're sabotaging your own self if you don't fully accept yourself as you are.
So, I mean like, wow. It just, I still like, I, I heard the research. Okay? I heard the words. I considered myself a pretty smart kind of guy, but I just couldn't, I couldn't fully interpret. I couldn't make it happen for me. It wasn't, I wasn't getting it. Wasn't feeling it. I couldn't feel the research, you know.
And so it's been part of the process for me. It's not something that I just, you know, it's kind of like the relationship with yourself. I've said many times, and I believe it, and it is so that, that your relationship with yourself… Hey, you're going to be with yourself more than anybody else. And it's a, it's a process. It's not something that you go, “Oh yeah. I got that thing done. Great.” You know, like, “Oh yeah, I have a great marriage. Check. I did that a while back.” It's an ongoing deal. Right? As long as you're in this relationship, which is for ourselves, as long as we're breathing, as long as we're alive, at least, you know. I'm just talking about our time here on this earth. That we have this entire time to go through this process.
And it has been a process. I've incrementally, you know, I've tried to take this concept in and get it. And I've more and more got it as time goes on.
I found that, I guess, and so the point there I'm making is is that if you, if any of this stuff that I'm relating about me, if you can relate to you might not expect that it's just gonna like a light bulb gonna go off and everything's gonna change in your whole world. Okay? It might be like me that was an incremental over a period of time of taking information in and making an effort to try to understand and making an effort to wanna be better and want to improve and want to make progress that I could more fully get this concept.
Because I'm telling you as I have been able to live this concept to understand it to accept it. Right? To be able to accept self-acceptance. That it's made a substantial difference in the way that I view the world. And you know what, the way that I feel every day. And guess what? The way that I feel everybody comes out to the rest of the world, in all my relationships and right here and now with you.
So I found that the key to understanding, I found that the key is basically it's understanding that acceptance doesn't mean approval. It's kind of like forgiveness, and I'll just say self-forgiveness. It's forgiveness in all, but I'll just use this example of forgiving yourself.
To me, forgiving yourself is easier when I can separate what I have done as an action. That's one thing over there that's not me. And I separate that as me, as a soul, as a human being, that is a perfectly imperfect person. So who, by the way, makes plenty of mistakes and does a bunch of stuff wrong and does things that I wish I wouldn't have and makes bad choices. And that's just part of my human experience. Right?
So I separate what I have done. don't say, man, I can't believe they did that. I can't believe I did that. Look at what kind of a person I am. What does that make me mean? I don't make the thing that I did that I wish I would not have, mean something about me that I don't want it to.
I simply try to separate it and say, I did a thing that I wish I would of. And that's what human beings do. Okay? And so that's what I do. I do some things I do or things that I wish I wouldn't have, you know, that's going to be the way it's going to be.
And so then I look back, I don't say that's gonna be the way it's gonna be all the time and I don't use it as an excuse. I use it to accept me, to fully accept me and say, okay, now let's take a look at this. What am I gonna do to not do it again? And what am I gonna do to make amends? And what am I gonna do to move forward like the kind of human being and make a better choice what I wanna do next time?
That's the way I look at it. And it makes it easier for most of us if we separate that, okay, in forgiveness.
And that this is the same. It's the same. Okay, what it is is if you can accept your… Separate the thing that you feel like you're settling for. The thing that you're not happy with the results of so far. Okay. Let's just go back to my examples, my net worth, okay?
Well, the thing of it is if I don't fully accept me, I'm probably never gonna be happy. You hear like people just keep going and going and going and going, and they're never happy, never ends, and You're trying to fill this empty hole, and you can't ever fill it up. And this is one of the reasons why.
Because let's just say that I have this certain goal of net worth, and I get it and then I bump it I get it and I bump it and I get it and I bump it and it never becomes full.
And so, so in this example, if I can separate, okay, well, I had a goal of X net worth by this time. And it's this time and I'm under the mark.
Okay.
So if I can, so what the problem is, is if I feel like, like, that makes that mean something about me. Okay. Let's do, and if, if I want to, if I choose to make that mean something about me negative, it's not going to help me in the future. That's bottom line.
Okay, but I can also choose how I look at that thing. I can fully accept that, I didn't get the thing because I'm an infallible, imperfectly perfect human being. And so I'm happy with that. And I can choose to make it mean not mean something negative about myself.
So when, so that's what I'm talking about in the separation like that.
So that's one thing that has been helpful to me is to try to separate the fact that when I feel like I'm settling, when I feel like, don't accept, don't accept defeat. Like you're like I'm accepting defeat. Okay, when I feel like I might be accepting defeat when I'm not accepting me. Okay? Because they're not the same. Okay?
You can fully accept yourself without, you know, accepting a circumstance that you like. That doesn't mean that you agree with any of that, It just means that you fully accept you.
So, here's another example. This also makes it helpful for lot of parents. You know, Stable Living is with parents and teens. And so this makes it, this really opens eyes.
If you're a parent, just try this, okay? How do you feel about your kids? Do you, how do you feel when they fall short of their goals? Okay. Do you love them less or what do you do? Of course you encourage them, right? You believe in them. You tell them that they can go for their potential. So if you can turn that lens upside down and view yourself the same way, that's the deal. Okay?
So I look at the times when I've felt acceptance, when I've felt accepted. And I've taken some of that, when I felt that, when other people have helped me feel that way. And I've had some private times with my maker, when I felt God's acceptance. You know, and that's really something. You know, my parents, you know, when I hear things from my parents. When I have their, when I feel like I have their full acceptance, I'm saying, well, how did that make me feel in those moments?
I remember one time I put on an event in, here in Northern Nevada in my auction company. And at the end of the band, a friend of mine that I respected came up to me and he just said, “You know, Shane, you've done a really good job here.” And in that moment, and that's just one example, I've felt fully accepted. Okay.
So now the reason I'm sharing these experiences with you is that I'm hoping that you can relate and use these kinds of examples for yourself. Because my question is, is when I felt that from my maker, when I felt that from my parents, when I felt that from my spouse, when I felt that from the people in my close relationships, my friends and loved ones… When I have felt that, when I have felt fully accepted by them, why am I not giving this gift to myself?
And I'll tell you what the deal is, when I do, when I choose to, you know, do it. You know, which has been, like I said, it's a hard thing. Let me just tell you, I can't even believe half the stuff I'm saying. I never thought that I've heard all this language, you know, love yourself regardless of, you know, what you're doing. And I just, it didn't sound like, it didn't sound right to me.
But the more that I do, okay. The more that I give myself the gift of what those other people have given me in times of my life are the times that I am energized and clear and I feel like I have the pathway forward and I can make some serious progress. And I see it. I see it not just in me, but I see it in other people time after time and time again.
So I hope that makes sense for you and I hope that you can apply some of this in your daily lives if any of what I'm saying that you can relate to. Think about those experiences that you've had when you felt fully accepted. And then give the gift of that to yourself and open the door. Clear out the self doubt, clear out the discouragement, clear out the I'm not good enough. And you're able to fully make progress so much that you're able to get better results quicker. Okay.
And I think that's what we all want.
Hey. When you, the bottom line is love yourself, okay? You're worth it.
Thank you for joining me today and remember you cannot fail as long as you Don't Ever Stop Chasin It.
