Janna Holterman 0:00
Welcome back to Unlocking Your More podcast with Janna Holterman. So let's get to it. Today we're gonna be talking about why you don't want their approval, and you're probably like, "What? So our entire lives, our society has conditioned us to seek outside approval for everything. Right? You want to get your boss, your boss to say, "Hey, you did a good job. You want to get recognized for the hard work that you do. You want to be appreciated. You want your partner to tell you that you're amazing. You want your, even your kids. You know, if you have kids, to be like, you know, you're the best mom ever, right? Like we seek outside validation for everything. We always want external feedback telling us that we do a good job. Now, if I asked you how much do you feel like you're being appreciated by others, is it to the level that you actually want to be appreciated. Do you feel that you are being appreciated enough, or do you feel like you should be appreciated more? And this is interesting because in my nursing role, you know, we always do these surveys where people give their feedback on things, and one of the things that people continually give feedback is that they don't feel that they are being appreciated enough, and when I'm in a leadership role and my nursing job, I try to appreciate the heck out of people. But here's the thing: they can't see what their brain won't allow them to. So basically, if your brain is focused and programmed to look for certain things, it'll be able to find it. But if your brain is not programmed to look for how you're doing a good job, how you are making an impact on others, how you're achieving the results that you desire in your life. If your brain is not primed and focused on finding evidence to support those things, you're not going to be able to find it. Which means even when people give you praise for your accomplishments, you won't let it sink in and actually feel the difference because we cannot feel better from external things. We need to feel better internally, and that will allow us to recognize the external things that are happening around us. And taking this away from, you know, our praise and accomplishments for a second. How well do you accept a compliment? If I were to come up to you and be like, "Oh my God, like I love your outfit, or you look so beautiful today, would you take that to the heart, or would you say, "Oh, you know, like try to brush it off this old thing, or you know, oh, it's just my outfit. That's why I look good. Or I got this new makeup. That's why I look good. Not because it's you, your energy, your you know existing, or you being the one that chose to put the outfit together to get the compliment. Like, did you accept the compliment when I gave it to you, or did you brush it off and say, "Oh no, it's this outside of me thing that created that compliment" Because if you cannot take to heart a compliment and say, "Yes, this is something that I created. I am gorgeous as I am. I am the smartest, the best one because I put this outfit together that somebody else complimented. If you can't accept that kind of compliment, you are not going to be able to allow other people's compliments to truly sink in and change the way that you feel. So that is why you've probably felt unappreciated, unrecognized, unvalidated, because the external things are not sinking in. Right? They're be they may be said, and here's the thing: the less and less you believe it, the less and less other people are likely to say those things to you, because other people reflect us back to us, so we think thoughts about ourselves, and energetically we are literally sending signals to all of the people around us, and they reflect our energy back to us.
Janna Holterman 4:33
So because we have mirror neurons, people are constantly looking at you and mirroring you back to you, just like if you hang out with somebody and you're like, you know, if you hang out with somebody with an accent, and then all of a sudden you're like talking in an accent, and you're like, oh shit, I'm trying, like I'm not trying to be like insensitive. No, like you literally have mirror neurons. That is why that is happening. You know, somebody has a phrase or a saying or a certain like body. Language and you spend a bunch of time with them you start doing them that is mirror neurons acting but these mirror neurons are constantly at play so we interact with somebody even for a short period of time your mirror neurons are still picking up their energy their body language like you know the words that are said and the words that are unsaid and reflecting it back to them, so the more that you beat the crap out of yourself, the more you do not recognize your success, your accomplishments, what you've created within your life, how you're making an impact on others. The more you do not recognize that for yourself, the more other people are also going to not see that in you, which means that you're gonna get passed up on you know job opportunities or promotions or things like that because you don't see it in you, which means you're not like sending that out in your energy, and other people are not going to bring it back to you. So you want to get recognized, you want to be appreciated, you want to, you know, you were like, I'm working so much fucking harder than everybody else in the room, and nobody is recognizing it, right? We have to pause, and we have to actually start giving that to ourselves. But this needs to start with our nervous system, and what I mean by that is our nervous system has an internal compass. You probably heard me talk about this before, right? We have a homeostasis point in our nervous system when we are doing big things for other people, when we are accomplishing things in our personal lives and our careers that are new, or even just stuff you've been working on for a while, if you haven't let your nervous system acclimatize to that thing, it's going to naturally cause your subconscious brain to push it away because your brain is like, "I'm not used to this. I don't like it. It is something new. It is something unfamiliar. We are gonna push it away. So we want to allow our nervous systems and our brains to acclimatize to these things. So I want you to like. This is gonna feel strange, but I promise you, it works. I want you to sit with what you are accomplishing, right? If if you had a difficult situation with a client and you worked through it, you signed a new client, you worked with somebody, you had you know a interaction with a potential partner. All of these things that you are wanting to create more of the things that you're like. Okay, well, you know, I have a tiny little bit of this, but I want to create way more of that. You got to sit with it. You got to take a moment. You know, you can put a hand on your chest if you want to, and just be like, okay, like I did that thing. I did the thing. Here we go. I did that thing. This is the result. This is what happened. I created this. I created this. What is it like for me to create that? Why did I create that? Oh my goodness! Because I'm so intelligent. I'm so smart. I saw a problem. I created a solution, and fucking just sit with it. And you're gonna be like, "This is really uncomfortable, and I'm gonna get distracted. I'm. My brain is gonna go a million different directions. Bring it back. Of just like yeah, you know, somebody paid me $10 for my free train or you know my my $10 training or something like that. What is that like to have somebody pay you $10 Somebody showed up for this free thing, cool. What is that like to have somebody show up for your thing that you you created?
Janna Holterman 8:38
You created that with your own genius. What is that like? And this feels stupid. It feels dumb. You're like, I don't understand why I'm doing this. This is literally how we get our nervous system on board with things because your nervous system has to acclimatize. It has to get used to what it feels like to have that thing. And the more you get your nervous system used to what it feels like to have that thing. The more of that thing that you're going to create, so get sit. Somebody compliments you on something. Take a fucking moment and just be like, okay, you know what? They complimented my outfit. Isn't you know like that was really kind of them. Why? Like how did I create that situation where they complimented my outfit? Well, I'm really smart and I picked out this beautiful outfit. Like it feels so dumb, but I can guarantee you that the more you practice this, the easier it'll feel. But also, what you're doing is you're telling your nervous system that those things are okay, that is safe, that's more what we want, right? People recognize you, sit with it. Your boss says, "Hey, you did a good job. Take a moment, take a breather, and be like, 'Okay, I did a good job. I got this recognition from somebody else. Okay, number one, what is actually happening when we're doing that? We're making our nervous system feel safe. Number two, you're creating an internal feeling. The internal feeling. Remember how I said nothing. External will make you feel differently inside. What you're what you're actually doing is creating the internal feeling that is going to make you feel different inside. Because when we create strong emotional connections to things, it tells our brain, "Hey, this is significant. We want to remember this. What kind of thoughts go along with those feelings? We are going to remember that, and we're going to store it for long-term knowledge. So the more times we sit and appreciate and let ourselves feel it, the more strong those neural connections are going to be. Which means the more we are going to be able to find the evidence to support it in our lives, and the more our brains are going to believe it. When our brains believe it, we find the evidence to support it, guess what? We send those signals. Our body language starts to change. The way we speak about ourselves starts to change. Other people are gonna start noticing. They're gonna start recognizing it. And when they start recognizing it, they're going to start sending those signals back to you. Right? Those mirror neurons are gonna start playing. They're going to start appreciating you more. They're going to start recognizing you more. They're going to start validating you more because you did the work to validate, recognize, and appreciate yourself first. Now you do not need to wait for somebody else external to validate you to feel validated or appreciated or accepted or whatever it is, right? Like, sure. In those moments when people do that, sit with it. Get your nervous system on board with it. Feel that, like, hey, I am re, like, like adjusting my homeostasis point to be a person who is appreciated by others because she appreciates herself. When she appreciates herself, other people will then appreciate her because they reflect you back to you, right? It all starts internally with us. So we have to. So not everybody is going to be walking around and complimenting you, especially when you start. Compliments could be very far and few between. So we can find the evidence of our own accomplishments, our own appreciation, our own validation for ourselves. Right? You know, where is something that like where is something that you did that nobody else could do because nobody else knows what you know, understands things the way that you do, like recognizes patterns, like you recognize patterns. Like, where is your genius? How did you, you know, this seems so simple for your brain, but if you gave it to somebody else, they'd be like, "What? I'm so confused. Like, I don't get it. But like, it makes sense for you because you're you, right?
Janna Holterman 12:38
We need to find those things and bring them back and find that like use that as evidence for our brains of like, yeah, I did that thing, I created that thing, I showed up and I helped this person, and that is amazing. But most of us are on to the next thing, on to the next thing, onto the next thing, and part of that is because our nervous systems don't feel safe in appreciation and acceptance of ourselves, so we have to sit with it. We have to like recognize, hey, yeah, I did that thing. What is it like? What is it like to help people in that way? What is it like to show up in that way? What does it feel like in my body when I feel into it? And how do I find more evidence for my brain, that I've accomplished things, that I've done a lot, that I've made an impact, and the more you find evidence for it, our brains are going to find more and more and more evidence. Right? Your brain's like, oh, this is relevant to me, so I'm gonna keep finding evidence. Right now, your brain is like, nope, not relevant. We don't need to be appreciated. We don't need to be accepted because I've spent the last, you know, 30 years beating the crap out of myself. So why would we? Why would we find evidence for appreciation, right? We have to change. We have to change the way that our brain sees things, and we do that with repetition and nervous system safety and getting the emotions that help us really lock into those long-term belief systems. So, it starts with creating that safety in your nervous system. Sit with it. It's uncomfortable. I get it. Do it anyway. Do it anyway. I promise you. What do you got to lose? What do you got to lose? Right? Feeling better. Switch. You know. know, great. Then I want you to start finding the evidence, finding the evidence for how you're doing a good job. How are you going and above and beyond? How are you doing something that nobody else could do? Where's your zone of genius, and how are you unlocking it? And even if you are only feeling you know, 50% capacity and 50% is all you get. How is your 50% better than somebody else's 100% Like, you need to be your own biggest cheerleader. Find the evidence and then sit with that. What does it feel like to recognize the impact that I made on this other person? What is that like in my body? And the more. You focus on that, the more you will start to feel it yourself, and then the more other people will reflect you back to you. Right with those mirror neurons, they're going to start picking up what you're doing for yourself, and they're going to start recognizing you, appreciating you. And the best part is, when they're appreciating you and recognizing you, you can actually absorb it and be like, yeah, that was amazing, right? Like that was that was good. Because right now you're deflecting it. You're like, nope, that's uncomfortable. We're just gonna shove that away. And then we're like, well, why don't people recognize me and appreciate me? So let's get ahead of this one and let me know what is your zone of genius. You can send me a message on Instagram. What is your zone of genius? How are you recognizing your own accomplishments?
