Moving Forward: The Path of Personal Growth

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you’re listening to The Love, Happiness, and Success podcast. 

[Intro Song: There’s a New Day by Staffan Carlén]

Dr. Lisa: There’s a new day. That song is by Staffan Carlén, not Stephan, Staffan Carlén. I thought it was a good mood setter for our episode today. Because today, we’re talking about moving forward: what it really involves and how to turn what may feel like a personal crisis into a vehicle of personal growth. Today, it is all about turning a breakdown into a breakthrough so that you can feel good and achieve the love, happiness, and success that we both know you deserve. That’s what we’re doing today on the show. I wanted to do those. I actually had something else planned for us today. 

As you may or may not know, if you are a regular listener and caught last week’s show, last week, we were talking about self-esteem. I launched a new activity for you guys, which is a little self-esteem assessment. It’s an online assessment. You answer a few questions. You get a self-esteem score that measures how you’re feeling about you these days. I’ve had a bunch of people take this and I get an overview of the results. I looked at this the other day and realized that many of you are not feeling that good right now, at least some of those of you who have taken the self-esteem assessment. 

I also have a little place in my assessments where I make space for you guys to ask questions or share things and, in looking through those, saw that a number of you had questions about where to go from here. I wanted to address those on the show today. If you are interested in participating in this activity, you can access the self-esteem assessment by texting the word ‘esteem’ to the number 55444. Or, of course, you can cruise on over to the blog at growingself.com. You’ll see a link to that quiz, in addition to other ones, if you go to- I think it’s under the free resources tab on the website. There’s a little drop down and you can access that assessment in addition to others. 

That’s what I wanted to talk about with you guys on the show is when life has thrown you for a loop, then what? In service of your growth, I thought that I would share my perspective of what growth and evolution and healing really involves and really looks like from the perspective of being a therapist and coach who has walked with a lot of people on this path and witnessed many people doing this successfully. I’m going to paint you a picture of what this looks like from the other side to just give you a roadmap for what this might involve for you, too. That’s what we’re doing today on the show. 

If this is your first time listening, you’re probably wondering what in the heck you have just stumbled into. Of course, this is The Love, Happiness, and Success podcast. I’m Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I am a psychologist. I’m a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I’m a board-certified life coach and the Founder and Clinical Director of growingself.com. The Love, Happiness, and Success podcast is all about you. Welcome, I’m glad you’re here. 

Let’s turn our attention to our topic today. A couple of the questions that trickled through from this assessment and there were others, if you were one of the many who asked a different type of question, never fear I will address those in time as well, but a couple stood out to me. One person asked, “How do I cultivate feelings of worthiness, combat my inner critic, develop self-compassion?” Another person asked, “How do I break through and take the next step towards my dreams?” Yet, another person said, “What are some ways to work on self-love, or undo the effects of childhood emotional neglect, while isolated this year due to COVID? What are some things we can work on by ourselves without a relationship or a partner?” There were many more, but these are just a few that stood out to me as really being an example of you guys saying, “Yes, but how?” 

First, I will share my perspective, my bird’s eye view from… I mean, I work with my own clients. I also manage a practice and I supervise 35, 40 different counselors and coaches at this point. I have an involvement in many of their cases. What I have experienced from my own work my own life, my own clients, but also being part of many others’ growth is that right now in the midst of what feels like a world on fire with pandemics and job losses and very unusual circumstances and difficult times, in many ways, is that right now seems to be, interestingly, a very ripe time for growth and personal development. Meaning that there are life circumstances that many people are experiencing right now that are perhaps not pleasant and, in some ways, make it easier to do very deep and meaningful personal growth work. That is not always possible when we’re doing our usual status quo running around act. 

For example, right now, a lot of people have time and space to get in touch with you. We are not running around and going to activities and hanging out with people in the same way and attending events. There’s just more time that people have either at home or with our families, that solitude time. This is actually a really important ingredient if you are serious about personal growth work. Many things can get wallpapered over by dizziness and running around and errands and social engagements. I mean, I think a lot of people under normal circumstances flit around from thing to thing. There’s almost a dragonfly quality to it. They land somewhere for a little bit, then they zip off to the other thing. Being deprived of the ability to do that is pushing people into contact with themselves, for better or for worse, without those distractions. People are finding that their inner thoughts and feelings are often more readily accessible. Again, that is not always comfortable, particularly if you’re going through something hard, but it is necessary if you’re serious about growth. 

Another thing that is currently happening that is very conducive to personal growth, to the point where I would say that when I look back at the successful growth work that I’ve seen people do over the years and I’ve been part of, many of the times, my clients have had their eventual breakthroughs and ‘aha moments’ after experiencing a pretty significant loss or disappointment. It can be a lost relationship, a loss of job, maybe both at the same time, but being confronted with life circumstances that they do not like. They feel disappointed by them. They feel upset by them. Going through that, what feels really like a personal crisis or a big thing brings up a lot of big feelings: everything from shame, insecurity, grief, loss, all kinds of stuff. Because, oftentimes, the big events are so big, that again, people have to deal with the feelings. Of course, there are always exit ramps if you want to. You could get high. You could get drunk. You could do something else entirely, be addicted to porn. There are lots of ways to avoid, right?

But many times, if a crisis is big enough, even our usual numbing strategies aren’t quite enough to protect us from all those feelings. They need to be dealt with. Those experiences will lead people to, oftentimes, with the support of a good therapist or coach be like, “Okay. Why do I feel so bad? Why was this upsetting to me.” Just begin using that as a doorway to understanding themselves more deeply. What I’ve learned over time is that many times, when people really go into that exploration, they can come away with realizations about themselves: their core values, recognition that maybe the job that they were so attached to and so devastated by when it ended, maybe that wasn’t actually their perfect ideal situation, or a relationship that ended and they felt gutted that had ended. Maybe, sometimes, during that exploration, they come to this realization of, “That wasn’t actually that good for me either. I wasn’t really getting what I needed.” 

Being able to reevaluate some of the things that they’ve been doing and realizing that maybe the things that didn’t work out were not truly in alignment with who they were and what they wanted, after all. It’s through these difficult experiences and difficult times that people can go through a dark valley, or a dark tunnel, or have this inner experience where it’s really focused on understanding themselves. “Why am I feeling the way that I’m feeling? I feel angry. Why is that? Why does it make sense? Why do I have every right in the world to feel as angry as I do? Or what am I feeling ashamed of right now? What is that about?” Going into those dark emotions for the purpose of not pushing them away and making them go away, but understanding them. “Why does this make sense? What is this telling me about me?” Through that exploration, it helps people get really clear about themselves: who they are, what they want, what they need, what their core values are, what their hopes and dreams are, all of this. 

Many times, this level of self-awareness and self-knowledge is only available to us through our dark emotions. I use the term dark emotions instead of negative emotions because I don’t believe they’re negative. In our culture, things like anger, grief, pain, guilt, shame, frustration, rage even, you name it, have gotten a bad rap. Because we often believe that these are feelings that we shouldn’t have. That when these feelings are active, we should do things that make them go away which eventually, certainly is one of the goals because it’s not helpful for you to stay stuck in bad feelings that are unproductive forever and ever. But your dark emotions are a treasure of insight and self-understanding and the doorway to clarity. When you’re able to understand them compassionately, make friends with them, absorb the wisdom that they are attempting to share with you, that requires a lot of strength, I think, a lot of courage to be able to do that, oftentimes a lot of support. Can you get there through journaling or thinking about things while you go on long walks? Yes, you can. 

For many people, it is also through conversations with a good therapist or a good coach, where they’re saying, like, “Okay. Why are you so angry?” Not in a judgy way, but let’s-talk-about-why-this-makes-sense kind of way that people finally have the permission to say like, “Okay, maybe this does make sense. Why is that?” That is really an important part of the growth process. Then, when you understand what is going on that is creating so much pain, sometimes it can be a misalignment with your current circumstances, sometimes there can be a lot of clarity around your own inner dialogue, or limiting core beliefs, or ways of thinking that are creating a lot of pain and suffering.

Then, that leads to an understanding of what you need that maybe you didn’t know before. Perhaps, it is making some life changes. Perhaps, it’s changing the way that you relate to yourself or even others. But it becomes linked to this, “Okay, this isn’t working. Now, given what I’ve learned about myself…” The ‘now what’ part, because as I’ve mentioned many times, insight is not enough to make it different. Just being like, “Okay, this is why I’m angry,” does not change it. That’s step one. Then, we need to move into the now what part. 

One of the things that I have observed over time in walking with people that are doing this work, that is a pretty consistent common element here, is an emerging sense of personal empowerment that is not that superficial, artificial like, “I am empowered. I deserve… Whatever. She-woman…” I don’t know. There are so many life coaches on Instagram right now with all this, what to me feels superficial calls to empowerment that do not address what is actually happening on the foundational level for people who attain genuine authentic empowerment. But I’m going to tell you what that really is. When people make contact with their feelings, legitimize their own needs and rights, and start behaving in ways and treating themselves in ways that support their wellness, and when they start feeling better and stronger through these activities, they will then arrive at a point where they begin to cultivate and acquire a sense of personal power that is rooted in realistic responsibility. 

Let me explain what that means. When people are feeling really fragile and don’t feel good about themselves, feel disempowered, feel powerless, they tend to displace blame. They blame other people. They blame outside circumstances. They focus on how they were victimized or wronged because thinking about how they participated, knowingly or unknowingly, in the trajectory of a series of decisions, life circumstances, step-by-step that they said yes to, that culminated in their having experiences that they were unhappy with. People who are in a fragile place cannot tolerate that. Those ideas feel so threatening and overwhelming. This idea that they were participants in the decisions, or choices, or even unconscious walking towards something that they didn’t know was going to not end well, that’s hard to do. 

When people have begun to do the work of growth and healing, they come to a place where they’re like, “Oh, yeah. I did actually not know what I was doing at the time that contributed to me getting the outcome that I got. If I had to do that over again, these are some things that I would do differently, knowing what I know now.” Because true empowerment is a core belief in your own competence and ability to be an author of your life, and to make changes, to make decisions that lead to good things for you, and a basic sense of self-efficacy. That is empowerment. It’s not necessarily, “I deserve this just for being me.” True power is, “I have the ability to create the reality I want and to keep myself safe from things that I don’t want. I am empowered.” 

The opposite of empowerment is disempowerment, which is having no control over what happens to you, it’s being victimized over and over again, it is unconsciously stumbling into one bad thing after another. That is the definition of disempowerment in many ways. There are situations where people are disempowered by others. There are disempowering, systemic, racist systems that people actually do have to deal with and that are contributing to disempowerment on a systemic level. Yes, we as a society need to try to change those systems. On an individual level, empowerment happens for individuals when they become aware that they have more control than they thought they did. Maybe, it’s not total control. There are always going to be some things that are outside of our control, but having a commitment to controlling what you can, and feeling able to control certain things: controlling yourself, controlling your choices, being able to understand, “When I’m doing this is helpful and productive, and leads me in a good direction. When I am doing that, it is not good for me. I am going to avoid doing these things because I know this doesn’t work. I’ve tried it.” 

That’s internal empowerment that is, in my opinion, very authentic. Because again, when people know what to do, they feel confident in their ability to get different results in the future. Then, they can go do that. That is simply an observation of watching people who have grown and healed and moved forward. That always happens sooner or later. It can be understanding, “Okay, when I was in this job, I was getting into power struggles with my boss. That didn’t end well for me. In my next situation, here’s how I would like to handle that.” Or, “In that relationship, I actually walked past a number of waving red flags because I didn’t realize they were red flags at the time. I just thought he was really excited about being in a relationship with me and that felt great. Now I know that rushing into a relationship, it’s a really bad sign.” Live and learn, but it’s taking that on and feeling empowered by it as opposed to being victimized by it. 

When people start thinking about themselves and their lives in this way, there is this huge release of shame and self-blame because it turns into… Okay, let me backup. When people are not in a good place, when they’re feeling disempowered, when they’re feeling bad about themselves, when they’re in the midst of all these terrible feelings and do not know how to use them productively, there’s often a lot of shame and failure messages and feeling badly about why things are the way they are. It’s all your fault and they might happen again because you don’t know how they happened. But when people do the work that I’m describing of moving into a place of empowerment, they really see very clearly, like, “What happened? Why did it happen? Why does it make sense?” 

Instead of perceiving their past life experiences or maybe, things that they did that they would do differently going forward, there’s not a sense of like failure or shame as much as there is a, “Oh, I just learned something really important about me, or about the way relationships work, or about the way the world works that I didn’t know before.” Instead of feeling shame for not knowing everything about everything, people that are really on a growth trajectory, instead will, believe it or not, enter the space of gratitude for vital life lessons that helped shape their understanding of themselves in the world that provided these school-of-life kinds of learning experiences that you can’t get any other way. 

Because of all the work they were able to do, because of, honestly, being thrust into such a not-great place because of their setbacks, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people say to me, “That right there was the worst experience of my life. I’m, in some ways, so glad it happened because otherwise, I would not be the person I am today. I would not be in the place I am today. I would not have grown and evolved so much as a person if I hadn’t been blown out of my little orbit by what happened. I don’t need to go through that one again, but I’m grateful that I did.”

I know that when you are in the grips of a really bad life space that is not easy to connect with because it’s down the road of growth. You have to do a lot of work to get to that place. You have to have the experience of learning and growing and evolving in order for that to be true for you. You can’t leapfrog over that middle part and be like, “I’m so grateful for the terrible thing that happened to me.” But if you do the work, that experience can be yours. The other neat thing that I’ve seen happen when people get there is that by developing a new appreciation for when things don’t go quite the way you want them to, it really supports this growth mindset that is so incredibly helpful just in an ongoing way. 

A growth mindset goes back to the idea that none of us know exactly what to do. When we are confronted with a situation where we weren’t being incredibly effective, or we’re not “good at something yet”, all this is an opportunity to understand, “Oh, I need to work on this.” Then put in time and effort and learn skills and practice strategies. Over time, if practice and skills and strategies are consistently applied, you can work towards mastery. 

A growth mindset is essential. Students in school, a kid might come home and say, “I’m bad at math.” It is all or nothing. Either I know math, or I don’t. People can take that attitude towards relationships. “I’m not good at relationships or this relationship isn’t working.” It turns into an all-or-nothing kind of thing that is incredibly disempowering. Because if you’re not good at math, where do you go? Instead, a growth mindset is, “I don’t know everything about this yet. Let me see what happens if I learn and practice, and try, and apply myself a little bit every day.” 

A growth mindset also doesn’t look towards absolute success or absolute failure. It says, “How am I doing compared to where I was a month ago or a year ago?” You’re not comparing yourself to other people and other people’s definition of success, but you’re saying, “How have I grown and evolved because of my deliberate efforts over time?” That is what I mean when I talk about a growth mindset. That’s really important to cultivate. 

When people have had the experience of taking one in the face and going through the process I’ve described of feeling dreadful, and figuring out why and figuring out what they need to do to help themselves feel better, and feeling like the foundation is back under them again, and then looking at, “Why did that happen? What did I maybe not know that now I know?” And identifying what are the skills and strategies that I now understand, I need to have more of or increase in order to really become truly empowered and in control of my results going forward. It’s a long game. A growth mindset is, “I’m not going to attain perfection and stop. This is something that I’m going to have to be working on and trying and paying attention to pretty much every day from now on.” That is okay. That’s what this looks like. 

When people are in this space where they are empowered and they’re understanding, not just new things about themselves, but that knowledge gap almost or skills gap, and feeling empowered to create changes, then there comes a super exciting time, where people take all of this good stuff and actively begin breaking out of their old patterns, old ways of being that they now understand that were not good for them. People have described to me as having been colorblind their whole lives and now they can see in color. I had the experience of being prescribed glasses when I was probably 10. Prior to that, I didn’t know that a tree didn’t look like a green blob. You put on glasses, and you’re like, “Oh, look, there’s all these separate leaves that you can see.” It’s that clarity that people describe seeing things in their old patterns, or in their relationships that they didn’t see before, or in their self-talk, their ways of relating to others, this absolute clarity about their feelings and their values and their core beliefs, and also a newfound commitment to legitimizing all of these things.

There just comes a point where people are done participating in things that they now know are not good for them. It can be not tolerating people treating you badly that maybe before you achieved all this growth, you might have. Setting boundaries with people, editing some people out of your life maybe. But also, what I see is a lot of newfound commitment to being appropriately assertive, helpfully assertive with other people where they say, “This is how I feel. This is what I need. I have done a lot of reflection around this. I know in my heart of hearts that this is very legitimate. I have the right to expect this and to communicate this need to other people in a way that helps them understand me more deeply so that my relationships feel more satisfying to me.” It’s not reactive, like, “Don’t talk to me that way.” It’s a really heartfelt, productive, authentic assertiveness that all of a sudden feels relatively easy when people have done this level of work. 

But I think, even more excitingly when people have arrived in this space, things that used to feel really hard to do all of a sudden feel easy and particularly when it comes to things like self-care, or healthy habits, or mental hygiene. There’s just this recognition in people like, “Yeah. I am not actually going to beat myself up for this. Or I wouldn’t let other people talk to me that way. I am not going to talk to myself in this way.” There’s just like this, “Yeah, I know. I’m not participating in that crap anymore.” It’s so neat to be a part of. It’s also really interesting to see people being in relationships that have been unsatisfying to them for a long time, all of a sudden, feel really empowered to do something completely different in those relationships that they would not have been able to do before. 

For some people, it is a recognition of, “You know, what? This well is dry and I am not getting my needs met. I am actually not doing this with you for one more day.” That’s fine. It could also be, “You and I need to do better than what we have been doing. Here’s what I am going to be doing to improve my relationship with you and keep my side of the street clean because I know that this is who I need to be. I would love it if you could do this with me. Let’s see what we can do about getting involved in couples counseling. I would like for you to have the same tools and growth experiences that I have benefited from. Let’s get into some growth work together.” That can be another outcome. 

But the big phase here is that people are no longer participating in their old patterns. As a result of this, everything that I’ve described, everything from the beginning stages: making friends with our dark emotions, getting clear about who they are, and how they feel or what they want, and why that is legitimate, and moving into a place of authentic empowerment that is earned by taking responsibility and establishing a sense of control; by learning and applying new skills and strategies so that they start getting some different results, releasing any shame, and instead welcoming with all the learning experiences that life has to offer; breaking out of old patterns where they stop doing the things that perhaps they had once done that were disempowering or contributing to outcomes that made them unhappy or refusal to do that anymore, then people start feeling really good about themselves. 

I would like to stress this last point. People do not feel better about themselves before they start doing all of these things. They have to start doing all these things and working their way piece by piece through these stages in order to eventually feel differently about themselves. When they have done that work and earned this, it is effortless to feel good about themselves because it’s unquestionable. It is not hard to feel good about yourself when you have demonstrated to yourself through experience that your feelings are valid, that you are a powerful person, that you do actually have control over yourself and the things that happen to you, that you do have the ability to learn and grow and do things as well as anybody else could. When you are actively participating in being your own champion and not engaging in things that aren’t good for you anymore, all of those things are really what it takes to feel good about yourself. 

In pop psychology, there are these ideas that you can skip over all the work and just, “I love me,” but that “I love me” doesn’t have its roots attached to a, “Why do I love me?” that is coherent and authentic and makes sense. It feels fragile. It feels superficial that the love that I have for me is based on these superficial qualities and not grounded in “I love me” because I know that I am fundamentally worthwhile as a person, and I am a powerful, competent person, and I am worthy of love and respect. I know this and I am able to shape a world that feels good to me and that honors me and what I need. In that space, self-worth is not just unquestionable, no one can take it away from you. 

I wanted to talk through what I have seen this journey involve for many people. I also want to say very clearly so that everyone who listens to my voice hears this: it takes a long time. Years for some people, for many people, honestly. I have worked for many months, sometimes years, with clients, who have, bit by bit, chapter by chapter, gone through all of these stages. There is no magic pill. There is no online course that you can take, “Use my four magic strategies and have all of this.” All of these stages are challenging. All of these stages require time and energy and commitment and oftentimes, support, and I think courage and faith in understanding that you are on a path. You are on a journey and that working through these pieces is valuable and that over time, you will be able to reap the rewards. You can’t skip any of them. They are all important.

Some people can do these faster than others. I think last time we talked about the reality that if people have underlying mental health stuff or are trauma survivors, this is going to be harder than it is for people who were not dealt that particular hand, biologically or circumstantially. It is attainable for everyone. I hope that hearing this message and just me painting a picture of here’s how to get from where maybe you are currently to where you want to be, has offered some hope and some direction and guidance and illuminated how we make the sausage in therapy or in coaching. Because I think people on the other side make it look easy, but we don’t know that they’ve actually done all of this work. It has been a hard one. They’ve earned it and you can, too. You can too. 

To recap, elements of growth, time, and space to get in touch with you and stop avoiding, or minimizing, or distracting yourself away from yourself in your feelings. Pay attention. Also, using a major loss or disappointment as a vehicle to get into deeper contact with your dark emotions, and shifting into a core belief that your dark emotions are actually incredibly valuable. We do not push them away. We are also not victimized by our dark emotions. We have to use dark emotions productively, but dark emotions are your friends. 

Then, through a process of exploration, understand what your dark emotions are trying to tell you about you and legitimizing those things, learning about yourself, understanding your values, your needs, rights, feelings, and getting clarity about why that’s okay. Then being able to look back at the life experiences that you have had and look for ways of empowering yourself; shifting out of a victim mindset into a, “Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then,” in a very brave and honest way that allows you to then, map out what you need to do and/or the skills that you need to cultivate in order to get different results. 

Then developing a growth mindset where you are practicing things that are a work in progress, and allowing yourself the opportunity to not be perfect, but get better over time. Then feeling that empowerment, feeling that competence, shifting out of a shame-blame-failure mindset into a, “Here are all of my learning opportunities. I’m so grateful for that,” kind of mindset. Then using all of those experiences and learning moments to say, “Now, I know. I know what I want. I know how to get it. I know what is good for me. I know what is not good for me. I feel like this is important for me to create. Therefore, I am not engaging in any of my old patterns anymore. They are no longer attractive to me.” 

Being really clear and appropriately assertive and committed and actively challenging all those old, unhelpful thoughts and ideas and patterns that had contributed to your feeling disempowered and bad about yourself in your life. Through all of that hard work and commitment and dedication, coming to a place where you feel so good about you. You feel proud of yourself. It’s not just, “I deserve good things, but I trust myself to create good things because I love me. I am just as important as anyone else. I’m going to prove it to you.” That’s the destination. 

Alright. Hope this discussion was helpful to you and Godspeed. I will be watching for any other comments that you have, of course, on the blog or through the self-esteem assessment or any others that you’ll find at growingself.com. If again, you’d like to take the self-esteem assessment, you can text the word ‘esteem’ to the number, 55444. Go to growingself.com and take advantage of that or other assessments that we have there for you. I will look forward to addressing any other questions or pain points that you share with me. But again, I hope that our discussion today was helpful to you and I will be back in touch with you next week for another episode of The Love, Happiness, and Success.

[Outro Song]