Teach Your Children To Love And Value Themselves | The Wisdom Podcast | Season 1 Episode 9

The Wisdom Podcast is birthed out of the Wisdom Blog,

A digital healing hub of inspired consciousness,

Sacred wisdom,

And the divine teachings of authentic power,

Living one's truth and spiritual,

Or as we call it,

Unconditional love.

Many of the topics that we cover arise out of my work with clients who have chosen to live their life from a place of self-honesty and truth,

And in doing so,

They quite naturally began the journey inward,

Recognizing their authentic self and their capacity for being love and choosing to live as this in all moments.

This is what makes it possible to experience authentic happiness easily.

Each episode offers divinely inspired teachings and insight that will show you how to live consciously aware,

To access your inner wisdom,

And to help you make the best choices towards living a limitless potential.

Join me for consciously inspired truth,

Divine wisdom,

And new thought paradigms for living an infinitely abundant and love-filled life here and now.

Hello and welcome.

This is Dorothy.

Before we begin,

I wanted to remind you of the free downloadable content in this and every episode.

These are specifically designed and curated to support and expand upon the concepts and teachings in each episode,

And they are a way for you to have practical tools,

Guidance,

And the best strategy for implementing more of what wisdom is offered here in each and every episode.

Particularly here,

I encourage you to have a look at the interactive tools that will help you engage your children in positive and encouraging dialogue and confidence building.

These wisdom tools will also be most helpful if you are seeking to reclaim and heal what past hurts and wounds you have suffered.

It's a way for you to offer more goodness,

Support,

And love to yourself and your loved ones and a gift from me to you.

A woman walks up to a mirror,

Her eyes scowling as she looks critically for what is wrong,

For what she doesn't like about herself,

Her thoughts herself effacing and hurtful.

There is no one that can hear what harsh and self-diminishing words she tells herself.

The woman doesn't see all of her natural beauty,

All of what makes her uniquely perfect.

She no longer remembers a time when she didn't question her appearance or anything that allowed her to feel good about herself.

This woman is many women,

And any person who has grown up with the constant messaging that they are not okay,

That there is something wrong with who they innately are.

This is how we come to learn that we are not enough,

Even though this could not be further from the truth.

On a pre-release of this episode,

I received many comments from listeners who observed how the story of my client Janet resonated with them and their life experiences.

I've included in the transcripts some of their feedback and comments because I believe it's important to share the messaging that so many of us suffer disparaging feedback and critical words,

Even if our caregivers did not intend to negatively affect our self-esteem and worth.

In this episode,

My hope is twofold.

First,

That if you can relate to the story of Janet,

That it helps you break what patterns of critical and hurtful self-talk that has caused you to diminish your abilities and inherent potential so that you can change what you say and believe.

And second,

That as a parent,

You are now even more aware of what messages you are sending to your child and what you are teaching by what your child or children witness of you.

As you listen to this episode,

I hope that you will be helped by the practical teachings,

Strategies and guidance for how you can reclaim what has always been yours.

That is,

Your personal sense of pride in who you are,

Your invincibility,

And that you are uniquely perfect as you are.

Even as you may be working on an aspect of yourself to improve and become more.

Our caregivers have but one sacred opportunity to help us nurture and develop healthy self-esteem as we are learning and taking in so much information,

Including what teachings are fostered and in our efforts to navigate successfully within the social mores and customs of our culture and the world at large.

We need unconditional love and nurturing to develop trust in our self and our abilities and to thrive in the world.

Feeling secure and safe helps build our confidence to be self-reliant and successful and to know that we are lovable and good enough.

It's never okay to accept hurtful comments and words from our loved ones.

For all of Janet's life,

She could remember how her sisters were ungrateful,

Uncaring and selfish.

They could also be at times aggressively mean and vengeful.

Janet did her best to stay out of the conflict and pettiness that her siblings engaged in,

But the truth was she had also received unkind and hurtful words from both parents throughout most of her childhood.

Janet's father would often tease her about her weight,

Saying,

You could be pretty except you are so big.

When Janet would ask to wear clothes similar to her older sister,

Her mother would say,

You can't possibly wear the same pretty clothes.

Your body is too big and you won't look good.

It may not surprise you to learn that Janet struggled with her weight all of her adult life.

As a child,

She weighed a normal and healthy weight for her height,

Although she never thought of her weight as normal since she was constantly teased about being big.

In reality,

My client Janet happens to be of model height.

She stands over six feet and her height naturally dictates the density and structure of her bones.

This was often overlooked and unexplained in the numbers that were so harshly judged by the scale.

We can cultivate an eating disorder and body image issues in most anyone if we begin at an early age to tease and mock them about how unappealing or unattractive they look.

The truth is that Janet could easily have been a model,

For her height and features are stunning.

Unfortunately,

Years of self-loathing and ridicule were among the learned habits that Janet adopted,

Rather than a confidence and love of herself and of her unique physical attributes.

As such,

The negative and critical self-talk permeated into other areas of her life and Janet often felt tormented rather than loved and appreciated.

Her self-esteem and worth were repeatedly diminished based on being judged on her appearance.

We need to remind ourselves and teach our children that beauty is far beyond what we see at the surface.

Janet is incredibly intelligent and may have chosen any career path.

For the past three decades,

She worked in financial securities where she headed a team that liked and respected her.

Before Janet and I began working together,

It would be unheard of for her to speak her mind to her boss or her siblings,

Especially when unrealistic demands were made of her.

Part of the journey of reclaiming herself,

Of learning to like and also love who she was,

Included Janet becoming more comfortable with asserting boundaries,

Saying no to unreasonable or demanding requests,

Both at work,

But also to the loved ones who still tormented her with their critical comments and teasing.

If you teach your children that it is acceptable to expect much of them,

If you are overly critical rather than approving and accepting with unconditional love,

Then you will raise children who seek love and approval of others rather than from within.

If you demand of your children that they model behaviors,

Life choices,

And beliefs based on what you approve of,

You give them an impossible task that they can never be wholly successful at.

If you mistreat or diminish your child's sense of worth,

If you place pressure on your children for having certain standards of intelligence,

Beauty,

Or competency in a specific skill or talent,

And if you judge them as somehow different or less than what you would deem as good enough,

You can create much damage.

Even with the many successes of her life,

Janet still had a difficult time validating her worth and feeling self-adequate and competent.

She still continues to overachieve at work,

Doing far more than is expected of her,

Although she now appreciates that this is by choice because she enjoys her career,

Has an impeccable work ethic that she is proud of,

And her high achieving contributes to her self-confidence.

As an adult,

Janet's sisters continued to make demands on her using guilt tactics and hurtful words,

And were never satisfied with what she did for them.

This was a cycle of emotional and verbal abuse that continued until Janet and I began to deconstruct how these constant and unreasonable demands of her reinforced her core belief that she was not good enough.

This early and well-engrained core belief began a pattern in which Janet sought approval,

Acceptance,

And love from her family by going above and beyond in acts of kindness and generosity.

If you are in a position of power and authority,

And if you abuse this power when others look to you for love and validation,

You may create a codependency whereby others base some or much of their esteem and worth on your approval.

You would never want your children to grow up looking to others in order to feel worthy and good enough.

You can encourage achievement,

But then allow your child to decide what their achievements will be.

If you judge your children as somehow less than or not good enough based on unreasonable standards,

You can create much damage.

I also work with adult clients who have experienced the heartache of being criticized and ridiculed by those who ought to have loved and protected them.

From their stories,

I can reinforce how important it is to teach your children how to see and know their value and worth,

Their beauty,

Their intelligence,

And their ability to be successful as a monumental aspect of helping them to develop their self-esteem and for having belief in their abilities.

Teach your children how to value themselves highly by being demonstrative and encouraging of your child's greatness.

Then you will see that your child is motivated to succeed in large part because they believe in their abilities and their potential.

For parents who themselves struggle with the outward and often performance-based societal standard of success,

And if they allow external influences to supersede the innate beauty and worth of their child,

Please let me help.

Please consider the standards that you are choosing to set for your child because of what you believe in.

And yes,

It is true.

You likely adopt your beliefs from what you heard,

Read,

Saw,

And were taught by your caregivers.

Let what you believe in be what is most important to you based on knowing yourself best.

Your desire for happiness can only be achieved as you are free to pursue your greatness.

You encourage authentic happiness and self-love in your children by encouraging them to appreciate their unique talents,

Abilities,

And interests,

And by reinforcing your child's value and self-worth.

Janet learned through our work together to enforce healthy boundaries for herself,

To be strong-willed,

And to say no when she experienced an unreasonable demand or the suggestion of guilt for not doing something for her sisters.

She began to focus on her health,

Working with a personal trainer and nutritionist so that she could take control of her previous self-sabotaging behaviors.

To no longer eat junk food and be unhealthy because she began to see her worth and her ability to make good choices for herself as valuable and important for growing her self-esteem and for self-care and self-love.

You can always teach others how to treat you by first deciding that you are worthy and deserving of kindness and respect,

And to surround yourself with those who easily support and uplift you through their own positivism.

You can stand your ground to others politely,

Firmly,

And perhaps with an injection of humor as you speak your truth.

You can also begin to see your worth as something that is not based on whether you are skinny,

Smart enough,

Or beautiful by societal standards,

But rather to witness and appreciate yourself first as you are,

With acceptance,

Self-approval,

And loving kindness.

You can honor a path that you determine is right and best for you based on liking and loving yourself wholly and completely,

Because ultimately you are more than enough.

You may just need to keep reminding yourself of this first and always.

And if you would like to dive deeper into how you can change your core beliefs so that you can begin to love and respect yourself more,

Please let me help.

In the description you'll find a link to work with me one-on-one.

I will help you to rewrite what negative and problematic beliefs you were once taught which have never been true.

And you can begin right now by reminding yourself of what is true,

And to use these new thought paradigms as your healthy self-talk,

And to formulate new and truthful beliefs about yourself.

Thank you so much for joining me in this episode of the Wisdom Podcast.

To hear more,

Please check out the other episodes here.

And then join me at DorothyRetusne.

Com where you can share your questions and feedback from this or any episode with me.

And where you'll also find the Wisdom Blog,

The inspiration for this podcast,

The latest online courses that I teach,

My YouTube videos,

An extensive library of free guided meditations for you to experience and enjoy,

Plus other special offerings of love.

Please also visit me on social media and say hello.

Allow yourself to go within,

To access your inner wisdom and to live this.

Awaken your authentic power,

Live your truth,

And be loved.

This is Dorothy.

Namaste.