Your Words Matter

The words that you use to describe yourself carry a lot of weight. And if you allow other people to speak negativity over you and you believe it, that carries a lot of weight in your life, too.

Key topics:

✔️ Other people's opinions and gossip do not matter. That said, if you internalize their negativity, you can poison the well for yourself.
✔️ If you are saying things like, "I'm bad with money. I spend it as soon as I get it. It just never lasts for me," CUT IT OUT NOW!
✔️ Are your beliefs about yourself your own? Or have you internalized things you were told by parents, grandparents, teachers, etc?
✔️ People will often follow your lead. If you command respect and do not accept ill treatment, the people in your life will either show up differently or will make an exit.

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Transcript

Unknown Speaker : 0:15

Hello, hello and welcome to today's episode of the Causey Consulting Podcast. I'm your host, Sara Causey and I'm also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at Causey ConsultingLLC.com. Today I want to talk about the words that we use. Yesterday I listened to a message by Bishop Jakes where he was talking about the words that we speak about ourselves and the words that other people speak over us. We need to be cautious and conscientious about what we take with us. There are times in life when we are our own worst critic, we might lose the big game, or lose a big contract, bring on some client That's unbelievable, and then beat ourselves up about why can't I make this person happy? Why aren't things going according to plan? Why do I keep screwing it all up? In reality, it could be that the client is a complete problem child, you're probably doing the best that you can. With the cards that you've been dealt, you need to give yourself a little bit of a break. I had a client once who was constantly being compared to her older sister. It was as though her parents and grandparents thought that her older sister could do no wrong. She was married to the perfect husband, she had the perfect kids and the most beautiful home in a wonderful neighborhood. And the kids went to the best schools and she made the best meals and she always wore the most elegant clothes and she never had a hair out of place. You couldn't take a bad photo of the woman. And it was like, my client felt as though she was not only being marginalized, but that everything she did paled in comparison to the older sister. Older, ultimately, the responsibility is on us to take back our own power. When we sit and listen to that kind of junk, and then we internalize it. We are turning our own mind into a private hell. in one respect, it's as though we're saying I trust everybody else's judgment about myself more than I trust my own judgment about myself. And one of the things that Bishop Jakes said in that message is what other people say about you does not matter. And he kind of made a joke. It was probably one of those things that like was a joke, but not entirely a joke where he said, You know, there's been people that absolutely hated me, they've wished me ill there's people in my life that would love to have seen me dead or or seriously injured. But what they had to say about me does not matter what you have to say about you. And if you're a spiritual person: what God has to say about you, that's what really matters. But all these naysayers and nitpickers that are trying to put you down what they have to say ultimately does not matter. But you can allow their voices to matter to you. If you internalize what they're saying to you or about you, we'll never amount to anything. You're just like your dad, or you're just like your mom, you're given to hysterics, you can't hold down a job, you can't do this and you can't do that. If you listen to what they're saying. And then you absorb it, and it becomes part of your own internal monologue, then essentially, you are allowing those people to beat you up by proxy, because you have internalized the negative things that they've had to say about you. In my clients case, the more that she accepted, and loved herself, and just drew a firm line in the sand of how she expected to be treated by other people, the better her life became. And so often if we have people that we have allowed to disrespect us to say negative things to push us around or to bully us in some way, when we get a backbone, they might be irritated by it at first or they may clutch my pearls. I just, oh, you've always been so polite. I don't know why you're being rude. Now, it's not necessarily that you're being rude. You just have a backbone now and you're not going to allow them to steamroll you with their negativity. But if someone is accustomed to judging you, or pushing you around or using you as their whipping boy, and you're no longer available to provide that for them, they may freak out at first, but over time, As you command and demand respect, they will show up differently in the space either that or they'll just disappear and you'll have very minimal interactions with them. In my clients case, she embraced her own identity. I remember her telling me you know, I'm an artist and I live a more bohemian type of lifestyle. I'm not going To dress like Jackie Onassis, and I'm not going to drive a big expensive SUV, and I'm not worried about trying to get married, trying to land some guy, who's a member of the country club, and then have all of this like 2.5 yuppie kids, like, that's not for me, that's not the life that I want. And the more that she embraced who she was, and what she actually wanted out of life, the better she felt about herself. And the more self confidence, she had to be able to stand up for herself and say, This is me, this is who I am, I'm living the life that I want. You can either be part of that, or you cannot, but you're not going to shame me and act as though I'm the black sheep of the family. Because I'm not willing to live the type of lifestyle that my sister does. No offense, nothing personal to her. That's just not the lifestyle that I want. So what I'd like to do today, is just simply challenge you. If you're hearing negative voices, if you've internalized criticisms that came from parents, or grandparents, teachers, neighbors, friends, and you have made their opinions and their judgments about you into your own internal monologue, you've taken on their judgments as though their judgments or your judgments, and you're punishing yourself mentally with things they've said to you, or about you set it down. There is something so liberating and so freeing about being able to get away from people's judgments about you, if they're saying things that are negative, if they're gossiping, or maybe you've changed, you know, maybe you were a certain way as a kid, and now you've matured and grown out of it as an adult, but they don't want to give you a second chance, or they don't want to view you in a new light. You have to take care of yourself, that really come back to what Bishop Jakes said, what these other people have to say about you, their judgments over you, that does not matter. And you want to be careful about what you allow these other people to speak over your life. You want to be careful, certainly about what you speak over your own life, because that's what really matters. So if you get into a scarcity mindset, I'm always broke. When I get money, I don't keep it. The money, I go through money like water, the minute I get paid, it's gone the next day, if you continue to reinforce these stereotypes that you have about yourself, they're never going to go away. You You will live that life forever if you keep speaking, all of those negative things over your own life. Likewise, you want to be careful about what you allow other people to speak over your life. Now you can't control what comes out of somebody else's mouth. And it's not your job to police somebody else's free speech. You just want to be mindful of it, so that you don't accept it. There's a Buddhist proverb that if someone tries to hand you a gift, a gift of bitterness of anger, and you refuse to accept it, it stays with that person. You never take it on, and it never becomes part of your life because you have refused to take it from that person. So the same concept applies here. If someone is telling you, you're crazy, like your dad, or you just give give yourself over to hysterics, like your mom, why can't you be more like your sister? She's just always so polished and so poised. Why can't you be more like your brother, he's got a good job and his life is so stable. Why do you want to go off and try to be this or try to be that you don't have to accept it from them. You don't have to get hateful, you don't have to fly off the handle. Remember that when you're very angry and you're screaming and you're shouting and you're stomping, you're not fully in control of your faculties. Nothing looks more immature, and ridiculous than somebody that stomping and shouting and showing out. You can calmly say even if you don't say anything back to the person verbally within your mind and within your spirit. You can say I rebuke this. I do not accept it. I reject what they're saying. And I'm not going to carry this with me. If you can learn to do that, I promise you it will be one of the most valuable gifts that you will ever give to yourself. If you enjoy today's episode, please share it. If you haven't already. Take a quick second to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai