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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.
Some health coaches love focusing on nutrition. Some health coaches love focusing on movement and fitness. And others really love focusing on mindfulness. While my work addresses all of those things in depth, the thing that I am really the most passionate about teaching is self leadership. Because without it, nothing else will stick for very long. So what the heck is self-leadership There was a book written a few years back called self-leadership by a gentleman named Andrew Bryant and Ana Lucia Quezon. And in the book, they use this definition, which I think is really good. self-leadership is having a developed sense of who you are, what you can do, where you are going, coupled with the ability to influence your communication, emotions, and behavior on the way to getting there. self-leadership is in my humble opinion, an exercise of self introspection, radical self honesty, and a whole lot of curiosity about why you do what you do.
On that last point why you do what you do. I just like to say here that I think one of the biggest challenges people have with making sustainable improvements to their health is that we seem to have become a culture that doesn’t really promote people thinking for themselves in the arena of health, or it doesn’t promote people being self directed when it comes to health. We are sold meal plans and exercise programs in droves. And the crazy thing is we are more unhealthy than ever. It is obviously not working for us to follow someone else’s list of rules and regulations. When trying to improve our own lives. To improve your health, you need to get to know yourself better So you can lead yourself better. And that my friends requires going in, which is definitely not as sexy as getting shredded abs in 30 days. I know.
After a 14 year career in coaching, and working with many, many women over the years, I’ve come to believe that self-leadership really requires proficiency in the following areas. First, and I do believe these are an order, by the way, so there is a very specific order here. First is self respect, which I’ll go into great depth in today’s episode, but self respect, which I also think is synonymous with this element of grace.
The second thing I think that we need to develop, to become self LED is self awareness, which requires that radical honesty, we need self development, which to me is practicing the skills or developing skills where we lack proficiency, self management, which would be organizing and planning our days and our lives in order to practice those skills that are going to move our lives to higher a higher level, self discipline, which is showing up for yourself consistently, following through with the plans that you make for yourself. And then finally, self compassion, which really, in my opinion, is very closely tied to allowing yourself to stack failures.
There’s a quote, I don’t know who said it, but there’s a great quote that says success is built by stacking failures. And so many women that I work with, when they screw up when they take a sidestep, when they trip over their own feet. They look at it is like an endpoint. Like it’s it’s such a catastrophic thing they can’t possibly continue. But really, if you look at any successful person, anyone who has acquired any level of success in any arena of life, they got there by screwing up a lot. And so I love this idea of building success by stacking failures. And in order to stack failures, you need to be very compassionate with yourself. Otherwise, you’ll have no motivation to continue.
So over the course of the next month, it is my intention to do a deep dive into each of the components that I just mentioned, that make up self-leadership. And to provide you with some tools that will help you to start improving your skill in each one of these areas. I feel like in my entire three years of producing this Podcast, has really been in dedication to self-leadership. But I’m really inspired this month to help make it crystal clear what self-leadership can look like in the health arena, and also really helped to give you a better understanding of how my work is so very different from a lot of other health coaches out there, especially in regards to this topic of self-leadership.
So today, let’s start with the very first element necessary for self-leadership, which in my opinion, is self respect. Now we hear a lot about self love in the wellness industry, the need for self love, and I agree that self love is a beautiful thing. But self love, as you’ve probably heard me say many times on this Podcast is also a really big ask of someone who has been in a state of self loathing for a really long time. You can’t just jump from self loathing to self love. At least not most people can’t. That’s a really big jump. But I believe that self respect is really kind of an easier ask. It’s a gateway to self love. And you know, if you think about relationships, I don’t love people when I meet them right away.
And honestly, when many women I work with are starting to improve their health story. It’s almost as if they’re just getting to know themselves for the first time or for the first time in a really long time. And so it’s a big ask to tell people to love someone when they’re just meeting them for the first time. Right? I didn’t love my husband the day I met him. I thought he was really cute. I thought he was really funny. I You know, I definitely thought he was worthy of respect. And there were things about him that made me want to get to know him better. But I did not love him, the day I met him. So because I respected him because I was curious about him, I started spending more time with him. And eventually, I fell in love with him.
And I really think that that is such a more graceful way to allow yourself to fall in love with yourself, is to stop telling yourself just to love yourself. But maybe give yourself permission to start respecting yourself. Because in my book, every human being deserves respect. self respect, forms the foundation of every decision you will ever make. self respect forms the foundation of how you treat yourself. It also forms the foundation of how you will treat others and allow others to treat you. If you don’t respect yourself, you will have absolutely zero motivation to take care of yourself, or develop yourself or even if you get a little bit of motivation once in a while, it’ll be fleeting. self respect means trusting yourself and having confidence that the decisions you make for yourself are the right decisions for you. If you lack self respect, you will easily be swayed by the influence of others. And completely disregard your own knowing your own desires, your own needs, which will lead you ultimately further and further away from yourself. self respect allows you to more easily set boundaries, and say no to things that deplete you. self respect also allows you to more easily ask for what you need from other people. In other words, it allows you to advocate for yourself.
When you develop a healthy dose of self respect, you will be far less likely to compare yourself to others, you’ll be far less likely to spend time doing things that don’t serve you. And you will spend far less time seeking the approval of other people. And I’m not saying that you’ll never do these things. But the more self respect you have, the less time you will spend on these things because quite frankly, you will have less tolerance for them. In my opinion, self respect is the ability to extend grace to yourself. You know, things like compassion, and forgiveness. And yeah, ultimately, love. self respect prevents you from being a jerk to yourself. So what happens when you don’t respect yourself? Well, a lot of you are probably very familiar. I know I am I have gone through many phases of life, where I had very little self respect. And I had to practice kind of strengthening my respect muscle for myself over the years. When you don’t respect yourself, it’s likely that other people won’t respect you either.
In other words, you kind of become a doormat when you’re unable to set boundaries, or ask for what you need. And that sucks. When you don’t respect yourself, you seek the approval and the attention of others above your own. I see this all the time in the wellness industry, women aspiring to be a certain weight or clothing size or look a certain way purely for the approval of others. The diet industry literally feeds off of the lack of self respect that women have for themselves. When you don’t respect yourself, you engage with behaviors that do not honor your mind, body and soul. We over consume, we over indulge. We don’t set limits or parameters with ourselves. When you don’t have self respect. You tolerate a tremendous amount of verbal physical and mental abuse, sometimes from others, but most oftentimes from yourself.
Some of you listening to this right now, I know are finding it literally impossible to love yourself in this moment. Because the way that you’re thinking about yourself because of the way that you have set up the relationship that you have with yourself. So I would suggest first and foremost, let’s drop the notion of self love and just start working on self respect. So how the heck do you do that? How do you start developing respect for yourself? Well, I have a few ideas, a few things that should kind of scratch the surface. First and foremost is gratitude. When we have when we are grateful for things in our lives, we tend to want to take better care of them.
So a few questions that I would encourage you to ask yourself, and you can write these down, or maybe replay this episode later, so you can jot them down. If you’re if you’re driving right now, obviously, do it later. But a few things that I would encourage you to think about to help sort of extend gratitude for the things that are going well. Are these questions, I want you to ask, what is going well in your life right now? Some people might hear that question and say nothing, nothing is going well in my life right now. Now, there’s something and there’s probably some things plural. For starters, you woke up breathing today, that’s something to be grateful for a lot of people didn’t. Another thing that I would encourage you to think about is what are your superpowers? What are your strengths? What are the things that allow you to contribute to the people and the world around you? And again, don’t say nothing. That’s not true. There are things that you are uniquely good at. There are things that you are able to do a little bit easier than other people, what are they? What makes you uniquely you? Ask your friends and family what they love about you. Maybe that seems weird, but honestly, it’s a really powerful exercise.
I once had a business coach asked me to write, you know, colleagues and people that I was that kind of knew of my work, and ask them, what were the three words that came to mind when they thought of me? And I gotta tell you, it was really awkward to kind of ask that question. But the feedback was really amazing. And very consistent. It made me kind of take more pride in my work, it made me kind of see myself through the eyes of others, which was at the time, a hell of a lot better than I was seeing myself. So don’t be afraid to ask people. What do they love about you? Why do they spend time with you? Why do they hang out with you? This is probably one of my favorite questions. What is your body doing awesomely? Well, right now? And I know, this is a hard question for a lot of women to answer because we spend so much time hating on our bodies, right? Focusing on all the things that are wrong with it. But good Lord, your physiology and your psychology is doing a whole lot right in this moment, right now, the fact that you’re listening to this Podcast, pretty awesome. Your ears must be working really well.
The fact that you might be listening to this Podcast and doing something else simultaneously, like driving car washing dishes, going for a walk, that’s pretty incredible, that the human body has the ability to coordinate all of that material, right? I mean, it’s a lot of stuff to coordinate, you’re walking, you’re listening, you’re, you know, avoiding obstacles at the same time. Pretty incredible. I’m guessing most of you, maybe not all of you, but most of you are probably standing on two legs, you’re able to pick up your kids, you’re able to go to work, and use your brain and make money and support your family. That’s amazing. So we tend to feel good about our lives or not so good about our lives based on what we’re thinking about, right? And what you’re thinking about as a choice. And many of you are just stuck on the same tape. It’s like you’re playing that song from the 80s over and over and over again. Right when you don’t even like it anymore. And really, you have the choice to change that tape that’s playing in your head. And asking yourself pointed questions like these can give you some really good material to start pivoting your psychology more quickly.
I’m a big believer that your thoughts drive your emotions. And if you are focusing every day on what’s wrong with your life, what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with your body? Why someone else has it better than you have this I am certain you will feel like crap. And when you feel like crap, you make crappy decisions. And yes, that should be a bumper sticker. I haven’t made it yet. But when I do, I’ll let you know. When you feel like crap. You make crappy decisions. and really think about it for a minute. Think about the things in your life that you are so grateful for your kids, your house, your job, I’m willing to bet, you take pretty good care of those things. You probably clean your house, once in a while, you probably feed your kids and take him to school, make sure they have clothes to wear, right?
You probably show up with the intention of doing a good job. at your job, you take good care of things that you have gratitude for. And the same is true of you. If you start focusing on what you are grateful for about yourself, what you appreciate about yourself, what is going well, with your psychology and your physiology, you will have a heck of a lot more motivation to do the things that keep your head and your body in working order. And ultimately, it’s because you respect them. When we are grateful for things, we respect them, and we treat them better. So the I’m gonna end the Podcast here today.
On that note, I still have I mean, this is again, just one of the areas of self-leadership that I wanted to talk about today with self respect. But in the coming weeks, I’m going to move on to self awareness, self management, self development, self discipline, self compassion. We’re going to cover all of these topics this month. But let’s just start there today, I really hope you’ll come back and join me for the rest of the month because it’s going to be good. I love this stuff. And I specifically it is no coincidence, by the way that I chose this theme in the month, where we are also launching a signature program, we’re opening the doors for registration for the signature program. The reason I am talking about self-leadership on the Podcast this month, is because self-leadership is what I teach in the coaching work that I do. Yes, it’s in the arena of health. It’s teaching women how to be self directed along their health journey.
So once again, like I said, at the beginning of the Podcast, if you are somebody who is really ready to to make a difference in your health story in 2019. And you’ve been around the Grace & Grit community for a while, and you resonate with the message. And you really are kind of understanding this concept of self-leadership and how important it is. Get on over to Grace & grit.com, forward slash kickstart and book a free coaching call with me. And let’s together figure out if the Grace & Grit program, the signature program would be a good fit for you. Maybe it will be maybe it won’t. But there’s no loss if you book a call. And we decide that ultimately it’s not for you. That’s okay.
But I also want you to hear that I’m not just in the business of offering free coaching calls. I mean, I really am doing these calls for people who are genuinely interested and curious about the program. So I promise not to waste your time, I promise you will walk away from that call with value with action steps. And with a much better understanding of whether or not that program is a good fit for you. I hope this was valuable. I hope it gets you thinking a little bit differently this week about whether or not you are moving from a place of self respect in your own life, especially when it comes to your health. I would argue that most women are not. And how might you be able to start changing that? Right? Because self loathing beating yourself up being a jerk to yourself. Not having self respect is not working, it will never work for long term sustainability. Plus is just a really unhealthy place to live. Right?
If we were in any other relationship in our life where there was no respect, I’m sure we would all be having a conversation about what a horrible thing that is. So why are we willing to accept a relationship with ourselves that lacks respect, we should not be willing to accept that. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of the Grace and Grit Podcast. I hope there was something in here that allows you to travel forward with a little bit more ease and grace. And again, if you’re looking for a higher level of support, I would really encourage you to check out our Rumble & Rise membership community once again, you can check out that community and all that it entails by heading on over to graceandgrit.com/readytorumble Have a wonderful week and I hope I’ll see you again next time take care.
Thank you for listening to the Grace & Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible.
