How to Stop Giving Up on Yourself So Easily

Welcome back to another episode of the Self Work podcast this is season two episode 20 and in today's episode as you can see from the title I really want to discuss this with you guys how to stop giving up on yourself so easily because we live in a doom a generation right now and I think it's pretty obvious even a while back someone who listens to this podcast pretty often actually message me that you know they've given up and over the last few years just things haven't been going their way and now they quite literally do not want to do anything new because they think the cycle is going to repeat itself and this is something I've noticed a lot of people go through so today I want to talk about why you keep giving up on yourself and why it happens a lot faster and a lot easier than it actually should and the thing that I believe before we even get into this is if you're anything like most people you need to accept that the worst abuser yes the worst abuser you will ever come across in your life lives inside your own head nothing to do with your ex partner nothing to do with your dad if you create content nothing to even do with your comment section and I know that's not something like groundbreaking but you are your worst enemy and the moment you accept that you end up realizing until I solve what's within me I shouldn't be concerned about what's external to me because even in my position just to sidetrack a bit a lot of people always ask me hey bro how do you do with hate online how do you do with negative people how do you deal with people that are constantly trying to disrespect you how do you deal how do you deal how do you deal yes there's a right way to deal with these people but the reality is the first thing I always think to myself is do I know myself am I my own biggest enemy am I my own biggest abuser if not and I'm friends with myself it's very easy to deal with the negativity in life so the first thing I want to talk about is the thing that most people skip and this is something that I've been wanting to make an episode on for quite some time so when somebody is cruel to you if you really think about it logically for a second and I want you guys to slow down there's a theoretical way out of it you can block them you can distance yourself you can go quiet you can move city like I did you know move out of the country move out of London go to UAE change your number you don't have to see them every day if you don't want to there is no version or there is no alternative for that with yourself there's nowhere to hide from if you are the one voice that constantly well shut up and it's worse than that because that voice also knows everything about you strangers and this is why I always tell people a stranger cannot hurt you because they only use what you hand to them you know you literally tell them what you want to tell them so if they use that against you if you're okay with that cool if you're not okay with it then shut up next time and the thing is your brain knows every secret every failure every ugly thought you've ever had and never even acted on sometimes and it can use every single piece of it against you every single time and this is what makes it really difficult and when a person can't escape and they can't escape that pain or that rumination that they're constantly having of those negative experiences they just give up they just give up on themselves and giving up on yourself does not always look dramatic this is what people need to acknowledge it's called the quiet quitting epidemic I read a sub stack on this a while back right where they were talking about how this generation they were primarily talking about men but also women are quietly just giving up after years of disappointment most importantly disappointing themselves you know they don't really want to get jobs no really wants to find a relationship because no one wants to be vulnerable and you notice this in your own life even take a second to pause how many of you guys have pulled away from your own goals you've lost interest in things that you once cared about sometimes you even pick up addictions you know you have these weird coping mechanisms the drinking maybe you're just scrolling all the time maybe you're eating when you're not even hungry you know emotional eaters how many of you guys can relate to this I was going to say big backs but some people eat not because they are hungry not because they're craving food but because it brings them comfort and in some extreme cases it is self-harm and for some of you listening it's false about not wanting to be here anymore so it kind of becomes a lot of things that unfortunately always stem from giving up on yourself and I want to be direct with you guys for a second before I move on if the last thing I mentioned is where you are at this episode isn't going to fix down its own and I want you to really acknowledge this if you want to send me a message feel free and I'm talking about specifically not wanting to belong anymore tell someone you care about in what honesty I feel like this could have a whole completely separate podcast episode because I did have a friend you know may god rest his soul who committed this was about a year and a bit ago and as I said sometimes just catches you out of the blue even to sidetrack a bit I'm using this podcast as a self reflection myself but one thing I've always advised people is just because someone looks okay doesn't mean they are okay like physical pain is always localized like if my friend breaks his arm or if my partner has a really bad back you can see it's a localized location you can look at the pain you say oh how's your arm how's your back but the thing about mental health is very difficult to gauge which is why sometimes unfortunately in the crazy world that we live in some people catch you out and sometimes you're wondering could I have done things better could I have been a better friend but that's besides the point but moving on the thing that most people never get told when it comes to giving up on yourself is you have to be able to acknowledge that you have a relationship with yourself and I know that sounds strange because you're technically one person but you talked to yourself constantly you think about yourself constantly you spend hours with yourself more than anyone else in this world that's a relationship whether you've called it one or not and the second thing is which I think matters even more is that your relationship with yourself runs on the exact same rules as the relationships you have with other people and this is what people don't acknowledge some people say you know that the relationship you have with yourself determines the quality of partner you pick which I absolutely believe you know there's a mountain of content out there if you look on the internet teaching you how to fix things with a partner a friend a parent there's almost nothing that teaches you about how to fix things with yourself so we're going to borrow I guess I'm going to kind of introduce some pieces of advice that I want to kind of push forward to you guys when it comes to building a relationship with yourself and before I even get into it I want to answer a question I think a lot of people ask and this is what the DM that I was sent even had which is why does this voice in my head even exist you know why do I have a built in Simon Cowell in my head a critic all the time that is capable of destroying me and if you go back far enough and think about it being cast out of the group when you look at the primal age or you know when people weren't necessarily living in technologically advanced places or errors if you got outcasted from your group that was quite literally a death sentence there's no protection there's no food there's no survival and somewhere within us and this is why I always say a lot of people operate in a very primal way somewhere you've basically built a system whose entire job now is to scan for anything about you that may get you rejected and maybe flag it up before anyone else can see it that's why a lot of people self-reject I don't know if you guys watch some of these dating shows it comes across my feed sometimes and have you ever seen a man or a woman seeing someone that's really attractive and then they pop and then the person asks them oh why did he pop yeah because I just feel like I wouldn't be good enough for them or I just feel like they would judge me or whatever maybe this is what people don't realize that you are the biggest saboteur in your life you are the thing that blocks your own blessings and that's not a personality flaw I don't want you guys to think there's something wrong with you it's just a old defense mechanism same as the one that I've talked about before the one that turns into what people call a personality in the previous podcast episode the problem is that it just never got an update and it constantly runs and this is what the problem is it's just decades centuries even family history of just constantly critiquing and being your worst enemy and there's a psychologist to even add to this that I was reading up about recently actually his name is John Gottman right and he basically built this model that I find extremely interesting called the four horsemen that predicts divorce with something like it's something crazy I don't know about the validity of this statistic or this number but he predicts divorce with like 93% accuracy purely by watching how two people argue and it's not necessarily a hunch because his formula is really well thought out and when I read into this what stood out to me wasn't the marriage research it was realizing the exact same model that he portrayed John actually plays out inside every single one of our heads and the fix for this is the same fix either way the four horsemen in case you're wondering in order are criticism defensiveness contempt and stone warning so let's kind of break down each one criticism is when something happens that upsets you and instead of talking about the actual thing that happened you go after the person's character someone takes a while to text you instead of saying hey I got a bit worried that that's not really like you it then becomes you never think about anyone but yourself you always do this How many of you guys do this by the way? Men and women, boys and girls. You start just throwing shots at the person, you always do this. So what you did there was you stopped naming a behavior and you started naming someone as the problem and that kind of attack makes the person defensive because now they're not defending one decision. They're defending their entire character. So they deflect, they make excuses. Sometimes they flip it right back at you and they're like, well, maybe I would have replied faster if you didn't text me 80 times a day, defensiveness as a whole that never gets resolved. Then gets turned into contempt. And I'm assuming most of you guys are aware of this, right? This is the single strongest predictor of divorce on its own. Stronger than any of the other three, by the way, contentment is when you stop, listen, by the way, guys, contentment is when you stop being annoyed and start actually losing respect for someone. Someone says something to you. You don't even react the way you did before. You just roll your eyes, you mock them somewhere underneath. You've basically decided that this person's beneath you. I don't want to deal with this person anymore. This person is absolutely below me. And the thing that contempt now produces and I hope you guys are connecting all of the dots is what's called stonewalling, which is the final stage. One person just shuts down. They shut the door. They go quiet. They stop responding. They give you one worded answers, you know, they have a flat voice. They have this checked out look on their face. If any of you guys have ever been in a relationship that has had this, you would know that stonewalling is a classic thing that people use when they've mentally checked out, which is they don't really react the way they did. They'll just give you one worded answers, very moody. And I don't believe it's because they stopped caring. Because I feel like deep down people still care. But the way I kind of see it is they just decided somewhere down the line. There's no point trying to fix this anymore because there's no point. And in a nutshell, if you now look at this is criticism, defensiveness, which then leads to contempt, contempt leads to stonewalling. And that's the whole sequence. And that's how two people who used to love each other now end up strangers. Now let's actually point this to you. And I want you guys to think about this now. Let's say something didn't go your way. A relationship ended. You didn't get the opportunity. You said the wrong things in, I don't know, in a room that you thought was really important and you made a mess out of yourself. And it's okay to feel hurt, by the way, it's okay to feel annoyed that you didn't perform well. That's not the issue. The issue is what your own voice does with it next. Criticism sounds like you always do this. You're doing too much dino. You ruin this because of who you are, not because of what happened. You know, notice the shift, pay attention to this. It's not that it didn't go well. It's that I am the thing that is wrong. And the criticism now makes you defensive about yourself because part of you knows it's unfair. So now you argue back. I didn't choose to feel this deeply. You know, I didn't pick this nervous system. I don't know. I don't know why I feel like this probably my parents fault. If anything, again, you need to acknowledge that you're not wrong to defend yourself, but notice what's happening. You're now arguing with yourself instead of actually looking at what happened. You're in a critic. Now here's that defensiveness and reads into it more as proof. Now this is where it gets really bad. It then escalates into contempt. Yeah. And you know, the attitude that I have just doesn't get me anywhere. Ma's will stop trying. Yeah, I'm really awkward, man. There's no point doing this stuff anymore. You've now lost respect for yourself. You've lost the goodwill you'd extend to a stranger. You don't really extend this to yourself anymore. And now finally, contempt then produces stonewalling. You just tell yourself, you know, fine, I'll just stop. Yeah, I'm just going to not bother anymore. I can't be bothered. How many of you guys can relate to this? Most of you guys have given up on yourself because you're at a point of contempt to stonewalling. You know, you just tell yourself there's no point doing this, bro. Leave it. How many people have I spoke to people who cause with me, I have coaching programs. I do real person events. The amount of people that come up to me, men and women and they quite literally say, Hey, man, I'm just at the point. You know, honestly, like, yeah, this is just not for me. I don't know what it is, bro. And when they explain their situation to me, it goes through the exact same process. Every single time and I want you guys to notice something in that spiral, because it matters more than it sounds like it does, right? That didn't go well is guilt. I am the thing that is wrong is shame. And I've made a podcast episode about shame before guilt tells you I did something wrong. Shame tells you I am something wrong criticism, which is the very first horseman that I discussed with you guys. It's just shame, but it pretends to be guilt. You know, it actually disguises itself as you being very accountable. You know, I'm holding myself accountable when really you've swapped the behavior, which is how you performed what you did for yourself. And now once you bring yourself into the lens and you bring yourself into the picture, now the thing is there's no conversation I can get you out of that because you're always going to harshly criticize yourself. And this doesn't only activate when you've been heartbroken by a woman or by a man, if you're a woman, right? The same thing plays over and over again, even over small things. Listen to this. You miss a gym session or you say something wrong in the meeting or you say something awkward at dinner and you can't stop replaying it. I always do this. You know, I'm just like this. I can't help it. Honestly, what's even the point in trying anymore? This is contempt. And then you quietly stop showing up to the thing that you wanted to do. Whatever it was because you've officially decided to quit. And that is stonewalling, most people never even pick up on these small things. And I've seen this so many times, people say certain things. And I can quite literally tell that they've given up on themselves. At least in marriage, it ends up in divorce. And you can leave the person and move on, but you can't divorce yourself. So instead of what it becomes is in reality. If you think about it logically is, it then becomes withdrawal. You then start having addictions and you may start self harming or even giving up. The same four steps that have very different endings. And I want you guys to really ponder on this because this is something that really helped me in my life, which is just acknowledging how something tiny that can then go through those four horsemen that I've discussed with you guys. And then leave you to a point where you just fully give up on yourself. I don't think people understand that giving up on yourself is not a nice feeling because you feel like there's this gray cloud over your head every single day where you're like, I wish I could do that. You watch someone's video, you're like, I wish I could do that. Who says you can't, right? And let me even be transparent about myself for a second. I've always been a high energy guy most of my life. You know, always trying to do something, always moving. You know, whatever I found, I've always wanted to try it. What I never realized at the time was the second somebody got to see the real version of me, right? The one that wants to talk about deep things in life. The one that maybe wants to share some vulnerabilities. I'd start to feel very weird. I'd start overthinking and maybe I'll start distancing myself from the person and sometimes even myself. And that is what I realized was stonewalling, right? I was running from myself and I built up some quiet content where I'm like, the moment I do something that makes me perceive, like, let's say, for example, I used to attract shoes and I used to be this nonchalant guy when I was younger. So I knew if I ended up in a space where I was hanging around with different types of people that I wasn't really comfortable with, I used to think in my head, if I act a different type of way, and let's say I did, maybe I said a random joke that I don't usually make. Well, let's say I started talking about something serious in life and people kind of look at me, I would play that in my head constantly. I'll say, oh, like maybe they thought I was weird. And then I'll feel insecure and then I won't even meet up with these people. And as I said, it's just very important to keep these things in mind. And the thing about the study that I just shared, right? Or the concept by that guy called Godman is he also said a very interesting thing that I wrote down because I knew I was going to forget this part, which is if you want to be able to overcome this problem of contempt and also stonewalling, it boils down to two things, which is high commitment and realistic standards. High commitment basically means giving up stops being an option for you. You don't keep it on the table, at least for the time being, right? Maybe long term, you can revise things, but giving up should not be on your cards, same as committing to your partner, you know, in sickness and in health. Not because everything's going to feel good. You know it won't. Sometimes you guys are going to argue, sometimes things are going to be problematic, but you decide in advance that a hard season doesn't make you bail out. So that's one promise you have to make to yourself, I won't give up irrespective. Second thing, which is probably more important is realistic standards. And this is the part where most people fail because you're running a scoreboard against yourself that isn't necessarily real. I call it a fake timeline. You know, I need to have X amount of money by 25. I need to be married by 23. You know, if I don't have my life in check by 26, I'm basically finished. This is the problem. You're comparing yourself to some imaginary thing that never existed. You're comparing yourself to someone that never misses a workout. Someone that maybe says and I've never cried in my life. Someone that never says anything wrong. That person doesn't exist. Remember, everyone on the internet is performing. Everyone on the internet wants to look cool. Everyone on the internet wants to look likeable. So holding yourself against these people is just cool to you're actually doing yourself a disservice. And on top of that, most of what you are expecting progress to look like isn't really reality because progress isn't a straight line. Isn't linear, right? Growth is my definition. definition actually is a long stretch where nothing happens, followed by a jump, followed by another long stretch, followed by a jump. And I think this is what people need to acknowledge that even right now in my life, some days I wake up and every day feels the same to me. But I know from experience, if I just keep planting those seeds, keep watering every single day, maybe at day 300, I'm going to see the plant, maybe at day 600, I'm going to pick the fruit or the vegetable out of the ground. And that's the way I see things. It's not day ones, it's not day two, it's not day three. It just basically means that you're going to have to accept with the standard that not every day is going to be amazing. Because if the standard you create for yourself is a perfect, output line, you're going to feel constantly and it's not going to feel good because, and it's not going to feel good because that's not how life works, right? Your problems will not resolve in a day, even if you do everything right. And that's just something you need to factor in when it comes to rebuilding a relationship with yourself. And then now that goes on to the practical part because I really like leaving you guys with some practical things. I want you guys to get out a pen and paper or listen to this and make notes on your phone. First thing I want you guys to note down is right down the four horsemen. I believe this concept is very good. You can research on YouTube or even on Google, I don't like AI, but if you want to use chaggbt or Claude, be my guest. Next time you're spiraling after a setback, name which one you are actually in. Are you in the stage of criticism, defensiveness, contempt or stonewalling? Naming it funnily enough psychologically actually takes away some power immediately. Second thing is, I want you guys to actually be aware of the shift that goes from guilt to shame. When your inner voice goes from I did something wrong to I am something wrong. I want you to stop and write it down. And I want you to write down exactly what you said to yourself because not being aware of this sometimes makes both of them sound the same, which then goes on to my third one. I want you guys to actually write down a promise to yourself. And I want you to really keep this somewhere that you can see every single day. I am not going to quit on myself even if there's days that disappoint me. Everyday read it. I am not walking out on myself even if some days I'm disappointed. Even if some days make me feel horrible. And I think this is something that you really need to start doing because you can actually unf your life overnight. You can decide right now listening to this podcast. I'm just going to change my life today. But don't set crazy expectations. Remember, as I said, it doesn't always work in a linear way. Your problems are not going to solve overnight. But make a promise yourself, no matter how hard things get, I'm not going to walk out on myself. And then the fourth thing I want you to do is I want you to name, and this is a bit introspective. So I don't know if you guys will be aware of this but I want you to name the version of yourself your inner critic compares you to let's say this crazy standard that you hold all have to have a million dollars by 27. I have to have three kids by 28. I have to have, I have to, I don't know, retire my mum by 29. Ask yourself, does this person even exist? Have I ever met them or has this person been created or curated, I should say? Sometimes they sound the same to me. Through social media, through highlights, you're just watching people's lives. And number five is, when the criticism hits, right, when you're starting to criticize yourself, one thing I've learned to do is just not argue. I don't actually argue with myself whether it's right or wrong. All I say is, hey, you know, games game, you know, let's keep moving. And I guess the last thing I want to mention, which just came to my mind is a concept that I call non-zero days. And this has really helped me. I made a video about this maybe like two years ago now, which is, never let a day go by where you don't do something towards your goal, even if that means one minute. Because a day where you didn't collapse fully, still counts. You don't need a perfect day to prove that you're still committed to yourself. And this is why I feel like a lot of people or where I feel like a lot of people go wrong. You just think to yourself, if I'm not on it today with five red balls and I'm completely on it and I'm doing 12 hours, that's a wasted day. There's some days a kid, you know, I just do one thing and I just put my pen down. I'm like, you know what? I'm not feeling it today. I go out, I come back home, I sit down, I go to sleep, I wake up. What do I remember? At least yesterday I did that. These things accumulate, especially if you're someone that doesn't do things. So all I want to say is to just kind of wrap up everything is, I want you to identify which horsemen you go to when you first disappoint yourself. And the other thing that's very important is, who does your inner critic compare you to? Write these things down. Who are you always comparing yourself to mentally? What are the things they have? What lifestyle do they live? And where did this version come from? So I hope you guys have enjoyed this podcast episode. This was more so off the cuff because I really wanted to discuss this with you guys. I do believe this will definitely benefit all of you guys listening to this. And as per usual, I hope you guys really uneff your life. I hope you guys really fix your life. I remember you can decide to fix your life from today. You can really change your life from today. Off the listen to this podcast episode, get pen and paper and write down one big goal that you want to achieve towards the end of the year. And then just stick to it. I will never walk out of myself even if I have some days that deeply disappoint me. And I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast episode. And as per usual, if you did enjoy this, share it with someone that would benefit. If you want to send me over a message, feel free. I like hearing back from you guys. Otherwise, I'll catch you guys in the next episode.