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Glenn Mattson
Welcome to the Building Blocks of Success, this is going to be taking a look at our self-worth is today's session. Yet, you know, it's interesting, we look at self-esteem, we look at other things that we take a look at that we put into our world and what does it mean? You know, self-compassion, acceptance, self-respect, self-confidence, self-care, self-love, and so on, and so on. You know, it's interesting that when we look at self-esteem, and self-esteem, for all intents and purposes is how we feel about ourselves. Self-esteem is that when you wake up in the morning, and yeah, you got the bed head going, and you got the mucky, mucky, mucky stuff in your mouth, right from sleeping all night. And you walk in, use the bathroom, you look yourself in the mirror, before you're either go into the kitchen, or walk downstairs to the kitchen, wherever you may be. And whatever you see in that mirror. And how you feel about that, looking back at you, many would say is our self-esteem, it's our perception of our self-worth. Now, interestingly enough, when we look at self-worth, and self-worth is very interesting, right? So a lot of people will say they're very common with regards to each other.
Glenn Mattson
Yet, when we look at our self-worth, it's the very core of who we are, right? Our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors, there are all intimately tied to this. It's how we see our worthiness and our value as humans in comparison to everybody else. It's also how we, what we our views are in terms of, do we deserve certain things? So when we look at our self-worth, is really taking a look at how we fit within the greater good and are we worthy? All right, and do we have value?
Glenn Mattson
Now, we all know that an A student has the same value as a student that gets an F, right? We know that a CEO of a firm has the same value as a human being as potentially someone who's a garbage man, right? So we know we know those intellectually yet, many of us have a very difficult time dealing with this. So I want to walk you through some what we call the self-worth theory, and what does it look like? How does it come to be? What are the things that make up the self-worth theory? And with that, what are some things that we can do to become better and stronger? And in self-worth, okay?
Glenn Mattson
So, let's first take a look at when we have the perception of self-worth is really where does some of this come in with the definition of it right? So let's take a look at self-worth from what they were considered as an individual right? Self-worth theory says, an individual's main priority in life, their main priority in life is their main focus, their driving force, right. So their main priority in life is to find self-acceptance. Well the self-worth theory is all about our individual, main priority, one of our main driving forces is to be is to find self-acceptance, and this is where the connector start to come.
Glenn Mattson
Self-acceptance is often found through achievement. And a lot of people would turn around and say achievement is often found through competition with others. Let's follow the bouncing ball for a second. Self-worth theory says that our main priority is self-acceptance. Our self-acceptance is often found through achievement. Achievement is often found through competition with others.
Glenn Mattson
Follow the bouncing ball, right? Self-acceptance through achievement through competition.
Glenn Mattson
So it's logical that when we compete with others that we will have potentially feelings on our ether belts, we may have thoughts of before we enter into something how we're going to do, because of our again self-worth, and based on our achievements. Now, there are three subsets, that when we look at self-worth, alright, so, you know, again, if you practice really hard at something, and you may walk into a room and feel you have a lot of self-worth, right, so like, for instance, and everyone has stories like these, but I remember I was very young, I was 25, 26 at the time. Starting my career as a sales consultant. I remember going to the Huntington Hilton. It was on what's called route 110 and Long Island. I pulled up, I had my new suit on, I had my new shirt on, right had all my new shoes, it was looking good. Had a briefcase that was relatively new, I have a new business cards, I was looking good. Alright, it's walking across the parking lot. I was role playing in my head, what my icebreakers were, what was I going to say to, you know, as I going into this networking meeting, that I was going into. What was I going to say to people just to kind of break the ice and get in there and say, hello. So I was practicing my icebreakers, I was practicing what my my next questions we're going to be in terms of how I was going to talk about, right, their family, their occupation, what they like to do recreationally. I had my flowchart going, I was practicing what I was going to say, how I was going to say it, what the flow was. I was feeling really good about the whole thing. I practiced it quite a bit with my wife, and then my mentor at the time and my boss.
Glenn Mattson
So I had confidence that I could do and say the things that I needed to say, at least in front of a mirror, right? I was good. So I'm sitting there walking across the parking lot, feeling pretty strong about myself, kind of feeling pretty good about myself, trying to feel in, oh, hey, listen, I got this. Course when I walk into the room. I was expecting, I don't know what I was expecting. But I walk in and there's about 150 people in the room. I am by far the youngest person in the room. I'm looking around, and I can start to size up people pretty quick on where they are, and what level that they're at. I walk over and say hi to somebody, the vice president of a bank. Say hello to somebody else, the owner of a four or $5 million practice.
Glenn Mattson
Within seconds, starting to get a feeling that I am over my skis. I'm starting to get a feeling that I don't belong in here. Getting a feeling that I think maybe I'm not in the right spot. Of course, I'm in the right spot. It's a networking meeting. But from a feeling of worth, self-worth, all of a sudden, I felt everyone was better than me.
Glenn Mattson
They were older, many were more successful in terms of what they were wearing. Their dialect, the words they use, was significantly different than my pay grade and SATs scores. So the confidence I had got shot down pretty quick. Just because I walked into a room and I gauge the room, and I let that affect my self-worth. How many of you will go into a first day at work? How many of you will take a look at, heck it could be something as easy as walking onto a field, right? And you're gonna play a pickup game and you look over and you'll see some kids throwing the ball around and they're really throwing it well, they got great equipment, they look like they know what they're doing and all of a sudden your confidence and your self-worth starts to drop a little bit.
Glenn Mattson
Just because of the way they look? Just because the way they throw the ball, really?
Glenn Mattson
Now, let's take a look at the components that make up self-worth real quick.
Glenn Mattson
The first one is ability. That's number one. Number two is effort. Three is performance. Last, is self-worth.
Glenn Mattson
It's interesting how one and two get you three, two and three, get you four. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Ability is your capacity to actually perform at the job the way it's supposed to do and the way it's supposed to be, or whatever you're thinking about. So ability is, can you do it? Now ability comes from practice, ability comes from failure, ability comes from, you practicing it over and over and over and over again. Right. So ability is very important. The ability is also in your minds that even though you may not know how to, if it's something brand new, you do trust that you can.
Glenn Mattson
So, ability is important. Some we have innate belief in ourselves that we can achieve, but most ability, and this is for everyone listening in, what self-worth confidence, etc., a lot of that originates from a belief that you can do it. A belief that you can do it. If you don't know how to do it, how are you going to have the belief that you can do it?
Glenn Mattson
So you got to make sure that you practice and practice an insane amount. You don't practice until you know, you practice until you never get it wrong. That's ability. So ability, make sure that we're on the same page, yes, comes from natural abilities, but it's also comes from competencies. And competency is is that you practice it until you have conviction you can do it. That's ability.
Glenn Mattson
Then we have effort. Well, effort is the cheapest thing in the world. And it's the one that's very hard to find. It's like one of the greatest resources, effort. It's just your determination to give it a shot, right. To put the time, energy, and effort into it. So if you have ability, and you put the effort into it, so ability, and effort will give you performance. If you don't have the ability, and you don't try in the effort, you won't get the performance. How many people, heck I have kids, and this is one of the things that gets me crazy. And I don't want to get too deep into it. I'll talk for 25 minutes. And this one is what happens when someone has the ability, but they don't put in the effort? You have someone who has the and I see this all the time in sports and it drives me nuts, right? And then the reason it drives me nuts because I'm jealous. I have to put in three times the effort, because of where my ability is in terms of skills, right? Natural ability. So I have to practice harder, try harder, put more time into it, I'm okay with that, to get the performance I want. But how many of you look around and you judge others or yourself on how hard you're working in compared to others. So you may have to put in twice as much work as the average person, twice as much effort than the average person to get the results. But that's still worth. You may have to have significant more practice to get the ability up to the level to get the performance done.
Glenn Mattson
But remember, ability, plus effort creates performance.
Glenn Mattson
You go look at all your great athletes, there's so many of you can listen to and talk about that they practice. And they practice look at, you have Kobe Bryant, he will practice in the morning and then his team will show up, then he practices with the team, then he practices again. And then the team shows up and he practices with a team. So he will practice four to five times a day while the team will practice twice. He's putting in twice the effort as everybody else. And he will tell you, within two or three years, it's almost impossible for them to catch up to me in terms of my performance, because I've put in so much effort.
Glenn Mattson
Look at Elon Musk, think anything you may want to that individual, but he will say if you work 40 hours and you can achieve x, why wouldn't you work 60 to achieve y? His mindset had all had to do with more effort increases performance. That's his mindset, not saying it's right. But if you look at all individuals, you can have examples of people who have all the intelligence of the world but they don't utilize it. You have individuals that have all the ability with a huge natural market, but they don't tap into it. So never look at other people and say or judge where you are in comparison to them. The only person you should be judging yourself is a mirror.
Glenn Mattson
So your ability and your effort will create performance. Never forget it. So if your performance is where it needs to be you got to look at ability and effort. Now let's take a look at the next piece.
Glenn Mattson
Effort with performance actually equals self-worth.
Glenn Mattson
So the amount of effort you put into this, with the performance you get, will create self-worth. There's lots of things that you can take a look at with that. I mean, look at the individuals that it comes super easy to them, very little effort, but they get a high performance. Those are individuals that your straight A students, they don't have to study much. But those individuals have never really failed before. They've never had adversity, they never really had to have the tenacity, the fortitude of being knocked down to get back up, because they've always aced everything. There's enough studies out there that the choke a horse that will turn around and say, if you put in the effort, in the performance, increases your self-worth. But there are individuals that will get the performance numbers, but they don't put in the effort. And they know they don't put in the effort. They know that they're putting in just enough to get the results that they want, not how much effort they have to put in to get the right results.
Glenn Mattson
Tiger Woods talks about it all the time. Why would you feel good about yourself on achieving something you didn't actually work hard at? No one likes to have it give me, at least the good ones don't
Glenn Mattson
Look at your effort. Look at your performance. Think we all can attest to, when you've been really beaten down and you had to practice hard and put more time and energy into getting prepared and then to win. And look, I've told you guys 1,000 times I play lacrosse. We had a huge tournament down in Florida and we were beating the heck out of everybody. Now this is the championship game, they were the best over there, we're the best over here. They were killing people, we were killing people in terms of the scores. They came flying out in the first couple minutes and scored. And we know we can play lacrosse. But our worth as a team started to go down. Now people didn't have the shoulders down and weren't walking around like that. But they were looking around saying oh boy, this is a little more difficult than the other group.
Glenn Mattson
Now the greatest thing that I can have towards my team, that the greatest feeling I had, which was just so a fork, right was that we were down five, one at half, five, one. We came back and the second half and we beat them six, eight to win. Win the whole tournament.They scored once in the second half and we scored seven times. Our skills never changed, but our belief and our ability. And we weren't scared to do the effort that we needed to. We weren't timid, we started to believe in our performance, started to believe in our self-worth. Momentum happened, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
Glenn Mattson
So when you look at self-worth, some things to think about in terms of how we determine self-worth. And this is, for some an easy way of looking at this. We commonly use yardsticks really to measure self-worth, it's a very common thing that we do in the Americas.
Glenn Mattson
And here are four or five top factors that many people use to either measure, unfortunately, compare themselves to others, which impacts their self-worth.
Glenn Mattson
The first is appearance. Now the size of the clothing, the quality, the clothing, the attention that you get from the clothing, a lot of us will determine our self-worth just based on how we look. Do you dress really well and you walk in and you're not dressed well? Do you feel like you're worth less, just because they're just nicer than you? I always find it really interesting, on purpose sometimes, just to dress normal, which is the way I like to dress right? Jeans and a t-shirt. And how people will treat you differently. You're dressed that way than if I show up in a suit. Or what happens is something as ridiculous as the second one which is net worth.
Glenn Mattson
People determine their self-worth or get uncomfortable around others and don't feel worthy just because of net worth of someone else. Now that's income, materialistic goods, financial assets, all that stuff. If you feel less as a as a person, less as a worth, because your net worth is not the same as somebody else. That's a problem.
Glenn Mattson
Same thing with appearance. It's sad, I will say, but it does happen. When I travel and if I have my right my Fitbit on. and one of my Rolexes or a different watch. You do get treated differently, sometimes worse, sometimes better. But it's different for sure. So do you judge your appearance, and say to yourself that my worth increases or decreases because of appearance? Do you believe that others are better than you or worse than you because they drive a nicer car? Because they live in a bigger house? What happens when you go to someone's house and you're just newly married and you're looking around going, man, we are not doing well, I do not feel comfortable because they have new couches, or they have a gorgeous couch or dining room set, or they have an entertainment set. And you're trying to figure out, you know, if you're going to have chicken or or be fully on for dinner.
Glenn Mattson
So your worth as a human has never changed. It's our perception that they're better because they have more stuff. So the first is appearance. The second is net worth. The third is kind of who you know, or what social circle you're in.Some people judge their value and the value of others by the status. The status of, of who they hang out with, the status of the influential people that they're part of, or they're connected to.
Glenn Mattson
So all of a sudden, people believe that you're worth more than I am just because of who you hang out with. Just because of the name dropping that you're doing, just because of who you went out with and played golf with or who you went for a walk or had a conversation with. So does it really change our worth just based on who you know?And what circles you're in?
Glenn Mattson
So yeah, appearance is one, net worth is another. Third is your social circle, for sure. Here's the fourth one. What you do. We often judge people based on what they do. Oh, oh, you're a banker and you're a business owner? Whoa, you're an executive? Ooh, you're a CEO? Why is it any different than school bus driver or a janitor? Garbagemen? What is the difference? I was a garbage man when I was a kid, right? I picked up trash for four bloody years in Cape Cod as a job. That mean I'm worth less, because I chose to be a garbage man during the summer time? No, it was phenomenal. I worked at six o'clock, I was done by two. I worked outside all day. I was lifting stuff. I was working and basically working out all day and getting paid for it. It was great, course it smelled like hell, but you know, you're 17 years old. Who cares?
Glenn Mattson
So what do you do? Does that really change the value in your worth? So that's number four. Now we talked about appearances, net worth, your social circles, and your career. The next one is what you've achieved.
Glenn Mattson
What you achieved creates worth.What about Yeah, we talked about worth Yeah, but what about something else? Maybe you're working at a company and they have a business trip for those that hit certain goals? Oh, they achieved it and you didn't, so are they worth more than you? What about sitting down next to someone and they graduated with a much higher GPA than you did? You haven't heard my talk. You haven't seen it, you should better go download it on what makes people successful. I'm telling you right now A students are not the most successful people. You look at a B student, a B student is the number one individuals that have self made millionaire. More B students are self made millionaires than anyone else. More C students are self made millionaires than A students. Most people will tell you a C student is an A student, they just haven't figured out what they're motivated by.
Glenn Mattson
Most A students are very smart, very good at what they do, but they've never been challenged they've never been pushed, they've never been failed, they've never been knocked down. They never had the ability to push forward, stay motivated, even though when they get knocked down. So a lot of people that are B and C students will hire an A student when they own their own business like I did.
Glenn Mattson
So when you look at your worth, please, I understand the concept. But really deep down inside, your self-worth is not connected to your parents, nor your net worth, nor who you know and what you know. Yeah it makes you feel good to name drop, I get all that. What career do you have? Especially for some of the newer people that's going out and getting a job. And then they may get another job and another job and another job, which we all know is going to happen. I can't tell you how many times I get people will ask me how to go interview. What's the best way to get the right job? Man you're in your 20s, how the hell do you know what the right job is? I'd rather tell you go out do 20 job interviews, go get 20 people that say, I want to hire you. Go on an interview, my gosh, you should go on interviews all day long, even for jobs you don't even want to get, learn how to be a good interview, learn how to be comfortable in your skin, learn how to share your worth with people, not necessarily just by answering a question. So go on a ton of interviews and literally, you know, go find four or five jobs and then the best thing you can do is stop looking for what you want and stop looking for the things that you think are going to, you know, tickle your heart in waiting for that one golden goose job. Quite honestly, you're better off just going out, getting a job, working it, finding out what you don't like about it and then and then the next time you improve on it.
Glenn Mattson
Very few people find a career right off the gate. Go get some jobs and find out what you love. But again, your self-worth is really important when it comes to that. Okay?
Glenn Mattson
Now, when we look at some of the pieces that are about healthy self-worth, healthy self-worth, again, is believing in your ability and your effort and your performance. You know, I could show up at a lacrosse field and have duct tape on a lacrosse stick, and have tape on my gloves just to hold them together and I'm very confident with my self-worth that I'll be able to play and play very well and not embarrass myself.
Glenn Mattson
You know, that does what my equipment does look like, right? It looks like I'm a bum, but I don't care, I don't have to wear the new stuff to impress people. What's going to impress people is my performance. Not necessarily how I'm dressed, not what car I show up on, not who I'm talking to on the telephone as I walk out of the field. Not because I have an own, you know, and been in business for myself for close to 30 years and have a very successful life. That does not mean that increases my self-worth. So and or what other people do, you have to remember who you are, remember what you've done. And that makes a big difference.
Glenn Mattson
Now, let's talk about some things that you can do to help really increase and maximize the self-worth that you have. Okay, because that's important, to understand how to do that.And what I'm going to go through are pretty easy steps. And really a great way to take a look at this. And it's not overly hard to do, it's just, we have to remember that we have value. And the value that we have is important. So when we can gain this and remember that when we're talking about how to create as a large self-worth, or remember who you are, as your self-worth, is also remember that you can do these things. You need to be a positive mental state in your brain. You need to turn around like, you know, for instance, you show up someplace like I did at a networking meeting. should have walked around and looked around and said to myself, you know, you can do this. You own what you have to say. You bring value to everyone in this room if they would. Those that need it. Show confidence so people are magnetically drawn to you versus being someone who's weak and meek. No one's gonna want to walk up and talk to you. Be what they're trying to be even though they're terrified too.
Glenn Mattson
So one of the ways that we can reverse our self-worth pattern is talking to yourself about your abilities in a positive state. The critical parent has a tendency to crap all over your and your nurturing parent has a tendency to say nice stuff. The issue is your nurturing parent can talk for 20 minutes and it'll have exactly the same impact when your critical parent says one sentence. You can spend 20 minutes telling yourself, you're great. And a critical parent can come out and literally say, you know, I don't know why you're here, you just gonna screw this up like you always do. And that critical parents statement will just kick you right in the gut. You make sure that when your self-worth is getting challenged, you look over and someone's got a Louis Vuitton bag, you look over and someone's driving a European car. And you know, you have two different color doors on yours. Remember, just remember about who you are and what you've done to get to where you are, you have worth.
Glenn Mattson
Also, I want you to think about number two, is the word yet. I grew up not a lot of money. Sure, in the world of sales and measuring stick his success. I always thought that the richest guy in our town drove a Mercedes. And I always thought those are the things that you drove when you were successful, and not arrogantly successful, because the people in my town drove BMW's that were arrogant. But the people who had money that were quiet about it, humble about it, didn't flaunt it. Much as you can drive in a Mercedes, I guess, but had a Mercedes. So I always thought deep down inside, that would make a big difference, right? So the Mercedes isn't the thing that made the self-worth, it was all the change I had to do inside myself, the abilities, the massive amount of effort that I had to put towards the things I had to do to get the results to get the performance, which then got me the car.
Glenn Mattson
So my ability and my effort, my performance, got me the car. What didn't get me the car is someone else buying it for me, is just going out saying one day, okay, I'm gonna go get it, even if you could afford it, you haven't earned it yet. Earning it is what helps you create your self-worth.
Glenn Mattson
So when we look at self-worth, things that we can do, and some things that you can take a look at, to really help you drive all this stuff is our ability to fix it. So we understand why we have it, where people look at it, where we judge others and ourselves, right? That's again, the clothing, achievements and etc. But you got to take a look at a list of the things that in our life do not create our worth. When you're on your deathbed, and you think back at your life, you don't say thank God, I had $10 million in the bank. You don't say to yourself, thank God, I have a $7,000 or 7,000 square foot house. You don't say thank God, I had seven different places I could go to or two different homes. Right. One I can go to to go skiing at, one I could stay here at during the day. We never think of that in a deathbed. You don't say to yourself, oh, thank goodness, I have 15 Louie bags. Don't think of those things in your deathbed. As a matter of fact, no one even cares on your deathbed.
Glenn Mattson
What you're what you're reminded about is the value and the worth of you as a person. The value and the worth that you had with your family and society and the impact that you had. That's what people think back at. And those are the images in their mind that give them their self-worth. So if when you're sitting back, you really got to ask yourself and please make sure that your children see the world in the right light. That your bank account, your job title, where you work, if you have blue eyes, brown eyes, you know, you're thin or heavy, doesn't make a difference. If you have three people following you on social media you got 65 likes or you get 2,000 people or you got 300,000 people like the video, doesn't really change the value of you in the worth of you as a person. All that means is you found 2,000 or 235,000 people liked your video. Doesn't mean that you're worth more or you're a better person, just means you had a bunch of people like your video.
Glenn Mattson
You really got to take a look at be hardcore on what does, in your mind determine self-worth at the end of the day? You're knocking on the door, and you're upstairs and they're asking you to take a look at your life and was it worth it and what value you had? Those are the important things.
Glenn Mattson
Now, next piece, right? How are you kind? Were you compassionate? Did you have respect for other people? Did you treat others around you nicely? There's a reason that the golden rule, right, which is, do unto others as you want done unto you. So that's what creates our worth.
Glenn Mattson
Next piece, the second piece on identifying and challenging and increasing your worth is really having and this is a tough one. It's one that we coach on all the time. It's their inner voice. It's the inner voice. It's when something happens to you, we've talked about this in lots of different podcasts, right? 99% of all your decisions are made based on beliefs that you have. And those beliefs are either nurturing, or self limiting. Self limiting beliefs are repeated in your head based on a critical parent, a critical parent is a state that we're in. You have a parent state, you have an adult state and have a child state. And your critical parent is the one that's very critical, inner voice, it loves to nitpick and point out your flaws. It quite honestly, it just constantly beats you even when you're down and you say mercy, mercy, mercy, it'll keep beating you sometimes.
Glenn Mattson
So what I'd like you to take a look at is when you hear these things these little internal crick's. And man, they get going, want to talk about momentum? When they start, I really liked you to turn around and say to yourself, out loud, is this any basis of fact? Is this is true?
Glenn Mattson
Number two, do I need this information? Is it going to be helpful? Is it factual? And is it going to help me? Big stuff and if you know anything about you know from a standpoint of being unemotional, sporadic behavior, they always look at three areas. And this is doing the same thing. The first thing you have to ask yourself, as you say something negative in your head is, is it valid? Is it true?
Glenn Mattson
Number two, when you hear that is, you know, from your standpoint, is it helping me right now? Is this helping me? Some critical parents statements in your head do help you, it's called motivation for some of us. For others it just beats you to immobilization. If I'm out there, and I did something, and I may say something really rude and vulgar in my head, but what I'm doing is I'm yelling at myself to motivate myself. If I said the exact same thing to my son, or my wife or my daughter, I'm pretty sure that they would be completely demotivated for the rest of the day and maybe not want to talk to me.
Glenn Mattson
So inside your psyche, you have to know is your critical parent, a motivator, or a demotivator? For the majority of people it's a demotivator. When your critical parent starts kicking in and beating the hell out of you, and creating your worth to be less, you walk in you see someone's got a really nice bag and like, oh, man, I feel really uncomfortable and not sure if I should be here. Is the fact that you feel that way just because that person has a Louis Vuitton, is that true? Is that valid? The first thing you got to ask yourself.
Glenn Mattson
Second thing is it helping you in this situation feeling that way? No, not at all. It has nothing to do with the conversation, nothing to do with the company. So take a look at how to increase your self-worth. Your self-worth is massive. And if you have children self-worth is through early and frequent experiences of success, of winning, of achieving certain things, like tying your shoes. It's being competent and mastering it through hard work is what creates self-worth. So hopefully this journey has given you some insights into your self-esteem, your self-worth, why we have these areas, right again, taking a look at ability and effort equals performance. Effort and performance equals self-worth. And a lot of us will look at each other in based on how worthy we are, based on things like a parent's net worth, you know who the hell you know, your social circle, who you're hanging with, right? What you do as a career. What are the things that you've achieved at life? So when you look at those five things of how most people measure it, don't get stuck in that. Remember, when you're on your deathbed none of that stuff makes any sense of the world. It has no bearing on your worth. And it has no bearing on your worth now.
Glenn Mattson
Enjoy it and I'll talk to you for a next session on Building Blocks of Success.
Glenn Mattson
This has been the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
S1E8 with Glenn Mattson: Goals, Commitment and Accountability
S1E11 with Glenn Mattson: Maximizing Outcomes of Risk