Self Worth – Episode 219

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:03] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, we have our co-host and bestselling author, Kim Butler with us today. And we’re going to be talking about self-worth. We talk a lot about financial worth, but I really want to kind of separate today and talk about self-worth. And the angle that I want to approach it from is the permission to be free. I met a gentleman who’s a public speaker and I’m not even sure if he’s still alive

[00:55] by the name of Les Brown back in probably about 1990. And Les had just an unbelievable story where his mom literally was homeless and he went door-to-door selling TV sets to put food on the table as a kid and it’s pretty impressive. But the one thing that he said is that you will never be able to maintain a financial level that you do not believe that you are worth. And at the time, it just sounded good. But over time, I’ve seen examples again and again where people who have that self-worth, even though they still go through bad times because I just think there’s cycles to this stuff that no matter how hard you try, you’re not going to win 100%. So I mean, there are cycles to this, but they come back.

[02:00] And then there’s other people that are blessed with lotteries or maybe huge sports careers or something and it’s just never enough. So long intro there, Kim, what do you think? Well I love, first of all, the idea of self-worth and the importance of it. Something that my mentor Dan Sullivan says is the number one skill of an entrepreneur and it could be anybody, frankly, is to be able to have self-generated confidence. And I really view self-worth as self-generated confidence, humble confidence, but still self-generated. In other words, it’s not the car that I drive that gives me confidence or the house that I live in or the address that I use or the particular whatever it is that’s on the outside, but it’s something that’s on the inside.

[02:53] Now what’s interesting is that people that have a good level of that tend to have the ability to demonstrate it on the outside, to back up what your friend said, your speaker friend. I know there is another very well-known person that says you get paid what you are worth. Like your actual income is a relative dollar figure to the value that you provide in the marketplace. And so if you want to increase your income, you must increase your worth, the value that you provide in the marketplace. And so there’s lots of things that we can do to get better at that. When we think about the word human being, how we’re being out in the marketplace is very, very reflective of what’s going on in our view of ourself.

[03:53] And so I’ll meet somebody, for example, that let’s say they’re not demonstrating humble confidence. Let’s say they’re just demonstrating confidence. And I’ll immediately think, wow, what’s going on inside that person that’s causing them to be so boastful or so egotistical or whatever way they’re demonstrating confidence. And it’s something that on the other side, you see it when you do meet somebody that has humble confidence. You think, wow, what’s going on in that person’s heart and mind? How are they able to be, in other words, the human being part, not human doing, right, but a human being, how are they able to be this classy, this graceful, this capable, this humble, and yet this confident in the marketplace?

[04:45] And I think it’s that really highly developed, well-educated perspective on self-worth that then enables them to be free, free of societal trappings, free of keeping up with the Joneses, free of a lot of the other garbage that causes us humans to sometimes be not the best amongst other human beings. And I would have to say that the people that have the highest self-worth are those that are willing to give the most, not so much in a give to charity type mentality, but they’re always looking to contribute. In other words, you know, if there’s a problem and it’s related in some way to somebody that I know or to some part of my world that I could help solve, how can I make that better? And that continues to generate both financial and self-worth.

[05:46] Absolutely. And it’s just so amazing when you see it in action. And I think people, especially the younger crowd, you know, they’re just coming out of college trying to kind of figure which way is up. In today’s world, they actually do a better job of it than you and I did back when we came out, because today there is just a lot of proof that your own story, your own background, the experiences that you’ve been through are unique and special and have something to offer in the world. And you need to celebrate that uniqueness rather than fit into the gray arena of everybody else. You know, if you’re going to be black, be black. If you’re going to be white, be white. And I don’t mean that in a good or bad sense, just a strong color.

[06:32] But don’t be gray. I think there still is a lot of this fake it till you make it mentality. And I personally have tried that and I can’t say that it works. I mean, you can’t go out and buy a Ferrari assuming that you will get a job that will allow you to pay. Yes, so very true. I just witnessed a friend of a friend by it wasn’t a Ferrari, but it was certainly a step above car that didn’t seem to match where the income was. And I just cringed and trusted that it will work out for them. But how much freedom there is when we can, first of all, literally have some cash savings to back us up. And so anybody coming out of school, getting involved in their first job, et cetera, I just can’t recommend enough the ability to save money

[07:31] because with savings becomes freedom, freedom to not take the first job that’s offered to you, freedom to go on a special trip. If that’s what’s presented to you, freedom to maybe invest in yourself a little bit. I saw a book recently that had a fabulous suggestion. And it said, if you’re earning more than $100 an hour, and especially salespeople, the kids, if you will, that have the ability to get paid for results. I mean, that’s pretty doable right out of college or at least fairly quickly thereof. Then you should spend some of that money to hire yourself an assistant and free yourself to do what you’re really good at, but also free somebody else to do what they’re really good at. Because no matter who we are in the world, there’s skills that other people are good at.

[08:28] And it’s not a higher or lower thing. It’s not a like, oh, well, I’m good and you’re not. So you can be my assistant. It’s a I’m good at this and you’re good at that. Let me please pay you to do what you’re good at for me or for our family or what have you. So I thought it was super cool. It was literally having the recommendation that people spend their own money hiring an assistant. Forget whether your quote company was going to hire it for you or not so that you truly could be free to do what you’re good at. And so whether you want to call this instinctive purpose or sole purpose or unique ability, these are all terms that are out there in the marketplace based on who you listen to. It’s so valuable to be focused on the good that you do that comes naturally to you

[09:15] and then doing more and more and more of that and less of everything else. Here’s the challenge that I see and the question that I have for you, Kim, is that number one, where do you start? And number two, what are some suggestions that you could give people to work on improving that self-worth? Well, without a doubt, self-knowledge is, I think, the very beginning on the road to self-worth. And so there’s some basic things that you can do on the web. Your typical personality profile is beneficial. So whether you want to use disc or Myers-Briggs or the lion otter golden retriever thing from Gary Smalley or whatever it is that you want to use, the strengths finders from the Gallup organization,

[10:07] all of those things give you some information about personality that is, I think, very valuable self-knowledge. And then right behind that is an additional self-knowledge tool that gives you information about a completely different aspect of your being. And that’s the Colby profile. And we’ve talked about it before. If you’re interested in a podcast on that, if you’ll just search for Colby, K-O-L-B as in boy E, Colby, K-O-L-B-E, colby.com, 50 bucks. Well worth it for the self-knowledge that comes out of there around how you get results. And so when you have self-knowledge around how you get results, you increase your self-worth because then you won’t get yourself involved in aspects of doing things that does not fit your way of getting results.

[11:00] You’ll stay into the areas where you are naturally fitted to that method of getting results. Another word for that, if you will, is literally your God-given talent. And the Colby profile does a good job of putting English words around your God-given talent. So I think those two are super important. And then I’d like to add a third, and it’s literally how you spend your days in the morning, like however you start your day, your first hour, your first 90 minutes. And so our good friend Garrett White, as you know, calls it the power hour. What are you eating? What are you listening to slash watching? And what are you reading? And possibly what are you doing like a physical workout? So to me, it’s always very, very important to have in the morning

[11:48] some real clear inspiration. So whether you’re going to read that inspiration or watch it like on YouTubes or TED Talks, typically that would mean not the news. Or whether you’re going to have, you know, maybe you have a Bible thing that you’re reading or some other inspirational piece that you begin your day with. And then, of course, very good breakfast and also some type of physical workout. Those three aspects of your life in the morning are super critical in my mind to the development of self-worth. Awesome. I know, you know, very early on, I was fascinated with this idea of mentors, which I do think is an absolutely fantastic idea. But I always thought if I found somebody whose lifestyle that I admired,

[12:36] if I did what they did, I could have what they had. And really, truthfully, that made me a copy of them. And it wasn’t sticking to that originality or sole purpose that you were talking about. And really, I think the truth of the matter is, is that if you be the best version of who you are, you can have anything you want. Yes, that’s well said. And especially when your motive is pure, when you want what you want, because there’s a higher calling there, there’s a purer motive. And so that just opens the doors to so many things. I want to address, too, the idea of pay it forward. Or, you know, some people call it giving back. But Dan Sullivan has a fun laugh to that, like giving back, that implies you took something and you don’t take things as you progress in life.

[13:35] The people that take things get their own results. And so just focus on giving. And so whether it’s paying it forward or just giving, I think those are things that we all want to be looking at. And, you know, that doesn’t mean money. And it doesn’t necessarily even mean time. It can mean a little of both, or it can mean something else entirely, in just some way to give, to be of service. That’s really what human beings were designed to do, is to be of service. And one of the definitions of retirement that Todd Langford likes to quote all the time is to be taken out of service. And that’s just not generally a good thing, which is, of course, why we don’t like the idea of retirement. But I think that’s for another podcast.

[14:19] Super. Well, again, I appreciate all of our listeners. Appreciate your time, Kim. And, you know, just something we kind of wanted to get out there, that we talk a lot about the different strategies, and we talk a lot about the different products. But I think getting ourselves in the right position to create value and receive is as important as well. And for the Prosperity podcast, this is No BS Money Guy. Thanks to all of you. Keep the questions and the comments coming. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.