Transcript
Hello and welcome to another daily Jimm. Today is Monday, January 20 0 man, so many notifications. January 29th, 2024. Today I wanna talk about separating how I separate, my worth from my behaviors or basically from how good I am from what I do and how good the things are that I do. So to go more in depth with this, I would say, one of the things that has helped me out the most over the last gosh, maybe even 10 years now has been this idea of separating my worth from my behavior. Basically saying that no matter what I do, no matter what I say, no matter what I have or don't have or believe or feel et cetera, et cetera. I am still a good person. So kind of like separating my essence and my worth from things that I have done or have happened to me. And I think this small thing has helped me so much and conversely, I think it, hurts and damages so many people in this world when we don't have that separation.
Because with this, say, for example, I have done something to hurt somebody. If I link the two together, then if I did something that hurt somebody, therefore, like if that person felt a bad thing or I did quote unquote a bad thing, therefore, I am a bad person, then I could really have a low perspective on myself. And then if anybody criticizes anything that I do, if they say, oh, I can't believe you did that or if they say um you know what you did really hurt me, even if they say it in very specific language of that thing that you did. Uh I, when you did that thing, I felt really hurt and other people um you know, I felt hurt when other people have done that in the past. And I just wanted to let you know which I would say is one of the most clear ways to communicate that um to not put blame or, or, or um assume that the other person was responsible for all of the, the feeling. So even if I, even if somebody says that to me, um, if I have the belief that if I hurt somebody else, I am not a good person, or as one person said to me once, um, if that person hurt me, he doesn't love me because people who love you don't hurt you. And I said what? Really, I think sometimes the people who love us the most are the ones who do things that end up hurting us. Um But it didn't land because I think this person has in her mind. Um Worth is tied to behavior, very conditional idea of worth. Now, car it was Carl Rogers. I checked that they had this idea of unconditional positive regard and I think that is positive regard towards the individual, towards the worth, the essence of the human, and basically saying disconnecting it from the behaviors. I had a conversation, it was 2015 maybe, uh worked on a conflict resolution project in Germany and one of the participants was from Israel and I think he was the equivalent of a Navy Seal medic. So very special operations went through a lot of physical and emotional trauma and war. And um actually trauma is a response. It's not the activity, that's another conversation. So I went through a lot of uh really intense situations I believe. And we had a debate on the first night of, are people evil or are people good who sometimes do evil things?
And I went back and forth with him because I believe that people are good who sometimes do evil things. And he said that he believes people are good until they do too many evil things and then they become evil. So in his mind, behavior once done enough makes somebody become evil. And I, when I think back on that, I wonder, does he feel the same way about himself? Because it seems like that's a pretty strong world view that he holds and if he has that belief about himself and he does things that hurt people accidentally or even if in retaliation, he hurts somebody. Does he become an evil person? And how does he treat himself if he thinks that he's an evil person because of the things that he did or did not do, man? That's probably frankly why a lot of people commit suicide. They think they're a bad person. Uh, for example, a military guy in the US, his buddy got killed because he made the wrong decision. Now he thinks, oh, I made a bad decision. Therefore, I'm a bad person and I don't deserve to live. What? What? Huh? Why? Because of that one behavior. Therefore, the whole worth gets taint tainted. Rather, it reminds me I was taking an Uber in California once and I got in the car and it was a black American gentleman. Maybe he was 10. He was like in his forties. I was probably in my thirties and we were talking a little bit and he said, yeah, man, I just got out of prison. I think he said I'm a bad guy and I said, no, I think you're a good guy who did a few bad things and he looked at me and his eyes, I think opened like, huh? He blinked hard. Like what? And I wonder if that man has ever heard in his life? Something like that. No, you're a good person who did a few things, a few bad things or basically a few things that hurt other people. Now, do I like the things that you did know? But do I think you're a bad person because of those things? No, I still think you're a good person. Hey, this belief helps me so much because I've done, I'm sure I've done a lot of things in my life that were out of spite or that were unintentional that have hurt people. And if I look at those examples and I go, well, I did these things so I must be a bad person. How do I live with myself? And maybe the answer is a lot of people don't live with themselves. The, we, we drink alcohol, we get really numb on TV shows or we find plenty of other escape mechanisms to not deal with ourselves, to avoid ourselves, to. Yeah, it's, it's this weird kind of self, avoid uh avoidance. Um, or we can't. And then some people commit suicide or, um, or worse, we die of other diseases because we've been suppressing so much of ourselves and we just ignore what's happening with our bodies because we, we demonize certain parts of our bodies or certain parts of ourselves. And. So I just, I wonder how would society be if we started to believe that our worth is not our behaviors.
We can talk about the behavior separately if you don't like how I speak, you don't like how I look. You don't like how I act. It's fine. Let's talk about it because maybe I can change. And if not, then I still don't think it's because you think I'm a bad person or because I think I'm a bad person. It's just that certain behaviors don't align with you. Um And then maybe we can try to coordinate on how to deal with that.
It's just I find conflict resolutions so incredibly difficult with other people and with myself when there is the belief that someone's worth is tied directly to their behaviors.
And so again, I'll say for me, what has helped me so much is believing that I'm a good person, no matter what I do, no matter what I believe, no matter what I say, no matter what I have, and sometimes what I do say, believe have hurts other people. It even hurts myself. And so how can I look at those things without, automatically assuming that I'm bad that there's something rotten or evil within my core because if I can maintain that sense of self worth, a sense of self goodness, I think I also maintain the goodness of other people, you know, that, that core goodness of other people. And then it's a lot easier for me to look at them when they say something or do something that hurts me and not think, oh, they just have this essential e evilness to them. So, anyways at nine minutes, I am going to end this before the, uh, music intro and outro kick it over 10 minutes and I can't go over 10 minutes. So great talking with you. Talk to you tomorrow.
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