Have you ever found yourself not getting everything you want despite being a star student in your youth? This episode is for you. I’m Dara Tomasson, and in episode 149 of “Love Yourself Thin,” I’m delving into how seeking external validation, symbolized by the gold star, influences our personal and professional lives. I’ll explore this concept from a historical perspective and share personal experiences to help you rethink and rewire your thoughts for better outcomes.
In this episode, I aim to shift your mindset from relying on others’ approval to valuing your own. I’ll recount a story from my membership program where a client celebrated an honorable mention at a quilt show, highlighting the shift from seeking first-place validation to appreciating personal effort and growth. I’ll discuss the historical roots of seeking approval and how it impacts us today, especially in the context of menopause and perimenopause. I’ll also draw parallels between the nurturing environment needed for seeds to grow and the positive mental environment needed for personal development.
If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think about hunger, sign up for the lifetime access membership for Love Yourself Thin! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- Understanding the roots of external validation: How the educational and industrial systems shaped our need for approval and how it affects our adult lives.
- Balancing external and self-approval: Practical advice on identifying areas where you seek others’ approval and areas where you need to cultivate self-approval.
- Impact of mental health on physical health: Insights into how addressing mental health issues can improve overall well-being and why it’s crucial to focus on self-compassion and emotional awareness.
Listen to the Full Episode:
- If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think, sign up for the lifetime access membership for Love Yourself Thin! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.
- Leave me a review in Apple
Full Episode Transcript:
149. Weight Loss and The Gold Star
Were you the star student in your classroom and it served you really well as a child. Now you’re finding that you’re not quite getting everything you want, even though you’re a really good student. Well, this episode is for you. My name is Dara Tomasson, and this is love yourself in episode 149. Weight loss and the gold star. Today’s episode is going to be very interesting for you. Kind of take this idea of the golden star. From a historical perspective then your own personal experience.
So always in this podcast, I’m here. My purpose is to help you to think about things that you haven’t thought of before. To really help you learn. You’re thinking those things and then ways to rewire the way you’re thinking in a way that’s going to serve you. That is always my objective, because if you’re stuck, it’s because you keep having the same thoughts and doing the same things.
You get the same results. It’s frustrating because you keep wanting to change the results, but if you don’t know how, then it doesn’t quite work, does it? Before I go into the heart of the episode, I do really want to share with you one of the ripple effects that comes from the work that we do inside my lifetime membership. This one is about quilting. It’s one of my clients and she got a honourable mention in a really big quilt show. The thing that was really amazing about this win was that she was able to enjoy the honorable mention. She didn’t beat herself up that she didn’t get first. The way that it affects everybody else is that people aren’t having to walk on pins and needles because they’re not sure how she’s going to react. She is in charge of herself and her own reactions.
What other people do that’s on them? But it’s such a fun win, and it’s also such a fun win that she has so much courage to put herself out there, be willing to try and to end, you know, some things work and some things don’t, she doesn’t make it mean anything about her worth as a person.
I love it. This podcast episode I really want to encourage you to print off the worksheet or you can, you can do your own version of it. It was going to be really, really helpful for you because it’s going to put you in the driver’s seat of your own life. Now, historically speaking, the reason we started school, we there’s lots of reasons. But one of them actually came from the perspective of a factory worker. As the factory worker, they were noticing that the workers were not as compliant.
They weren’t as obedient and they didn’t do what they were told to do. That doesn’t make very good workers when it comes to doing the same thing over and over again. It’s monotonous and difficult, and it’s a bit of a grind. When they went to school, they really structured and really reinforced that you do this and you get this kind of feedback. Now as I do the work with menopause and perimenopause we have different hormones in our body that are more focused on that kind of response.
There’s wiring inside of us that will reinforce that positive feedback loop. It helps us to stay, to survive in our tribe. If we really feed that connection, then we become more and more dependent on it. I got coaching from Jody Moore and she was at an event and the one of the speakers, he’ll go to communities and he’ll do these forums. They will ask questions focus groups on, what do you think? What you don’t. What they discovered was if they do too much of it. Everyone just kind of, they have these really crazy ideas. That are awful, but then there’s these really, really great ideas that are amazing, but no one wants to do them because everyone kind of just wants to stay in the happy medium. You weed out the good and the bad.
I’m watching a TV show right now with my kids and it was made. From like 1999 to 2004, five. And the clothes are almost the same as what we’re wearing now, just the technology is lacking. We don’t really want to veer too much. From a different, so, because if you watch back to the future and Marty McFly goes back.
I mean, his clothes look very different from the fifties. That’s not really happening that much now, so interesting.
So let’s talk about the golden star. If you look at the worksheet, I have when you are constantly seeking approval of others, rather than your own approval, you will always be at a loss. I’m here to help you learn how to find the balance between the two. I have a, there’s a negative cycle that we keep feeding that keeps having us stay stuck. Doesn’t allow us to really make the changes that we want to make. So. We are, we want to be happy.
That is one of our goals in life is to be. One of our goals in life is to be happy. The problem is we don’t really know how to make our own happiness. When we were little kids. And hopefully little kids are still doing this and they’re not just on their phones all the time. They are playing with imagination and they’re having their own imaginary friends and they’re being creative and playing.
When we go to school, we get different messages about what’s popular. What’s not, what’s acceptable. What’s not good is how people can disapprove of you. We get a really strong message that we need other people to make us happy. We need the teacher to say to us, good job Susie. Then now we, now we are outsourcing our own happiness to what other people say. Which is really scary. The dilemma that we have is let’s say you know, someone says, oh, you’re really beautiful.
Or you’re really talented. Now, if you don’t believe that you’re beautiful.
If you don’t believe that you’re talented. People can say that all day, every day. But if you don’t believe it, it doesn’t, it’s like a tough line. Doesn’t stick, right? Like Velcro. Then the problem is the only way that we can be happy is through our own thoughts. But what is stopping us from believing our own happy thoughts?
I want you to ask yourself that question. All right. I’ve got an analogy here.
So I’m recording this on May the 10th. I went to the store recently and I got a bunch of seeds. I love and I yesterday, I even, we did my garden. I have all these seeds here. They all have instructions.
Now I have those watching my YouTube, I have this trough. I planted these micro greens and there are some seeds that are growing.
Some are still in the process of growing. The reason I bring this up. Is the seeds know who they are. They’re genetically programmed.
It tells us what to expect and how to do it. Now, these seeds know that they’re supposed to grow. They know what they’re, they’re going to become. The problem is we don’t have the right environment. If I noticed that when I was checking on my plants in this little trough here, I don’t have any irrigation. I have this plastic lining and so they were overly saturated. The poor seeds were like, oh man, I’m having a hard time growing because I’m just sitting in a lot of water. I am not getting enough sunshine.
I’m not really able to grow as great. I also have some of the soil that’s not quite as nutrient. I’m not quite getting the nutrients that I need to grow really well. I’m not doing that. In order for my seeds to grow well, not only do I need to follow the instructions on the back of the planting instructions? But I also need to be aware of their needs being met? Are they getting enough sunshine?
Are they getting enough water? Are they getting too much water? This is the same thing for our brain. So if we have a lot of negative feedback, And a lot of fear and a lot of distrust, self distrust. Then we are not going to be able to thrive very well. Now, in the last episode I talked about this concept called the Allostatic load. I don’t even know if I’m saying that correctly.
But this concept is really as interesting as I’ve been. Thinking about it. And it’s spelled a L L O. S T a T I C. Basically it means the wear and tear on our body or the repeated exposure to chronic stress. The author is Dr. Beth Westie’s book on menopause, the female menopause solution. She said we need to look at our history to see how we’re doing.
When I think about the soil that I planted the seeds in, is this soil going to be fertile soil? Does it have a lot of nutrients? I know there’s studies done where cabbage that was grown in the 1950s compared to cabbage grown now doesn’t get nearly as many minerals and nutrients because the soil is not as rich as it once was. I have questions here to ask because when you consider your success.
We need to remember that we all, like we don’t all start. We essentially, we all started at the same starting line of life. I know enough about video games. There was the Mario Bros, I think. And it was the, it was like the original one with the duck hunt. It was funny watching my brothers because they were able to go down the same path and they knew what obstacle was coming up. The more that they played it, the easier it was to that stage. The same thing with us when we realize what the obstacles were? That might be contributing to our belief in ourselves.
Our ability to believe that we can lose weight, that we can solve problems, that we can be trusted, that we can feel good about ourselves. Here are a bunch of questions.
What was your childhood like?
Were you breastfed or bottle fed?
Did your parents use medications to treat illness or did they take a more natural approach?
We’re most of your meals cooked fresh or where they fast food.
What patterns did you notice when it came to nutrition, body image and weight loss
As I’m asking these questions, my mind is immediately going back to remembering a conversation at my grandparents’ house with my aunt complaining about a minute on her lips and my lifetime on the hips. All of these conversations of ‘ enjoy your body now, because once you get old, it’s going to be awful.’
Right? What is coming up for you in your life? I’m going to keep asking questions.
Did you have a positive role model?
Did you have positive role models or were you constantly exposed to diet culture?
As you got older and went to puberty, how were your cycles initially?
Did you go on birth control?
If you’ve had children, how were your pregnancies?
Did you experience any kind of postpartum depression?
How was your recovery from giving birth? How did your hormones recover?
As you’ve moved through life. How has stress impacted you?
Have you gone on any extreme diets?
Have you gone through a divorce?
Has anyone close to you passed away?
All of these things can impact how your life is going to go through this phase of life.
It’s important to understand that any emotional, neurological or physical stressors that the body has gone through will play a role in physical or hormonal shifts. The body goes through.
As we talk about getting your own approval. On the second, I actually made a second sheet for this handout and it, this is a similar activity I did with my students. So what are things that you want others’ approval of? I want approval when I’m planning a family vacation. Or if I like planning something new for the membership. There are certain things that I want feedback on. Approval in those situations.
There are times where legitimately I do want the approval of others.
That makes sense but I want you to be specific on what are the things that I want other people’s approval of. Do I want other people’s approval of my clothes that I wear or my
The kind of vacations I take. Because even in this it’s like, whose approval do you want? Why? Just getting really clear on that. Right now I’m taking an Instagram class and I’m learning all about Instagram and learning how to use the algorithm. The algorithm shows me what reels are more approved than others. Then I can learn oh, this reel or this post or this. Instagram live that I’m doing. It is found more valuable.
People are finding it more helpful, right? Then I can take that feedback and then I can tweak it and see what’s going on. Then I can move forward. But in the second column, what are the things that you want your own approval for?
The way you spend money, the way that you spend your hours of your day, the way you think about yourself, the way you think about other people. The way that you save for retirement. The way that you speed or don’t speed or pay your bills or whatever that is. It’s like you write down what you want for your own approval. Now at the second page here for. The worksheet is something I did with my students and I call it, I use this. System it’s called rubrics. And yeah, I’m just going to put the word rubric so I can, maybe I can.
Yes. So the rubrics say. What equals a top top-notch.
Like what gives you a plus. What would you have to do in your life to deem an A-plus? What would it be? Like the way you talk to yourself The way that you look at yourself. The negative talk all of those things. What would that look like? Would you be You know, having no negative self-talk throughout the day or having negative self-talk five times a day. Or whatever that is.
Then you get to decide what that looks like for you. I’m just going to like doing this while I’m still thinking about it. But then you can decide. It was really interesting when I was a teacher because my students owned it. They owned the marking strategy. You’re the one who said you needed to have you didn’t have to have, it could only have like two spelling mistakes. You could only have had to have all your sentences, like the periods ought to be. In the right spots. Then that way they owned it, they realized what was required to have the kind of results that they wanted.
Yeah, it’s fun.
Isn’t it? It’s fun too. I want to tell you that it’s fun. It’s fun to be able to say, I’m in charge of myself because that is actually the reality you are in charge of yourself. But when you give all your power away to other people, That feels terrible. Right? I don’t think that’s going to work the way I want it to work. I’m going to close this podcast episode right now. This is my closing remark. We are wired to seek the approval of others. There’s a great book called rejection proof. Very fascinating and how we literally are wired to not be rejected. Our body releases feel good hormones when we get rejected. Learning how to get your own approval and knowing what to do when other people don’t approve of you. That is a really helpful skill. And in fact it is a skill that the members in my membership learn.
I have to say that the more you can spend on your brain. The more that you can really look at your own life. You can own it. The more power you have. You don’t have to be afraid of other people. You don’t have to be afraid of what people say. You don’t. You can be cautious, you can be fearful. You can, you can have all the emotions. But they don’t have to stop.
They don’t have to change the way that you show out for yourself. Okay. All right. If you really liked this podcast and it really resonated with you. I’m just telling you. You will love my program so much. We go deep and we go with love and compassion. It’s not as painful as you think it’s going to be, because I can promise you when, you know, you can get it resolved, then you know that the pain that you’re carrying right now, you can, that can be relieved.
So that pressure is off and that’s amazing. What would it take for you to finally say yes to yourself? Yes. To your brain? And what credible benefits that would be. I can’t wait to be your coach and to help you work through all of it. All right. I will see you next week. Bye.
If you find so many tools and gems from the podcast, you wouldn’t even believe what a difference it is in the membership where we go deep into these topics. And for the month of May, we are going to work on how our mental health impacts our physical health. And so if you are struggling with anxiety or depression or any of those mental health issues, I invite you to consider coming and preparing for joining us in Love Yourself Thin, where we’re really going to take a deep dive into that. I can’t wait to see you there. Bye.