Rebuilding Self-Esteem After Heartbreak

In this episode, Lauren discusses why our self-esteem takes a hit after a breakup and what we can do to change our thoughts about it.

Hello, my friend. And welcome back to comeback class. In today’s episode, we are going to be talking about how to rebuild your self-esteem after a breakup, going through a breakup or a more specifically being broken up with can really cause your mind to produce some negative thoughts. And it can really sort of bruise your ego. So what I wanna talk about in this epic, so are some reasons why this happens to us and also some things that we can do to really change our mindset when it comes to how we think about the end of the relationship. Now, I want you to pretend for a second that I am your friend and I am coming to you because I have just been broken up with, by my boyfriend and I’m really upset. And so what I’m telling you is, why am I not good enough?

Something is wrong with me. No one will ever want me. I feel like such a loser. What would you say to her or me? What would you say to me if you were my best friend? And these were the things that I was saying about myself, chances are, you would say, oh my gosh, don’t say that that’s not true. He’s missing out. He, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Right? You would probably say something along those lines. So my question for you is when you get broken up with, or when, and you have been broken up with, what are the things that you are telling yourself? Does it sound like any of those? Now, if you’ve said things like this in the past, I want you to know it’s okay. That’s totally normal. I am very sure that I have said these things or I have had these thoughts myself.

So I totally get it. And the reason for this is that when someone breaks up with you or chooses to end their relationship with you, it can really affect your self-esteem. But there’s a reason that it’s affecting your self self-esteem. And the reason is because you are making the situation about you, right? So instead of doing that, what I would suggest that you try is to just look at the situation as pure, simple, straightforward facts. Right? So what I used to say, when, when I was broken up with, at one point, was this person left me, this person abandoned me. Right? And now, even though that’s the way I felt that wasn’t factual, what was factual was that that person chose to end their relationship with me. I was adding in all of these extra words that weren’t even really necessary, right? So the, that person chose to end their relationship with me.

That’s it, that’s the story. Then what we tend to do is we tend to add to the story and we might say things like, oh, well maybe I wasn’t pretty enough for them, or I wasn’t smart enough, or I wasn’t funny enough, or I wasn’t cool enough. Or they didn’t like me as much as they like. So, and so stuff like that, we tend to just add little things, things here and there to the story that most likely are not even true. So what I want to suggest to you is that when you think about your breakup and you think about the situation that you’re in to think about it as simply factual and do not make it mean something about you, someone choosing to not be in a relationship with you does not necessarily mean something about you. They may not wanna be in a relationship with you for reasons that have nothing at all to do with you, but when you, they, and say things that make it about you, that is when you suffer.

And there’s a quote that you probably heard somewhere before. And I, and I don’t even know who said it. So I apologize. But there is a quote somewhere that says pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, right? So pain is something that we are pretty much guaranteed to experience at some point in our lives. But it’s really our thoughts about it that determine whether or not we suffer. So I do want to, you know, that you have an option, you can choose to feel pain, but also not suffer instead of immediately defaulting into thinking about all the things that are wrong with you. What I want you to do is to think about all of the things that are great about you and all of things that you love about yourself. I, it kind of sounds silly, but it’s actually, it, it shouldn’t, it really shouldn’t.

You really should be very aware of the person that you are and the good qualities that you possess. And it’s funny because I know there are some people who might think, well, that’s concede, did you know, I don’t wanna go around, you know, thinking that I’m, that I’m awesome. And you know, people are gonna think that I’m full of myself. I think there are a lot more people in the world who have issues with low self-esteem, as opposed to people that have too much self confidence, right? We are very, very quick to be judgemental towards ourselves, but we are a little bit slower to acknowledge the good, amazing things about ourselves. And it’s kind of sad. I feel like that’s, that’s something that should change. I want you to be able to get to a point where if you are dating somebody or talking to someone or whatever, and they decide that they don’t wanna be in a relationship with you, that you can just say to yourself, huh.

All right. Well, I wasn’t expecting that. And that kind of sucks, but you know, that’s okay. I’m okay with that. And it kind of, it sucks actually more for them because I’m awesome. Right? I want you to hold your head up high and be able to tell yourself I am the. And it sounds stupid. It sounds silly. But once you start, you know, using these affirmations and saying these things to yourself, you’re going to start acting as if it’s true, which it is, you are awesome. Once you know that you’re awesome. Then you’ll only accept positive, good, awesome energy. You won’t accept anything less than that, right? You won’t even bother entertaining anything less than that. Sometimes people think that they’ll have increased self-esteem if they look better, if they lose some weight or they, I don’t know, have plastic surgery or something like that, they think that their self is steam and their self confidence will improve.

And that may be true. But the better way to build your self esteem is to do it from the inside to do it from the current state of being where you are right now. Now I want you to be able to say, I love myself just the way I am. I know that I’m a good person. I’m kind, I’m smart. I’m generous. I’m funny. And really believe it really, really believe it. I want you to be so confident in who you are, that if someone does not recognize and appreciate you for exactly who you are and they don’t see your worth, you’re gonna notice that right away. And you’re gonna say, mm, you know what? I’m good. I’m gonna pass on that because we don’t have time for that. We only have time for people that know our worth and know our value, but you cannot expect other people to know your worth and know your value. If you don’t believe me, when I say that you are going to see receive what you project. So if you are projecting a very high value, a very high self worth, then you are going to receive somebody who not only recognizes that about you, but also has their own.

Also recognizes their own value and their own self worth. And that’s what you want. Ultimately, as you want two people who are whole on their own, who recognize their value and their worth, that can come together and really be a dynamic team. One of the things that I like to teach and to encourage my students to recognize is that have a choice in almost all situations. So even when it comes to building self-esteem whether you already have decent self-esteem or you have no self-esteem or low self-esteem, you can choose, you can choose to have high self-esteem. You can just decide that you are going to love yourself exactly as you are, and be confident in the person that you are, you don’t need, you don’t need any formal training or anything like that. You can just decide, even if you, even, if you don’t necessarily believe it in the beginning, it’s something that you can consistently tell yourself every single day.

And as time goes on, it will get easier. So you can look, look at yourself in the mirror and say, I love myself. I’m a good person. I have high self-esteem. And I’m telling you, I know it sounds silly, but if you don’t believe in yourself, then nobody else is going to you are the one person that you are going to spend the rest of your life with, right? Even if you get married and have a long, wonderful marriage, you are still your most important relationship. The relationship that you have with yourself is the most important one you will ever have. So you need to nurture it and take care of it. Stop saying bad about yourself when it’s probably not even true. And anyway, saying those things and believing those things about yourself are, is, is not going to serve you. It’s not.

And I know if you have been in this pattern for a long time, it may be really, really hard for you to try to change your thoughts in this area, but it, it is possible. It is possible. And then once you do that, you will change your life. Changing the way that you think, especially when you’ve had the same patterns of thinking for a long time can be difficult and it can take work. But I promise you, it is so, so worth it. Once you are able to really get better control of your thoughts and your feelings, you will start making better decisions for yourself and your life will begin to change drastically. And when it comes to dating people with high self-esteem are attractive, right? Like we’re attracted to people who are confident. So when you are confident in yourself and you feel good about you yourself, and you know your value and you know your worth, you’re going to attract higher quality people. When you don’t have high self-esteem and you don’t recognize your value and your self worth, and you think bad thoughts about yourself, and you say bad things about yourself, you are gonna have low standards. And that’s because you think whether consciously or subconsciously that that’s what you,

So I want you, I really wanna encourage you to change these thought patterns, to do what you need to do to build up that self-esteem to say good things about yourself, To believe that you are the To carry yourself with confidence. Even if you don’t always feel it, fake it till you make it. I’m a firm believer in that. Now, are you gonna feel a hundred percent on your game all the time with this? No, of course not. Nobody is. We all have days where we don’t feel good about our ourselves. We have a bad body image day. We just, we just don’t feel good. We just don’t feel good about ourselves. That’s that’s totally normal. But what I’m saying is you do not have to get stuck there.

You do not have to get stuck in that place of negativity. You can pull yourself out of it. You can have your, your day or your few hours, even you’re weak if you want to, but then you’re gonna pull yourself out of it because the truth is that you are amazing and that there is no one on this earth. Just like you, you are the only you that there is. So start realizing that and start appreciating it. Do not let rejection or the fact that someone does not wanna be in a relationship with you, determine your self worth. It’s just silly. And the thing to remember is if someone doesn’t see you the way you see you, and they don’t recognize you for all of the wonderful things that you are, then they’re not the person for you. And that’s okay. Not everybody’s going to be your person. It’s it’s person, not people, right? You’re looking for one person that is going to be your person that is going to compliment you in the best way. And that means that you are likely going to encounter several other people and date several other people that are not gonna be your person. That’s what the whole, that’s what the whole dating thing is about and relationships. And, and some, sometimes even marriage.

Sometimes we have to have a few failures in our relationship so that we can have our one giant success. So I don’t want you to get discouraged. If you feel like you keep getting broken up with, or you keep having, getting into relationships and then they fall flat. I don’t want you to think that number one, that means anything about you. And number two, that you’re not gonna find the person that you’re supposed to be with. You should be happy. You should be thankful. Oh, well, glad we got this out of the way, because now I can, can get going and, and find my person. You know, that’s, that’s the way that I have learned to look at things now. And I feel like it has been so incredibly helpful. It just, it just lets you release all of that stress and that feeling of inadequacy.

You know, you can just say to yourself, huh? All right. Well, I wasn’t really expecting that, but it’s okay. They weren’t my person. Anyway, moving on. Thank you next. You know, so if you have been burned in the past or burned recently, and you feel like your self-esteem has really taken a hit, I want you to really just work on your thoughts and dust yourself off and get back out there. You know, you are not going to find what you are looking for. If you are not taking action. So you have to take action. Thank you so much for joining me in this episode of comeback class. If you found this information helpful, please go ahead and hit the subscribe button so that you can get notified every time a new episode comes out. And if you feel so inclined, go ahead and leave me a review as well. I’m so, so glad that you have joined me today and I cannot wait to see you in the next episode.