Owning Your Worth

00:00:04 Speaker 1: Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio. Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Comeback Stories. I'm one and half of your co hosts, Darren Waller here with my man, my brother, mister Donnie Starkins. Donnie, how are we doing today? I'm doing well. I'm excited for what we're going to dive into today. Oh yeah, this is big, you know, for anybody that's new, We've been as our show has been unfolding. We've been chugging along now for a couple of years. We Comeback Stories was built on, you know, stories being told about people overcoming adversity, overcoming the challenges in their lives and the perspectives taken from that. And that's still a huge part of our show, right but we feel like the meaning of comeback has evolved in a way. In one of those evolutions of comeback is returning back to our true, real, authentic selves, coming back home to our centers and who we really are. And so the title of today's episode, we're gonna call coming back from a life of self abandonment. And so, Donnie, I want to ask you first, when you hear that title, when you hear coming back from self abandonment. What comes to your mind? Is it your own experience is talk to me bro oh man, it's like, it's my whole life. The recognition of it happening in my whole life and now, you know, most of my life not having the awareness of it, but now having the awareness of it doesn't always make it easier. Like when you wake up to some of this stuff, it's it's really hard work. And as you're saying this, like you know, in this topic, like it's all in relationships, right, and for me it's people pleasing and caring what other people think. And this is like again we've talked about the enneagram and I'm an achiever on the Enneagram, and achievers can achieve a lot of things, but from an ego, false self, it's it's it's not healthy, right, You're you're trying, You're I care what other people think. And so to watch that still unfolding relationships to this day, it's like, well, I guess I'll just be working on this my whole life, Like that's what I've surrendered to. Yeah, no doubt, man, As you say that, I watched on Prime Video last night. If anyone doesn't know who ram Das is. You guys should definitely go check him out. He's a spiritual teacher, one of the most amazing that we've seen. But he had They made a documentary. It was called Becoming Nobody, and uh, you know one of the beginning parts you talked about when he was born, and he painted this picture of like when we come into Earth and we're born as human beings, we're like aliens and we come to this new foreign place and we're like putting on our spacesuit and as we learn to walk and you know, grab things and all these simple motor skills, we're being brought up in this world that values our spacesuit and it's like, oh, and he's a top paints his analogy like, oh man, all we want to do is how people tell us how nice our space suit is and that that did it so much for me because you know, in this world, I feel like we're taught to value the physical. We're taught to value the external more than we are our internal. And so we begin since young kids that you know, what we should value the most is our acceptance by the world. We should value results and outcomes more so than we should just the process of growing as a human being. You know, doing is taught to us more so than being is. And I mean I can think of how early it was for me when self abandoning began, and for anybody that's like, what is self abandonment exactly? I see the definition as things that are me, things that I love about myself. I sacrifice those because I feel like I should be what the world wants me to be. I should be what's normal. I should be what's accepted. And anytime that we choose to do that, you know, we're shutting off who we really are and who the world deserves us authentically as we are. And I remember doing that as early as elementary school. Like I've talked about on the show numerous times, like the wound of not being black enough. So that's like, okay, like me, as I am, as just this black kid who may be different than everybody else, how do I push whatever's me to the side so I could be more like them? And it shows up all over the place. I mean, we can go through my whole story all day, but just going back to where it began and where I knew that I was making the choice to abandon myself but didn't know the repercussions of it. Man. I mean, I'm just thinking about both of our journeys, right, and just thinking about my path when you talk about these things, for me the most, I think, so the self abandonment for me is it's like conflict aversion, Like I struggle with conflict, and so it plays out in self abandonment and just like carrying what other people think, right and and and a lot of times it's the people that we love the most. So then what that turns into, like we start to live with these code dependent perfectionists, people pleasing thoughts and habits. Where we define being codependent think is like chronically our self worth is about external things like you're talking about, right, And it's it's we have to find we have to come back to our truth. And that's why these these tests, these personality tests, and I was so blown away by the Enneagram test as it identified me as an achiever was my main one, and then peacemaker was my second one. But it so much of it for me again was conflict aversion and avoiding those things to keep the peace because I didn't want to deal. And how does that show up still to this day? Avoiding hard conversations. And I tell people and I and this is my work and I'm and I'm leaning into it and I've had a lot of them lately. And Robin Sharma says, the conversation you least want to have is the one you need to have next. And man, it's a practice, even even conversations around money. Right. A lot of my coaching that I've got coached on is my energy around money. And it's just like breaking dysfunction, right because our parents weren't given these tools and these resources that we have today. So yeah, man, I'm I'm so glad. I love these. I guess you call them solo episodes where we don't have a guest because you know, Darren and I just kind of flow. We don't have a plan or a format. We have guests we want to see and if it aligns, it aligns. But there's so much that we can dive into. And honestly, for me, this is like it's just selfish because it's super it's healing for me. And I've shared it before, like, deep meaningful relationships is a strong core value of mine and the only way you can really have those is having deep, meaningful conversations, and so any chance that I'm going to get like, you know, a window with you with your like crazy schedule, dude, I'm just like, let's let's drop in. We don't need a guest, right man. This the flow of this is so natural because I mean, it's our own stories, it's our own experiences, and I'm just like you, I fear conflict as well. And it's like, why do we fear conflict? It's because when conflict takes place, I fear that it's gonna I'm going to be found out for being a fraud or like prof it being proven that I'm not worthy of love. I'm not worthy of the good things in my life. I'm not worthy of what God is blessing me with. So by all means, I'm looking to avoid conflict and you know, keep the peace, save face in order to so, okay, these things are going well externally. That means I'm good internally as opposed to showing up, okay, showing up more than enough. And but we don't we don't learn that. You know, through through self abandoning, you can start to feel like for me in high school, it was like I started to self abandoned as far as looking for love and just being desperate for attention and approval. The self abandoning started to work. The self abandoning started to look like me being around cooler people. The self abandoning looked like me going all in on athletics as my identity and starting to see things pay off for me. And that's like a lot of people, you know, we can that carried on to when I was in the league. I mean there's you look at people that have had fifty million in the bank and you know, blow their brains out, you know what I'm saying. So it's we look at things like that. It's like, how is that even possible. It's because along the way, I made choices that pushed who I was, what I loved to decide in order for the dream that I've been sold by the world, by society, by my parents, by my friends. And if we continue to make those choices and build our lives on self abandonment without conscious awareness, we're gonna end up in this place where it's like, man, I thought this was gonna feel better. I thought this money was gonna make all my problems go away. I thought being with this person or having the hottest Chicken school or whatever it was gonna make me feel like the man when if you look back at all the choices that you made, it was, you know, at the expense of yourself, you know, over extending yourself in ways that doesn't allow you to approach life from a place of balance and from a place of loving yourself first. And these are things that I'm realizing in real time, you know, the struggles that come in my marriage, struggles that come in you know, in the workplace and wherever you know, at the root of it, there's usually always some level of self abandonment and the resentment and the bitterness that comes from abandoning myself. Man, what you're saying is so relatable and so much more profound for me personally than somebody dropping some knowledge or research like that's I feel that so hard. And I'm thinking back to me as this like brilliant, amazing kid who starts to try to do everything to prove my significance, to prove that, like you know, you know, excuse me, that I that I matter right, And this is how this is how I felt safe. It was getting validation through external things. And what happens is so we practice that our whole lives. And here we are as adults with these these deep, deep rooted patterns, you know, deep neural pathways with grooves in them that are really hard to get out of. But Darren and I are doing this podcast so that we can shine the light of awareness onto things like share our shit and the things we're going through. Like what you just said, I'm like, man, this is what I need to hear every day, Like this is the medicine, And you know, it excites me to see how you can just so naturally drop in and talk about this and you know, you'll never really truly know how many people you're helping, and like it's very clear to me that you're just getting started, you know. Yeah, man, sometimes I feel like I'm just learning how to walk again, you know. And for anybody that may be starting to feel like you relate to this idea of self abandonment, I encourage you not to shame yourself because I align with it, like totally completely, you know, since I was five years old, and it's not a problem. There's nothing wrong with you to feel like you identify with this. This is you know something that like I said that we're taught, and we're not taught how to love ourselves in school. We're not taught emotional intelligence in school, we're not taught self care practices. So these are things that we're all learning and that's just going to make our lives better. That's going to make us more whole human beings and come to the table in our relationships, in our workplaces, in our friendships as the person that we want to show up as as the people that we've been waiting on. And So if you're looking for, like, what are some relatable, you know, things that you can be aware of that would be a sign of self abandonment, I would start with low self esteem is one where you feel like you're not good enough. It may be poor boundaries, You don't feel like you can say no to people. You feel like you always have to say yes to get that thumbs up from somebody else. You may feel dependent on somebody else for your own worth and your own value. And a couple for me that really stand out are fear of rejection and abandonment, and then as well as fear of intimacy. And on the fear of intimacy, it's almost like you know, I crave deep intimacy. But at the same time, I want to push it away. You know, I'm dying for it. At the same time, I'm so afraid of it and afraid of messing it up that I continue to find ways to push it away. And I'm so afraid of that potential judgment, rejection, and just being left exiled by myself. And it's just so heavy. But I hope that these things will allow you to begin this practice of awareness in your life and see how these things are showing up. Because when you start to see these things as they arise in the moment, that's the growth. That's when you're winning. That's when you're starting to see the change. Because until we're aware of these things and how that self abandonment shows up in our lives, it's tough for us to get some momentum going. It's tough to get the tires out of the mud. And we want to see you guys back on the road, back on the path of really flourishing and thriving in your lives. Yeah, And if you've been following our show and listening to all of our guests, I mean every guest just drops some nugget that I hold on to and then I pass along and then people are like, oh, that's so profound. I'm like, it's not mine, Like nothing's mine, there's no original thought anyways. You know, I just might put my own little spin on it. But so many just legends as far as like wisdom that I've learned in our podcast, a lot of mine, when you're talking about this, comes down to, you know, sitting with our friend Don Bergeron who leads plant medicine ceremonies, and ultimately getting to this place which I could never get to before. So the reason that I did this was to gain more spirituality and to get closer to God. And he had asked me the question, he said, do you believe that you are worthy of love? And I said yes? And he's do you believe that you are love? And I said yes, and I truly felt it in that moment. And then we were talking about a certain situation that I was like, really not surrendering the outcome, and he just basically said, if it's not going to be this, it's going to be something better because you're worthy of it. And so you if you know that you're worthy of it, you don't have to sacrifice for anybody or anything, and anybody that comes into your life and sees that, like, if you're seen from that place, you know you're going to attract the right people. So I just think this self abandonment cycle, it gets activated off like years of pent up feelings of not feeling seen or appreciated, which might be total bullshit, but we've been telling ourselves that story, and so then they come they start to come out sideways in our adult relationships. And I will tell this story and I'm not afraid, like I have. A person asked me at my retreat. They said, Donnie, do you like handle your situation when you get in a conflict with a partner or a parent or a family member? Do you just like talk the way you're talking now? And you know, it's just it's it's funny, because no, I don't. Sometimes I turn into a five year old kid, and that's literally what's happening, you know. So it's understanding that and making sure that it doesn't start to come out as resentment or irritability or we're annoyed. Right, It's kind of like this little bullshit protest behavior I think they call it, you know, trying to make the other person feel guilty or blaming them, you know, or shaming them if we're not happy, so we're not feeling fully seen, right and then so we prochecked it out. The bottom line is like it's all about figuring it out and knowing that we're the only person that can give us this, nobody else. And if you keep trying, even though if you know that truth, if you keep trying the other way, like you're the only one that can give you whatever you're looking for. So like whatever you got to do to surrender to that and do the work to trust that and find what ever God that you believe in that's going to get you to that place. Man, you get that had nail on the head on so many things right there. I mean, you talk about we're the only ones that can give us what we're looking for. We can go to the ends of the earth searching for things thinking that they can give us what we're looking for. You know, money, romance, success, like whatever the metric may be, it's all in empty longing. And you know what you also said that I think is so profound is that feeling like you need to sacrifice yourself who you are. And that's a reality for me, and I feel like for a lot of people that are listening, like I felt like I had no choice but to sacrifice myself or else I would just be alone my whole life. I would nobody would want anything to do with me. Women wouldn't want me, nobody would think I was cool enough to just hang around and kick it with. I felt like I had no choice as that little kid, when really today, I feel like the ultimate goal is to find a balance between standing in my truth, knowing who I am, not sacrificing my needs, my wants, what makes me feel alive, while at the same time not going extreme with like not wanting to please people at all. Like it's the balance between being who I am, being authentically myself while also wanting desiring to impact people in a positive way but not just one or the other, not not impacting people at the expense of myself, and not being so fixated in the truth that I just use the truth as a weapon on people. You know. It's that balance, and it's such a tough place to get. I don't think we ever fully get there or just arrived to that point and it's like all right, like I'm here, I'm enlightened. I've got this thing figured out. It's always work, it's always constant awareness, it's always you know, being anchored in our practices because the minute I'm not aware, the minute I'm not conscious of of my desire to sacrifice in order to feel okay, I'm gonna be right back in the pattern. And that over self sacrificing was such a part of my reality for so long that you get to a point where you don't even you're not even able to tell that you know, the difference between the self sacrificing version of yourself and the person you really are, Like I would just sacrifice and think that that was me and not even challenge it and not even question it. So, yeah, we just want to offer an extent compassion and love to all you guys as we go about this, and we talk about this because it's real in our lives and we know to some extent it's real in you guys as well. But there is a solution, There is a way. There's a way, and you can't do it alone. And if you are kind of feeling like you're doing it alone, there are so many recent if you can't afford a coach or a therapist. First, I would ask, like if that's really true, and where you're spending your money and where you're placing your value, because I mean, when shit gets bad enough, you'll pay for a therapist if you need it, you know, But we want to be proactive on that. But I think it's it's just you know, I think it's a lot of shining the light of awareness because if if all of these things we're talking about, like if you don't realize that you're actually angry at yourself and actually these these broken down systems that actually taught you to behave this way, you know, for for actually overgiving this is like ownership. You know, Darren, we talk about this all the time, and you're listening right now, and you might have you might be going through some shit, like a lot of shit, like maybe you feel like nobody's ever experienced the level of whatever pain and trauma you're going through and and just understanding that, like there we are talking about this to to to bankrupt that story. And the reason we're doing this, the reason Darren and I are talking right now is because of pain. It's because of of but it's also these broken down systems that we had and it's why we talked so much about a lot of this work. When you can shift to like undoing and unlearning and letting go and not acquiring, it's just it's just freeing ourselves from all of this stuff. It's like in the Four Agreements of really, you know, we agree upon these certain things when we were younger, and it's so outdated these days, right, So we have to we have to get clear and write our own tenants for our life today. Otherwise you're just like you're living a life that I don't know whose story might it might be. It might be one of your parents, it might be one your third grade boyfriend who said you weren't pretty and you ran with it and have been telling yourself you're not enough since. But I think I just want to come back to being balanced and compassion but also like take ownership of your life. I'm telling you, when you stop blaming everybody else, even if somebody really did some damage to you, to be able to see it as an opportunityy to heal and maybe help others through it or find a way. Because you know that person who hurts you, they're not thinking about you every day the way you're thinking about them. So free yourself from that. Do yourself a favor, and you know there's ways that you can do that you can get on the internet, and there's amazing stuff I was thinking about early on as a coach, even this exercise like what we talked about today, right like I didn't I kind of wanted to learn a little bit more about it. I know I do it, like that's obvious, but I don't have like a specific coaching exercise, and so it was fun to kind of dive in and understand this. I did this early as a coach, where like maybe when I first started, somebody talked about boundaries and I'm like, oh, like we'll get that next Well, let's dive into that next session. And then I wasn't really prepared with a session or felt like I had the knowledge to teach it. But then I would dive in and just re like go on the first page of Google and you won't get past the first page of just like amazing content. So my point is is like you might be making some excuse, but the resources are there. You just have to be willing to take a little action. Hm. That's always the answer. And I don't know if you're like me, But I've always wanted a path that didn't take action, to where the answer could fall right into my lap without me having to do anything or stand up to anything, or deal with any type of conflict or conversation. So that's a real thing. And uh, something that you just said that I loved. I'm reading Michael Gervais's book Shout Out to to Doughter g Yeah, and it's talking to the theme of the book is, uh, you know, stop worrying about what other people are thinking of you and the idea of FOPO. And he has this section in the book talking about the spotlight effect and how like we as people, we shine the spotlight on ourselves and we think other people are judging us so hard and strictly in way that we're judging ourselves, when really these people are so caught up in how they look, how they feel, what they're afraid of, how they're going to get through their day, how they're going to perform at their job. And there's to the extent that we think people are thinking about us, they are it's not even close like they're thinking about themselves and how they're they're just going to get by how they feel like they're self abandoning, you know. So it's this idea of it's not about showing up for them, it's not about doing anything for somebody else, it's doing it for ourselves. And what I've learned is the people in my life, the people that love me unconditionally, they want the real me. They want my truest self, whether it's it isn't the greatest thing in the world to hear or it's the most amazing feeling in the world to hear, but showing up as our truer selves, that's what people are from us, and that's what ultimately we want from ourselves desperately, you know, all the time to commandon we're you know, giving our power away, giving our peace away. And that thing that we feel inside that just doesn't feel right, that's our spirit yelling out like, hey, like this this ain't it? Like Like when are you going to start to do things for us in here? When you're gonna start to do things for your inner child that that younger version of you that's so desperately just wanted to show up and say this is me. But you know, things happened and it's it's okay. That those things happen. And it's okay that you feel the way that you feel today, but we cannot stay here, like Donnie said, we have to take action that we cannot choose to stay here or a time will come where we're approaching our last breath and we'll look back on our lives and uh and there might be a regretted to And by no means do we want that to happen. We want to. We want to be able to just come back to who we are. Dude, so much there I feel like when we get caught in this self abandonment cycle, we don't realize. Like everything you're saying is that we're blocking ourselves from receiving love, care and kindness and support and all of these things, not only from ourselves but from everybody else. It's so whether you know a lot about the subconscious and conscious mind, you can just even google that and understand the difference and understand that if you can't get a grip on the subconscious mind, So just really basic, your subconscious mind, they say these days it hijacks ninety percent of your life. So so it's when you're in your mind, you're thinking, you're you're not in your body. That is where the subconscious is. And they say that that is formed from ages zero to seven, So it's conditioning. It's things that like you don't even remember that are happening that have hijacked your whole life. I don't remember a lot from those ages, but that's what's running the show. So you have to take a step back and understand what is all this old narrative and these old stories, and then how what are the practices? What do I need to do to first get willing to dig it out and do whatever it takes to like free yourself from it? And then I think that's like our purpose, right if you really want to simplify your life, just free yourself. So when you say free yourself, that may seem overwhelming to somebody that's listening right now, Like you, what would you give as like the first step, like a practical thing that somebody can start tonight before they go to bed or when they wake up in the morning, like to be on that track to freeing themselves, to be on that track to coming back to their truest, most authentic self. Like what's a just something that somebody can just take that first step forward? Well, as you were asking that, what I did was I took a deep breath, and for me, that is like what brings me back into my body. And you might say, okay, so just take a deep breath. Well start there. If that's as intimate as you are with your breath, is you'll take one deep breath a day. But I'm telling you, at some point you're going to understand that like when you can grab a hold of your breath and you have practices, whether it's you know, because you can control your breath. And that's why I love teaching yoga and kind of dancing with the breath where you can connect the breath and the mind and body together as one, you know, so it becomes like this dance. But yeah, I mean I could go on. There's there's something I want to circle back to because I don't want to lose it. You talked about carrying what other people think, the fact that Michael gervea a human performance like guru, that he would write his book and take time focusing because he works with so many athletes. Carrying what other people think is like and he was the one that said carrying what other people think is the modern days saber tooth Tiger. So shout out to Michael Jerma. He said he'd come back on, So we'll get him back on to promote the book and talk about it. And I mean, this is what we're talking about. So much of it comes rooted in carrying what other people think, no doubt, and I feel like adding to what you just said, the best way to begin on this journey of no longer choosing to self abandon is looking directly at your self care practices, like the smallest things of your day, like when you wake up, Like what are you doing that is catered towards your well being, towards your peace, towards you know, how you want to live your life that day? And that fuck it starts with some type of meditation practice, some type of breathing practice to center yourself. What about journaling are you finding a way to if it's not journaling, just a way to express what you're thinking, what you're feeling in the course of a day, Like what you're proud of yourself for situations that you wish you could have responded to better? Like what are the ways in which we're getting those things out? Things as simple as hydrating choosing to keep yourself hydrated is a way to fuel your body and is an act of self care. Is an act of saying I am valuable, I'm worth it, so I'm going to take care of everything that is me. Another thing is, even if it's for five to ten minutes today, are you taking the chance to do something that you enjoy, to allow yourself to be in a playful state, to allow you to be excited about what you're doing and just take a break and smile and laugh and dance whatever it may be, Like, how are you structuring that into your day? And at the end of the day, I don't think we can outrun sleep ever, So it's just like simple things that we can start to implement in our day that we don't even know are subconsciously reinforcing the fact that I value myself. I'm gonna do the necessary things to show up and to allow myself to function in my highest vibration. And like Donnie says, the non negotiables and keeping the promises that you make to yourself, those things go a long way, those subtle messages, because then those start to translate into relationships where it's like I'm making the choices to value myself, because then once I can start to see the reality of when I start to value myself, I am then able to pour into somebody else. You know, if my cup isn't full, how I'm gonna be pouring nothing into somebody else, like literally nothing, And you know, and then we could possibly get to the point where, you know, I fill my cup up so much that somebody may come up and need to drink themselves and I'm able to give that to them because I've poured so much into myself and having myself to be in a position where it's healthy for me to give I found myself in so many situations relationships work where I pour so much into other people. You know, you look back at the cup, there's nothing for me there, and that's not the way that we want to live. And so I went pretty far down the road as far as explaining what self care could lead to and lay the foundation for. But to get back just to the practicality of it, and the basics is the choices that you make in your day and the things that you do to add value to yourself, to fuel yourself to choose a greater wellbeing for yourself. Those things go such a long way in the direction that you're trying to go. Yeah, I would just add I mean, you nailed it all. There's a couple questions for all the people pleasers out there, like myself asking that question, like is there perfection is in people pleasing or codependent thinking at the root of this act of giving that I'm doing, Like, that's a big one, Like what's my intention? Am I saying I love you to hear I love you back? Or am I saying I love you because my heart is feeling it? Like? What is your intention? And then the other one is like am I giving with the desire of trying to get someone else to think or feel a certain way about me? You know? It's like those that's all I did my whole life, my whole life growing up as a kid. It was just like so I was so concerned and so you know, as I say that as we wrap up this episode, this is deep conditioning, so meaning we have to be patient, we have to be compassionate. This is deep rooted. There's nothing wrong with you, it's just a pattern of thinking and you're feeling something maybe anxious, afraid. That's information that there's change that needs to happen. All of this we're feeling is it's to activate change. And I think a lot of times even in self abandonment, right, won't we want to keep the peace, will stay in the relationship, or will avoid the hard conversation. But meanwhile, like I'm having the conversation in my head twenty times a day, so I think it's just getting clear. And you know, daring the way that you articulated things, and I just want to acknowledge you for your your vulnerability and the way that you flow and man, the way that we flow. I mean, I know we could talk about this all day long, and I know people are listening that are that are relating to this, and that's all we wanted to do is just to relate to y'all. So we appreciate you staying consistent with us. And it's a big deal to leave reviews on the podcast, and even you know, a five star review or comments or whatever is going to help us get this out to more people. That's all we care about. And yeah, that's why we drop. In no doubt, man, I feel like you have left people with a lot to take away and as you go on this journey, as we close. I hope that you don't think that you have to be perfect in this process, or that you have to be free of mistakes. You know, I've always felt most of my life and I'm one mistake away from being a band and then being rejected, being fired. And that's no way to live. Because at the end of the day, we're human and we're going to make mistakes. We're going to drop the ball, we're going to miss the mark. But it's about showing up and valuing ourselves enough to the point where even when I do make that mistake, even when I do drop the ball, even when I do miss the mark, I'm still worthy of love. I'm still me, I'm still okay, I'm still enough, And that's the ultimate goal. And we just want you guys to know that where wish you every step the way when you get there, however long it takes, and past that and beyond and even as you live your life past that point, because we need each other and we need you guys, So thank you for tuning in. We appreciate you, and we'll see you guys next week. Peace Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.