How self-respect changes everything
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Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Date Yourself Instead, and also welcome to the video side of Date Yourself Instead. I've been putting off video literally for forever because I'm lazy as fuck and I don't like editing videos. Long-form videos to me scare me. I know I could technically maybe hire someone to help me with that, but...

I just like being hands-on and doing most things myself because I like knowing what I'm creating and knowing how it's resonating with people. I don't know. I'm very picky with how I edit things. So when it comes to long form video, I was always freaking out because I was like, how am I going to have time for this? How am I going to edit this? I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like YouTube. YouTube scares me. But then

I don't know, something kind of shifted in me over the last couple days because I was watching a video podcast and I realized that video adds a really personal special component to everything because you're face to face with someone almost. You see their face, you see their expressions, you could read their body language and you kind of get to know them on

such a deeper more personal level and I feel like yeah audio is amazing for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for the last five months I'm sure it's been great I feel like very connected to my audience and all that stuff but the video just adds a really special aspect to it and I woke up this morning I got my coffee I went to the gym and I was like maybe I should just try it

Let's just see what happens. Stop fucking procrastinating and let's just see what happens. And if people really respond well to it, they really like it, just maybe it'll motivate you to keep going and continue doing it. It's like, I guess I have nothing to lose, right? So here I am. I set up all these pillows around me to make a little makeshift podcast studio because I

The ceilings in this apartment are very high, so there's a lot of echo. Like, a ton of echo. And it sounds almost like I'm in a cave in the middle of the wilderness when I record episodes in here. So I took all my bed pillows. I took, like...

All these couch pillows and I made a little soundproof studio for myself. Hopefully it works. Maybe this is going to sound like total shit. Who knows? I don't know. But here we are and I'm excited to talk about today's episode, which is assertiveness and also learning how to respect yourself.

Now, I've struggled with learning how to respect myself for my entire life. For some reason, whenever it came time to stand up for myself or stand up for what I believe in or defend my values,

I always felt stuck. I always felt like I couldn't actually get to the point where I was really making a point to other people. And I couldn't really stand for what I truly believed in because I was always catering to everyone else because I wanted people to like me and I wanted everyone to respect me. But the irony of that is by not actually honoring who I am and taking a stand for what I believe in,

and trying to go along with what everyone I what I thought everyone else wanted me to be it ended up making me less respected and it ended up making me feel like I had no true friends and I had no one to turn to and I just kind of felt like people didn't really value me the way I wanted them to value me I wanted to be that girl

that when I walk into a room, it lights up and everyone wants to talk to me and everyone wants to be around me because I wanted to give those good and friendly vibes off to everyone because I felt like that person deep down. I felt like I really wanted a group of friends and I really wanted to be well-liked because I do think that I'm a nice person and I do think that I have a lot to give and I have a big heart.

But I always found myself in situations where I would be in social settings and I felt like I was not valued or well respected at all. I felt like I was just a fly on the wall in a way, watching everyone around me have a good time. And I was just standing in the middle of chaos and I felt really excluded and left out. And I felt like I couldn't connect with other people the way that I really wanted to.

I wanted to feel magnetic and I think I was just trying to mold myself into someone that I really wasn't at all times throughout my teenage years and into my adulthood that I forgot what I really stood for and I forgot what I really was about. I didn't really have a good sense of identity.

I didn't really have my own opinions the way that I wanted to because I was constantly catering to everyone else's point of views and I was constantly trying to mold myself and shape myself into this person that I thought everyone else wanted me to be. Which is how you lose your power and which is how you lose respect because you're not really...

doing what's best for you and people feel that people sense that because everything is energy and everything is connected and people can sense if you don't really have a high value for your own beliefs and your own viewpoints I think a lot of it I chalk up to just never really believing in myself in the way that I wanted to even though there is a voice in my head that says you're amazing you're gonna do big things you're gonna be super successful in life

I think there was another voice on the other side of my head saying, "You can't do anything and you are not that special." And I think I always had those voices battling with each other. And I would always let the other voice win when it came to the world of social media in particular. Now I know every industry is different. I know that everyone has their own unique experiences in their career fields.

For me, the social media industry was really toxic early on because it was always very competitive. I started out as a fitness influencer and everything was always about body aesthetics. So everything was always about looking a certain way, looking shredded, burning fat, the best ways to work out to lose weight. Obviously, this was many years ago when Instagram first came out.

A lot of the body positivity movement has changed, which is amazing. It felt like if you weren't eating the right way or you were eating unhealthy, you were technically doing everything wrong in your life. So it was definitely a hard...

hit to my mental health very early on when I was much younger. I started social media and Instagram when I was in college. I was 20 and I didn't know a lot about myself. I didn't really have a formed, a well-formed sense of identity yet. And although I learned so much and although I'm so grateful for all those experiences and starting social media as early as I did, I think I

myself in a lot of ways where I carried that into my 20s and then into my late 20s. And now I'm just starting to understand how to respect myself way more than I ever have. Respecting yourself comes with a lot of knowing who you are and knowing what you believe in and what you stand for. And I didn't really understand that when I was much younger. And we don't learn these things in school. We don't learn how to

know our value and see our worth because I don't think those are things that you could teach. I think those come from learning experiences and those come from going through multiple situations where you feel like you're not enough. For example, I know a lot of people who have been bullied early on in their childhoods, myself included, and I

as they've gotten older, they've developed a tougher skin and they've learned more about how to take care of themselves and know their value by going through those hard experiences being tormented and bullied by other people. Even now on TikTok, I see so many negative hate comments all over the place about people's looks, about how they dress, about how they speak, about their culture, just so many different things that

When I read the comments, which I try to avoid at all costs at this point,

I worry genuinely for the younger generation. I worry a lot for people who are half my age and they are just starting out on social media and trying to make a name for themselves, but people are just so cruel all over the internet because it really damages your sense of self if you don't have a really, really strong foundation underneath your skin. If you don't have that foundation underneath

Which I knew I didn't. I didn't have a sense of identity at 15 years old. So it can be really hard on a young person's mental health. And it can carry into their adulthood. And affect their lack of self-esteem. And affect their self-respect. Now another thing that I think is tied to self-respect and self-worth is comparison. Comparing yourself to other people. I feel like...

It's interesting. I never used to compare myself to anyone when I was younger because there was nothing to really compare myself to other than other people that went to the same school as me, pretty much. I was very happy with how I looked. I was really confident for a while. I remember in high school, I thought I was beautiful. I never looked in the mirror and really questioned my looks. And as I got more in the social media space, I started to question everything.

I started to question the way I looked also because people had started making comments about my nose. Now this is something I still don't like talking about because I'm still a little insecure about it and I've always wanted to change this part of myself but I'm Italian and big nose, you know? It's a defining feature. I mean, not to say all Italians have big noses but

From where I grew up, my family, my background, everyone has the same type of nose. Everyone has the similar characteristics of, you know, a definitive nose, a prominent nose. And I started getting comments all over my Instagram posts about how

big my nose was and it kind of triggered me in ways that I didn't even know were possible because I was a teenager. I didn't really think too deeply into my looks until social media came around. So now I have all these strangers basically telling me that I'm unattractive and I have a big nose and I need to go get a nose job. So

I think that really played into the level of self-respect I had for myself because it started to chip away at my self-esteem. It chipped away at my confidence. And it made me feel like total crap about the way I looked and the way I... Everything. I guess I just started to think about it a lot and started to care a lot more about what I looked like. And I just... I think that really played into the level of respect I had for myself because all of a sudden...

my focus went on to how I looked as a person instead of who I was as a person. And to this day, it still affects me. To this day, I still carry a lot of, I guess you could say trauma with me from being bullied about the way that I looked and the way my face is. And it happened on multiple occasions. So if it happens once...

It might be a little easy to brush it off, but if you hear it from multiple people, you start to believe it's true. Now, of course, there are other people who have told me that I'm beautiful, but I think the hate comments hit a lot deeper for some reason, and I think a part of it has to do with the fact that if you were insecure about something already to begin with, and then other people kind of validate that. So there were moments I guess I did think my nose was big, but it wasn't a big deal.

But then when other people started to say it, it became this big deal. So if you kind of believe what the hate comments are saying, it can really start to chip at your self-esteem and your self-worth. And for a while, I think I just didn't have any true respect for who I was anymore because I was so focused on fixing the way that I looked. And now I remember this tied into my dating life because...

i started changing all these things about the way that i looked i started changing my hair i started getting fillers i started doing botox in my face and i started trying to reshape and restructure my face and i never thought i would do those things so early on i always thought botox was for like 50 year olds honestly

I know the world has changed a lot too and the world of Botox and fillers is so normalized nowadays and I don't regret doing anything because I do like the way it looks

But at the same time, I think if social media never existed, and I think if society never existed as a whole, I probably wouldn't touch my face. The same way that I don't think anyone else would do all this plastic surgery if there was nothing to compare themselves to. That's my personal viewpoint on it. And it's not to say any of it's bad. It's not to say that

It's not to say that plastic surgery is a bad thing because I'm pro doing anything you want to do. And I do it too. So there's nothing wrong with it. But at the same time, would we be doing all of this if society didn't give us anything to compare ourselves to? Probably not. This is just my take. This is just my two cents. If you don't agree, then that's totally fine. I think it's also like...

All of that stuff kind of tied into the way I respected who I was. And I forgot who I was in the midst of caring so much about what other people thought of me and how I looked. I started to neglect that childlike side of me that was just happy with who she was. And...

confident and free and playful and never took anything too seriously. I forgot about that side of me because I was so worried about what other people had to say about me and what other people thought of me. So I think if you could take anything from this topic, it would be to really think about who you are when no one else is watching and when no one else is around you because that's really the true you. I also think that

assertiveness is the key to learning how to respect yourself too. So I wanted to talk about being assertive primarily because I have trouble being assertive even now in my adulthood. Now I'm 30 years old. I don't feel 30, but I'm 30 and I don't really believe in age. I love always bringing this up because when I say I'm 30 people don't... it's either one or two things. People are like, "Oh that makes sense because you're so knowledgeable."

And then other people say, oh, I thought you were in your early 20s, which is such a compliment. Maybe they're just being nice. Who knows? But we'll get into that another episode. I feel like my whole life I've struggled with being super assertive. I've seen other people do it. I've seen other people carry themselves with no shame and they can walk into a room and demand what they want on the spot because they know that's what they deserve. I just never felt comfortable enough to do that.

I felt like if I was being assertive with someone, whether it's in a business environment or in a relationship or with, you know, with a guy that I was seeing or even in friendships, I struggled with standing up for myself and vocalizing how I felt about something or asking for something. I struggled with this idea of vocalizing what I felt because I

I feared that it would go really badly and then that person would hate me or that person wouldn't talk to me anymore because I was carrying myself a certain way and maybe I'd come off to them in a really negative way. And I always wanted to make sure that people liked me. So I think I got in my head about it for a very long time, a very long time meaning my whole life. I

with this idea of sticking up for how I felt about things or asking for things that I wanted because I was afraid of maybe rejection or I was afraid of losing that person or I was afraid of losing the brand deal or the business deal even though I knew I deserved a lot more.

I really don't know what it is, but I think once you hit 30, there's just a switch that flips in your brain because you realize that life is so fucking short. And we only have one life to live, and if you're constantly living worrying about what other people think of you at all times, it's not only exhausting and draining and completely pointless,

but you're not living for yourself and the last thing I would want to do is leave this earth being concerned about what everyone else has thought about me my entire life instead of living for what I stand for, standing up for what I believe in, and just being my truest self. I think anything that you say or do in this lifetime is going to be picked apart by at least one person

You can't please everyone and I think we've learned that through social media. You could be this perfect celebrity or social media personality and you could do one small little thing that might rub someone the wrong way and like wildfire that action spreads and then everyone's against you and everyone hates you in a split second.

And I think if you live in fear of that, in fear of everyone rejecting you and society hating your guts just for being who you are, it's going to be a very draining and exhausting life for you. And I think once I hit 30, I just realized that I'd rather live my truth and speak freely and just be my most authentic self and step into my power and

then be concerned about what society has to say about me. Whether it's about my looks, whether it's about, you know, my podcast, what I'm posting, the things I'm saying, whatever it is, it doesn't fucking matter because life is short. And once you die, I mean, this is pretty dark thing to say, but it's reality. Once you die, even if you're the most famous person in the world and everyone loves you and looks up to you, eventually,

that fades and people kind of have you in the background. I mean, obviously people will still honor you and love you and miss you, but life goes on. So I think the point I'm really trying to make is you just got to live for yourself and do everything you can in this lifetime to make an impact and do what makes you happy and be honest with yourself, be genuine with who you are. And that comes with,

with this concept of respecting who you are and respecting yourself because if you live the rest of your life not respecting yourself and not valuing who you are, you're always going to be at the mercy of other people's opinions and you're always going to be living for everyone else and I just don't find that an appealing way to live. Now something else I've really carried with me throughout the last couple of years and I've been doing a lot less of is...

avoiding gossip and negativity at all costs. And this directly ties into respecting who you are because if you define yourself as a really good person and you define yourself as a respectable person, you're not going to talk shit about other people and gossip about them and bully them because I don't think being a respectful person

comes with that type of action. Now, you could disagree with me and say, you know, I love to gossip and I think I'm super respectful and I don't know. You know what I'm saying though? Like if you were to describe your ideal type of person to me, I don't think you would describe them as someone who gossips, someone who talks shit, someone who's a mean person. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. It doesn't align. Those things don't align with each other. So

I think just working on not gossiping, working on not talking badly about people, even if they've wronged me, even if they've done something really fucked up to me, I just try to keep the peace and move on with my life. I do my best to move on and it doesn't necessarily mean you have to forgive everyone for what they've done to you if they've done something really bad, but...

Just moving on with peace. Learning how to let go of toxic energy that's stored in your body. I feel like when I hold on to grudges and I hold on to certain bad things that people have done to me, it actually hurts me. It physically hurts me. And I think I've learned that the best way to honor myself and honor my truth and be the best version of myself is to learn how to let go. To learn how to...

release all that negative energy. I guess when I was younger, maybe I would have went to a million people and started venting out and bitching out to them saying, you know, this person did this to me, this person did that to me, and it's so fucked up and I can't believe they did this. Instead of taking that approach, the best approach I think you could take is to look within and say, you know what, this hurt me, this affected me, and it wasn't okay.

and either just remove yourself from the situation and avoid that person and don't associate with that person anymore or act out of love and just say, "You know what? They're going through their own shit. I'm not taking it personally. I'm not gonna let that affect me and I'm not gonna waste time complaining about it for the next six months because that's gonna do more harm than good for me. It has nothing to do with them at this point. I don't want to hold on to this toxic energy."

I think taking that approach has really helped me unlock a new level of self-love and also unlock a new level of self-respect. I think respecting yourself comes with maintaining your peace in times of hardship. Now, this doesn't mean you always have to be perfect with your emotions and it doesn't mean you have to be some spiritual guru that never gets upset about anything. The point I'm trying to make is...

handling things in a more mature light with more grace. And if someone wrongs you, someone does something really mean to you, not letting that ruin the rest of your life, not letting that destroy the next six months for you. I just think if you can avoid drama and you can avoid gossip and you can avoid the negativity, it's more beneficial to you. I think the other thing I wanted to say is respecting yourself comes with a lot of taking care of your

physical and emotional and mental well-being. That could mean going for a walk once a week just to clear your head. Or that could mean finding a new workout routine. Or that could mean trying a new activity like yoga. Anything kind of tying into your physical health, not for looking a certain way, not for body image reasons, it literally has to do with

It all ties into your mental health. So for me, staying active during really hard times in my life where I felt like I didn't have a lot of self-love, it helped me become more grounded in my body in order to take care of my mental health.

I think everything's kind of tied together. Physical health, mental health, spiritual health, emotional health, all of it's tied together. And I think just monitoring that has also played a role in respecting myself more and just making sure that I have some sort of grounding routine to come back to when I'm feeling really stuck or lost or sad within. I have my moments where I'm not confident. I don't feel like I value myself and I'm

I think having a routine, whether it's going for a walk and listening to a podcast or trying something new. I started doing hot yoga for a month. I stopped, but I did that for a month to change up my routine and clear my head and maintain a new sense of peace within myself. All of those things are just examples, but they can help when you're learning how to develop a new sense of self-love for yourself. I think another...

huge thing that I've taken from learning how to value myself is setting clear boundaries with other people. If you know what you will and will not tolerate, it does wonders for the interactions you have with other people and you'll see how it carries into your relationships and your life drastically. For me, when I've set clear boundaries with other people,

They feel that. They sense that. And they know that I'm not here to fuck around. I'll give you a really good example. I was signed to management and I wasn't comfortable with the way things were going. I just felt like I wasn't happy. And I had made it clear several times that I was not happy. This was a few years ago. And this person would walk all over me. This person...

was disrespecting me, this person was taking advantage of me and saying all these manipulative messed up things to me on the daily to make me feel like I was basically a worthless piece of garbage. Not an exaggeration. It was really toxic and I spent a lot of days crying and feeling like shit and I felt like my career was a failure and there were so many things that happened that I'll probably speak on in another episode.

But I believed him. I believed the things he was saying. I believed in all the things he was telling me all the time. And I started losing so much respect for myself because I believed him. I listened to what he was saying. I fell into this hole of depression because I wasn't honoring my truth. I was just getting sucked into his version of who I was.

And I couldn't stand up for myself. For some reason, it was so hard for me to get the words out to speak up for myself. And then I met someone who was the total opposite of me. Bold, assertive, gets what he wants. I was dating him. And I told him what was going on. And he...

looked me in the eye and he said, you need to call this person right now and tell them you're not taking their shit anymore. And you need to get yourself out of this situation because this is fucked up. And he kept encouraging me to take action. And eventually I started to realize that I deserve so much more. And I was allowing someone to manipulate me and control me and make me feel terrible, which is fucked up. So I ended up

I ended up calling this person and speaking my mind and I ended up doing a few other things that I had to do in order to get myself out of the situation. I'm not going to dive too much into details because it's a very long story. But basically at the end of it, I got myself out of that mess. I left that management and I cannot believe, I cannot believe to this day that I put myself through a situation like that.

Because I feared that I don't even know. I don't even know why I was so afraid. I think I just felt like if I were to speak up for myself, I would be too aggressive. I would be considered in the wrong. I didn't believe in myself. I wasn't respecting and honoring who I was. I was just letting someone abuse me. And looking back...

I can safely say that I will never allow something like that to happen to me again. So if I see the red flags in a relationship of any kind, I know what to look out for and how to handle it. And I know how to carry myself now. But 25-year-old me was very different from 30-year-old me. And I'm very proud of myself now for knowing my worth and knowing what I do deserve. But there was a period of time where I really didn't know that. So...

I think another thing I've taken from that experience is to learn how to treat yourself with kindness and compassion when you do feel like you're stuck and you can't really defend yourself. Just trying to talk to that inner child version of you and saying that it's okay and you're going to get through it and you deserve love and compassion is a really big part of learning how to respect yourself because if anyone's talking down to you and degrading you and making you feel terrible all the time,

Ask yourself why you're allowing that. Ask yourself why you're allowing this person to stay in your aura and allowing this person in your field of energy. I allowed it to go on for way too long and it was fucked up. But I will say I've learned a lot and I've carried those lessons into my future relationships with people. And I think...

I've earned more respect from people because I really do respect myself more. And when people sense that you really place yourself on a pedestal, they feel that. And they'll learn to respect you given the boundaries that you create for yourself. The other thing is surround yourself with really good people or at least try to if you can. I know it can be hard to find your group. I know it can be hard to find friends.

your core circle of friends that lift you up and make you a better person. I struggled with this for a very long time. I struggled with meeting really genuine people for years. And it can be hard to find that tribe that really gets you and wants to see you grow and succeed and supports you. But even if it's one person, even if it's your mom, anyone that really makes you feel good about who you are,

Lean into that. Do your best to lean into that. For a very long time, I used social media as a way to connect with people that understood me, even though I just spoke about all the chaos that can come with social media. The beauty about it and why I kept going throughout all those hate comments and all the negativity is there were also really good people on there that supported me and supported my content and lifted me up.

So I think between those people who actually valued my content and eventually meeting people who were kind to me in person, those were the people that kept me grounded and that kept me going and that taught me more about how to respect and love myself. It was very few people, but...

I can think of a few that really helped me throughout that journey. So if you can surround yourself with even one person that can support you and respect you the way that you desire to respect yourself, that's a really good friend and that's a really good person. And I think if you have someone in your life that does see you in a really positive way and makes you feel good about yourself all the time, that's someone that you should keep around. I think...

That concludes today's episode. This was also a disaster. I kept having to like fix my computer over here while I was working and trying to film this at the same time. I'm not an expert yet at the whole podcasting video process. It's very new to me, but I hope that was helpful. I hope you enjoyed the content. I hope you enjoyed... I hope you enjoyed the episode in general.

And I would love to hear your feedback. So if you want to send me a message on Instagram at Liss or on the podcast account at Date Yourself Instead, you can always feel free to DM me. And yeah.

Thanks so much for listening. I love you. I appreciate you. And if you could relate to this episode on any level or you're feeling a little lost or stuck and you just need someone to talk to, my DMs are really open. I always try to reply and I love seeing all the feedback. It makes me so happy. Thanks again. Stay tuned for next Monday and have an amazing rest of your week.