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Are you ready to take the steps necessary to thrive? Join us every episode as host Adam Gragg discusses what is holding us back and how to move forward with purpose, along the way developing healthy relationships and navigating life transitions while overcoming fear, stress and anxiety. Adam is a family therapist, mental health professional and life coach helping individuals and organizations find the transformational clarity that unleashes hope. Live the life you want, the legacy you decide.
Ep118_impress
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] I can get caught up in comparing myself to other people. I look around myself and I get triggered. I don't like certain aspects of my life. I will say that, you know, at age 50, I should have more career success, or I should have this family situation that I don't [00:01:00] have, or I should, whatever, have a more successful business.
And I can get caught up in trying to prove myself to other people, prove my worth. I fairly frequently will say things to myself inside, like, why did I say that? I'm just gonna cringe because it's an insecure comment that is trying to somehow get another person's validation, get them to look at me with big eyes, you know, like, wow, you're impressive.
You know? And then I feel like crapola, 'cause I didn't need to say that I can be okay with who I am I know that it's possible to do things that'll help me not to need to impress people. Sometimes I know it's, but I don't practice those tools. I don't do the things I could do. And that's what I'm going to talk to you about today.
So this is episode 118 of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. Today's episode is Stop [00:02:00] trying to prove yourself to other people. So stop trying to impress people. I'm going to share four tools that if I apply them, they help me to get out of this trying to impress people cycle that you can apply today to your life.
I'm Adam Gragg. I'm a coach, a content creator, a resource creator, a speaker, My passion is to help people find the clarity that helps them to have the self confidence to face their biggest fears, so they can live their legacy. I talk about stuff I struggle with myself. This podcast is for me and you.
I don't have it all figured out. I'm a fellow traveler, and I'm super excited that you're here. So I want to share something uncomfortable that I did recently. And I do this at every episode because I don't believe that there's anything that I know of that's more important to your mental health than to facing your fears, facing the things in your life That are difficult is the most [00:03:00] important thing that I can ever do as a mental health professional.
I've been a mental health professional for 25 years as a family therapist and I can't think of anything that's going to help somebody get better faster than going through the storm, facing their junk, getting to the other side. Nothing is more damaging to your mental health than the opposite of that.
Playing it safe, just playing it safe, making that your priority. It's going to make you miserable. it's going to destroy your mental health, really. And If somebody's telling you that it's not, they are not a good mental health professional and they're not being honest with you.
The people that are honest with you, that tell you the truth, the research based, data driven, clinical data driven, get that kind of information in your head, are the ones that are going to help you the most. One of the best, tools of anyone in the mental health profession is to be honest with you about what actually does help people.
And we know that facing things in your life. Dealing with it head on is extremely important, but do it and do it incrementally. I'm saying, do it with some guidance [00:04:00] with a lot of situations. I'm not saying that you want to just go ahead and jump into things without any thought to it. So what I did that was vulnerable as I got to the office yesterday and there's a few different businesses in my office area.
And so there's a guy I've been getting to know there and I just had this gut kind of feeling that, This specific book would be encouraging to him because I know, I've gotten to know him, he's a young guy and he's got two young kids. He's a really sharp person and he's at the beginning of his career in some ways and I thought this would be the most inspiring book to me if I was his age in his situation.
It's called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy and it is one of my favorite books. It gets on my list of 25 top favorites. There you go. We'll send you a link to that article if you're interested in what those other books are. So, I want you to think about something in your life that could be uncomfortable for you to do.
So, that was a risk I took because I don't want to play it safe. He could have rejected me. He could have said, that's weird. You don't really know me. But no, it was a good [00:05:00] positive interaction and I was encouraged by it. Hopefully he was too. I think he was. So, this is the podcast that you do.
What that means is you get to take action and even do stuff that makes you uncomfortable to apply the content that you glean today, right? So what is an action you can take right now is I want you to think about somebody or some situation in your life where you have a tendency to try to impress people.
So you embellish or you avoid sharing things that are more vulnerable or could be perceived as weakness in your life. Or you get. Triggered because these are people who you perceive yourself to be maybe, or you get insecure around, so you say things to make yourself feel better about yourself, and then eventually it doesn't make you feel better, as I've mentioned.
That's when I feel really discouraged, is when I'm trying to impress people after that. It may feel good in the moment, short term, but not long term. Short term benefit, yeah, some relief, but long term, no. I mean, [00:06:00] I don't feel great about myself When I have to boast, basically, about myself.
So, let's go ahead and jump into these tools. Four tools that help me, that when I apply them, it'll help you to stop trying to impress people. You know, I hate the fact that I do this. And I get stuck in trying to feel valuable. My next thought when I interact with somebody when I'm insecure is often, how can I talk to them in such a way where they're going to look at me and say, well, you're impressive, you know, or that's really impressive.
You've done that. Or you have those friends or you have you know, it can be a gamut of things, you know, exercise or, The fact that I grew up in California, right? Who knows what it is? It's like, I can find anything that I can perceive can make somebody else look at me like, oh, wow, he's impressive. But I'm not, because of those things.
The crazy part is the only impressive things about people that I find are things you're not only gonna find out if you get to know them, [00:07:00] and you get to know their character, and you get to see their integrity, and you get to understand what they've been through and the challenges they've overcome. So, I want people to like me, And that's a problem, so I do things to impress other people.
Why? Because I'm insecure. Because I have times I want to numb my emotions. Because I want to feel better about myself than I do in the moment. I get my self worth from the validation of other people. When I'm really honest with myself, I don't want to. So here's some, here's one of the tools.
We'll share your junk, okay? And I'm not saying you share with everybody. I'm not saying you share it publicly. I'm not saying you share it continuously, but I'll tell you something. This is pretty vulnerable for me and I don't want to share this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I, was sitting out at my pool the other night on Sunday before work, started Monday, obviously last day of the week, and it was about six o'clock or so, and there were some couples there that were hanging out, having a few beers, having a good time, laughing, and they [00:08:00] seemed like they got along well, and they, to me, my perception of them are these are really happy couples, and they're really good friends that hang out all the time, and their life is better than my life.
That's what I did. I got stuck in that. I started feeling really lonely and insecure, insecure about a lot of areas of my life, which would happen when we get depressed in a depressive state, which I was getting triggered into.
We can do a lot of that comparison. And then I start feeling it's not only a personal thing, it becomes a pervasive thing. So my whole life and a permanent thing, that's my perspective. And so I had this kind of, you know, Give up mentality and what I can do at those times, and I, this is, this is where I'm ashamed.
So I thought, well, I don't want to feel these uncomfortable feelings. So I'm going to drink a few beers and numb myself, you know, I'm not going to go get hammered. I'm not going to do anything illegal. I'm not. I wasn't gonna get drunk, and I didn't, but I did something that was compromising my value.
So I did go and [00:09:00] drink some beers, you know? And I didn't feel good the next day. I felt like, I didn't feel like hungover, but I felt like I failed myself. You know, I, I numb myself. I hid from a problem. I didn't want to feel these insecure thoughts. So I did whatever I could to not feel them. And then I called my buddy, Dan, and I told him about it.
And I said, Yeah, it's just, you know, it's not that I'm against doing that if I was with some friends hanging out every once in a while on a rare occasion, having a few drinks and laughing and everything, that could be totally fine. But in that situation, it was to escape the pain that I felt.
So then I felt weak the next day and I told him, I said, Dan, I have a lot of pride and I try hard to impress people and I told him about the insecurity. So I was open about it and that's what I would challenge you to do because that helped me at that point. It wasn't a great Monday. I beat myself up. It took me a while to forgive myself.
It wasn't, wasn't probably till Monday night when I started to forgive myself. I was inspired to share that with you today, you know? [00:10:00] And so if you share it and you talk to people about it and they know you're not perfect, you know you're not perfect, then it's a huge amount of pressure off my shoulders that I don't have to impress people.
I can be myself. And maybe that's impressive. I, I don't know. Maybe you're going to judge me because you heard me say that. It's, it's okay. I mean, I didn't drink at all until I was 47, from age 22 to 47.
I'm not perfect, but I know according to a study by Michael Slepian, I believe that's how you pronounce his name, professor of management at the Columbia School of Business, the average person keeps 13 secrets, five of which he or she believe has, they have never shared with anybody else. Pretty amazing.
47 percent chance that one of those secrets involves a violation of trust and an over 60 percent chance that one of those secrets involves a lie of financial impropriety and a roughly 33 percent chance, one third, that it consists of a theft or some hidden relationship [00:11:00] like adultery, some hidden romance or unhappiness at work.
So we keep secrets. And there are times where we want to keep secrets because it can be illegal not to, you know, for me as a licensed clinician, when I'm working in a clinical role, then I have a duty to keep secrets. protect the information of my clients. If someone asked me, well, do you see such and such as a client?
My comment would be, well, I can't comment on that, you know, or you could, you can't share that information. I mean, it's protected information. It's one of the sacred parts of the profession. Now, when I'm doing corporate executive coaching, it's a little different because a lot of them. I come to their office and they're very open about knowing me.
Of course, I'm not going to share their secrets or anything they share with me in a session, but the confidentiality, confidential nature is waived by agreement, by document. I mean, it's something legal and everything. So I'm not practicing as a clinician, which is different, but. There are different situations.
Now, I know if you [00:12:00] are a, an officer at a publicly traded company, of course, you have financial data on occasion where if you shared that with other people and they made trades based on that information, or you made trades based on that information, that could be a crime. You can end up in prison. You have to keep that secret.
But, for the most part, what I find relationships, relationship wise, even with me not telling people that I was using nicotine, it's been over five months, thank goodness, but that I was using Xen for a while and hiding that from people, that didn't feel good. You know, I was hiding it from people that I have trusting relationships with, guys that I've known for years, and I didn't tell them about it.
I was hiding the fact that I was using that to numb as well, and that's not good. And so I feel better not having secrets. I mean, I felt better just telling people that there are times where I will do things to numb that I'm not proud of. So I would like to challenge you to share something with somebody else.
I mean, if it's something you're hiding and it's a [00:13:00] secret, you can find a trusted person, just one. It can just be one person because you're starting to repair some of that stuff in your past or whatever it is you're hiding today which is numbing the stuff in your past or numbing the insecurity with somebody that you're building a trusting relationship with and you can see that healing and moving forward is It occurs in the context of community, of relationship.
That's a huge factor. You cannot go it alone. You can't get past that. I will never let somebody get past that. They will never, you will never be able to live the life that you are destined to live in isolation. It's just not going to happen. You know, I remember once, It was probably three, four, maybe even five years ago where I published an article on my blog, on the Decide Your Legacy blog, about healing after divorce.
And I was so ashamed to have to write that article. Writing it, I knew, would be a healing activity, but that was an act of being vulnerable. I haven't really read that article in a while. I'll probably have to go revamp it a little [00:14:00] bit, but I remember that was healing to me because I didn't have to hide and carry all that burden on my own shoulders.
To feel the fear of people judging me at the same level. And I still fear the fear, feel the fear of people judging me for different reasons and everything, but it was a way that I actually was able to move forward. So the second tool for you to stop trying to impress people is to focus on being your true self.
Okay, and now this is easier said than done. I mean, you've heard the quotes, you know, be yourself or above all else. To thine own self be true, above all else be yourself. Those things, you know, the, that the beginning of wisdom is self knowledge. There's a lot of stuff out there. I love one quote by Dr.
Seuss. Today you are you, you are you er than you. There is nobody else that is you er. Then you, there's nobody alive that is you or the new. And I believe that there's nobody like you. You were made for a purpose. There's a reason for your existence. You're not a mistake. There are great things ahead for you.
You are different and [00:15:00] unique. And that uniqueness makes you something special. And the more you get in touch with that, the more attractive you become to other people. the more you try to please other people and say what you think they want to hear and try to prove your value to them, the less attractive you become.
It's being, meaning drawn to you that they will be. And then when you are your true self and you are living with courage in that situation. So I had, I stopped using nicotine and alcohol when, When I was, when I was 22. Okay. So it was the last time I had ever used it was when I was 22. It was my senior year in college.
I had stopped for over a year and then I used again right before I left and graduated from college. So I'm just being honest with you right now. And then I didn't legit use any at all period. None. And so I was 47, I'm 50 years old. Okay. Good for me. I'm not trying to impress you, but I am trying to say one thing.
That when I had stopped for that period of time when I was 21, after my 21st birthday, for such a long period of time, [00:16:00] I remember thinking that this was really cool. I'm being myself. I'm able to go to parties and bars and hang out and meet people. Cool people and go on dates and just all these cool things.
And I could have a great time without alcohol. And I love that. And I got a lot of people come up to me and say, even now, you know, that was really impressive. How did you do that? That was cool. And I got into this whole profession of in being a coach. it was triggered and spurred on from starting with being a counselor in mental health.
And I remember it started then when I stopped drinking in college in this big party fraternity at the University of Oregon, who, which I'm fond of to this day, and I have friends from there to this day that I'm very grateful that I have. I remember thinking back then that I love helping people to get sober.
I love the fact that I can rise above this and be in these situations and not be drawn in. It's amazing what you can do when you can observe the crowd and not get drawn into the crowd. You know, groupthink is a [00:17:00] very dangerous thing. there's a lot of good documented research on how people can do crazy, horrific, horrible things, because they get drawn into the crowd.
And there is this other pressure that their family could be harmed, and all this other things, and think of different, different traumatic, I mean horrific situations that have happened throughout human history. But there's an element of people getting sucked into this people pleasing type mentality.
And I think most people know that being on their phones too much is damaging their mental health, yet they still do it. Because they're drawn in to wanting to know what other people think, what other people do. It's this comparison trap. It's a dangerous thing. But you can find people, and I would challenge you to be a type of person who steps back in these situations and is able to observe how other people interact.
and decide for yourself what you want to do, to intentionally live your life based on your values because that is going to lead to the best life possible. a quick action you can take is, think about [00:18:00] this, what is a key value in your life that you are compromising on? is it your health?
Is it honesty? Is it integrity? Is it relationships? A key value is a key behavior that you want to incorporate into your life more that you're compromising on. Like I did on Sunday, which was apply the tools that I have, and I challenged my clients to apply to myself and not be a hypocrite. Okay, fair enough.
That's it. I just want to take the easy way out of getting out of my uncomfortable emotions. So what's a value that in your life you're compromising on? And then what's a risk that you're not taking right now that you would be taking if you were your true self? What's a risk you're not taking right now that you would be taking if you were your true self. So let's go to the, before we go to the third tool, I want to challenge you to check out Shatterproof Yourself Lite. These are seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health and Shatterproof Yourself, the full version is live.
The first two sections are done and it is live for you to purchase. [00:19:00] Awesome deal. If you are interested in going through a very small private Shatterproof Yourself community group, which is capping at a very small, I mean, it's not going to be very many people in this group, and we're going to meet over Zoom consistently going over all the sections, reach out.
we've got seven different steps to a giant leap in your mental health. Vision, Facing Your Past, Knowing Your Value, Shifting Your Perspective, Owning Your Emotions, Self Care, Caring for Yourself, and then Building True Friends.
And I'm going over stuff that I've been talking to clients about for 25 years and applying to my life on occasion. Not enough, but sometimes. Less than I'd like to at times, for sure. But applying to my life in a lot of situations, it's been helpful to me. And it's helpful to my clients and it's going to be helpful to you.
I want to encourage you to engage, but go through the mini version, because it'll give you some inspiring inspiration about the full version. I'd love to get any kind of feedback that you have as well on this content. Shatterproof yourself, light and full version.
So the third tool [00:20:00] is compare yourself to yourself only. All right. So when I look sometimes at Facebook and I see a benefit to being on social media with staying in touch with family and staying in touch with in reconnecting with old friends, rekindling old relationships, I think I see a great benefit to that.
Sometimes when I look on Facebook, for example, or on Instagram, for example, I'll compare myself professionally, you know, they're just, they're making a lot more money.
They're more successful than me. They have a wife and more kids, or they have better, I mean, I wouldn't say better kids because I have the best daughter ever, but they have who knows, you know, their kids are going to more prestigious colleges or they're going to better high schools
You know, I can compare my physical appearance to people that I know, compare, compare, compare. And then I'm measuring my progress against where I want to be or believe I should be in that situation [00:21:00] or where they are. And that's always Defective. I mean, that's always dangerous. It's like, do not do that.
Don't touch that with a 10 foot pole right there. Cause if you measure your progress against yourself and how far you have come, then you're going to start to feel some inspiration and then also see how far you have come. So you can apply those steps to your future to make more progress in your life towards those goals that you want to achieve.
Better health, better wealth, better relationships, more progress in your career, better marriage, better relationship with your kids. Whatever it may be that is a goal for you, you can start to focus on the progress you've made, the progress, not the deficit. Okay, big, big deal. So I know I've mentioned this before, but I went to my 30 year high school reunion a couple years ago, Jesuit High School of Sacramento, and I challenged my buddies as we went out there to not ask any questions about the other people's careers while I was there.
They were, while we were out there at the reunion. And so I thought today, like, well, what questions do I wish I would have asked at that reunion? I asked some good questions. I basically asked people a lot of questions about [00:22:00] what they had done over their summer and about their kids. But here's what I would have loved to have known.
If I had a chance to sit down with these guys I went to high school with or talk to them more, or I'll do this maybe at my 40 year high school reunion or my 35th high school reunion, number one question, one of them would be, what's the biggest challenge or obstacle you faced over the last 30 years?
Okay, or what are some of the challenges or obstacles you've faced over the last 30 years? And they could share with me, and I'm sure if they were honest, they would share things like addiction and divorce and problems with their kids and self worth problems and depression and anxiety and addiction to nicotine or who knows it, but I mean, trauma in some way.
So number two is I'd ask them, what are their goals and what changes do they want to make over the next 30 years? Or even over the next five years? You know, what do they want to achieve? What are their hopes and dreams over the next 30 years? That'd be really inspiring to hear that. I'd love to hear it from them.
And another question I'd love to ask anybody that I haven't seen for a long time is, you know, tell me about your [00:23:00] closest friends now and what are they like? And tell me about, like, I did ask about their family and their wife, but about their friends. And here's some things about their friends. And they may even say, well, I don't have enough friends.
I'd like more. And that could be a conversation starter that's intimate, that's deep, that's really a growth thing as well. So quick action you can take to stop comparing yourself to others and then compare yourself to yourself. That's the tool. Ask yourself, what progress have you made over the last year in your life?
And then how did that growth occur? And if you can't think of something over the last year, well, think about five years, extend the time horizon. So think about five years then what progress have you made over the last five years? And if you're honest, you're going to see some things. maybe you overcome some kind of adversity or you've learned to be less insecure, or you are more professional in difficult, conflictual situations, or you're more encouraging to your kids or your wife, but you've made progress.
Or maybe you've overcome You've had a huge weight loss, you've overcome an addiction, or you've [00:24:00] overcome some kind of a traumatic event in your life, or somebody you love you've lost, and you made it through to the other side. Big deal, and what you'll start to see is that you have made great progress in your life that can propel you forward to those new goals, the new vision that you have for yourself in the future, which vision is the very first step of shatterproofing yourself in the course.
Vision creating a compelling, inspiring vision. Very fun, exciting thing. Tons of worksheets in there. And it's cool stuff that I'd love to hear about you. I'd love to see you engage. So the fourth tool and the last tool is find, find the meaning of Alright, if you, if you can go and look at the gain or the progress you've made, I would challenge you to find, find the meaning in what you have been through, okay?
The lesson in what you have been through. And I mentioned that you can go back and look and see how kind of progress you've made. This is very [00:25:00] similar, but if you want to stop proving yourself to other people and having that desire to prove yourself to other people, if you go and find and you deal with your past, okay, and you realize that you're triggered in certain situations, and you're able to process that and go into the storm like the buffalo to the other side, and you're able to process it, verbalize it, talk to a professional about it, talk to a friend, a trusted person, then you're going to see that you don't have.
Like, when I'm honest with myself, I like myself. That's the crazy part about it. when I'm dishonest with myself, I have to prove myself to other people because I'm stuck in fear and resentment and what I've done wrong and my mistakes. I'm not forgiving myself.
You know, I don't like the fact that I'm divorced, but I can talk about it now and I can talk about it and say, and keep my head high and say, I am a valuable person. God has a purpose for me. All these things that I have been through can be used for good. There's a lesson in them. when I'm at my best, when I'm healthy, when I'm at peace, I remember and realize that I [00:26:00] have a lot to offer and that I am good enough and that I'm going to make it through.
And I can see that as I find the meaning in the situations that I've gone through in the past and how I did make it through, I can see and project that forward and use that as fuel to get through the difficult things that will come my way in the future, knowing that I've been through some things in the past.
Now, do I know exactly how to handle these new situations? No, there's probably some new learning that's going to take place, but there's some stuff that I've gleaned from the stuff I've been through that I can apply to these future situations. And that'll give me confidence.
It definitely gives me confidence to think about it. I had somebody reach out to me. She reached out for coaching and somebody that was very successful in her career and getting ready to turn 65, I believe, and said that did not want to die with regrets,
Both of her parents died without being very engaged and connected to the family. That they had focused so much on performance and so much on achievement in their life that they didn't die with a whole lot [00:27:00] of connection. And they teared up. I mean, she was very emotional about this. And I'm thinking, I got to have you read a book.
So I was thinking, I really want to help you, but it was a great interaction. I recommended a book, which I've recommended to many people, just like the compound effect called The Five Regrets of the Dying, which we will also link to in the show notes here.
But it was inspiring because this person wanted to find the meaning in their past and the meaning in what they had been through. And a lot of it was connected to their parents. And that achievement they wanted to let go of, they had had tremendous achievement in their life. I mean, so much so that they were world class in their field of endeavor and gone to the best schools, had the best jobs that you can think of in that profession as well, but was missing that one key
The last chapter, or the last three chapters without addressing that core issue, really inspiring stuff. So I'm going to go ahead and review these things for tools. Gosh, these are rocking things here that I want to apply so I can stop trying to impress people with [00:28:00] my insecure. Non impressive ways and impress people in the right way, you know, by living and being myself and facing my fears and doing the right thing.
So number one is share your junk in the trunk. Number two, be yourself, be your true self. Number three, Compare yourself with yourself, and then number four, find the meaning. So, if you have found this podcast helpful, subscribe to Shatterproof Yourself Lite, 7 Steps to a Giant Leap in Your Mental Health.
Also, remember that insight is 20 percent of transformational change. Action is the key. is 80%. An okay plan that you act on is a hundred times better than a great plan, a perfect plan that you do nothing with. Take some action today. Just like those clients in my office, when I challenged them to do something in the very first session,
By the end of the day, what are you going to act on? Take a risk based on some insight that you gained today. And if you really want it to stick, Teach it to your kids, teach it to your wife, teach it to your [00:29:00] coworkers, teach it to somebody in the next 24 hours. I'm going to sign off the way that I always do, make it your mission to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone.
You decide your legacy, no one else. I admire you, I appreciate you, and I will see you next time.