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I'll be honest. One of my favorite parts of hopping on the mic once a week to talk about these topics with George is that I often need this advice myself. Of course, we make no secret of the fact that we both consider ourselves works in progress. But in this moving episode, I found myself learning so much from the conversation I had with George.
I don't know about you, but loving myself hasn't come easy to me, due in part to a challenging childhood, as well as many of the trials and tribulations we all experience as we attempt to navigate life as best we can.
But in this transformative episode, George takes us on a journey to the center of your own universe — yourself. It's not just a podcast episode; it's a masterclass in self-love, self-worth, and the art of being your own life coach. Think of George as the Yoda of self-improvement, guiding you through the labyrinth of your own mind.
As he likes to say, I strongly recommend you "grabbing a snack and a backpack" for this adventure. Oh, and a pen and notepad — the tactics and principles he shares will change your life. They've already changed mine.
Questions We Explore
- Why is it so hard for so many of us to love ourselves? What stands in our way of seeing our own worth and loving ourselves wholly?
- When has George struggled throughout his life to love himself? And how did he finally move through that?
- How are the relationships in your life helping or hurting your ability to love yourself?
- What are the critical mindsets you must embrace to help repair and nurture the relationship you have with yourself?
- What role do boundaries play in helping you develop a healthy, loving relationship with yourself?
- How can daily affirmations actually help you cultivate a relationship with yourself, and what should that practice look like?
The Value
- Gift Yourself: George kicks off the episode with a powerful principle—be your own Santa Claus. Why wait for a special occasion to treat yourself? Whether it's a new watch or even new wipers for your car, gifting yourself is a tangible way to acknowledge your own worth.
- Core Circle: Ever wondered about the dynamics of your inner circle? George introduces a groundbreaking mindset—Are you the Uber driver or the GPS in your relationships? This metaphor compels you to reevaluate your relationships and the energy you invest in them.
- Spirituality: Navigating the often sensitive topic of spirituality, George shares his personal insights without preaching. He even brings in scriptural references to underline the importance of knowing and loving oneself.
Mindsets
- Self-Awareness: The episode emphasizes the need to turn the spotlight inward. It's about understanding that you are the main character in your life story.
- Internal Affirmation: George challenges the listener to flip the script from seeking external validation to internal affirmation. Be your own cheerleader, mentor, and spiritual guide.
Your Next Steps
- Self-Evaluation: Take a moment to ask yourself the questions George has laid out. They're not just questions; they're a mirror reflecting your inner world.
- Daily Affirmations: Start each day with positive affirmations. Remind yourself that you're worthy, loved, and capable.
- Set Boundaries: Know your worth and set boundaries accordingly. This is a best practice that will serve you well in all aspects of life.
Creators and Guests
What is Beyond Your Default?
What Is Beyond Your Default? "Everyone keeps telling me I should be happy, but I'm not." “I feel stuck.” “I have a calling, but where do I start?"
Right now, you have a choice. You can continue living within your default norms, playing it safe, clocking in and out every day, and scraping by to achieve what's supposed to make you happy hopefully. Or you can choose to accept the challenge of living beyond your default. Stop wishing to live your "best life” and start living your best life. Success leaves clues. And they're waiting for you to discover them.
But many times when we're talking negative about ourselves, we're like, you're stupid. You don't know what you're doing. You didn't, we don't actually say, George, you're stupid. George, you don't know what you're doing. Like, we don't even call ourselves our selves most times when we're talking negatively.
George B. Thomas:If we did, if we stopped and just inserted our name, it would make such an impact that you would immediately be like, that's unacceptable. I wouldn't let anybody else talk
Liz Moorehead:to me that way. Why am I talking to myself that way? But we don't. We we, like, take the most important word, our name out
George B. Thomas:of it. And it's important when you start to rebuild that you actually do use your name. When I'm talking to myself, I'm like, George, you got this. George, you can do this. George, now you know better than that.
George B. Thomas:And I'll literally have a conversation with myself using my name because I really do feel like there's us and there's us.
Liz Moorehead:Welcome back to Beyond Your Defaults. My name is Liz Moorehead, and as always, I'm joined by the one and only George b Thomas. How are you this morning?
George B. Thomas:I'm doing really good, Liz, but I wanna start out by a little disclaimer. I've never disclaimed one of these episodes so far. A lot of what we're gonna talk about, I just want all the listeners to know that I am preaching to myself, that I am still working on all the things that we're gonna talk about, the questions that you're gonna go, the things that we're gonna unpack from my brain. I fully understand that some of the words that come out of my mouth, I might come back and listen to this and go, I should probably start doing I should probably start doing that.
Liz Moorehead:It's fair. It's fair. Well, let's be perfectly honest. Every time I'm asking you a question quote on behalf of our audience, I go, and on behalf of our audience, I mean, on behalf of me.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:I will be seriously taking notes. Thank you very much. But I think those are the best types of conversations. Right? You know, how many times do we often find ourselves having the exact conversations with others that we should be having with ourselves, whether that's giving advice.
Liz Moorehead:For example, I was telling somebody earlier this weekend, you know, you should spend a little bit more time connecting with yourself. How are you setting boundaries around yourself? And then this little voice inside of me went, and, Liz, when was the last time you meditated? And I went, listen, you saw CB. This is not about me right now.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned boundaries though because and and I'm sure we'll get into it. But if you don't know yourself, if you haven't cultivated a relationship with yourself, it's gonna be very hard to understand what your boundaries are. And if you don't understand your boundaries, then you really don't understand the game that you're playing, and then then it's a hot mess.
Liz Moorehead:Oh my gosh. That is exactly what we're getting into today. In case you missed the title of today's episode, we are talking, in fact, about cultivating relationship with yourself, why it's so important, and what that looks like in practice. But to your point, George, I love what you said right there about boundaries, because we often talk about defining a clear sense of self. And I like to think of that literally.
Liz Moorehead:What is the boundary that defines you in this space? But before we start going down that path, before we start talking about boundaries and defining ourselves, and what we need for ourselves, I wanna ask you why does this topic matter? Why are we talking about cultivating a relationship with ourselves?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I'll keep it simple. It's a question, but it's actually, like, one thing that I want you, Liz, and you, the listeners, to actually think about. Just one thing. Make it very easy.
George B. Thomas:And the question is, who is the human on this planet you spend the most time with?
Liz Moorehead:Oh.
George B. Thomas:See, the human on this planet you spend the most time with is yourself. And here's the thing, when you're in a room by yourself, you can feel bored, you can feel lonely, you can feel frustrated. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, you can feel all of the negative words that you can throw at this podcast, or you can feel joy and happiness. You can feel optimism and excitement. You can feel like you're in good company yet be in a room by yourself.
George B. Thomas:So the fact that we don't take the time to understand that this relationship does matter, It's the most important relationship that you can cultivate. Like, everything that comes to the outside world starts inside you and your perception of who you are. It's like the factory. Right? And when later we might talk about, like, you as a company.
George B. Thomas:Like, it's funny. This is not my professional podcast, but, you know, on my professional podcast hub heroes, we talk about marketing, sales, service, like, the different departments of your organization. And what I want people to realize is we have, like, different departments inside of our organism, you know, gut, heart, mind, that we have to make sure are aligned, that we need to make sure understand these things. And if we're not cultivating a relationship with ourself, we can't do that. And if you're wanting, right, you're listening to this podcast, so I would assume that you wanna live a life beyond your default.
George B. Thomas:If you're wanting to live a life beyond your default, then you most, likely will be focused on adding value to the world. And added value is way easier. I might even just say possible if you come with a filled cup. Now we're gonna use that analogy of, like, an empty cup and a filled cup for this bucket, but let's talk about that cup for a second. If a cup is always empty, if your cup is always empty and you need others to fill it, then this makes you an energy vampire, and people can feel that.
George B. Thomas:Now a simple principle of life is that people remember how you make them feel, and there's an actual quote that might be ringing in your mind right now. They may forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. The funny thing about that is the quote usually is the Maya Angelou set. That actually can be found, by the way, in 2003, Maya Angelou said. That quote can be found in a a volume from 1971 called Richard Evans quote book and was first said by Carl Buehner.
George B. Thomas:Anyway, that's a little nerdy. Like, you gotta understand the world around you and the things that are thrown at you. And unless you can be rooted and grounded and have your own borders, your own barriers, your own things. And if you've taken time to build these listen. If you wanna show up and add value and make people feel a certain kind of way, you have to do a couple things.
George B. Thomas:And so why does it matter and what should you be doing? I need and I'm gonna phrase these as questions, but they could be statements. Like, right now, you're sitting listening to this, and let's just say for this podcast moving forward, when I ask a question, it's like, I want you to write it in your notebook and give it a 1 through 10. Right now, do you feel like you can depend on yourself? 1 through 10.
George B. Thomas:Right now, do you show up for yourself 1 through 10? And right now, do you have things in place that you protect yourself? You see, when you depend on yourself, you show up for yourself, and you protect yourself. When you do these things, you start to build self trust. We always talk about self worth and self all these selves.
George B. Thomas:Right? But you start to build self trust. When you start to trust yourself, that's actually how you kill the enemy in your head. That's how you kill the inner critic because you trust yourself. You've culted a relationship with the person that you spend the most time with.
George B. Thomas:You see? And if you focus on a healthy internal relationship, the inner critic speaks less. You grow internal love for yourself, and because of this external love, that's what energy, that's what flows to the rest of your relationships. So because of that, all the external relationships that we talked about last episode become better because your cup's full. You trust yourself.
George B. Thomas:You're showing up for yourself. So I have to ask the listeners as you listen to this podcast on a scale of 1 to 10. How much do you trust yourself to have your best interest at heart versus always thinking somebody else is coming to save the damn day?
Liz Moorehead:You know, maybe it will be helpful for the listeners to hear my answer to that question. Because the answer to that question 6 months ago, 7 months ago, was I looked in the mirror unexpectedly one day and realized the answer was no. I did not.
George B. Thomas:Been there.
Liz Moorehead:And and it's a scary moment. You know, we talked about it in a little bit on the last episode, and I alluded to it. You know, I recently went through a divorce, but there's another more, I wouldn't say more insidious side, but the one bit of dimension I would add here is that sometimes a lack of trust in yourself can also manifest itself in the way of you are making choices in your life, not based on any sort of internal compass. I'm not saying you're immoral, but you may just end up in scenarios where it's like, why do I want this job? Why do I want this house?
Liz Moorehead:That's almost like that. This is not my beautiful house. This is, you know, you have that moment. I remember looking in the mirror one day going, I don't understand why I'm picking any of the things that I'm picking. Because I didn't trust myself to build a life that would make me happy.
Liz Moorehead:And I think that is something that can sometimes happen with folks when they go down this path.
George B. Thomas:And you're knocking on a very interesting door. You used the word happiness. And if you don't know yourself, if you aren't building a relationship with yourself, how do you even know what happiness equals for you? I'll never forget, I was on I go to these weekly meetings for high performing men. We meet.
George B. Thomas:We talk. And I'll never forget that we asked one of the gentlemen, well, what makes you happy? And his response was, I don't know. And, man, like, I could feel just complete sadness in myself at that moment Because if you don't have the answer to that question, there are so many other questions that have been left unanswered about yourself and so many things that you have probably buried or packed away and haven't worked on, and you should be able to say, this makes me happy or these things make me happy. The answer to that in your life, which by the way, at the end of this, Liz, I know you're gonna ask me, like, what are some questions you should be asking?
George B. Thomas:One of the questions is, do I know what makes me happy? That's one of the questions that is gonna be at the end of this podcast.
Liz Moorehead:What I love about what you just said there is that the importance of being able to define that. I think though it's so easy in today's society to lapse into the default state. And I'm very interested because, you know, I prepared you for this because I said, George, you know, we're going deep with a relationship with ourselves. You need to start thinking about where this journey began for you. But one of the things I want the listeners to understand as they're going through this is that you and I have a very interesting relationship with the word should, George.
Liz Moorehead:We live in a society that loves to shove a bunch of shoulds down our throat. Oh, you should be doing this. You're not doing this? Oh, no. So when you hear us say things like, you should be able to define your own happiness, we're not saying that from a place of the fact that you can't right now makes you a bad person.
Liz Moorehead:It means you're already behind. We're just illuminating an area of you should be able to define your own happiness because you are allowed to define your own happiness. And we live in a time where a lot of people have lots of opinions about everything in your life. From the moment you're born. Right?
Liz Moorehead:What preschool you go to, what elementary school you go to, what middle school you go to, who your friends are in high school, where you're considering applying to, what major you get, who you're dating, what you're wearing, who you married, what your wedding reception looks like, how you raise everybody has an opinion about how you live your life. So when we say you should be able to define your own happiness, we do so having personally understood how hard it is today to make that choice to live beyond your default.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:And, George, take us to that moment in your life. That catalyst moment in your life that made you because you alluded to this earlier. Right? Like, you're sitting here talking about understanding how to define your own happiness, and you're there and you've made it there. But I know this journey has a beginning.
Liz Moorehead:Where did that start for you?
George B. Thomas:I wanna pull over at the rest area for a second, though, because you mentioned the word should. And I literally MC this event on a monthly basis, and one of the things the narratives that I talk about is if you realize you're shoulding all over yourself, make sure you transition that into what worked for me. Right? Because we're helping other people in this event, and, like, you should do this. You should do that.
George B. Thomas:You're shoulding all over the audience. Like, just chill out and bring it in. Like, talk about you and your story. Alright. Let's pull back out of the rest area and get on the highway here.
George B. Thomas:So listen. This is hard for me to say, but easy for me to say at the same time. I didn't understand the assignment. I didn't understand the question. I literally had to, like, lay in bed last night and go, I'm not sure when this actually took place.
George B. Thomas:What made me transition in this area? And I I actually woke up, and I was like, oh, wow. I had I had forgotten about that, but it was there. It was in my brain because I had assigned my brain. I had assigned the universe.
George B. Thomas:I had asked God. I need there to be a moment. Where was that moment? And I buried it. But I'll never forget.
George B. Thomas:This is, like, shortly after I met Kelly, my wife, and we had gone to some family events, you know, reunions and dinner at her aunt's house. And she has an aunt, her aunt Nancy, and I love her aunt Nancy to death. She is an amazing human, compassionate, loving, just this tiny woman who exudes this quiet power. And I'll never forget, my wife came to me one time, and she said, probably in different words, but my brain heard, aunt Nancy says that you're filled with anger. And my response was, no.
George B. Thomas:I'm not. That was my response. Alright. I'm not angry. How dare she say that I'm angry?
George B. Thomas:And then I had well, I was like, wait. Woah. Woah. Why did that just come out that way? And so it literally was listen to the words that I just said about this human, right, about Nancy.
George B. Thomas:And I'm like, if she is saying this thing, I probably can't escape it. Like, this is probably a truth. And what's interesting is I hadn't realized who I was willing to live with. I hadn't realized the amount of garbage that I hadn't unpacked from being a kid, from, you know, divorced family, high school dropout, divorce, lost friendships, there was just a lot of stuff. Like, I was a hoarder of all the bad things of my life and emotions.
Liz Moorehead:Own nightmare roommate.
George B. Thomas:I was my own nightmare roommate. And here's the thing. Like, we're more than willing most times to live with our negative self when if it was another human being, we would have divorced them years ago.
Liz Moorehead:Well, isn't that the thing though? Isn't that the thing that often keeps us quite frankly, from wanting to cultivate that relationship with ourselves? That idea of if the world only knew who I really was.
George B. Thomas:But see, that's a trap.
Liz Moorehead:It reinforces the story that even though it's a sucky story about ourselves, it's a comfortable one.
George B. Thomas:But see, here's the thing. You've gotta get comfortable with being uncomfortable. First of all, comfort is not the destination that you wanna go to. It's in these painful processes that you actually grow to be the human that is living beyond your default. For me, though, I realized at that point, I had to build a new relationship with myself because I no longer was willing to live with that negative human.
George B. Thomas:I needed to be able to be in a room and love myself because the next time I went over to Nancy's or to her union, I wanted her to see a difference. Like, it was important to me that she would see that I was different. And what's funny is if I think about my math teacher and his words, and I'm gonna prove him wrong. And Nancy, in her words, I'm gonna prove her wrong. I can start to put these blocks of I have built myself into a better human because I refuse to accept anybody's vocal verbiage of who I am, except I wasn't willing at that point to accept my own vocal verbiage of who I wanted to become.
Liz Moorehead:I think we all just need to take a moment of silence for that. I'm gonna go buy a microphone, ship it to you real quick, and just let you drop
George B. Thomas:it. Let me drop it?
Liz Moorehead:Yeah. Let me drop it there. Alright. But I can't let you go off the hook entirely. In fact, I wanna dig in a little bit here.
Liz Moorehead:I wanna go a little bit deeper into some details. You know, we've been talking a lot in metaphors today. We've been talking a lot about this idea of cups, And, you know, filling our own cup, and talking about cultivating a relationship with ourself, and how important it is, and finding happiness. And my type a self is going, okay, so what does that look like specifically? What are the activities you do, either on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that quote unquote cultivate that relationship?
Liz Moorehead:What do we do?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. We'll get to the tactics in a minute. I think we have to actually start with, like, why did this become important past me just trying to prove people wrong?
Liz Moorehead:See, you're skipping ahead in the narrative, but we can go there first. Yes. So when we say you're spending time on this, anything that you want to spend time on means it's a priority. Yeah. So at some point, you made the realization Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:That this isn't something you just figure out once.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:This is like a garden you need to tend.
George B. Thomas:Well, first of all, you gotta turn it into a garden. And let's just skip all the metaphors because when I think about why has this become a relationship building a relationship with myself that I wanna spend lots of time on. When I think about that, no metaphors, no jargon, no getting cutesy. I didn't like myself. I did not like myself.
George B. Thomas:I did not like the choices that I was making. I kept putting myself in piss poor places in life, and I knew there had to be a better way. I had to convince myself and finally did convince myself that I was smarter than this reactive, angry, frustrated life that I was living. And so when you start to do this, now we can start to get into well, what are the tactics look like? What actions are you taking?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. You have to draw a line in the sand where you're like, enough is enough. You mentioned earlier, Liz, this voice that's like, they it's all they they it's comfortable. You gotta get the point where you're like, no. Call it what is, maybe, is what I'm looking for.
George B. Thomas:Like, I am sucking at life right now. Why is it? Because I am treating myself like ish.
Liz Moorehead:Oh, yeah. You and I had that conversation about myself, what was it, a few months ago when you asked how I was doing. And I said, I gotta be honest, George, kinda tired of my own BS. Like, I'm like, I won't have a better answer for you right now. That's just kind of where I'm at.
Liz Moorehead:And I think you bring up a really valuable point there. You know, it would be nice if a lot of us got to that place before those big moments, but I think it's really important is that you can look at it one of 2 ways. And I'm leaving all metaphors to the side when I say this. You can look at it as I'm tired of my own BS or the way I started reframing it in my mind because I've noticed so much of the reason why I never took the time to define my own happiness and to do all of these different things and to really cultivate a relationship with myself was because I didn't think it was worth it.
George B. Thomas:And a
Liz Moorehead:lot of it stemmed around the language I used to talk about myself every single day. And so one day I decided what if instead of saying the reason I made all these changes was because I was tired of my own BS?
George B. Thomas:What if
Liz Moorehead:instead I started saying because I'm gonna bet on myself because I'm worth betting on? And I think that's something that's really important for people to remember.
George B. Thomas:What's interesting about that, Liz, is and this is gonna sound small and we'll probably dig deeper into it as we go through this, But many times when we're talking negative about ourself, we're like, you're stupid. You don't know what you're doing. We don't actually say, George, you're stupid. George, you don't know what you're doing. Like, we don't even call ourselves ourselves most times when we're talking negatively.
George B. Thomas:If we did, if we stopped and just inserted our name, it would make such an impact that you would immediately be like, that's unacceptable. I wouldn't let anybody else talk
Liz Moorehead:to me that way. Why am I talking to myself that way? But we don't. We we, like, take the most important word, our name, out
George B. Thomas:of it. And it's important when you start to rebuild that you actually do use your name.
Liz Moorehead:Can you give me an example?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So one of the things that I do is I've gotten to the point and, again, this goes back to filling your cup, and we might dive a little bit deeper into this. If you're always waiting for somebody else to fill your cup, think about when I said that a while ago, Yet, you can become your own guide. You can become your own mentor. You can be the person who is filling your own cup.
George B. Thomas:And so when I'm talking to myself, I'm like, George, you got this. George, you can do this. George, now you know better than that. And I'll literally have a conversation with myself using my name because I really do feel like there's us and there's us. And that's gonna sound weird to some people, but, like, we'll dive into this later with, like, looking in the mirror, and I've got questions around this for people, like, when you wake up in the morning.
George B. Thomas:But I feel like there's 2 people inside of our brain many times. But I wanna get back on track because we've used the word cultivate, And you said garden a little bit ago, and I said, if there's even a garden or at least in my brain, I said, well, there might not even be a garden there. I think it verbally came out, but, hey, rewind and you can see if I said that. But
Liz Moorehead:You did.
George B. Thomas:So I want you to think about this. Right? You got a house. You got a yard. You decide, hey.
George B. Thomas:I need to build a garden. The first thing that you have to do to build a garden is you have to rip up the soil. You have to destroy something. You have to destroy something to make something new.
Liz Moorehead:That is a Pablo Picasso quote. Did you know that? Every act of creation begins as an act of destruction.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And so now here's the thing. Just like yourself, you have to actively work on yourself. Now you've destroyed the ground as it was. Now you have to actively plant the seed.
George B. Thomas:You have to actively water it. You have to make sure that you're giving it the best conditions to grow so that you can bear fruit and vegetables and be able to eat the things from your garden. My question to the listeners is, are you giving your garden, you, the best light, the best water, the best thing to then produce fruit into the world so that you can live a life that you are nourished and full and able to move forward. But here's the thing. I'm painting it as a pretty picture of, like it's painful.
George B. Thomas:It's painful at first, but it's so good, and it feels so much better in the long run when you've got the garden for the 2nd year, the 3rd year. The plants are more mature. They're producing bigger fruit. You didn't have to necessarily destroy an entire area. You just had to maybe pick a few weeds out that were in your life.
Liz Moorehead:People talk about, like, being in a state of receivership, wanting to let in the things that they feel that they are meant for, the things that they want in their lives. And one question I asked someone yesterday was, is there even any room in your life for the things that you want? But that's an episode for another day.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. That's a
Liz Moorehead:whole episode. I've got my pen ready. Do we are we ready to talk about tactics?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:Yeah. Alright.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:So let's talk tactics. What is true cultivation of a relationship with yourself look like? I'd love to peek behind the curtain of what that looks like with you.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So the first thing that I started doing is I started reading books. Now when I say reading books, I mean, listening to books because I'm more of an audible guy than an actual, like, sit down and read it. That counts. I know that is a hot debate in the community of
Liz Moorehead:whether audiobooks is actually reading. Yes. It is. Here it is. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:Reading. Yes. It is. Here it is.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So there are 4 books that helped me cultivate a better relationship with me and help me to the point where I could even have these beyond your default journey conversations. One book is The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and it is phenomenal. There's a movie too, I think, I watched, like, years ago, but the book, the book, the book, the book. For all
Liz Moorehead:of these, the book, by the way.
George B. Thomas:There's a book called Soar, and it's by T. D. Jakes. He's a pastor. The book is amazing.
George B. Thomas:There's also Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty, which you kinda can't turn anywhere on the Internet and not see Jay Shetty at this point. But the book and when he talked about the monkey brain and the monk brain, I about lost my stuff. I was like, what is going on right now? And then since reading it twice, have told almost everybody that I come into contact with, if you haven't read it, you need to read it, and that's the big leap by Gay Hendrickson. The big leap.
George B. Thomas:You'll find it. So the way of the peaceful warrior, Soar, Think Like A Monk, and the big leap. Like, if you're truly trying to set out on this course, that is 4 pieces of text that you could put into your mind.
Liz Moorehead:By the way, there is a 5th. It it's called the Bible. We'll talk about that in a little bit.
George B. Thomas:But here's some things, like, activities. I had to get to the point where I would give myself grace, and that's so hard for us to do so many times. Just to be compassionate for ourself and to allow ourself the understanding that we're imperfect beings and we are gonna make mistakes and not to beat the crap out of ourselves. And there's a huge difference between beating yourself up and just noticing and then taking action on those things you're noticing. One of the things that I was really bad at that I do as an activity now is I try to get plenty of rest.
George B. Thomas:And I know that's gonna sound like, you know, oh, get good sleep. Thanks, Jordan. Listen. I want you to think about the last week, 2 weeks, or 30 days, and the amount of time that you've slept. Because when you sleep, that's when all the things that are firing in your brain all day long, when you're sleeping, that's when they're actually, like, connecting and merging and rebuilding.
George B. Thomas:Like, you need to get rest. Again, go back to the Healthy Hustle episode. I make it without sounding weird. I make it a point to talk to myself using my name through the situations that I'm going through. I am truly trying to become my own guide, my own mentor on the things that I know are in my brain and these little bites of information that I can play on loop and then be like, George.
George B. Thomas:Alright. Here's what we're gonna do, buddy. What I want you to do, George, I want you to sit down, and you need to kinda strategize at this point. I know you feel like being a bull in a China closet. You wanna run through it.
George B. Thomas:They pissed you off. But, hey, George. What you need to do is the opposite of that right now. And so, like, I would talk to a true friend, you know, if you were having a hard time, I'd be like, Liz, listen. This is what I would suggest doing that for myself.
George B. Thomas:Here's the other thing too. If you know yourself, you start to understand your own love languages. One of my love languages, I love gifts.
Liz Moorehead:Like, I just love gifts.
George B. Thomas:It's I know that. So I'll take time to, like, gift myself. Like, you know what? You deserve a new x y z. It might be a watch.
George B. Thomas:It might be a hat. It might be, you know, something dumb like new wipers on my car, but I'm gonna go buy me this gift because I know it's gonna make me feel a certain kind of way. And the last thing and, again, it ties back to our last episode, which led us into this episode, is I have really tried to pay attention to my core circle. Does it need to grow anymore? Does it need to shrink?
George B. Thomas:How can I be pouring into them? And I'll tell you, even since last week when we recorded this, this whole, am I the Uber driver or are they the GPS, has not been able to leave my brain. And it's given me a whole new way to kind of look at these core humans that are in the circle and how much of or what type of attention do I pay to them because there's totally 2 different sides there. So that's literally kind of the things that I block out that I'm trying to pay attention to or do or insert into my life.
Liz Moorehead:I love that. A couple things that just came to mind. Number 1, I had a similar thing where I started evaluating after and this happens after every conversation that we have, obviously. But when we were talking about the relationships piece last week, I noticed an interesting little side effect, a positive one, where how I treated an external relationship actually helped me cultivate a relationship with myself. I was talking to someone and they noticed, like, I was making more time for them and came up and I said, well, yeah.
Liz Moorehead:I've purposely made my circle much smaller. So now I get to be more choosy about how I spend my time, and so I reference The Simpsons and I went, I choo choo choose you. And it was just kind of it was a silly cute little moment, but then I realized, wow, I care about myself enough that I believe I'm worthy of having cultivated relationships with others, that I get to be choosy in my own life. A couple other things that came to mind in terms of tactics that I do in my own life, I try to meditate every morning. One of the things I noticed is that when I was really struggling to define my own happiness, often it was because even though I was an only child, even though I lived by myself during the pandemic with a cat.
Liz Moorehead:You know, I had this false sense of, well, I'm really good at being by myself. But I actually did not know how to sit in silence and stillness with my own brain and my own thoughts. And a meditation practice, I use Headspace. I find that to be a really calm is great. I use it for other things, but headspace is great because it teaches you how to move through uncomfortable feelings and how to observe thoughts as opposed to experiencing them.
Liz Moorehead:And then the other thing I would recommend is that if you are someone who is a creative like George or myself, I would recommend a book called The Artist's Way. It has some incredible, incredible activities. It's a guided 12 week program that involves stream of consciousness writing and it's really helped me connect with myself as well. George, I wanna dig a little bit more deeply into some of the things that you do for yourself. I know that we have said in the past, obviously, that when we talk about spirituality, when we talk about religion, when we talk about the Bible, we are doing so from a place of this is our lived experience, and we are by no means doing so from a place of we are preaching to you about how you should be living your life.
Liz Moorehead:However, you did note the Bible is one of the books that you consider to be Yeah. Important in shaping this narrative for yourself. Can you speak to that a bit?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And it's funny because I haven't really stated this, but I'll state it. I'm purposely not bringing a lot of scripture into the episodes because I don't want somebody to tune in immediately and be like, oh, this is a spiritual podcast and be gone. And I don't want him to think it's a religious podcast. By the way, being religious, being spiritual, 2 totally different things, probably an episode in the future.
George B. Thomas:But I'm gonna bring a couple scriptures in this episode. And so just bear with me and realize that you, the listener, whatever your beliefs are, you can still use the words in a way of the power that they have. Let's just start with this. You have to know yourself to understand yourself. And, Liz, we kind of bumped into this earlier.
George B. Thomas:It's only when you understand yourself that you can know your boundaries and set your boundaries and start to create a safe space for you to play the game of life. It's also when you know yourself and start to understand yourself that you then start to know your values. Values are actually what help you. It's like, okay. We're gonna shoot over to the right.
George B. Thomas:He's gonna run to the 30 yard line, and your values are the core pieces of what allow you to run the plays in your life or plays that you wouldn't accept in your life. And so for me, when I think about this knowing yourself, understanding yourself, setting up your boundaries, knowing your values, There's actually 2 pieces of scripture that I wanna pull out for this episode, and one is Mark 12 3031, and the other one is Acts 2035. Now Mark 123031 goes a little something like this, And you shall love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. I want you to realize that's broken into 3 things. Remember I talked about marketing, sales, service, your inside organization?
George B. Thomas:The lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Now if you hate yourself, if you don't like to be in a room by yourself, if you are your worst inner critic because you haven't got to know yourself or cultivated the relationship, how in God's name are you supposed to follow the commandment of love your neighbor as yourself?
George B. Thomas:It almost positions that you are supposed to love God, love yourself above, and then that's how it flows out to the world. Remember I talked about energy flowing out. So Acts 2035, in everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak, remembering the words the lord Jesus himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. We always talk about giving to others and helping the weak in this fashion. But if you just stop for a second and realize you're a human just like the rest of the humans, you're an imperfect human, you're a weak human, When's the last time you have given to yourself so, therefore, you could give to others?
George B. Thomas:This is why I tie into being my own guide, my own mentor. How do I give myself a pep talk? How do I give myself the energy? How do I fill my cup so that I can? But this is a self realization, imperfect and weak human, not always with other people who can fill his cup.
George B. Thomas:Out of necessity, how can I become that person? See, because when you pay attention to Mark 123031 and Acts 2035, you realize, like, you're supposed to love yourself. You're supposed to then radiate your energy, which helps you to live out your passions, and it's all because you have the self realization of being an imperfect weak human that you can have self conversations, teachings, and mentorings to self. Self conversations, teaching yourself, mentoring yourself. You can't take others to the next level, help them live a life beyond their default, unless you're leveling yourself up along the way as well.
Liz Moorehead:How do our listeners know if they have an issue with their own relationship itself? What are the symptoms they might be experiencing in their lives? Because I think there may be some more obvious cases where it's like, yep, That's me. Hi. I am the problem.
Liz Moorehead:It's me. Taylor Swift 1 through 5. But there are other times though where it's more insidious. Right? Where it's more like a death by paper cut until you wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and
George B. Thomas:go, oh, no. I think there's 3 things that I'll talk about here. When you're in a room by yourself, are you lonely, or is it an opportunity? See, if it's an opportunity that you can fill your cup, if it's an opportunity that you can love yourself, if it's an opportunity just to kinda shake the rest of the world off. But if you're in a room by yourself and you're lonely and frustrated and beating yourself up, you probably have an issue, this conversation that we're having today.
Liz Moorehead:But that's good, though. That discomfort is good. That's where the
George B. Thomas:Discomfort is where like, knowing the problem exists and not accepting the discomfort and growing through the discomfort is good. If you're not keeping yourself accountable, and I'll position that as a question. Are you keeping yourself accountable? If you're like, I'm gonna do this, and then you get a weekend and you're like, well, I'll do that some of the times. And then you get another weekend and you're like, well, I'll do it occasionally.
George B. Thomas:Now you don't trust yourself. You don't believe in yourself. And if you don't believe in trusting yourself, it's very hard to love anybody that you can't trust or believe externally. So how are you gonna do it internally? So I would say, like, how can you keep yourself accountable?
George B. Thomas:How can you make sure that you are believing in yourself, that you are trusting in yourself, therefore, allowing you to love yourself? And this next one, you have to ask yourself, am I demolishing my own divinity? You have to understand you're a whole human. You are perfect as you were created. If I were to say that to myself, I'd be like, I am whole and I am perfect as I was created.
George B. Thomas:When you can't love yourself, when you're demolishing your own divinity, you're saying that you're a mistake. You're saying that you're a junk. And I gotta be honest with you. God don't make no junk. The universe don't make no junk.
George B. Thomas:Like, you are here for a reason, but you have to love yourself and unlock your inner superpowers to be the light to the world, to be who you're supposed to be. And if you can't stand to be in a room by yourself, if you're not keeping yourself accountable, and if you're demolishing your own divinity, how in the world are you going to achieve that?
Liz Moorehead:So when we think about folks who may be listening to this, because we alluded to this earlier. Right? You let the cat out of the bag. You always kinda know where I'm leading us to, which is what are some of the questions people should be asking themselves at this point? Point?
Liz Moorehead:Because we've spent a lot of time talking today about the importance of this relationship. How it directs so much of our lives, not just in terms of trying to live beyond your default, but just in general. Like if you have to start here before you can start thinking about anything outside of yourself. What are some questions that can help people on their journey?
George B. Thomas:The first question I'm gonna ask the question, and then I'm gonna give it some context. The first question that I have to ask myself and remember, all of this is like a work in progress. The first question I have to ask myself and that I would hope the listeners would ask themselves is when life squeezes you, what comes out? Because life's gonna squeeze you. Let me give you some context here.
George B. Thomas:If I take an orange off of my counter, cut it in half, and squeeze it, what am I gonna get? Orange juice, because that's what's inside of it. If life squeezes you and anger comes out, who are you? If life squeezes you and frustration comes out, envy comes out, who are you? Right?
George B. Thomas:If life squeezes you and grace, empathy, compassion, and love come out, who are you? So look at the times when life squeezes you and your reactions to understand where you truly are and how you might need to change your inner self so that when life squeezes you, the external juice is what you want it to be. The other question that I have to ask myself and I think the listeners need to ask themselves by the way, this could be on the daily, the hourly, or the minute. Am I beating myself up, or am I noticing things that I wanna change along the way? Because there's a fundamental difference.
George B. Thomas:You're so stupid. You're so dumb. Well, that probably wasn't the smartest decision. Let's document that and pay attention to it in the future. There's a difference between beating yourself up and just noticing things that you wanna change.
George B. Thomas:Do you know your self worth? This one's a biggie, and it's hard. But do you know what you're worth? Like, I'm gonna let that sit with people for a minute. Like, they might wanna pause and be like, I don't know.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Like and that's the second
Liz Moorehead:I don't know.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And that's the second question that makes me sad. Hey. What makes you happy? I don't know.
George B. Thomas:What are you worth? I don't know. You gotta know what you're worth. You gotta know your value. The other one, and I said I would come back to this, is what makes me happy?
George B. Thomas:What makes you happy? Now I'm gonna go back to this self worth thing for a second. Because of your visceral response, lean in face, and, like, oh.
Liz Moorehead:Gotta help me like that.
George B. Thomas:But, yeah, it's it's fair.
Liz Moorehead:It's fair.
George B. Thomas:Most people don't know their own self worth. They have never taken time to understand their self value independent of the world's opinion and validation. They want opinions. You should have your own opinion of yourself. They want validation that they're headed in the right direction.
George B. Thomas:You should validate your own ticket of life. That's the thing. We have to spend more time with ourselves cultivating this relationship because we're letting the world be our Uber driver that forgot their GPS and is just driving us all over the wrong places that we don't need to be. Instead of us being our own guide on this fabulous journey of life filled to the brim of positive, loving energy that we can spill out to those around us in being the most value based, loving, light along the way.