Beautiful Bravehearts, so glad that you're back with me today, and hey, before we get going in today's episode, would you just take a minute and would you subscribe and follow and like, and all those positive things so you never miss another episode? Why is it important to follow and not miss episodes? 'Cause I'm sharing every week from my heart, empowering messages just for you. I'm opening up my life, I'm sharing my heart. Because I love women. I love you. I know I don't know you face-to-face, but I love the fact that I am you. I feel you. I go through the same problems and difficulties. I have the same dreams and aspirations, and together I feel like we can really encourage one another. So I wanna build this population of women. I wanna build this tribe of overachieving, beautiful, self-accepting women who are midlife and beyond. And so if you would please even just stop by my website, braveheartedwoman.com, I have a newsletter there that you can sign up for. I'd love to have your information. I'd love for you to have mine so we can get some synergy and share together. I'm always giving away free gifts, downloads, and opportunities. I'd love to meet you and hear from you, so take a minute and do that.

But today I do wanna talk about self-acceptance versus shame, and specifically, to tell you that the way that you talk to yourself matters the way that you see yourself and the way that you evaluate yourself. It matters. You know, many years ago, there was a commercial on TV. It was called the Ali Oops Sale. It was talking about scratch and dent furniture and how it was marked way down. And I think that sometimes women who struggle with shaming voices, they put themselves on sale. It's like you're in the scratch and dent showroom and you are apologizing for all of your Mars and Marks, and so therefore, I'm not worth as much. But I'll tell you the truth, it's those marks, those Mars, those scratches, those dents that make you valuable. That makes you irreplaceable, that makes you a beautiful, solid, strong, wise woman. That is your value, my dear sister. Everything that you've been through, lived through, learned from, and can now impart to others.

So let's just take a moment and talk about the way that we esteem ourselves. Let's be honest, as I said at the beginning and the top of this show. I don't think that you would ever say to a friend, you look terrible unless they did indeed look terrible, and you had that kind of relationship, and you were about to pull them out of the dumps by your next sentence, come on, let's get you back to the beautiful self that you are. But we wouldn't say, you look terrible and you've let yourself go, and boy, you look like you've really packed on the weight, or you're too old for that.

Who do you think you are? Nobody wants what you have. We wouldn't say those things to our best friend. We say 'em to ourselves. Now, if I heard somebody talk to me like that, I would probably say, excuse me, I'd be offended. I would want to defend myself. And yet those words bypass my inner guard, my inner watchdog, all the time, and allow me to accept them and hear them and even repeat them, saying 'em over and over again in my own head. No, it's time for us to catch what we say and replace it with more empowering words. So when you say that, when you beat yourself up, when you, you know, berate yourself with those negative comments, honestly, that's not motivation. That is shaming yourself.

So let's just define for a moment the difference between the shaming messages and those of self-acceptance type of messages. So the shaming. Shaming says, I am the problem. I am a mistake. I am a failure. I am not enough. I will never change. I am stuck. I am ordained to be in this mess. This is my lot in life. Okay, can you hear that? Oh, how discouraging. How sad if that's what you really believe and what you speak over yourself. But self-acceptance just says, this is where I am, and I can grow. I will grow. I will move on. From here. I am learning. I am stretching. I am becoming, I mean, can you hear the difference? One is just filled with self-hate, I think self-rejection, and the other is filled with compassion and grace. Shame just paralyzes us, and acceptance empowers us. Shame it shuts us down, doesn't it? We say, I quit. I can't do it. But acceptance urges us to keep on going, and we feel confident enough, affirmed enough, celebrated enough to say, okay, I'm gonna keep going. I can do this. One keeps you stuck, the other keeps you moving forward, and you get to choose which voice you're gonna listen to.

So I wanna share with you the biggest lie about shame, 'cause I wonder if somewhere along the line we learned or we were taught that if we were hard on ourselves. That we would do better like if I was really hard and, and I was mean, and I was, you know, just diligent and vigilant with myself, that I will do better, kind of like an angry staff sergeant inside of us, that inner critic, well, you won't, you won't do better. You might hustle for a moment. You might perform outta guilt for a bit, but it's not sustainable long term. Shame leads to withdrawal, isolation, hiding, avoiding over apologizing, making excuses for ourselves, emotional eating 'cause we're failing, we're not enough, we're not good enough. And finally, giving up shame does not produce transformation. Never has. And it never will. It produces exhaustion. It produces feelings of futility. It produces smallness.

Now, here are two areas where we really get caught up in the shaming as women, midlife women. Women in their fifties or sixties, body shaming is one of them. I'm gonna talk about that for a minute. Body shaming, the constant criticism, looking in the mirror or looking at pictures of yourself and seeing the weight or your shape, your size, your height, your appearance, like your hips are big, your hips are small, your arms are too meaty, or your arms are too stringy. I mean, you start treating your body with contempt. That means that we are deserving of scorn. Because I have this body. Now, some of us are just born with the body that we have; we know that it has morphed on us and changed, and we have some control over that, and a lot of control over what it looks like.

But here's the truth. Your body is not the problem. Your body is not the enemy. Some unruly betrayer of you. Your body is a sacred friend. I think of it like my body is my covenant partner. My body is the vehicle, the divine vehicle that's carrying around the true life in me, carrying around my spirit, carrying around the vision that God has given me. My body is my ally, an eye, my mind must be an ally back to my body because if I don't take care of it, it can't take care of me if you have to appreciate your body.

Many years ago, I did a message called Good Job Body. I think I even wrote about it in one of my books. I know that I did. I taught my daughters to say, good job, body! Good job, legs! You keep me walking. Good job, heart! You keep beating. Good job, circulation! You keep cleansing me and pumping blood. Good job, eyes! You see. Some days not so well, but you see, good job, body. Good job! Thank you. Thank you, God. Thank you! And to show my appreciation for your body.

Tell me what you need. Tell me how I can treat you well. Water, food, energy, exercise. Do you have to reevaluate your relationship with your body to stop shaming your body? Start loving your body. Love your skin. Tell it beautiful, nurturing things your body hears, your mind hears. The words that come out of your mouth are instructions to your brain, telling you how you're going to live, how you're going to look, how you're gonna appear, how you're gonna feel.

The other area that I think that we tend to do a lot of shaming, and I've talked about this at length before, is, and this one's a little sneaky, but it's aging. You're too old, you've missed your window. It's downhill from here; you're irrelevant. Nobody cares about what you think or say. Says who. Your age is not a disqualifier. Sometimes it's our own messaging. I want you just to think about this and be careful because sometimes the way we look at older people, the way we treat older people, might be the way that we're treating ourselves.

Right now, if you were taught as you were younger to revere your elders, to look up to them, to respect them, to understand that they have incredible wisdom, then you might be aging with a sense of pride and godly confidence and feeling good. But there may be a sense that you saw in your world that you know, older people in the American culture, y'all were not very kind to people who get older. We treat 'em like babies, and we patronize, and we disrespect, and we think they don't know what they're talking about. So I wanna give honor to those who are older than me. I want the younger people to honor me for the age and the life experience that I have, but most importantly, I wanna honor God by loving myself at every age that he's allowed me to live. I am the sum total of every age that I've ever lived. I have wisdom to impart, experience to help others, to train and to teach, and to share with others. So do you. We have resources and networks. We've learned so much. We've cultivated a life that's, we're still here, we're successful. We've moved on. We've navigated life on life's terms. Here we are. Well done. Good job, sister.

So let's talk about what healthy self-acceptance actually looks like. Okay, so let me be clear. This is important. Self-acceptance is not just settling. It's not giving up. It's not ignoring your health. It's not saying, well, it is just what it is, and I just accept myself. It's not saying, yeah, I'm very, very overweight, but I just love myself. Well, love the value of who you are, but love yourself enough to say, honestly, I'm not at a healthy weight, but I'm gonna get there. Okay. Or maybe you have some habits and some addictions that you don't wanna just say, well, I'm just hooked. And that's how it is. No, no, no, no. Say, here's where I am, and with God's help, I'm believing that I'm gonna be set free from this and walk into the next. Best chapter of my life. Self-acceptance is not self-grandiose either. It's not saying I got it all together. Self-acceptance isn't some form of pride or independence that says, I got it. I don't need God. I don't need community. I don't need anyone. I don't need help. No, that's not what I'm saying. And sometimes Christians get really sensitive about this thing. I'm saying Love who God created you to be. Love yourself. And that's an important message, and I don't believe it's wrong. I believe that God has called us to accept and love the value and worth of who we are. Change what we can change and embrace what we can't, and God's grace be upon us.

Self-acceptance is refusing to hate yourself while you grow, refusing that self-rejection when you're not quite where you can be and will be. Self-acceptance is speaking truth instead of criticism. Speaking the truth in love to yourself.

Yes. I remember one time I wrote myself a love note, and I said, Dawn, I love you. I care about you, but here's some truth. You are da, da, da, da, da. And you need to think about what you'd like to do, whether it's church hurt or a wound or a bitterness, whether it's spending money or being a shopaholic, an alcoholic, whether it is being a food aholic, overweight, impatient, ill-tempered, whatever it is, you can become. You can change, you can transform. So accept yourself while you're in the midst of that transformation, take responsibility without tearing yourself down. You have to take responsibility. While loving yourself. Okay, acknowledging weakness and the need for others without being prideful or any self-exaltation. That's self-acceptance. This is where I'm at. You can say, I wanna get stronger without saying, I'm a loser. I'm disgusting. I'm a hot mess. I'm blah. Okay. We don't need to be using those kinds of words to describe, well, anything, especially not ourselves or those that we love. Alright, so let me give you a few practicals as we wrap this up today.

Here are three quick shifts that I want you to really be aware of. I have one client who said to me, you know, I have a pattern in my thinking that I don't know how to break loose of it. You're not gonna just magically break loose of it. Number one, catch the voice. Catch yourself in the midst of the crime, if you will, the seat of the crime. Notice the negative script. Catch it, interrupt it. You can't change what you don't catch. You can't modify something that you never see, hear, or acknowledge, but to master it, to make the changes, catch it, and then reframe it.

So number two, replace. Don't just remove, and don't just remorse. Replace it. Back it up. Literally say to yourself, you know what? I'm gonna back that up a minute. Instead of saying, I hate my body. Whoop. Catch it. Say I'm working on getting stronger and healthier. Good job, body, stronger and healthier. I'm working on toning and strengthening what I have been given in my body. I'm working on sharpening my skills and practicing my mindset versus just letting anything happen.

And three, speak like a coach, not a critic. Coach yourself. A good coach tells the truth in love. A good coach, while they're telling you the truth, they're also pulling you forward. They're inspiring you to go forward. You're aspirational with a coach. They're showing you the vision of what could be for you if you choose it and say, yes, that's the voice that you need, the coach, not the critic. So, bringing it to a close today, the bottom line is you can't build a life that you love, a strong life. On a foundation of self-hatred, self-loathing, and self-rejecting, it won't happen. You can't overcome imposter syndrome if you hate yourself. You can't grow in confidence if you're constantly criticizing yourself. That's not gonna happen. So it won't hold. It won't keep up.

But when you combine your identity in Christ, know who he says you are, and you combine that with self-acceptance, taking personal responsibility, and consistent action. All right, now we have a recipe. You are partnering with self-acceptance, not shame. You're gonna grow, you're gonna blossom, you're gonna bloom.

So talk to yourself like you are worth someone who is worth leading because you are. My beautiful, brave hearts. That's what I have for you. You know, at this age, you've spent years showing up for everyone else. It's time to show up for you. You've been responsible. You've made sacrifices, you've paid the price. You keep going. Even when you've been sick, you were running on empty. You showed. You get to say yes to you.

Now, somewhere along the line, you may start wondering, is this it? Is this all there is? Like, where did my confidence go? What do I do now? What's next? A lot of women are asking that question, so I've made a course just for you, the Brave Life Transformation Method, based on my five BraveHeart framework, if you will. I want you to be a part of this. Reignite your confidence. Say yes to you. Get your assurance back, step into your God calling without self-doubt, without second-guessing or wondering if it's too late for you. You can find that. Go to my website, the bravehearted woman.com/bravehearttransformation. I want you to get that course. Start today, your transformation is waiting for you to say yes.

All right, everybody. This is Dawn Damon, your Braveheart coach, leaving you like I always do. It's time for you to find your brave and live your dreams!