Finding Abundance in Self Acceptance | Sarah Jakes Roberts EP 284

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:51I do think no matter how great you've had parenting in your life, that there's an ache inside of all of us. now. It could be something minor like a headache or it could be a missing leg, depending on what you've gone through in life. Emotionally. Yeah, in some way. And so I think to come to terms with the fact that there is going to be a part of me, and even for me as a parent, there's going to be a part of my children that I just don't see, that I just don't see. I'm going to give this 100%, but there's still going to be moments. Life is still going to have to suck them in. And in the process of doing that, they may come out wounded.

1:28And this is part of what I thought even when I was a single mother is like, so my job is not to protect them from harm. I'm going to do the best that I can, but I realized that they are going to have some harm, right? They're going to school. They're going to be around people and peers and who knows what will happen in that environment. My role is to show them how to recover from harm. That's so true. That's so true. I feel like no matter how much we create safety for our kids, there's going to be some trigger, some wound, some pain they feel from peers or school or sports or whatever they're in, they're going to have something that hurts them.

2:03We can't always protect our kids, but what you just said, teaching them the tools on how to recover, how to emotionally navigate those feelings, how to express it in a healthier way is, I think, our responsibility as parents or as humans, right? Yeah. I think I get on my kids' nerves because now I'm like, let's look at the feelings. Let's talk about the feelings. One of the things that I noticed immediately about my husband, Trey, who I've been married to now for seven years. So we're a blended family with six children. You know, when he was parenting his children, if he had a bad day and was like maybe too sharp or too rough, he would apologize to them.

2:38And I was like, oh, no, we don't apologize to children. We don't do that. We just let them get over it. We take them for ice cream. And he was like, no, like, it's OK to apologize to your children. You know, I cannot remember a time when my parents, like, apologized to me. This is the way. You do what I say. Right. You go to your room, and this is the law. Absolutely. And even if I'm wrong, suck it up. I'm right most of the time, you know? And so my husband taught me the power of apologizing to your children. And so even when you have those moments where maybe you fly off the handle, you react too soon, or don't react from the best version of yourself, don't underestimate the ability to go back and fix it through an apology.

3:19I think that we have to believe in our worth. How do we believe it if everything is telling us we're not worth anything? Maybe it's less about belief and more about acceptance. You know, because I think at the end of the day, I had to surrender to the fact that whether I think I deserve it or not, it's in my life. I'm here. It's here. I'm here. I'm alive. Like, this is the only body I'm going to have. I think what I'm calling belief is actually acceptance. Maybe it's self-acceptance and finding worth in the acceptance of our actual truth and truth building us up in such a way that we live without fear because we're no longer afraid of our own truth.

4:01Because I do think the acceptance of this is my body, this is my life, this is my past, like this is my husband. And if I only have a short amount of time here, do I want to spend it rejecting the very life that I've been given? Or do I want to dare to accept it with no fear that it could be gone tomorrow? Like even with me and Woman Evolved, like I'm at this place now where I'm like, I'm going to give this thing 100 percent. And I'm not going to worry about how I keep it afloat because right now it's here. Right now it's present. Don't stress about it going away. Yeah. I feel like practicing acceptance and living in a moment is something that social media and just our phones in general have robbed us of.

4:44I have to tell myself to put my phone down when watching a movie. There's something about practicing being present fully in a moment. And I think that as we practice that, that we will take in our life in such a way that we find what we enjoy about it and we accept it and embrace it and love the life that we live. How do we accept if we're not happy with what we have? We got to accept it if we're going to change it. So I think we have to accept that, okay, so this is my life. I'm in a bad marriage, okay? My career isn't where I want it to be. Like, this is my truth. I'm going to accept this as my truth.

5:19And then I have to determine, can my truth stay? Can I build with this truth? And if not, what do I need to do? Do I need to go to therapy? Do I need to go back to school? Should I start a side business? What would it take for me to come to a place where I can embrace and love the truth that I've had to accept? Yeah. What are three things that people should look for when knowing they've found the right partner for their life? Maybe not the perfect person, but the right person, great fit. First thing that you should look for is the best version of yourself. In them or you being the best version with them?

5:54You being the best version of yourself. I don't want to even talk about what the other person should possess until you understand the fullness of what you possess. That's smart. Too much onus is on what a person is going to bring into the room. What do you bring into the room? Who are you at your best? Who are you at your worst? How do you handle your finances? How do you handle your emotions? What does anger look like for you? Where's your childhood baggage? You know, how is that playing out in your adulthood? Who are you? My father said the most powerful thing to me after I went through my divorce.

6:28I wasn't even thinking about marrying again. But he was saying in the context of marriage in general, that when you're married, you're looking for the person who you want to be beside you when you put me in the ground. In your most fragile moment, who do you want beside you? when everything you've known is being pulled up from underneath you, who do you want besides you? So I think understanding who you are well enough to make that decision is the first thing. Okay. Number two is someone who has done that type of work for themselves, that type of work of knowing their strengths, their weaknesses, their childhood trauma, someone who knows themselves well enough that they can say, oh, I'm sorry, the little boy, and me was speaking, the little girl in me was speaking.

7:17Right. Take responsibility for those actions. Absolutely. What you can't do unless you've gone on a journey yourself. Right. And then the third thing I will say is someone who makes you laugh because laughter is medicine. It is. And if you're going to do life with someone in a world that is often sick, you want to have that medicine right beside you every night.

7:49Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple podcast right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

8:39Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.