How to inspire yourself, not be an asshole, and think positively

Note: This is an excerpt from my podcast episode: “How to Inspire Yourself, Not be an Asshole, and Think Positively. You can listen below.

 Hi and welcome back. Today we’re going to be talking a little bit about how to not be an asshole. And in this I don’t necessarily mean to other people, I actually mean to yourself because as you know, we are pretty critical on ourselves and especially with summer and summer bad and hot, mom summer and all of these trends really taking place, it can be a pretty dangerous space to hold for yourself when you’re not necessarily in the best headspace or the best physical shape that you wanted to be.

And so I figured that this would be a perfect topic for us to dig in, and for me to give my true and unfiltered advice, tips and tricks for how to not be an asshole to yourself and how to really inspire yourself when you’re feeling uninspired.

Let’s dive in.

One thing to note is I am by no means a mental health expert. I don’t claim to be, but I have done and lived nine lives worth of refining myself and figuring out ways to feel better, try to look better, and do things that truly just made me a more happy person and a better, more friendly, fun person to be around.

I no longer feel like I have to rely on things like alcohol to have fun, or to put myself in situations where I might be around people I don’t know, or situations that are unfamiliar to me. Because I’ve developed a set of tools and tips, tricks that have enabled me to feel more confident in those situations and scenarios. And I wanted to share those with you, because I think it can be a pretty tricky place to find yourself in when you’re going through a period like I have consistently found myself in year over year, month over month, etc. and lately, for some reason I’m really not sure why. Maybe it’s just the draw of the device in my hand and feeling like when I’m commuting, it’s one of the only things I have to do is to look at my phone.

But I have been absolutely obsessed with checking Instagram and TikTok lately, and I’ve actually gotten past the point where looking at it is making me feel. Depressed or unworthy in any way, shape or form. I actually now am at the point where if I see someone who clearly has it more together than me, is in great shape. I am, you know, either commenting and applauding them or in my head liking. I’m liking their post. And then in my head thinking about the fact that, like, wow, that’s awesome for them.

However, I want to reiterate that half of what we see on social media is fake, and I am well aware of that because it is the portrayal of what you want other people to think of you. There is a rarity in someone’s content where they’ll say, I posted this photo because I thought I looked really good, but actually I was struggling so much at the time that I posted it because I was feeling these real feelings. I was going through these real emotions. I was having this hard time getting past this thought, etc. and I think that it’s so easy to look at some of that content and just think to yourself, wow, this person has it all together. They look beautiful. They this, they that. Yes, that’s 100%. How they want you to think, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s actually what’s going on. So I want to just preface with that, because if you are a person who is consistently checking your phone on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or wherever you’re checking threads, Twitter, whatever, you’re likely to spend more time than you actually think or want to on those platforms because it is so addictive. It’s interesting to see what other people are doing, and to feel connected, or to feel like you’re following this story or this person’s life, etc. that’s why so many of us love reality TV, because it is interesting. It’s not providing any true value to you or helping you negate or learn life lessons, but it’s providing you with an outlet in which to follow someone else’s debacle instead of having to live through your own. And I, for one, totally love reality TV for the most part. I do have a few favorite shows, although I no longer have cable, so I am now kind of having to figure out and watch and find new things to like. But. I have noticed that when I’ve actually gone through certain programs where we’ve been asked to think through and actually jot down the thoughts that we have throughout the day, like what they actually say, that some of them are literally messed up.

Like sometimes I’ll catch myself thinking things like, you are a fat, disgusting pig. I cannot believe you would go out looking like that. And I have to pause for a second and think, oh my God, that was cruel. I would never say that to someone else, even if I were thinking it. And then I have to think, oh my God, I, I probably do think that about other people. Of course, I would never say it to them, but that just goes to show that I’m one mean bitch. If that is something that’s literally in my head, and especially when it comes to myself.

And in my last episode, I talked a little bit about finding confidence and building some tricks to help you get out of those really rough ruts where you’re feeling incredibly self-conscious. And I think that not being an asshole to yourself is part of that. But it also goes hand in hand with feeling inspired and finding a way to draw yourself to content or podcasts or visuals or something that is more awe inspiring than the things that we traditionally pull ourselves to, like Instagram and TikTok and reality TV. Because at the end of the day, what I have found is that it’s incredibly hard to feel inspired when you’re looking at content that is uninspiring. If you’re looking at someone else’s life and they’re posting all of these things and they’re on a yacht, or they’re at the beach, or they’re on vacation with their kids, or they’re doing their workout routine and you’re feeling like, okay, I’m looking at my watch. It’s the middle of the day. I feel like I’ve barely accomplished anything because I’ve been on calls all day, or I’ve been with my kids all day. The laundry isn’t done, the dishes aren’t done, and all of these things are piling up. You’re going to feel pretty uninspired about your own existence and your own life, because you are focusing so much on the things that don’t matter, which is what are other people doing and why am I drawing myself there instead of using those extra ten minutes that I unintentionally just wasted scrolling through social media to do something that would empower me, or better me, or teach me some sort of a lesson, or provide me with a new perspective.

So my first piece of advice when you’re in this setting. Is to draw on something that actually might inspire you. And what I mean by that is there are so many podcasts, and there are so many experts and interviews out there that provide a new way of thinking with real world advice from people who have gone through the shit from the bottom and helped reach the top. And that’s why we want to listen to those people, or their intellects, or intuitive or psychics, or they’ve written self-help books and they have truly helped thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of people develop new neural pathways to think about how they center and structure their lives. And that’s the type of content that if you are in the place of feeling like you’re in a rut, you’re uninspired, you’re being an asshole to yourself, you’re potentially being an asshole to your kids or to your spouse or to your parents or whomever. Then the first place you have to start is reaching for something or content. Whatever your preferred format or form of anything that you’re reaching towards most regularly is, and look for something that brings you value. Look for something that you might not traditionally listen to because you think, oh my God, this is boring. I don’t want to listen to some woowoo there are. So Melissa Wood Health is someone that I love. Anna Grace Newell is someone that I love. Uh, Jordan, Younger of the Balanced Blonde, is someone that I absolutely love. I love the him and her podcast, The Skinny Confidential, him and her podcast. They have the most incredible guests. The content is funny, and I think that’s something that you also need to find. It doesn’t necessarily all have to be funny, but it should inspire you in some way, shape or form. Whether to talk to someone new, to research something new, to find something that you’re passionate about, especially in this day and age when right now there is so much going on about our political landscape and. You know, presidential candidate one versus new presidential candidate versus the presidential candidate that is now no longer the presidential candidate. And that content creates just a lot of hate and anxiety. And it’s super overwhelming. So if you’re reaching to traditional news sites, it is great to be informed. And I highly suggest that everyone formed their own opinion by reading things that provide opportunities for you to better understand side one and side two, and not in the sense that you’re utilizing it to pin yourself against other people, but for the sake of your own enrichment. But that also is a slippery slope, because the more that you’re reading into all of these hateful comments, etc., it might make you lose a little bit of hope in humanity when what I’m recommending is hopefully going to help you do the opposite. And I like to try to follow. And frankly, my best friend sends me the best recommendations for people to follow on Instagram because she sees all of this content, because I’m pushing things on her or topics on her, or we’re talking about it, and then she’s the one getting all of like, the ads for these people’s pages. And then she’ll send them to me and I’ll follow them and they’ll become my favorite content. But I try to follow more spiritual. And I guess even minded people on Instagram. I did an Instagram cleanse a while ago where I went through the majority of the people that I was following, and for anyone that I felt like I was not immediately excited about following, I just removed them. And a lot of those people were like Instagram models that I was following. And I was like, I’m getting literally no value from their page. I’m being influenced from things that I don’t care about, I don’t need, I don’t use, and it wasn’t making me feel super good about myself. So I changed up a lot of that content. I’ve started re following some of that content because I’m at a different place. It doesn’t necessarily impact me in the same way, but I also found that because I haven’t been reading as many of those books or listening to as many of those podcasts, that kind of helped me feel like I was getting additional value out of my day. I have started to wonder, like, where am I getting my inspiration from these days? I’m spending so much time on Instagram and so much time on TikTok, and the only inspiration I have is me thinking through content I could potentially put on TikTok. That is not a very valuable way to live my life. And I’m a mom. I feel like there are more important things that I could be doing for my own mental health, in my own personal equilibrium, than spending time on Instagram and TikTok, seeing what other people who are in their 20s or something are doing, and how they’re creating millions of dollars off of TikTok. That is great and I wish them the best, but that is not necessarily an equal path to what I’m experiencing today. And so finding and seeking out content that will help enrich you is going to serve you in so many ways. I think when I started actually beginning to research people and places that I could consume content that would give me a different perspective and would focus on either spirituality or. And when I say spirituality, just for context, I’m not talking about deep religious content. I’m talking more about the idea of existence, the idea of communicating with mentalists or, um, or mediums, or the idea of focusing on our on humanity as a whole and our ongoing consciousness, the idea of spirit, the idea of other beings, the idea of using some of those, um, philosophies to make life decisions, to follow your heart. I focused on human design. I focused on life experiences. Like I sought out that sort of content and it literally lit me up. I just felt like I was entering this new state of consciousness that was so much more inspired and excited than I had been. About anything in the longest time, and that brought me so much internal value. It gave me more things to talk about with my friends and family and my spouse. It gave me a new way of thinking about ideas, situations, and scenarios that I might have internalized or focused on differently. It made me a better interviewer when it came to podcast guests, and even speaking with executives for my job, where I would try to understand how they work, how they operate, what matters to them, how to best communicate with them. It made me a better coworker because I was not internalizing and taking things so personally, because I knew and in my gut and I understood that so many things are not personal and that we make them personal out of insecurity and out of fear. Because stress at the end of the day is just fear of some situation or stimulus. And so I think that talking to the people that you love, or joining any groups or finding broadcast streams on Instagram and following people that really are putting out a message of like love, hope, equality, those are the places where you’re going to end up finding the most value and potentially getting a mindset shift. Not all of you might need a mindset shift, but if you’re experiencing, again, this sense of either restlessness or not really knowing where to put energy and attention, I do think that asking your friends and your family, or doing some quick Google searches with terms that might be meaningful for you and topic areas that you’re interested in, you’ll find so much more value than just mindlessly scrolling on social media looking for quote unquote inspiration.

I also think that it’s worthwhile to think about the people that you are spending time with, and the people that you’re actually giving your energy towards. And this is essentially part two of this, because the first thing is really finding content that inspires you and makes you feel good. But the second part is if you’re hanging around people who are immediately dimming all of the inspiration that you’re pulling from these new venues or content podcasts, books, etc., it’s going to be incredibly hard to not revert back to that place unless you have this deep sense of inner confidence and this deep sense of knowing and of self to want to potentially shift those narratives. I love that anytime I’ve gotten super excited about some sort of a spiritual path or a new mode for learning or enlightenment, I’ve been able to share it with my friends and there’s been a unanimous sense of, this is exciting, this is interesting. Tell me more. I want to know more. I have to look into this. And if you’re not getting that response from the people that you’re around, or you feel like you can’t talk to the people that are closest to you about some of these new things that you’re discovering and that are inspiring you. That, to me feels problematic because the worst thing that you can feel outside of uninspired and. The self-awareness that you’re being an asshole to yourself is feeling like you have nowhere to go, or to talk to, and feeling lonely in that existence of unhappiness, UN inspiration and really just self hatred. And so I would encourage you to continue to kind of try to follow the people that make you feel the best, but also be mindful and respectful of the boundaries that you put in place. And I think that’s one thing that’s really important when it comes to your own inspiration and how to not be an asshole to yourself. If you knew that one of your friends was hanging out with someone that consistently made them feel either belittled or where they felt like they had so much pressure to perform or act a certain way. When they were around that person, you would tell them, cut them off. We are not at the age where you have to pretend or be fake anymore, or talk behind each other’s backs. Now we are at the point in time where we can be real to each other. We can tell people how we feel, and we can be an adult about having tough conversations and be candid in our feelings. You can tell someone, no, I can’t hang out today because I really just need some alone time. I’m overstimulated and overwhelmed because I had a week with the kids with no daycare. Like we are at a point in our lives when respecting our own boundaries is the most affirming way to feel more confident about ourselves. Because if you’re not listening to what your body and your mind are telling you, no one else is going to be listening either. They’re not going to care that you might need a little bit of a loan time. They’re not going to care that you had a mental breakdown yesterday because they’re only. Concern at that point is are you coming or not? Because there’s no context at all to what’s happening in your life. So part of that is a establishing those boundaries, but also then being able to say, like, I’m not interested in coming tomorrow, but maybe we could do like a FaceTime soon so that we can just talk about things that are happening in my life and things that are happening in yours, because these I find that with myself, I tend to share so much about my own life that sometimes I forget to ask about what’s happening in other’s lives. And it’s not because I don’t care, because I wholeheartedly do care, but it’s that I need. And I am aware that I need an outlet to express my feelings. And if someone gives me the opportunity to be vulnerable and to talk to them about things that I’m experiencing, I will take it. And that’s not it’s I don’t unintentionally not like, reciprocate that by asking about other people, but it’s something that I’m aware of that I can do. And I, I’m trying to be more mindful of because I think it could come off as I’m selfish and I don’t care about what other people are going through. But when I hold on to things for a long time and I don’t get them out, I word vomit. Everything that’s happening to me without. Taking the time to truly just sit and listen to allow other people to be heard. So I think that that’s something that’s been a little bit of a learning lesson for me as I’ve gone through this process, and I’m still working on that to make sure that not only am I reaching out to other people because I need to be heard, but then I’m giving them the same opportunity to be heard by me as a response. If they’re allowing me to share what is going on in my mindset and allowing me to express some of the things that maybe I was holding on to and being an asshole to myself about, then I need to give them the opportunity to do the same thing, because at the end of the day, no one wants a one sided friendship or a one sided conversation. You want to be able to share in the way that you can share. So if you know that your friend seems to close up when they have a lot going on, then you need to be the one who’s prioritizing that outreach, asking how they’re doing, encouraging them to talk to you, showing them that you can be a listening ear where you don’t necessarily expect that they need to, then ask you how you are doing back, but you need to be the person that my friends are usually to me in asking, how are you, what’s going on, how are you feeling, etc. and then allowing them the opportunity to truly be heard. And you don’t always have to think. One thing to keep in mind is that when we’re assholes to ourselves, we usually don’t give ourselves the benefit of the doubt or give ourselves the opportunity to see different scenarios. Because usually when we’re in the thick of it, all we see is the negativity. All we see is the asshole ness that we’re telling ourselves about. Oh, you’re so fat. You’re so disgusting without makeup. Oh, I have no energy for that because I can’t xyzzy. Oh, I’m only interested in hanging out with this person. If there’s alcohol, if there’s a party, whatever the case might be, or oh, I’m no fun without this, I can never do this. Like, most of those conversations come from a place of lack and from a place of not feeling. Whole or abundant enough. And that’s exactly why, when it comes to not being an asshole to yourself, I truly believe that it all comes from the idea of finding ways to be re-inspired. Because without that inspiration to think differently and without the curiosity to go out and do research and find new ways of thinking that might generate a potential response for you that will make you reevaluate how you’re talking to yourself, how you’re thinking when new stimuli and experiences come in, you are limiting your opportunity to grow and to further understand that there is a new way or a different way of operating than how you’ve been operating up to this point. And I think that that’s incredibly critical, especially as you become a parent, because we are so used to the conditioning that we’ve had from our own upbringing that your parents, for instance, are not going to be asking you questions about ways that you can empower yourself to make better decisions or to think more holistically, generationally, um, you know, collective, consciously. That’s something that you’re going to have to do and that your kids only opportunities to think that way is going to be through seeing and through experiencing. So if you’re not doing your due diligence and finding ways to break cycles that maybe don’t serve you as well and make you default into being an asshole to yourself or to others, then you need to find a way to become inspired and be inspired quick because your kids deserve better. And frankly, you deserve better than. Defaulting to the collective from your familial upbringing or from your societal upbringing in getting angry. If your kid does this or insert whatever situation might be happening. So the two go hand in hand. Um, and then the third part of this, once you actually are conducting research or seeking out new ways to be inspired, new content to consume new mindsets that you haven’t yet considered.

The third part of that is really the action. So what are you doing to then shift what you’ve been doing so far? Are you shifting your mindset? Are you doing affirmations? Are you meditating each day? Are you journaling each day? Are you responding to that annoying person on slack in a different way, because you are now looking at them through the lens of human being, going through life experience versus this annoying person from such and such department that is pinging me incessantly all day because they don’t know how to do their job. So the action part of it is probably the most important because you can listen to things all day. You can read books all day about new experiences, about new mindset shifts, etc. but if you never actually put any of those things into action, the research is all moot, and the actual listening to and exploring different mindsets is all moot because at the end of the day, the only person whose reactions you can control and who you know, whose words and choice of, um, I guess, what am I trying to say here? Like the only person’s reactions you can control and the only person’s words that you speak. To react to other people are your own, so you have to give yourself the benefit of the doubt to say before you acknowledge this hasn’t worked. That approach never worked for me. Have you tried it? Have you given it five days? Have you given it ten days? Have you given it 30 days? Because if you haven’t, then you haven’t actually tried it. And this process of finding yourself in your mid-thirties and trying to rewire how you’ve done things for so long is going to take time. And one of the analogies that I really think is impactful is this idea of your neural pathways being much like freeways. If you’re on a freeway and your easiest route to getting somewhere is blocked and they’re doing construction, you’re going to have to find a new way to get there. It might be a side road that you’ve never taken before. There might be a little bit confusing and you might have to Google on your GPS. Okay. Is this the right way? I want to make sure that I’m actually following this because I need to get to my destination at X time. Okay, I’ll get there by this time, but I’m going to have to go through this route. But luckily I have my GPS here to keep me on track. It’s very much the same way when it comes to developing a new neural pathway. You ultimately have to put those old default patterns that you’ve been conditioned to follow under construction, and rewire and reroute a new path with new thinking, with a new approach, with a different mindset. And once you start doing that over and over and over and over again, that old highway that you usually took. Kind of disappears. Let’s say that they take that road away because there were so many potholes in it, and now that side road that you took becomes a more clear path to getting to your destination, because they turned it into a highway instead of a 20 stoplight street, because people found that it was most easier to get to their destination by taking that side road, etc.. So that’s just a good analogy of being able to see something visually. Another way to look at it from a visualization, because I’m a visual person and I really like and enjoy meditations that are visual in nature, that make you think through obstacles is this idea that if you think of your decision making, or you think of being conditioned in the sense of a stream, and the stream that we want you to be on is not a raging white water rapid where you’re going through bumps and you’re holding on tight and you are holding on to your or you’ve got your life jacket on and you are praying that you don’t fall off as you go over a bump or as you hit a rock. What you want might be more like a calm stream. It’s not traveling super quickly, and there might be pebbles or big rocks on the road that potentially put a ripple throughout the stream, but it’s peaceful. It’s not in a rush to get somewhere, because it knows that it’s trusting the process of point A to point B, a stream doesn’t worry if there’s a rock in its way, because it’ll find a way to get around it, or it will push the rock out of the way once the stream is strong enough. And that’s what I think we need to be thinking about as we’re looking at ways to inspire ourselves and what success might look like. If you’re operating at warp speed all the time and you feel like you can’t get anything done, and you’re consistently being an asshole to yourself about all the things you’re not doing, then I encourage you to rethink the things that you are doing. What are you doing? Well, what are you accomplishing? Because at the end of the day, the number of dishes in your sink does not take away from the actuality of all the fabulous things that you are 100% killing it on. If you’re prioritizing exercise because your mental health needs that over clean dishes, then take care of what you need to take care of, but find time to do the things that aren’t as fun. Find time to do the things that maybe don’t make you feel as good. Find time to do the things that are annoying to do but you know you need to do them because you want a clean house. So net net. What I’m saying is that we want to identify a way where we’re living in that stream and we’re not going down the rapids because we’ve moved those huge boulders out of the way. We’ve taken that path that maybe less traveled because it leads us to that calm spring. It leads us to that road that we love traveling down with beautiful trees, the sunroof open and our favorite country music songs playing on the radio. And if you haven’t gotten there yet, then hopefully this episode will allow you a few tips with some tricks that you can utilize to be better and more advantageous in creating a life that feels like that perfect stream. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that it gave you some helpful tools to potentially rethink maybe how you were doing some things. And I also wanted to reiterate that if you’re enjoying the content from the show, that it would mean so much to me. If you would like, rate or subscribe and feel free to follow me on Instagram at Kylie Majidi. And you can also find all of the information about my human design business and potentially booking a human design reading with me at Golden hour with Kylie. Com thank you so much for listening. Can’t wait to see you next week by.