394. Shame, Pride, Confidence, and Humility

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 394, Shame, Pride, Confidence and Humility.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master-certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast today. I am excited to talk to you about this concept, about shame and pride and confidence and humility. And before we dive into it make sure that you are following or subscribe to the podcast because we are now releasing more than just the Friday episode. I’m releasing bonus episodes that are the Entre Talk episodes that are a little bit more specific to business but you’re going to find I think that a lot of things we talk about there are relevant to any goal in your life.

And those of you who are entrepreneurs make sure you catch those episodes and also listen to these because the general wellness and health and life coaching episodes that I do are absolutely going to be applicable to you. So just more help, more content coming your way here on the podcast.

Okay, I want to talk about these four words today, shame, pride, confidence and humility. And the reason why is because I notice that I feel like a lot of us have had these concepts jumbled and I still do a little bit, to be honest. So as I talk through this, hopefully, it will make sense and I won’t go off on any tangents that are confusing. But I’ve started to think about these words differently than I used to even just in the recent past. And I want to just offer you my theory and you can take it or leave it.

So this is my theory. I used to a lot of times talk about shame and pride as being on opposite ends of a continuum. And I still think to a certain extent that that visual for me is useful. So if shame is the belief that something might be wrong with me and the nagging voice that all of us seem to have at times, that questions our value, questions our worth, wonders what’s wrong with us, wonders why we’re not as good as other people. And pride is sort of the opposite of that.

Pride would be judgment of others, that they’re just not as good, not as smart, not as successful, not as valuable, not as complete as us. We tend to elevate ourselves from pride and lower ourselves from shame. So it makes sense that we would put them sometimes on opposite ends of the continuum. But at other times and what I would offer to you today to consider is what if we’ve been thinking about that wrong? What if shame and pride are actually the same, they’re just different manifestations of the same lie or the same problem?

And that lie is that there is such a thing as a human being who is better than another human being. The lie is that there is a vertical access by which human beings can be ranked. Some can be higher than others and you can do things or be certain things or look a certain way and move yourself up or down on that vertical access. That is the lie of shame and the lie of pride. It is based on a lie I believe.

I believe that every human being is 100% complete the moment they are born and that we are valuable and worthy of love and loved by God and whatever divine source you believe in far beyond our ability to comprehend and we had nothing to do with it and all of us equally so. When I say we had nothing to do with it I mean we didn’t create ourselves, a divine creator did and that is where our value comes from. So we don’t earn our value by achieving or anything else and we can’t diminish our value either by not doing things or even when we harm others we don’t diminish our value.

We create a more negative experience for ourselves and others. We impede our own progress and maybe impede the progress of others but it doesn’t change our overall value. That is just a set thing. So shame is a lie, but it’s a lie that we all believe at times from time to time. At least we all get offered that lie by this part of our brains. I’ve said this a million times but Brené Brown teaches that only sociopaths don’t experience shame.

And I’m wondering, I haven’t done the research. I would love to ask Brené Brown this question but I’m curious as to whether or not it’s true that also all healthy human beings experience thoughts and feelings of pride from time to time, most human beings anyway. Are there just times when you just think I’m just a little bit better at that thing than this other person? And you internalize that as meaning that you may be are a little bit more valuable.

And so the reason I like to think about shame and pride as being the same is because I believe that pride is often just the outward manifestation of our own shame. So this idea that I would need to think or believe that I’m a little bit better than anyone else comes from the fear that I don’t want to be worse or less than. I don’t want to be judged as worse. I don’t want to be rejected. I don’t want to believe and feel the pain that I create for myself when I think that I’m worse. And so sometimes the way that shows up is in a way that we call shame.

So the main way that shame shows up is through hiding. Shame says hide. So hiding can look like literally hiding in our house. It can be a more discrete version of hiding like just not opening up, not sharing, not being real. Sometimes that hiding looks like perfection, striving for perfection I should say. Everything has to be perfect or I can’t put it out there. And a lot of times that hiding I notice is just a shutting down, a closing off, a pretending.

Or if it’s with regards to a goal or something, are not pursuing things, not putting yourself out in the world, not going out and serving and helping and contributing and trying and learning. Because the embarrassment that we offer ourselves when we fall short or when people judge us is intolerable. That is shame and that is pride. What is pride? Let’s just sort of break it down in some not clinical terms, not formal definitions but just in real life what does pride look like?

For me, pride looks like not asking for help. Why would I not ask for help if I need help and I kind of want help, why would I not ask for help? Because I’m ashamed of the fact that I need help. I don’t want someone to know I need help or I’m worried that that person is going to find me needy or inconvenient. That I’m going to bother someone. And I’m going to use their unhappiness to judge myself, I’m going to think that it’s wrong of me to put someone else out. Or I’m going to fear that they’re going to talk bad about me behind my back.

Notice how all of that is insecurity, pride is not allowing yourself your full humanness. Pride is denying that full humanness. Pride is don’t let anyone know that you need help, just hide it, which now that I’m talking about it. It sounds just like shame. Shame says hide. But sometimes the way we hide it is to turn into a not-very-nice version of ourselves. Some people hide it again in a more cowardly literal way. Others hide it by pretending to be very confident, by talking a lot, by having a lot to say, by needing to constantly be heard, by needing to constantly be right, by needing to again be perfect even at times at things.

That is pride and that is shame, it’s all the same. It’s all based in insecurity in the end. Sometimes it manifests as shame, sometimes it manifests as pride. So that is what we want to avoid. We want to avoid thinking that there’s any such thing as any human being that’s any better than anyone else and that your worth and value can be earned. Why do we want to avoid that? It’s a recipe for disaster I promise you. It’s like being on a rollercoaster.

Sometimes it’s going to feel actually very powerful when things go your way, when you do, do a great job or when you get the approval that you’re seeking from other people when you’re winning. Achieving whatever goals you have set for yourself when you’re having a good hair day even then it’s going to feel really good. The problem is then it’s also going to feel terrible when those things don’t go your way. Most likely things are never going to always go your way.

You’re not going to ever be perfect at everything but even when you’re very successful in whatever way you want to succeed you’re going to have failures and shortcomings and bad days and times when things don’t go your way. So that rollercoaster is dangerous to be on and yet tempting to stay on especially because we can feed it. The more we win the more we feed that lie if we make our ‘success’ mean something about our value.

So listen, every human being is valuable and worthy and complete. And none of us did anything to earn it, we simply were created by divine beings. And so our value comes from that, the end, that’s it. And every single one of us will have to do the work in this lifetime to get to an understanding of that. And you’ll get to an understanding of it for a moment and you’ll see it in glimpses and then it will fade away again and you’ll have to go to that work again. You’ll have to constantly do it. Maybe it will get easier.

I feel like there are some people I look up to who seem to understand it more easily or more consistently. So maybe that’s a thing but I don’t think we’ll be done with it in this lifetime.

Now, let’s talk about the opposite of shame and pride. Let’s talk about confidence and humility. Confidence and humility are also the same thing. Confidence and humility are the opposite of shame and pride because what is humility? Let’s just start with that. Humility is understanding that you are amazing and giving the credit to the divine source that created you. I think that’s a part of humility. I also think humility is being willing to admit when you need help and being willing to admit that you’re scared or that you haven’t figured it all out or that you’re not perfect.

Being humble is, hey, I’m terrible at this part, could you help me? Being humble is I totally messed that up, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I’m going to try again. Or being humble is I totally messed that up and I even knew what I was doing and I made that wrong choice anyway. And I want to make it right now. I want to apologize. Let’s move forward. That is all humility. Now, in order to be that person who admits when you need help, who asks for help, who apologizes, who can acknowledge their shortcomings.

You have to be very confident because the alternative is that we slip back into shame and pride. If I say, “I messed this up. I’m such a terrible person. What’s the matter with me? I’m never going to get it together. Why do I always do this?” Now we’re back in shame and pride. We are making our mistakes, our shortcomings mean something about our overall value and worth. It doesn’t mean anything about your value and worth. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to make mistakes like I made a typo on that thing.

And you’re going to make mistakes like I totally lied and cheated and did a terrible thing. And guess what? Neither one means anything about your value or your worth. It just doesn’t. So humility isn’t I’m a terrible horrible person. I’m never going to get this. What’s the matter with me? I messed up. Humility is confidence. I messed up and that is not who I’m going to continue to be. I’m so sorry. Let’s try to make a right. Side note, I will mess up again. Pride is I messed up and I’m never going to mess up again. Doesn’t it feel like a lie even when you say it?

Confidence and humility is, I messed up and I’m going to try really hard not to mess up in that way again, but the truth is I could. And if I don’t mess up in that way, I will for sure mess up in another way. I’m a human being, now what? That is confidence. Way back when I went through coaching training in 2014, this really stood out to me. And I’ve continued to learn so much from The Life Coach School since then. So some of the things I learned in coach training I don’t remember at all.

But I do remember this, I will never forget this. This has changed my life. When Brooke Castillo taught me that confidence is embracing all of your self-confidences. Not look at me, I’m so good at this. I have all these strengths. And that’s what a lot of people teach. They’re like, “If you want to be more confident you need to focus on your strengths.” And yes, focus on your strengths but also, and this is so important, if you don’t have this then you’re going to actually be working towards pride if all we’re doing is focusing on our strengths.

But focus on your strengths and also embrace and understand and welcome all of your weaknesses. What? That is confidence, embracing all of you. Now, we don’t have very many examples of this unfortunately because it’s an internal thing typically. Most people aren’t out there going, “I’m really good at this and I’m really terrible at this.” Although sometimes, sometimes we get that. Notice when you get that, how real and truthful it feels and how humble it feels.

I talk about Oprah a lot because I’m a huge Oprah fan and I know Oprah’s not perfect but I do just have a lot of good examples of the times I’ve heard Oprah when she demonstrates all of this so well. So I may have told this story before. I don’t know. But I heard Oprah on some talk she was speaking at Harvard, or Stamford, or some ivy league school. And she gave her talk and then they let the students ask questions. Now, remember, these are ivy league students and they knew Oprah was coming so they prepared these questions ahead of time.

And these questions were beyond what I even understood. As the person was asking the question you’re like, “I don’t even know what you’re asking because your words are extremely big words and your concepts are deep and I love it but I don’t understand it.” And this girl asked Oprah a question and I think it had to do with environment or something like that. And at the end of her question, Oprah said, “I don’t know the answer to that question. That’s a really good question but I do not know the answer to that.

You need to ask somebody who is a lot smarter than me in these ways in those areas to get an answer to that question. But thank you for asking it.” Does anybody else have a question? And I was like, “That is confidence. That’s not shame, Oprah’s not beating herself up. Think about what would happen if Oprah wasn’t so confident. Maybe she would have pretended. Maybe she would have just given the best answer she possibly could to try to pretend that she knows what she’s talking about.

Or maybe she would have just shut down altogether and freaked out and ran off the stage, shame or pride. Pride is pretending you know everything and pretending to know the answer because you don’t want those ivy league students to know that you don’t know the answer to that. But confidence is being humble enough to say, “I do not know the answer to that question and it’s a brilliant question.” That is confidence. It is the same as humility.

So if you’re with me, if you see my point here, if you agree with me that the objective and I guess part of the reason I wanted to bring this up is because, at least in my upbringing in the 80s and 90s in the church, I remember hearing a lot of talk in the LDS church about beware of pride. And I still love that message but I internalized that to mean don’t be too confident. And I think a lot of people in the coaching, I deal with a lot of other people especially women internalized to beware of pride to mean don’t be too confident. Don’t be too full of yourself. Don’t think too highly of yourself.

And I don’t think that’s, I don’t know what was meant in that message but I don’t think that’s a useful way to think about it. I think beware of pride is the same thing as saying, “Beware of shame.” Beware of the false belief that some human beings are better than others. Beware of your own brain trying to tell you that you’re a little bit better than some people in some areas. But also beware of your own brain trying to tell you that you’re not as good as people in other areas. Beware of that false premise.

And instead, what we’ve, again what I remember hearing a lot and we still hear a lot is, be humble. Humility is such an amazing valuable noble attribute. but humility isn’t, look at me, I’m such a wreck, I’m so worthless. And I think that’s what some people think humility is. Humility is not that. Humility is hey, I am not good at this at all and I’m going to go do it anyway.

In order to build a business, I was just coaching a little bit today, some entrepreneurs who were like, “I’m afraid to put content out there. What if it’s not good? What if people don’t like it?” Humility is, hey, guess what? I’m brand new and I don’t know what I’m doing but I want to get experience and I want to take care of you and I will figure it out, you want to come with me? You want to work with me at a really awesome cheap, if not free rate? Because I need experience and I’m learning and I’m growing.” That’s humility.

Humility is being confident about the fact that you don’t know that you’re not good at it. That you haven’t achieved what you hope to achieve one day. Humility is just being real. When we get real we can only truly get real from a place of confidence because if we’re going to beat ourselves up and be embarrassed about it and think that it’s wrong and worry about what people are going to think, we’re going to be right back in shame. And we’re never going to be as real from shame or pride as we can be from confidence.

And I’ll just tell you, I was coaching today in one of the little coaching samples that I do which by the way you should come try a coaching sample. Come see what coaching is like. Come see if it’s for you at jodymoore.com/intensive. But we were doing some coaching today in Get Your Goal and the woman said to me, one of the first things she said to me was, “I’m insecure.” And then she went on to tell me about how that creates challenges in her life.” And I said to her, “Do you know that you’re not insecure right now anyway, you’re not insecure.

You just came on a Zoom call with me and a bunch of other people you don’t know. You don’t even know how many people are here. And you admitted outright that you have weaknesses.” Just saying, “I’m insecure”, this is the ironic part, just saying out loud in front of other people that might judge you, I’m insecure is the opposite of insecurity, that’s confidence, that’s humility. It takes confidence to raise your hand, volunteer to come on the call and then say that out loud. Somebody who is insecure doesn’t do that.

Somebody who’s insecure hides it either just doesn’t raise their hand and come on the call. Or comes on the call and acts really arrogant and confident and cocky but in a way that we can feel is not true, or at least a way that they know is not true. They come on and lie. I think pride looks like lying, shame looks like hiding. So I said to her, “You’re not insecure, at least right now you’re not. You’re confident.” And if you want to add to that, hey, I get nervous sometimes and sometimes I don’t know what to say and sometimes I’m awkward and sometimes I worry about what other people are thinking.

And then add on, and that’s okay, I’m a human being, we all do this from time to time. Then you’re going to feel even more confident but I would definitely stop calling yourself insecure because that’s not what I see at all. I see humility and confidence. Let’s go. And from humility and confidence you are capable of extraordinary changes in your life and in just your day-to-day experience even. I don’t even care if you set goals. I mean if you want to set goals I’ll help you but if you don’t want to that’s fine. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about you enjoying being with yourself and you being able to connect in your relationships more because you allow yourself to be more real. Notice that somebody who’s guarded and hiding when they do finally get real, there’s tons of shame behind it. When they finally let down their guard it’s, “Oh my gosh, you’re right, I’m terrible, I’m horrible, why do I do this?” So pride and shame. They are the same. Confidence and humility. They are the same.

And if you want to nurture confidence and humility in your life my favorite way to do it, what has made me more confident than anything is to be willing to be terrible at things. To choose to try things and be terrible at them and manage my brain through them, practice not judging myself, practice not making my shortcomings mean anything about my overall worth as a person.

So, for example, a while ago I took up the piano, I took a little bit of piano lessons as a kid but I didn’t learn too much so I decided a wanted to play the piano. And I told myself, you’re going to be terrible at it and that’s okay. Let’s be willing to not be good at it. I’m still not very good at it but I love to sit down and try to play the piano because I love to manage my brain through it. First of all my brain wants to go, it’s too hard and there’s all of that that I benefit from managing that, but also just not judging myself for being not good at it.

My business has been a great way for me to do that too. And even now that I have some success in my business I still have to learn things and try things and add things that I’m not good at. And when my brain’s like, oh, no, we can’t do that, we’re not any good at that. I just go, “Okay, let’s be willing to be not good at it.” And I get my own back. I’m like, “And I love you anyway Jody Moore, and I’m going to be so proud of you for trying and for putting in the effort.”

That’s all I ask of you right now, just put in the effort and let’s just try and let’s just see and maybe we could get good at it but you’re not going to be more valuable then, just like you’re not less valuable now. I have practiced understanding that and I talk to myself in that way so much that I am very confident. I’m very confident which makes me very humble. Now, I’m not perfect at any of this of course either. But overall it’s gotten so much easier and it brings me so much peace in my life. I don’t feel like I’m on a rollercoaster anymore.

I’ll tell you this. I had this realization when I was a trainer in corporate. I used to be a trainer, I trained salespeople. And I did some leadership coaching at the same time. And at any rate, we did this training day where we would bring in staff from all over the Southern California area, these were salespeople. We would spend a day with them teaching, and I say we because I had a team of trainers. But we would teach classes and we would have discussions and we would just try to help them improve at their job performance.

And everybody loved that training day. They all looked forward to it, it’s kind of a nice break from your regular job and they liked seeing each other. And we always had a really good time and had food and stuff. And so at the end of the day, we would pass out a survey and ask for some feedback from them. And I loved reading those surveys because they were very complimentary. They would talk about how mind-blowing the things were and how inspiring it was and how recharged they feel.

Occasionally there were a couple of complaints usually about whatever we search for lunch but for the most part, they were really positive. And I always couldn’t wait to collect those surveys and take them home and read through them all because I used them to feel good about myself. I had this false belief that if people liked the training I put on that must mean I’m a good person. And then I felt really good about myself. And one day I recognized that there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a compliment, I still do by the way.

People always say to me, “I know you don’t need to hear it.” But I’m like, “No, I still like hearing it, don’t get me wrong.” But it’s true, I don’t need it because I have worked on what I’m teaching you here. I have worked on reframing my brain. I have worked on understanding that just because maybe I’m really good at putting on a training day at that company doesn’t make me more valuable. I already was that amazing. I don’t tell myself, “Settle down, you’re not that great.” I tell myself, “You were that great before you knew how to put on training day.

You were that amazing and you’re actually far more amazing than you even know. You’re way more amazing than you think you are after reading these surveys. And you have so many shortcomings and weaknesses and things you don’t know how to do and none of that changes your amazingness. You’re still just as valuable.”

One other experience I want to share. I had an instance where I was teaching a class online for another company. It wasn’t in my company, it was another company that I was teaching a class for. And somebody asked a question about one of the other teachers there at the company, one of the other instructors. And the reason they asked it is because what I was teaching was sort of different than what they’d seen that other instructor, do. So they are saying, “Okay, you’re teaching us this but this other person who is part of your company who’s a teacher here does it differently. So help me understand.”

And the way I answered that question as I was answering it, as it was coming out of my mouth I had this thought, I don’t know if I should be saying this but it was too fast for me to think. So what I said was, “Well, I think that other instructor, would agree that things aren’t going as well as she would like in her situation, but this and this and that.” And then I went on to give some kind of explanation. But as I was saying it I kind of knew I probably shouldn’t be saying this but I didn’t know how else to answer it.

And then the next day someone from the company reached out to me and said, “You know what? Can we please not talk negatively about other instructors?” Sounds so obvious when you say it that way, “On the calls and on the classes you’re teaching and also we’re going to edit that part out.” And I went into a major shame attack. I felt so terrible.

I was so embarrassed. I was like, “What is the matter with me? Of course, we shouldn’t be talking badly about each other. I know that, why would I do that? What if that person is mad at me? What if I get fired from this company that I respect?” I just went down this spiral of shame. And then I took the tools that I know as a coach after I let myself process the shame and I applied them. And I told myself, you know what, Jody Moore, it’s true, you messed up. That’s not appropriate, please don’t do that again. But also you’re just as amazing as if you had never said that thing.

And maybe people will be mad at you and maybe you will get fired and all of those things, consequences are still real. And you’re just as amazing even if all of that happens. So because I’ve practiced doing that enough times, you can practice it in pride. Situations are tempting to go to pride, everyone gives you amazing feedback. You can practice it in situations where you go to shame. It doesn’t mean you resist the emotions, you’ve got to process and allow them but then you take a look at what’s really true.

Then you retrain your brain to understand the truth about human worth. And to circle back, I had this realization the other day because my husband went to our PO box. We have a PO box for our business. And we don’t go there that often, maybe once every couple of months. So he went there the other day and he collected the mail that was there and there were a bunch of really lovely, nice cards and letters and little gifts and things that people had sent me, little thank you’s. Thank you for what you taught me. This moment changed my life.

I wanted to share this thing with you that I created after listening to you, tons of sweet awesome notes and thank you’s, and tokens. And I noticed as I was reading through them that I did not feel at all like I used to feel when I worked in corporate. I didn’t feel like I was at the top of the rollercoaster, like this is amazing. I’m going to save all this. I’m going to read it 10 times. I can’t wait to cling to every word. I still appreciate it. I still like it, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s super thoughtful.

What I think more than anything now naturally which took me a lot of practice to get here by the way, what I think is like wow, that’s so impressive that this woman took the time to write this card and send it to me or to put this thing together and put it in the mail. What a thoughtful kind lovely person. And I’m appreciative of it and I like hearing it, don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t feel like a rollercoaster anymore because I already understand that I’m amazing whether other people see it or not.

And if that person appreciates me that says a lot about them. That doesn’t say anything about me. So shame and pride are the same. Confidence and humility are the same. I would love to hear your thoughts on this because this is a new concept. I’ve never taught it in this way before. Maybe I’m not making sense. Maybe I’m overlooking something really important, if so, please I want to hear it.

I think the best way for me to get your input is if you go to Instagram and DM me. I’m Jody Moore Coaching on Instagram. You can DM me. Or you can put comments in any of the posts because we do read and pay attention to all of that. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Thanks for joining me. I’ll see you next time, take care.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.