S03E38 WHEN SOMEONE DINGS YOUR SELF ESTEEM PART 2

How do we feel when someone makes us question our self worth, our physical attractiveness, or damages our confidence? As a plastic surgeon we have a unique responsibility to our patients, who are often at their most vulnerable when they come to us for our opinions.

Part 2 Last week was about a patient whose self-esteem got dinged, and this week is other situations in the gym and elsewhere where this can also occur.

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S03E38 WHEN SOMEONE DINGS YOUR SELF ESTEEM PART 2

[00:00:02] 2023-03-22 11-55-46_01.output: So last week I talked about dings to self-esteem and gave examples that I saw as a plastic surgeon. This week, let's talk about dings to the self-esteem that sometimes I see at my other job, a coach at CrossFit Bison in Midland Park, New Jersey.

The gym is definitely a place where your self-esteem can rise or plummet depending on the situations and what you let affect you.

I think the main reason is, is that external validation, what we hear people say about us is such a powerful influence on how we feel about ourselves. It's possibly the most powerful influence on our ego and our self-esteem. What we wear, what we say, what we do every day, is often predicated on how we expect people around us to react to us, what they think of us, and then what we hear them say about us. And this is all tied up with our egos, regardless of how much we try not to worry about what others think, that self-doubt creeps into our head one way or another.

So here's a personal example of how other people around us ding our self-esteem, one athlete in class after workout asked me half seriously, half joking, "Sam, are you sure you didn't skip a round?" And this was after I beat him very handily in a workout. And I actually self doubted myself because sometimes I do miscount.

And so I sat there for a while afterwards thinking, maybe I did, maybe I did miscount. And I went through that workout about five times in my head before I decided, no, I did count accurately. But that guy was definitely trying to ding my self-esteem, probably because he felt dinged himself because I beat him.

And unfortunately, a lot of people, including me, sometimes rely on the external to judge how we should feel about ourselves. And beating someone on a workout or having someone beat us, many times can affect how we feel how we did in a workout.

Whether that's a healthy situation or not, really depends.

This is just one example where people beat up on each other's self-esteem at the gym all the time. Sometimes it can be even a backhanded compliment, such as, " Dude, you killed the workout. It was nothing but burpees, man."

And I'm thinking like the only skill I have is burpees? Maybe they're meaning well, but with some people sometimes I get the sense that they are excusing themselves by saying I didn't do as well on the workout because it was burpees and Sam's only skill is burpees, so of course he beat me and my self-esteem is preserved.

And sometimes I even find myself playing into it where someone compliments me and I play it off by saying the exact same thing. Well, it was burpees and that's the only thing I'm good at. Instead of being gracious and accepting compliments, I'm actually dinging my own self-esteem. It's sometimes crazy how our brains work that way.

The key is recognizing these situations and dealing with them, not by confronting others, but understanding everyone is just trying to build themselves up, and unfortunately, sometimes it's at the expense of others. Insecurity will make people say and do things, which may try to ding our self-esteem, but only if we fail to see it and we don't let it slide off of us. We know who we are and we need to remind ourselves and we should feel secure in that.

I felt myself falling into that same pattern just two days ago. The first part of the workout was hang power cleans and burpees. The RX weight was 185 pounds for the hang power cleans, which for me would be a huge struggle to do even two in a row.

So I went into the gym thinking I might scale to 165, but during the warm up, even 135 felt awful. And so I scaled the weight to 155. And I thought I'd be able to move quickly. Well, it turned out I didn't. I moved really slowly and the burpees didn't save me this time. And when I looked at the whiteboard, my time and my hang power clean weight was much worse than a lot of athletes I usually compare myself to.

So I made excuses. I told myself I traveled over the weekend. I had an early morning flight. This was an afternoon workout instead of my normal mornings. And I told myself that's why I didn't do very well compared to others.

That was my ego, my instinct to preserve my self-esteem kicking in.

I still didn't even feel good, even with these excuses. I needed to let it go, but I didn't. And so it compounded. For the second part of the workout, five sets of three bench press, I pushed the weight at the end. I saw a lot of people on the whiteboard had gotten 215 pounds. So for the last set I went to 225 pounds. After I did it, some of the athletes high fived me and I felt good. I guess I restored some of my self-esteem, but those reps were a struggle and my left side was definitely lagging on the way up, pushing that bar on the bench press. My form was not the greatest, and I could have injured my shoulder honestly, so realistically, I should have stuck to 215 pounds instead of risking hurting myself at 225. So even after nine years in the gym, I still fall into the trap of worrying about my ego and self-esteem. I recognize this happens to anyone and everyone, and it will still happen to me, but hopefully at least I can recognize it and I can keep trying to do the right thing.

There's a lot more in this rabbit hole to delve into, which I haven't gotten to, like how much do we need to look into the external rewards and winning for self-validation? I know a lot of athletes that judge their self worth by how they rank. Or on the flip side, situations as a coach, where I will intentionally ding someone's self-esteem to try to motivate them.

So there's so much more to talk about in the future. Are there situations either by yourself or with others where you find yourself acting or reacting because of your ego or self-esteem? How did you deal with it? I would love to hear other people's experiences. Please DM me @BotoxandBurpees on Instagram and thanks very much.