February 3, 2025 • 9 mins
Stop Paying for Attention with Your Self-Worth
Sometimes, the price of keeping certain people around is too high—and it costs your peace. In this video, I break down why protecting your peace and valuing yourself over someone's attention is the ultimate act of self-love. If you've ever felt drained by relationships that pull you down or struggled to set boundaries, this video is for you. Let’s talk about letting go, finding strength in solitude, and choosing YOU first.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If it costs me a peace to keep you around them,
that's entirely too expensive. Like, I'm not in the business
of paying for someone else's comfort with my sanity, for
making people feel better than they need to around me
simply by sacrificing me for them. The reality is that
we have to care for people. We have to love people,
but we also have to care and love ourselves. We
have to stop sitting here trying to beg people to
(00:22):
stay in places that they don't want to be in,
or lose our sanity, lose our well being, just as
somebody can stay in that place or feel comfortable around us. Listen,
if it costs me my piece, if you're making me
have to struggle just to be happy near you can go,
you can leave. I'm not interested in convincing people. I'm
(00:43):
not interested in being an extra. And for a lot
of us, we tend to fall into this habit of
breaking parts of us so that other people can feel whole.
And I'm not saying that you shouldn't love people and
they shouldn't care, and that you shouldn't pour into people,
because you should. That's a natural thing, and in fact, you
actually feel happier when you do this for people, But
there's a difference between pouring into people and then being robbed.
(01:04):
There's a difference between loving and caring for people and
never being loved or cared for it yourself. We can't
keep going into these places for these people that will
never go in for us. And unfortunately we keep robbing
our own peace simply to keep other people happy. It's
not worth it. The cost is not worth it at all,
because you are gonna hate you trying to get them
(01:24):
to love you. You're gonna hate you trying to get
them to stay. You're gonna hate you trying to get
people who don't care about you to care about you.
It's okay to allow people to walk away. It's perfectly
fine to let people do their thing that they need
to do to show you where they want to. Because
at the end of the day, what are you gaining
from this, Like, are you authentically happy with the relationship,
(01:45):
with the economy that you have between this person. It's
not fair to you to lose who you are just
to keep them there. Yes, we should want peace, we
should want people to be happy, we should want to
love people. But there's a limit to that. There's a
limit to how much you can ever give and have that.
And the reality is that for a lot of us
sometimes it's a fear of losing them, Like we think
(02:08):
that if we are more of what they're already not valuing,
we think we give more into the situation that we're
going to be able to actually get the thing that
we're imagining, or we're going to not lose them. But
I don't think losing a person that makes you feel
like you're at war is bad. That's actually not a
bad thing. You have to realize that if you consistently
(02:29):
have to be in a battle to be around someone,
that then there's something else there, and there's something that
isn't healed in them, something isn't healed in you, something
that you two just can't be around each other. You
might have a season where it made sense, you might
have a time frame in your life where you know
it was worth sacrificing certain things, but at some point
you have to realize that it's not valued at the
price that you're paying. It's not worth being in a
(02:51):
constant war just to try to win someone's attention. It's
okay to lose people. And this is the scary part
of life that we think that we have to consistently
have everybody in every stage. No, not everybody is meant
for every stage. The reason a lot of people don't
develop and don't grow is because they are staying around
people that don't fit the chapter they want to be in.
They're staying around people that don't satisfy the things that
(03:12):
they need for them to be a better version of themselves.
You are letting people rob you of your peace, your time,
your growth, simply because you want them around. And I
know it hurts to think about that. You have to
lose people, that you have to let people go, but
they're not serving you, they're hurting you. There's no value
in that. And you can love people from a distance,
you don't have to have them directly invested in your life.
(03:33):
Another reason is that we seek validation. We think that
if if we sacrifice our peace, that these people are
going to love us, or we're gonna validate us, are
going to make us feel better about ourselves. Where have
they done that? What part of you being less of you,
what part of you loving you less? What part of
you doing less of the positive things that you need?
Is ever going to sit here and actually make them
validate you. They haven't and they won't because they themselves
(03:57):
are struggling with that. They're themselves don't validate them, so
how can they ever validate you. You are now giving
away your peace for somebody that doesn't give it back
to you. Another reason we feel like we have to
keep people that are toxic, that are not peaceful to us,
is because we think we have an obligation to them.
The only obligation that you have in this world is
to you. You are literally the only obligation you will
(04:20):
ever have. You have to worry about you, you have
to worry about your girlfriend. And again again, I just
don't mean like don't care and don't love people. I
mean care and love about you enough. It's that whole
analogy of a plane. Right when you're in a plane
is going down, that the masks involved. The first instructions
they give you is to put the mask on yourself,
because you can't help anyone else if you are dying.
(04:40):
And this is what's happening, that a lot of us
are struggling to bereave and we're worrying about putting other
people's mask. Well, we can't brieve ourselves. You can't help
anyone if you don't love you enough for you. But
you keep pouring into these people that are robbing you
of your peace, you're never going to You feel like
you have an obligation to save them, or to be
loyal to them, or to be in their lives, or
for them to be in your life. They're not. There
(05:01):
is no obligation there. The only obligation you have is
to you. It's to the things that are part of
your life, that are things that are going to help
you grow and are going to be the things that
are catalysts for everything else. It doesn't value you anything
for you to continue to be obligated or to be
loyal to people that have shown you that they don't
(05:22):
actually care about you, that they care about you inconvenience
but not in reality. And we're just gonna hurt ourselves
trying to be more of this. It costs you so
much to have the wrong people in your life, like
you devalue yourself for attention. You're shrinking your capacity for peace,
for joy, for connections. You're making yourself so much less
because you think that it's worth the price of having
(05:44):
them there. It's not. And at some point we need
to come to that reality. We need to start setting
actual boundaries and creating detachment from people. And detachment hurts
right because there's stages that we have to literally cut
things off with people that that we've become so used to,
becomes so well attached to, it's gonna be painful to remove.
But if you don't have these boundaries, if you don't
(06:06):
have this detachment, what's gonna happen at the end. They're
just gonna continue to be leeches to suck off everything
that you have. You need to learn that it's for
your own good, that it's not about being mean, but
it's about being clear. It's learning that I love me
so much that I won't let you make me hate me,
because what happens at the end of the day is
that we end up hating ourselves because we pour in
(06:27):
so much toxic places's toxic people, we let them robbles
of our peace that we look back and we just
hate the person we've become. It's not about being mean,
it's about being actually good to you. It's about being
fair to you. And there's so much power in being
able to detach. There's so much power and knowing that
you don't have to remain in a place you have
(06:48):
to regain that. You have to learn to love you.
You have to know that you're worthy of peace and
of love, and you don't have to be in a
war zone. What happens with toxicity. Sometimes we think that
that is normal, like the cortisol in our body, the
stress of hormones that we're so used to having, that
so elevated that we think that this kind of relationship
is normal and healthy, and it's not. It's actually terrible.
(07:10):
You shouldn't feel like you have to be at war
or in a constant fight just to feel normal. That's
just not okay. You have to learn to love you
so much and ask yourself, is this thing really bringing
me peace? Like? Am I genuinely happy in this? And
if you're not, if it's a constant war, then you
have to do something about that. Yes, it sucks to
(07:31):
pull the band aid off, but once the bandit's off,
you're letting that get air, You're letting you breathe, you're
letting it be real. But until you do that, you
will consistently remain in a place where you're selling your
peace for attention, where you're not giving yourself, the freedom
to be fully you, or you're creating something that allows
people to just to stay in whatever they want to
(07:53):
act however they want to do whatever they want. And
that's not the power that people deserve from you, that
deserve to take from you. There's this quote that I
heard once that said, your present situation isn't your destination.
Like where you are now, the things that you're going through,
the struggles that you're in in this moment, that's not
who you are and it's not defined by your whole life.
And then there has to be a moment of change.
(08:14):
And when you make that change, when you decide that
enough is enough, when you decide that this next stage
of me is the best stage of me. This is
when things actually fully change. When you cut things off,
cut people off, cut that toxicity off that has been
robbing you of your peace, and you're in the place
that you belong. That's when you move forward. Those people
that were in those stages can't go to the next stages.
(08:34):
You have not been the full you because you've been
attached to people that can't help you grow, and they
have been robbing you of peace. They have been robbing
you of your time they have been robbing you of
your love. But the moment that you realize this, you
realize that that where you are, the present situation that
you're in, isn't your final destination. You're not confined by
that place, You're not staying there. So you have to
(08:55):
make a decision. Is it worth keeping people that are
robbing you of your peace just to keep them around?
Is the price of attention from them worth your piece
If it costs me a peace to keep you around them,
that's entirely too expensive. Like, I'm not in the business
of paying for someone else's comfort with my sanity, for
making people feel better than they need to around me
simply by sacrificing me for them. The reality is that
we have to care for people. We have to love people,
but we also have to care and love ourselves. We
have to stop sitting here trying to beg people to
(00:22):
stay in places that they don't want to be in,
or lose our sanity, lose our well being, just as
somebody can stay in that place or feel comfortable around us. Listen,
if it costs me my piece, if you're making me
have to struggle just to be happy near you can go,
you can leave. I'm not interested in convincing people. I'm
(00:43):
not interested in being an extra. And for a lot
of us, we tend to fall into this habit of
breaking parts of us so that other people can feel whole.
And I'm not saying that you shouldn't love people and
they shouldn't care, and that you shouldn't pour into people,
because you should. That's a natural thing, and in fact, you
actually feel happier when you do this for people, But
there's a difference between pouring into people and then being robbed.
(01:04):
There's a difference between loving and caring for people and
never being loved or cared for it yourself. We can't
keep going into these places for these people that will
never go in for us. And unfortunately we keep robbing
our own peace simply to keep other people happy. It's
not worth it. The cost is not worth it at all,
because you are gonna hate you trying to get them
(01:24):
to love you. You're gonna hate you trying to get
them to stay. You're gonna hate you trying to get
people who don't care about you to care about you.
It's okay to allow people to walk away. It's perfectly
fine to let people do their thing that they need
to do to show you where they want to. Because
at the end of the day, what are you gaining
from this, Like, are you authentically happy with the relationship,
(01:45):
with the economy that you have between this person. It's
not fair to you to lose who you are just
to keep them there. Yes, we should want peace, we
should want people to be happy, we should want to
love people. But there's a limit to that. There's a
limit to how much you can ever give and have that.
And the reality is that for a lot of us
sometimes it's a fear of losing them, Like we think
(02:08):
that if we are more of what they're already not valuing,
we think we give more into the situation that we're
going to be able to actually get the thing that
we're imagining, or we're going to not lose them. But
I don't think losing a person that makes you feel
like you're at war is bad. That's actually not a
bad thing. You have to realize that if you consistently
(02:29):
have to be in a battle to be around someone,
that then there's something else there, and there's something that
isn't healed in them, something isn't healed in you, something
that you two just can't be around each other. You
might have a season where it made sense, you might
have a time frame in your life where you know
it was worth sacrificing certain things, but at some point
you have to realize that it's not valued at the
price that you're paying. It's not worth being in a
(02:51):
constant war just to try to win someone's attention. It's
okay to lose people. And this is the scary part
of life that we think that we have to consistently
have everybody in every stage. No, not everybody is meant
for every stage. The reason a lot of people don't
develop and don't grow is because they are staying around
people that don't fit the chapter they want to be in.
They're staying around people that don't satisfy the things that
(03:12):
they need for them to be a better version of themselves.
You are letting people rob you of your peace, your time,
your growth, simply because you want them around. And I
know it hurts to think about that. You have to
lose people, that you have to let people go, but
they're not serving you, they're hurting you. There's no value
in that. And you can love people from a distance,
you don't have to have them directly invested in your life.
(03:33):
Another reason is that we seek validation. We think that
if if we sacrifice our peace, that these people are
going to love us, or we're gonna validate us, are
going to make us feel better about ourselves. Where have
they done that? What part of you being less of you,
what part of you loving you less? What part of
you doing less of the positive things that you need?
Is ever going to sit here and actually make them
validate you. They haven't and they won't because they themselves
(03:57):
are struggling with that. They're themselves don't validate them, so
how can they ever validate you. You are now giving
away your peace for somebody that doesn't give it back
to you. Another reason we feel like we have to
keep people that are toxic, that are not peaceful to us,
is because we think we have an obligation to them.
The only obligation that you have in this world is
to you. You are literally the only obligation you will
(04:20):
ever have. You have to worry about you, you have
to worry about your girlfriend. And again again, I just
don't mean like don't care and don't love people. I
mean care and love about you enough. It's that whole
analogy of a plane. Right when you're in a plane
is going down, that the masks involved. The first instructions
they give you is to put the mask on yourself,
because you can't help anyone else if you are dying.
(04:40):
And this is what's happening, that a lot of us
are struggling to bereave and we're worrying about putting other
people's mask. Well, we can't brieve ourselves. You can't help
anyone if you don't love you enough for you. But
you keep pouring into these people that are robbing you
of your peace, you're never going to You feel like
you have an obligation to save them, or to be
loyal to them, or to be in their lives, or
for them to be in your life. They're not. There
(05:01):
is no obligation there. The only obligation you have is
to you. It's to the things that are part of
your life, that are things that are going to help
you grow and are going to be the things that
are catalysts for everything else. It doesn't value you anything
for you to continue to be obligated or to be
loyal to people that have shown you that they don't
(05:22):
actually care about you, that they care about you inconvenience
but not in reality. And we're just gonna hurt ourselves
trying to be more of this. It costs you so
much to have the wrong people in your life, like
you devalue yourself for attention. You're shrinking your capacity for peace,
for joy, for connections. You're making yourself so much less
because you think that it's worth the price of having
(05:44):
them there. It's not. And at some point we need
to come to that reality. We need to start setting
actual boundaries and creating detachment from people. And detachment hurts
right because there's stages that we have to literally cut
things off with people that that we've become so used to,
becomes so well attached to, it's gonna be painful to remove.
But if you don't have these boundaries, if you don't
(06:06):
have this detachment, what's gonna happen at the end. They're
just gonna continue to be leeches to suck off everything
that you have. You need to learn that it's for
your own good, that it's not about being mean, but
it's about being clear. It's learning that I love me
so much that I won't let you make me hate me,
because what happens at the end of the day is
that we end up hating ourselves because we pour in
(06:27):
so much toxic places's toxic people, we let them robbles
of our peace that we look back and we just
hate the person we've become. It's not about being mean,
it's about being actually good to you. It's about being
fair to you. And there's so much power in being
able to detach. There's so much power and knowing that
you don't have to remain in a place you have
(06:48):
to regain that. You have to learn to love you.
You have to know that you're worthy of peace and
of love, and you don't have to be in a
war zone. What happens with toxicity. Sometimes we think that
that is normal, like the cortisol in our body, the
stress of hormones that we're so used to having, that
so elevated that we think that this kind of relationship
is normal and healthy, and it's not. It's actually terrible.
(07:10):
You shouldn't feel like you have to be at war
or in a constant fight just to feel normal. That's
just not okay. You have to learn to love you
so much and ask yourself, is this thing really bringing
me peace? Like? Am I genuinely happy in this? And
if you're not, if it's a constant war, then you
have to do something about that. Yes, it sucks to
(07:31):
pull the band aid off, but once the bandit's off,
you're letting that get air, You're letting you breathe, you're
letting it be real. But until you do that, you
will consistently remain in a place where you're selling your
peace for attention, where you're not giving yourself, the freedom
to be fully you, or you're creating something that allows
people to just to stay in whatever they want to
(07:53):
act however they want to do whatever they want. And
that's not the power that people deserve from you, that
deserve to take from you. There's this quote that I
heard once that said, your present situation isn't your destination.
Like where you are now, the things that you're going through,
the struggles that you're in in this moment, that's not
who you are and it's not defined by your whole life.
And then there has to be a moment of change.
(08:14):
And when you make that change, when you decide that
enough is enough, when you decide that this next stage
of me is the best stage of me. This is
when things actually fully change. When you cut things off,
cut people off, cut that toxicity off that has been
robbing you of your peace, and you're in the place
that you belong. That's when you move forward. Those people
that were in those stages can't go to the next stages.
(08:34):
You have not been the full you because you've been
attached to people that can't help you grow, and they
have been robbing you of peace. They have been robbing
you of your time they have been robbing you of
your love. But the moment that you realize this, you
realize that that where you are, the present situation that
you're in, isn't your final destination. You're not confined by
that place, You're not staying there. So you have to
(08:55):
make a decision. Is it worth keeping people that are
robbing you of your peace just to keep them around?
Is the price of attention from them worth your piece
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