Episode 277: Why Talking About Yourself is Not Narcissistic | GET LIFTED
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Today Erin addresses the concern, “I want to share more, but I’m afraid people will think I’m too egotistical or I’m a narcissist.” Listen in to learn why that isn’t true, and what you can learn from hearing other people’s stories.
Connect with Erin on Instagram here to submit questions for future episodes!
Resources mentioned:
Funk’tional Nutrition Academy™
Energetics of Expansion Course
Energetics of Being Seen Course
The Boundaries Course (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Ned Natural Remedies (get 15% off your order with code FUNK)
Learn more about Mindset
Related episodes:
234: Where Are You Holding Yourself Back?
196: Confidence, Clarity & Courage for Practitioners: The #1 Thing in Your Way
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Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
I'm Erin Holt, and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast, where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions, and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience, and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do, and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school in mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same.
Erin Holt [00:00:45]:
This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. You'll get things here that you won't get other places. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share, because you never know whose life you might change. And of course, keep coming back for more. Now give me the mic so I can take it away. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the new Get Lifted Thursdays second episode of the week. Are you digging it? Are you into it? Little snacky snack, little quick fix? Little boosty boost.
Erin Holt [00:01:27]:
This is where you get to ask me anything for my unfiltered hot take. Today, I am addressing this concern: I want to share more, but I'm afraid people will think I'm too egotistical or I'm a narcissist. So remember that the intention of these little quickie episodes are to activate you into your power. They're like a pep talk. So by the end of this quickie today, you're not going to be afraid to share your stories, and you're going to understand why it's helpful to do so. We know that health isn't just found in broccoli and biohacking, so this is the place to come when you want to expand beyond. This is why it's all fair game here:
Erin Holt [00:02:07]:
Intuitive functional medicine, health consciousness, mindset, manifesting energy, medicine, business boundaries, relationships. It's kind of like, ask me anything. Free for all. So for now, we're collecting questions on Instagram. So just be on the lookout for my stories for question submissions at @the.funktional.nutritionist. So the functional spelled with a K nutritionist, that's my Instagram. Follow me there. You can submit your questions there.
Erin Holt [00:02:32]:
So today I'm going to explain to you why talking about yourself is not narcissistic. So it's this concern that I hear all of the time. I want to share more, but I don't want people to think that I'm too egotistical or I'm a narcissist. And it reminds me, I heard Glennon Doyle say this on a podcast. She was talking to Brene Brown, and she was talking about when she wrote her second memoir, people were asking her, somebody actually asked her, do you ever worry that it's narcissistic to keep talking about yourself? And she was bullshit. She was like, men talk about their lives, and it's a reflection of the human experience. Women talk about their lives and it's narcissism. So right out of the gate, I'm just going to start you off right there.
Erin Holt [00:03:24]:
You are not alone in feeling this way. So you have to try to remind yourself that it has so much more to do with our society that tells women we really shouldn't be saying much or only just so much, right? There's a finite amount of words that you are permitted to say, so do not exceed that invisible threshold. So that has more to do with the programming and the message that we've received and a lot less to do with you because there are a lot of people that feel exactly this way. So I just want to speak into that. But I will also say that the longer you hold on to this belief, the longer that you hold onto this fear, the longer you will see matching pictures pop up to reflect that belief. You'll see evidence that this belief is true. That's how your brain is wired. It is designed, it's wired, it's primed to look for evidence of its own beliefs.
Erin Holt [00:04:19]:
And what we actually do is throw out anything that misaligns with those beliefs. So the more that you think, geez, when I talk about myself, when I share my story, other people are going to think I'm egotistical. The more you believe that to be true, the more you will gather up evidence that that belief is true. So let's widen the lens a little bit today so you can choose some new beliefs that feel better to you. Okay, let's do it. Let's just talk about storytelling. Because we are programmed for stories. We communicate through stories.
Erin Holt [00:04:55]:
They're part of who we are. It's how we evolved to understand our place in the world we live in. And through stories, stories help us make sense of the world. They are sense making. This is from "Braiding Sweetgrass" book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, she says the storytellers begin by calling upon those who came before, who passed the stories down to us, for we are only messengers.
Erin Holt [00:05:22]:
She also says that although I'm trained as a scientist, I am coming to understand that the greatest influence I can have is a storyteller. Stories, they're important. Now, from a brain based neuroscience perspective, stories help us learn and remember. Neural activity in our brain increases when we're hearing a story, so it helps our brain synchronize up with the storyteller. Something called coupling happens when we're listening to someone tell a story, especially if there's motion involved, if there's emotion, if it's highly charged, this is especially true. The same parts of the brain light up in both speaker and listener. Isn't that cool? And the more this happens, the more we comprehend, the more we understand, specific neurochemicals can be released, which actually helps make it easier to remember something with greater accuracy. So storytelling helps us learn.
Erin Holt [00:06:26]:
It helps us comprehend, it helps us understand things at a deeper and more accurate level. I understand this. So I learned about this years ago, which is why you'll notice I use storytelling a lot. Or I will bring in real world anecdotes in my teaching here on the podcast, in the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy and our programs and our courses. Wherever I'm teaching, I'm usually peppering storytelling for this exact reason. It's to get you to learn a little bit better. It's to get you to understand and remember what you're learning. Also, just as an aside, my rising sign is Sagittarius.
Erin Holt [00:07:08]:
Sagittarius is the scholar. It's the teacher. It's the archetype of someone who goes through a lived experience in order to gain knowledge and wisdom, to then go on and share and teach that. So part of me sharing my stories and my lived experience is just part of who I am. That's just the Sagittarius rising in me. So if you have any Sagittarius in your chart, this might also be true for you.
Erin Holt [00:07:43]:
So one of the coolest things about stories is that they help us learn.
Erin Holt [00:08:36]:
Another cool thing is that through sharing our stories, we can help others access and unlock parts of themselves. We can bring other people to a deeper understanding of themselves. So I can be sharing a story of mine, something I've gone through in my life, and me talking about it can unlock something in you, the listener. I remember last year, the end of last year, I went through something. It was very specific. I was talking about a very specific experience of going through a mastermind and some things that were coming up for me. It was really a specific to me experience. And I talked about it on the podcast and I got so much feedback from that podcast.
Erin Holt [00:09:28]:
People just telling me, oh, my gosh, I got so much out of this. People shared that podcast so much. Not because everybody else in the world was looking for a mastermind at that time, but because me talking through the story of going to that mastermind and what it took for me to go to that mastermind lit things up in the listener, in other people. Even though I was sharing a very personal experience I had, the listener got something out of it that impacted them, that shifted something in them, that helped them understand themselves more. So you can listen to a story and let it move something in you. You can listen to somebody talking about their lived experience and let it unlock something in yourself, right? Let it, let yourself learn something about yourself and how you show up in the world and how you want to show up in the world. And honestly, this is not dissimilar to what I discussed last Get Lifted Thursday when I said, you're responsible for what you get out of any situation. Because you can listen to someone talking about themselves in their story and say, gosh, what a narcissist.
Erin Holt [00:10:35]:
Or you can listen to somebody talking about themselves and sharing their story and say, what can I receive from this? What does this story do inside of me when I'm listening to this? What can be unlocked? What can I learn about myself through this story? And I think so much of why I have and can hold such a broad spectrum of knowledge, right? That's a question that people ask me like, where do you learn all of this? I think so much of this is through listening to other people's stories. My learning didn't come from sitting back and waiting to be spoon fed the exact information that exactly applied to me in the exact moment I was looking for it. It was widening my lens. It was listening to other people's stories and perspectives. And through storytelling, I learned something about myself. I learned something about the world. I make sense of things. And that's part of what makes an excellent practitioner.
Erin Holt [00:11:37]:
I know I have a lot of practitioners that tune into the show, listen to stories, listen to what your clients and your patients are telling you. Through their storytelling, you learn about them. And their stories always hold the codes for their healing. So through listening, you get to help them decode that. Storytelling should be valued, and that means the storytellers should also be valued. Virginia Rosenberg is an astrologist astrologer. She's an account that I follow on Instagram, and she said, storytelling is essential to our existence. We can't know who we are or what time it is or what we're capable of without the threads we weave through story. The tales we tell can become our lifelines. Sense making is a skill, a craft, and a healing art.
Erin Holt [00:12:35]:
I love that so much. Okay, the last thing I'll bring up here is what I refer to as voice codes. I believe that something extremely healing happens when we use our voice. And I'm not speaking in metaphors here. I mean, literally, using your voice, using your vocal cords, labeling things, naming things, bringing life to your experience through words can be so healing and cathartic for the speaker, but also for the listener. There's real reciprocity there. And I believe that there are healing codes that get activated when we use our actual voice. I know that this is a little bit far out, but stick with me because I've seen it in action and I come by this theory honestly.
Erin Holt [00:13:23]:
When we hear the resonance of our own voice, we can receive our own medicine. When others hear the resonance of our voice, they get to receive that medicine too. And so I hope that helps anybody who's listening to this and is like, gosh, I really want to speak more. I want to be more visible. I want to use my voice. I want to share my story. I want to tell my tale. I hope that today's conversation provides a little bit more comfort into stepping into that new territory.
Erin Holt [00:13:56]:
It also can be very, very helpful to explore any limiting beliefs that you have around being seen, being heard, being witnessed. And that's exactly what my two courses, Energetics of Being Seen and Energetics of Expansion. Do. Energetics of Being Seen is a I think it's a 75 minutes, 90 minutes, 1 hour. It's a shorty master class and it's $222. The Energetics of Expansion is a bigger course. It also includes Energetics of Being Seen. It also includes the Boundaries course.
Erin Holt [00:14:29]:
That is normally $1,111. I know, angel numbers. They bring me such pleasure and joy when I see them that I can't not but that is Energetics of Expansion. We are putting that on sale. I just made this decision when I was recording this episode because I was like, yes, I want to do this. We're putting that on sale for $888 through the end of the month. So through the end of September, this course, like I said, it's three in one. And it is really designed to be repeated over and over.
Erin Holt [00:15:03]:
Like, this is a course that you buy once, but you come back to time and time again. I certainly do. Every time you up level, there's going to be a recalibration period, let's say. And with that, there's going to be new stuff that comes up around being heard, being seen, being witnessed through more visibility. So these are all self led courses that you lead yourself through time and time again. And just as a heads up, in case you don't know this, you receive both of those courses in really all of my mindset, and entrepreneurial trainings in the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. So we are open for enrollment right now for our fall cohort. So this is for practitioners, clinicians who are looking to learn intuitive functional medicine modalities, but you also get a little boost of personal growth and development.
Erin Holt [00:15:59]:
So anyway, consider that, and I would love for you to share today's show with somebody who needs a little help using their voice, somebody who needs a little encouragement to share their story and tell their tale. Let's activate some voice codes today, shall we? All right, I'll check you next week. Thanks for joining me for this episode of The Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.
