Neuroscience of Coaching – Episode #7
Harnessing Self-Acceptance (Matthew Kimberley)
Matthew Kimberley: Hearing from you how self-esteem is directly linked to brain chemistry is somewhat relieving because the very essence of self-esteem is we ask, what is wrong with me? Why am I not enough?
Dr. Irena O’Brien: Hi, I’m Dr. Irena O’Brien, and you’re listening to Neuroscience of Coaching. I’m a cognitive neuroscientist with almost 30 years of study and practice in psychology and neuroscience. And as the founder of the Neuroscience School, I teach coaches and other wellness professionals practical, evidence-based strategies to use in their practices. In each episode, I invite a seasoned coach to discuss a topic that clients struggle with, and together, we provide you with science-based tools to help your clients reach their goals by working with their brains to create results that last.
Today, we’re going to talk about self-esteem with Matthew Kimberley. But first, I’m going to talk about the science behind self-esteem and also share a tip for boosting yours. Self-esteem is a complicated topic. It seems that self-esteem is related to the strength of the pathway between the medial prefrontal cortex, which processes thoughts about the self, and the striatum, which is a dopamine rich region associated with reward. And what this means is that our feelings of self-esteem come from a mix of our thoughts about ourselves and how those thoughts are rewarded or recognized by our brain’s pleasure system. Thus, boosting self-esteem can be challenging.
One thing we do know is that using positive affirmations to boost self-esteem, the way most people use them, doesn’t work for everyone. So telling yourself that you’re lovable or successful or whatever it is that you want to be hasn’t worked for you, it’s not your fault. In fact, positive affirmations can actually make you feel worse, and it can be a double whammy. In addition to not working, you beat yourself up over the fact that it doesn’t work for you when it seems to work for everyone else.
So why don’t positive affirmations work for you? It’s because your brain doesn’t believe it. Lion Goodman and I talked about this in a recent episode. When you make a statement that isn’t yet true, your brain brings up what you believe about yourself instead. It’s like your brain is telling you, hey, that’s not true, you’re not successful. Or no, you’re not lovable. Fortunately, there is a way that you can use affirmations to boost your self-esteem. To do this, you want to start with a statement that is true and then follow it with the affirmation. That way, your brain doesn’t reject the affirmation.
For instance, you might want to say the presentation went well because I’m a good speaker. I normally don’t think of myself as a good speaker, but now I have proof that I am and my mind accepts it. It sounds simple, but it really works. I’ve seen dozens of my clients boost their self-esteem with this tactic. To put it into practice, I have them choose three things at the end of every day that went well and then complete similar statements and their self-esteem usually rises within a few days. If you try this for yourself or your clients, make sure that you complete the I am part with something that you are rather than something that you can do. For instance, the meeting went well today because I’m a good leader or my kids didn’t fight today because I’m a good mother. The goal is to change how you think about who you are.
We’ve just scratched the surface about self-esteem. Let’s bring our guest, Matthew Kimberley into the conversation. Matthew is the Chief Owner Wrangler at Delightful Business, which is all about fun, freedom and flow. He’s also the author of Get Enough and Grip and the creator of Delightful Emails and The School for Selling. Matthew travels the world speaking on stages from Singapore to San Diego, and he now lives in Malta. So before we start talking about self-esteem, will you tell us a little bit about your work and how you came to be doing it, Matthew, and maybe how you ended up in Malta?
Matthew: Well, Dr. Irena, thank you very much for having me. It’s an absolute pleasure to be with somebody legitimately qualified and competent and expert because as we know in our space, there are an awful lot of marketers who talk a very good talk without so much to back it up. So the pleasure is entirely mine. My professional journey, I have struggled for 25 years with trying to be as good or better than my peers. By means of example, in my career I have sold two or three companies, and these are companies that I’ve been the managing director of and I sold them because I wanted to go, I wanted to be somewhere else.
And over the last 25 years, I have learned that I’ve spent a lot of time putting my ladder up against the wrong war. And now, at the age of 43, I’m starting to realize that ambition is absolutely fine so long as it’s your ambition. I’m learning that it’s absolutely okay to work on your terms and without any point of reference from your industry peers. Just because other people are doing it doesn’t mean that you should. And it also doesn’t mean that you can. We’re all wired differently. And I have sat on hundreds of occasions in rooms with highly driven, highly ambitious business owners of all ilk’s, service businesses, consultancy businesses, brick and mortar businesses, coaching consulting businesses.
And I thought, what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I want what everybody in this room claims to want? Why do I not get excited about having an eight-figure business? Am I perhaps afraid of the hard work? Because if somebody were to hand me the monthly dividends from an eight-figure business, I would be very happy. So I’ve enjoyed many successes, but I am, in moments, proud of myself for the life that I live, the things that I’ve done, the adventures that I’ve had. But I did spend a lot of time chasing other people’s dreams.
And so what I like to do now at Delightful Business and the name chosen very specifically is encourage others to pursue their own benchmarks, to create their own role, to participate in daily, weekly, monthly activities that they feel comfortable with or they can learn to feel comfortable with, but also critically, to celebrate their success, whether their success is taking four days off a week or taking one day off a week, whether their success is bringing in $10 million in revenue this year or living very, very comfortable with $250,000 of company revenue.
And over the years, I’ve taught people how to sell, I’ve taught people how to measure the metrics. I’ve taught people how to write emails, I’ve taught people how to run marketing campaigns. And I guess with age, as I start to enter my third act, as I step through the dark wood, I’m trying to do something a little bit more holistic when it comes to encouraging others who have perhaps had the same journey as me to identify the wall that they should be putting their ladder against.
Dr. Irena: I love your story, Matthew, and how you finally figured out and what it is that you really want to do and that what lights you up, right? So I have a similar story. My first career was as a chartered accountant and that wasn’t me at all. And so then I went back to school to study psychology, neuroscience, and then I went into coaching. And then finally I decided what I really love is neuroscience. I love reading about it. I love writing about it. I love talking about it. So this is where I am. This is what lights me up. So thank you for your story, Matthew.
Matthew: Well, thank you for inviting me to share.
Dr. Irena: So, Matthew, what came up for you as you listen to my preamble about self-esteem.
Matthew: I’ve struggled with self-esteem, I think, my entire life. And to hear the, and I’ve read up on it. I’ve done extensive therapy. I continue to do extensive therapy. And one of my frequent business partners, Michael Port, who wrote Book Yourself Solid, said quite famously, 90% of business problems are personal problems in disguise. And whether we were to swap the word problem out for situation or areas in which we find ourself, then I think that hearing from you how self-esteem is directly linked to brain chemistry is somewhat relieving because the very essence of self-esteem is we ask, what is wrong with me? Why am I not enough? Why am I not good enough? And it manifests in different ways, of course.
And in business, it tends to manifest itself when we forge comparisons. We can either set ourselves a benchmark and say, this week or today or this month or this year, I’m going to achieve the following benchmarks, the following goals. I’m going to hit x dollars in revenue. I’m going to employ a team, I’m going to have a successful exit, whatever that might be. And when our reality doesn’t match our expectations or our declarations, then we either look outwards or we look inwards to find a reason for that. And sometimes we look in both situations. There was a COVID epidemic, or everybody else doing it. I’m just not good enough. Or other people survived through COVID, but I didn’t.
So there’s always this element of the single point of failure being the individual. And when you were giving your introduction, Dr. Irena, I really wanted to call from the hilltops that you can’t be behind in your own journey. There’s nothing that is pre written. There’s nothing predestined for the journey that you’re on. You can make progress. Progress is never linear. If self-esteem is an issue for you, and if you are struggling with issues of self-esteem, you’re absolutely, categorically not alone. I face issues with self-esteem every day. I don’t know a founder who doesn’t suffer somewhat from the impostor syndrome, which is linked, I would say, in some ways, to self-esteem.
I got lucky. I’m the person who’s going to get found out one day. How did I get this far without being discovered? Then know that you’re not alone. And also know that there are tools available to you to help make your vehicle, mental, physical, a healthier environment for you to appreciate the journey that you’re on.
Dr. Irena: I like what you said, Matthew. We spent a lot of time comparing ourselves to others, and that is really damaging.
Matthew: And in these days of line, broadcasting our every moment, particularly if we’re a coach or in the marketing game, we’re generally not advertising our every moment. We use strategic vulnerability to say, you know, last week I was feeling terrible, but hey, I’m feeling better now. Thank myself for the tools I’ve given myself to overcome this. And so we’re watching marketers, we’re watching broadcasters selling us a story.
Social media generally is the edited highlights of somebody’s life. And also the marketers that you are paying attention to, the personal brands that you are paying attention to, are delivering a very carefully curated persona. It’s absolutely necessary for protecting yourself. I have a persona when I’m on stage. I have a persona when I’m writing emails. And we have different roles to play in different situations in our life. And you might be familiar with this concept of transactional analysis, or the idea that we have an identity which never changes, but a series of roles which happen on a daily basis.
And what is most damaging for me to see, or what upsets me the most is when a bad or a subpar or a mediocre performance in one aspect of your life. For example, oh, I was late for my gym appointment, does not mean that you are therefore a terrible human being. And if you flub a sales call or a presentation on stage, it doesn’t mean that you’re a worthless piece of crap who doesn’t deserve any of the goodness that is out there. So we, by our very nature, compartmentalize how we present ourselves to the world. And I would be very happy if my children never went on social media.
You know, there’s for all of the good that there is out there. For many marketers or people who occupy marketing role who are listening to us right now, you will be spending an awful lot of time watching other marketers tell you how great their life is, or watching other personal brands stepping down the steps of their private jet. And that’s kind of poisonous. It’s odious, I would say. I had a very fractious business relationship with my first business partner. He was a kind of mentor. I was in awe of him and intimidated by him. And I was rapidly climbing a that was up against his wall.
But he told me something really useful one day, which struck me. I said, I’m off to an event, and I can’t remember who the speaker was. Let’s say it was Tony Robbins. I said, I’m off to an event. I’m going to see Tony Robbins. I’m going to try and shake his hand and get a selfie with him and my business partner turned around to me, he said, you know what? He’d be lucky if he got to shake your hand. And that I think we spend far too much time looking out a not enough time looking healthily directly, I was going to say inwards, but that’s wrong. Directly in front of us.
Dr. Irena: And there’s something that you said earlier about when people beat themselves up when they don’t succeed in the business that they’re in, but often we’re at other people’s businesses. It’s not even what we want to do. It’s something that we think we want to do because we’re comparing ourselves to others.
Matthew: And that’s absolutely right. And I think that’s not only true in the business world, it’s true in the playground, it’s true in peer dynamics. Why do we compromise our values? And if you don’t know what our values are, that’s okay, we can find out. But I think when you reach a certain age, like we’re not surprised when otherwise good kids in the playground get caught up in name calling and bullying, we know that every 8, 9, 10-year-old is going to go through that experience, probably no matter who they are, because they think, how can I fit in with this crowd?
Ah, well, it looks like the powerful people over there are the ones who are teasing and calling names. And so maybe if I do that, I can build up my stock. I think it’s about choosing your role models very carefully. You can have a role model and you can be inspired and you can go to people for help, but it’s absolutely okay to do you. And I remember years and years and years ago, I was in one of my mastermind groups with lots of very successful coaches talking about businesses and their revenue and their plans for the future. And there were plenty of million-dollar coaches in that room.
I played the game for a couple of years and I kept quiet, and then I can’t bear it. So am I allowed to remain in this room, which I wanted to do on my own terms? And so I said, look, I’m Matthew. I’m an accidental entrepreneur. I’m a creative who has become a business owner, and I’m in this situation now, which I like very much. I said, I don’t work many hours, and I’ve been stuck at about 30 grand a month for the last three or four years. And that was an unusual kind of statement for that room.
And the number of people that came up afterwards and said, Matthew, that was so refreshing. We love the fact that you know, you and you do you. And I want to add the caveat that I am deeply flawed. And if you were to ask me next week how life is, I might tell you it’s utterly awful. Dr. Irena, thank you for asking. I don’t got all the answers, but I am getting better at telling myself, what you got and what you want is okay.
Dr. Irena: So it is about accepting oneself, right? Accepting how we are. So one of the things about me is that I do suffer from anxiety. And so when I give a talk like a webinar, I always start with, I suffer from anxiety and I tend to read my notes and it’s okay. And I’ve given talks where people have come up to me after and said I gave them permission to be themselves. And every time they spoke, they didn’t have to do a TED type talk, which is almost an impossible achievement for most people. So how do you help your clients with self-esteem?
Matthew: I think many of them would say I’m a champion for them. Apart from the logistical, practical stuff, I try to make things simple because I think complex is typically uninspiring, undelightful, and we tend to get stuck in the weeds, which is never a good place to see if we want to take in the view. So I try to simplify things for them. They might come with complex issues. And I’ll say, can we rise above it or can we simplify it? Because the advice that we give ourself is always so different to the advice that we would give a friend. We are generally much harder on ourselves.
My therapist once put it, she said, feel free to desire anything and need nothing. And that was quite liberating. A desire is attractive. We move towards it. We become expansive with it. A need or a worry or a concern, or I must have a six figure launch next month, or then it becomes burdensome and miserable. So I think practically being okay with what you got, spending less than you earn, investing wisely for the future, taking some big puns sometimes, because it’s fun. And feeling free to desire everything and need nothing is a pretty good way of describing my philosophy for working with my clients.
Dr. Irena: To summarize, really, you’re saying that it’s about accepting yourself, right? It’s about accepting the way you are, which is really powerful. It gives you a lot of freedom when you do that.
Matthew: If you can get to the stage where you accept the way you are, how do you get to self-acceptance? How do you do it? Because I live in Malta. It’s a small mediterranean island, and it’s got a population of maybe half a million people. It’s certainly not more than 20 miles north to south, so it’s very densely populated. The Mediterranean diet is traditionally and famously very good for you. But the British colonized Walter for a very long time and they left behind all their pies and pastries and.
And so the Maltese kids are some of the per capita, some of the most obese in Europe. And every summer I go to the beach multiple times a week. Everybody’s in their Speedos. There is nothing more attractive than self-confidence to be able to wear your Speedos with your belly hanging over and you’re with your friends and you’re enjoying yourself and you’re not self-conscious. That confidence is deeply attractive. And I look at people and I say, I wish I had your confidence. I wish I had your self-belief.
Dr. Irena: That is self-acceptance. It really is just accepting who you are, like in a quiet kind of way, like the guy with the belly hanging out in the Speedo.
Matthew: We often know the secrets that other people don’t know about ourselves. And that’s why we say other people’s judgment, even though it might be welcome, which is, you’re great, we love you, we think you’re okay, you’re a fantastic human being. I say, yeah, but you don’t know what I was just thinking or, yeah, but you don’t know that I was up in the casino at 04:00 this morning and I spent my kid’s inheritance. Or you don’t know that I was meant to go to the gym this morning, but instead I ate cake.
So we are very careful about how we present ourselves to the world. And when we become too careful about how we present ourselves to the world, we start to hide things because we feel that we’re not going to be accepted. And when we hide things, that’s a form of dishonesty. I’m talking about in personal relationships, not necessarily online. And then when we hide things and we think we’ve got secrets, then we’re filled with shame. And shame is about pretty much the worst feeling that we can have. It’s very difficult to shake it. We feel that we owe the world an apology, and very often we don’t. If you can get to self-acceptance, amazing.
Dr. Irena: It’s not easy. It’s not easy. So what tools do you use to help your clients boost their self-esteem? And can you share a client’s story that illustrates what it looks like when you help them boost their self-esteem?
Matthew: So in my world, there’s a direct correlation between self-worth and self-esteem and pricing, because many of my clients are coaches and they charge for what they believe is time with them. If they don’t value themselves sufficiently, then it’s very difficult for them to transmit a sense of that value to the prospect or the client in front of them because the prospect is looking for leadership. They will go with the person who believes they can get what they want.
But the other problem that low self-esteem, low self-worth, low self-value has for the coaches who work with me is when it comes to pricing, because they might say, oh, I don’t believe that I could ever charge my clients what you were charging me, for example. Or they might say, well, I’d love to charge more, but I need to work up to it. Now, the big secret in pricing coaching services is that there is really no secret. Unfortunately, that’s true. How do you know how much you charge? Well, I actually like to reverse engineer from a lifestyle point of view.
So let’s say that I want to work with, let’s say I need a nice easy number. Say I need $100,000 a year and I don’t want to work more than one day a week, which means I’m probably going to work with five clients, maybe five or six clients. Well, that dictates that I need to be charging $2,000 per client per month frankly. The difference, the difference between a coach who charges $2,000 a month and the coach who charges $200 a month has got absolutely nothing to do with market value, experience, credentials, even who the client is. Although clearly some markets will have more spending power than another. A coach who charges $2,000 a month or $5,000 a month or $7,000 a month is a coach who decides that they are worth that much.
Dr. Irena: So how do you get them to that point?
Matthew: I use a blunt force approach. I get them to agree to try it. I use the what’s the worst that can happen? Technique. They say, well, I don’t know if I can do it. What if they say no? And I say, well, has a prospective client ever said no to you before? And they’ll say, yeah, plenty of times. Well, there we go. Can you live with a prospective client saying no to you? Yes, I can. It seems like a really simple technique or trick. It seems a bit hacky, but here’s what happens. Something switches up here.
The self-value thermometer gets switched up. The standard for your new normal changes. And then, interestingly, you start to make lifestyle decisions that are based upon what you know that your time is worth. I almost put my back out earlier on today, trying to move an armchair down a set of stairs. I knew it was going to take me 45 minutes, and I said, 1 minute in, maybe two minutes in. I said, what on earth am I doing? And I called somebody and they did it for me because you start to feel more expansive.
You say, my time is worth more than this. My health is worth more than this. It doesn’t mean you become super competent and everything, but if you correlate pricing, how much you charge with how much you value yourself, I think there’s a direct correlation. You might hate yourself for a million other reasons. You might have bad habits, you might have fractious relationships, you might have a filthy temper. But one level of your life, your business, the way that you see yourself when you talk to people, when you look at yourself in the mirror in that particular area, has been raised.
So it’s something that I would encourage everybody to do. And again, for the coach who is selling themselves, I try to get them to remember that they’re not actually selling themselves. They’re a delivery vehicle for what is normally an outcome or an experience that their clients want to enjoy.
Dr. Irena: Thanks for that, Matthew. And I can relate because I’m one of these who suffer from having a hard time increasing my prices, too.
Matthew: Well, let me ask you, Dr. Irena, what’s the worst that can happen next time? Somebody says, how much does it cost? And you say, it costs $25,000 an hour. And they say, I wish I could afford it, but it seems a little bit too much. And you get off and you’re like, oh, okay. Well, that wasn’t awful. That wasn’t the worst thing ever. They still like me. They maybe even like me even more.
Dr. Irena: I should try that. So I’m inspired. So is there anything else you’d like to say to our listeners? And also, what’s the best way for our listeners to find out more about you and your work?
Matthew: I would say to anybody listening to this, you are not alone. Everyone’s been through it. There are plenty of marketers out there who understand what an epidemic, low self-confidence and low self-worth is, and they play directly into that. You will read emotionally charged headlines and sales pages that say things like, did you think you’d be further along by now? Do you feel that other people are doing it, but you’re not? Do you ever feel that it’s time to step into your greatness?
Well, that time is now. Be aware of those messages, the reason that they work and the reason they’re so successful is because everybody’s feeling the same. It’s completely normal. We want recognition. We want to be perceived as being incredibly successful by our peers. But when we stop caring, not caring for them, but caring about their view of us, then that becomes incredibly liberating. I still want my friends to like me. I still want my clients to like me, for sure. But I found it was easy to do that when I liked myself and when I was selling a narrative that wasn’t congruent with what I actually valued, then there was immediate incongruence in the conversation that I was having with the people around me who wanted to become my clients.
So I would say, look for somebody who is building a wall that you’re very happy to put your ladder against. And the other thing I’d say is, it’s okay to be inconsistent. What you might want right now is to make a million dollars because it’s going to solve your financial problems. And what you might want next year is to do nothing more than take a nine-month sabbatical and write your book. And all of those feelings are absolutely okay. And I’d be very happy to talk to you about my journey and your journey.
You just go to delightfulbusiness.com and get on the mailing list over there. I do 90% of my most delightful work by email. It’s my preferred way of corresponding with people. And when I gave myself permission to opt out from endless video broadcasts and social media shenanigans, that became a very delightful moment for me as well. So delightfulbusiness.com.
Dr. Irena: So thank you so much, Matthew. This has been a really great conversation. So thank you all for listening. And remember that it is possible to boost your self-esteem if you work with your brain rather than against it. And try some of the techniques we talked about today, particularly the positive affirmation exercise I described at the top of the show. And again, the first part of your affirmation is the statement you already believe to be true. The second part is the obvious new belief you’re fostering. And when you get this right, you’ll experience an aha which activates your brain’s reward center when it works for you. Let me know in a comment.
I’m Dr. Irena O’Brien, and you’ve been listening to Neuroscience of Coaching. You can find out more about me at neuroscienceschool.com. the Neuroscience of Coaching is a part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Just Between Coaches and Once Upon a Business. This episode was produced by Cynthia Lamb, Danny Iny is our executive producer, and post production was by Marvin del Rosario. To make sure you don’t miss great episodes coming up on neuroscience of coaching, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player.
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