Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am Roberta, your host, and today I am joined by Clarissa Burt.

She is the CEO and founder of the Multimedia Platform Company, which she will talk more about as we go on.

And most recently, she authored a book, The Self-Esteem Regime.

Now, you and I will both agree that self-esteem is the one thing that we always need to constantly water, nourish in order for it to grow.

Before I go any further, please help me welcome Clarissa.

Hi, Clarissa.

We're doing this on a Saturday.

We must be very dedicated, Roberta.

I will be honest with you.

Every time I send people my calendar, they either book a weekday morning or evening.

You're the first Saturday person.

I'm not kidding.

Really?

That's funny because I've been working all morning, well, here at three o'clock now, but I've been working all morning at the National Publicity Summit, which is another event that I show up for as a press.

That was about three and a half hours.

Yeah, I knew I'd be ready for you today and here we are.

But yes, you are absolutely right that self-esteem is extremely important.

I knew as a young girl actually that I was able to see even on the playground that there were issues already brewing with bullying and kids weren't treating each other well.

And I'd always broke my heart.

I always would go and play with the bullied person because I just didn't want them to feel so sad.

And then, you know, my mother was always a beautiful woman.

Oh, don't take my picture because I don't come out good in pictures and I'm fat and all of that.

She's not.

She's gorgeous.

My grandmother thought she needed to lose weight and she didn't.

So she took two diet pills one day, perforated her esophagus as she choked on them.

She wound up in the hospital for six weeks and I thought, well, that was kind of silly.

I mean, why would you do something like that when you're so lovely?

Then it was when I was modeling.

There were girls that were absolutely beautiful, just gorgeous creatures who were either, you know, doing drugs or in toxic relationships, or they would speak poorly about themselves.

And I thought, gee, there's a common denominator here.

And I think it's the lack of happy, healthy self-esteem.

When COVID hit, it was really kind of the moment that I could really focus on getting this project done.

I've been wanting to write the book for a long time.

And I think it came out in the perfect time because I think we need to be talking about self-esteem after these COVID years.

COVID brought with it the sense of loss, or not even a sense, it brought with it a lot of loss.

Loss of hope, loss of faith, loss of friends, loss of family, loss of money, loss of jobs, loss of stability, loss of our individuality, like who are we now?

You know, with the craziness going on in the world, every turn, and there seems to be another crazy happening, it's destabilizing.

And I think that reading a book like mine called The Self-Esteem Regime, it is an action plan for becoming the confident person that you're meant to be.

We start the first chapter with release, just release.

What do you need to hold on to that you know, and what do you need to unlearn?

Where are the things that you brought forward from the natal tribe, from your schooling, your education, from your faith, your priests and whatever that may not serve you now?

Where are you going to be tomorrow, and who do you want to be tomorrow?

Well, without very strong sense of self-esteem and who you truly are and where you truly want to be, and the work that you know you will have to do to get there, you're going to remain stuck.

Some of this can be a very difficult process, I'm not gonna lie, some of it can be a very lonely process, but only you can do the work.

This is nothing that anyone else can help you with.

I'm very passionate about up-leveling and raising, if you will, the consciousness, especially of women all over the world, that think they are less than, they're a child of a lesser God, and it's not true.

So I'm here to be a very, very loud voice, hopefully, when it comes to my book.

It is a resource more than it is a read, because you can read this today, and in six months you can read it again and say, gosh, I didn't see that the first time.

Well, you weren't ready, you didn't resonate, your energy was not ready for that lesson.

So this is the kind of book you will read for a lifetime.

Right.

We're not going to mention names, obviously, but going back to who we usually admire and see on TV and in the media as supermodel, beautiful, they look like they have everything going for them.

Then you go to Twitter and they are depressed and polemic, because I think that we just want to start breaking down what is it about self-esteem and actually nourishes it because it seems like some of the things we thought increase it, we've been misguided on.

I think one of the most important things is that you have to understand that nobody is perfect, that everyone on the planet, no matter what you see, no matter what you perceive, no matter what they are projecting, is living in some sort of somewhere, some difficulty.

I really don't think that there is anyone on the planet that doesn't have what I call my daily demons.

They come and they want to get in your ear and they'll say something like, you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you're not young enough, you're not old enough, you're not thin enough, you're not rich enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not smart enough.

All the stuff that we battle with, I'm not going to say on a daily basis, but frequently.

It's your job to catch these voices.

It's your job to stop the crazy madness.

It's your job to recognize it and to put it back in its proper box and back up on the shelf.

This doesn't serve you.

Put it way back on the shelf.

Let it get really dusty because this doesn't serve you anymore.

These aren't the kind of things that we want to be using as tools, as tips, as resources, as what I love to use, affirmations.

I mean, people say, oh, affirmations, whatever.

I mean, yeah, you can...

Well, yeah, well, I'll tell you something.

They're extremely...

I love affirmations.

I do them every day.

But yeah.

Some people say, oh, this thing of yours, Roberta, sounds like a cult.

Exactly.

And people will want to do that.

You got to be careful what you tell your subconscious, because it believes you.

And if you continue to listen to this, say, look, there's no room for you today.

You've got to go.

Please don't come back.

I'm really working on myself, and I do want to be my best, the best version of me.

I want to be a better person tomorrow than I am today.

I want to stand strong in my stead, because life is going to throw at me triggering moments.

It's going to throw at me storms and tornadoes and hurricanes are going to come through.

Relationships, work, jobs, money, all kinds of things will worry us and will trigger us.

Well, if we have strong roots, right, just like a tree, when those storms come through, we may lose some leaves.

We may even lose a couple of branches, but we didn't get uprooted with the storm.

We're still standing there strong and proud, waiting for the sun to come back out to warm our limbs so that we can continue to grow.

And this is the same exact thing that I say, when your self-esteem is not in check, when your feet hit the ground in the morning, you're going to have difficulty with yourself, the relationship with self and the relationship with others.

Like you were talking about all the bills and everything we have to take care of.

Obviously we don't take the time to even check what we're thinking.

I have a friend who calls that voice, Sigmund Freud, meaning you're a liar.

Stop it.

Sigmund Freud is cute.

That's cute.

Yeah.

We don't even take the time to check Sigmund Freud if what he's telling you is true or and how it affects us because we're in a rush.

So what can we do to just make a little bit of time to check and say, wait a minute, is this correct?

Yeah.

First of all, good on you for recognizing it.

Second of all, one of the things that I really talk about in the book is taking the time for self-care, I feel like, ah, self-care, okay, everybody's talking.

Yeah, well, everybody's talking about it because it's pretty important stuff.

It's oh, I'd have no time.

Well, I'll tell you, if you have time to go out with girls for dinner, if you have time for your children, if you have time to make your haircut appointment, if you have time for your mani-pedi, for the dentist, you have time for self-care.

You must put it into your calendar, much like you would any other appointment.

And you must respect that appointment just like you would.

The doctor's appointment, the mani-pedi appointment, and any other appointment that you make.

Every Saturday from 8 to 10, that is my time, nobody touches it.

My husband's taking the kids out.

You have to plan what that means.

And this is when I am going to take a hot, soapy bath, put in some Epsom salts, I'm going to put on a beautiful mask, it's going to be beautiful, chill music, I'm going to do my nails, I must shampoo my hair, I'm going to meditate on whatever that is for you is what you need to be doing, making sure that that time is a commitment to yourself, much like you commit to everyone else.

Don't put yourself last ever.

You must put yourself first, just like they say on the airlines with oxygen, can't help anybody else.

Put it on your nose first.

I'd say muddy waters when it comes to mothers.

I don't have kids, so I tread very carefully when it comes to those subjects because a lot of the time they feel like we don't understand when we even suggest that they...

I know.

Right.

Here's the deal.

There are babysitters, and if you can't afford a babysitter, if you don't have a husband, then what I suggest is that you trade time with another mother.

You've got mother's groups, you meet the other mothers in school, there are ladies in the neighborhood, there must be someone that you say, listen, I'll take the first Saturday of the month and you take my kids.

You get the second Saturday of the month, I take your kids.

Create the play dates in order for you to have that.

I'm not here to tell you how to run your life.

I'm here to suggest that there are other ways that you can actually create a way, find the way.

There's always a solution.

If you want to sit back and say, oh, but I can't because of it, well, what are the proper questions you should be asking?

Maybe it's God or universe, whatever you want to interact with.

What are the questions I need to ask in proper questions?

I need to ask in order to get the solution to this, I don't want to call it a problem, but to this conundrum that I have.

And so you'll get an answer.

I think we get in our own way a lot because we want to complicate things that really are not that complicated.

Yes, other things are very complicated.

I'll give you that.

But, you know, finding a few hours for yourself during the week, I'm going to suggest is something you probably can work out.

I'm in my 40s now and I wish we had learned this at school.

We used to think that only the smart kids will succeed and become the millionaires and heads of companies.

But as I grew old and entered the corporate world, I realized that it's not the person who got A's that was climbing the corporate ladder or was the most successful, but the ones who were just more confident and taking more chances and suggesting their ideas to management.

This is where the academics stop and this is where your confidence kicks in.

Yeah.

I think that some of the greatest words here are, yeah, it's great to be smart, but I really think that the next words that come in line are the ones that were willing to take the risk.

The ones that had the courage, the ones that got up and went, wow, okay, you know, like myself, I got up and I moved on the other side of the world when I was 20 years old.

I didn't know the language.

I was with no family.

I had no friends and I continued to forge on.

I did it again some later years when I moved from Paris to Italy and I did it again, but I learned the language and I made friends.

So absolute belief in yourself.

If you want it, you will work for it.

And make no mistake when I say that self-esteem, the work that you will do in my book is not play.

It's called work for a reason.

I call it a manual.

For me, it's a manual.

It's a mission and it's a movement.

If we could raise the self-esteem, the consciousness, these confidence, the self-awareness of all sentient beings, wouldn't then we be living in a much more beautiful world, a much more peaceful world, a place where there was so much less fear and a lot more love?

Well, this is what I offer with self-esteem, with your own self-esteem when you live in less fear and you live in more love.

When I say this, people say, oh yeah, she's just, I get it, hold on.

Some people come into your life for a reason, for a season, and some people come into your life for a lifetime.

So not everything is meant to last forever.

In itself is just a huge lesson.

That should be its own chapter, and as I write my second book, it most likely will be.

So the lessons that you are learning on a daily basis are the ones that you need to hold very, very dear and very near.

Remember, your boundaries are going to be some of your greatest power plays for your own sense of worth.

You know, when you start to say to people, it's not okay, thanks, but I won't be treated that way, and either they'll have a conversation with you and apologize because they want to have you in their lives, or they're going to get angry and they're going to huff off and also be able to love yourself more in certain occasions more than you love someone else.

How to treat you, how to act in your life.

That is exactly right.

Now, that is not narcissism and that is not one-sided, but people say, well, it's not all about you.

Well, it's okay.

And I agree with that.

But when it starts to feel yucky, when it starts to hurt, if it hurts, it's not love.

At what point do you draw your line in the sand and say, with all the love in my heart, with all the respect that I have for you, I will offer that I will not be yelled at.

This is how it makes me feel.

And I hope that you accept that.

And if not, next, it feels really yucky to let someone go in that way.

But I'll tell you, when you start to live in what is real for you, what is true for you and feels good, we were not put here to be anyone's doormat.

No.

We were not put here to live in shame or guilt.

We all deserve to live in a peaceful home.

We all deserve to be loved.

And we all deserve to be respected.

People get used to you being a certain way.

But when you start doing the work in your book, the boundaries, they just got accustomed to you being a doormat.

Yeah.

I think they got used to the way they indoctrinated you or the way they taught you.

So let's go back to mom and dad and the tribe, the natal tribe.

They have taught you to a certain extent.

And again, I talked about your education and that has taught you other things.

Your faith has taught you other things.

As you're growing, you just scratch your head and go, does that resonate with me?

Does that fit?

Is that who I am?

And as you grow, all people are going to fall away.

It doesn't mean you never see them again.

You're still going to go home for Christmas dinner, might be at the Thanksgiving table.

You'll be calling in FaceTime and all of that.

But at a certain point as you grow and you go back, you will have to love them where they're at.

You do not have to dress, do not have to fall back onto what was comfortable.

Right?

It's family, it's warm, it's cuddly for the most part.

As you move on and you grow, you start to make your own rules, your own boundaries, your own standards, right?

What you will and will not accept as your truth, as what resonates, what feels right and real to you.

Yes, people are going to get offended, they're going to get their nose out of joint, they're going to be angry.

And again, remember that standing firm in your stead as that hurricane floats by again.

But I might have lost a couple again, here go a couple of my leaves.

I have not been uprooted, I didn't fall back into whatever the dynamic is, the yelling, the screaming, the name calling, the bullying, doesn't feel good.

And it didn't feel good when they did it to you and you need to be the bigger person.

Stop the sickness, stop the illness, stop the injustice and make the change so that as you are now teaching and preaching and indoctrinating others as you move on, you're not passing on the disease.

Yeah, because that's when grownups, because we usually think of bullying as happening in school, but as grownups, we are bullies.

They usually say that you are the product of the five closest people you surround yourself with.

If you want to keep your self-esteem healthy or increase it, what kind of people should you be surrounding yourself with?

I love that question too, because we talk about it in the book and that is the support groups, you know, the people that you actually choose.

Couldn't choose the family you were born into.

And again, we love our families.

We couldn't choose our schooling and who was going to be our teacher, preacher, whatever it is, a priest, because that's the church down the street, whatever the reasons are.

We can now as we go out, start to form and formulate our own core groups.

I mean, I have people that have been in my life since elementary school and I still am in touch with people that I grew up with along the way.

I may not see them or speak to them as much as I used to, but I know that I can call them in at a time and I will have their full on support.

Those are the people that you want to hold very near and very dear.

And surround yourself with.

You get to choose them.

That's the good news.

What is the first thing that we need to check besides the voice?

Always be picking at our self-esteem.

Again, I call it Self-Esteem 101.

Stop comparing yourself.

And I know it sounds like, oh, God, Clarissa, don't say that because everybody says that.

And it's so true.

Stop doing it because it's human nature.

We all do it.

Social media is really distorting people's images of themselves.

A lot of it is not real.

And especially with the advent of Photoshop, that was the beginning of the end.

And Photoshop's been out for 25 years now.

So the idea that we could take a face and completely trans-fix it or make it completely different, no lines, no wrinkles.

I will admit, I put some cream on my face and I freak out if I see it.

We all do.

I suppose it's a little bit normal, it's a little bit vain.

Okay, whatever it is.

But we have to be very mindful and careful that what we think we see and what we think we perceive on social media many times is not real.

It's not truth.

I see the Photoshop and the makeup part.

But you know, people would go to the most expensive restaurant, take a picture, post it on social media, and then some would think that that's their daily life.

Like you said, it's a perception of reality.

Or sometimes they don't even go on the vacation, just Photoshop, as you say, the face on the Maldives resort.

It's a complete and total distortion of reality.

So be really, really careful with that.

I think we have to be teaching our young girls that you don't need to be getting Botox at 16 and you don't need breast implants when you're 15.

We need to be teaching our girls that they are fine just the way they are, that they are lucky that they get to be them.

Oh, you are so lucky you get to be you, because whatever it is that you claim as your higher power, they knew exactly what they were doing when they created you.

As you want to continue to alter yourself and not honor yourself for exactly who you are, that's kind of unkind to them, you know?

It's not really cool to be going, you know, universe, yeah, kind of messed up here.

That's not what you want to be doing.

You want to be saying, thank you, universe, I get to be me.

Yes, we all like to look nice.

Don't get me wrong.

Nothing wrong with that.

It's part of that self-care routine you were talking about as well.

My four pillars of self-esteem are look good, feel good, be good and greater good.

We have a little tin our step when we're walking out the door or feeling ourselves, we're feeling pretty.

But there's so much more to it than that.

Is self-esteem something that is hanging in your closet?

Is it parked in your garage?

These are not the kind of things that self-esteem is.

Self-esteem is who you are, what you are, who are you when no one else is in the room?

When we're running around saying, I am enough, you are enough, you are enough, and I am enough.

Well, enough is only as much as is required.

We got to be really careful with that wording because that's not serving us.

I know I'm a hell of a lot more than as is required.

And I think you are too, Roberta.

Every being.

It's only as much as is required.

So you know what?

I'm going to be just as much as is required by whom, first off?

Standard am I working with?

Yes, by what standards?

By whose standards?

So very, very good, absolutely.

So we have to be careful of that.

Stop apologizing.

It's the way you present yourself.

As you're going through your path of life and the people that those five, your one hand kind of people you go through life with, is loyalty is when you have someone's back behind their back.

Loyalty is when I have your back behind your back.

When you're not there.

And others are maybe speaking about you.

I defend you or I just walk away and don't become a gossip because someone else might be trashing you.

Yeah, and these are the kinds of things that could take backbone.

And self-esteem is also a lot of backbone.

Remember when I told you, some of these things are gonna be uncomfortable.

So when you stand in a group of girls that's talking bad about your friend, can you say, you know what?

I don't think you know Jane the way I know Jane.

I think Jane is awesome.

I'm sorry, I don't agree with what you're all saying and turn around and walk away.

We used to say, if you came to me and you said, Roberta, Jane was saying this about you.

Instead of me hating Jane, I used to say, what did you say in return?

Yeah, what did you say?

And there you go, to my point.

So self-esteem is many things.

The book, you asked me where we can find it.

It's in Amazon in Barnes and Noble.

So you can find it in the Barnes and Noble stores.

It was published by Roman and Littlefield in New York City and there it is, I'm very proud.

I've got people telling me that this book is changing their life.

Like it is, yeah.

Just one more question before you go, Clarissa.

Speaking of doing good, when you mentioned the four pillars, why do you think that people who do good are not as advertised as the scandalous ones?

Oh, it's so funny you should say that.

Yeah, it's like being famous or infamous.

I don't know that that's true.

So the last pillar being greater good is what are you doing for the greater good?

A lot of people think it's like, oh, you've got to do these huge, big broad stroke things.

And sometimes it's nothing more than holding the elevator door for someone.

You know, they're struggling to get there.

Helping a old lady across the street, helping a mother down the stairs with carriage.

Those manners, the manners that I was taught as a young girl, are we still getting up for people that are elderly in public transportation?

Are we offering our seat to the pregnant woman?

Being mindful that it's not only us, we are not the only person on the planet and other people.

You know, we know what it means to go through difficult times.

A lot of people are going through difficult times now.

The country is very divided and that is a very unstable place to be.

The economy is very up and down and unstable and that is very destabilizing for people.

And it makes people worry and stay up at night.

So it's up to us, the people that are stronger and have the know with all, the wherewithal and the ability to be able to help even the littlest things.

Remember your manners, be kind.

I do this all the time.

It doesn't make me perfect.

It doesn't make me, it just makes me...

And your little act of kindness goes a long way.

Well, I'll tell you what it does.

It puts a boost in you.

When you've done something that helps someone, it makes them feel better, it makes their life easier.

That is one of the greatest self-esteem moments because it comes back as a reflection on you and you feel kind of proud about yourself.

You kind of feeling good about yourself again.

You know, what is wrong with that?

Don't forget that other people are struggling and that sometimes just your smile and a kind word might be the only thing they need in that moment.

Clarissa, this has been so wonderful.

You've shared some amazing nuggets with us.

Thank you for your time today.

Before you go, what is your website?

clarissaburt.com.

Yeah, you could find me everywhere on social.

It's Clarissa Burt.

Facebook is Clarissa Burt Official.

Everybody, the book is on Amazon, The Self-Esteem Regime by Clarissa Burt.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much.