Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
"Your relationship with yourself determines every other relationship in your life."
When we create a healthy relationship with ourselves, everything in our lives begins to transform.
Join us each week as we discuss topics such as overcoming shame, letting go of limiting beliefs, dealing with imposter syndrome, finding healthy motivators for achievement, transforming trauma, and learning how to practice self-love and self-acceptance.
The Permission to Love Podcast is dedicated to helping people have healthier relationships with themselves and find the permission to fully love and accept themselves.
About Jerry,
“When I realized I was the source of my own suffering, I realized I could also be the source of my own healing.”
Jerry is a Master Certified Transformational Mindset Coach, author, speaker, and host of The Permission to Love Podcast.
He works with high-achievers to help them create a happier, healthier, and more sustainable life grounded in self-acceptance and self-compassion.
Jerry has helped thousands of people have a healthier relationship with themselves and uncover the limiting beliefs keeping them from the life they so deeply desire and deserve.
He uses a combination of transformational mindset coaching, positive psychology, trauma-informed approaches, IFS, and NLP to remove limiting beliefs and connect with their authentic selves.
Jerry has an undergraduate degree in Political Science, an MBA in global business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and is currently completing his Master's degree in Psychology at Harvard University.
Before becoming a Transformational Coach, Jerry spent most of his career in Philanthropy, raising over $1 billion USD for not-for-profits. He is a survivor of childhood trauma and now helps individuals learn how to create the lives they want from a place of healthy motivators and remaining mentally, emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually healthy.
New episodes of The Permission to Love Podcast come out every Monday.
To learn more about Jerry, find additional resources, or submit a topic or question, check out: www.jerryhenderson.org
You can also connect with Jerry on Instagram: @jerryahenderson
Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
The Most Important Relationship in Your Life
Your relationship with yourself is the foundation of EVERYTHING.
No amount of success, validation, or external achievement can replace a healthy self-relationship. And yet, so many high achievers and trauma survivors neglect this relationship the most.
In today’s episode, we cover:
- Why your relationship with yourself shapes every part of your life
- The 5 key areas that determine self-worth & self-trust
- How self-talk, thoughts, and daily habits rewire your brain
- The neuroscience of breaking toxic patterns & limiting beliefs
- The small shifts that lead to lasting transformation
Plus, I’m giving you a FREE PDF for a Healthier Relationship With Yourself to track where you stand and start making real changes.
🔗 Download the free PDF → jerryhenderson.org
🔗 Access the course "Learning How to Love Yourself" here: Access Course
DM me on Instagram @JerryAHenderson or LinkedIn @JerryAHenderson to tell me what you're working on this week—I’d love to support you!
Let’s dive in.
Chapters
00:00 - Your Relationship with Yourself Changes Everything
00:45 - Welcome to the Permission to Love Podcast
02:54 - The Moment I Realized Everything Needed to Change
05:17 - Research: The Link Between Self-Compassion & Long-Term Success
06:31 - The 5 Key Areas That Define Your Relationship With Yourself
07:15 - #1: What Are Your Daily Thoughts About Yourself?
09:02 - #2: The Words You Speak About Yourself Matter
10:23 - The Science of Self-Talk & How to Rewire It
11:45 - #3: How Do You Feel About Yourself?
14:42 - Brené Brown’s Research on Self-Acceptance & Shame
17:19 - #4: How Do You Treat Yourself?
19:28 - The Science of Self-Care & Its Impact on Your Nervous System
20:48 - #5: What Do You Tolerate in Relationships?
22:41 - How Trauma Impacts the Way We Let Others Treat Us
25:31 - The Science of Lasting Change: Why Small Wins Matter
27:10 - Dr. BJ Fogg’s Research on Micro-Shifts & Behavior Change
28:58 - The First Step to Changing Your Life Starts This Week
I am grateful you are here,
Jerry
Setup Your FREE Strategy Call:
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Website:
www.jerryhenderson.org
🔗 Access the course "Learning How to Love Yourself" here:
How is your relationship with yourself going?
Get your free-self assessment guide
Pick up your copy of my book:
Returning: Meditations and Reflections on Self-Love and Healing
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Instagram: @jerryahenderson
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jerryahenderson
Welcome everybody. I am fired up about today's episode. Why? Because we're diving into a topic that is at the core of everything I teach. Now, if you've been here and you've been following this podcast or following my work for a while, you'll know that this isn't just another episode. It's a conversation that we've had and that we're going to keep having again and again. And what's the conversation? Your relationship with yourself, and why do we keep talking about it and why are we going to continue to talk about it? Because your relationship with yourself is absolutely everything.
Jerry Henderson:Hello everybody, and welcome to the Permission to Love podcast, a podcast where we have conversations about self-transformation, building resilience, living a life that is rooted in self-compassion, how we can change our mindset and how to give ourselves the permission to thrive by giving ourselves the permission to love ourselves. Now, whether you're a high achiever, a trauma survivor, or you're just simply interested in the work of self-transformation and how to cultivate a healthier, more fulfilling life, this podcast is for you. Every week, we dive deep into the topics that truly matter, the ones that shape how we experience the world, how we relate to one another and, most importantly, how we relate to ourselves. Because if there's one thing I've learned as I've talked about it's that everything in your life is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. Reflection of your relationship with yourself. In fact, the very first reel I ever made on social media was about this topic, and today I want to take a step back and fully revisit this topic again. And here's the thing you can't talk about this enough. You know, I remember sitting with a highly effective communicator who had been communicating to audiences for decades, and he told me this. He said if people aren't sick of you saying it, you haven't said it enough. And I've taken that to heart, especially around topics like this, because this is one of those truths that we as a community need to keep coming back to again and again. So today, let's do just that. Let's slow down and let's truly take an inventory today of where we stand in our relationship with ourselves. So I invite you, if you're able to get a notepad pencil or however you take your notes and take some time to engage in the exercises that I'm going to ask you to do as a part of this episode.
Jerry Henderson:Now, I remember the moment I realized just how important my relationship with myself is. It was an absolute turning point in my life and now, as I mentioned, it's the first thing I work on with my coaching clients. Why? Because the way you see yourself is determining how you see others, it's how you see the world and, ultimately, it is determining what is manifesting in your life. And so, if we want to change what we're experiencing, we have to change the experience that we're having with ourselves.
Jerry Henderson:Now, here's the interesting thing about this, right, even though it is the most important relationship in our life, for many of us especially for trauma survivors and high achievers, who are often driven to prove themselves this is the most neglected relationship in our lives. That's the paradox, right, it's the most important one, but it's also the one that we neglect the most. Now, for many of us, we track our business goals, our income, our fitness, our performance, et cetera. We even have KPIs for those things, right, but here's the hard truth we rarely stop and assess the quality of the relationship that we have with ourselves. We don't set KPIs for our self-worth, our self-talk, our own inner peace, but we should, shouldn't we? And in today's episode, I'm hoping to lay a bit of a foundation that will allow you to start measuring that, because research has found that those who develop a healthy relationship with themselves experience lower levels of anxiety and depression. They have greater levels of resilience in the face of failure. Studies also show that self-compassionate people are more likely to achieve long-term success than those who rely on self-criticism as a motivator. So if you're beating yourself up hoping that that'll cause you to change, guess what? The research is showing that that's actually moving you backwards and that if you'll shift to self-compassion, that is actually what's going to take you towards the life that you want to live.
Jerry Henderson:So today, as I mentioned, I want to help you take an honest look at your relationship with yourself, because once you start paying attention to it, everything changes. Let me say that again Once you start paying attention to becoming aware of your relationship with yourself, everything in your life will shift. Everything will begin to change, because where our attention goes, our energy goes, and if we start putting attention on our relationship with ourselves, it allows us to put energy towards making the changes that we want to make. And guess what? The research in neuroscience supports this that what we focus in on strengthens the neural pathways in our brain associated with that area that we're focusing on. As Dr Rick Hansen explains, where attention goes, neural firing flows and neural connections grow. So let's grow connections that support a healthy relationship with ourselves.
Jerry Henderson:So are you ready to dig in today? I am too, so let's do it. So how do we know if we have a healthy relationship with ourselves? How do we know if it's healthy? Well, I want to take you through the five key areas that determine our relational health with ourselves, and, as we go through this, we're setting a foundation to give you something to reflect on today and throughout this week. Okay, so let's not just listen to this episode today and then tuck it away. Let's turn this into an awareness exercise for this week so that we can start making progress towards having a healthier relationship with ourselves. Deal, deal.
Jerry Henderson:So let's talk about number one your thoughts about yourself. Take this week and pay attention to your repeated thought patterns. What do you tell yourself on a daily basis? Are your thoughts kind, encouraging and supportive, or are they critical, judgmental and harsh? Are you speaking to yourself in a way that you would never speak to anybody else? You know, dr Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and brain health expert, talks about automatic negative thoughts or ANTs as he puts it and those negative, repetitive and self-critical thoughts shape how we feel and act, and the research shows us that becoming aware of them is the first step to rewiring them. So here's what I want to encourage you to do Start by simply noticing those thoughts that you have towards yourself and record them in a journal or on your phone. Begin to get aware of the thoughts that you're thinking towards yourself, and then you can move into the awareness of the ones that are showing up the most, the things that you're thinking about yourself on a regular basis, and that's gonna help you have awareness of your patterns and remember awareness is the first step towards change. All right, let's move on to number two, about how we can determine if we have a healthy relationship with ourselves and how we can start moving towards a healthier relationship with ourselves, and it's about the words that you speak about yourself.
Jerry Henderson:Let me ask you what do you say about yourself out loud and in your mind? Do you make self-deprecating jokes all the time? Are you constantly putting yourself down without even realizing it? Do other people point out that you're talking about yourself in a very negative way? Do you join in on the banter when people are making disparaging comments towards you and you're laughing them off? How are you speaking to yourself and you might think that it's harmless. You might just be brushing it off, but the research shows that the language we use shapes our beliefs. A study in the Journal on Cognitive Therapy and Research found that people who repeatedly use negative self-talk reinforce patterns of low self-worth and stress responses in the brain. Your brain is listening to what you're saying about yourself, both in your brain and with the words that come out of your mouth. Yourself, both in your brain and with the words that come out of your mouth. Now, on the flip side, the research shows that self-affirmations and the science of affirmations has been shown to strengthen neural pathways linked to motivation and positive identity.
Jerry Henderson:The way that you talk about yourself is shaping your view of yourself. Now I talk about this more in depth on my new course that I just put out, called Learning how to Love Yourself. If you haven't taken that course, I'd encourage you to take it. You'll find a link to that course in the show notes of this episode, or you can simply go to my website at jerryhendersonorg, or you can simply go to my website at jerryhendersonorg. I truly believe that course will help you in learning how to change the way that you talk about yourself. Now, for this next week, I want to ask you to keep track of how you talk about yourself in conversations, in your mind and even on social media.
Jerry Henderson:The words that you use matter, and if you'll bring awareness to them without judgment. Let me just pause and say this Do this without judgment towards yourself. Don't beat yourself up that you beat yourself up, okay. Give yourself grace. Use this as a learning opportunity to become curious. Bring awareness to it, just like you're bringing awareness to the thoughts that you're having about yourself, and once those things come into the light, we then have the power to start making decisions to change them.
Jerry Henderson:Have you ever felt like, no matter what you do, you're stuck in the same cycles, same doubts, same struggles, same roadblocks? If that's you and if you're ready for a real transformation in your life, I want to invite you to join my six-month one-on-one coaching program. It's a structured process designed to help you break free from limiting beliefs, help you rewire your mindset and help you create the life that you actually want to live. During those six months, we're going to cover things like healing your relationship with yourself. How can you shift from self-doubt and self-criticism to self-compassion and confidence? How can you rewire your mindset? How can you train your brain for resilience, clarity and possibility? How can you overcome fear and limiting beliefs and break the thought patterns that have kept you stuck for so long? We'll work on releasing those past wounds and rebuilding your ability to trust in yourself. We'll work on creating new habits and patterns so that you can develop daily practices that reinforce your self-worth and your success. We'll work on building a vision and a pathway towards the life that you really want, one that will align your actions, relationships and choices with your future self.
Jerry Henderson:I want to be clear this isn't a quick fix. It's deep, lasting change. We're talking about self-transformation from the inside out. So if you're ready to take that first step towards rewiring your mindset and transforming your life, I want to invite you to go to my website at jerryhendersonorg, or simply see the show notes in this episode and set up a free strategy call so that we can connect, learn more about each other and see if working together is the right fit. Set up that free strategy call. Make this the moment where you make the decision to start showing up for yourself like you. To start showing up for yourself like you've been showing up for everybody else.
Jerry Henderson:Now the third area that we want to address is how you feel about yourself, and the way that you feel about yourself is directly linked to those thoughts that you're having and those words that you're saying about yourself. So let me ask this question when you look in the mirror, what do you see? What's the first thought that comes up? Do you feel shame, disappointment, indifference, or do you feel appreciation, compassion and acceptance? What are the emotions that come up? How do you see your potential? How do you see your potential? How do you see your worthiness? Can you envision yourself as being successful in relationships that are healthy, achieving the things that you want to achieve in your life?
Jerry Henderson:So become aware this week of how you feel about yourself, how you see yourself. You know your emotional response to yourself, and how you see yourself is one of the clearest indicators of your relationship with yourself. Dr Brene Brown's research on shame and vulnerability highlights that self-acceptance is the foundation of true belonging and personal growth. And if you're in there rejecting yourself instead of accepting yourself, your foundation for secure attachment, for belonging and for you to grow into the person that you want to grow into it's very shaky. And here's the thing we can strengthen that foundation by changing the way that we see ourselves, the way that we feel about ourselves. So this week, take an inventory.
Jerry Henderson:What emotions consistently arise when you think about yourself, and can I encourage you to not be afraid of them? Okay, because you can heal, you can change your emotions. But we have to face what emotions come up when we think about ourselves so that we can then get to the root of why those emotions are there. What decisions did we make about ourselves in our life? What decisions did we make when we experienced trauma or other painful life experiences, or when we experienced failure in our life? What's the story that came from those experiences that we keep telling ourselves that now have determined the way that we feel about ourselves and the way that we see ourselves? Here's a powerful truth. If the story that you told yourself of failure and shame caused you to feel the way that you feel about yourself now, the same thing can happen in a positive direction for you. When you change the story that you carry about yourself, you begin to change the way you feel about yourself and the way that you see yourself. All right, now let's move on to the fourth one how do you treat yourself, because this one follows the other three Thinking bad about ourselves, talking bad about ourselves, feeling bad about ourselves is then going to lead into how we treat ourselves, or the actions that we take towards ourselves, or the inaction that we have towards ourselves, and I'll explain that in just a second.
Jerry Henderson:So let me ask are you engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors? Are you neglecting or showing inaction in self-care, your health or your emotional well-being? Are you engaging in self-betraying behaviors? And self-betrayal behaviors can look like overworking, ignoring your needs or staying in toxic situations, and so this week, I want to invite you to become aware of how you treat yourself with your actions. Let's do what we've committed to do with our thoughts and our words and our feelings.
Jerry Henderson:Let's now look at our actions, because our actions are really going to start telling us about the relationship that we have with ourselves. Right, because I could say all day that I believe that I'm worthy of love. I can think positive thoughts, but if my actions never align with it, I'm telling myself that I don't actually believe it, and one of the quickest ways to tell yourself and to convince yourself that you're worthy of love is to start taking action in loving behaviors towards yourself. You know, the research in behavioral psychology suggests that consistent self-care practices will lead to an increased ability to emotionally regulate ourselves and build resilience in our life. You know it's interesting One study published in Health Psychology found that people who prioritize self-care have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and they self-report having experienced increases or improvements in their overall emotional well-being. It's incredible, right? You show yourself that you love yourself, you feel better about yourself, which puts you in a better mood overall and winds up reducing your stress levels overall. Fascinating, isn't it? What happens when we begin to act towards ourselves in ways that are loving and are communicating to us that we're worthy of love.
Jerry Henderson:Now let's move on to talking about the fifth area, which is how you let other people treat you. I mean, this is a big one. We often allow other people to treat us the way that we're treating ourselves. I mean, if you tolerate disrespect, neglect or emotional unavailability from others, ask yourself am I doing the same thing to myself? Because we're going to let people treat us in a way that we feel that we're worthy of, that we feel comfortable with, that feels normal to us and that is usually aligned with the way that we're treating ourselves, because, guess what we're with ourselves 24-7. And so if we're treating ourselves in ways that are not kind, that are self-neglecting, then guess what? Our system has gotten used to feeling that way. And people who treat us different than that, who show us genuine love, show us genuine connection, that's going to feel uncomfortable to us because our system is used to the way that we treat us and now we're going to find people who align with the way that we treat ourselves and that's why we keep getting into toxic relationships, toxic patterns, that's why, in the relationships that we're in, we keep stirring up drama and chaos, etc. Because that feels more comfortable to us at a subconscious level.
Jerry Henderson:So this week, take time, think about it. How do you let other people treat you? Because here's the truth about this, the hard truth about this the way you let other people treat you is often a mirror of your own self-worth. So pay attention to it, reflect on it, record it. And let me say something else Nothing I'm saying today is about judgment.
Jerry Henderson:This is about encouragement. This is about helping you see areas that you have agency over to control. And so if you're feeling any sense of shame about how you treat yourself or how you let other people treat you. Can I encourage you to not go down that path today, to allow yourself to simply sit in curiosity, in learning, in compassion towards yourself, Because all of the stuff that I'm talking about, remember, these are coping mechanisms that we developed as a way to stay safe, and so the part of you that beats you up thinks that that's what you need to be able to stay motivated or to improve yourself, or whatever the story is that goes with that. I mean, everybody's different, so I don't want that to be a generalization, but as you think about it, ask yourself, as you're recording these things, what need is that behavior meeting for me? So we're becoming aware of it, we're bringing it into the light, we're understanding what the need is, that it's meeting for us. We're practicing self-compassion towards ourselves, because self-compassion energy is the energy that allows us to bring change in our life in a way that's positive and sustainable, and then we can move into what's going to be the next part of this exercise, which is about bringing some change.
Jerry Henderson:Now, the good news is, all of this can change. You have the ability to transform your life. Yes, you and you might be feeling like, well, no, I'm the one person who can't change. I've tried and it doesn't work for me. I'm different. I've got a unique story. You do have a unique story. You do have a unique story, but that unique story doesn't mean that you can't change. It's not a unique story that needs to keep you trapped. It's not a unique story that makes you broken, uniquely flawed, unchangeable, broken for life. No, it's a story that's unique to you, but it does not mean that you're uniquely broken, that you can't heal, that you can't transform. You can change your life, you can heal your life. May I say it again to you you can change your life, you can heal your life.
Jerry Henderson:Now, before we move on to some practical steps about how you can start making some changes, I want to encourage you to go to the show notes in this episode, because in this episode or on my website at jerryhendersonorg, you can find a free PDF that you can use to track how you're doing in these five areas over this next week. It's actually designed to be used over a 30-day period, but just start with this week and use it as a tool to start developing a healthier relationship with yourself. So, once again, I want to invite you download that PDF. You can see the show notes or you can go to my website. Now let's talk about change.
Jerry Henderson:Now, one thing I don't want you to do is walk away from this episode feeling overwhelmed. It's like, hey, I got these five areas and I'm tracking all of them and I'm trying to see what's going on with them. That is for awareness. Okay, that's for you just to begin to monitor it, think about it, see it and once again approach it from self-compassion. Can I encourage you Don't try to change everything at once. And the reason I'm inviting you to reflect on all five areas is because, as you do it, you to reflect on all five areas is because, as you do it, more than likely one area is going to come up to you as something that needs some work. So, even though you're looking at five different areas, let me encourage you once again don't try to change everything at once. That is definitely a recipe to set yourself up for failure and burnout. Instead, this is what I'd like you to do Choose just one area from what you've recorded, what you've listed, what you've become aware of that you want to start working on.
Jerry Henderson:Maybe it's your self-talk, maybe it's your self-care, maybe it's setting boundaries in relationships. Whatever it is. Once you have that one area, decide on one simple action that you can take consistently this week. Let me say it again One area and one simple action that you can do what Consistently for a week. So make it easy, make it doable. And one simple action that you can do what Consistently for a week? So make it easy, make it doable. Don't set the bar on it high and make it easy for you to make excuses as to why you can't do it. We're talking low bar here right now.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, so maybe it's just one phrase that you say about yourself that you've seen as a pattern, that you want to stop saying that and you want to replace it with a more kind and compassionate phrase about yourself or towards yourself. Okay, that in and of itself big deal, okay, huge deal. That's a great place to start and that's all you need to start with, because, remember, success is built by stacking small wins, not by trying to overhaul your life overnight, and science supports this. Research supports this. It shows us that we change by engaging in small, incremental shifts. Think of them as micro changes. You know, we get so wrapped up in trying to do these macro changes in our life and that's why we get burnout around it. But here's the research on this.
Jerry Henderson:Dr BJ Fogg, a behavioral scientist at Stanford University, found that tiny, consistent habits are the key to lasting transformation. His research shows that making small changes, like shifting one repeated thought, replacing one self-critical phrase or taking one moment of self-care, creates momentum. And what happens Over time? These micro-changes compound no-transcript. They've gotten change fatigue. They now have what is learned, helplessness.
Jerry Henderson:And this often comes from setting ourselves up for failure by trying to make too many changes all at once, and then we experience setbacks and then we believe that we can't change and we're drowning out our motivation for change. And so, instead of doing that, set yourself up for a win and then celebrate the wins when you do it. And as you do that, you start wiring into your system the belief that you can change. Better to make a small micro change and succeed at it than trying to do grand change and continually failing at it. So my encouragement, my invitation start small, one step, one shift. Okay, awesome.
Jerry Henderson:And because I'm super curious and because I really care about you, I would love to hear what you're working on. So if you want to take me up on that invitation, dm me on Instagram. My handle there is at Jerry A Henderson. Or find me on LinkedIn same handle at Jerry A Henderson. Or send me an email at jerry at jerryhendersonorg, and let me know what you're going to be focusing in on this week and that way I can encourage you on it and I can root for you and I can hold space for you as you're trying to make that change.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, don't be a stranger. Reach out Now. If you'd like some help on your journey of self-transformation and learning how to have a healthy relationship with yourself or how to become a healthy high achiever and avoid burnout and create sustainable success for yourself, I want to invite you to go to my website at jerryhendersonorg. Set up a free strategy call. I'd love to connect with you and see if working together is the right fit, so reach out to me there. I'm looking forward to connecting with you Now. If this episode helped you, can I encourage you? Share it with somebody you know, because if it helped you, it's going to help them as well. And also, don't forget to subscribe or to follow so that you don't miss our next conversation on the Permission to Love podcast. And until next time, let me remind you, as I always do. You are worthy of your own love.
