This episode will inspire you to fight your inner critic and discover your inherent worth. Becky is the owner and editor of Latter-Day Woman Magazine, but she didn't start that way.  Her inner critic used to tell her that she was dumb. In this episode Becky will take you through her journey of transformation.  Listen and learn about what she did to change that hurtful inner dialogue. 

Episode Transcription:

Hey, everyone, I am so excited to be back with you for season three. This season is going to be dedicated to helping women discover and embrace their inherent worth. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. And without further ado, here's episode one.

The most rewarding journey you will ever take is discovering and embracing what lies within you, a fountain of worth.

I'm your host, Norma Zaugg.

I sat in the middle of the smart and popular girls feeling like an alien in more ways than one. I stayed quiet as much as possible to avoid getting caught, not knowing anything. But sooner or later, you always get caught. My teacher wrote an equation on the board. It was full of random letters, numbers and symbols that I knew weren't random at all. He turned to call someone up to solve it.

I avoided his eyes and sunk down in my seat. It didn't work this time. He called my name. I stood up and slowly made my way to the front of the room as I walked. I stared down that equation, begging it to reveal its answer to me, but it didn't. It looked like a foreign language. My face felt warm and my heart was pounding. How long could I stall? I picked up the dry erase marker and let it dance around my fingers.

The room was dead silent. Was everyone staring at me? I didn't dare turn around to check, but I could feel the popular girl sneering at me. Surely the teacher would have compassion on me. I turned to meet, his eyes magnified behind his thick old man glasses and just shrugged. He nodded in subtle surprise and said, "Oh, I thought you were a Hart."

Ouch. Becky, was there a message sent to you like that inner critic?

What was it saying when this was going on?

It said that I was stupid, dumb and an airhead and most of all, a disappointment.

Ouch. Those messages can be so upsetting. Can you tell me a little bit more about your family growing up?

So I am the youngest of seven children in a very smart, talented and influential family. At least that's how I perceive my parents and siblings. We never missed family scripture, study, prayer or family home evening. We won spelling bees, reflection contests and even Sterling Scholar. And we really enjoyed singing beautiful harmonies at home and performed around our community, just like the Von Trapp Family Singers. Pretty much. What couldn't the Hart family do?

Wow.

I can imagine how amazing you must have been. Do you think that belonging to your family led to any feelings of inadequacy or not being able to measure up?

It definitely wasn't anything that they did to make me feel that way. But like I said, it was kind of my inner critic. And so while all my siblings were getting straight A's and and succeeding in every subject and every part of their life, I would usually be found stuffing my homework into the hidden crevices of my room. My mother was out of sight, out of mind.

And then I would create I would create stories with my dolls, with my stuffed animals, and sometimes just with a pencil and paper lost in my infinite imagination. I was comparing myself to my siblings and not measuring up.

Yeah, it's so hard. Comparing ourselves to, yea siblings makes it really hard. Sometimes I have comparisons with my own, so I totally get that. What do you think was the defining moment when you were like, I want these feelings to shift?

Like I don't want to feel this way?

Well, I definitely struggled with those thoughts for a long time. But years later, after I was married and had three kids, I had a miscarriage. And during my mourning and my sorrow, the only thing that I could do was to write about it. Writing has always been my therapy, even though I didn't necessarily think I was a good writer. I just enjoyed it. And it helped me through things. I don't know what it was that made me do this, but I decided to submit an article that I wrote about my miscarriage to the Ensign and they published it.

And that's kind of what started my creative flame to start burning a little bit brighter.

Wow, that's amazing. That's really cool that you were able to get that validation from, you know, writing something and just maybe even.

Did you feel like you were holding your breath when you submitted it?

Like when I submitted it, I never in a million years thought that I would ever hear anything from them. I never I never thought it would even maybe, you know, the email would even get opened. And this is a whole other story. But what's interesting is that is that I didn't hear anything for three years. Three years later, I got an email saying that they wanted to publish the article.

Wow, that's really fascinating, almost as if the right timing, you know, like they were waiting the right time. So after you get this article published, like what? What did you do next?

I decided to start my own blog. I, I had loved blogging, but it was mostly just a family type of blog. And so I decided to start one where I would just have my own writing. And I wrote something every week and it was on different topics that I just kind of enjoyed writing about. I didn't think anybody would care to read it, but it didn't matter because it made me feel good to write. And the more that I wrote, the better it got.

There's definitely been a transformation that has happened for you from feeling dumb and feeling like you weren't as smart maybe as other family members to where you are today. Can you share a tip or a tool that helped you?

Something that I've come to realize over the last few years to be smart doesn't mean that you're book smart. So let me rephrase that. I believed that if you weren't book smart, that you weren't smart at all. But that's not the case. There's so many different kinds of smart and creativity is definitely one of them. I decided to start writing an article once a week and now I have not only been published in the Ensign, but I've been published on the Today Show and a lot of other media outlets, and I am now the founding editor of Latter-Day Woman magazine.

Amazing. Do you still struggle? Yeah, I do for sure. I don't think that that this is something that you can just magically get over feelings of doubt and disappointment in whatever areas you might be feeling that what we need to learn is how to use tools to. You know, despite those feelings and get over them every day,

yeah, so if you were to summarize your experience in six words, what would those words be?

Stupid disappointment, determined writing, magazine owner.

That was Becky Squire. She is the owner and founding editor of Latter Day Women magazine.

Becky is an amazing example of how we do not have to let the inner critic rule our lives. If you want to know more about Becky, you can visit her website at Beckysquire.com or go over and check out the magazine Latterdaywomen.com. And as always, thank you so much for joining me today. If you could take a few moments to leave a review for this podcast. It really helps other women find this podcast. I can't tell you how important it is.

And I would be really grateful if you could do so.

Thank you so much.

If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can follow me @Fountainofworth thank you so much. Talk to you next time.