59. What my 30's taught me

As I turned 40 recently, I started asking myself what the single biggest lesson of my thirties was — and the answer surprised me. It wasn't a business strategy or a mindset shift. It was about the importance of self-respect in relationships.

Listen to hear more about:

• The difference between self-confidence, self-love, and self-respect 
• What it looks like when someone loves you without needing to control, validate, or fix you
• The quiet, almost invisible moments that told me something fundamental had shifted inside me

If you've been pouring yourself into relationships — romantic, professional, friendships — and wondering why some of them feel so heavy while others feel so free, this episode might show you what's actually making the difference.

Transcript

Hey, you are listening to Liberatory Business, and I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for listening.

So as I was approaching my 40th birthday recently, I was in a meeting with my team and they were asking me, what do you think are the biggest lessons that you've learned from your thirties? And I was like, huh, that's a good idea. That would be good material for a podcast episode. So I've been mulling on that question since. What are my most important lessons from my thirties, which just ended?

And the more I thought about my thirties — which is a long period of time, right, it's ten years, it's a lot of time — the one thing that I couldn't ignore was that maybe the single biggest factor that shaped and influenced and molded my life in my thirties was in fact meeting my husband, dating him, and then marrying him. I met him in my early thirties. We dated for two years. We got married. We had a baby. And that's as big of a life change factor as it gets. It dramatically changes your life when you make that big of a commitment to someone, and when you are that close to someone new — you change because of them and they change because of you, as a result of the alchemy of that relationship.

I've spoken about this before and I constantly think about how different my life would be if I hadn't met my husband and how positive his contribution to me and my life and my work has been. The truth is that I feel so exquisitely well supported by him, and I have since day one. Well supported to be myself, well supported to be happy, to be creative, to do my best work, and to generally just flourish as the human being that I am.

Honest to God, if I didn't find him, I don't think I would've been as productive. I don't think I would've been as myself. I don't think I would've been as peaceful and stable in terms of the foundation of my life so that I could take risks with my business and stuff.

And so I was like, okay, but that's not really great podcast material. Because I can't say the greatest lesson of my thirties was that you gotta marry someone great and then your life will be great too. Like, that's stupid. And I also know that finding your person and finding love, good love, is not necessarily something that just happens out of your own merit. You need luck, you need timing. And I met him through a set of circumstances that are almost impossible for anyone to replicate, which is that our moms have been best friends since childhood and he was the son of my mom's best friend. So yeah, that's not really something you can engineer.

What was underneath all the good stuff

So I'm thinking to myself, what is it? What is it about my marriage? And yeah, okay, we do make a big effort to always be kind to each other, to be thoughtful and considerate towards each other, to choose each other on purpose every single day. All those things are important. All that is true. 

But I felt like there was something deeper, something underneath all of that good stuff — the stuff you hear elsewhere too, right? Something else underneath all of it that was actually the engine of the whole thing.

And when I sat with it for a few days, I landed on it. And it was that my husband has been the greatest model and teacher for me in self-respect. I think it's the first time that I really felt, being with someone and spending a lot of time with someone — wow, this is what it feels like on a day-to-day basis to be loved by someone who is genuinely at peace with himself and who just likes himself so much.

And I remember that kind of broke my brain in the beginning of our relationship. Because I wasn't used to it.

What I mean by self-respect

Let me talk a little bit about what I mean by self-respect, because I had to think about this too. It's not the same thing as self-confidence or self-love. I think we talk about self-confidence and self-love a lot more than we typically talk about self-respect.

Confidence, I think, is about what you think you can do. It's almost like outward-facing. Self-love is about how you feel about yourself. It's more emotional, right? Like, can you love yourself? That's a feeling. 

And I think self-respect has a quality that's more low-key, more quiet than confidence or self-love. It's about having a stable relationship with yourself. You're not trying to prove anything or earn anything or outrun anything. You are just you and you are okay in there.

Think about someone you might know who projects confidence but isn't settled in themselves, right? Like they can walk into a room and own the room, but they still need the room to respond in a certain way for them to be okay afterwards. That, I think, is what confidence looks like without self-respect. They can go and do the thing, but then if they don't get a certain response they want, it's gonna break them or destabilize them.

But the person with self-respect — they don't need the room to do anything for them. The room can rise up in applause or the room can boo. That doesn't change their relationship with themselves. And that's self-respect. That's what I'm talking about.

What it looks like in practice

And remember I said when we first started dating, this kind of broke my brain. Because here are all the ways that he showed this to me in practice — what it looks like when you're with someone who has such a deep degree of self-respect.

One, he doesn't need me to validate him. That means he's never performing for me. He's not curating some version of himself based on what he thinks I want to see. 

And this was so evident from the beginning because we came from such different lives. He was born in Korea and he never left Korea a day in his life. He never felt the need to leave Korea, even to travel. So he's just Korean through and through.

 And I am also Korean, but I was born in the US. I have lived in multiple different countries. I speak multiple different languages. I've been hopping and bopping all over the world my whole life. We have some similarities, but personality-wise we were such different people with different frames of reference.

And you might think that when we first got together, it might create pressure for him or me to perform a certain version of ourselves for the other person. But he never did that from the beginning. And I remember even then thinking, wow, this is really interesting. Like, whether I think an outfit looks good on him or bad, whether I agree with his take on something or not — his sense of himself doesn't depend on my approval or my admiration or anyone's admiration. Even when he had a crush on me. And from having experienced many alternatives, I was like, this is very different.

And this maybe was the thing that broke my brain the most — he didn't feel the need to control me. 

Like, again, we're two such different people. He's this very serious, lives-his-life-in-a-predictable-way, stable, follow-the-rules kind of person. And I am a sparkly rainbow unicorn rebel who kind of does whatever she wants, and sometimes whatever I want is something that would be pretty outrageous to someone who has the kind of sensibilities that he does.

Like I would wear a crazy, attention-drawing, super colorful outfit. Or I'd go on a ten-day trip by myself abroad to do something that he doesn't even begin to understand. Or I'd be like, let's change this big plan at the last minute — which, if you know anything about rule followers, that one's rough on them.

And yeah, there was some whiplash. Like, you're doing what? You're wearing what? But past that initial shock of "oh, this is different from how I do things," his response has always been like — oh, okay, that's her. I don't understand it, but I don't need to understand it in order to support her and love her. Because I support her and love her because she's my girlfriend, or wife. You do you.

That was always him. And I was like, wait, what do you mean you don't wanna control me? What do you mean you don't wanna tell me that my outfit is too much and I should tone it down next time? You know, just always like — wow, I don't understand that at all, but I support you and I love you because this entire package is the person that I chose. And I was like, what? Who does that?

And the answer is someone with a lot of self-respect.

He never felt the need to fix me

And therefore he also never felt the need to fix me. In fact, whenever I point out my own shortcomings — like, oh, I wish I was better at that, or I wish I didn't do that — he would always say, kind of joking but also not joking, "Oh, but that's part of your charm. You wouldn't be you without it." And he really does mean it. He's not humoring me. He really thinks that I wouldn't be me without all of my annoying and sometimes exasperating flaws and areas of growth. And he's like, well, what person doesn't have their own? You're fine.

And his attitude towards me really rubbed off on me in a way where I think I'm able to have a similar attitude towards myself. Like, I'm not so impressed with my own flaws and places where I need to grow, because he doesn't see them as a problem. So why would I see them as a problem? That's rubbed off on me in a really positive way, speaking as someone who can be incredibly self-critical. I have a Virgo moon, if that means anything to anybody.

What happens when love isn't fueled by need

So I think what this really paints is a picture of this great well of self-respect that enables the flourishing of love. When someone isn't loving you out of need — whether it's a need for control, need for validation, need to feel superior by improving you — what's left? What's left is just choosing you. Loving you freely as you are. And that kind of love is so qualitatively different from everything else.

And so when I saw this, I was like, wow, this is interesting. Because I could see this mapping out across different kinds of relationships in my life. Like — oh wow, I have this incredibly satisfying professional relationship with my team and with this collaborator of mine and with these friends because... what do all these people in my life have in common? They also model the self-respect that my husband always models for me.

My team right now — the same two people that I've been working with for years and years, Julie and Sam — they are people who make me feel so supported. They bring out the best in me. And I was like, oh, they do the same thing that my husband does. 

They are both very different people from me and they never try to mold me after what they think I should be. We're all very close because we work closely together. So they could see that I'm not a perfect person — if anyone knows that I'm not a perfect person, aside from my family, it's these two people. And I'm sure there are moments when it's incredibly annoying or whatever, but they never make me feel like it's a problem.

There's no subtle control disguised as feedback, which I think happens so much, right? Like, "Oh, I'm just offering a thought, just offering a suggestion." But what they're really doing is steering you towards what they think is right. That need for control — that doesn't happen.

And when there's a tension or a conflict that needs to be resolved, which happens, right, because it's life — we don't need to spend half the time managing each other's egos or feelings. We can just focus on what actually needs to be resolved, with care for each person involved. And I just think that's so rare. Things go so much faster and better and more efficiently when you can just deal with the thing and not deal with the egos around the thing.

And the same thing with friendships. The friends who make my life so much better aren't the ones who need me to play a role for them, right? You become the friend who's always playing the therapist. Or you're the fun one that's always down for the adventure. Or you're the one that's always available to come chat and help with whatever. That's fine — until one day you can't play that role.

The best friendships are ones in which you can break character. Like, you are usually the fun one, but I'm not fun today. I'm usually available, but I'm not available now. Or I can show up as something other than what they've come to be comfortable with and their love for me doesn't change. They still love me and care for me just as much, because they didn't need the role. They're like, I just love this person who is my friend.

Same thing with practitioner-client relationships. When they're not using the relationship to feel important and needed, it's such a cleaner relationship.

And what do all these things have in common? There are individuals with a deep foundational layer of self-respect. I have a stable relationship with myself that external factors can't rock, and therefore I don't need you to do whatever for me or be different for me, because I'm good with myself. I truly think, if there was ever such a thing as a recipe for happy, successful relationships of any kind — that's it.

The work underneath the luck

Okay, so what's the lesson here? Because I've been thinking about why I've been able to attract these relationships in the first place, and I do think a big part of it is that I've been very lucky. I've been blessed, not entirely through my own effort or merit, with these people walking into my life, and I thank my ancestors for that.

But I'd be lying if I said I could have attracted and held onto these relationships if I also hadn't been doing a lot of work on myself. Because yes, my husband taught me so much about self-respect, for sure. I didn't know as much about what it means to have self-respect when we first met as I do now. But when we first met, I think I was at a place of being able to recognize it. To appreciate it. To see it for what it was, even if I didn't necessarily have the words for it — to be like, oh, this is something different, interesting. And to use that to fuel my own self-awareness and growth.

And I wouldn't have been able to do any of that if I hadn't already been doing my own work for a long time. Because someone who isn't working on their own sovereignty can't receive lessons in sovereignty even when it comes and punches them in the face. Someone who isn't working on their own self-respect cannot receive lessons in self-respect. You can be standing right next to the most self-respecting person in the world, and if you're not doing your own work, you won't be able to see it. Or worse — you might see it and feel threatened by it, because it's making you hyper-aware of all the places where you abandon yourself or don't have your own back.

The quiet moments where it shifts

So if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, I want more of this in my life — more relationships that feel clean and free and are actually about the thing they're supposed to be about — I think it starts with asking yourself some questions that I only began to ask myself starting in my twenties. And at first they were really challenging questions.

Questions like: Do I like myself even if someone else doesn't like me? Do I like myself even if no one else likes me? Do I look upon myself as a project that needs constant improvement and work and fixing, or do I look upon myself as someone who's already whole — not perfect, but someone who's already good, whole, fine? Someone who can be enjoyed and loved and well respected exactly as they are right this minute, no improvements, no changes necessary? Can I stand in my own truth and have that be enough, even if it's not validated or agreed upon by anyone else?

And over the course of my life, the answers to those questions haven't been a clean yes or no. For me, it's always been a process. I think some people are just born with more of a natural engine for self-respect — and I think my husband's probably one of those people. I don't have that, and I don't say that to be disparaging of myself, but some people are just more critical by nature. I have a very critical nature, and that can sometimes really be my superpower. And I sometimes turn that critical lens internally, and that manifests as self-criticism.

But I didn't go from answering no to all these questions to suddenly being able to answer yes to all of them, like, "I now have self-respect." It wasn't like that. It was more like I slowly developed the ability to have my own back more often than not. To approve of myself more often than not. To not need external validation more often than not, in more areas of life than not. And it has really been a slow simmer — very gradual, over years, decades.

And I have to say, even when the improvement in self-respect felt punishingly slow at times, the gains you see in response to even the smallest change are so rewarding. They're everything.

And when I look back at my own journey, what I remember aren't big dramatic wins. They're really more quiet, almost very subtle, private moments.

Like I remember one time, someone who I really admired and loved, who I almost put on a pedestal, whose opinions meant a great deal to me — they said something that I disagreed with. Not just like, oh, we have a difference in opinion, but disagreement at the level of worldview. And quietly, I noticed this very subtle internal shift, this quiet moment of clarity where I thought to myself — oh, that's okay. I don't need to agree with them, and they don't need to agree with me. I don't need to make them a villain because I disagree with them, and I don't need to make myself wrong. I get to hold onto my opinion because it's mine and they get to hold onto theirs because it's theirs, and it's all good.

And it was that moment that I realized — oh, my opinion has as much value to me as someone's opinion that I put on a pedestal, because my value is equal to theirs, because my value is equal to anybody else's, because we're all valuable human beings. Again, it's not a dramatic moment, but at the time it was a big deal for me. Like, oh, that's really interesting that I just feel this now.

And another moment I remember — when someone gave me heaps of praise, glowing words of praise showered upon me. And I think up until that moment in life, I would've really made that mean something about me. Like, proof that I was all these good things, proof of my worthiness. But in that moment, without even trying, I noticed that I was thinking — oh, that's cool that they have those thoughts about me. I can appreciate that as a reality that they're experiencing, and it's not something that validates me. Because someone else's words, no matter how wonderful, can't validate me. Because my sense of self is validated from within. Because I know who I am. So it's wonderful if someone else has wonderful thoughts about me, but that's not what makes me wonderful.

And those are the moments. Those are the really subtle, quiet moments. And yeah, that's when I knew — oh, I am becoming more settled in my relationship to myself. A little bit more okay in here.

Self-respect as the foundation

And I think the more settled you become, the more your relationships start to reflect it. And when I say settled, I don't mean you are perfect at all, because life still includes ups and downs. You still have missteps. You still learn, you fall down, you get back up. This is always gonna be life.

But I think we need a strong foundation of self-respect in order to be able to meet those moments with grace for ourselves and with wisdom for what we can learn from them. And I think that's how we become more resilient — in life and in relationships. We need self-respect not because that's what makes us perfect, but because self-respect allows us to really meet life with the strength that it requires of us.

And the more you do that, the more you grow in self-respect, the more the people who relied on you lacking self-respect begin to drift away. And people who appreciate you and love you and value you exactly as you are, no improvements needed — they find you, they stay, and you get to build wonderful, fruitful relationships with them.

And I gotta tell you, being around people who don't need anything from you except for you to be exactly who you are — that makes for a pretty fucking wonderful life.

So that is, underneath it all, underneath all the externally visible things in my life — I think that has been one of the most important themes of learning and growth in my thirties. And I hope and know that it is going to continue in my forties. And I hope that this episode mirrored back some useful things for you to think about.

Okay, so that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time. Bye.