72. He Disrespected My Mom - Here's What It Taught Me

We unpack self-respect as a daily practice and show how the gym, your routines, and your inner monologue reveal what you truly believe you deserve. I share a college story that changed my standards for relationships and explain how honoring small commitments reshapes your energy, boundaries, and future.

• a bagel shop blowup that exposes disrespect fast
• why self-respect is built in quiet moments
• using the gym to keep promises to yourself
• sleep, food, health checkups, and self-talk as self-care basics
• raising your standards so you stop tolerating time-wasters
• noticing who drains your energy and who restores it
• choosing one concrete act of self-respect this week

Check the show notes for all the good stuff on how to get in touch with me or check out my program, Lift Like You Mean It. 

If you want the deeper lessons behind strength training, I write a weekly newsletter called Between Reps: Building the Unbreakable Woman. Check it out HERE

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Website: unbreakablemb.com

Email: info@unbreakablemb.com

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only.  This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.

Transcript

Welcome And The Theme Of Respect

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Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Tiana, and this episode is all about respect. When was the last time that you did something for yourself? Not because someone told you to, not because you had anything to prove, but because you genuinely believed that you were worth the effort. And I want to sit with that for a second. This episode, we are going to discuss what self-respect actually looks like on a daily basis, why the gym is one of the absolute best places for you to build your self-respect. I'll share with you a kind of funny but not so funny story from college that taught me so much. And I didn't really fully grasp the gravity of the situation until I was much older. And also, we're going to talk about how respecting yourself will change the way that you move through everything in life: your relationships, your job, your inner workings with yourself, your inner monologue, how you speak to yourself. So buckle up because this is going to be a good conversation. Now, before we get into the fun stuff and the strategy, let me take you back to the late 90s when I was in college. And in the summer before my junior year of college, I worked at a small nightclub in Stanford, Connecticut. And I had so much fun because I was dancing on a box. Now it's not like what you might be thinking. I was fully clothed, and this was a place that was 18 to get in and 21 to party. And at the time I was 19 years old, going on 20. And I met this guy there and we started dating each other. But unfortunately for him, I had to go back to college at the end of summer. So when it was time for my mom to help me pack my stuff and move me into my new apartment, she was kind enough to invite this young man. And we took the three-hour drive. We had my baby brother in the car with us. And we get up to Binghamton, which is where I went to school. We started moving into my new place. I got to reconnect with my roommates. Two of them I knew previously. One was a relatively new friendship and started to get myself squared away, make a couple of runs to Kmart, get some storage and cleaning supplies, get any little knickknacks. Now, mind you, I didn't have a car that year. I got my license and my own car the following summer. So at this point, I didn't live on campus, but I was relying on public transportation and getting rides from friends, etc. So it was really helpful that my mom was able to take me back and forth and do a couple shuttle runs, et cetera. Now, when it came time for them to then turn around and head back to New York, obviously my mom was driving with my baby brother and this young man in the car with her. We stopped at the bagel shop that I used to work at and we ordered some turkey and some sandwiches and some drinks and probably some coffee and whatnot. And when we were waiting for the delhi service person to slice up the turkey meat and put it in a nice little wrapper for us, the young man that I was dating at the time started to lose his patience. And he started to really go off the deep end, cursing up a storm, slamming his hand on the counter, asking me very loudly with the intention for this very young, innocent deli counter person to assist to make sure he would hear us, saying things like, What is this guy a fucking idiot? What the fuck is taking so long? You know, just really being loud, obnoxious, rude, cursing up a storm. And here's where it gets interesting. My mom, the adult in the situation, tells him, Listen, we're not in New York City anymore. Like, please try to be patient. You know, you'll get your turkey meat. It's it's really not that serious. Like, we can always go somewhere else if you want food. Like, I'm so sorry. And he tells my mom to mind her business and to not tell him what to do because he's a grown man. Well, as you could imagine, I was completely mortified, completely embarrassed. I used to work at this bagel shop. So even though I didn't know this person, you know, I didn't want the commotion, I didn't want the drama or the attention, I didn't want the owners to end up being upset with me because they were a nice family. And I just remember feeling really uncomfortable because I was in the middle of this small, minor situation that was turning into a huge conflict between this guy that I was dating who I kind of liked, but we weren't really doing so great. And I was very much looking forward to going back to school because I didn't want to be around this guy as much as I as I had to be, which is also another part of this conversation, but I digress. So I didn't really process it fully. I just wanted to keep the peace. I pulled my mom aside and I asked her if she was gonna be okay driving with him in the car for three hours. And she was like, Yes, don't worry. I can handle it. I'm not gonna give him any sort of advice or anything because apparently he has some type of complex. I'm just trying to give him a little encouragement and he's telling me to mind my business. Well, I'm gonna mind my business so much that I'm gonna make sure he never sees you again. Which she really didn't have the uh ability to prevent or to control because I was pretty independent at that time to to as much as I could be at that age. So they dropped me off. And now remember, this is before cell phones existed. And so they leave. My mom drives him wherever his car is, then she gets home. I had I probably had called her once or twice by then. She called me back. She said, Yeah, it was not the most fun car ride, but we survived. Uh, that they started talking about bodybuilding and working out, and you know, they had something to talk about for most of the car ride home. The thing is, I didn't have the words or the courage or the language back then to say what I really wanted to say. I just remember being uncomfortable and very confused because I knew why this person was getting frustrated. And I also knew that my mom did not do anything wrong, nor did she deserve to be treated like that. Now, if you've listened to uh a couple previous episodes, I share that years later I went to Puerto Rico with a different person that I was seeing and his family, and I kind of lost my shit on his mom, and I was completely out of line. But this was years before that. And this was something totally unexpected. In fact, I remember going back to the story in Puerto Rico when I got home thinking to myself, wow, I treated this person's mom the same way someone had treated my mom a few years back. And I was so ashamed of myself. But when someone shows you who they are in that moment, in that instant where they're angry or they're losing their patience, or they're yelling at someone who's actually trying to provide them with a service, even if it's not that great of a service, you have to pay attention to that because they're telling you a lot about themselves. And if you are someone who maybe has a lot of conflict when you're out in public places, or there's always a situation, or there's always some kind of drama, maybe a little self-reflection and thinking about what does that mean about who you are as a person? What kind of standards do you have? What kind of expectations do you live your life by? And here's the saying: this person lost their patience because they wanted their order faster and it was just taking a long time, but it wasn't poorly executed, and it wasn't an unreasonable amount of time. He was just being impatient. So, how does this connect to respect and even more so self-respect? Well, it it connects in a huge way because self-respect is not how you act in just one dramatic moment. It's something that's built upon through hundreds, if not thousands, of these quieter moments, these day-to-day experiences, these instances where you have an opportunity to take care of your body, to take care of your health, and to take care of your heart, soul, and mind. And how you show up in the world and how you present yourself says a lot about how much respect you have for yourself and others. So things like showing up when you say you're going to, even if it's a really tough day, even if you're very tired, even if you had the energy when you made the plans, but now on the day that you're getting together with your friends, you really don't feel like it, but you show up anyway because you said you would. Or how about going to the gym, showing up there, following through on the workout in front of you, hitting every intended set and repetition because that's the formula and it's important that you finish what you start. Now, no one, maybe no one's in the gym with you, but you know if you completed everything to the best of your ability. And that's keeping a promise to yourself, right? The other thing is every repetition is a little bit like you know, giving yourself a pound or a fist bump. You're telling yourself that you matter in this situation and that your goals are important to you. They don't have to be important to anybody else, and no one has to understand them or agree with you. But when it comes to taking care of your health, nine times out of ten, most people are gonna be supportive. They're gonna be like, fuck yeah, I want you to live a long life. I want you to be healthy, I want you to feel great in your skin. And then outside of the gym, things like how you sleep, what kind of foods are you eating? What is your inner monologue? How do you talk to yourself? Are you beating yourself up? Are you talking badly to yourself after you eat something because maybe you think it was a little too rich, too sweet, too salty, too fatty, too decadent, and now you're gonna punish yourself? Or maybe not. And what about choosing the difficult things in life? The things that are really hard, the things that maybe you want to procrastinate on, but you're not going to. I know for me, getting to bed early is something I must proactively do. It's never going to happen by chance. I'm never tired at night. But I have to force myself to go to bed early. Why? Because I get up at 5, 5:30 every day, even on the weekends. I think last weekend I slept until 7 a.m. And that is very unusual. So when you're thinking about your nutrition, the water, the vitamins, the minerals, the food you eat, then how you care for yourself. Are you going to your routine doctor visits? Are you getting blood work done to look at your markers and see where you have any nutrient deficiencies or vitamin deficiencies? Are you making those appointments that you keep putting off or that you keep adding to that long-running list in your phone or on the whiteboard at your desk? See, self-care is really about showing up for yourself. And the thing is, when you take care of yourself, you also show other people how you expect to be treated too. Because if you hold yourself to a high standard and you refuse to settle, people will notice that. People will see it, people will know, oh no. You know, I've had friends tell me, you stand on business. When you say you are gonna do something, you always do it. Or when you say you're not gonna do something, you don't fuck with it. And that's a hundred percent true. Don't get me wrong, I am not perfect. There are things that I say I'm gonna do and I procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate, but eventually I will do them. And here's the thing: just recently I put an offer out into the world, and it's something that I've had as an idea, and it's been it was in the inception mode, and then it went through so many iterations before I actually narrowed down what it was I wanted to put out there. And then I made a commitment to myself around Christmas time. I said, this thing is going out into the world by mid-March. It has to be available for purchase by the end of Q1 in 2026. And I worked diligently. When I would get home from training my clients in person, I would hop on my computer and I would be working away for hours and hours and hours. Now, I didn't necessarily do this the most efficient way because I was also learning new systems as I was creating the offer, because I wanted to create something that I was proud of. I wanted to create something that would be very user-friendly and that the initial experience when somebody buys the product, it would be a seamless transition. They click a few buttons, they get everything they ordered, and it's in their phone, ready to go. All of the downloads, the podcast, the videos, and everything in between, all of the lessons. But I have so much respect for myself now. Why? Because I did the fucking thing. I did the thing I said I was gonna do. I got that product out to market, it's available for purchase, and it's out there. It was about a week and a half late, but I still got it done in Q1. And I have to say, as much as I am not a procrastinator in certain things, when it comes to finishing an idea and getting it out into the world, I have started more projects than I have finished. So this was a huge marker for me, a huge milestone. Now, let's get back to you because let's talk about this ripple effect about how the way you treat yourself teaches people and your life how to treat you. When you respect your own time, you stop tolerating people who waste your time. When you respect your own energy, you get better at recognizing who are the people that fill your cup and who are the ones that drain you. And I gotta say, years ago, I had a few personal training clients, and every time I had to train them, I couldn't stop yawning. I don't know what it was. I would always be really tired, lethargic, exhausted. And if I had to work out after training any of those clients, it would be incredibly difficult because all I would want to do is curl up and go to sleep. And when I realized after my schedule changed, and then one moved away, and then one changed gyms, and then one had a new work schedule. And so I wasn't seeing these handful of clients anymore. My energy seemed to be more even and sustained. And I wasn't getting this exhaustion at a random hour of the day, and then feeling this wave of energy at the end of that hour when those clients were leaving me. And maybe to some people this sounds mean, but this was just a genuine observation that some of the clients I used to have many years ago sucked the life out of me. And you know what? I feel for those people, and they needed me. And I hope that the work that we did together served them well and taught them something, and maybe with a little bit of time, effort, and energy, they will be able to lift themselves up too. But now going back to respecting yourself, when you respect your body, when you train it, when you eat well, when you rest, you carry yourself differently, and people will notice the ones who don't respect that, they start to stand out. And you're gonna know, you're gonna feel that energy shift when they're in your presence. And now thinking back to the bagel shop, if I had the knowledge and experience back then that I do now, that guy would have been on a bus going home and I would not have allowed my mom to drive him because he was so rude to various people, including my mom and me. And that's just unacceptable. Never again. In fact, on a total side note, I remember going home for the weekend about three weeks after my mom dropped me off after that incident, and this guy wanted to take me out on a date, and we went to see a movie and walk around the movie theater was inside of a shopping mall. And so we were walking around the mall afterwards, and I broke up with him. And I remember we were like walking along in front of all these different stores, and the mall is super packed, and he's basically like begging me, please don't do this. I don't understand, like trying to convince me. And I just kept saying to him, you were disrespectful. You were disrespectful to me, you were disrespectful to my mom. Like, I just can't, I just can't be with somebody that's gonna act that way. And I'm gonna always have to worry about how you're gonna get triggered and react to to people that aren't moving fast enough for you. And then how you're gonna talk to my parents, like absolutely not. And he didn't get it, but I stuck to my guns. It took me a few weeks, but I stuck to my guns. But if that situation had occurred now, oh hell no. I would have been out so fast. I would have told that guy, you know what? Here, go to the bus station. You can take a bus home and don't ever call me. Hell no, absolutely not. Like, who raised you? But back to the self-respect and living your life right now in the present day and not 30 years ago or however many years ago at the bagel shop in upstate New York. I want you to honestly take a look at an area of your life where you've been maybe letting self respect slide. Where are you maybe a little too lenient? Are you skipping workouts? Are you letting someone disrespect you? Are you maybe talking to yourself in a not so kind way? And I want to encourage you this upcoming week, pick one thing that is absolutely a pure act of self-respect, something different. Maybe you're setting a boundary. Maybe you're going to start meal prepping because you want to eat higher quality foods and more nutrient-dense foods. Maybe you want to go to bed a little bit earlier so that you can feel more refreshed each day. I want you to realize that you are worth all of that effort. And I want you to really stop and think about where are those areas where you could make these cute, small little changes that are going to have a huge lasting impact. I want you to really take that time, do it. And let me know how you feel at the end of the week. You can get in touch with me by reaching out. There's a way to do that. Check the show notes. And also, by the way, if you're interested in the project that I was just talking about that I committed to launching at the end by the end of Q1 2026, which I did, it's a program called Live Like You Mean It. And it's awesome because it's literally my training values and fundamentals all packaged up into one beautiful program. It's not a piecemeal sort of thing where there's like one day you do this, one day do that. It's a whole cohesive program that's bundled all together. It will make sense when you listen to the audio lessons and then you look at the plans and you pick the one that fits your lifestyle and you commit and you commit for a long time. And just like committing to something for the long time for a long time, commit to yourself that you are going to treat yourself with respect and that you are not going to allow others to disrespect you. And that you're going to commit to that. So if you're interested in the program, check the show notes. The link is there. And you can see all the details about it. And I want you to realize that this work that you're doing on yourself is the most important work you're ever going to do. Because when you respect yourself and when you take care of yourself, you are literally changing the trajectory of your future because that new version of yourself is not going to tolerate or put up with some of the nonsense that younger you used to tolerate. And oh, by the way, if you are into the law of attraction or any quantum physics, we are living in an age of multiple timelines. So when we talk about future you and the past you, like it all exists simultaneously. And I know this may be a little woo for some of you, but hear me out. You are exactly where you are meant to be. And yes, every choice, every decision, every turn, every option, every road that you have taken has led you right here, right now. And I want you to know that you're right on time. You are not behind. You are not missing out. The one thing that you can absolutely do to make sure you live your best life full out is to take care of yourself, to be very uh protective of your energy, and to make sure that at the end of each night, you can look back on your day and know that you did the best you could with what you have and what's meant for you is never gonna miss. I appreciate you being here and showing up for yourself each and every week. This episode, I know it was a little woo-woo and a little out there, but it's really important, and you are really important. So thank you so much for being here, for tuning into the show. Check the show notes for all the good stuff on how to get in touch with me or check out the program, or you could follow me on Substack where I dive deeper into all of these subjects that we talk about here on the show. I am here for you. This is my life's work. I'm proud of you, and I will catch you on the next one.