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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the show. It is just me, you and the mic on this episode. That's it. Just, just the three of us. Just the three of us. And we're talking a little bit. I don't know why I sounded like Trumpy. Just that. Just the three of us. Just the three of us. Anyway, today we're talking about self respect I have for somebody who did not go to like a real college, get a real degree or have any fancy letters after my name. I've done quite a bit of research reading through stuff that took me way too long because I don't, I just am not qualified to read through, you know, the, the meta analyses of different studies that have been done by graduate level students and researchers and all this other stuff. And I've, I've had to, I've had to train my brain to learn what these words are and what this means all around the subject of relationships, loneliness, friendship. And the most, this is probably the most counterintuitive result that I've come across in that research. And that is to say that probably the number one solution for the loneliness epidemic is probably the thing that most people don't think that it is. It's not more community programs and it's not just, it's not just more community programs. I should say it's not just going out and getting around friends more. Because what we've note, what, what, what we've noticed, what the research has, has said is that there's essentially two. There, there's a breakdown of the word loneliness. There's loneliness, and then there's social isolation. Well, social isolation is more of an objective measurement of how much time you're spending with other people. That one can be measured. So it's literally like we'll track how many hours or minutes you spent last week with friends or people who mattered or who were important to you or who you love. Loneliness is more insidious because it is an internal, subjective feeling of not belonging to the group. So you could be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. So then the question then becomes, okay, well, if you can be surrounded by people, then it's clearly not just a function of whether or not you go get around more people or if you have access to people or if you have Friends from growing up, or if there are people in your life who love you, it ultimately comes down to which, to me, the most counterintuitive solution to the loneliness epidemic, which is aloneness. It is not loneliness, because that is the only option. It is choosing solitude and choosing to be alone, because that is when you get to the nitty gritty of your relationship with you. So ultimately, my theory is that the number one way to cure your loneliness is to build a better relationship with yourself first. Now, will that replace the biological and psychological needs for human interaction, belonging, connection? No, it will not. You will still need to have those other things in your life. However, if you have not solved this core internal problem first, you're going to find that solving the secondary problem of getting around more people, you're going to find that to be more difficult because your relationship with yourself will always bleed into your relationship with other people. So you, if you don't have a good relationship with you, if you don't have respect for yourself, if you don't love yourself, if you don't accept yourself, if you don't view you as being worthy of achieving what you want to achieve in life, if you don't view you as being worthy of having good, strong, healthy relationships, then you're probably just going to allow negative relationships, you're going to allow toxic relationships, you're going to allow people to have more of your energy than deserve your energy. But it's because you think that you're giving yourself what you deserve, whether or not you're doing it consciously or subconsciously. You might be consciously doing that, but I think for the most, for the majority of people, it's a subconscious thing. It's a subconscious desire to sort of punish yourself for the person that you believe you are by not allowing yourself to go out and, and, and build strong relations with other people or not allow yourself to cut off this objectively toxic relationship. That's a terrible thing in your life because you and your mind have diluted yourself so much that you believe that you are not worth getting rid of that relationship and that you're just lucky that somebody would find the compassion to stick around, even if they verbally abuse you or physically abuse you or do something detrimental to your life, your family life, your health, your mental health, whatever it is. So that starts with battling the internal struggle of building a great relationship with you. And so today's episode is really more about self respect, because hustle culture, grind culture, that's all here. We know about that. That's been something that's been in the cultural zeitgeist for quite some time, and frankly, this episode of the show is.
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Probably. Probably. It's a good thing because most people, I think, are looking for excuses to not hustle and not work. And obviously on this show we talk a lot about, you know, figuring out ways to make extra money and figuring out ways to increase your skill set. And all that's going to require more work and it's going to require you to hustle and it's going to require some seasons of a grind. But it's not really necessarily the work that's the point. It's not. It's not even necessarily the result. That's the point. The external result, that's the point. I should say the point is self respect. Because the more you work towards something, the more you actively choose something difficult instead of something easy, the more respect you're going to gain for yourself. And it's a fairly simple equation. If you don't have any self respect, ask yourself, what do I respect others for having done? Is it, is it they're in good shape that you know that person has a six pack or that person goes to the gym, or wow, that person ran a marathon, or wow, that person built a big business, or that person, you know, has a great relationship with their kids? Whatever it is, you have this, this thing in your mind that makes you respect other people. So if you don't have any self respect, then maybe try to go do the actions of somebody who you would respect and you might find that that self respect starts to climb a little bit. But there's a couple of things that we're going to talk about on today's episode that I think are really helpful in this, in this process. The first thing is effort builds identity before it gets results. So before you will get the desired results of the effort. The first good thing that happens is that that effort reinforces a new identity, that you are somebody who does the work or you are somebody who does what you say you're going to do. The identity takes place a lot of times before the identity shift takes place, a lot of times before the results take place. And the identity itself is what allows you to be able to start working on that relationship with you. And then you build a good relationship with you. It's gotta bleed into your relationship with others. Meaning that if you don't have any respect for yourself, you can't help but have that come across in your interpersonal relationships. It's going to bleed into your relationship with other people. You're going to start the way that you talk about yourself, the way that you show up, the way that you know, if you're 100 pounds overweight and your car is full of fast food trash and your apartment is filthy and you haven't washed dishes in a month and you're wearing the same clothes that you wore for the last four days and they've never been washed and they smell bad. And like you present yourself like that, you're actively telling other people what they should think about you. You're actively telling other people that you are not somebody that's worthy of respect because you don't even have the ability to respect yourself enough to take care of yourself. So effort will build the identity before it's going to get the result, which is arguably more important than the result, even long term. So second thing here, keeping promises to yourself is the foundation of confidence. And confidence is sort of the foundation for everything else, you know, having. Especially when we're talking about connections with other people. Especially we're talking about charisma, we're talking about leadership, we're talking about sales, talking about marketing, we're talking about creating outside success for yourself. Confidence is at the very foundation of that. And the number one, the fastest way to start building more confidence is to simply keep the promises that you make to yourself. I. People will. If people would treat themselves the way that they treat other people, they would probably help, they would probably fix their confidence and self respect issues almost overnight. Because the, the, the, what we tolerate in other relationships is so much less than we tolerate with our relationship with us. Meaning that if, if a friend of yours, you know, think, think about the last time you were throwing a pity party. The last time you were telling yourself all these negative things about yourself. Think back to that time. Think about all the terrible things that you told yourself. Think about somebody close to you in your life saying those same things that you've said to yourself that you've allowed yourself to internalize. Think about them saying those things to you and how quickly you would cut that off, how quickly you would let go of that relationship or at least retaliate or retort with something, or say something back, you know, or, or defend yourself to a certain degree to, to think about the things that you've done well and be like, but I'm not all those. I'm, I'm. I also do this and I also do that. Yet you allow yourself to do it every night before you go to sleep. And then you wonder why you have no self respect. It's because you talk to yourself like you don't respect yourself. And if you don't respect yourself, maybe you're not giving yourself enough reasons to respect yourself. So the very first place that I would always start is just keep the promises that you make to yourself. Start small, guys. You do not have to start with this massive, huge change in your life. And tomorrow I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be a brand new me. And then you paint this picture of what the ideal version of you looks like. And you, and then you expect that tomorrow everything's going to change and you're going to Be able to live up to that expectation every single day for the rest of your life. And it's just not reality. So start with something small. In the light of. In the light of thinking about your relationship with yourself in the context of your relationship with other people, this would be another thing that you would not allow yourself to do. If you told somebody really close to you that you were going to do this thing for them and there was somebody you genuinely loved and cared about, you would probably do that thing. And you would. Even if there were excuses, even if there were reasons, even if there were some things that might prevent you from being willing to do it, you'd probably still find a way to make it work. Because you. Because there's stakes to not keeping your word with that person there. You're going to lose trust. You're going to lose the relationship, you're going to lose the friendship, you're going to lose the marriage. You're probably going to put effort into following through on the things that you said that you would do for other people. So why don't you do that with yourself? You. You. You. Just because you didn't say it out loud to somebody else does not mean that you don't remember that you said it to yourself. So if you say you're gonna get up early, then get up early. If you say you're gonna go to the gym, go to the gym. If you say you're gonna read that book, then pick up the damn book. The problem is that we over commit. You're wildly over committing to things. And this goes for people outside of your life, and this goes for your relationship with yourself. Again, you tell yourself, tomorrow's gonna be different, I'm gonna change all these things. And you give yourself a list of 20 things that you're gonna commit to. And then of course you're not gonna do all of those things because there's way too many things to go from zero to a hundred like that. You can't do it. It's, it's, it's your, your act. I shouldn't say you can't do it. You can do it, but it's just way more difficult. You're creating this massive psychological barrier between who you are now and who you wanna be when. If you just started with something small, man, like, I don't. Again, I don't care what it is. If it's just, I'm gonna drink double the amount of water that I usually drink in a day because I think that's good for me or I'M gonna put my head on the pillow at this time because I've noticed that if I get X amount of sleep that I can perform better. Great. Just do that thing. Be impeccable with yourself. Just stop committing to too many things. And this goes for the other relationships in your life. You know, like maybe instead of committing to be at all of your kids practices and games, maybe just commit to the games. Say I might miss a few practices or maybe just say I'll be there for the big games. I might miss a game or two here and there but I'm going to be there for all the big things. Like just stop over committing to everything because you're setting yourself up to lose. Shooting yourself in the foot to see if you can walk and it's just like. Or you could just walk. You don't have to shoot yourself in the foot first. That might be an idea. Why don't we try that? What a novel concept. What if we just started walking and without a bullet hole in our foot that's bleeding out that we have to address. Like stop making life more difficult by over committing to everything. And especially, especially, especially, especially when it comes to your relationship with you. Because what happens is you over commit to everybody, you over commit to yourself and you over commit to everybody else. And then the, the, your primary goal because you don't want to be separated from the tribe, right? Your, your, your, your feeling brain is going to tell you that, well, I can't cancel all these other obligations, all the others, all these other people because I don't want to lose trust with those people. So I don't have the time or capacity to be able to say, to do all the things that I committed to for everybody else. Therefore it makes more sense to not do the things that I told myself that I was going to do because nobody else knows that I told myself I was going to do them except for me. So I can just internalize those things and I can make sure I keep my commitments to everybody else. And this is how you end up being in that. I'm lonely yet surrounded by people because you're doing everything for everybody else but you're not doing anything for yourself. You're not, you're not following through on the commitments that you made to yourself. So start small, start light again. You don't have to change everything about yourself in a 24 hour period of time and if you try to do that it's going to be less effective. So just don't, don't do it like that. Make Smaller, more easily attainable commitments and that that confidence will start to compound. You'll start looking at the next thing and be like, okay, well I figured out how to get myself out of bed or I figured out how to walk a half a mile every day. I figured out how to drink more water. Maybe I could figure out this other thing. And then you commit to the next thing and then you figure out that thing and then it's another win, it's another notch in the confidence belt. It's another deposit in the confidence bank account that you can make to say, I am somebody that does the things that I say I'm going to do. You make that deposit, you make those deposit, make that deposit. You look at that over enough time and now you've built a massive bank account full of confidence. And this is what enables you to be able to withstand the rejection that life is inevitably going to throw your way. The reason that people quit too early, the reason that rejection prevents people from reaching their goals is not to do with the rejection itself is because they don't have enough, they don't have enough of a balance in their confidence bank account to withstand the rejection. Because every time a rejection is made, a bit of the confidence goes away. It's a withdrawal from the confidence bank account. So if you want a healthy account balance, you have to make more deposits than you make withdrawals, just like your actual bank account. Rejection is not the culprit, it's the lack of confidence. It's, it's the fact that you don't have a great relationship with you. So you don't have a big tolerance for rejection because your confidence account is overdrawn because you haven't made enough deposits on a daily basis to, to maintain that level of confidence over time. So keep the promises that you make to yourself because it's the foundation of confidence and that will obviously help with your self respect. And then last kind of thought about this is discipline is better than motivation. Motivation comes and goes. It's not sticky. It is largely emotionally driven. There's some things that you can do to try to motivate yourself, right, and put on some pump up music or listen your favorite speaker or you know, watch your favorite Kobe Bryant YouTube video montage, whatever it is that you like to do to pump yourself up. But ultimately it's fleeting and you are, you are at the whim of your own emotional state and that will decide whether or not you're going to get anything accomplished. And if you allow that to happen in your life, then you Are inevitably going to start having an overdrawn bank account of confidence because it's not going to work out for you long term. So value the discipline that it takes to keep the promises that you make to yourself. Value the discipline that it takes to keep the promises you make to other people and stop over committing. Because the discipline that the system is better than the motivation. It's like what James Clear says, the author of Atomic habits, is that you, you will not rise to the level of your goals, you will fall to the level of your systems. And your systems are built through the discipline that you have every single day. So if you want better relationships, you want a better network, you want closer friendships, you want a better marriage, you, better relationships with kids, and you want to avoid loneliness, which is something that affects over 50% of U.S. adults, then it is going to come from the relationship that you have with you that is the foundation for all of the other relationships that you have. If you have a bad relationship with you, it's going to bleed into your relationship with others. If you have a good relationship with you, it's going to bleed into your relationship with others. So treat your relationship with yourself as the primary number one relationship that you have to make as good as you can first. And that's where people, I think, get wrong. They, they assume that they can leave themselves in the dust for the pursuit of other people, when in reality, you will become a much more attractive, magnetic, charismatic person if you're somebody who has a good relationship with you. So let's start there. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. Catch you guys on the next one. Peace.
Host: Travis Chappell
Date: February 15, 2026
In this solo episode, Travis Chappell dives into the profound link between self-respect, loneliness, and success. Departing from surface-level hustling and financial advice, Travis argues that the cure for the modern loneliness epidemic is not found in socializing or community programs alone, but in building a healthy, disciplined relationship with oneself. He explores why self-respect is foundational—not just for personal fulfillment but for unlocking the confidence and resilience needed to make more money and build meaningful relationships.
“Loneliness is more insidious because it is an internal, subjective feeling of not belonging to the group. So you could be surrounded by people and still feel lonely.”
— Travis Chappell [02:20]
“The number one way to cure your loneliness is to build a better relationship with yourself first.”
— Travis Chappell [03:35]
“Effort builds identity before it gets results.”
— Travis Chappell [08:00]
“The fastest way to start building more confidence is to simply keep the promises that you make to yourself.”
— Travis Chappell [10:15]
“Stop over committing to everything because you’re setting yourself up to lose... You don’t have to shoot yourself in the foot first. That might be an idea. Why don’t we try that?”
— Travis Chappell [15:32]
“Discipline is better than motivation...You will not rise to the level of your goals, you will fall to the level of your systems.”
— Travis Chappell [19:32] (referencing James Clear)
“Treat your relationship with yourself as the primary, number one relationship that you have to make as good as you can first.”
— Travis Chappell [21:58]
“If you don’t have a good relationship with you, if you don’t have respect for yourself...you’re probably just going to allow negative relationships.”
[03:55]
“You’re shooting yourself in the foot to see if you can walk... Or you could just walk. What a novel concept.”
[16:04]
“Maybe I could figure out this other thing. And then you commit to the next thing...another deposit in the confidence bank account.”
[17:10]
“The reason that rejection prevents people from reaching their goals is not to do with the rejection itself—it's because they don’t have a big tolerance for rejection. Your confidence account is overdrawn.”
[18:40]
| Topic | Key Insight | Notable Quote | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------|-----------| | Loneliness vs. Social Isolation | It’s an internal, not just external, problem | “Loneliness is more insidious...” | 02:20 | | Building Self-Respect | Your internal relationship shapes all others | “The number one way to cure your loneliness...” | 03:35 | | Effort Builds Identity | Taking action changes self-perception | “Effort builds identity before it gets results.” | 08:00 | | Keeping Promises to Yourself | Builds foundational self-confidence | “The fastest way to start building confidence...” | 10:15 | | Stop Over-Committing | Small wins > Overhauls; don’t set yourself up to fail | “Stop over committing...” | 15:32 | | Discipline > Motivation | Systems and routines sustain growth | “Discipline is better than motivation...” | 19:32 | | Self-Respect Feeds All Relationships| Inner respect is the base for connection and success | “Treat your relationship with yourself...” | 21:58 |
This episode is both a motivational charge and a practical playbook for turning inward, building your “confidence bank account,” and transforming the quality of your life and relationships—financial or otherwise. Travis’s direct, conversational style keeps the tone personal and actionable throughout.