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On this episode I jump right in. Expect bold, honest, and thought provoking perspective.
We live in a modern day reality show, and I don’t mean the kind just for "entertainment" purposes. Our lives have become so wrapped up in social media, and capturing everything we do so that we can share it with the outside world.
We live for the acceptance of others, for "likes", popularity and validation. We frequent social media as our outside source of inspiration, and then we can’t seem to understand just why in the hell we are living on a (daily) emotional roller coaster.
"Today I feel great... I’ve got this... I’m smashing goals, and feel like a bad ass...” Then the next day we are trying to get the energy to get out of bed, not to mention try to complete everything else on the list, and when we throw in the towel and binge eat at lunch, or bypass the gym to go home to a bottle of wine. Then, inevitably we sink down in a self loathing nightmare; shame, regret, self hate, and feeling defeated.
Let me tell you this snowball of mental garbage, comparison, not being "good enough", being a failure, and sucking at life, WILL NOT GET BETTER unless you make it your job and get real with where the heck you are leading yourself.
Are we not all, at least to some degree, battling with the NEVER ENDING roller coaster of validation, acceptance, and envy of others?
"Look at the trip she is going on? How perfect her house is... The car she drives... How clean her kitchen ALWAYS is, and how “successful” she must be."
I will promise you with every fiber of my being, she isn’t perfect. Her trip doesn’t come without sacrifice, or effort. The car she drives is a material item that doesn’t give her life any more meaning, or make her successful. The kitchen that always looks IG TV ready doesn’t make her dinner and clean itself. The “perfection” that you keep running across as you scroll Instagram, or when you see the girls at the gym that seem to "have it all", It isn’t perfection.
I mean we all know perfect doesn’t exist, right?
Even with this reality, for some reason, we create a comparison, or vision in our head of what others have and what we don’t making it coincidentally seem like what we have isn’t good enough, that we are failing, and not worthy of thinking we’re pretty damn awesome at life.
If you look back at your life are you the same person now as you were when you were a teenager? When you had just graduated college? Have you changed? Damn right you have, and not by a little but by a lot. So understand this right now, YOU WON'T MAKE IT TO PERFECT it doesn’t exist outside of the ideas and visions in our head.
Unless you want to continue living in a world where you feel less than awesome, where you’re constantly comparing your life with someone else's highlights, and where you continually beat yourself up for being a “failure” I want you to encourage you to start living your own life, where the only validation you look for and need is your own!
Did you wake up this morning? Are you being a nice, functioning citizen? Are you being persistent and kind to yourself, like really kind? Did you try your best at everything you had to do? YES? Fantastic, you’re killing it already - keep that going!
The place where things get sticky is when we’re rolling through life, almost through the work day and we try to kill the last dragging 15 minutes in the day... So, we hop on social for a quick scroll to catch up on the “news” and see yet another flawless(ly edited) shot of "Mrs. Perfect" out doing her thing.
There she is out and about doing exactly what you wish you were doing, and looking like a 10 doing it. "How does she always look so good, and who the hell is her photographer? Why does he follow her around like a lost puppy and take perfect shots - how annoying. (I wish I had my own photographer). How is she always doing some envy worthy badassery?"
Now you begin to hate your job, your ass feels fatter, and the long commute in traffic could send you over the top. You think about ripping into the jerk who jumped in line in front of you Starbucks, and all the crowds of people at the gym make you somehow feel less than human and ultimately like going home and feeling sorry for yourself.
Instead of pulling yourself back and realizing what just triggered you, you spend the rest of the night feeling like a total loser, unmotivated and more like a failure than ever. Just because you lost perspective of reality and this perception of what someone else has, or is doing.
Why would you want to get your workout in, or skip the ice cream? Why not go head first into a binge worthy Netflix marathon? You’re already telling yourself you aren’t good enough, so why try now, when you really don’t want to anyway?
Does this sound at all familiar? Ya picking up what I’m laying down? Yeah, I thought so. ALL of us have been there. Now let’s be REALLY honest. We feel it more often than not, right?
Does it seem like any motivation or momentum you pick up quickly gets squashed by these feelings of inadequacy?
Then, let me tell you from one woman to another - only you can dig yourself out, but you have to start by realizing YOU ARE CREATING THIS.
You are creating a mindset that leads you to FEAR OF FAILURE.
You are practicing throwing in the towel as your safety net to catch you instead of owning the business of where you are, and choosing to put in the hard work.
You cling to food, and eat to cover your emotions so that you ensure you fail. Because if you actually tried and weren’t successful then you would really feel like a loser. So somehow you master self sabotage as your way of protecting yourself.
You complain that you “don’t have the time” when really you spend time investing in others lives, watching what they are doing, and wondering how you get their approval, acceptance, or validation.
You continue to look for PERFECTION even when you know IT DOESN’T EXIST and then let what you perceive as perfect make you feel less about yourself, and who you are as a woman.
You know the super hard thing about changing things, LIKE REALLY changing things, is that we have already tried this whole “change thing” so many times and not succeeded. So, now somewhere locked in our subconscious we start believing that we aren’t actually capable of making these changes.
You wake up one day and call yourself out. You know you need to start doing things different if you want to get to a different place. So you set some goals, make an outline, spend a butt load of money on “healthy groceries”, and those new leggings that make you feel 1% more confident. You log a workout, and carry around the new positive mindset all day. And then boom, you get stressed, or overwhelmed, or see a squirrel and then you are right back on the “I’m a failure wagon”.
If you really think about it there is literally no gray area… no in between place of reasoning where we can almost talk ourselves back into “sticking to our goals”, making it to the gym, going for a run, prepping lunches for work, or resisting the cake in the employee break room.
We go from ALL IN, TO ALL OUT, and once the tire is flat we purposely look for ways to deflate all the others. Then we proceed to cry about being “stranded”, lost, defeated or a failure.
We throw in the towel and binge eat our favorite comfort food because somewhere in us we know that dealing with the failure of botching the health kick we're on is easier than mustering up the sheer will and determination we’d need to pass up the temptation, and get back on track. It’s “too hard to follow through” has taken the place where commitment to our OWN promises used to be. Too busy Too tired Too stressed Too unmotivated ...all deemed relevant excuses to use as needed when what we need to do interferes with what we want to do. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?
Ladies we are complicated, and a mess. And you know what, THAT’S OK. We don’t have to try and be prefect, we already know that isn’t attainable. So what we get to START DOING NOW is working toward PROGRESS.
We get to start feeling proud when we do one thing right, even if it's followed by two “fails” an hour later.
It’s time to pat yourself on the back and be your own source of encouragement to do things better. To reach goals, to get a promotion, to step outside of your comfort zone, to finally run that marathon, to be hell bent to stick to your clean eating program.
If you continually look to others for validation and relevancy I promise you will never find it. Not in the way that helps you grow into the woman you were born to be.
So here is my challenge to you, step back for at least one week and take a look at where your focus is. Call a staff meeting with your brain and do some decluttering. Make more time for your personal growth and less time for technology, AND DISTRACTIONS.
Plan uninterrupted dates, long walks, and quiet time to yourself.
Listen to music and daydream about all the wonderful things you want to accomplish.
Plan the next month, and year of your life. Envision what you’ll wear to the movies with your handsome man, how you’ll feel when you start seeing those sexy shoulder muscles make an appearance, and what it’s going to be like when you cross the finish line of that race.
Imagine what it will feel like when you do something for yourself without caring what others will think.
Envision what life will be like when you start living for progress and not perfection, and start caring more about what you have rather than what you wish you had.
I will tell you again, comparison is the fastest way to becoming dissatisfied with who you are. If you need to take a break from social media, delete the apps from your phone while you work on your mental game, or unfollow accounts that always get these negative feelings rolling. Even if that person is someone you like, until you get your mind back in YOUR game, and focused on your healthy future these things will only serve as a distraction and interference to what you are doing
Sit down with only your thoughts and a pen and paper, outline where you want to go. Think about the smaller and attainable goals that you can work on now.
Think back on the things that you have been successful in and write about what you did to achieve it. What was different then, how did you tap into the drive and determination it took to achieve that goal? Be detailed.
If you want to get out of your comfort zone this year and start doing bigger things, what do you need to start incorporating now to get there? Make your outline. And if you need help figuring out your goals and knowing where to start I definitely recommend listening to Episode 003 - The Ultimate Guide to Setting Goals. This episode will break it down into steps and help you make realistic goals that will lead you to your end goal.
If you want to start being the girl who follows through and starts tallying up more successes than failures, then you have to understand that you will never have a perfect go at it. You’re going to have days that feel like a total loss, days where you feel stuck, unmotivated, and like giving up but what you decide to do with those moments will truly be defining moments on this journey of yours.
Your success and future are being molded by every action you take now - the good and the bad. Your character is being polished and made more clear by what you do when all hell breaks out in your life. So, even on the days that everything sucks, choose to keep wading through it and be gracious with your progress - you've got this.
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