2: Unlock Your Full Potential: Becoming Your Best Self

Ready to take control of your life and become the best version of yourself? In this week's episode of the Build Strong Women podcast, we're diving deep into the transformative power of personal growth. 

I'll be sharing my own journey of self-discovery and why prioritizing your own growth is an absolute MUST, not a selfish act. It's about creating a life that truly aligns with your values, passions so that you can feel your best! 

Key Takeaways:

• Discover why personal growth is not selfish, but a necessity.
• Learn practical tips to start your journey of self-discovery.
• Gain inspiration to create a life you truly love.
• Understand the positive impact of personal growth on those around you.

FREE PRINTABLE for this episode 

Links & Resources:

👉 Grab the free Follow Through Starter Kit

👉 Grab the free Happy Habits Guidebook to build your life around what matters most!
👉 Want help staying consistent? Check out the Promise Journal
👉 Let’s connect on Instagram: @graciousadventures

👉 Sign up for Laura's weekly email: https://gracious-adventures.myflodesk.com/podcast

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, I'm Laura Orlando and welcome to the Build Strong Women podcast. I believe as women that we are the role models for the next generation of girls. So how do we become the best role models for these young girls? We work hard to become the best version of ourselves, whatever that means to you. It's not easy. It takes work. It takes learning, trying new things, falling down and getting back up again. But that's what we do on the show. We dive deep into how we can grow on the inside. We will learn from women that are on the same journey as us. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Build Strong Women podcast. I'm so happy that you're here with me. This is the next or I should say the first episode of the Build Strong Women podcast. That's not the trailer. And it's taking me some time to get started with this, but I'm actually on a snow day from school. I don't know when you're going to be listening to this, which is kind of crazy. I feel like God and the universe gave me this gift so that I could sit down and record a this podcast. I'm so excited to be doing this. All I dream about is wanting to help women grow inside themselves so that they can feel better inside themselves. And that's what this podcast is all about. So I'm so happy that you're here with me. And today we're going to be talking about becoming the best version of you. And becoming the best version of you might sound a little bit confusing and like, what the heck does that even mean? But my entire goal in is to be on a journey for myself just to feel happy and to feel good inside myself and to feel good with the decisions I make in my life and to feel good in my body, to feel confident so that I can wake up every day and just feel good inside. Like that is my goal. It hasn't always been my goal. Trust me, I have struggled with anxiety and self-doubt and self-worth for so long into my adulthood years and I was just done I did not want to feel like that anymore I didn't want to feel blah and I know sometimes it's okay just to not feel right but I didn't want to feel like that all the time I didn't feel confident within myself I feel like I couldn't make decisions for myself and I was always looking for outside people and things to make me feel better like oh if I do this I'm going to feel better inside myself even though that wasn't something that I liked or I wanted and So now I'm just on this constant search to feel good inside. And I want to help you do the same thing. And sometimes as women and moms especially, we just get stuck in the everyday and just doing the things that we always do, the routine, and we don't think about ourselves. So here's the thing. I want you to think about when becoming the best version of yourself or trying to be on this journey of becoming the best version of yourself. I don't ever think that we're going to find it. We're not going to wake up one day and be like, yes, I am The best version of myself today. Yes, that's really not what this is about. This is about every day being on a journey and making choices and making decisions that help us feel good inside. It's just the things that we consistently do every day just to feel our best inside. And we're not always going to win at that. We're not always going to make the best decisions and do the things that always light us up and make us feel good. But that's okay. Becoming the best version of yourself is going to to be a lifelong process. There is no end game here to quote Taylor Swift, I should say. There is no end game. You're not going to get there. Finally, every day, I hope that you feel better and better and better. And you just have more confidence within yourself each and every day when you choose these things. But it's a journey. It's something that you are going to do. And this journey should become something that feels really special inside yourself. Because you're deciding to do something about your life. You're deciding that, hey, I don't want to feel like this anymore. I want to feel good inside myself. I want to feel strong. I Take this journey for yourself. Explain to you how I went on this journey and how I am on this journey even today. And I want to help you do the same thing because when you decide that, hey, I want to be the best version of myself. I want to feel good inside. I want to feel confident. I want to feel strong. Your life will change. Your mindset will change because that's what happened to me. And I want everyone to feel this way, especially women. We go through the day just doing the same routine every single day, but you have to be intentional about becoming the best version of you. And every day it's just going to be a journey and I can't wait for you to try it because it's going to be really worth it. I promise you. Another thing here about becoming the best version of yourself is to not worry about what other people are doing and to not do what other people are doing. It's about finding what's best for you. And that is number one. And that is something that I had to reprogram my mind to think about. Like, I don't care what she's doing. I don't care what they're doing online or my friends or anything. I have to do what's best for me. It's not about everyone else. Like if you hate, um, just let's take an example of working out. If you hate like a hit class and it's too intense, it's crazy. You'd rather just walk or do yoga, then do that. You have to make that decision. You might not be with everyone, um, And might not fit in with the crowd or you might be doing something different than anyone else. But if that's what's best for you, then you have to do it because you're not going to feel good inside yourself if you're just trying to do what everyone else is doing and you're caring what other people are going to think about you. Thank you so much for watching. and you don't like to drink it because it makes you feel like crap, then don't do it. Don't drink that. Heck, maybe you hate drinking altogether, but that's what's socially acceptable in these days. Then just don't do it. Do what's best for you. This is all about you. This is about feeling your best. This is about making decisions to look inside yourself to find out what makes you feel good. What makes you feel motivated? What makes you feel loved? What makes you feel more confident within yourself? Don't you just want to wake up every day and just feel good inside yourself and feel confident? And part of that is making the decision to say, hey, I'm going to do what's best for me because I want to be the best version of myself. Imagine if you make this decision and you start working on yourself and all the things that will be affected by this. You will be more competent. You will be happier. You will be a better mother if you are one. You will be a better worker at your job. You will just be better in every way because you're taking care of yourself and you're making decisions that help you love yourself a little bit more. And that's what this is all about. This is all about loving yourself a little bit more. and becoming the best version of you. And that's the point. It might not be what everyone else likes or loves and you might create a little bit of waves doing this because you might be taking out things that everyone else does and you don't want to do them anymore. Or you might be adding something really great into your life that people just don't understand and you have to be okay with that. But once you decide that feeling good and feeling confident in yourself is what's best for you and what works for you, your entire mindset is going to shift. Your confidence is going to shift, I promise you. Because that's what's happened to me. This isn't like I'm just making this up. This is what I decided to do and I really started working on myself and my mindset has completely changed. So what I want you to do The first step about this, and this is what I did, is I want you to sit there and I want you to dream up the best version of you and what that looks like. So you can do this on a piece of paper if you're driving, if you're taking a walk right now or working out or doing something while listening to this. You can just think about it as I ask you some of these questions. But what I did is I wrote out everything on a piece of paper. I wrote out who I wanted to be as a person. what would it look like to be the best version of me and I created a printable for you that you can use a free download that you can just print out and you can do this it'll have all these questions on there so you don't have to like write it down or think about it or come back to the episode or anything you can just go to the show notes and print it out but this is what I want you to do and this is something really cool that you can do even before you make a vision board or before the next new year because 2025 is around the corner I don't know when you're going to be listening to this but It's coming. And I'm not saying wait for the new year to do this. I think you should do this anytime. It doesn't matter. But I want you to dream up the best version of you. And what would that look like? How would you feel? What things would you be eating and putting in your body? What types of exercise would you be doing? How often do you want to be exercising the best version of you? What kind of friends would you have around you at all these times? What kind of mom would you be? What kind of wife would you be? I want you to think about some of these questions and there's so many more questions that I asked myself of who I wanted to be. So that's exactly what I did. I wrote a list on a piece of paper of who I wanted to be, how I wanted to feel, what would it look like, what would my life look like. So I wanted to give you some examples of some of the things that I wrote down just to get your wheels turning. You don't have to do exactly what I do. Obviously not. Don't do that. I want this to be all about you, not what, oh, what's my friend Carol going to think What does she want me to be? What would she want me to say? Absolutely not. This is all about you. What do you want to look? What do you want your life to look like? How do you want to feel? So some of the things I wrote down is I wanted to be someone who works out five days a week because I know when I work out and I exercise that I feel better inside. I know it sucks getting up in the morning. I know it sucks going. I know it sucks being there. But when I'm done, I feel so good. And I work out solely, not solely, but for my mind. If I don't move my body and I don't exercise and I don't try to work out as hard as I can, I don't feel good inside. I feel good. Just blah. And I don't want to feel like that. So the best version of me would work out five days a week. Something else is I wanted to be a yogi. I know this sounds weird, but I want to do yoga. I have done a couple classes and I just absolutely love it. So that is someone that I want to be. I know that I want to be a yogi. I want to go to yoga class and relax and stretch and do those things. I want to be a great mom. I I want to be a great wife. It completely changed my life. I know that there are so many women out there that need help and that need guidance. I don't think I'm an expert by any means, but if I can just help a couple people just feel better inside themselves, then I'm making a difference. I want to make a difference in the world. Those are just some of the things that I wrote down of who I wanted to be. Once you're done writing out who you want to be and what the best version of you would look like and how you would feel and how you would show up in the world, there's so many more things that you could write down. But I want you to take a step back and after you reread all those answers that you wrote down and all those things of who you want to be, are the actions that you're doing in your life right now in this present moment, is it aligning with that person? Are you doing the things that you need to do to become the best version of yourself? If you looked at that list, are you that person? Are your actions aligning with those things? Because if they're not, then there's no way that you can be that best version of yourself if you're not doing the things and doing what it takes to be that version of yourself. So that was something that I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not doing anything wrong. to become the best version of myself I'm not doing these things I'm not even trying to go to a yoga class I'm too afraid I don't want to go by myself I have no idea if I'll like it I might just fall on my face but I had to step outside of my comfort zone and do that thing if I wanted to be someone that goes to yoga and likes doing it so I did it I went to a hot yoga class I absolutely loved it and there was a chance that I wouldn't but I wouldn't have known if I didn't try so you have to see if your actions that you're doing every single day are aligning with the person you wanna be. So after you wrote all of that out and you kind of take a look back and to see if your actions are aligning with the person you wanna be, it's all about becoming self-aware and really looking at your life and your day-to-day and are you making the choices you need to make and the decisions that you need to make to become that version of you that you wanna be and how you wanna feel and how you wanna show up in the world. One of the things that I like to do is I like to get up early and for a while I wasn't doing that. I was waking up, I was sleeping in and my days were not as productive and I didn't want to be someone that slept in until 10 o'clock. That's just who I didn't, I didn't want to be that person. I wanted to be someone who got up early and who had a productive morning and just had a relaxing morning. So what I had to do was I had to start setting my alarm so I could get up early. And yeah, it stinks, but I was so happy that I did it And it was just something that made me feel good inside I wanted to be someone that got up early and just started the day At an early time. That's just something that is important to me Another thing that I changed is I stopped drinking alcohol for no reason I didn't want to Just drink alcohol just because everyone else was doing it. And I'm not a huge drinker anyway, but when I do drink, I just feel like crap. And I just feel terrible the next day. I didn't get up earlier. I wasn't getting anything done that I wanted to do. And I didn't want to feel like that. So I don't drink as much alcohol. anymore or even at all. So once I know and understood how I wanted to feel, I started aligning my actions with those things and with my goals that I have and my values that I had in my life. And yeah, it's not always easy to be someone that makes those decisions like getting up early when the rest of the house is still sleeping or not having a drink when everyone else is doing it. It's hard. It stinks. It doesn't feel good sometimes because people don't understand. But those are my values. That's the person that I want to be. And if I can do that for myself, then I am loving myself even more. And I am choosing myself over making other people feel comfortable. And that's the decision that I made for myself because I want to be the best version of myself. So you have to think about what What you need to do to become the best version of yourself. Be really self-aware. Look at your everyday. How can you start improving a small area in your life right now? Another thing you need to do, which I know everybody knows already, A lot about this is just cultivating more of a growth mindset because at first I was like, I'm never going to be someone that wakes up early. I'm never going to be someone that can work out five days a week or six days a week. I'm never going to be that person. I just don't have the energy. I don't have the time. But I... started thinking like, yes, I can. I can grow into that person, and growth is such a huge deal for me. My kids think I'm nuts, but I have two big quotes in my kitchen that talk about growth from Lindsay Letters. It's this hand-lettered quote about growth and how it takes work and how it takes tears, but you can do it and you can push through. It's all about having basically a growth mindset and just pushing through hard times because I always felt like when something was really hard, it meant that it wasn't for me, that it meant that I needed to quit. I needed to stop. I always grew up that way. And I look back now and this is why I did nothing in my childhood. I didn't want to play a sport. I was too scared. I didn't want to go on big roller coasters and rides and do crazy things because I was afraid. I was like, oh, that must mean it's scary and bad and I should just stop. So mindset is everything. So when you want to feel better inside yourself, if you want to be on this journey to be the best version of yourself, you have to have a growth mindset because challenges are going to come up. And when that alarm goes off at five o'clock in the You have to just do it anyway. You have to push through and you have to understand that it's going to suck sometimes, but you have to be okay with that suck. And that's hard. It's really hard to do, especially if you want to be a better version of yourself because you're going to have to push yourself through. And this is what can hold us back sometimes. And I don't want you to do that. I want you to understand that I'm going to grow. I'm going to push myself. It's going to take pushing sometimes and pulling back sometimes as well because our priorities change. As moms, as women, we have a lot going on. I understand that you can't always keep pushing and I don't want you to live that hustle life either, but I just want you to understand that you can grow into the person that you want to be. You can become the best version of yourself. It's just going to take some time and some mindset shifts and to understand that you're going to have to have a really big big growth mindset if you want to change and become the best version of you. And the last thing I want to talk about with becoming the best version of yourself is you really have to start prioritizing your self-care and I know you might be sitting there like oh my gosh here we go rolling your eyes about self-care but you have to start thinking about how you can take care of yourself and here's the thing I don't think about self-care like everyone else in the world and I'm actually doing an episode about self-care how I think of it it is completely different from the rest of the world it I think of self-care as the little things that you do every single day in your life that are like having in your everyday that help you feel happy and to help you feel good inside yourself. I kind of like to call them happy habits that I have every single day. It's these little things that I do consistently every day that just make me feel good inside. I'm going to be doing an entire episode on it and it's going to be episode number three. And it's going to be a must listen because I really break down what I do to help myself feel good. And I want to help you do the same thing because self-care shouldn't be that monthly massage if you even do that. I don't do that ever. But I'm not saying that that's a bad form of self-care, but it's just not something that's sustainable that you can do every single day. It shouldn't be once a month. I feel good because I got a massage. It's those little things that you do every single day to take care of yourself. And taking care of yourself is going to help you inside yourself but it's also going to help you be a role model for everyone else around you your daughters your sons everyone they can say oh my gosh mom takes care of herself i need to do the same thing they're not going to see you laying on the couch wanting to fall over because you haven't taken two seconds for yourself So I have a lot of self-care tools and happy habits that I do for myself to help me feel good inside. And of course, they're like working out, getting up early, even my face wash routine, the products that I use. I absolutely love using them and they just make me feel good. I have a morning routine where I do gratitude and I pray and I do a little bit of journaling. And I can't get it in every single morning because I work full time as a teacher. But When I do do it, I just feel so good inside. I try my best to get it done, even if it's just for five minutes. I love listening to my favorite podcasts to fill me up, especially so when I'm driving to school, I listen to a podcast that helps me feel motivated. Something like this one. I hope that I become one of your self-care tools. in the car when you're driving when you're doing laundry you can listen and you can just feel motivated and uplifted inside and that's what i want so finding these things will help you manage your stress and anxiety it'll just help you feel joy and feel good inside and that is the whole point adding those little things in every single day to help you feel good okay so i hope this episode made sense to you and that you are now motivated and excited to feel better inside yourself, to become the best version of you or to be on the journey to be the best version of you. Because this is going to be a journey that you are going to be on for the rest of your life. I want to be on this journey for the rest of my life. I never want to stop working on myself. I never want to stop feeling, trying to feel better inside myself and teaching my kids to do the same thing. I want to be on this journey and And that's what's so great about this. This is what has changed my mindset, just making the decision that I'm going to do things that help me feel better inside. And it's just about taking action. You have to make the decision and then you have to take action. The coolest part and the hardest part about all of this is that you get to choose. You get to decide now. You get to choose how you want to feel. Are you going to make excuses and not do what feels good inside? Or are you going to make yourself and your well-being and your mindset a priority? In my late 30s and early 40s, I was done. I didn't want to feel like crap anymore. I didn't want to feel like garbage. I wanted to have confidence within myself. I didn't want to look at other people for ideas and for how I should live. I didn't want to do that anymore. The best version of you is out there and you're going to get some pushback when you try to do something like this for yourself, but it's okay. It's going to be okay. You just have to have your why in place. You have to say, this is why I want to do this. I want to do this for myself. I want to do this for my family. I want to do this for my daughter, for my son, so I can show them what it means to be the best version of yourself. You can't care what other people think. If I can share anything with you right now, it's to not care what anyone thinks about you. You're going to make choices and decisions that aren't going to make everyone happy and that's going to have to be okay. I battle this too because it's uncomfortable not to care. It's uncomfortable. You're not going to just say, I don't care what you think. No, it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable and that sucks. But I want you to practice getting comfortable with that uncomfortable feeling. It takes a lot of practice. It's not something that happens overnight. Because becoming the best version of you, it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable. It's a decision we make and it gets uncomfortable. And that's what makes it so amazing. You have to push yourself every day to be the version that you want to be. You have to push yourself to be someone that you're proud of. And you get to decide. You get to choose. Every single day I am going to be the best version of me. It's so rewarding. I can't even tell you. And it will change how you feel about yourself. I'm actually getting emotional thinking about it. Because my mindset has completely changed. Knowing that I get to work on myself every single day. I get to choose. I get to make the decision. And I want that for you too. I want you to feel confident. I want you to feel strong. I want you to feel brave. I want you to do what's best for you. This has nothing to do with anyone else. And yes, we have families and husbands and everything in our lives. But you have to feel good inside yourself. Don't you want to wake up every single day and just love who you are? And you're going to love yourself even more, I promise you, because I have, because I made the decision that I'm going to do what's best for me and do the things that I need to do to feel good inside. so I hope that you'll take this journey with me I hope you'll let me know how you like this episode and if you are going to make the choice to become that best version of you because I believe in you I know that you can do this and I know that this is going to change your life I know it will because it has changed mine and I just want you to remember that this is a journey your life is a journey and it should be fun and exciting every single day we're going to have ups and downs we're going to feel crappy some days and we're going to feel good some It's okay. And especially being a woman, if you are going through perimetopause and you have hormones and everything like that, or even menopause, yes, we are going to have ups and downs. It's going to be hard. But when we try to find things that help us feel good inside, even if it's with hormone related or Anything in your life, you're going to feel better because you're making the decision. So I want you to head over to the show notes if you want and get that free download so you can start mapping out what is the best version of you. If you have no clue how to do this, I have some guiding questions over there that can help you. So I really hope that you will try this and figure out how to become the best version of you. I'm so excited. It's such an awesome place to start. So head over to the show notes and get that download. And if you liked this episode, I would love for you to share it with a friend. If you have a woman in your life that you could share this episode with, I would be so grateful. This is how I'm going to grow this podcast. This is how I'm going to reach as many women as I can so I can help as many women as I can. Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I am so passionate about helping women feel good inside themselves, feeling more confident so that we can not only feel good inside ourselves, but that we can inspire this next generation of girls I have a daughter Grace and I know so many women out there who don't even have any kids or daughters that they can inspire other women or girls just by being the best version of themselves and I know that we can do this together if we come together as women and really start working on ourselves and really start feeling good inside ourselves that we can teach the next generation what to do so that they don't have to grow up feeling less and not worthy and not loving themselves because we all go through those times and we need to help each other and I hope that this podcast is something that you will come back to and that you can listen and feel inspired and motivated because that's what I want to do for you so please share this podcast episode with someone that you love I would really greatly appreciate it and if you have an extra couple minutes I would love for you to go over and rate and review the podcast and if you loved it and just Let me know what you loved about it and any episodes that you would love to hear. I would love for you to go over and rate and review because that will help me grow this podcast and this is something that I'm so excited to be doing and I'm so passionate about so thank you so much for listening and I want to leave you with an affirmation that I absolutely love that kind of sums up this podcast episode and I hope that you can take it with you for the rest of your day so that affirmation is taking care of myself allows me to be the best version of myself so I hope that you have a wonderful day and I will see you next week for another episode of the Build Strong Women podcast. Thank you so much for being here. See you next week.