11: The Power of Unbecoming: Journey to Your Authentic Self

Are you living a life that truly reflects who you are? In this transformative episode of the Build Strong Women podcast, we delve into the profound concept of "unbecoming." Discover how shedding societal expectations, limiting beliefs, and outdated roles can liberate your authentic self. We explore the journey of self-discovery, empowering you to break free from external pressures and embrace your true identity.  Learn practical strategies to identify and release the layers that no longer serve you, fostering personal growth and self-acceptance. 

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Transcript

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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. Just trying to become the best version of themselves. Let's learn together, build our confidence, learn to love who we are so that we can teach the next generation of girls to grow up to be strong and confident women. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of the Build Strong Women podcast. Thank you so much for being here and tuning into this week's episode. And thank you so much for anyone that has messaged me and let me know that you are loving the podcast, that it's helping you. It actually means everything to me. Sometimes I get a little worried, like, oh my gosh, is this meaning something to someone? Am I helping people? Am I making a difference? And when someone reaches out to me and tells me that they are loving the podcast and it is helping them, Oh my gosh, it just brings tears to my eyes. So thank you so, so much. Make sure also that you head over to the show notes and get on my email list because every week I'm sending out new emails and I really want to connect with you there and I want you to be inspired and build your confidence and Become the best version of yourself. And I hope that I'm giving you so much information and ideas through this podcast. But I also do that through my email list as well. And the emails that I send out, I absolutely love doing them. So I hope that you can click over to the show notes and make sure that you get on my email list. Okay, so let's dive into this week's episode. So this week's episode, we are diving deep into a powerful concept about I'm becoming who you're not so that you can become who you are truly meant to be. And I heard this quote from a podcast I was listening to and I was like completely blown away. I'm pretty sure that this quote came from the Rachel Hollis podcast, but I'm not exactly sure, but I put it into my notes app and I went back to it and I started thinking about it like, oh my gosh, this would be such a great podcast episode because it is so true for when we really take a good look at our life and we really take a good look about who we are, how we act, how we think, and the person that we want to be inside of ourselves. So sometimes we become someone that we don't actually know. love. We don't love the way we act. We don't love the way we treat ourselves. We don't love ourselves at all. So sometimes we have to unbecome who we're not so that we can really become the person that we are. So a lot of times as we grow up and as we get older into adulthood and things like that, we become a person by who we surround ourselves with. Who do we hang out with? What are we watching on social media? What has happened to us in our past? And what we do is we start creating these limiting beliefs and in turn we become someone that we don't even recognize. So what I want to explore in today's episode is how holding on to these roles and labels that no longer fit us, even the limiting beliefs and the self-doubt that we have on ourselves or what society puts on us, we need to try to break free from those chains. If you want to become someone that is strong and confident and motivated and all the things that you want for your life. I don't even know what you want for your life or who you want to be. All I know is is that you have to take a good look at your life and really start breaking away and chipping away at the self-doubt and the limiting beliefs that we have built up over the years so that you can become who you want to be in this world. When we were in our 20s or maybe even into our 30s we're just trying to figure out who we are with jobs and young families and everything around us and we just start to conform to what everyone else is doing and what their opinions are. We start living that kind of life. We're just trying to fit in. But as we get older, those things just don't seem to align with us anymore. It's almost like we mature and we grow up and we start recognizing, you know what, I don't really feel good inside myself. What is going on? And that is why I was so excited and blessed and everything in this world about finding personal development because I wasn't feeling good inside myself and I really was thinking what is going on with me? Why do I feel like this? And I just wasn't aligning with who I wanted to be and who I knew deep down I was. I was conforming to everyone else's opinions and ideas of what a young mom should be and how a young mom should act and what I should look like and what the things that I should like and not like. I was comparing myself to everyone around me. I was listening to those voices and I wasn't being true to myself and I didn't even know that. And once you start working on yourself and discovering the things that light you up and things that make you happy, bring you joy, the things that don't, your life completely changes once you are intentional about these things. So I was married very young in my early 20s and I don't regret that for a minute, but I was still trying to figure out who I was in my 20s and 30s and I look back now and I regret so many things. I don't like saying that because all of those things have really shaped me into who I am today, but I just wish I could go back to my younger self and guide her a little bit more. Do you ever feel that way? Or teach her to look inside herself or to really focus on and find out and try to discover what she loves because so often I I know for myself I was always looking for other people to give me the answers to tell me what brings me joy and I want to just go back and tell her to figure out what brings her joy what makes her feel good inside without looking at everyone else around her I did that in so many ways in my life and I know that it hurt my self-esteem and my confidence and I never really pursued growth in my life because I didn't know how to do it I didn't know what it meant to grow I think that's why I I'm so passionate now to be doing this work on myself and to help other women try to do the work on themselves too, to teach you how to do this work on yourself so that you can feel good inside because it is so important. So recently I was on Instagram and there is this trend going on about posting a reel describing how you took your old self to coffee and I'm like completely obsessed with it. I love reading people's stories. I don't know if you've seen it on Instagram. It's essentially about how you take your old self to coffee and you kind of go back and look back at your old self and what she was like and who you used to be and you compare it with who you are today and kind of like how you're cheering her on and you're telling her what's going to happen in her life. Share how your life was in your 20s and then tell her what your life is going to be like now. I just love this concept because it would be so cool to go back and talk to your younger self and just kind of give her advice and tell her not to worry about those little things that you worried about back then. And I just love it because it just shows the evolution and the growing and learning of people that post about taking their old self to coffee. It's really, really cool. If you haven't checked it out, you need to go over on TikTok on Instagram and check it out because it's really neat. And I posted one recently and I just love doing it. It was almost like a therapy session. Thank you. So if you think about your life right now and maybe you aren't feeling really good inside yourself and you're still struggling with some of the things that you struggled back when you were in your 20s or 30s and you really want to feel better about yourself, you may need to take a deeper dive into who you are and start to unbecome or strip away some layers of the things that are weighing you down. Maybe your mindset is just in the dumps or your health is in the dumps or your relationships aren't serving you anymore. Sometimes we need to overhaul things that we don't even know about, and we don't know where to start. That's why I wanted to talk to you about this concept of unbecoming our old beliefs and our old habits, and maybe even our old roles that don't serve us anymore. Sometimes our family, our society, social media, they all put these chains on us that we think that we have to conform to, and it's just not true. This isn't easy work, but it's work that needs to be done so that we can feel good inside ourselves. The whole goal is so that you can look back on your life in 20 years when you take yourself to coffee someday and you think about the old you and how you want to tell yourself how proud you are that you're doing the work right now so that you can become the best version of yourself at this moment. The funny thing is the best version of yourself at this moment is not going to be the best version of yourself in 20 years. You will not be that version anymore. You will be someone new. You will have new things that you love, new things you don't like, and you will be discovering so much along this journey. That's the coolest part because it's a process. It's something that you will keep working on until the day that you die. And that is what I love about personal development. Every single day is a chance for you to become better than you were yesterday what i want women to understand and you to understand is that once you decide that you want to become the best version of yourself and you want to unbecome and let go of those limiting beliefs and that self-doubt and all the layers that are just weighing you down you will feel so much better in every area of your life you will have so much more clarity and self-awareness for what you like for what you don't like what things bring you joy what things don't bring you joy, what things you want to do in your life, the things you want to try and the things you want to get rid of in your life. You might have relationships in your life that are just weighing you down. And sometimes we can't help those relationships because they could be family members or very close coworkers. And sometimes we just have to deal with hard people. But once you decide that these relationships are weighing you down and they're not serving you anymore and they're not bringing you joy, you will feel so free when you start to recognize the people and the things that are weighing you down. You will grow your confidence and you will have so much more belief in your abilities you'll be so much more courageous in your life and brave when you start becoming that person that feels good to you. Okay, so now what I wanna do is I wanna give you some strategies for identifying the layers that you don't need anymore, all of those hard things that are weighing on you, that are bringing you down, that aren't making you feel good, that aren't bringing you joy. So first of all, I want you to think and write about all the things that you value in your life. What are your values? What are your beliefs of who you are today? I have an episode on becoming the best version of yourself. I think it's like episode two. And I think it is so important for us to really sit down and take 20 to 30 minutes to dive deep into who we are as a person. Who is the person that you want to be? How do you want to feel? How do you want to live? Are you someone that wants to live a healthy lifestyle? Do you want to be someone that exercises, that makes healthy meals and eats well? Are you someone that wants to try new things and be really brave in your life? I want you to write down all the things that you value in your life because what you value isn't what the person sitting next to you values as well. I'm sure You'll have some similarities, but you need to really dive deep into the things that you value. What are your beliefs? What do you find valuable in your life? What brings you joy? So once you have written down all the things that you value in your lives and the beliefs that you have about yourself, you need to start living your life and tailoring your behaviors and how you show up in the world around those values and beliefs because those are your values and your beliefs. It is what is important to you. You need to start living life on your terms. Why would you do things that don't bring you joy and that you don't value? For example, I have been really taking a step back from drinking alcohol. It doesn't make me feel good. It doesn't serve me. It just makes me feel like garbage. So I really don't like to drink. And it's really hard for me to go to social situations because everyone around me is drinking. Everyone drinks. And I made a decision in my life just because everyone else is drinking. Actually, I made a in my life. That was one of my promises in the summer. I'm not going to drink because it doesn't make me feel good. So why would I do that? It is not something that I value. I don't think that you need to drink to have fun. Yes, maybe it makes you loosen up and all those other things, but it makes me feel like garbage inside and I don't want to do it. So it doesn't serve me anymore. So I really had to take a step back and think about, okay, I don't really value this. It doesn't bring me joy. It doesn't help me. So why would I do it? Just because everyone else is doing it and yeah absolutely I've had pushback and questions and people wondering what the heck I'm doing but I have to stick strong to my values I have to do what serves me if I want to feel good inside myself I want to make this decision for me and my lifestyle and And not everyone's going to agree with me. And back then in my 20s and 30s, if I didn't want to drink or even anything in my life, if I didn't want to do something that everyone else was doing, I probably still would have done it anyway. I wouldn't have thought of myself. I wouldn't have thought of what brings me joy and makes me happy. I would have just done what everyone else is doing. And that's exactly what I did. And that's why I didn't feel good inside myself. It has nothing to do with drinking. It has to do with just making decisions in my life that was making everyone else happy. And I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want. you to do that anymore as well and that's why I wanted to really do this episode we have to become who we think we should be so that we can become our truest self our best self and that's why I'm here to help you do just that writing out your values can be such a freeing experience when you start doing this exercise I really want you to start thinking about the stories you tell yourself or your negative thoughts that you have about yourself because here's the thing you are capable of so much more than you think you are and that's what i want every woman to know you don't have to settle Once you know what you really value in life, you can start living life on your terms. You can really start pushing past those negative thoughts that you have about yourself or any kind of pressure that you have from anyone around you. And I'm telling you this from experience because I never thought in a million years that I would be someone that would be helping other women feel better inside themselves or that I would have a podcast or that I would have a blog or that I would even show up on social media. If I took my 20-year-old self to coffee, she would have laughed right in my face and thought I was lying. I was a girl who in high school, if I was going to give a presentation, I would fake sick that day or I would get myself so worked up that I would actually make myself sick. So what I really want you to take away from this episode is that You can become anyone that you want to be. You can feel any way that you want to feel. You just have to do the work. I really want you to dive deep into who you want to be and the values that you have in your life and start living your life in that way as that person. I want you to replace that negative self-talk. I want you to believe in yourself and know that you are capable of so much more. Catch yourself when those negative thoughts come into your mind. I also want you to catch yourself all of those moments when you're around other people that then when they are bringing you down because there are so many influences around us that we don't even know or even when you're scrolling on social media if you catch yourself comparing and not feeling good inside yourself because you're scrolling on social media stop it right there catch yourself the last thing we need in our lives is to be scrolling on social media and just feeling like garbage after that there is no reason for it we have control so if you want to live a life that you love you really have to start looking deep inside yourself. Maybe you need to start shedding some layers that aren't serving you anymore. Maybe you need to start saying no. Maybe you need to start saying yes to different things. Maybe you need to stop having those negative thoughts about yourself. I think that's why this quote just struck me so much because becoming who you are is about unbecoming who you're not, about shedding those layers. It made me really think back of who I was back then 20 years ago even and how I'm not the same person and no one should ever be the same person as you were 20 years ago but how I've changed for the better and that's what I want for you as well. I want you to change and grow and just feel good inside yourself. I want you to start being more courageous than you've ever been before. I don't want you to hold back anymore. I want you to start doing courageous things in your life. I want you to speak up. I want you to try new things. I want you to chase your passions and your dreams and find a hobby that you love I want you to be proud of yourself I want you to become someone that you are so proud of let me tell you right now there is a safe way to live your life and that means you will avoid all hard things you will never be uncomfortable but on the other side of that you're not going to live a life that you're proud of You're going to look back and think, oh my gosh, I wish I would have taken that chance. So let's make that decision today. Let's strip down those layers that have been holding us back, that have been holding us down, and become the person that you want to be. Maybe you don't even know who you want to be yet, but if you start focusing on living a life under your terms and the values that you have in your life, it's going to be a great life. And maybe you're going to be a little uncomfortable sometimes because you have to make decisions that are best for you. But that's okay. Start making your values your North Star. Start working towards that. Start living that life. Because I promise you, you will be so happy that you did. Okay, so I really hope that you enjoyed today's episode and that you got something out of this episode. Listening to that quote when I heard it on a podcast, I just... it just struck something inside of me and I'm like oh my gosh absolutely we just have to break free from those chains that are holding us down we have to live freer and I really wanted to share that with you so I hope you like this episode and if this was helpful I would be so grateful if you could share it with a friend even just one friend that would honestly mean everything and if you could take a few moments if you have some to spare to go over and rate and review the podcast that also means the world to me too I so appreciate it I love showing up for you I I love inspiring you, helping you, motivating you, whatever you need. I love to connect with you here. And if you have something that you're struggling with or you have a topic that you would love for me to do an episode on, I would love to hear from you. All you have to do is head over to the show notes and there's a little button that says send us a text and you can text me a podcast episode idea. It is completely anonymous. I have no idea who is sending me messages. So just go over there, click the link and you can just text me an episode idea or something that you're struggling with or something that you would love for me to dive deep on, I would love to hear from you. So as always, I'd love to end with an affirmation to motivate you, to encourage you and to help you through your week or your day, whatever you need. And that affirmation is, I am living a life based on my values and who I am meant to be. Thank you again for being here. I hope that you have a wonderful day and I'll see you on next week's episode.