22: The Summer You Start Keeping Promises to Yourself

There’s something about summer—a season that feels wide open with possibility. But without a little intention, it’s easy to let the days slip by without showing up for you. In this episode, I’m sharing how the Summer Promise Challenge helps women step into the season with purpose, confidence, and self-trust.

You’ll learn how to:
 🌞 Set a simple, soul-aligned promise
 🌱 Build habits that actually stick
💪 Create daily momentum without overwhelm
🧠 Strengthen your mindset with consistency
✨ Feel more grounded and proud of the way you show up

Whether you’ve been feeling stuck or just craving more inner alignment, this challenge is your invitation to reconnect with yourself and grow from the inside out.

JOIN THE SUMMER PROMISE

This summer, let’s stop breaking promises to ourselves. Let’s start showing up—gently, intentionally, and with love.

Discover how one small promise can change everything.

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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 back to another episode of the Build Strong Women podcast. Thank you so much for being here and tuning into this week's episode. I'm really excited about this week's episode and It is a great one. So if you've been feeling a little unmotivated, a little scattered, and I know summer is coming, you are going to want to listen to this week's episode. To me, summer is all about a refresh. It's new beginnings. I love to create bucket lists. I love to create goals for the summer. I just get really motivated this time of year. Maybe it's because it's the change of season. I'm going to be done working and I'll have my days back. But I really am excited about what I'm going to be sharing with you because I think it's going to help you in So many women just feel better inside themselves and I'm going to be introducing you to the Summer Promise Challenge and I cannot wait to tell you what it's all about because it's really going to help you. But let's rewind to last summer and let me tell you why this challenge means so much to me and how it just came to be. So there was a time last summer, it was actually July, where I just felt at my lowest point. I just felt blah inside. I didn't feel good about myself. And you'd think I'd be like really happy. It was summertime. I was off of work. My kids were home. I had so much more flexibility, but I just felt stuck. I felt off. And you know, sometimes I think we get really down on ourselves. It's like, why do I feel like this? There's nothing bad going on in my life. And sometimes we can just have this mental, you know, craziness going inside our heads thinking like I shouldn't be feeling like this. I should be feeling happy and joyful but I'm just not and I just think that that's okay and I think all women need to know and understand that sometimes we're just going to feel off. We're going to feel stuck. We're not going to feel good and that is okay. So when I was at this low point I just started journaling and journaling and I realized in that moment when I was journaling it hit me like literally like a ton of bricks that I I wasn't following through on the things that I know that help me feel good. I know that exercise is good for my mind and I wasn't doing it the way I wanted to do it. I wasn't doing it as much as I wanted. I know that I was eating garbage food. I know that I wasn't doing the things that I wanted to do with my kids and it was just weighing on me and it was bringing me down and I wasn't following through on the things that I know that helped me to feel good inside. I was probably going to bed really late and I just all the things so What I did is I wrote down 10 promises that I wanted to keep to myself. I do have a whole podcast episode on this. It's such a good one. I really dive deep into what happened with those promises. Thank you so much for joining us. It actually changed my life. Making promises to myself now and following through on the things that I know that help me feel good has changed my life. And that is why I wanted to create this summer promise for you to help you make promises to yourself and actually follow through on them. And then you can see that when I make a promise to myself, I learn to start trusting myself. I start to build my confidence. And it's going to change your life. So those promises turned into something so much I started creating habits around my promises that if I do these habits, I know that I'm going to follow through on my promises. And now I call those my happy habits. And that has a whole framework around it because I know there's different areas of my life that I need to do things to help me feel better. So if you're feeling like disconnected with yourself and just not feeling good and you know that you're not following through on the things that you know that make you feel good, this summer promise might be for you. So when I sat down to plan this summer, I knew I didn't want to be a repeat of last summer. I'm not doing that again. I didn't want to have this low point in my life in the middle of summer when I'm supposed to be feeling my best. And I know that I needed some kind of structure to help me follow through on the things I need to follow through on. And I have been doing this since that moment, making promises to myself and keeping them. And you know, I have a journal that I have created for myself to help me really Focus on those promises. Okay, this is my intention for the day. When you start your day with intention of this is how I'm going to follow through, it changes everything. So I wanted to create something that would help other women just like you and just like me stay consistent and so that you can be proud of yourself and that you can grow real confidence inside yourself. So let's talk about why I'm picking summer. Now, I know that summer can feel like a season that I know we're going to slow down. We're going to go on vacation and things like that. But it's actually a perfect time to start. When a schedule kind of opens up a little bit and there's a lot of less noise and after school activities and the less pressure and commitments, we can finally open up a little space to look inside ourselves. And that's how I see summer. I feel like summer really gives us room to breathe. of the things that I hoped for, like my bucket list and my goal list that I make. So summer has the potential to really nourish us if we show up for intention. And that's where this summer promise challenge comes in. You don't need a massive plan. You don't need a huge overhaul. You don't need this crazy, crazy challenge to make you go insane. You just need to make one small promise to yourself and and the intention to keep it. It's not a boot camp. It's not a crazy transformation program. It's like a reset. It's a simple invitation for you to choose yourself this summer. So let me talk about what this Summer Promise Challenge is. So it's a five-week experience designed to help you follow through on the promises you make to yourself. This is all about you and the promise that you want to keep. I'm not going to tell you what your promise is. You need to think about what you... want to choose for you and what is going to make you feel good, what is going to make you feel accomplished, what is going to help you really feel your best. So what you're going to do is you're going to choose one to two promises at the beginning of the challenge, something that feels supportive, not overwhelming. We're not trying to overwhelm you this summer. We're just trying to spark something inside of you that you can start trusting yourself and that you can really follow through on something that you commit to. And it can be as easy as I'm going to take a walk after dinner. I'm going to drink a glass of water before I have my coffee. I'm going to read before bed instead of scrolling on my phone. I'm going to start speaking kindly to myself. I'm going to say one affirmation to myself in the morning when I get up. It can be anything. No one else decides for you. This is about honoring you and who you are. So you're going to make one to two promises. I think any more than that, that would be overwhelming because this is going to be for five weeks. And like I said, I feel like they're going to be really simple promises for you. So it's going to be manageable and doable for summer. So also each week, there's going to be a theme to guide you with your mindset. I'm also going to be including some podcast style audio for me each week so that you can kind of get a boost of encouragement and a weekly reset together so I can help you and motivate you each and every week to keep your promises to become intentional each week. And you're also going to have materials to help you track your promises and really build momentum. And it's not about feeling guilty when we don't follow through on our promises, because trust me, I really struggled with that too. At first I was like, oh my gosh, I'm really, you know, sometimes I'm not following through on my promises and then I'm feeling guilty about it. But I really worked through that to saying, okay, this is a new day. This is a new moment. I'm going to start fresh again. And that's what this is all about. Not feeling guilty when we don't follow through, but really learning to trust ourselves and And if we fall down, being gentle with ourselves and getting back up again. So the part that I love about this challenge is really probably the journal pages. So there are journal pages for every day of the week for... the five weeks and it's a really, really quick thing. It's actually what I do in my promise journal. So this is kind of like a glimpse of the promise journal that I'm going to be creating for the fall to help women really follow through on their promises. So this little summer promise challenge is kind of like a glimpse of my promise that's coming in the fall. But what this is is just a quick intentional moment in the morning for you to write down the gratitude, read over your promises, write down some habits that are going to help support your promises, and then just a little journal section that helps you just kind of free write or you write your goals or you can brain dump whatever it is. And that's what I do every single morning. So it's really getting a glimpse of what I do every morning to help me follow through on my promises. And like I said, my promises aren't these big grand things. They're just these little things that I know that help me with my mental health. I really need to be intentional about being positive. I really need to be intentional about following through on the things that I know that help me feel good, like moving my body and doing some things that help me bring me joy and help me to feel positive. I really need to be intentional about bringing peace into my life because I can go 100 miles an hour and never stop and never stop. just crash at the end of the night. I really need to be intentional about showing up for myself because if I don't, my mental health suffers. And I have had anxiety, I have had mild depression in my life, and I have learned that I really need to take care of my mental health. And having this practice every morning of setting my intentions for who I want to be That has changed my life. And that's what this promise challenge is all about. The summer promise is about you promising yourself, you know what, I'm going to make a couple promises to myself and I'm going to try to follow through on them. They're not going to be crazy. They're going to be really simple. And I'm going to do what's best for me. Because I believe with my whole heart when a woman keeps a promise to herself. Everything changes. She starts to trust herself. She starts to feel a little braver, more confident. She stops apologizing for needing time for herself. She doesn't need permission because she's already given it to herself. This challenge is not about being perfect. It's about showing up for yourself with kindness and consistency because I'm telling you right now, that is how we grow our confidence within ourselves. That is how we model to our kids and anyone around us what confidence looks like. So much is going to open up for you and your confidence and your mindset and the belief you have in yourself. So this summer promise is another checklist. I'm telling you, it's five weeks to rebuild and trust yourself. One moment at a time. Because when you keep one small promise to yourself, you're going to start feeling more confident. You're going to stop second guessing yourself. You're going to show up with more energy and intention. You're going to actually believe in yourself and reconnect with the version of you that feels grounded and happy. And you are going to be on this journey to become the best version of yourself. And that's the journey we're on. To become the best version of ourselves every single day. You don't need another goal. You don't need another, you know, new year to start over again you just need a promise that you're willing to keep one that fits your actual real life it's not some big grand thing it's these small little things that add up And this summer promise is going to give you this simple structure for you to stay consistent and not feel guilty. I'm going to help you through motivation and weekly themes to guide you on your growth. You're going to have a downloadable journal that's going to help you so immensely. I'm so excited about this journal. It's absolutely beautiful and gorgeous. You can either... Buy the digital version or you can buy the printed version. I think sometimes women, they get overwhelmed with these digital copies of things. I want to get a printed version in your hand. So if you choose the printed version, yes, it's going to be a little bit more money, but it's worth it because you have this actual tangible journal in front of you guiding you. You're not just going to build better habits. You're going to build trust in yourself. And you're going to have encouragement and accountability. And someone who gets it. That is me. I have been there. I have been in a place where I was so low and felt so terrible inside. And I just started with making promises to myself and trying to keep them. It wasn't about keeping every one perfectly. Absolutely not. It was just about showing up every single day. And doing it for myself, doing it so that I can feel better inside myself. And that's what I want for you. That's what I want for all women. I want you to feel better inside yourself. And summer is the perfect time to do it. So we're going to be starting on, let me look at my calendar. We're going to be starting on June 23rd for five weeks. And you can head to the link in the show notes to sign up. I'm so excited for you. As soon as you sign up, you will be on the list for getting either the digital or the printed. You can pick which either one you want. And I will be there for you every step of the way. And I promise it's going to shift something in you. This summer is yours. 2025, this summer is yours. So let's make it a season where we finally... follow through on something for ourselves we keep our promises we grow our confidence and I cannot wait to do this with you because don't you worry I am going to be doing this summer promise just like you my husband said that he wants to do it too and I'm just really really excited about it so I hope that you will do this summer challenge with me it's going to be so great it's very small very intentional but it's going to help you so much you're going to get gain so much from this and I just am so excited about it so if you have a friend that would you think that you guys could do this summer challenge together that would be completely awesome send them over my way send them this podcast send them the link for the summer promise I would love to have as many women as I can I have a really big goal for this for this summer to just reach as many women as I can that's what I want to do I want to make a difference in women's lives I literally could cry thinking about it Because I was this way. I struggled for so long with my confidence and just not feeling good inside myself and I didn't know how to change. I didn't know I could work on myself. And when I found personal development and just really started diving deep into it, it changed my life. And I would love to be someone that could change someone else's life. And I hope that I am with this podcast and everything that I share because it means everything to me. I'm sorry I'm getting emotional, but I know how other people have changed my life and I hope to be a change in your life or someone's life that just doesn't feel good inside themselves. So please, please join this summer promise with me. It's going to be so great. You're going to get a glimpse into my promise journal that I do every single morning that has literally changed my life and I know it's going to change yours too. I want you to make this promise. I want you to feel good inside yourself. I want this to be the summer where everything changes. You just start to trust yourself. You just start to believe in yourself because I know that you can do it and I know that we can do it together. And I'm here to guide you and show you and motivate you. So let's make this the best summer ever. So please make sure that you head over to the show notes and click on the link and sign up for the summer promise. We are starting on June 23rd That is in one, two, three weeks. Sorry, my calendar's right here. Three weeks we're starting and I cannot wait. I am so, so excited about it. Okay, so I'm going to end this episode like I do every episode with an affirmation to help you on your day and get you through your week. And I really hope to see you in the Summer Promise Challenge. And that affirmation is, I choose actions today that support the life I want tomorrow. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I hope that you will share this with a friend and that you can do this Summer Promise with a friend and We can help as many women as we can feel better inside themselves. So have a great day and I will see you on next week's episode.