5 Things We Need to Normalize
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As women, we have some unhealthy habits, beliefs, and behaviors that have been normalized and I think we need to normalize the OPPOSITE if we want to build a healthy and happy relationship with ourselves and others around us. And in this episode, I share what these five things are.
If you see someone who ISN’T normalizing the five things, let’s help them change their outlook by sending them this episode! The more women we get to listen to this episode, the more success we will have in normalizing these five things. So share it with your friends and family who need to hear this!
And if you loved this episode, I know you will also love…
Episode 69: Unlearning Society's Expectations for Us
In this episode, I explore why we think we need to become skinnier. Or more productive. Or less sensitive. Or more outgoing. Or whatever it is we think we need to become. Why do we think we need to become less of what we are and become more of what we are not?
Unfortunately, the society we live in has conditioned us to believe we should be a certain way, should look a certain way, and should live a certain way…and we believe it!
After you've listened to this episode, I challenge you to question why you are doing what you are doing. Are you doing it for yourself or for society?
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, hey, beautiful human. Can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real, with me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned. If you're ready to embrace your real, let's get it and let's go.
Hello, and welcome back to another bonus episode. Grateful that you're here. I'm going to dive right in. There are a few things that I believe new need to be normalized amongst women. As women, we have some unhealthy habits, beliefs, and behaviors that have been normalized. And I think that we need to start normalizing the opposite if we truly want to build a healthy and happy relationship with not only ourselves, but those around us.
But before I dive into these five things, I wanted to share this sweet review. It comes from Levines. She says, "love, love, love her podcast. I've been keeping a food journal for a while now. As I flipped through my entries, I could tell how much Julie has helped me improve my relationship with food. My relationship with food and body image are no longer as negative as they used to be. Less guilt, less stress, more love, and much, much happier. Healing and learning to love yourself is a gradual process. It took me close to three months to get to where I am now. I am thankful enough to have developed the habit of journaling down my progress. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known how far I've come. I'm truly, truly thankful to have found Julie's podcast."
First of all, I absolutely love this so much. I love that you're keeping a food journal. I love that you're in the habit of journaling. I agree with you. So, the other day was just in this box of stuff. My mom... As you get older, and I feel like it happens in your late 20s, early 30s, when your parents are like, okay, I no longer want your stuff in my basement. We kind of want to use this for X, Y, and Z. And so you start getting all this stuff that you kind of forgot that you had at your parents' house.
So anyways, my mom was here from Arizona and she brought this box of stuff and it was all of my papers and projects and journals from literally grade school all the way to my senior year in high school. And whoa, did I get a flashback. I was going through all my journal entries. But the one thing that I was looking back on... So I used to journal every single day, still journal every single day. And I feel like the reason why it's a no-brainer for me was because I've developed a habit like this girl said, developing the habit of journaling really allows you to look back and realize how much progress you've made. I was praying for things back when I was a senior in high school. I was praying for Josh, my husband, but I didn't know that it was Josh at the time.
And just looking back at my journaling and recognizing the things that I prayed for, I'm now living. And I've seen this quote all over Instagram and TikTok recently. And it's like, how many of the things that you're now living were things that you once prayed for? Be grateful for that. And I think that's so true. But honestly, you don't know that and you won't recognize that unless you take the time to journal things down. And this could be a whole nother podcast episode so I'll keep it short and sweet. But all that to say, I encourage you to journal. I encourage you to write stuff down. I know that it's going to feel like a task at first, because if it's not something that you're used to, you're going to be like, it takes so much longer to actually pen to paper and write stuff versus just putting it on your phone.
But I'm telling you something so special happens when you just carve out 5 to 15 minutes of your day, each day, to really prioritize a journaling habit. Whether that's five things that you're grateful for or things that you're praying for or whatever it is, you'll be able to look back whether that's in three months or three years and just realize how far you've come. So thank you for that review. I appreciate you so much. And also take that as your sign to start journaling because journaling has single handedly transformed my life.
Okay. So let's dive into the five things that we need to start normalizing. Number one, being lazy. Being lazy is normal and being lazy is healthy. We live in a society that believes in order to be validated. We need to go, go, go, go, go nonstop. And if we stop, we are no longer valued. Please, please, please remember that this is not true. We have to break this mentality. Some days you just need to lay on the couch, be lazy, not work out, not do your chores, not be productive and allow your body to recover from life. Yeah, that's right. Recover from life. Because life is hard and life is tiring and life can be stressful and overwhelming. We need those lazy days to help us reset and rejuvenate. If we don't give ourselves the time to be lazy, we put ourselves on the road to burnout. Avoid burnout, get energized, and enjoy your life more by being lazy.
And of course, this could be taken with a grain of salt. If you feel like you're lazy seven days a week and you're complaining about your life, yeah, I'm going to tell you to get your butt up and start setting some goals. But if you feel like you're in a place where you just cannot be lazy, try it. Even try it for a half day and say, okay, I'm going to be lazy for half the day, and then the rest of the day I'm going to be productive. If that's what you need to get started on being lazy and breaking this mentality, do it. Trust me when I say having a lazy day, every once in a while, or on a weekly basis, is so important and will actually help you to get more things done in your life.
Number two, women supporting women. Why are so many women so competitive with each other? They feel threatened or intimidated or less than or envious. They're constantly comparing themselves to each other and letting the comparison take away from their own accomplishments. Why do we do this as women? Why can't we realize that someone else's beauty or success or strengths won't take away from our own beauty success or strengths? There is enough to go around. It's not like there's a limited amount of beauty or limited amount of success or limited amount of whatever it is on this earth. There is more than enough to go around. So why can't we celebrate it? Why can't we look at someone's strengths and celebrate it? Why can't we look at it as motivation for us to get stronger? And why can't we look at their accomplishments and have that motivate us to recognize that there is room for success all around. I want to challenge you, the next time that you catch yourself feeling threatened or intimidated or less than, or envious of another woman, and instead change whatever you're feeling to support or love or genuine happiness for that woman.
I also believe that we're called to do that. I was just recently reading a book called Beauty Begins. I've talked about it in a previous episode. It's by Megan and Chris Shook. It's on my Amazon storefront. It's such a good book. And it was just talking about the true key to joy, J O Y, is Jesus first, others second, and yourself third. And I feel like how often do we forget to put others really second in our life? We try to put ourselves first and we realize that we're getting tired and worn out. And it just reminded me like, man, we are here on this earth to serve people. We are here on this earth to connect with people and celebrate people. I believe that when you take your eyes off of the mirror and looking at yourself and what you're doing and what you're not doing, and instead you fix your eyes on other people and really start celebrating them and encouraging them and building them up, you will in turn feel so much more satisfied because that's ultimately what we work created to do.
So please don't think that there's a limited amount of whatever it is that you're struggling with. And instead take your eyes off of yourself and really start to celebrate and love and encourage those who you might be struggling with feelings of envy or jealousy or comparison. Trust me when I say God does a work in our heart when we truly prioritize that in our life.
Number three, cellulite is normal. No amount of eating healthy or working out will prevent you from having cellulite. Some of the fittest and strongest women that I know still have cellulite. It's just a part of being a freaking woman. We need to stop believing that the airbrushed photos that you see are reality and realize that cellulite is normal. Stop trying to hide it. Stop trying to obsess about it. Stop trying to get rid of it and just accept the fact that it's part of being a human, being a woman, 99% of us have it. So please stop looking at it as something ugly or something that you want to get rid of and just start looking at it with eyes of acceptance, knowing that so many of us have it as well.
Number four, eating until we are full. I know so many women who think that if they eat until they're full, they did something wrong. They feel like they failed. They feel like they're going to gain weight. Please, please, please know that eating until you are full is the goal. That's the point of eating. So please, let's start to normalize it. No more saying, ugh, I'm full. I ate too much. No you didn't eat too much. You ate the amount that your body actually needs instead of depriving it of food. And while we're at it, can we start normalizing eating three balanced meals a day? Can we start normalizing eating unhealthy foods or going out to eat with our friends and family? Can we start normalizing eating the amount of food that our body actually needs instead of trying to eat as little as possible.
And number five, embracing your real. We need to stop pretending to be someone we are not. Whether it's hiding behind filters on Instagram or changing our opinion, beliefs, or actions or making decisions solely based on what others think or what they will think, or punishing our bodies to be something other than what they are just to impress. We've got to stop that. We need to normalize embracing our real and just showing up as our true, authentic self. Don't hide who you are. Show the world who you are and embrace it. It's okay if not everyone likes you. It's impossible for everyone to like all the same things. Everyone is different and they're going to vibe differently with different people. So be yourself and find the people who you vibe with, because that's ultimately going to make you the most happy.
And just remember this, when you stand for everything, you truly stand for nothing. And I've really found that over the last two years, especially with everything going on in the world, it's okay to have an opinion. And it's okay to differ opinions with people that you love. Know that not everybody's going to agree on everything. You can absolutely still love somebody who disagrees with you. But that doesn't mean you have to change your stance just because you want that person to like you. If they truly love you, they might not agree with you on everything that you do or everything that you believe in, or the stance that you take on certain topics, but you can still love them. And you can still try to find common ground in other areas of your life without feeling the need to water down your own opinion.
Okay. So let's recap. We are going to work on normalizing being lazy, women supporting women, cellulite, eating until we're full, and embracing our real. Lastly, I've got a challenge for you. If you see someone who isn't normalizing one of these five things, I want you to help them change their outlook and send them this episode. The more women that we can get to listen to this specific episode, the more success we will have in actually normalizing these five things. So share it with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of your friends that you feel like would really benefit from this bonus episode. You can even link and send it to them in a text message. You can also just post it up and share it to your socials and all of your circle of influence will see it. And that way we can get this message out and we can start normalizing these things more.
If you love this episode, I know you'll also love episode 69, Unlearning Society's Expectations For Us. Why do we think we need to become skinnier or more productive or less sensitive or more outgoing or whatever it is that we think we need to become? Why do we think we need to become less than what we are, and become more of what we're not? Unfortunately, the society that we live in has conditioned us to believe we should be a certain way, look a certain way, and live a certain way. And we believe it. So in this episode, episode 69, Unlearning Society's Expectations For Us, I challenge you to question why you are doing what you're doing. Are you doing it for yourself or are you doing it for society? I will link it in the show notes below so that you can easily go listen. But again, that's episode 69, Unlearning Society's Expectations For Us. You can go tune in to that episode.
That is all that I have for today's bonus episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll tell you in the next one.
Alright, sister. That's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the Gram, be sure to do so, Julie A. Ledbetter. Yes, it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. And I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real, because you're worth it.