The Ultimate Guide to Becoming Your Own Best Friend (Part 1)
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Are you your own best friend?
Do you treat yourself like you would your best friend?
“Treat others the way you want to be treated.” This is the golden rule that we all know of. But have you treated yourself the way you treat others?
Being kind to yourself as you are to others is a significant component of self-care and may have a big impact on your confidence and general well-being. And in this two-part episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast, I’m sharing my own insight into becoming your own best, it’s importance and how to do it.
What I discuss:
When you treat yourself with kindness and respect, you begin to believe in yourself more.
Treating yourself with kindness and respect can also have a positive impact on your mental health.
Most importantly, when you start to treat yourself like you would your best friend, you learn to love and accept yourself.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Episode 108: Self Love: The #1 Thing That Transformed My Mindset
Episode 85: What Would You Do If You Loved Yourself More?
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Transcript:
Hey. Hey, beautiful human. Can I steal 5 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. Let's go.
Hello and welcome back to another bonus episode. We often hear the Golden Rule treat others the way that you want to be treated. But what about treating yourself the way that you treat others?
Honestly, I personally think that this is just as important, if not more important. Like treating yourself the same way that you treat others is truly an important aspect of self-respect and can genuinely have a significant impact on your overall well-being and confidence. So let me ask you this Are you your own best friend? Do you treat yourself like you would treat your best friend?
I'm assuming the answer is probably no. And if that's the case, I've been there. That's why I'm making this podcast episode. I know how it feels. And so that's why in this episode I'm going to be sharing kind of my own insight into becoming your own best friend, why it's so important, and then how to do it. So this is going to be a two part series, so be sure to stay tuned for part two as this is part one of part two. But before we dive in, I want to share this review.
It comes from Caffeinated cowgirl. She gave a five star review and said absolute godsend. This show is a saving grace for me. Daily, Julie's passionate words of wisdom and nourishing your body and loving yourself unconditionally saved me. I had such a negative body image and negative mindset around myself. It was disabling. I discovered this podcast during the 2020 lockdown and haven't looked back. Thank you, Julie and crew, for this podcast. God bless. I love this so much.
Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to send this in. And man, 2020 was not a great year, but I have to say it was the year that this podcast launched and we have been going strong ever since three years. So thank you so much for being a true O.G. and now embrace your community and tuning in week after week. I genuinely appreciate you.
Okay, so let's dive in.
So if you wouldn't say it to your best friend, your mom, your sister, your niece, then why are you saying it to yourself? If you respect your best friend's boundaries, then why aren't you respecting your own? If you give your mom compassion, then why aren't you giving it to yourself? I think many people and this was me, guys, and this is still me certain days we tend to be much harder on ourselves than other people, which can lead to feelings of self-doubt, low self esteem, and even depression. So that's why I kind of want to explore some of the benefits of treating yourself with the same kindness and respect that you show others, as well as give you some tips for how to start incorporating this practice into your life.
So simply put, this is going to kind of be an ultimate guide to becoming your own best friend. I know it sounds cheesy, but hear me out. First off, I want to start talking about the benefits of kind of treating yourself the same way that you would treat your best friend.
So, number one, when you treat yourself with kindness and respect, you actually begin to believe in yourself more. You know how you're like you're you are your best friend's hype woman. You give her confidence when she needs it. You say like, Yeah, girl, look at you straight in that where that or you can totally crush this. You've got this like you are her cheerleader. Here's the thing. You can do this for yourself as well. You can do it all the time. What if you actually hype yourself up daily in the same way that you do for your best friend or your coworker or your husband or your mom or whoever it is that you tend to find yourself hyping up all the time. When you treat yourself with kindness and respect, you actually are starting to create a better, more positive self-image for yourself. And in turn, that positive self-image really allows you to believe in yourself more and trust in your abilities.
When you have confidence in yourself, you're able to likely take more risks, try new things, push yourself outside of your comfort zone, and when you have self-confidence, you're more likely to pursue your goals and aspirations. You're also more likely to bounce back from setbacks and failures because you have this strong self confidence. You have this sense of like, I can do this, like this. Resilience is an essential quality for success because setbacks are a natural part of any journey and the resilient aspect of you putting yourself out there, That's what's going to enable you to keep going when not if, but when you fall. And really all of this can truly happen simply by starting to treat yourself like you would treat your best friend. It's like a domino effect that can really lead to a very beautiful life.
Number two, treating yourself with kindness and respect can also have a positive impact on your mental health. So when we treat ourselves like we treat our best friends, we're actually starting to respect our boundaries just as we would respect our best friends, boundaries. We can learn to respect our own. And this means learning to say no when we need to, setting healthy boundaries in our relationships and actually sticking to them.
We wouldn't disrespect their boundaries. So why would we disrespect our own another way? Treating ourselves like our own best friend can really improve our mental health is that we start to pay attention to our own needs. So just as we would listen to our best friends when they're feeling overwhelmed or feeling in need of support. We can learn to listen to ourselves in the same way. And this means like really taking time to reflect on our own emotions, acknowledging when we need help or support or taking action to meet our own needs.
Like when we treat ourselves like our best friend. We are also learning to say no to being a people pleaser. Typically, we prioritize the needs and wants of others over our own, leading to feelings of stress and burnout and resentment. And so by learning to say no when when we need to, we can protect our own mental health and prioritize our own needs. I always say that I'm doing X, Y, and Z like I'm getting my workout in or I'm nourishing my body so that I can become the best possible version of myself so that I can go out and serve others in my best capacity. And that is like my number one driver in all that I do in terms of just prioritizing my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, nourishing my body, all of those things.
I know that I'm the best possible version of myself when I'm able to first do the things necessary so that I can become that best version of myself. Another thing too, on this topic is that when we treat our selves like our own best friend, we can also start to respect our own time and energy. So just as we respect our best friend's need for rest, recovery, need to prioritize certain things, we can learn to do the same in our own life so we can learn to take breaks when we need to. We can learn to push hard when we need to on those goals. Whatever it is overall, we can learn to prioritize our own well-being just as we respect our friends when they need that in their life.
And number three, most importantly, when you start to treat yourself like your own best friend, you really start to learn to love and accept yourself. So in the same way that we don't love our best friend more because they have a perfect body or they don't have a perfect body like it really does, it has nothing to do with their body. Your relationship and love for your best friend literally has nothing to do with their physical appearance. You love them regardless of what their body looks like. But when it comes to self, we are our harshest critic. Like we think our body needs to be a certain way in order to love and accept ourselves. And for some reason we make that a prerequisite. Like why is that a prerequisite for ourselves but not for our best friends? It just doesn't sound super fair.
So imagine if you looked at yourself the way that you look at your best friend. Imagine if you look at yourself, the way that you look at your niece or whoever it is that you love in your life so much. Imagine if you looked at yourself and noticed everything about you. Except your body. And that's why I truly believe that when we start to treat ourselves the same way that we treat the loved ones in our lives, we learn to really disassociate our bodies with who we are. Our bodies are not who we are. When we do this, we finally learn to love and accept ourselves for who we are, who God created us to be. We realize that our body really has no impact in terms of who we are. Our purpose here, of course, I will always be the biggest advocate for honoring and taking care of the temple that God has allowed you to live in. But what our body does or doesn't look like really doesn't determine our level of appreciation, acceptance, or love for it.
Okay. So we just talked about the three benefits of kind of treating yourself the way that you would treat a best friend, but how do we actually start to put it into practice? That's what I'm going to be talking about in part two. So stay tuned for that.
But first, let me recap the three kind of benefits of treating yourself the same way that you would treat your best friend. Number one, when you treat yourself with kindness and respect, you begin to believe in yourself more. Number two, treating yourself with kindness and respect can also have a positive impact on your mental health. And number three, most importantly, when you start to treat yourself like you do your best friend, you really start to look at yourself for everything but your body like who you truly are and recognize that has nothing to do with your body.
It has nothing to do with physical appearance. It has to do with the content, your character, your gifts, your talents, all of those things like who you are and you start to love and appreciate and respect that for genuinely who you are.
So in part two, I'm going to be sharing again kind of how this looks in action. How do we start to become our own best friend? So stay tuned for that. If you love this episode though, I know you'll also love episode 108 Self-love. The number one thing that transform my mindset. I will be sure to link that in the show notes that you can easily go tune into that. And then also. Episode 85 What would you do if you loved yourself more? So I will link both of those in the show notes that you can even go tune into those in the meantime as you wait for part two?
I know it sounds cheesy, but I'm here to tell you that this can be very profound in just cultivating a deeper relationship with yourself. Because at the end of the day, like, you have to like yourself. You live in your body. You're the only one that's going to live in this physical shell for the however long we're able to be blessed on this earth, like however long or short we're here. And I want you to have the best possible relationship with yourself. I want you to be your own biggest cheerleader. I want you to love and appreciate yourself and respect the boundaries, all the things that we do on a daily basis for other people so freely and so easily. I want to learn that for ourselves because I really think that it can have a profound impact in our life.
So thank you so much for tuning in. I would love to hear kind of your aha moments. You can always DM us on this show. Instagram. Embrace you real or movement with Julie or Julie A Ledbetter, whichever of the three you prefer. I always love hearing from you.
That is all that I have for today's episode. I love you so dang much. I mean it and I'll talk to you in the next one.
All right, 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 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 the real because you're worth it.