5 Important Things I Learned in 2021
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WOW! After some deep reflection on 2021, I realized I learned A LOT in 2021. Honestly, I believe starting the year off by reflecting on what I learned from the previous year is one of the best things I could do for myself. This helps me avoid making the same mistakes twice and helps set myself up for success for the year ahead of me. I think it’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of life and never stop to reflect. With all that being said, I put together this podcast episode to share the five most important things I learned in 2021 in hopes of inspiring you to learn these same things (and also to inspire you to reflect on what you have learned!)
In this episode, I also share something super exciting! From now until mid January, every week I will be picking ONE of you who leaves a review on the podcast and giving you a free entry to our next Honor Your Body Challenge (starting January 17th!)
If you’re not familiar with what the Honor Your Body Challenge is, This 4-week challenge, is a fabulous way to kickstart the New Year as you intentionally honor your body through 3 key areas of your health: movement, nutrition and mindset for the next 30 days.
Spots are limited, so be sure to get on the waiting list and you’ll be first in line to sign up on January 3rd, 2022!
Join the waitlist here: www.honoryourbodychallenge.com
(If you purchase a spot + leave a review and win a free spot, don't worry, I give you a refund)
Go leave your review and enjoy this episode!
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, they're beautiful human, you're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice 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 the Embrace Your Real Podcast. It is the first official episode of 2022. I love starting off the year of by reflecting on what I learned the previous year. I think that this is a great way to help me avoid making the same mistakes twice. And it also sets me up for success for the year ahead. I think that it's super easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of life. And thus, we never stop to reflect on what the seasons of life that we're going through have taught us. And so in today's episode, I have shared five really important things that I've learned over this past year, in 2021, in hopes of inspiring you to learn the same things, or inspire you to reflect on what you have learned over this past year.
But before I do, and before I dive into the episode, I wanted to share something really exciting that is happening. From now until mid January, every single week, I will be picking one of you guys who leave a review on Apple Podcasts to get a free entry into the Honor Your Body Challenge, the first challenge that we are kicking off January 17th. If you are not familiar with what the Honor Your Body Challenge is, this is a four-week challenge. It's a fabulous this way to kick off the New Year, as you intentionally honor your body through the three key areas of your health, your movement, your nutrition, and your mindset. So for the next 30 days, we are going to be doing this alongside one another.
You can actually learn more, spots are limited for this challenge, you can go to www.honoryourbodychallenge.com. By the time that you are tuning in on January 3rd is when enrollment opens. So if you are interested in that, I would love to do this alongside of you. But also, if you want to win a free entry. So if you purchase a spot in the challenge because maybe you want to make sure that you're in and you leave a review, if you get chosen, I will simply just refund your challenge entry. So if you sign up and you also leave a review on the podcast, so any Apple device, it can be an iPad, an iPhone, your MacBook, type in Embrace Your Real. Be sure to, number one, subscribe so that you never miss an episode, and two, leave a rating and review.
I will be randomly picking a few of you guys every single week, and I will be giving a free entry to you. Or if you purchase, I will be refunding your entry. Thank you in advance, the reviews truly do help us out so, so much in growing this podcast, in reaching more women all across the world, in hopes that they can embrace the real. All right? So let's dive into the five things that I learned in 2021. Number one, just do the thing. Sometimes you just need to go do it. It doesn't matter if it's scary or if that time doesn't seem right, or if you're not sure it's the right move to make. What I have learned is that, number one, it will always be scary, number two, the time will never feel 100% right, and number three, if it's not the right move, the decision is typically reversible. And if it's not, you gain experience from it. And I think that that's really important to remember.
For example, my husband to Joshua and I have been wanting to get a warehouse to help us expand our business. But we kept putting it off, we kept making excuses, and we kept just saying, "Oh, next year, oh, in the next season of our life." But finally the opportunity came and we just did it. We jumped in. And while it was scary, and while we weren't sure if it was the right move, and honestly, we still are going through getting it ready, it's taken a lot longer than we thought it would, we just did it anyways. We decided to take the chance on ourselves because at least we could say that we tried. If we don't end up liking it, or if it doesn't end up working out, then we know now that it wasn't the move for us. But we will never spend our time now thinking and wondering what if.
I think jumping and doing the thing, whatever that thing is for you, is the best way to give yourself a chance, to give yourself a chance to find out what you love, to find out what you don't love, to give yourself a chance to go after your dreams, a chance at success, a chance at becoming who you want to be and living the a life that you want to live. I don't want you to spend any more time wondering, wishing, thinking, when the time is right. I want you to just go do it. I want you to go for it, I want you to believe in yourself, and I want you to trust in your abilities. And above all else, I want you to have faith that it will all work out the way that it is meant to out.
Number two, it is okay to evolve. I think many of us, myself included, get stuck in the way that we have been previously doing things. We don't change up what we're doing because we tell ourselves, "But this is what I've always done." And we always have that mentality. We're stuck in the mindset of, "This is how I've always done it, and so this is how I need to keep doing it." But the truth is, just because it might have worked for you in the past, doesn't mean that it will work for you now, or that you need to force it to work for you now. I think many of us try to force things that should not be forced. Instead, we need to allow them to evolve into what they're meant to be. We need to be open to doing things differently, and we need to be open to being flexible on how things are done, and open to things evolving in the way that they're meant to be.
For example, you might have noticed a shift on my Instagram content. I used to think all that I could post about was fitness, macros, and confidence, self-love, all of that. I thought that's what got me this far, and that's really all that people care about seeing from me. But recently, I said heck to it. I started posting more lifestyle stuff, I started posting more funny content, things with my husband, and people are loving it, but this is only because I am allowing myself and my content to evolve. I have always heard from the business world, I know this is not a business podcast, but business is a huge part of my life, and I've always heard, "You've got to be in your niche. You've got to stay in your niche." And I've always hated that because there's so many aspects of myself that I want to share. It's all of me.
Of course, fitness and nutrition and confidence, and all of those things are important to me. But as I've been reading the Bible more and as I really just allowed myself to evolve, my faith has been so important to me, and sharing my faith and my relationship with my husband is so important to me. So sharing that. And so all the different aspects of my life are what I share now. And I just want to remind you that nothing in life is permanent. Life is constantly changing and nothing is at a standstill. So let your life, your goals, your relationships evolve with the ever-shifting world that you live. What I've learned is the more stuck you are in your old ways, the more you hold yourself from achieving what you want to achieve, and become what you want to become. So stop forcing things that aren't working. Don't be so stuck in your old ways, and don't be afraid to try new things. Be open and flexible with changing up what you're doing. And trust me when I say that you'll notice a huge shift for the better in your life.
Number three, prioritize joy. One thing my husband and I have really prioritized this year was turning off work and going to have more fun. I mean, we live in arguably one of the most beautiful states. I've lived in Colorado for the majority of my life. And yet, there are still so many things and places that I have not seen and done. And so this past year, I really made it a priority to go see and do more. We made it a priority to bring the boys on weekend trips to the lake and take them places. And honestly, it was one of the best things that we could have done for ourselves. I think a lot of times you think, "I don't have time to do fun things," but here's the thing. The more that you prioritize joy in your life, the more productive you will be with the things that don't bring you as much joy.
For example, when I had just had a fabulous weekend off my phone, exploring with the people that I love, doing things that I love, when I come home and I return to the parts of work that are not so fun, I have been able to get so much more creative. I've been able to do things faster, I've been able to get more motivated quicker. Having fun has really benefited my business because when you just go into grind, grind, grind mode, and you never take time for joy, trust me, you will eventually lose your spark. And when you lose your spark, the quality of your life will deteriorate. So I want to ask you, how can you prioritize joy each day? How can you prioritize joy each week or each month? Maybe you prioritize joy an hour a day, or maybe you prioritize a fun local outing each weekend or a weekend getaway each month.
This is to is an example, but I want you to figure out how you can start incorporating joy into your day-to-day life, and I want to know about it. So be sure to tag me on Instagram, I would love to hear how you plan on incorporating joy more in 2022. Number four, do less of what you don't enjoy. This kind of piggybacks off of number four, just how important it is to prioritize joy, it's also important to prioritize eliminating the things in your life that you just don't enjoy. What do you dread doing? What do you feel shouldn't be your job or what takes away from your life? If you don't like cleaning your house, maybe you could find a way to budget a house cleaner once a month.
Or maybe you can ask for help so that you're not doing it exclusively. Or if there's a daily responsibility that you don't feel like you should be doing yourself, maybe you can either be honest about how you feel and ask for help, or you can seek for a solution that can help you do it better, or more efficiently, to help you take some of it off of your plate. Or another example, if you hate working out, maybe it's time for you to stop doing the workouts that you hate and find ones that you actually enjoy. Seriously, take five minutes today and just write down all of the things you don't enjoy doing, and then go through the list and think of solutions on either or how you can take that off your list, or come up with solutions that can help you become either more efficient at it, or help you take things off of your plate.
Trust me when I say that this will be life-changing for you because at the end of the day, if it's not something that brings you joy, it will likely continue to keep sucking the life out of you. And thus, you won't have the bandwidth to be able to give to the people and the areas of your life that you love most. And number five, narrow down your goals. Having lots of goals is great. It means you're a dreamer, it means you're motivated, you're ambitious, and you believe in yourself, but sometimes, having too many goals equals not accomplishing any of your goals. This past year, I feel like there are so many things that I wanted to do in my business, but I realized I didn't have the bandwidth for it all.
I felt like with each thing, I kept dropping the ball, I wasn't giving it the attention that it deserved, and I just felt like I was failing to accomplish anything. But in reality, I wasn't dropping a ball, I was just stretching myself too thin. I realized that I can still have all of these goals, but I don't need to accomplish them all at the same time. So towards the end of this year, I decided to start to prioritize which goals were most important for me. And I picked on one to focus first, and then the next one, and then the next one. And I still have not accomplished all the goals when I set out to in January of 2021, but I am making progress day by day, choice by choice.
And so I just want to encourage you, if you feel like you have so many goals and you're trying to accomplish everything all at once, but you're not really accomplishing anything, try to prioritize your goals and step by step, day by day, month by month, you will start to be able to check off the goals. And just like I talk about in nutrition all the time, being inconsistently perfect will trump being perfectly consistent all the time. It's about sustainability, it's about consistency, showing up, day by day, so really start to prioritize those goals. And you will see, over time, you will check off so many more. Okay, so let me recap those five things that I learned this past year in 2021. Number one, just do the thing, number two, it is okay to evolve, number three, prioritize joy in your life, number four, do less of what you don't enjoy, and number five, narrow down your goals.
I am super curious to know what five things you learned this year. So I want you to post it up on your Instagram story. Be sure to tag me, Julia Ledbetter and tag Embrace Your Real so that we can share it with the rest of the Embrace Your Real community. I appreciate you guys so much, I am so pumped to get into 2022. It is going to be an amazing year. Again. If you want to learn more about the Honor Your Body Challenge, this four-week challenge is the best way to kickstart into the New Year as you intentionally honor your body, in the three key areas of your health, your movement, your nutrition, and your mindset. You can head to honoryourbodychallenge.com, that's honoryourbodychallenge.com. Spots are limited, so be ahead over there if you want to join. I would love to do this alongside of you. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
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 in the already following me on the gram, be sure to do so,@juliealedbetter. Yes, it's with an a name 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.