How Much of Your Life is for the ‘Gram?
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In today's world and the digital age, it is easy to get caught up in what others think of us and how we present ourselves to the world. And with that, we get caught up in putting emphasis on how our lives appear to others and tend to lose sight of what is truly important in life—our own happiness and well-being.
That’s why in this episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast, we’re going to explore the importance of focusing on how your life FEELS instead of how it LOOKS.
Link mentioned in this episode:
Episode 116: Real Talk For The Woman Who Doesn’t Feel Like Herself Right Now…
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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 Rail 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 a real. Let's get it. Let's go.
Hello and welcome back to another bonus episode. In today's world, I think it's really easy to get caught up in what others think of us and how present we're actually being in this world. And I think that it's really easy to get caught up with how our lives appear to others, like we strive to have the best job, the nicest car, the latest gadgets, the perfect Instagram worthy home. We focus so heavily on what our life looks like externally that we end up neglecting what really matters in our own life, our well-being, our happiness.
And so in today's episode, I want to just talk about that. I want to encourage you and explore why it's more important to focus on how your life feels versus how it looks. So that's the real talk that we're dishing out in today's bonus episode. Before we do that, I want to share this review. It comes from Tara, Christine. She gave a five star review and said a voice I needed to hear. As a busy mom of four, having short and inspiring podcasts is so helpful. I am so glad I found your voice. It's just what I needed to start and not stop taking care of myself.
I love this for so many reasons, but most of all, you're busy mom of four and you take time out of your day to send in this review. So I applaud you. I say thank you. I'm so grateful that this podcast is helping you. It's helping you find your voice and it's helping you start and not stop taking care of yourself. That is one of the most important things that you can do, especially in the various roles that you play in your life. Become the best version of yourself so that you can serve others in your best capacity. That's what I always say, and I'm grateful for you. So thank you.
All right, let's get down to it, sister. Let's get real and raw. Let's be real. External appearances can be misleading. I think one of the biggest problems with focusing strictly on external appearances is that most of the time they're incredibly deceiving. Social media has created a false sense of reality for so many of us, where we really only present the best version of ourselves to this world. This distorted view can really lead us to compare our own lives unfavorably to others, even though we don't know the whole story.
For example, we're following the latest like to Know, a fashion blogger on Instagram. They have a beautiful home, they have an awesome career. They have a large Instagram following. The perfect body has been kids hair, make up, perfect clothes. We see that on a day to day basis, and that's what we think their life is. But we don't know behind the scenes. We don't know that they might be struggling in their personal life or they have a strained relationship or they're struggling financially or they have health problems. We don't know whether or not their perfect body is attained through healthy habits or crazy deprivation and punishment. We actually don't know anything about their marriage. We don't know what their relationship is like. We don't know what their kids are like or how much money they spend on this hair or this makeup or clothes. We only see maybe 90 seconds to a couple minutes into someone's life, and it makes us feel like we know everything that's going on and we know everything that they're going through when in reality we don't know barely anything. We don't know the real story. And guess what? We will likely never know the real story.
And this is why it's important to continue to remind ourselves that what we see on social media is only a carefully curated and filtered version of reality. Let me repeat that again. What we need to continue to remind ourselves is that what we see on social media is only a carefully curated, filtered version of reality. It's easy to forget that behind every image or real or post, there are actually real people with real struggles just like us. Because when we lose sight of that, here's what happens.
We start to focus more on what our life looks like rather than what our life feels like. We see how perfect their lives are and we feel that we need to keep up with them. We also think that we need to carefully curate our lives and curate a filtered version of our own reality. And this means that we put more into what our life looks like ahead of what our life feels like. This means that we start focusing only on the external and not what's actually internal, bringing us true joy, happiness and fulfillment.
This weekend I want to challenge you to do something. I want you to document what you're doing for social media and what you're doing for yourself.
So let's say, for example, you have plans with your friends or family this weekend to go outside and go for a hike. Let's. Say you get all dressed up in your winter gear, or if you're not in winter climates like I am here in Colorado, you're in your summer gear for your winter hike, but you spend an hour taking tons of different photos trying to get the cutest one for the gram and then you head home. Does that genuinely sound fun? Like, what if instead you actually went out with your friends and family? You enjoyed the sounds, the sights, everything that this hike had to offer. You were present. You were living in the moment. You were actually in a deep conversation with people and enjoying their company rather than fixating so much on what is that gram pic that you're going to get from this hike.
While external appearances may give us temporary pleasure and validation, they don't provide us with the long term joy, happiness and fulfillment that we crave and research has back this up. Time and time again, it's shown that they're the true joy and true satisfaction come from within, not from external circumstances. Inner happiness is not dependent on external circumstances such as wealth, material, possessions or even social status. There are truly no amount of likes, story, video, views or followers that will make you happy, but they will make you very unhappy and very incomplete and wanting more and more and more.
When we focus on cultivating these internal sources of joy and happiness by focusing more on how our life feels and doing things that bring us joy and being around people that we love, we actually start to create a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives, even in the face of adversity.
For example, someone may have a high paying job. They might have all the material possessions in the world that they could want. But if they're not fulfilled in their work, their relationships, their purpose in their life, they're not going to be truly happy. On the other hand, someone who lives a modest life, they might have strong relationships, a sense of purpose, a fulfilling hobby. They might be so much happier and satisfied with their life. But you would never know it because they're not posting on Instagram.
I think oftentimes we forget that some of the honestly, most of the people that are posting the least on Instagram or social media, those are some of the happiest, most present people I've ever met in my life. I'm just speaking from experience. I have a few friends that I can just think of off the top of my head. They're rarely on social media posting everything, but when you're in person with them, they are the most fun people you'll ever frickin meet. Like. And my business side of me is like, you need to start doing X, Y, and Z on the Internet. And when in reality, I'm, you know, I think about it and I'm like, they're probably happiest because they're not on social media as much as the average person. But it's just it's, it's so encouraging and it's so true that when we start focusing on how our life feels instead of how our life looks like, we are going to feel so much more fulfilled.
So I want you to keep this in mind as you go about living your life this weekend, this next week, this month, this year. What are you doing for you and your happiness and your fulfillment? And what are you just doing for social media if you're honest with yourself?
If you love this episode, I know you will also love Episode 116 Real Talk for the woman who doesn't feel like herself right now. This is for the woman who is feeling unmotivated, who's lacking excitement or passion, who never feels like she has energy or feels completely off, doesn't feel like anything like she truly is. I share with you a three step process that can really help you bring you back to you again. So I will link that in the show notes that you can easily go tune in to that next.
I hope that this brought you encouragement. I hope that this empowered you in some way, shape or form just helps you reflect on what you're doing right now and what your goals are and what you're doing in your life. On a day to day and week to week and month to month basis. Because I want you to truly live your life present. I want you to feel so much joy. I want you to feel purpose and fulfillment from your life. And I can tell you that will not come. It will never come from likes from strangers on social media that you will never meet or even from the people that you do know in person, but actually don't know what's truly going on behind the scenes.
All right. I love you. I mean it. And I'll talk to you in Annex. I'm 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. And be sure to do so. Julie, a lot better. Yes, it's an in the middle for that daily poser about 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.