The Ultimate Guide to Becoming Your Own Best Friend (Part 2)
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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. This is the second part of the two-part episode of Embrace Your Real podcast on Becoming Your Own Best Friend. In this episode, I’m sharing my own insight into becoming your own best, it’s importance and how to do it.
What I discuss:
Get to know yourself.
Learn to be alone.
Set boundaries with others.
Celebrate your successes
Embrace your quirks.
Practice positive self-talk.
Practice forgiveness.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Episode 326: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming Your Own Best Friend (Part 1)
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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. This is part two of two on becoming your own best friends.
So this podcast is really about embracing a real and I think a step on that path is doing like on that path of embracing a real is becoming your own best friend. I know it sounds corny, I know it sounds cliche, but I think that it's so important to have a fulfilled life and to genuinely enjoy your life in your own skin. You have to learn to become your own best friend.
So in part one, I talked about why becoming your own best friend is so important and how it can really change so many facets of your life for the better. I will link that in the show notes that you can easily go tune in after this episode and in today's episode part two, I kind of want to walk you through the steps that you can take to start to become your own best friend.
I know that this is no easy task to tackle, but by starting to follow kind of the seven ways that I'm going to outline in today's episode, I think that it can help you get closer to becoming your own best friend.
Before we dive in, though, I wanted to share this review. It comes from Amber Minette. She gave a five star review and said,
Love it. I absolutely love this podcast. Advice, tips, tricks and a healthy dose of positivity. Julie's podcast has been a game changer for me. I struggled with self-image and self-doubt all my life. Julie's words fill my cup and inspire me to embrace myself while doing all that I can to be my best self for me, my family and the world. Thank you, Julie, for always delivering a real time message just when I need it. I have noticed I have more grace for myself and others.
I love this so much because I always talk about this. I always talk about us choosing to lean in and better ourselves is not only going to obviously benefit ourselves, like on our day to day, but other people in our life, all the different areas in our life that we are service servicing people, whether that's your family, that's your friend, that's your work, that's your community. They will get a better version of yourself when you are choosing to prioritize yourself so that you can go and serve all of those people in your best capacity. So I love this so much. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to send this in.
Let's dive in to the Ultimate Guide to becoming your own best friend Part two and kind of walk you through the steps that you can take to start becoming your own best friend.
Number one, Get to know yourself. You have to spend some time getting to know yourself on a deeper level. Like Who are you? What do you actually care about? This is also kind of self-awareness, right? What do you really want? Talk it through, like figure it out. Confide in yourself just how you want a best friend over a glass of wine or a margarita or a bubbly seltzer water. Whatever your drink of choice is, you have to know kind of the ins and outs of yourself. You've got to figure out all those ins and outs of yourself. And oftentimes I think we put a lot of attention onto others, and that's not a bad thing. But I think that we need to have self-awareness of ourselves. And when we are more self aware of ourselves, we also are able to deepen our relationships with other people because we have that self-awareness already. And we're not looking for acceptance. We're not looking for those other things in other people because we already know ourselves. And for me, my relationship with God is most important, right? Like I know that God tells me I am X, Y, and Z, and I know that his opinion of me is the only one that matters. And so it can really benefit not just you, but other people as well.
Number two, it's this is hard. This is a hard one, but you got to learn to be alone. I think most of us really we do have a fear of being alone. Some people, they thrive in that. That's not me. I personally, I don't know what it is about being alone, but it's hard for me. Like there's, you know, maybe the first hour or second hour, like when Josh goes on trips or when Josh is away. Like, it's hard for me to be alone, man. And I feel like I'm constantly, like, playing music or podcasts or having a TV show or a movie playing in the background because I'm trying to distract myself and trying to make it feel like I'm not alone. But we can never really sit with ourselves if we're not like sitting with ourselves in silence and being comfortable with that. Solitude, I think, is a crucial part of becoming our own best friend and like really taking the time to be alone with our thoughts and feelings and learning to enjoy our company. And this is where like a new hobby can come into play or taking a bath in silence. And just like if it's talking out loud or if it's internally talking, oftentimes I'll do a little bit of both. Like I'll talk to myself, but also talk to God. And I'll just, you know, just trying I'm trying to incorporate it more. I'm I'm not the best that I will be the first to tell you. It's like last on the totem pole. And so hopefully by me encouraging you, it will actually encourage me to do it as well.
Number Three, We set boundaries with others. So being your own best friend also really does mean protecting yourself from people who might not have your best interests at heart, or just setting boundaries in general with those who maybe drain your energy or make you feel bad about yourself like you would never cross your best friend's boundaries. You should respect them. So why don't you do that for yourself? You would also, you know, never encourage your friend to continue putting up with people crossing their boundary. So why would you allow yourself to continue putting up with others, crossing your boundaries? Like start paying attention to boundaries? And if you haven't already read the book Boundaries by David Townsend, I highly suggest that you do. It's a really, really great book and it's boundaries in all different areas of our life, not just like with ourselves, but with work and with other relationships, you know, relationships with people that they kind of have to be in our life, their family, but also work relationships and just general relationships. It's boundaries. They're a hard man. They're hard, and they're a tricky thing to navigate. But I think that the more that you educate yourself on that topic, it can really set you free and a lot of different ways that maybe are unexpected.
Number four, learn to celebrate your successes, right? Don't be afraid to celebrate your accomplishments. No matter how small they seem. You celebrate every little thing about your best friend's accomplishments. So why are you not taking the time to acknowledge your own and really give yourself credit where credit is due? Like it doesn't matter how big or small. Just start celebrating your successes. The more that you focus on the small wins in your day to day life, the more you're going to start to appreciate, accept and love yourself and love the journey.
Number five, Embrace your quirks. So we all have quirks that make us unique. Like oftentimes it's our best friends, quirks that we love most about them, like we adore them, Like there are some people that just have something about them that is hilarious. It's charming, it's different, and that's what we love so much about them. But when it comes to our own quirks, I think we look at them in such a negative light. We try to hide them, we try to change them. So what if we really started to change that perspective and look at our quirks the same way that we look at our best friends or our family member's quirks? What if we started to love the quirks for making us interesting, unique, or endearing instead of trying to hide them or change them, we embrace them and celebrate them as a part of what makes us who we are, who God made us to be.
Number six, Practicing Self-Talk. So one of my favorite things to say, and I say this often because I just genuinely don't feel like it is can be said enough is. If you wouldn't say it to your best friend, then why are you saying it to yourself? Like I truly believe that this is a rule to live by. If you would not say it to your best friend, then why are you saying it to yourself? If you would not say it to your daughter or your niece, or you fill in the blank person that you love, why are you saying it to yourself? And this is why I want you to try to be more proactive with catching yourself, thinking negatively about yourself, and then trying to reframe those thoughts into something more positive or affirming or personally, I like to take captive those things in my brain and I immediately submit them to God. And I say, I know that this is not what you say about me. So God, please help remind me of who you say I am. And just being aware, having that self-awareness is so important and doing so in the moment will save you so much. Heartbreak will save you so much unnecessary energy that we spend on these negative thoughts. Right. If your best friend was speaking negatively about themselves, how would you respond? How would you change their perspective? What kind of words would you speak to them? And whatever that is that you would do in that scenario, why not try to do that for yourself as well?
And lastly, number seven, you've got to practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is a crucial aspect of really building a healthy and positive relationship with yourself. And when you make a mistake or you fall short of your expectations, I really think that it's easy to get caught up in self blame, self-criticism, even self-loathing. But when we are able to practice forgiveness and allow yourself to acknowledge your mistakes, to take responsibility for them, but move forward with self-compassion, that's really how you should handle it with your best friend, right? So why can't you handle it that way with yourself? So practicing forgiveness is key in ultimately becoming your own best friend. So there you have it.
Let me quickly recap what I mentioned in today's episode. Number one, get to know yourself. Number two, learn to be alone. That is so me. I need to work on that. Number three, set boundaries with others and yourself. Number four, celebrate your successes. Number five, embrace your corks. Number six, practice positive self-talk. And number seven, practice forgiveness. If you haven't checked out part one of this part two series, The Ultimate Guide to Becoming your own Best Friend, I will link it in the show notes below. But again, I know that I mentioned this at the beginning of the episode. I know it's cheesy. I know it sounds cheesy, but it can genuinely change your life and it can genuinely change the quality of your life. If you can learn to not just tolerate yourself, but like celebrate yourself and enjoy your own company, that will ultimately be life changing. And I genuinely believe that when you're able to get to that point, not only will you benefit from it, but other people as well will benefit from you being more at peace with yourself and just knowing yourself better. I think that it will save you a lot of heartbreak from maybe going down paths that you would use to go down because you didn't know yourself that well, but because you took the time to know yourself better, you're actually saving yourself from some heartbreak in the future.
So that's all that I have for today's episode. If you have a friend or coworker, someone in your life that you feel like would really benefit from this specific episode, I just ask that you share it out with them. You can copy the link, you can send it to them in a text message. You can also screenshot this and post it up on your store. I love hearing your aha moments. 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 next time.
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 an A 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 and 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.