A New Life Podcast Ep 3 FIGHT FOR YOURSELF

Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean, where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean.

Hello, friends, and welcome to episode number three of A New Life podcast. I'm so glad to have you here with today. I'm going to start today off with a question. My question for you is this. When is the last time you fought for yourself? Let that thing sink in for just a second. When is the last time you fought for yourself and stood up for yourself? So that might sound a little bit strange. What a weird question to ask today. But what I have found in my time of working with women through my life coaching is for some reason, we stop fighting for ourselves. We stop standing up for ourselves. And why does this happen? Well, that's a really long answer. But we're going to just focus on one thing at a time. So fighting for yourself, what does it even look like? Well, I want to start off with just a little, a little something for you to think about. If your child came home from school today crying and upset because someone was cruel or mean or said something hateful, how would you react? And what would you do if you were at a playground with your children and you saw another child push your child down or you saw another adult parent scolding your child for something that they really hadn't done anything wrong, how would you react if you see your child being mistreated or hurt or frustrated? All of the above. I know, I know exactly how all of you mothers out there are going to react. It's a no brainer, right? Is struggling with something or is hurting, Mama Bear comes out, right? You are ready to take on the world. You are ready to take on whomever or whatever hurt your child. My question for you is this. Why don't you fight for yourself with the same ferocity that you would fight and stand up for your children? Just going to let that sink in for a second. Why don't you fight for yourself with the same ferocity that you fight for your children? Friends, how do we let this happen? And I think it's safe to say, I mean, I'll be the first to admit I stopped caring about myself. I stopped fighting for myself. I, I stopped standing up for what I wanted and needed in my life. I can't necessarily pinpoint exactly when that happened, but it happens over a period of time where you get busy, life is happening, you're raising a family, you're busy with your work, and then all of a sudden one day you realize that you're not standing up for yourself, that you're letting things happen in your life that you not only don't want but you don't need, that are self destructive, that are not good for you because you've stopped caring enough and loving yourself enough to stand up for you. And here's something that I want you to think about from a little bit of a different perspective. Your children, your daughters and your sons, they're watching you every single day. You are teaching them how to stand up for themselves as they grow into adulthood. How you stand up for yourself today, the self respect and the love for yourself that you are giving you is what you're teaching your children to be correct and appropriate. I know you love your children just like I love mine and had the absolute best time raising my kids. Truly, truly was some of the best years of my life, was raising my children. But what I want you to remember is the example that you're setting for, for your sons and for your daughters. They are watching you. They are seeing you when you look in the mirror and you tell yourself, or you say it out loud that you look fat, you look too heavy, that double chin has turned into a triple chin. How you look and perceive yourself is how you're teaching your children to love and see themselves as they grow into an adult as much as you think. But I tell my kids every day how beautiful they are, how kind they are, how smart, and all of the things, you can talk all you want, but if you're going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. You have to be able to look in the mirror and say, you know what? You are beautiful, you are smart, you are strong. Because that's exactly how your children are going to see themselves as they grow into adulthood. And if you don't want your children, your daughters and your sons to look at themselves in the same way and in the same eyes that you look at yourself, then, friend, I'm here to tell you you have some adjustments to start making and some changes need to happen in your life. I want to tell you a story. This is something I read many, many years ago and it still resonates and still is stuck in my brain. There was a picture of a woman lying on the beach and she had her swimsuit on and she was a very large lady and she was laying on the beach taking a nap. Well, her son, her 8 year old son had taken pictures of mommy while she was laying on the beach with her phone and she didn't know he was taking those pictures. As she's looking through her photo reel, her album on her phone, she comes across these pictures, and she says, oh, my goodness, why would you take such awful pictures of me? And the little boy looked at her and said, mommy, I thought you looked beautiful. You were taking a nap on the beach. So to that child, mommy was taking a nap on the beach and she looked beautiful. That mother was mortified because how she saw herself was heavy and overweight and should not be in a swimsuit lying on the beach. I tell you that story to tell you this. How you see yourself and how you treat yourself, how you fight for yourself, how you stand up for yourself, is exactly how you are teaching your children to stand up for themselves as they grow into adults. And if you don't like how you treat yourself, if that's not how you want your children to see themselves someday, then, friends, I want you to be intentional about making that change and shifting that mindset for yourself. And you're probably wondering and thinking this, Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. I would be if I were you. How do I start? Where do I begin? What do I do first? The first thing I want you to do is write a list of things that are happening in your life right now that you are not okay with. Now, this could be something as simple as you've overextended yourself with your time away from work. Maybe you have too many volunteer hours that you have scheduled for yourself. And in those volunteer hours, you're looking at the projects you've agreed to do, and you think, I don't even believe in those. I don't even like those things. But I said yes because I was afraid to say no. Sometimes learning to fight for yourself requires you to manage your time well and respect your time. And when someone asks you to do something that you don't want to do to be able to say no, it doesn't mean you have to be rude and harsh and ugly about it. You just simply say, no, thank you, but ask me again another time. Perhaps I'll volunteer at another time, but now is not okay. It is okay that you stand up for yourself and stand up for your time. Because if you're spreading yourself so thin that you don't have time to take care of yourself or take care of your family properly, then you have to start saying nos to some of those yeses. If you are in a work atmosphere where you have a toxic individual that you have to work with every single day, it is okay, for you to fight for yourself. Now, I'm not talking about having an office room brawl or anything like that, but what I am saying is put healthy boundaries around yourself when it comes to that toxic person that you have to work with every single day. Do you have that negative person that comes in the office and complains about the weather every single day? Whether it's hot or cold or rainy or not, there's always something wrong. That's a toxic person. That's an unhappy person. Set a boundary around yourself. Fight for yourself. Fight for what you will and will not allow to be a narrative in your life. You know, misery loves company. And when you are around miserable people, they will just want you to be miserable with them. And the easy thing, at least it seems easy, would be just to go ahead and go with the flow and whatever. I'll clock out at 5 and not have to deal with this person again. But their negativity will resonate and it will affect you if you allow it without that healthy boundary. So first and foremost, start writing a list of where you're spread too thin. Where are the things in your life that you need to say no a little bit more often? You can't do it all, friends. You just cannot. You will spread yourself too thin and then you will be taken advantage of. We all have been taken advantage of in our lives before, and no one likes that. It's awful. And you feel embarrassed. You feel ashamed. It's like, why did I let them take advantage of me? Because you know it's happening, but for some reason, you just don't have the courage to tell someone no. Second thing I want you to do is start being aware of the negativity in your life and placing those healthy boundaries around yourself. You have to have boundaries in your life. You know, you drive down the road and there are guardrails on the road. Why do you think those guardrails are there? To keep you safe. The guardrails are there to keep you from going into the ditch. If you happen to go off the road, that's a boundary. You don't cross the guardrail. If you do, you're going to end up in the ditch. Where are the boundaries and the guardrails in your own life? You have to be able to set up those healthy, healthy boundaries and guardrails in your life. So start writing a list of the negativity, the negative people in your life. Who do you need to have a boundary set with? Sometimes it's family, and that's the hardest, because how do you put a boundary around your sister or your brother or your father or your mother or your grandparents. How do you put boundaries around those people? You can do it, friends, without making a big stink about it, without making a big to do. You will make an intentional choice to not engage with their negativity. You're going to build a invisible shield, an invisible boundary guardrail if you will, around you when it comes to that person. You will not let their negativity penetrate you. You will not let that negativity get through that invisible shield. You cannot control the thoughts and ideas of other people, but you absolutely can control the thoughts and ideas of yourself. You get to decide who gets in. You get to decide what gets in. And you get to decide if you're going to fight for yourself and fight for your well being. And I'm here to tell you, friends, it's okay to fight for yourself. And I'm going to wrap this up with this. I want you to think about when was the last time I fought for myself and took as good of care of myself with the same ferocity and the same intention as I do with my children. So I'm going to leave you with that thought, friends. It is a choice. Fight for yourself, friends. You are worth it. Your goals are worth it. Your dreams are worth it. I know you were made to make a huge impact in this world and a huge impact with every person you meet today. And it is okay to fight for yourself in the process. Have a great day, friends. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you next time.

Thank you for joining us today on a New Life podcast. We will see you next time.

Sam.