462: 5 Things I Wish I Could Tell My 20 Year-Old Self

Hi, I'm Sahara Rose and welcome back to the Highest Self podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement.

And before we get started, I have an announcement for you. The greatest way that we can help balance and heal our nervous systems is through embodiment work. You see, we spend most of our times in our heads. We are constantly analyzing, trying to make sense of the world and predict the future. But what we really need to create the future that we want is to drop into our body's wisdom and understand what it's telling us. And that way we can bring about more healing and co create the circumstances that we desire. And that really comes first from knowing our body's language. So I have created my free Goddess embodiment practice which will allow you to drop into your body's wisdom in under 10 minutes. This is the perfect practice you can do if you have no prior experience to embodiment, or if you're already practicing yoga, meditation. Maybe you're working out, but you want something a little bit more feminine and flowy to add to the end or beginning of it. This practice is for you. I play incredible music and I guide you through dancing and just really feeling the messages that your body has for you. And you're going to feel so different on the other side. People seriously say I can't believe how amazing I feel in less than 10 minutes. And I'm so excited to see how it turns out for you. So if you're interested, interested, head over to iamsaharrose.com embodiment again, that's IAM saharrose.com embodiment and you can find that link in the show notes and download the practice. Without further ado, let's get into this week's episode.

If it's your first time listening, welcome. This podcast is all about making spirituality modern, fun, relatable, grounded, diverse. And I welcome you wherever you are on your journey. I'm an author. I've been hosting this podcast for over five years now and I love taking spiritual topics but really making them grounded and relatable into how they fit into our human experience today. So right now I've really been thinking about my own evolution and how much I've learned and how much I've grown. And I was thinking back to that 20 year old version of myself. I started to think, if I were to give this 20 year old version five words of wisdom, what would they be? And yesterday in my journal I wrote these words of wisdom and I want to share them with you because they may be words that you need to hear right now. Even if you're not 20 years old, you may be 40 years old. They're words that I need to remind myself of even right now too. And sometimes it's so much easier to look back at former versions of ourselves and give that version of ourselves words of wisdom based on where we are today. But oftentimes in life we continue to learn the same lessons over and over again until we really embody them. So there may be some ounces of the lessons that your 20 year old self hasn't fully integrated that still might be showing up in your life today. And it's also so beautiful to see something that used to bother you so much and really get to you no longer have any affliction over you because that really means you've completed the energetic cycle that it needed. So with that, let's get into the five things I wish I could tell my 20 year old self. The first thing is stop staring at your stomach. For really as long as I can remember, probably since I was like 11 years old, I would wake up and stare at my stomach. But not in a good way, in a very judgmental and self critical way. I remember reading as a kid at some point that Britney Spears does like a thousand crunches a night before she sleeps. And so I was Even younger than 11 years old then, so I would try to do as many crunches as I could. And my stomach was always the thing that I hated about myself. I felt like it was so flat. I hated that my parents gave me these jeans. I hated that I didn't have the hourglass body that the woman in the media that I looked up to, like Beyonce or Shakira or Christina Aguilera or whatnot, had. Nor did I have this super lanky body either. And I felt so much shame over it. You know, I went through periods of my life that I had eating disorders. A time in high school and a time in college. And it was always that part of me that I spent so much time just stressing over. Like how does my stomach look today? Is it flat? Is it not? I would base what I was going to eat that day according to what I was going to do that night because I knew if it was going to make me bloated or not. And it just took over so much of my life and a lot of it too were that I actually had really bad digestive issues at that time that I just did not know about. So I would get painfully bloated and that would just, instead of leading me to like a healing journey at that time, it would just lead me down a shame spiral. And the healing part of it didn't come until a few years later. So I would tell myself to stop, stop staring at my stomach when you wake up, think about the things you're grateful for. Think about the things you want to create that day. Start your day with reading a book, journaling breath work, not just staring at your stomach in the mirror and then basing on how your day is going to go on how flat your stomach is. Because ultimately your stomach is here to store your organs. And what a gift that it houses your kidney and your liver and your spleen and your stomach and all of the parts of you that keep you alive. It is the vessel of your body, it is your digestive fire. It allows you to experience this life through. So instead of looking at photoshopped, mind you, pictures of women in the media who also had really bad eating disorders at the time, who also were older than you, who also had different body types, and you, who also now are speaking on how unhappy and controlled they were, instead of comparing yourself to that and making yourself feel something's wrong with you because you don't have that stomach, instead just celebrate the fact that you have this body that is allowing you to live this human experience through, and that is going to completely change your relationship with your body. And now I'm so glad that I really hardly ever look at my stomach in the mirror. It's definitely not part of my morning routine anymore. Like, sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm more bloated than others for sure. But it's not based off of how I feel that day. I'm not always thinking about it. I just let my stomach be my stomach rather than the priority of my life. And I really do believe that so much of the weight loss industry has been created because if we keep women focused on something so stupid and so subliminal, so unnecessary, right? Like your weight those last five pounds, like if we make our entire life existence on those last five pounds, then of course we're not going to go out there and live our dharmas, live our soul's purposes, because we're caught up in these tiny little problems. So I really do believe that part of this is part of the patriarchal agenda to keep us down and to keep us suffering and to try to make ourselves smaller. You know, why are we trying to make ourselves smaller constantly? Because that's what the patriarchy wants. It's for us to be so small that we become invisible. So I've done a lot of healing work around this since and I'm so grateful that that part of my life experience has completed. So the next thing number two is don't worry about not having a boyfriend and everyone else around you has one. So at this time of my life, my college roommate and the other girl I was friends with and it felt like everyone around me had a boyfriend except for me. And when you're 20 years old, that feels like a very big deal. It feels like what's wrong with me? No one likes me, I'm going to be single forever. And it really turns into this giant problem in your mind which led to again a lot of just shame and feeling of unworthiness, I would say, because I felt like I wasn't chosen. So what I would tell my 20 year old self is that you don't need to be chosen by a man, you get to choose yourself. And this is the time of your life that you get to go into your interests. You know, this ended up being the time in my life that I really went into my health journey and starting to learn more about holistic healing. And I then went to health coach school and studied Ayurveda. So it was in this time that I spent so much time by myself that I really started to dive into my healing journey. And I also created my blog, Eat Feel Fresh when I was actually 19 years old. So I would tell myself to just focus on you, focus on your path and don't worry about the boyfriends because eventually you'll find the right guy and then you'll also break up at the right time and then you'll find another one who you'll marry and that's who you're with today. And like that's all okay. And you know, relationships come into our lives as mirrors. And even the relationships that you have in college are not necessarily meant to last forever either. So don't feel like you need to find your husband, you know, because the type of person that you would meet right now at this stage of your life is not someone that you would want to marry. So number three, it's okay that you're not interested in drinking and going out like the people around you. So by this time when I was 20, I realized I hated going to the club, I hated going to, you know, college kind of parties, but I would make myself do it anyways because I felt like if I didn't, I would be left behind, forgotten, I would be out of the loop. So I would make myself go to places that I literally did not want to be and then I would drink because I didn't want to be there. So I would tell myself, don't go places that you have to be drunk to even enjoy, or you're not even enjoying it, just to get through. Like, you should not be surrounded by people that the only way that you can handle being around them is through drinking. Be around people that you love to be with, even when you are sober, because those are the people who you really get to keep in your life. And you will find. So at this stage of my life, I actually stopped drinking the next year when I was 21 years old. But this was really the time in my life that I wasn't totally being honest with myself. I was kind of living a lie. A little bit of going out, but then hating it, but then still doing it anyways because I felt like I should and I needed to and there just wasn't any other option. So I would really encourage myself to take that time again for myself and to stay in and cultivate that time towards the things that I am actually interested and passionate about and find people that I love to be with. Which brings me to number four. Continue to follow your creative pursuits. Don't stop dancing just because you don't have the time. Don't stop creating art just because you don't feel like going to the store to get art projects. Open up your mind to all of the creative possibilities that are around you. Your school has improv classes, it has dance classes, it has all these workshops. You just need to choose them. And it's not about not having time. So many of the things that you spend your time on later on just won't matter. And there is so much more to life than studying and then later working. You know, I spent so much time in college just so stressed about my grades. You know, I need to hit the magna cum laude. And I would spend all night in libraries. Like once a week I would pull an all nighter where I would just drink coffee all night and keep studying to cram for a test and then leave the library at 9 in the morning and go straight to the test. Especially when I was going to school at George Washington University in D.C. because it was just so competitive there. And then I went to Boston University and it. I was a little bit more work life balanced there. But it still was my life. And it came from pressure from my family, especially my dad, where grades were very, very important. My dad went to MIT So there was just so much pressure on me to achieve. And I wish that I released myself from some of that pressure because ultimately my GR did not matter. I did not go on to get my master's. So no one saw them. And there were so many creative opportunities available for me in college that I wish I did. I never ended up doing improv. I never even painted once in college. Maybe I went to like a Zumba class, but I let go of all of those things because again, I was just so caught up in studying socialization that I forgot just joy and curiosity. So I would tell myself if I could go back to really take advantage of all the creative opportunities that were available for me at that time. And number five is you don't have to have it all figured out. You don't even need to know what comes next. In fact, it's better not to, because anything that you can predict from where you are in your life right now is not something that ultimately you would want. Because right now your worldview is limited by just what you've seen and you don't fully know yourself. And who you are is going to constantly evolve and change. So if you have your whole life figured out when you're 20 years old, you're limited to what your 20 year old self knows. So I would say just follow the excitement. Those are the breadcrumbs that are guiding you towards your dharma, your soul's purpose. Follow what you're curious about. If you're curious about something, that is a very strong indicator that there's something there for you on the other side. Side. So when I was 20 years old, I, you know, was finally realized I didn't want to just be an international human rights lawyer and work for the un, which is what I always thought that I was going to do. After working at various nonprofit organizations, I realized that I wanted to actually connect with people and talk to them and, you know, use my creativity in some sort of way, not just raising money for the fundraiser. I definitely didn't want not want to work in a cubicle and be on spreadsheets all day. But I didn't know what comes next. And I put so much pressure on myself of like, well, if I don't know what's going to come next, then I'm going to fall behind. And people who know what they're going to do are going to like be taking these steps right now. And it was this like survival fear that was coming in of like, if I don't have a solid plan, I'm going to lose everything. I'm never going to get a good job. I'm never going to live the life that I want to live. So I need to just stick to something now. Stick to whoever or whatever I can find closest to me. And that is so limiting because truthfully, if a little angel were to whisper in my 20 year old self's ear of like, oh, one day you're gonna have a podcast and talk about spirituality and have a coaching institute and a divine feminine mystery school and be a DJ and you know, do improv and make skits, like I would be like, what? First of all, what's a podcast? Second of all, spirituality. I'm not even into spirituality. Huh? Like I'm supposed to be lawyer who's gonna work in human rights in the un. Like that is not what I wanna do. I was not even interested in really the healing spiritual space at all at that time. So I'm so grateful that I didn't know because the fact that I didn't know allowed me to open up for what was to come. So I'm curious, what are five things you would tell your 20 year old self? I invite you to write a list and share them on an Instagram post or Instagram story and tag me so I can reshare them this week. So if you check out, I can reshare what other people have learned. Because I think we can really gain so much from other people's experiences, even if they weren't exactly like our own. I'm sure there was something that I listed that also would have been a good lesson for your 20 year old self. Or if you're 20 years old right now too. I'm sure it would be really beneficial for you to read what some of your elders have to say that that they wish they knew at that age. So write your list, put it on an Instagram post or on an Instagram story, tag me at I am Saharbros and I'm going to be reposting them on my story. And I'm super excited to read yours, to learn from yours. And I'm curious too. What are some things that you wish you would have told your 30 year old self? Because I'm 31 years old right now and I'm sure the woman right now in their 40s and 50s have many lessons to share along too. So if you have something that you wish you could have told your 30 year old self, also write and share that. And I would love to read and share it as well. So thank you so much for tuning in today. If you love this episode, please leave a review for it over on the iTunes store and I will give you the free gift of my Womb Meditation, which is a meditation that allows you to connect to the sacred energy of your womb and receive answers for different areas of your life. So you can leave a review over on the iTunes store, take a screenshot before you submit it, and then email it over to me@sahara iam sahararose.com and you can find that email in the show notes and I will email you back my free Womb Meditation. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one. Namaste, Sam.