hi everyone welcome back to another podcast episode my name is Alicia Goen the host of The Globe cus podcast where I help you expand your mind and become more self-aware so that you can glow up into the best version of yourself I just want to quickly note something's going on with my microphone so if at any point the sound kind of drops in quality it's because I'd be going back to my camera sound I'm trying not to call that into the universe but I just wanted to mention that just because we don't know what's going on I might have to just get a new mic cuz I kind of broke the USB a little bit on this mic but we're good for now I'm going to be looking over here if you see me on YouTube a lot as well but anyways how are we doing I quickly just want to say thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday I am 28 now I'm feeling good and fun and fresh I would highly suggest you go to my main Channel and watch the video that I titled you are not living up to your full potential and you know it I really think that that video just encompasses the past few weeks that I've been going through this so many deep realizations and one of them which is something that I said in last week's off topic episode I want to start committing more to the things that I say that I'm going to do or that I need to do on the days that I actually told myself to do them instead of like pushing things off and I am recording on the Monday I told myself I want to start recording my Thursday episodes on Mondays and my Monday episodes on Thursdays so I'm feeling really on top of my game I had a great workout this morning I'm just feeling so good I'm feeling 28 up feel 28 anyways that's what we're talking about today we are essentially doing a part two to last Thursday's episode where I essentially just gave you a pep talk on deciding that you are enough like I just really want you guys to just be sick and tired of self-hating and looking in the mirror and just constantly picking at yourself and constantly saying that you're not enough like we just don't have any more time in our lives to just waste looking in the mirror and just const stantly telling ourselves that we are not good enough so if you haven't watched that episode or listened to it on Spotify Apple wherever you're listening or watching definitely go listen to that first but in today's episode I do want to talk about the pressure to be perfect and pretty and also just how to start to feel more confident in your own skin and just rebuild your confidence now I've talked about this many times on my channel I think my channel is a big library of things that you can incorporate into your life to kind of build up your confidence more and to love yourself more but I do think that I want to break down some of the main things that really really helped me build my confidence in a world where everywhere you look and everywhere you go especially when you're young it seems like there's always just something some standard you have to live up to or you constantly feel like you are always influenced to change yourself and I think a lot of the reasons why we have a lot of insecurities is obviously the rise of social media uh you know getting socialized in school there's so many people who have different preferences and different likes and dislikes and unfortunately it comes very very loud especially in women's ears sometimes and men too if you listen to this and you're a man you can totally apply all of this but I think that sometimes uh everything gets really really loud and it's kind of hard to navigate life it's like like for last week's episode it's like I know you guys resonate with that message of being like yes I'm sick and tired of hating myself like I want to love myself I want to look in the mirror and just be proud of myself I want to Unconditionally Love myself this time the third but then you go out into life and you either forget the message or you need to work on that a little bit more or you're simply just bombarded with living in a society right now or it makes it honestly very difficult for you to look at yourself as someone who is enough who is beautiful enough hot enough successful enough enough I am good so I want to give you some of my best tips to help you navigate the pressures of being pretty now one quick mention I guess probably one of the biggest Sparks that I had for this episode came from a girl on YouTube I Love Her videos and her YouTube name is called Queen cha c h i o m a i will also have it linked in the description or wherever you're listening to this and also like the episode in which she was talking about the pressures to be pretty in society and in that video she was really just breaking down she breaks up down honestly a lot of like social media influencers and you know baby mama rap culture and you know kind of like toxic type of relationships and dissecting them and pulling out the wisdom and things that we can learn from what we're seeing on social media so I would honestly highly highly suggest you watch her uh YouTube channel I just love that kind of content I've always been really into it honestly but in this video specifically she was bringing up the fact that I don't know who this girl was some sort of either female rapper or some big influencer on social media and she was complaining to the world about how I guess she had gotten lipo or something in her chin to get rid of her double chin and then she went online saying how many times is going to take for me to actually get this away like I just went in and got this um uh procedure done and I'm still not satisfied with the results like I'm still not able to get away this like double chin this that and the third whatever she was saying and on top of that she did have a lot of work done and this is not the episode to beg on people who have whatever it is that they have done I understand why people do what they do honestly but at the end of the day like it was very clear that she's done everything head to toe on herself and she was continuously doing more and she was constantly also complaining about the fact that it wasn't enough and I even see and hear a lot of stories about girls who get veneers they'll get veneers and then they post on social media oh my God like my teeth are hurting so bad and this that and this is not everyone's case people get veneers and it looks amazing and great but there's a lot of people who are really still struggling after they get veneers done or after they get their boobs done or after they get bbls I literally know so many people in the city who have gotten bbls who either terrible terrible results they're not happy with their results and also they didn't know that they kind of had to keep up their bodies in a way in order to kind of like have the BBL look pretty good still and so they're pissed about that and they feel like well then why did I even get this type thing it seems in this world there's not a lot of satisfaction when it comes to certain procedures and that's why I heavily moved away from even trying to convince myself that I needed these things and I said this before I when I was younger I considered actually thinking about getting a BBL which is so far out of the realm in which I look at myself in life and I would never never never never never get that anymore like I just I wouldn't consider that at all mainly because honestly you could go to the gym and really just grow your ass if you really really committed to doing that but whatever and also I definitely even before the bbls were a thing though this is the probably the first thing I thought about was getting my boobs done when I was younger too and I would just like say this like off the whim like I always just thought yeah one day I'm going to get my boobs done but after hearing so many people talk about their dissatisfaction with some of the procedures that they were getting or just personally my personal taste I just don't really see the need or I don't really love the way it looks sometimes and this is not every time girl there are some girls who've got in a BBL and it literally looks like not they haven't gotten it it's crazy or they get their boobs done and you just don't even know like there's definitely definitely times where things look good I'm not saying that but I just I steered far away from that and actually one girl that I will mention especially I think for the very young girls who listen and watch my podcast or my YouTube I think this would be really helpful because I feel like a lot of us Millennials or like 25 and up we kind of know the name of the game when it comes to social media we know everything is fake we know it's a highlight real this that and we can kind of maybe remind ourselves more but I feel like the younger generation they're just like growing up with the pitcher perfect version of everything and it's almost I'm not saying that younger women or even men are uh blind to the fact that things are fake or they're dumb or you you know you guys aren't like on it just like we are but I don't know I just feel like sometimes when you're younger it seems to be like everything is always bombarding you so there's this girl name is Stephanie Lang and she does a lot of dissecting celebrities who Photoshop their um photos and who've gotten work done but they said they haven't like all that kind of stuff just as a way to really educate women and to make them feel better about themselves but not in a way of her she's trying to put these other women down for photoshopping she's very very healthy so I would just suggest you go and check out her YouTube If you haven't so bringing it back to chaach chat's video video what I came to realize out of that video in many many years of this realization honestly there will always be something that you can get there will always be something that you can enhance and at what point do I look in the mirror and I say you know what I'm good enough well here is a few things that allowed me to solidify this energy of I am enough and actually before I say my tips I want to make a few disclaimers here I am not saying that we can't use makeup or fashion or get things done to ourselves to make ourselves feel good that is not what I'm saying and especially when you are on this journey of rebuilding your confidence for me to sit here somebody who has rebuild her confidence and feels really really secure in her own skin for me to sit here and tell you oh you know you shouldn't want to get your boobs done or you shouldn't want to uh get filler to make your lips look fuller uh you shouldn't want to dye your hair or get extensions or get a weed in or whatever would be hypocritical of me because I have gone through those phases of using some of those things to make me feel better and this is also not to say that you're using these things because you're just this insecure girl and this that because there's obviously things and we're going to talk about it that I came to realize in my life right now that I still like doing like I still like wearing some sort of makeup I still like wearing my hairpiece sometimes like there's obviously still things that I um you know essentially enhance but I definitely fell back on the list of enhancements that I thought that I needed to have by going through some of these tips so I just want to make that disclaimer and I also think another thing is like the goal for us is not to strive for Perfection and what I mean is you will I personally think always want some sort of external validation you're going to want to wake up beside your man and your man to tell you that you're pretty even if you have all this confidence in the world it would be nice to hear your man say that you're beautiful even if you know it or you know if you post a photo on Instagram like yeah wouldn't it be nice to have likes like when you go out to a party like it'd be nice to get a compliment obviously like I feel like this is bringing it back to honestly human connection at the end of the day right it's like what we're actually really striving for is that love and validation and acknowledgement from other people and we don't get that in our lives and that's what we're chasing which again I'm going to talk about but I just want to make this very clear y'all know my relationship with being a perfectionist and I don't want us to get into that energy of like okay I'm going like rebuild my confidence and I'm going to like never need external validation because I really think that's it's just not needed it's really not needed you can you can still want and enjoy and embrace external validation without it either like feeding your ego too much um or for it to only sustain your happiness like there's there's definitely can be a flow so I first want to talk about having a mental diet what you consume not only influen inuences the way you view yourself but it also influences your actions in your life and when I started to realize I didn't have a lot of self-worth and I was feeling like about myself every time I went on social media or I was around pretty people and I wanted to change myself and like I had this list of like things that I needed to do and I just like could not accept myself at all I started to be very honest and real with myself and I realized that I needed to re-evaluate my priorities this I do not want to have be some sort of call out so please I love you so much and I've been here but honestly when I was younger my priorities weren't the best okay my priorities were how hot was going to look in a bikini will this boy like me how many likes will get um you know I want to look better than all these girls out here and I started to also realized that I wasn't valuing things that were actually more important in life and for me at the time it was my finances getting out of debt saving money working finding out what career path I even wanted to go into my education making sure that I was moving my body and eating right and sleeping right for my health so I had energy to get up and go and do things and live my life I started to realize that I was valuing whether um a guy was going to text me back versus making plans with my friends because I was waiting to see if he was going to like you know message me to see if I can go out with him instead of you know putting off an amazing friendship my priorities just were not very good and once I got real with myself about that and I started to have a focus on what really mattered in my life I naturally started to gain more confidence and I wasn't feeling so much like about myself because I wasn't putting my attention to vanity metrics I wasn't really caring about um who's going to wear what at this party or who's going to be the hottest girl because in my life I'm focusing on getting out of debt and working on my goals and um having good friendships like really healthy things in my life and something I actually thought about a lot when I was trying to rebuild confidence Within Myself especially in regards to men like in relationships because that was always my insecurity I always thought that my body wasn't nice enough and I wasn't pretty enough and this that and comparing myself to every every other girl and oh my God he's going to like those girls more I would tell myself a lot is my body and my Beauty really going to sustain a long-term relationship like let me think about that for a second like those are the things that I'm telling myself are important when it comes to relationship like that's actually pretty insane and I think as you grow up and you start dating as well you start to realize first of all the standards that guys have are usually kind of low honestly like and also they just don't they don't have like body dysmorphia sometimes the way that we do and we nitpick on absolutely everything and and most men like obviously physical attraction needs to be a thing for a lot of them for most of them but like they don't even pick up on half the things that you are like hyper obsessing about so those are just like some of the things I had to get real about with myself in my life like okay so why is it that I'm only caring so much about my beauty when realistically the beauty is a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to my relationships and in general everything else but I'm bringing it back to relationships as an example what about my heart what about my kindness what about my personality what about my uniqueness what about the fact that I'm interesting what about my interest like what do I even have to say to this person beyond the fact that I'm pretty like okay so I just worked all summer to get super hot and like now I'm going on this date and now I have nothing to talk about because I didn't have any of my priorities really uh in place and my finances are a mess and I don't really like myself and I'm actually quite unhappy and I don't have healthy habits but oh that's fine at least I'm hot like No And also life real life experiences do not require you to be pretty the lake or the ocean or wherever you live does not require you to look like a supermodel in order to get into the water and and wear a bikini and to enjoy your life the only person that is putting that standard on yourself is you okay the ocean is doesn't care about how freaking small your waist is and this is what I'll say if you are around people places things that require you to be pretty hot whatever ever in order for you to be let into the door baby that is not your door that is not your door this is not to say there is not a time and a place to get yourself DED up and get ready yes am I going to say you're going to go walk downtown to Toronto and try and get into a nightclub wearing freaking Crocs and looking like Justin Bieber probably not but that's okay because at the end of the day there's there it's okay to have standards right it's okay to look your best but it's your best right it's not like you have to look like Kim Kardashian in order to get into the door if you have to look like Kim Kardashian to get into the door baby it's not your door okay so getting real with what you're putting your focus on and what you're prioritizing in your life will have a huge impact on how you view yourself what are you prioritizing right now get real with yourself are there things that are outside of uh how your body is going to look or what your diet and your Fitness is going to do for your body that you could be focusing on like are you in debt do you have money saved do you know what you want to do with your future do you know what you want to do with your career and this is important to think about okay because at the end of the day you being hot and pretty and like just this popular it girl that's only going to get you so far what's going to happen when you're like 30 years old and you need to buy a house or uh 30 years old and you need to have an actual real relationship with people but you don't know how to have one because you don't even know how to have a relationship with yourself like these are things that we need to deep Center in our lives like looks for just a little bit especially as you're rebuilding your confidence and put your focus on something else it will help so much not only will help you get to where you're actually probably really wanting to go in your life anyways but it will really just help you heal like stop putting so much Focus sometimes on this external like this physical how you look it's really I promise you being 28 now it really is not that important the next thing when it comes to your mental diet is having some sort of social detox or social media detox I know we talk about this a lot and I'm not even going to say get off of social media because it's obviously hard right everyone and everything is on social media but listen do you really have to sit and scroll through hours of beautiful sexy pretty amazing beautiful Tik Tok girls dancing and showing their hips and showing how amazing they are listen we're not here to not support people we are not here to hate on other women we're not doing that but this is what I'm going to say it does not help you when you do not have a lot of confidence Within yourself it just doesn't and I say this a lot once you get through this period you usually if you do this I don't say right but if you do this in a like balanced way you're going to be able to be able to look at these women online let's say and have more confidence within yourself because you've done some of the things that we're going to continue to talk about um so like for me when I see let's say Tik Tok girls who are like doing those like hip waist things I don't know like dancing and they look amazing and hot and beautiful I can look at them and I can be like wow she's amazing and kind of keep scrolling and it not really affect my self-esteem but what I will say is if my Tik Tok feed was only that I don't care how much confidence I have that would break it down it would I can't sit here and look at every single picture perfect person all the time I cannot do it and you shouldn't either again bring it honestly back to priorities why do I need to consume so many women and so many pretty this that and the third third that girl and clean girl which by the way I love a good clean girl aesthetic I think I might actually make a video on that make my version of clean girl aesthetic but again it's like in small doses and honestly when you're rebuilding your confidence it should really just be out of sight out of mind so thinking about your Tik Tok feed thinking about your Instagram your Pinterest what are you looking at right now what are you consuming this is not to say that you can never be inspired and you you know cuz I know I get the argument of oh but these girls are so motivating inspiring and I want to be like them okay that's fine but you don't need to watch and consume them every single day all day in order for you to get up and go to the gym okay like it you don't really need that and I know sometimes it feels like it's normal because especially the young ones who've just grown up on social media but I promise you there is a life outside of social media you go in the real world you feel so much better about yourself and this is not to look around and be like Oh see everyone's like not actually that pretty and this that but genuinely you just don't get triggered because you see people and their flaws and their beautiful uniqueness and this is something that you have to continue to remind yourself and I have to remind myself of this as well what you see on social media is only a highlight real it only is even my feed it's only a highlight reel I'm not going to show you what I look like when I wake up at 700 a.m. and my eyes are super super tired and my hair is a mess I do the best that I can showing up on camera the most authentic that I can but at the end of the day it does not matter how real you want to um you know think someone is I'm not saying that I'm a lying like I'm lying or anything but it's just like you're just not going to get the full picture right even let's say when you go out to a formal event everyone is looking flawless do you really think every single person in that room is always looking like that no we put time and effort into ourselves to show up but why is it that when you go home you're still comparing yourself to the version of them which is the highest version of them which when they went home they're actually still looking like you as well right but on social media you're you're being taught to believe that that is literally how people show up all the time and it just really isn't and listen if you know people in real life who really just look amazing and beautiful Let It Be that's fine people can look amazing and beautiful another person's Beauty has nothing to do with you it should have nothing to do with you so curate your social media the best that you can stop consuming and following and scrolling people who really at the end of the day just make you feel like now you need a BBL and now you need to get fake tits and now you need to um buy everything from Zara and now you needed the X Y and Z keep it a balance okay keep it a balance doesn't have to be perfect um I like to really follow people who at the end of the day yes their life is a highlight re and I really love their Aesthetics I love a good aesthetic you guys know me I love a good aesthetic but they're usually teaching me something like they're teaching me how to do their hairstyle or they're teaching me how to have the fashion that they are or they're teaching me how they got to where they are or you know the gym girlies if I'm following them which I I really don't but if I I I definitely used to actually and I would get really obsessed with them but then I started following the ones where they were kind of being a little bit more real with me and they were teaching me how to even work out and they were talking about self-con confidence themselves those type of creators I just find are a little bit more helpful because it's like it's one thing to show how amazing you are but it's another and I think it's a it's a it's a nice thing to do as a Creator to share some of your secrets this does not mean you have to share everything right you are not obligated as a Creator to share all of your secrets but literally the reason why I called this podcast the glow of Secrets is because I wanted to share the secrets in which helped me actually glow up into the best version of myself and this is what I'm doing and I actually think one of the things that actually sparked this idea of the glowup secrets is I remember when I would go on social media and I would follow girls this is like when the rise of in Instagram girls would like really started to rise I guess and um there was like fashion girlies who would always post their outfits and they would look really pretty and this is when I started to realize like damn like my fashion don't be looking like that or like my room doesn't look like that or oh my God these everyone has Picture Perfect lives but then you would go to the comments because you'd want to see like where did they get that shirt or where did they get this that in the third or how did they do their hair and they would never answer they would never answer and that I didn't like why are we gatekeeping listen again as a Creator I have to advocate for allowing myself and whoever else on the internet to be able to share whatever they want whatever they're comfortable with but there was this energy and I think that there was like this culture a lot of people were really picking up on this that there was just girls who really only cared about look at me you know look at how amazing I look and how beautiful I look but I'm not going to tell you and I'm not going to share and you can just like me and you know it was very just egotistical but I do think creators now it's so much different like there's so many people who are very very helpful when they share things I really really love that but yeah just make sure that you're kind of following people who seem to kind of have your best interests at heart in a way but creators can't always we just can't we don't even know half the people sometimes that we're talking to and at the end of the day there's just going to be certain things that I like or dislike or that Creator likes or dislikes or whatever and it just might not be your cup of tea now we need to talk about something that is very important you can have a social media d talks and remove yourself from things that are triggering you more like you know focusing more on your goals and your aspirations and your hobbies in real relationships and you know just like moving away from vanity metrics but at the end of the day you are going to feel the most confident when you are putting work into yourself this is not to mean that if you feel like crap about yourself that I'm saying to you got to go to the gym you got to work on yourself girl you got to change yourself you got to put some makeup on you need to learn how to do your makeup up or this that no you're going to do whatever you want that's going to make you feel good but at the end of the day we cannot deny that there are certain things in our lives that will build confidence okay I don't care how many times you want to not look at the pretty girls at the end of the day you're going to have to live in a world where you're going to see pretty girls so how is it that you're going to feel good about yourself well here's a few things for one you need to understand this concept deep into your soul the only competition that you have is with yourself it is not with the girl next door it is not with the girl who sits beside you in class it is not the girl from 10 years ago who you think about all the time and you're like oh my God she's so pretty and I just can never be like her it's not the girl on your Pinterest board it is you the reason why I'm saying this is you will always find somebody in your mind if you think about it like this if you are in this Rat Race you will find people who inevitably have better skin than you better body more money more success a hotter boyfriend more friends more followers more likes more everything so why are we constantly competing and comparing and I love to use other women as inspiration and that is what we should do but not to the point where I feel like I need to compete and there's no need to compete there is enough to go around now I have an episode on how to stop judging and criticizing others and yourself and how to stop being jealous so I'm going to put those videos in the description as well because that will really really help if you really struggle with that I talk a lot about Shadow work in those episodes but realistically when you are working on yourself it really should be you versus you when you're going to the gym and you feel really good about yourself and then you go on Instagram and you look at someone else and you see that their body is like maybe your dream body or whatever stop looking at yourself like you didn't do enough like you're not there that girl in her body and her aesthetic and her everything is irrelevant to where you're at right now when you catch yourself comparing yourself remind yourself I am comparing to out here the external and I need to bring the spotlight back to myself and look the previous version of me I need to compare myself to that girl that is it so when you're scrolling and when you're around people your attention is usually on everyone else when you notice your attention going to someone else bring it back to yourself what have I done today what am I continuously doing for my self-growth journey what is it that I've accomplished you have to remind yourself of those things in the moment to help you move through this little trigger that you might be going through now sometimes we struggle with bringing that attention back to our elves and reminding ourselves of all the work that we have done you know why because we haven't done any work this is where we got to get real with ourselves for a moment at the end of the day if you have really been committing to yourself and taking those actions towards a version of you that you know that you can be it would be quite easy for you in the moment that you're triggered to remind yourself of all the things that you've actually been doing and if you can't do that then you probably haven't been taking those actions in which you have no business sitting here looking at someone else and dwelling and being sad and feeling like about yourself you got to put your attention and your time into a routine that works for you that is going to get you to where you want to be which is feeling confident within yourself there is this is the thing there is no denying the way you feel after you've done a hard workout or after you've made a beautiful meal for yourself no one can really shake you now listen you can go on online after you've done your workout and maybe you see someone who's like more fit than you and you kind of are like damn like whatever but that's when you do that practice and you bring yourself back to yourself keep it going we don't need to like go into that energy but you're really just less susceptible to that type of trigger because you just went to the gym like you literally just did all the work you possibly could have done so like why is it that I would even get thrown off when I have done the work and now this is something that I'm going to be showing you guys on the main Channel as well some of the things that I'm going to be really committing to my own self and you know pushing myself on and that really is pouring into my own cup and I think that that's what you need to do as well when you find that your attention is going to everyone else and you're feeling like about yourself how can I pour into my own Cup right now not how can I figure out how to be that version of her over there because I absolutely hate myself how can I help myself right now because right now I'm struggling clearly and now another thing that is really important is to ask yourself the question in some of these times when you're triggered is how can I Embrace more of my unique beauty my uniqueness of myself it doesn't even have to be Beauty right and I maybe this is just this is this is my thought and I think a lot of people think like this too now as we get older but you know people really like people who are unique people like different and you might not think about the fact that you have something different or unique about yourself right now cuz you're in this phase of like rebuilding things but there is something unique about yourself I would highly suggest you take some time to really explore that and enhance that Embrace that nurture that and I'll give you an example my hair my natural hair all of my life I never liked my natural hair I didn't like my natural hair because I went to school with a bunch of girls who had straight hair okay and it was really hard for me to do my hair and I didn't like that I would look different I didn't know I didn't like how my hair looked obviously because I didn't know how to do it properly really my mom did a really good job at like doing like black girl hair and doing braids when I wanted to and stuff like I really definitely she did such a good job and again she wanted the she just wanted to give me what I wanted as a child and I wanted straight hair so at some point I asked her to get my hair straightened and she would let me like things like that like love her she just tried to do the best to make me feel the best but I I didn't know how to do my natural hair so of course it's like if I don't know how to do my natural hair then I'm not going to like it right because anytime that I have it out it doesn't look it doesn't look done up it doesn't look nice it looks freaking matted if I don't know how to brush it like things like that right I just didn't know how to love my hair and then on top of that I was obviously comparing myself to every everyone else and then I got so fed up with hating my hair I got so fed up with not knowing how to do my hair I got so fed up with the fact that my hair started to look like because I was uh hot iring it so much and I was constantly spending money on like fake hair and it just never really looked the best and so that's when I was like you know what I'm going to if anything I don't know if I'm going to embrace my natur hair or not and this is the thing I want to bring it back to there's going to be things that you realize that I'm not ready to embrace or I don't want to and I even think about my sister I think right now I don't think she's at a point where she's embracing her natural hair I know she was struggling with that because she had a baby and she just couldn't do her natural hair so she just got it like she straightens it and stuff and that's fine like my I think my cousin does that too that's totally fine like you don't have to ever or maybe there's going to be certain times in your life where you want to but for me I was like you know what I'm I'm ready I'm ready to do this and I got curious and I went online and I found girls on YouTube who were teaching you how to do natural hair and I got good at it and I committed to myself and I started to over time start to really like the way that my hair looked because I learned how to do my hair and then on top of that it made my life so much easier because I felt more natural I felt like I wasn't like ruining my hair all the time I also started changing the people that I was looking at online and I was looking at girls on Pinterest or Instagram or wherever I was and I started to see girls with natural hair and how they were styling it and I was like oh I didn't know my hair could look like this if I actually just tried and now I love it I think that that makes me it definitely makes me stand out when I go with my friends and my natural hair is out this is not to mean none of my friends are pretty and perfect and amazing my best friend Joy she has beautiful beautiful hair you know Asians they got that hair that long beautiful hair I love it she looks amazing but so do I because I've embraced my natural beauty and again again if you're not there yet when it comes to like your hair or your um like I know girls have fake eyelashes or they get their lips done or something like that like whatever is that's totally fine like you you go through a phase and you got to use whatever you can to make yourself feel the best and maybe you just really like the way that you look with these things but I would just highly suggest you explore your uniqueness and you try things out and you really ask yourself the question of like who am I doing this for am I telling myself I have to do this this is another thing even when it came with makeup is I used to wear like heavier makeup especially on my eyes I did that because I didn't really like the fact that I had big eyes and I thought that the way that I was doing my makeup made my eyes look smaller but it also didn't but I wouldn't leave the house without doing my like eye makeup and I also like would tell myself I couldn't go to certain events or certain things if I didn't have my hair a certain way or my my makeup a certain way this is not to mean that I would go anywhere looking like how I look in the morning but I do not put as much um effort sorry into how I look in some of these instances because I started to realize like it doesn't make me feel good to have this discipline on myself that I have to have my eyes or my makeup in in order to go out and go on a date you know I have to look my absolute best or I have to wear the prettiest dress and order to go and have a good time like I want to be able to have a good time with wearing minimal makeup I want to go out and go on dates with guys who um they don't care if I have all of my hair and my makeup and my outfit done to the nines this doesn't mean that I can't do it and I love to tap in to being able to dress up and do all those things but at the end of the day in my personal life it is exhausting to constantly do some of those things like I was talking about like my hair it was exhausting to do that all the time um and it also clearly was not healthy and it was exhausting to always feel like I had to make sure that I got get my makeup done and like all these extra steps that I had to do before I went out for me personally exhausting if it's not exhausting for you then that's fine but again tapping into this energy of like who am I doing it for am I telling myself that I have to do it or is this genuinely just a choice and I like it I know some girls who literally first of all they could beat their face like no other like I would never ever ever be able to slay a face the way that they they do it is insane I love it they're just like makeup artists and they thoroughly enjoy sitting down for like an hour or two before they go out and do their makeup literally bless their hearts I love that for them for me I become irritated after like 10 minutes I'm like hurry up let's get this done and I and I created a routine in which I can get my makeup done in probably less than 10 minutes and that just works for me I have other priorities and it's not to say those some girls priorities when it comes to makeup is the wrong priorities but it is if you feel like you are telling yourself you have to do certain things ask yourself why am I telling myself it has to be a priority and does it have to be a priority all the time it's really nice to be able to go out and not feel like I have to have all of these um like check boxes that I need to check before I walk out of my house and when I'm really feeling it I will get up and do my hair and look amazing and perfect and pretty and slay 10 out of 10 I love that I just love having the option to do that and that is what I really wanted when I was younger I would just look at some girls who I thought didn't wear a lot of makeup or it seemed like they they weren't really consumed with doing their makeup for an hour or like straightening their hair and stuff which think God and bless the girls who just kind of like don't really care because I think that we can learn something from them right it's like oh damn like I guess I don't have to go out and like wear all that makeup because you're not doing it and you're happy like that's great and I was like damn I I want that like I want to be able to go out and not give a so much and I started to experiment with that and I realized oh my God this is a life for me and again there's still times that I do my makeup and stuff but it's definitely not all the time now a few last things that I want to talk about because I feel like if you don't tap into this thing that I'm going to talk about right now then the tips and the advice that I've given you it's not really going to stick and that is in order for you to truly feel confident within your own skin you have to be okay with imperfections you have to start to tap into that unconditional love for yourself you cannot keep telling yourself you have to look perfect and you have to be 100% at all times I do not personally believe somebody who is confident within themselves has those insane standards on themselves and this is the thing you're not going to be able to experiment with what you like and what you don't like and whether you want to wear your hair natural or not or go out sometimes not wearing makeup or sometimes uh wearing makeup if you don't know how to let it go in terms of perfection right like if you have this perfectionist mindset then no you're not going to ever go out and and be okay okay with the fact that you're not wearing makeup and again I did talk about this in last week's episode so if you didn't listen to it I highly suggest you go listen to that because I did talk a lot about unconditional loving ourselves and we only usually love ourselves uncondition when we look pretty imperfect but what are you telling yourself on the days where you don't look pretty imperfect can you be okay with that for me I can be okay with that I can be okay looking in the mirror and saying you know what I don't look the best right now and you know what even if I'm relationship with someone and I'm I'm waking up next to him I know he probably doesn't think that I'm like a bombshell right now but that's okay and the fact that I am okay with that he's okay with that too and you know what it's even better he actually thinks that is way more beautiful than me having to show up or tell myself that I need to be a bombshell another thing you have to understand is there are always going to be beauty standards and there's going to be multiple now people like to say that there's like this one universal Beauty standard this European white girl type of beauty standard and yeah for sure there definitely is but I mean I even see in the black community there's this beauty standard I see in an Asian Community there's beauty standards there's beauty standards everywhere with even men like there's there's always going to be some sort of standard so with knowing that information stop trying to fit into every single person's box and stop telling yourself that you're not living up to a beauty standard that you see online when there's multiple there are literally thousands of people who would look at you with your eyes with your teeth with your smile with your hair color with your eye color with your whatever and say you are beautiful amazing so unique and there's going to be a whole other group of people over here that say you're all right or she doesn't really fit into the standard H yeah she's not thick enough so I don't really yeah no she's not my cup of tea okay and why is it that you are basing your selfworth off of the group whose standard is different than what you want yours to be anyways and listen listen let's just bring it back real quick the reason why you're honestly doing this you're trying to chase that love and approval from that group that is really irrelevant is most likely because you have been chasing somebody's love somebody's approval all of your life and you didn't get it this is where it is time that you stand up and you say you're enough this is where you stop chasing that group of people or that person that parent that man that friend that is clearly not willing to accept you for what whatever reason not willing to love you and honor you and whatever you stop and you stand up and you say I am enough and when you do that you will see so many more people actually come to you because it's honorable it's beautiful there's something unique about the fact that you are finally owning your you are finally owning yourself and you're comfortable in your own skin and you're enjoying life and you're in the present people are broken understand that okay and at the end of the day if people are not going to come to you who cares they're not your people anywayss you didn't come on to this earth to change and morph yourself into this one specific Barbie doll looking person so that everyone can just enjoy a piece of you and then walk away and actually I'm going to quickly read something from my book because I posted it on my story for the first time this is something that I've ever posted really about about my book and I just I think this is actually very relevant I wasn't even planning on doing this but I'll just read it right now and this is a chapter in which I'm really addressing this same type of topic here and I wrote a hard but freeing truth that I came to is that there are too many people on this Earth for me to be everyone's cup of tea I don't need to be the desire to be pitcher perfect emerged from the desire to be loved and accepted by everyone but the more I learned how to be there for myself and self soothe during times of hardship I came to find that I didn't actually need the entire world to fill the void I was experiencing in fact learning how to create a life filled with meaningful friendship connections and self-love was what I needed most half of the people I was seeking love and validation from didn't even love themselves let alone know how to love me so why keep chasing something that wouldn't know what to do with my love when I presented it ask yourself you are chasing the love inv validation from people who don't even know how to love themselves they don't know how to love themselves and they wouldn't even know what to do when you came up and your pretty packaged perfect amazing self is because they do not know how to handle something that is so incredibly beautiful and unique go find those people go stand in your worth stop chasing we are done the chasing so that's going to be it for today's episode I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you got something out of this please share this with someone that you feel needs to hear this message and definitely go check the descriptions for all the other related videos that kind of all Encompass this this topic of the pressure to be perfect and anything that I talked about in this episode as well will be down below and don't forget I do two episodes a week on the podcast in which today's episode Thursday episodes we talk about usually just one topic one main theme obviously talk about many things within that theme and then the Monday episodes I call them off topic episodes and I just talk about a bunch of random things that I learned that week I've gone through things that I found on Tik Tok just like fun more light-hearted chats so so definitely make sure that you're subscribed to the YouTube channel if you're watching on YouTube I also have this podcast available on audio Spotify Apple wherever you listen to your podcast make sure that you're following if you are listening on the audio version if you would be so graciously kind to give me a star review I would really appreciate that preferably five you guys already know that I was going to say that because we are really trying to hit a few milestones for the podcast we've technically hit 1 million downloads because looking at my analytics from the audio version but now because the podcast I've gotten a certain amount of views on all of my videos and obviously subscribers and everything it's probably total at 1 million but regardless whatever 1 million is a very big milestone and we're going to just be hitting it if we haven't already and I just want to continue to share this message with everyone who needs it so please let me know what you liked about this episode and what you want to hear next we have a lot of fun episodes coming this month and yeah that's everything I love you guys so much and I'll see you in the next one bye bye