Ep 123: Becoming Your Own Best Friend

It is possible that you only need to change your relationship with yourself in order to enjoy your life more. Most of us go through life listening to the voices inside our heads. The problem is that some of these voices say things like “I am not worthy,” “What will other people think?” or “Who do you think you are?”

The negativity with which we speak to ourselves is holding us back from living the life we truly want. When you become your best friend, you realize that you can create an environment of safety and belonging for yourself.

In this episode, I explore how questioning this voice—with love, and without trying to get rid of it—can help you step into your favorite version of yourself. We look at the four steps to becoming your own best friend so you can start enjoying your life as it is now, while also finding the courage to change what is less than optimal.

Click HERE to get the full show notes.

Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. 

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You can enter as many times as you'd like, as long as you're writing authentic reviews and giving genuine shares. All right, back to the episode at hand, I can't believe honestly that I haven't done an episode yet about becoming your own best friend, but here we are. 

And that is what I'm going to be talking about today. So let's get to it. So most of us are living our lives on autopilot, kind of going through life listening to the voices inside our head. This is normal. 

The problem is that we don't recognize that some of these voices are being very negative and very mean to ourselves. We actually even think that it's necessary for this voice to be mean and to work against us in order for us to have the life that we want. 

Thinking if I'm just a little bit harder on myself or if I just accomplish this one next thing or if I could get my kids to behave better or if I could convince my partner to just do what I want him or her to do, this kind of thinking is not getting you the life that you want. 

And I was going through my old journals recently as I was preparing for my very first retreat, which is a week from today as of this recording. And these are some of the thoughts that I used to have on a regular basis. 

And these are some of the common thoughts that my clients come to me with. So even though I was an accomplished 40 plus, almost 50 year old woman with a 20 plus year career in pediatrics, I was a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend to many, I still had the thought of you are not worthy. 

Or if they ever knew the real me, if I ever show people who I truly am, they won't want to be my friend or have me as their child's pediatrician. It was kind of bad. Of course, I also had the little voice of, maybe if you worked a little harder, then you might be worthy. 

Another big one that I think women think because of the lovely patriarchy is, who do you think you are? To have these big audacious goals and ideas for yourself. You can't do that, right? Of course, if you were a better mom, a better wife, a better sister, daughter, doctor, coach, person, whatever better means, then you'll be worthy. 

A lot of us think, what will other people think? It's a big one for a lot of us, right? Another one that I struggled with and that a lot of my clients struggle with is you will never be enough. No matter what you do, which degree you get, how many kids you have, how clean your house is, how many shapes you can make your kiddos pancakes into, how many colleges your kid gets into, that type of thing. 

It's never gonna be enough or you are never gonna be enough and that is a bunch of bullshit. So this is not our fault. This happened as a result of evolution where in the past in order to stay alive, we had to have a bias toward being negative. 

We always had to be on the lookout for what might kill us or might kill the people that we love. Always scanning the environment for what's wrong right now or what could potentially go wrong in the future. 

This worked well to keep us alive in the past, but for most of us, because of the time we live in, and let's be honest, because of modern life and all the modern advances we have, we don't need to have this huge negativity bias anymore in order to survive. 

And it truly is holding us back from living the life we want. Many of you have probably tried reading self-development books, or listened to self-development podcasts like this one, or have watched my journey over the past six and a half years and thought, well, that sounds good, but how do I do this? 

I wanna teach you how watching this voice in your head, this part of you, questioning this voice in your head with love without trying to get rid of it, can help you live the life that you feel is just out of your reach. 

Becoming your own best friend is one of the keys to enjoying your life as it is right now. and it's one of the keys to having the courage to change the things that are less than optimal in your life so that you can enjoy your life more. 

It's kind of a mindfuck and the crazy thing is that you might not need anything in your life to change other than your relationship with yourself in order to enjoy your life more. I was out walking on a Saturday morning. 

I often walk in the woods while listening to podcasts, but this time I was listening to Christine D'Ercole on the Peloton app. I was listening to one of her reflection rides, even though I was walking. 

I wanted her awesome messages in my ear and head while I was out there. Now, let's be clear, the me before coaching would have never walked to a riding workout. What? That is against the rules. Of course, fuck the rules. 

It was just what I needed. The ride was about self-respect, and she was talking about the fact that we spend an inordinate amount of time in our heads thinking about conversations that we're going to have or those that we've already had with others, either practicing them or replaying them in our mind. 

All of the things you would have, could have, should have said. And she was saying, what if we spend at least an equal amount of time thinking about the conversations that we want to have with ourselves? 

What a revolutionary idea. The best news ever about becoming your own best friend is that you get to bring your new best friend, you, with you wherever you go. You start to figure out that you are the common denominator in your life. 

I have four steps to becoming your own best friend. The first step is getting to know yourself. The second step is thanking your inner mean girl, thinking that inner mean part of you. The next step is recognizing how much power you have in your life. 

And then the final step is deciding to believe in yourself. and really becoming your own best-type person. So step one, get to know yourself. Most people that I talk to, when I ask them about the relationship that they have with themselves, look at me like I have at least two heads. 

So have you thought about it? What is your relationship with yourself like? How do you talk to yourself when you're having that constant conversation all day long in your head? You know what I'm talking about. 

The loop of thoughts that goes on in your head. For most of us, the voice actually gets louder when things start to go wrong. And then I want you to question, would I talk to my best friend the way that I'm talking to myself? 

I highly doubt it. In getting to know yourself, I want you to think about how much time you spend daydreaming about what you want your life to look like. Many of us stop daydreaming. For me, I'm pretty sure it was sometime in my mid thirties. 

Once I had accomplished all the goals I had set out for myself as a young adult. I was married, I had two kids, I had a career that I had worked for, we had a nice house, I had a nice car, I have some great friends. 

I thought I was set, so my need to daydream was done. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes we make subconsciously, it's to stop daydreaming. Honestly, the only time I daydreamed back then was when I was planning a vacation. 

And escape from my everyday life. So think about it, do you spend more time dreaming up the life that you want, or more time dreaming up escaping from your life by planning vacations and trips? When you sit with yourself in the quiet, what is your dream? 

I wanna encourage all of you to dream bigger than you are right now. I'll share mine, one day I would like to have a house on the water. It doesn't have to be a big house, just somewhere with water and trees, a kitchen for Jon to cook me meals in, a lovely bathroom, a screened in porch for me to read and do yoga away from the mosquitoes that love me, and a kayak or two. 

I wanna teach you to plan your life after getting to know yourself so that you don't have to go on vacation to escape your life. You can go and have fun and not dread coming home to real life, quote unquote. 

Other than you can dread doing the unpacking in the laundry, really no amount of daydreaming is going to get you out of that. So what do you think is holding you back from having your dream life? I'm gonna give you a hint. 

It very likely is you and the way that you're thinking. So this is a tough realization for a lot of us. So I want you to take a minute to kind of let that sink in. The next step, like I said, is counterintuitive, but it is to thank your inner mean girl. Your inner mean girl, the parts of you that are less than kind to you in your head have always been there for you. And she definitely has served a purpose in helping you create the life that you have right now. 

And for that, we actually want to honor her. Of course, she thought the way to help you was to be mean to you. Of course, she has been there for you time and time again, ready and willing to point out all the ways you've messed up, all the ways you've struggled, all the possible pitfalls that you could fall into in life. 

And we actually don't want to get rid of her. We just want her to know that from here on out, we got this, we're an adult, we're not the little girl anymore. And she doesn't need to be so loud and persistent anymore. 

Just like I've talked on here about your child having a tantrum as being a call for love, your inner mean girl having a tantrum is also a call for love. So the more love that you can give her, the less she's gonna need to try to get your attention by acting out and against your inner bestie. 

So I used to refer to my inner mean girl as Ursula, you know, the sea witch from The Little Mermaid. But then when I decided to befriend her after doing my deep dive coaching certification and after doing some parts work, I now call my inner mean girl, Sweetie. 

She's here to stay and she's way less mean when I actually give her space to be with me. So I want you to think about what you might wanna call your inner mean girl if you like. I'd love to hear from you if you come up with something, you can share it with me by emailing me or DMing me on Facebook or Instagram, wherever you hang out most. 

Okay, the third step, recognize how much power you have in your life. So many of us are out here living as if we are victims to our certain set of circumstances. And believe it or not, many of us are creating the life that we have with the thoughts that we have about ourselves. 

Many of these thoughts are not even your own and you've carried them with you, carried them forward from the people who raised you, whether that be your parents, your teachers, your grandparents, some caregivers, perhaps your classmates, you may have had a bully in the past, if you have a bully now, once you realize that everything in your life is a choice, you can get to work at making decisions that serve your dreams. 

You get to bring your human brain with you. I want to remind you that your primitive brain wants to keep you safe. It wants you to seek comfort, it wants you to avoid pain, it wants you to exert the least amount of effort possible. 

And you want this part of your brain because it actually also is the part that keeps you alive. live. Your breathing center is here. The controls of your circulatory system and your digestive system live here. 

In order to work with this part of your brain, you have to be willing to do some things that feel uncomfortable to you. Like me on this podcast right now, each week I have to overcome some discomfort to write and then deliver this for you. 

When you become your best friend, you realize that you can create love, safety, and belonging for yourself. You don't have to rely on anyone else anymore, and all the relationships that you actually choose to partake in, you are there because you genuinely want to be. 

Once you know this, you can set your priorities based on what you want for your life. You can decide how much influence you want to give to others in your life, your spouse, your parents, your children, your coworkers, your in-laws, your friends, there's no wrong answer. 

It just has to be an honest answer that you have for yourself. As you guys know, if you've been listening along with the podcast, one of my favorite questions to ask when I am coaching my fabulous clients is, what do you want? 

One of my favorite parts of this superpower of realizing how much power that you have in your life is that you get to start saying no when yes is a lie. When others ask you to give them attention, space, time, you can stop doing the shit that you never wanted to do in the first place. 

And remember, for every yes that you say to someone else and what they want, you are very likely saying no to yourself. I promise you don't have to do that anymore. The final step, deciding to believe in yourself and becoming your own best type person. 

Once you start prioritizing your own desires, your own dream, inevitably someone that you know and love is going to think you're crazy or that you're selfish. There will be people thinking you can't possibly just do whatever the fuck you want. 

Who do you think you are? No one else needs to understand. No one else needs to cheer for you. Once you are your own best friend, you can have your own back. You can make your decisions for yourself from a place of loving yourself. 

If you're overly worried about letting others in your life down, you end up letting yourself down over and over and over again. You can decide that you will never let yourself down again. This does not mean that you become a selfish asshole. 

The odds of that happening if they have not already happened are actually very low. Once you start taking care of yourself and making decisions from a place of love for yourself, you actually become less resentful and more pleasant for you and for others to be around. 

I have a question for you. Think about your best friend right now. Hi, Alicia. Do you expect your bestie to be perfect or do you expect him or her to be human? My guess is that you expect him or her to be human. 

Agree that you will meet yourself where you are and not expect yourself to be any better or any further along than you already are. There really is so much power in that. I want to remind you and me that perfectionism is holding all of us back. 

It leads to overwhelm, it keeps us stagnant, and it virtually never gets us what we want. I said to a client the other day when she was frustrated at herself for falling back into some perfectionist thinking, Listen, we don't have to be perfect at giving up this need to be perfect. 

And then we laughed and laughed. As I've been on this coaching journey back to myself, it's been such a delight to get to know myself and to help women get to know themselves and start living the life they've been dreaming of, to start bringing them back to themselves. 

Believe it or not, that is a simple decision you make. You can decide right this moment that you want to get to know yourself again and start living the life you're meant to live. There's a book entitled Journey to the Heart by Melody Beattie. 

She has a passage for you to read every day of the year in the book, and one of my favorite passages is, your heart can be trusted, don't doubt it. It will inevitably connect you to what's true. Love yourself enough to trust what you know, then stay connected to the truth. 

This is possible if you're treating yourself as your own best friend, my friends. Okay, if you do this work of becoming your own best friend, I promise you, you can create any result in your life that you can think of. 

If you would have told me in 2017, or even in 2019 or 2021, that I would be here with you delivering episode 123 of the podcast, teaching women how to become their own best friend, I never would have believed you. 

I never would have thought this was possible for me, and this is the power of coaching. Also, if you would have told me that one of the keys to being my own best friend was to actually befriend my inner mean girl, even just a few years ago, that would not have made sense to me. 

I thought then that I needed to silence her altogether. This is not true. And now that I know better, I do better. Again, this is the power of coaching. I want to give you an opportunity to start working on this right now, knowing what you know now, why would you wait and becoming your own best friend? 

Now is the time to take the opportunity. I keep the authenticity calendar on my desk, and I keep the card from my May 14th pulled because it speaks so well to me. It says, and then one day she decided to never put herself down again. 

That's possible for you too. I'm currently welcoming one-on-one clients and our next group will start in the spring. I would love to see your beautiful face on a consult call soon. See y'all next week.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!