Hi everyone, welcome back to another podcast. Welcome to Soulish Femme, my name is Glennavelle Manarang. To those of you who are here for the very first time, I can’t believe it’s December already and it’s almost over. The year is fastly approaching. 2026 is coming sooner than we think. And I know probably this is sooner for me to discuss about biggest lessons I’ve learned so far. Not just this year, but with my entirety of being here on this earth. Without further ado, with no further ado, let’s start with:
The Biggest Lessons I Learned:
As 2025 is rapidly ending, staying in touch with yourself can significantly enhance your daily productivity and growth. Whether you think your life is behind and waiting for the right opportunity, then today is that day to create your own. these top lessons I learned offer practical advice you can incorporate into your own life.
Do not care so much about what people think of you and the choices you are making. When we’re younger, of course, we love to ask people’s opinion. What should we do with our lives? We need direction. Of course, when we’re children, we want to follow the rules of our parents. We want to please our parents. However, when you become older and wiser, hopefully, you’ll come to realize that only you know what is best for you. Even if your parents might think so to follow this straight path, go to college, get a job, retire at the age of 65, it is the same rule for everybody else.
Take Note: However, I realize that if it doesn’t resonate with your core values and if it doesn’t align with your calling, it is actually going to rob you of your greatest potential and the purpose that God had put you onto this earth. This is why I always like to say figure out your purpose and your calling in life and the rest is just going to follow. It will make your life a lot better and you’ll become happier.
Remember: People usually wait for the perfect timing and the perfect moment to start something because of the fear that they have been trying to convince themselves that the fear of what would people think about me, especially my friends, my family, maybe they would call me weird or odd. Because I’m the only one who is truly willing to get out of my comfort zone. Sometimes we are stuck withanalysis paralysis.
So, we always try to overly think whether it’s not really the right time to start something right now. Maybe I should wait because we procrastinate too. It is another reason why we also do not start right away. We procrastinate not because we’re lazy. It’s because we like to make sure that we’re doing the right thing. However, you’ll never know whether it’s the right thing for you if you haven’t started. How are you supposed to know that something aligns with your calling if you have not started yet? And if you can hear some background noise because I’m actually recording this close to my window. So, I apologize for that in advance.
It ties into what I said earlier. According to Wu Wei it says, “The path that one person follows is not the correct path for any other person.” You must follow your own path that is the way end quote. So, your path is yours alone whether you think that it is probably not aligned with the rest of the people around you but it’s actually your own path. No one has the same purpose. Perhaps, similarities, but not necessarily with the same kind of purpose that God has given you. We might have different styles of personalities, calling, gifting, maybe you’re a teacher, maybe you’re good at serving other people. However, it depends on how you really view things. But this is exactly what I said. You cannot wait for people’s approval and permission to follow whatever that path is that God has been asking you to do.
Storytelling: For instance, going back in 2019 when I had this nagging voice to start a YouTube channel, I’ve been drowning the noise. I said, “I’m not going to do it. I do not look good in in front of the camera. I hated how I sounded. I don’t like my voice.” I had all the excuses. And that nagging voice had never stopped bugging me until I finally decided to have the courage to do so. And the rest is history. And the more you practice, of course, the better you become.
Progression is not about being perfect. It’s about the way that you’re going to learn. You’re going to stumble at first. You’re going to feel awkward. You’re going to sound as if you sound strange by listening to your own voice. However, the more and more you become a student of life, the better you’ll become. –
Glennavelle
#4. Do Not Be Self-Conscious
And number four, of course, is do not be self conscious or nobody cares that about you too much or do not have this idea that people are busy thinking about you when people actually are not really busy thinking about you. Again, it goes back to when you’re younger, you always about your image. How do I look? Is my hair fine? How’s my outfit? We are always trying to look out there and seeking validation. When you become in your 40s and hopefully later in your game, you realize that many people are too self-absorbed in the in the beginning to begin with.
The Reason Why:
They don’t really have so much time about thinking about you. They have their own problem. And so instead of focusing on the external, learn to focus on the internal instead.
And I wish I have learned this sooner. But it took me a long time to realize that people truly are absorbed about their problems, whatever they’re going through, their day today dilemma.
And so if you only focus about internal, how are you feeling at this moment? Are you happy, sad, anxious, grateful? These are the things that you’re aware because if you’re not really self-aware, that’s why you become self-conscious. You’re always thinking about, do I sound good?
How do I being how am I being perceived by other people? You’re constantly are trying to be people pleasing. And that’s actually exhausting. I used to be a people pleaser. That got me nowhere because I’m too concerned of how I looked, how I sounded, how I being perceived by other people. And if you’re not really careful when you are trying to please everybody else, you’re not going to please yourself to begin with and you’re going to keep changing your demeanor. You’re going to keep on changing how you’re how you’re going to behave. And apparently, you don’t even know who you are.
#5. The Hustle Culture
And of course, let’s not forget hustle culture is a lie. For at what cost? The biggest lesson I learned growing up is that you must hustle and you must grind until the day you die so that you can achieve your goal but at what cost. I am not saying that you should not work and you should not have goals and ambition because if you have been on my channel many times I always like to discuss about having a vision having goals because a man without a vision he or she will perish. I do I’m an advocate of always trying to grow and improve yourself mentally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually.
However, we cannot have this lie that you must always have to be hustling to get what you wanted. When you are not taking care of yourself, when you are not fully grounded, you are going to become exhausted. You’re going to exert too much of your energy and then you’re going to end up getting burned out and ended up at the hospital bed and nobody wants to be at the hospital bed and just debilitated. Because of the idea that we must have this Western culture mindset that if I’m not working 24 hours; therefore, I am lazy. Or I’m not going to achieve what I want.
Gracefully work towards your goal
Perhaps, you can gracefully work towards your goal and then you can also set aside for resting and self-care. Especially for women, as I always like to emphasize on this channel that women, we run on a gasoline tank to a fool that we take care of everybody else but ourselves. We always put ourselves at the back burner, especially holidays is coming.
Take a break when it’s necessary.
We like to put our husbands first, our children first, you know. We cook, clean, prepare our meals, do the laundry, pick up our kids, and drop off our kids. No wonder why we are very exhausted and we have nothing left for ourselves. I really think that if you are not taking care of yourself, you’re just going to rob yourself of that peace of mind and you are not going to be pleasant to be around with.
Because I know this for myself . When I’m always constantly exerting and always serving everybody else and I’m not really taking the time to decompress or have a self-care for myself, I am not the most pleasant person to be around with. I become short-tempered. I have no more patience and I am actually just going to short circuit eventually because I am frantically running around trying to serve other people and not filling my own tank.
First of all, you cannot fill up other people’s tank if you are not filling your own tank. That will be maybe taking a nap for 30 minutes, going for a walk, journaling, or doing something that can help you with your mental, emotional, and your well-being as a woman. Drinking lots of water, eating good food, as I always like to say, of course, meditation and prayer.
#6. Trust The Process
And then another thing that I would like for you to think about, and the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that trust the process. Timing is everything. We know that in this life there is no such thing as a magic wand quick fix formula. I will be richer tomorrow and I don’t have to do anything. That is full of baloney. If somebody tells you that you’re when you start something today, expect result in two weeks. If that person is going to sell you with that kind of a lie, you should drown out that noise and shut it out because it’s not truth.
Everything in life takes time. It is like a farmer planting a seed in the ground, which is the analogy that is still relevant to this day that it takes months before you can see a harvest, something into fruition. It doesn’t grow eventually tomorrow. With anything in life, timing is everything. God is testing your patience. First of all, God is trying to mold your character. As much as we want it to be fast and quick, and I want the result right now, when God sees that you’re not ready yet, and he’s not willing for you to take that risk because he knows that you’re going to get hurt along the way, he’s going to make sure to slow the process down.
Timing is everything. We know that in this life there is no such thing as a magic wand quick fix formula. I will be richer tomorrow and I don’t have to do anything. That is full of baloney..
Everything in life takes time. It is like a farmer planting a seed in the ground,
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But for many people, we like conveniences. We like fast quick because everything that we see is microwavable. We like to go through a drive-thru and our meal is fixed and ready to eat. However, with anything in life, relationship takes work. Business takes work. Anything that you put in, it takes a lot of work and that’s why you have to be patient in the process. I know it’s easier said than done because I myself too become frustrated when I don’t see any growth right away. When I don’t see numbers rising and I’m like, God, what am I doing wrong? We like to manipulate things because we thought we could.
And apparently life has a funny way of teaching us that sometimes we might have a detour along the way. Maybe God is saying this is not really the path for you. Maybe you have to take a this path.
Glennavelle
And so we just really have to understand that in life with anything, it’s not always a straight path. Sometimes you’re going to maybe turn left or turn right or maybe take a different pathway.
#7. Believe In Yourself
And then of course believe in yourself. The biggest lesson I have learned is that if you don’t believe in yourself, no one will. How do you believe in yourself? I know it’s easier said than saying I believe in myself. Affirmation is one of the things that I like to tell myself that I believe in you when nobody nobody else does.
Believe in yourself that you can do whatever you put your mind and heart into it.
Believing in yourself is really about taking the action.
When you keep the promise to yourself and you keep showing up to yourself every day, even though you don’t feel like it, even though there are times that you just want to sleep and do nothing, but because you do have believe in yourself that you can do whatever you put your mind and heart into it.
For instance, if you promise yourself that I’m going to work out this morning, maybe for 15 minutes of walking at the park, and you showed up for yourself, it really proves to yourself that you believe in your effort, that you’re a person that is reliable, that you have a person, your integrity speaks louder than your words, which is my next point.
Action speaks louder than words anytime
You must be the person who keep a promise.
Your words and your actions must be aligned together.
When you keep saying something and you never show it up for yourself, you are a liar.
You’re not only disappointing yourself, but actually you’re also setting yourself for a failure.
Your brain is being programmed thinking that you are just a complacent person who always have excuses and you always like to say that I’ll do it later because I have all of these things that I need to do first.
This is why I always like to say prioritize and time management are one of the keys that you must consider in order for you to have a good structure in the morning. If you don’t even know how to manage your time and you’re just squandering it on whatever it is that you’re trying to do, browsing on the internet or going through a social media that is pointless, then you’re actually just setting yourself up for a failure. When your brain wants you to do something else instead of doing what’s good for you, then you must switch off and just do the action.
For instance, even in the morning, sometimes I don’t feel like waking up because I’m tired. I don’t listen to my brain. I just do the opposite. I just get up and I just I don’t even have to give myself the time to talk myself out of it. So, when something is trying to convince you, because our brain is lazy, our brain is saying, “Well, it’s too cold outside. maybe shouldn’t just walk because you know it’s winter time and you just probably sleep for another 10 minutes. But I don’t even give my brain a chance to talk me myself out of it. I have just to do it and ignore that voice. And it takes a lot of effort actually. It takes a lot of practice. This takes a lot of self-awareness. But the more and more you do it, the easier it will become.
So when you take action, it just gives your brain the validation that you are actually are serious and you’re taking yourself seriously to a point where you’re going to show up no matter how hard it is. And there are days of course that you’re just going to tell yourself or your brain is going to tell you that you know what’s the point of doing something today. But remember that we only have today. That’s all we have. We’re never promised of tomorrow. And so why must you not live your life as if it’s your last day. Live your life to the fullest because this is all we have. You’re never guaranteed of tomorrow. You never wake, you may not wake up tomorrow morning.
So I always like to think that I want to do the best that I can today. And whatever it is that I would like to achieve, I’m going to show up with the excellence and the quality that the best way I know how. Because all I’m I’m all I know is that this is all I have. Nobody knows whether we’re going to wake up tomorrow morning. Only if God is going to tell you, by the way, you have only one week to leave to live. But most of us are not given that kind of gift to to foresee the future. We only have is today. That’s why Jesus said today’s problem is efficient enough.
Today, the now is all you have to worry about.
You don’t have to worry about the future because that is something that you cannot really uh vision of what’s to come. But today at this moment is only the present that God has given you. So why not use it? Because 24 hours in one day is a gift from God. And if you’re not using it, you’re actually robbing God and slapping his face and saying, “I don’t care about my life. I rather would just want to be complacent and just stay stagnant and be like acting like a dead person.
#9 . You Will Reap What You Sow
And number nine if you’re counting I don’t have number 10 is that you will reap what you sow. The biggest lessons I learned in life is that whatever you sow whatever you plant you will reap it.
Galatians 6:7-10 it says, "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life."
So, that’s why whatever you plant seed today, whether it’s a seed of laziness, a seed of something that you don’t think about the future, then you’re going to reap about that tomorrow. That is why when you’re young, you should be savvy about money right now. Unfortunately, for many of us, we did not come from a rich family. Our parents were not rich. We were not handed over inheritance from our grandparents that are millionaire.
However, I wish I have learned the hard way that well, I have learned the hard way back way back when I was in my college years that if you don’t know about money before, you’re never going to know about money if you’re not willing to learn it. And whatever you sow from yesterday, you are reaping now of what you have. Think about your life. The life that you have now is because the consequences and the result of the planting of hard work from many years ago. You do not expect a good life today if you’re not willing to work for your future. It just doesn’t work like that.
Unfortunately, we thought that someone is going to hand us over the good life and maybe if you win a lottery that is just a scarcity mindset for many people says maybe I’m going to win a lottery and I’m going to be rich. But when you study about rich people, they are not actually winning the lottery. They actually started something. They created a business. They created a product and therefore they have the life that they want right now. They work and they toiled with sleepless nights, many sleepless nights because that’s exactly how they did something. They read a lot of books. They actually reap money because many people like to reap money because they want to be financially independent and that is the main objective, right?
We want to be rich because we want to be financially independent. We we don’t want to be a burden to someone else. We want to be able to live the life that we want to live, the lifestyle, eat the kind of food that we enjoy, travel to places that we want to see without problems about money. But when you are not really concerned about your future and where it’s going, that’s why many people 98% of 98ers are just consumer and we are the mindlessly playing the victim of I am going to be the way that I am, the way that my mother was or my dad was broke and uneducated.
And that is why if you’re not really going to shake the status quo and be the difference of your family, then you’re going to constantly follow the route of your family, which is destruction. And they’re not really helping you to grow. So that that’s why when you want to have a better future, you must learn how to plant a good seed right now, maybe educating yourself, reading books, and I know for some people it takes so many hardships before we can get through it. It’s like pushing a a boulder up the hill. It’s very hard for many of us because there’s only what 2% of people that are rich and billionaires.
But right now in this generation of AI and technology, we do have the ability to do whatever we want and earn a passive income if only we’re willing to do so. And then maybe the last but not the least, I thought I only have nine, but 10 is that do not be weary. In Galatians it says, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially to those who are of the household of faith.” Weariness comes in season in my life. You’ll become weary. You’ll become you will become exhausted and tired.
And sometimes you ask yourself, “What is the point of doing this anyway? What is what is it for me of achieving this goal anyway? what is the use of this? And sometimes I would go back and forth whether I should continue with my podcast or produce short videos and YouTube or do a blog. I mean these questions probably it will occur in your mind if you are a content creator. But if you love what you do, you will have you will find a way to push through it no matter how hard it is and no matter what people say or think.
Especially when you’re not being supported to begin with, it’s a lot harder to go on in life, especially when you have naysayers around you, judgmental people, critical people who constantly undermine your potential. However, you cannot listen to those naysayers or the people who does not even have nothing to prove. If those people are questioning what you’re doing is impossible or it’s a waste of your time and if they have not even proven to themselves that they have done something then why must you listen to those voices.
So do not be weary. Do not grow tired of doing what you need to do. Even if it’s redundant and it’s boring sometimes it’s repetitive. You’re doing it the same thing producing a podcast Mondays and Thursdays and short videos. But that’s just how it is because it’s part of the process. Life is not always glamorous. It’s not always this rainbows and Skittles. Life is actually boring and it is a part of creating a business. However, you must be able to float and to just ride with a wave. And if it’s sometimes you feel like I don’t want to produce anything, maybe you just need to rest.
But don’t quit and don’t give up. If you just need to maybe step away for a moment and go to a different place, maybe to a park to have a different perspective and you need an inspiration, maybe go to a museum or somewhere that you can think differently. If you have not have any ideas like for instance if I am stuck with something if I have no more ideas that come out of my brain I would browse through the internet Pinterest I would look into magazines or go to a park so that I can think clearly or maybe learn to just listen to a podcast that can strike a chord in your soul that gives you an idea.
And these are the reasons why sometimes I read a lot. I listen to different podcasts. I go outside so that I have all these ideas that will spark within my soul and then I have something to produce and share with you like this one. And so I just want to wish you a happy holidays if I probably will. Happy Thanksgiving. It’s about giving thanks and counting your blessings is actually the bonus tip is always be grateful of what you have. I think the takeaway of this biggest lessons I’ve learned is be grateful.
Count your blessings.
Stop complaining of what you if you what you don’t have, the more and more you are grateful of what you have, the more and more you are going to be blessed. God hates complainer. He cannot stand people who complains and who always have this idea that God owes them something if they haven’t even worked for it. So always be grateful for the sunrise this morning. Food on your table, clothing in your back, shelter. If you have more than $20 in your bank account, you’re richer than the rest of the world. If you’re living in this place, United States of America, you’re actually one of the richest people in the world. And you should not take that for granted. The freedom that this country brings and the ability to achieve whatever you want, the pursuit of happiness.
These are the things that I think we take it for granted that we do have this privilege to be able to do whatever we please in this world, especially when we put it in good use. So we cannot take our liberty for granted really because it’s something that is given endowed to us by the almighty God that every one of us has this alienable rights and we have all this value. We intrinsically valuable in the eyes of God and it’s up to you to really hone that in and to develop your ability to understand that no one can reward you of something that you have not worked for in this life. No one can reward you.
Life has to be life is going to reward you if you’re willing to put the effort and time.
And that is why many people think that the government or their mom or their dad is a problem and they owe me something. Nobody owes you something. Not even God. You are put into this earth for a purpose and for a reason. And that is something for you to figure out what it is that you’re here for to do.
Every one of us has functions and we all have calling and purposes and you have not found that out yet. Maybe you have to ask God for permission or wisdom rather and give you clarity and guidance of why he created you in the first place because you’re wasting your time. If you’re not, if you have not yet figured out why you’re here on earth and you are still going in circle and not achieving anything.
