Episode #37 – Growing Steadily

Transcript

Welcome to Soulish Femme! Soulish Femme is a channel solely dedicated for you where I help focus in prospering body, spirit and soul. Life is a journey and I am glad that you can be a part of mine. As you explore my vlogs and my real talk episodes, I hope you will find inspirations and motivation you are looking for. Remember that life is not going to wait around for you. Therefore, live a life with intentionality and curate the life you’ve always dreamed of. As much as I love to share about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I also would like to showcase my passions in life such as food, travel, fashion, beauty, and many more. To truly be free from the shackles of the systems limitation, you must decide once and for all to live unapologetically and live a life that makes you feel alive and rejuvenated every single day. Perhaps I am a hopelessly romantic person, but I truly believe we are meant to enjoy the wonders and the magnificent beauty the world has to offer. If you are ready to embark on your healing journey from traumatic experiences, feel free to check the link below to enroll in this course through Udemy. I will see you there. Thank you. [Music]

Hi everyone! Welcome back on another podcast. Thank you for tuning in for the very first time. Perhaps ,if you’re here as new listeners, I would like to welcome you to Soulish Femme. My name is Glennavelle Manarang and to those of you who are returning listeners, thank you for coming back once again. Today is about growing steadily. Let’s face it, nobody likes to grow up. Everybody just want to be stagnant and complacent and just live life: que sera sera, whatever will be will be. I’m pretty sure you probably heard of the song because that was a song that I was introduced to when I was a child sung by my mother. However, if you want to grow as an adult and adulting is part of growing because if you are living in this world for a longest time, your body changes with time. You had your first birthday, probably you would not remember that. And then later on, you’re going to gradually going to develop some parts in your body.

For some reason, there are characteristics, attitude that are not really developed until later on in life. We are actually never been introduced to this kind of teachings until you become a grown-up and really studied about growth and self-development. I usually love to improve myself. That is one of my perhaps expertise that I always like to gravitate towards. I’m not saying that I’m an expert, but it’s something that I normally love to explore which are learning about human development physiology. How does the body functions? What are the characteristics to make a person successful? What are the habits that they do based on the things that we see on television: i.e., “great athletes and people that are have a remarkable way of becoming successful or become legends like musicians and some of the artists.” So with no further ado, let’s talk about it takes a lot of consistency to grow steadily. So the title is growing steadily or growth.

#1. Consistency

Growing steadily is that even though you’re still growing, you need to be steady which is consistency. I think is one of the hallmark that a person must developed over time. Consistency is very hard because you need to show up day in and day out. No matter however you feel it’s not about an emotion. It is something that you will develop over time through showing up for yourself. It is through habits. It is about having time management even though you don’t feel like getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth or getting up in the morning and making breakfast for your children and to send them to school because there will be days of course that you feel tired and there’s going to be especially when you’re going through emotional turmoil. Maybe you have financial issues, health issues, marital issues. These can also will make you somewhat less productive. So you have to take them into consideration.

Consistency of course is planning ahead of time. To be consistent is being mindful of asking yourself the question, “Why do you want to do this?” I believe it was Jim Rhon said that if you know your why, the how is a lot easier to figure out. If you ask yourself the question for instance, if you want to lose weight why do you want to lose weight? Is it only for vanity’s sake? Is it only because you just want to look good? You need to be very specific because I think if you have a very clear idea of why you’re doing something, it gives you that kind of motivation. It reminds you of the long term or the end result of why you want to achieve something.

#2. Discipline

And of course, let’s not forget about part of growing steadily is you have to learn to have this idea to have to think of a discipline.

According to 1 Corinthians 9:34, "I discipline my body and bring it into subjection lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified."

So, discipline is also another skill or characteristics that you have to develop by growing steadily. Discipline as I also like to say, comes down to becoming self-aware of your time. I think time is a commodity that we cannot afford to lose. Once the time is gone, you cannot renew it. You cannot chase it back. Everybody is given 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week. And you would wonder to yourself, why is it that some people have excelled tremendously? They have gained a lot of momentum by creating a lot of wonderful things in this life, invention or innovation. However, why is it that some of the population and some of the people are incapable of achieving things? It’s because of discipline. Not that they’re special. Not that they are better than you are. Actually, it comes down to their disciplining their time of how they’re managed their time wisely.

The moment they wake up in the morning, they’re on purpose. They know exactly where to get to and of how they are going to use that time wisely. They’re not squandering their time looking at their cellphones and mindlessly watching things that are unproductive. You know exactly the kind of competing with our attention today, social media. And if you’re not careful, you will be surprised the amount of wasteful time that you’re actually squandering because you are not disciplined. Discipline takes a lot of self-control. It is your ability to control your impulses. It takes a lot of self-determination. But probably it is one of the Holy Spirit’s development. Galatians 5:22 somewhere that says the fruit of the spirit is self-control and you cannot have self-control and discipline by constantly getting sucked into the stimulus and responding to the whatever you call it like something to do with your phone when somebody’s messaging you constantly just look at your phone and you keep responding to everybody and checking your email.

You’re distracted and you are not aware of your time. So, I really believe in having at least once a week, you have Mondays through Fridays. At least for me, I know exactly the kind of things I need to achieve, the routines. I am not rigid. I’m actually flexible. I like flexibility. I usually just look at my calendar or my to-do list of the things that I need to do, the important things. You need to be able to prioritize things in your life, in your daily activities. Lately, I have been trying to get back to the exercising every morning Mondays through Friday and have all those idea in my head of what do I like to do Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Just give you an example, perhaps for you, it could look differently but for me Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I try to do Pilates or yoga or ballet stretching and Tuesdays and Thursday are strength training focusing on the muscle which are building your lower body and also your upper body.

So, these are the things that you can actually think about and then you know your chores especially if you’re a mother and if you’re juggling, taking care of your kids what does your day look like? You cannot just basically be rattled up because you are disorganized and part of the stressors I think is because people do not know how to manage their time wisely. They are not clear of what they want to do in a day. You need to give your brain direction because your brain is like a toddler. It needs to have a concrete direction of where do you want to go? What are the activities you would like to do in a day? And if you cannot do them in a day, which is people usually become so rattled and they become stressed out because they put 10 things to do in a day, which is sometimes very unrealistic. It’s not something that is attainable. Maybe you have to narrow it down to five.

And if you cannot do everything in one day, you can delegate this task to someone who can help you at home who is an an able-body of maybe your child can perhaps pick up after themselves or clean after the room. Delegation is not something that it did not come to me naturally because I am a control freak. I like to just do things on my own because I always think they’re going to screw up anyway. They’re not going to do the things I want them to do. it’s not going to have the kind of results that I want to achieve. So, sometimes in my younger years, of course, I tried to just do things on my own. Eventually, you become tired of that, exhausted, and you have no more energy at the end of the day. And that’s why sometimes when you have adult kids in your home, you learn to delegate the task and ask for help from your husband or from anybody that lives within your home.

#3. Confidence

And of course, we do not forget that also part of developing your growing steadily is boosting your confidence. Confidence is subjective. I do not think that a person wakes up one day and they become confident. When you want to grow up, confidence doesn’t come to us naturally when we’re children. When I was a younger child, I was introduced and joined beauty pageants. I don’t know why. It was something that it was a very big deal when where I grew up and it was something that I did not like because I was not very confident. I was very shy. That was my nature. I’m introverted. I prefer that you don’t pay attention to me in the classroom. I prefer, you know, sitting at the very back or in the middle where I don’t like to participate or even though I know the answer, I would not even raise up my hands. That was just my personality perhaps.

And then of course I was in the front line and on the stage and something that I really dread and it really invoked a lot of insecurities because again confidence is because you have insecurities. You lack of confidence in yourself. Insecurity is part of it because you’re still growing. You don’t like what you see in the mirror. Perhaps, you don’t have a a healthy vision of what beautiful looks like. Because if you’re competing with other girls, of course, most likely you’re going to look at your body and compared to the other person next to you and you’re going to say, “She’s look much beautiful. She’s much better than I am.” And that is actually it makes you more insecure. And I was very insecure comparing with myself with other girls in those in those years of my life until eventually now that I’m older, actually,

Confidence builds overtime by being expose to the things that you’re not comfortable with. You become confident over time. It’s because you now know the kind of weaknesses that you should hone in and developed in your life. And confidence also is doing things that you have not done before. It is about doing it over and over again and being a fool. Perhaps in the very beginning you look like a fool to people or maybe you you sound like a fool. When I started my video on YouTube, of course, I have deleted it and reposted it again and edited it again and deleted it and I have to redo it until I was able to get rid of that fear of exposure. Or putting myself out there because I didn’t like how I sound. I didn’t like how I looked in the camera.

So, these confidence is about over time you gradually develop them by exposing yourself to something that you’re not comfortable with. It is maybe you’re afraid of talking to public speaking and the more and more you expose yourself to that kind of uncomfortableness or the kind of crowd that you think that they are judging you. I know people are judgmental. You are being judged 5 seconds. The way that they look at you from the top to bottom and the way that you dress and the way that you carry yourself, we are being judged. However, if you’re going to just learn to walk in the room and you allow your voices to just simmer down and just focus on yourself internally, I think people that are lack of confidence are most likely they look within themsel. They don’t look at themselves.

They are they are very fixated on the external saying what are people going to think of me? What do you think they’re thinking of me? Am I looking do I impress people? It’s all about looking outside instead of looking within. That is one of the secret not a secret anymore. It is one of the um realizations that I have learned that when you are fully focused on your you on the outside instead of looking within instead of just showing up for who you are being comfortable saying everybody’s just trying to figure out no one has really figured it figured out yet and everybody’s just here because they want to learn something. Confidence is also a practice. As I said, if you just allow yourself to be able to plant yourself or expose yourself into that area that you’re not comfortable with.

I used to get so actually before scared of even going to a coffee shop and asking uh buying for a drink at Starbucks. I used to I don’t know why I get anxiety. I was anxious as a child and when I was in high school when every time I would go to a a not a school but like a a coffee shop and just ordering something I would have this panic and I have to really think to myself I don’t know what I should say or how can I sound and nowadays because I have managed and I have practiced going to Starbucks coffee and other coffee shops and you know just ordering coffee that I wanted it comes naturally again it’s practice confidence is also practicing ing in front of a mirror and maybe if you want to talk to yourself and saying it’s okay, you don’t have to prove to anyone. You just have to show up for who you are and you don’t need anybody’s validation.

Growing steadily, of course, is part of development as a young adult is emotional regulation. As I always like to talk, it’s about developing your emotional intelligence. If you want to grow up and you are dysregulated constantly and being triggered especially from the ones that you have lived with and also from the people that you don’t know let’s say the news there are something that is underlying things that is going on inside of you. People that are triggered are because I always like to say on my channel they have unhealed wounds unmet needs that they have not yet able to deal with. And so in my life when I was triggered because I was not I was not regulated with emotion I was responding with different nuances because that is the act of immaturity. Kids usually are impulsive and they are overly reactive because they still do not know how to regulate their emotion because unfortunately we were not taught how to regulate our emotions.

We don’t go to school and nobody told us about emotional intelligence. Nobody even talked to us about breathing and being aware of how you’re feeling and counting one to five before you responds. And we were not taught to guard your heart with all diligence for out of it comes the issues of life. We only learned this later on when people made a study of emotional intelligence. It was one of the things that Glenna I think decided to write a book about it many years ago saying that people who are really regulated. They have more capacity to be able to excel in different areas of life because they are more attuned to themselves. They have done the work. They are not afraid of looking within themselves. That’s what I said. You cannot heal unless you are able to sit being on your own and listen to your thoughts.

Self-introspection. It’s actually biblical too. It’s one of the lamentations that said that says learn to sit alone and stay quietly and wait upon the Lord. I know sitting quietly and being alone is very uncomfortable. When of course I did this, it is your tendency to get out of that because your tendency is you you want to entertain yourself. You want to get yourself distracted. But it it takes a lot of let’s say a humbling experience because if you’re running away from that uncomfortableness, you’re actually running from yourself. And that’s why many people when they grow up, we’ve seen them adult body but immature in the head. You see them in how they communicate with you. They you see it and how they get triggered easily and they blame you for making them feel that way. No one can make you feel that way, right? I always like to say sometimes maybe when we are tired and we are frustrated because they don’t listen and they keep irritating us and they keep pushing our buttons.

Of course, there’s a time that you’re going to be triggered when people are constantly doing this to to really just test your patience. There will be a time that you’re just going to say enough is enough. This is it. That you’re going to just put your foot down and you’re going to say look this is not going to help anymore and I am going to lose it. And it’s okay to have that kind of uh grace in yourself to sometimes explode or share how you feel because you’re a human being. However, you need to have some kind of tools to help you regulate your emotions, which are maybe you need to go to a park and sit in a bench and really just take a breather or perhaps you need to journal or pray or anything that can help you come down because that is our purpose is to go back down to this equilibrium and not not being impulsive and not to think that you cannot control your emotions and growing is steadily.

Of course, it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of self will. It is about your determination that you want to grow up because what God says, he wants a grown up man’s head. He wants a childlike spirit. Keep your curiosity. Keep learning about the world. Keep exploring about the world like Dora. However, you need to have a grown-up man. Also in one Corinthians, it coincides with a teaching that says, “When I was a child, I thought like a child. I talk like a child. And when I grow up, I put away childish things.” So I’ve also done something in my journal many years ago. I asked myself the question, what are the childish things that I’m actually doing that are not really good now that I’m an adult? So childishness is part of you not regulating yourself and not taking accountability and blaming other people. That’s childishness because kids do not know how to take accountability because they say to themselves actually you make me feel this way because they don’t know any better.

Now that you’re an adult hopefully that you can have the autonomy to say I do have a choice to control my emotions. I do have a choice not to be triggered. I do have a choice to keep calm and collected and poised. However, it takes a lot of practice and it takes a lot of self-awareness and mindfulness to come to that point. And of course, it’s going to have trial and error because growing is never a straight path. It is never a linear path. People said, well, you know, she screwed up and she loses her temper. Maybe she has not really growing. Actually, it’s further from the truth because if you really think about it, you cannot really just because you screwed up today doesn’t mean you’re not growing. This is why I like to journal because this is my gauge of am I growing 5 years ago? Am I still getting triggered from the same situation or not? I like to put myself on a test. I usually like to challenge myself.

And this is why I always like to take notes of my triggers. And if I’m not really triggered anymore as I used to, then you are improving. You would need to be a student of your own life. Otherwise, how can you possibly know whether you’re improving or not? Progression is what we want here, not perfection. If you’re looking for perfection, you’re never going to find it on this on this world. Perfection is only attainable when you’re dead. When you get to heaven, that is the place of perfection. That you’re never going to have any more flaws and make mistakes until then. that you are still living in this world. You will have days that you think you have progress and there are days that you’re going to go backwards at three steps backwards and that’s exactly what growing is all about.

#4. Love Yourself

And of course, let me think about what are the things to grow steadily in your life. It’s also about learning how to love yourself and to love other people. Growing steadily is something to do with loving who you are flaws and all accepting yourself whether you are not that beautiful or stop comparing yourself from other people. Loving yourself genuinely is truly accepting about your past mistakes and not get and not beat yourself up about it. I really think that you cannot grow without love. Love is really what the antidote of growth. Look at the people around you and the things in the world that are growing. They usually are well-nourished. If you are a plant, for instance, a plant needs to be nourished. In order for it to grow, you give it tender loving care, sunlight. It needs fertilizer, water, oxygen. In the same manner, when you want to grow steadily, you need to love yourself and you need to love other people.

And I always like to say I know that the Bible says love yourself as you love your neighbor or love your neighbor as you love yourself. And they said well you should you should actually not love yourself first because it’s selfish but actually as there as is equally as loving your neighbor and I always like to say you cannot pour something out of an empty cup. I know it’s cliche you’ve heard that many times many people say it before but it’s true. How can you possibly give something that you don’t have? You cannot. Okay? For instance, if you’re a beggar and I’m taking something from you, what am I supposed to take from you? You have nothing. You don’t own anything. So, a rich person is more generous because he has plenty. He has abundance. But you as a person, if you’re not giving something for yourself, if you’re not if you’re depriving yourself of sleep, if you don’t have enough time for yourself, taking care of yourself, and really attuning to what you want, what do you have to give?

Most likely you’re going to show up irate and bitter and resentment because you have not done the work. And I really think people are still triggered and they are not fully mature or they’re not capable of showing up the for the best version of themselves because they have not done the work. And many people think that growth is just allowing people to give him to give him the uh leverage or the baton saying here do the work for me and I’m going to be better. You cannot be better by giving it to someone else. You are your own person. God said everything that you are doing you’re actually being rewarded. You reap what you sow do unto others as you would want others do unto you. It’s actually comes from you first. You have to do the action. And you have to do the work first. You have to give love if you want love.

But in order for you to give love, you must love yourself. You must understand who you are. You must understand what makes me happy. How can I show up today differently? If I am not the person who showing up for myself, if I’m tired, I cannot show up lovingly. If I’m sleepy, if I am actually have a problem in my own life, I cannot show up. I cannot show up to be the best version of myself. If I am constantly have a lot of troubles in my life, how can you possibly love yourself? And this is why for many women, especially for us, we have many hats that we wear. We juggle so many things and we feel guilty for putting aside once a week for ourselves. We feel guilty for stepping outside of the house just taking care of yourself or going outside in the park and just you yourself and your thoughts. We feel guilty because why?

We are conditioned as a woman to take care of everybody else, our children, our spouses and then we forget ourselves. And this is why many women are cranky. They are actually exhausted. They have nothing more to give because we keep on giving because that’s our society have conditioned women that we need to be just like an energizer bunny and at the end of the day when our husband our children are are talking to us we’re snappy our fuse is short is because we lack of sleep or we don’t have enough rest maybe we don’t eat enough food or maybe we just need to take a little breather and that is why we must be able to allow ourselves to just rest take a nap or go outside and ask for help around you if you can possibly cannot ask for help maybe I don’t know uh have some kind of group that you can find help from other women because I really think that we live in a society there’s too much stress for women today.

Because for some reason the role has been switched we don’t expect too much from men right I mean I am not trying to diminish men here because I do want to empower men as well but have you not noticed why there’s too much discrepancy or there is convoluted in our society and it’s not congruent because the role that we give to women are too much. Women are told to get a job or and then after that she gets pregnant and then she has to stay at home and she has to take care of her kids and on top of that she has to bring home the bacon and she also have to do 50/50 with her husband. On top of that she has to cook, she has to clean, she has to pick up her kids from the soccer and she have to pick up her kids from the school. And then for men though, we only expect him one. Come home, bring the bacon, and that’s it. Flop yourself in front of the TV for 5 hours in a day. That’s it.

But for women, for some odd reason, we are given too much to-do list. Like a thousand to-do list. And but for men, it’s only one thing. No wonder why women, as I said, are exhausted and cranky and low in energy because for some odd reason, we allow society to dictate to us of what the standard is. It’s actually between you and your husband to work it out of what’s best for you. If you are needing of help, you probably need to voice that out to a to your husband because your husband is not a mind reader. You have to be able to speak your truth and says, you know, I need help. I need for you to step in. I need for you to step up as a man. Men usually, and I’m going to get off the tangent here, is that they need direction, okay?

#5. Communication

Majority of people, growth is communication. And last my point, that’s my last point. If you want to grow steadily, you learn to communicate. You cannot expect people to know what you’re thinking and expect people the standard that you have if you’re not expressing or you’re not sharing your thoughts. As I said in a relationship, usually majority of women says when a person asks what’s wrong, we would say nothing. Why would why wouldn’t you say something when there’s something is really wrong? Here’s the thing. Do not be afraid of confrontation. Do not be afraid of sharing your thoughts because that’s the only way for you to really get your needs met.

If you’re not sharing what you’re feeling, you’re not asking for help and you’re not really being vulnerable to your husband of, hey, I need help here and I need you to step in and you’re just going to be, you know, grumbling and complaining because your husband is so lazy. But here you are, you’re not actually expressing to him what you need. If you need your husband to throw the garbage, maybe you should, hey, I need you to help throw the garbage because it’s heavy. I can’t do it. And this is one of the things that women are actually saying, I can I have it all together and I can figure it out. But actually, you actually need to be more open and not lack of communication because lack of communication and this is why men think that you’re just being cranky.