Hello. Welcome back to the Socially Motivated Podcast. I'm your host, Jake Walker. I want to thank you for tuning into this podcast. If you're new here, this podcast is all about bettering your mindset and mental health. Do you on a daily basis deal with some form of anxiety, depression, or other related conditions?
Are you tired of these conditions controlling your everyday life? Do you feel alone or fear? There's no way of overcoming these invisible barriers. This podcast shares all about my journey and tips and tricks on how I overcame my social anxiety. Your mind is the strongest muscle in your body, so why not better it by adding this podcast to your daily workout routine.
On today's episode, we're gonna be asking one simple question. When you think back, who is your worst enemy? You've ever faced in your life, and you might be sitting here saying, well, what does this have to do about bettering your mindset? Why are we going back and looking back at our worst enemies? Give me a sec, and this will sort of make sense to you in a little bit.
So just take a moment. So would you consider your worst enemy to be, say, That one person you cut off in tr traffic today because you didn't see 'em in their blind spot? Or was it that middle school or high school boy that was relentless to you during your childhood? Was it maybe your boss, your parents, your grandparents, your teacher, or just some random person that you met somewhere someday?
Which? You somehow pissed them off in some way, shape or form, and you say that they are probably never gonna be your friend. So now you're like, okay, Jake. Yeah, that sounds about right. Those, those do seem like my worst enemy. They might seem to be your worst enemy, but I can almost promise you that for everyone, that is not your worst enemy.
Me, you might be asking the question, but wait. If those aren't my worst enemies, then who is? What if I was here to tell you that your worst enemy in your life is shockingly drum roll yourself. Take a minute for let to let that set it. Let me share a famous quote for you to kind of give you a little bit more context.
You are your worst enemy enemy. It is your negative thoughts that hold you back, nothing else, and that is a quote from Leon Brown. So if your number one enemy is your self, who you deal with on a 24 7 basis, if nothing but negativity is being pushed into you by yourself, then how do you expect to make change?
To bettering yourself, to improving your mindset if nothing but negativity is being brought to you. So my takeaway from reading the quote and understanding the quote is that if I look back at my situation, what I've learned within the past year or so is that there was no one on this planet that wanted to see me fail more than myself.
My own internal thoughts, my own internal dialogue, that conscience of mine, of self-doubt, criticism, and inability to trust myself in any situation. Well, that simply pushed me away from creating what I wanted to become in the first place because I was simply, Not wanting to fail or show any sign of weakness to anyone other than myself, I was self-sabotaging myself because I feared to fail.
And that's where this quote really kind of goes into, how do you better your mindset? If you have your worst enemy is yourself, then how do you fix this? If. You want to better your mindset if you want to make your life more positive, upbeat. So I've broken it down into kind of three steps that you should probably take to be able to fix or try to cope better with trying to get rid of that enemy of yours that you face on a daily basis.
So the first step is ditching perfection and fear of failure. For me, failure was a big thing for me. I never wanted to step outta my comfort zone. I never wanted to feel that feeling of failing. And along with that was perfection. Everyone in their life wants to be perfect at something or anything at that matter.
You don't wanna be that person that's behind you. Especially in this society where if you are not on top of a trend, then you are just behind. You are a nobody. You know. If you go on your social media page, what do you see all over social media? Pretty much perfection. You do not see people posting the worst photos they took at their vacation, or the worst photos they took at their concert.
They went to. And I can guarantee you that they perfected that, you know, caption of theirs to encapsulate that, Hey, this is who I am, but really they're just hiding themselves from the truth, or they're just trying to make themselves look better to the general public. This step sounds more easier said than done, but.
You'll never 1000% be able to just take fear out of your life. You'll never be able to stop that human just characteristic of wanting to be perfect at some certain thing in your life. But if you can add clarity to trying to change that to where that enemy of yours that's trying to hold you back from doing of what you want to do.
Then that's what you have to, to do is try to limit the damage that your enemy is doing to your own self. So the second tip that I have, or suggestion I would say, is prioritizing your own wants, needs and desires. So whatever you want to do, whatever that situation is, you want to. Wake up and be more positive.
You wanna wake up and make change in your community. You wanna wake up and be more social. You wanna make more friends. You want to be the best boss. You wanna be the best employee, that greatest family member, whatever it is, whatever your desires and needs and wants are, that is on you. This is your life.
Live it the way that you want to live it. Do not let your mind say, oh, but my parents or my friends or my neighbors, or whatever, won't approve of this. This is your life. Live it the way that you want. Do not let your mind limit yourself to some imaginary blockade, I guess you would call it. You are your own self.
You can make your own decisions. You are an adult, you're a teenager. Whatever your age is right now, this is your life. You have one life. Live it the way that you want to live it. Letting fear and being perfect control you or holding yourself to a standard that societies high and a hold to you, then that's just gonna make your life miserable.
So, Understanding your wants, desires, and needs. And a great way to make sure you held yourself accountable is write down on a sticky note. Write down on a piece of paper, write down in your phone, or type in your phone or your computer and write down on a list. What are your wants and desires? Do you wanna go skydiving?
Do you want to go and get married to someone? Do you want to have kids? Do you want this dream job of yours? Do you want to help the community? Whatever it is, write it down to give yourself accountability. If you can account on you writing that down and you posting it up to somewhere to where you see it every day, or you remind yourself to look at it every day, it's just giving you better hope and understanding that you can get yourself to where you want to be.
You just have to take the action, and that goes into the third step into this whole process is slow down and take the action that is required to overcome this worse enemy of yours, which is yourself. And you might be like, okay, that sounds simple enough, but what else do I have to do? You don't have to do this within a certain timeframe.
You have goals that can be stretched out your entire life. You, you know that the one thing of like, oh, I have a bucket list of items I want to do, make this a bucket list item of you wanting to better yourself, but you wanna see some slow progress. So, You don't have to start all at once. It's not gonna just happen automatically unless you take the action that is needed.
So going back to my example or my situation, ive really tried to control my thoughts and how I proceed with action. I have done everything I could to. Stop fearing things that were outta my control stuff that I couldn't simply just snap my fingers and be able to change that. It was an external force that I could not do.
So I have limited that I have taken the time to prioritize what I want to do in my life. Not rely on my mind saying, well, this is not going to, you know, make my family happy or, This is how society would view me. How do I view myself? How do I prioritize what I want to do to make my life a happier place, a better situation, whatever it is.
And that's what I've said to myself. So the three steps again, are ditching, perfection and fear of failure. Prioritize your own needs and desires. Slow down and take the action. These three steps seem very simple, but if you do not take the action, those steps mean literally nothing. If your worst enemy is the person you deal with 24 7, then how do you expect to make change?
How do you expect to make your mind better? If you want a better mindset, if you want to improve that mental health, Of yours. You have to understand that that one enemy of yours, the biggest enemy you'll ever face in your life is yourself. And if you do not put yourself on notice, nothing will ever get done.
As we conclude, I want to thank you for tuning into the Socially Motivated Podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast so far and you have not done so yet, please leave a rating, share, and subscribe to this podcast. This podcast is available to download on all major streaming services, so you never will miss a feature episode.
You can follow me on social media, specifically on Twitter and Instagram at Socially Motive that is at socially. M O T I V, all one word. As always, I'm gonna leave you with this motivational quote. A life of fear will only hold you back, step out of your comfort zone. I will catch you all on the next episode.