the truth about boundaries, self-trust, and choosing you

this week we’re getting real about boundaries- the ones you break, the ones you avoid, and the ones you wish you had the courage to set. this episode is your reminder that trusting yourself starts with backing yourself… even when it feels uncomfortable. you deserve relationships, routines, and choices that honor your energy. let's talk about what that looks like in real life.

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Transcript

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We've got some rules. We've got some things that we need to lay down. We need to lay down the law today in this episode because I need you to start setting boundaries. I need you to start pushing yourself. I need you to hold yourself accountable. I am not just your best friend anymore. I am your big sister and best friend. And I'm here to give you some big sister advice today, that advice that you may not be ready to hear. But everything that I have to say is shit that's been sitting in your gut. Like none of this is new. This is me coming to you, sitting you down and telling you, okay, you know, it's coming. You know that this has to be said. You know that it's true. Deep down in your soul you know that it's true and you hate that. It's true, but I'm your big sister and I love you to pieces, and I don't want you to make the same mistakes that I did, and I want you to have all of the tools in your belt to be able to thrive, to do and be. Better than I. So get yourself a nice drinky drink. Get yourself nice and comfortable, comfy, wherever you are in the world. Get ready for week number 12 of the Self-Love 100. Welcome back to the Self-Love Archives podcast. I'm your host and your official big sister and best friend, Julia Salvia. Welcome or welcome back to the podcast. We are doing a series called The Self-Love 100 until the end of 2025. I'm giving you all of the tips, tricks, habits, rituals, routines to take with you. Beyond 2025, but most especially for the next 100 days until the end of 2025. In the hopes and a promise that you will love yourself more by the last day of 2025, you will look back on all of these episodes, all of these days, all of this time that you spent on you and say. Be able to say that you have loved yourself more, and that's a promise. So it's week 12, and week 12 really does give that big sister energy because week 12 is all about those masculine terms that we have heard over and over and over again. Whether it comes down to schoolwork or. Doing something or being an adult living life. Yeah. You know exactly what words I'm talking about. The words like push yourself, have discipline boundaries. I know, I know, I know. I'm really cognizant about the feeling a word gives us. Right. There's the. Official dictionary meaning of a word, there's potentially an urban dictionary meaning of a word. And then there is the meaning and the feeling that a word gives us. And sometimes we neglect to realize how just making one small change, like changing the wording that we use. When we talk to ourselves can make a world of a difference in how that helps us build our confidence and our motivation to push ourselves to do what we need to do. To do what we want to do, to do things that are better for us. So keeping that in mind, I want to rewind to that word, discipline and boundaries. And pushing ourselves. These terminologies that can sound so like authoritarian, so masculine. And I wanna switch that up to trusting yourself. What does it mean to trust yourself? Does it kind of look like something, maybe sort of, kind of like doing the things that you need to do? The thing is, can we get things done and create new routines and new habits and follow through if we don't trust ourselves? Because it's not really about having discipline or having motivation, it's about trusting ourselves. It's about creating motivation. It's about taking baby steps, keeping promises that we make for ourselves. When we say that we're going to do something, we do it, and by continuously saying, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna write this down. I'm gonna wake up at this time, I'm gonna make sure that I eat that because it know, I know. It makes me feel good. I'm gonna make sure I go outside and go for my daily walk, even if it might be drizzling a little bit, because I know it makes me feel great. It's doing those things and keeping our promise to ourselves and continuously doing that over and over and over again, and that's what builds trust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that's also what builds discipline and motivation and, and that all of that is what look, it looks like to push ourselves. And maybe sometimes we could use these words if they don't have this negative connotation or effect, like, I don't know, discipline. Like that just sounds like so, ugh. Like it just sounds like such a icky word. So. Why not switch that with trusting ourselves Because yeah, kind of inherently they sort of do mean the same thing. But I even would take it one step further and say that trusting ourselves makes that so much bigger, that aura around us so much bigger. That's like giving yourself a pinky promise. That's like having a conversation with your big sister. Hello and listening and hearing what she has to say and following through to make a commitment to ourselves to do better and to be better for ourselves. Boundaries, on the other hand, are kind of like these little sticks in the road, rocks in the road. Here's this little path of promises. And as you go through this path, you keep the promise by walking down the path, passing by each of these promises. You're like, okay, I promised myself I would do this. I'm passing it, I'm doing it. Then here's the next one. I'm passing it. I'm doing it. The next one, I'm passing it, I'm doing it. But sometimes there's a little rock in the road. Sometimes there's like a stick. Sometimes there is a massive tree. Right. There's an obstacle. There's something that is maybe like placing a boundary in your way, and that's when we need to take a step back and ask ourselves, oh, okay. In order to keep this promise to myself and get over the boundary, that's blocking me, what boundaries do I need to set? What protection? Do I need to provide this path so that the rocks don't fall onto the road so that the sticks don't fall onto the road so that a tree doesn't fall onto my path? What boundaries do you need to set in your life with yourself? Not just boundaries with other people, but to yourself. To what boundaries do you need to set for yourself in order to keep your promises so that you can continue to skip down that road, go on your merry way down that path to trusting yourself. Let me give you an example. I know that if I go to sleep early. I will wake up feeling well rested, ready to take on the day, and basically like I woke up on the right side of the bed. But in order for me to go to sleep early, I need to make sure that I'm not doom scrolling, make sure that I am stopping work at a certain time. Make sure that I am going up the stairs and starting my skincare routine and all of those other good things at a certain time. I need to set boundaries with myself to make sure that I can keep my promise to myself of going to bed. Early. Now, when it comes to setting a boundary for, for and with other people, let's say that all of your free time is being used up because there's a wedding there and this person wants to hang out with you here and there's a bridal shower and a bachelorette, and this person wants to hang out and this person wants you to do that, and that person wants you to do this. But all of your free time, all of the time that you would have for yourself is being completely eradicated. What a word is being taken up by other people. Maybe there's a conversation that has just gone on and on and on and on. And maybe it's time to set a boundary with how you're utilizing your time, how you are using your time. If you make a promise to yourself to spend more time with you, where in your life are you going to need to set boundaries in order to keep that promise? And when you set that boundary and you keep that promise, you're going to start trusting yourself. One of the most self-sabotaging things that you can do in your self-love journey is to continuously break promises to yourself. You wouldn't do that to a friend, to a significant other, to a family member, to a a coworker. You wouldn't break a promise to other people. So why would you break a promise to yourself if you say that you are going to do it? Do it. And yes, I totally understand. As your big sister, I totally understand that things happen, that sometimes you promised yourself that you were gonna go on a walk and something came up. It happens. If you have to cancel on yourself, reschedule it. One of the most important things to me is that if you need to cancel. It's okay, but you need to reschedule. If you are the canceler, you need to also then be the planner, even if it was planned by me from the beginning. If you cancel the date or you cancel the hangout session or the shopping date, like you need to be the one to then reschedule it when it comes to. Keeping promises with yourself. If you need to reschedule or you need to take a rain check, I want you to prioritize how you feel. Let's say that you promised yourself that you were gonna go on a walk after dinner today, but as the day went on, you started to just not feel well. It's okay to prioritize how you're feeling in that moment. To listen to your body and trust that your body's saying, okay, maybe not today. Let's take a rain check. Let's go for a walk tomorrow. Reschedule with yourself in that moment for another time or another day. Don't just say, Ugh, didn't happen today, whatever. It's fine. I want you to actually reschedule with yourself in that moment. Or let's say something came up. It has nothing to do with how your body is feeling. Maybe it's with what, how your mind is feeling. Maybe it's how your heart is feeling, or maybe today just didn't work out. Reschedule with yourself in that moment. Hold yourself accountable in that moment to the relationship that you're building with yourself, and when you can do that with yourself and for yourself. You are going to be able to trust yourself in the same way that you build trust with other people, friends, relationships, you're going to be able to build that same trust with yourself, and I think it's something that we so easily forget to do that it's so difficult for us to keep our promises to ourselves because we're not rescheduling with ourselves. Because we're not setting appropriate boundaries with ourselves and with other people around us, we're not able to keep our promises because we're not holding ourselves accountable. And when we can't keep our promises, we are not trusting ourselves. So when we want this new thing, when we want to reach certain goals. When we want to love ourselves more, we don't trust ourselves to do it. It starts with one small thing. If you feel like you're in a place where you don't believe in yourself, you don't trust yourself, you don't think it's going to happen because you just don't think you can stick to it because you've never stuck to it before. I want you to start with something really small. Something like taking your vitamins every morning or brushing your teeth. Make a promise to yourself that you are going to brush your teeth every single morning and every single night. Make a promise that you're gonna call a friend. Make a promise that you're gonna write in your journal. Make a promise that you are going to sit down for five minutes and do nothing. Start small. When you continuously make these smaller promises and keep these smaller promises to yourself, you are going to start instilling belief in yourself and start trusting yourself little by little, and then you're gonna have the courage and the confidence to create bigger goals for yourself or promise yourself that you are going to do what needs to be done to get to these bigger goals. You're gonna have the courage and the confidence to start and to walk on this path. You're gonna have the courage and the confidence to set the boundaries needed in order to walk the path as smoothly as possible, and your trust and your belief in yourself is just going to continue to grow. Week 12 is about visualizing this path that you have created. For yourself to love yourself more. It's about visualizing the path to the best version of yourself, and the only person that can create that path is you. So this week I want you to start building trust with yourself. I want you to hold yourself accountable when you say that you're going to do something. When you say that you are going to write something down, go somewhere. I want you to hold yourself accountable this week. If it doesn't work out, when you've made a promise for yourself, don't be mean. Don't be unkind. Reschedule with yourself, and then keep that promise taking everything in from the past couple of weeks. Putting it into action, understanding how each of these things might make you feel keeping your promises to yourself is one of the biggest and most important things that you can do. I want you to make just one small promise to yourself this week, right now, in this very moment, think of one thing that you can promise yourself, and this week I am challenging you to stick to it. To hold yourself accountable to that one thing. Don't let yourself down. Keep that promise to yourself, and I hope that by the end of the week, you start to feel a little more belief in yourself, a little bit more courage in yourself, and a lot more confidence to continuously make promises. For the most important person in your life, you and as the big sister in me, keep those damn promises. Trust yourself. I trust you. Do you trust you? You got this. I will see you back here for week number 13. Have the best week ever. Bye.