I'm just gonna give you a warning.
If I sound nasally, it's because I think I'm getting sick.
Everyone around me has been getting sick since before the holidays.
And we've been holding on, we've been so strong, and I think it's finally hitting me now.
By the time this video goes up, it'll almost be Valentine's Day and I thought it would be fun to do a little Valentine's Day special, but with a twist, and just do a video for the girls.
Today we're gonna be talking about how to become your own best friend.
I've been wanting to make a video about this for so long, because if I had to give credit to one thing throughout my whole 20s that really changed my life, it's this.
I'm going to share a little bit about my own experience and why I think that this was so important for me to go through and also compare it to where I was back then versus where I am now.
Before we dive in, I want to thank Linear for sponsoring this video.
As much as I think Valentine's Day is a great time to celebrate a significant other, I think it's also a really good time to celebrate ourselves, and Linear couldn't agree more.
For those of you who maybe aren't familiar with Linear, they're a female-founded brand, so all of their jewelry is made by women, for women.
Their mission is to bring luxe and sustainable jewelry to women at a fair price, and all of their fine jewelry is made to last.
I would say.
At this point, i have quite the collection of linear jewelry pieces.
I have a mix of 14 karat solid gold and also pieces that are gold plated.
They really do have something for everyone.
Regardless of what your budget allows, you're gonna find something that you love.
Starting with this necklace that I'm wearing right now.
This is the Gemma curved bar necklace.
It's made with 14 karat gold and has sustainably sourced lab grown diamonds.
A lot of you guys will know this about me by now, but I love delicate, simple jewelry.
It's my favorite thing in the world.
I love a piece that I can wear during the daytime and also wear it to dinner.
And this one is just perfect for that.
It's one of those necklaces that, If I didn't have to work, I wouldn't take it off.
I would just sleep in it.
I would wear it every day.
Also, one thing that I really love about this necklace is that this bar is fixed.
And so it's not like those necklaces where you have a loose diamond that ends up on the back of your neck halfway through the day and it just looks like you're wearing a chain.
What I've noticed with this necklace is once I have it on, it really stays put.
So it's just a nice bonus.
Next, I have the croissant earring, which is the one that I'm wearing right here.
I just think that these are so fun.
They're a little bit different than your everyday gold hoop, but they're also not huge.
And so if you wanted to wear these every day, you definitely could.
Yeah, I think that these are really fun.
And I also love that.
They're enough of a statement on their own where you actually don't need to put in Earring in your second hole.
I wore these a couple days ago and I just I wore them like this and it was perfect.
They're also super lightweight, which I don't know about you, but sometimes my ears can get sensitive pretty quickly, So I love when earrings are light and you almost don't even notice that they're there.
Okay next, I have a very special earring.
These are the pearl threader earrings.
I think that these might be the chicest earrings that I own.
This is what they look like on, and they're really kind of cool because they go in your ear with this thread in the back.
It's kind of like a coil and then they just hang like this, and then you can kind of see it through the back like that.
I think they're so chic.
I actually don't have any earrings like this.
I actually wore these for the first time last night.
We had dinner with friends and I paired it with just like a plain long sleeve black dress, this little necklace um, and i actually had my hair in a ponytail and i really loved it.
I don't know if i would wear these during the day, but i would obviously wear them out to dinner, and i also think that these would be great for a wedding.
I could have really used these last summer.
And then the last piece that i want to show you guys is a piece that you might actually recognize.
These are the joran earrings.
So I have these earrings in gold and I want to say that they're in my top three most worn earrings.
They're just such a beautiful hoop.
I really love that it's a little bit more of a teardrop shape than just a regular hoop.
As much as I'm a gold girl, sometimes I have these moments where I'm like I wish I had a pair of silver earrings that could just go with an outfit that has a lot of silver accessories, like a silver belt and a silver bag.
And so because I know I wear these so much, I ended up getting them in silver too.
And I actually I don't know, I might have to get more silver jewelry going forward.
What do you guys think?
I would love to know if you guys are team gold or team silver.
Let me know in the comments.
Anyway, Linear has been kind enough to give me a discount code for you guys.
I'll put it up on the screen.
You can use my name, Daphna, for a special offer.
I'm also gonna put the code and a link in the description box.
If you click this link, it's gonna take you to the page that shows you everything I mentioned in this video and also all of my other Linear pieces that I own and love.
Yeah, definitely go and check it out.
Do a little shopping.
And thank you so much to Linear for sponsoring this video.
When I think about how all this started for me and how I ended up going on this journey of becoming my own best friend, it was during a time where I felt really insecure.
Outside of feeling insecure, I think a lot of it actually had to do with the fact that I just didn't know who I was like.
I had no idea what I wanted, who I wanted to be.
I had no idea like, what I stood for and what I believed in, and so that was kind of the first step for me.
Building this relationship with myself is actually getting to know myself, figuring out who I actually was, rather than focusing on when I wasn't.
The reason why the self-discovery phase was so important for me especially and I realize this so much now is that if you don't take the time to figure out who you are, you'll always find your identity through other people, and I think that that's exactly what I was doing at that time and also why I felt so lost and I felt so insecure and I was always comparing myself to other people, because I wasn't really like living a life true to myself.
I was doing what other people were doing.
One of the things that I remember specifically from that time is just feeling like I wasn't cool enough and feeling like I didn't really fit in with anybody.
And I have to be honest, like that's one of those things that has kind of followed me throughout my whole life.
I think moving a lot as a kid and always having to start over and always having to kind of like jump into these friend groups that already existed maybe left me feeling like that when I moved to New York too.
And just as an adult.
In this specific situation, I think it was more about my style and also about my personality.
I think I was surrounded by a lot of girls who dressed very cool and girls who acted very cool, and I just never really felt that way.
I always felt like I didn't even really know what I felt like at the time, but I just knew that that was not what I was.
I would just try and mimic these other girls, I would try and dress like them, I would try and talk like them, and I thought that that would make me feel good, but it actually always left me feeling empty or still feeling the same like I did, and so eventually I realized that It really had nothing to do with the way that I was dressing or the way that I was acting, and it had everything to do with the way that I felt about myself on the inside.
I think that's kind of when I realized that dressing a certain way or acting a certain way wasn't going to give me the feeling that I was looking for, and that feeling was just confidence.
Like I remember so badly wanting to walk into a room and just feel comfortable in my own skin and confident in who I was and Not have to pretend to be someone else.
You know And not even really care about what other people thought.
So obviously this was a really big Part of why I have something on my lip, why I was continuing to feel the way that I felt about myself, but I also have to mention that I had some really negative relationship experiences at the same time.
And as much as I wish I could say that I woke up one day and I had this epiphany of like oh, I need to love myself and accept who I am.
It was those negative, toxic relationships, over and over again, having the same experience, that actually turned all of this around for me.
Because what it really took for me to get to this point where i realized like wow, like this stuff isn't just happening to you, you're allowing this to happen is being treated like and not having the self-respect to never allow that to happen again.
I would say this is when that self-discovery phase really started for me, it's like realizing that every time i met someone, i was in a position of fitting myself into their world instead of seeing how they could fit into mine, and Part of that is because I didn't know what my world was.
One of the things probably actually the main thing that was the most helpful for me during this time was just spending a lot of time by myself.
This is one of those things that came kind of easy for me.
I did like spending time by myself, and I was also living alone at the time, so that really helped a lot, but It wasn't necessarily about spending the time alone or being alone.
It was really about that intentional time thinking about your own life and thinking about who you are and journaling about it.
I talk a lot about journaling, but that was one of the things that actually really helped me during that time was like asking myself questions and even just journaling about the experiences that I was having.
Like.
I remember spending a lot of time writing about confidence and what it meant for me to be confident and what situations I did feel confident in and what situations made me feel very insecure.
And even writing about how it felt for me to be insecure and like where that was coming from for me at the time.
I just remember something about acknowledging it and actually talking about it rather than pretending that it wasn't.
There was so helpful for me.
And this kind of goes into the next phase that I feel like I went through.
But I think a big part of this is also just accepting that we have things about us that aren't perfect.
Like one of these things for me is I don't always feel confident, you know?
And I don't always feel like I belong.
Like that's something that I still feel sometimes in very specific situations.
Like especially actually when I'm in a scenario surrounded by people who are considered to be cool and I still don't feel that way.
Like that's not something that's necessarily gone away.
It's not something that I've necessarily fully healed, but going through the process of like, acknowledging that this is something that i feel and this is something that i experience, and it's okay to to feel that way.
You know um, even though it sounds stupid to be saying it out loud, but whatever that is for you like, you have to face it, and i had to face that um, in order for me to like, accept it and then eventually embrace it.
You know embrace like oh, you know, sometimes I don't fully feel like I mesh with everybody, but maybe that's a good thing.
And maybe it just means that I mesh with the people who I'm actually supposed to connect with.
There's so many ways that you can spin the story.
But yeah, I think a big part of it for me was saying these things out loud and journaling about them and understanding also like, where some of these things come from.
I think for everyone, a lot of this stuff comes from childhood and things that they maybe saw growing up and things that were modeled for them.
I definitely have that experience.
Spending that quality time by yourself and digging a little deeper, even if it's uncomfortable or even if it feels weird or scary, is a really big part of growing into who you actually are.
And I think that's the best part about your 20s actually is Like I felt like I started very far away from myself and it's almost as if throughout my 20s I've actually grown more and more close to not just who I'm supposed to be, but who I actually was before.
A lot of like life happened and social pressures and experiences you have in high school and as a teenager and whatnot.
Also, if you're not into journaling, there's so many other ways that you can do this, like you can go on a solo walk and just be in your thoughts.
Or you can be listening to a podcast even.
I feel like sometimes, when I go out on a walk and I'm listening to a podcast or listening to music, that's when I have my deepest thoughts.
It's as if my body and my brain are finally relaxing.
Another thing you can do is go out on a solo lunch date.
And I know that that can be really intimidating, but putting yourself in these situations where it's just you and your own company in your own thoughts.
Those are the times when you learn the most about yourself.
It's kind of like solo travel, but way less of a commitment.
You know, when you're traveling by yourself, you're forced to be in your own company.
And I think that that's when a lot of these big growing moments happen, is when you're forced to be with yourself in your own thoughts, and you can't really run from them anymore.
Okay, so the second part of all this that I already mentioned is the acceptance phase.
This is also really important, because becoming your own best friend isn't just about looking at the good parts and celebrating the parts that you love.
It's also about again accepting the things that you don't necessarily love about yourself and the things that you wish you didn't have.
And I can think of a number of things that I wish I didn't have.
Again, accepting that I don't always feel confident and accepting that sometimes I feel insecure in certain situations.
Accepting the fact that i can be overly critical, not just of myself but also of other people, and i don't like that about myself.
Accepting the things that i did when i didn't know better.
That's a really big one for me.
That i still struggle with sometimes is like i look at some decisions that i made in the past and i think, oh my gosh, like I would have never done that if I knew what I knew now.
But because of those decisions and because of those experiences that I had, I know what I know now.
And so Those are just some of the things that I personally had to accept in order to take that next step and see myself for who I really am.
It's kind of like any other friendship.
Like when you first meet someone and you really click with that person.
All you see is the things you have in common and the good side of them.
But over time, you get to see someone for who they really are.
And those are the best friendships when you can see the good.
You can see their flaws, but you still choose them anyway.
And that's kind of the... the relationship you end up having with yourself too.
This is one of those things that would be.
A good journaling exercise, too is making a list of the things that you love about yourself and then a list of the things that you don't love so much, and just seeing what it feels like to read those words on paper, what it's like to acknowledge those things without judgment.
I think you might be surprised and I think this was one of those things that surprised me too how freeing it feels to actually accept the things that we don't love so much and stop running from them and stop trying to change them.
Okay, the third phase is all about building trust and confidence in yourself.
This is the phase that I think is the most fulfilling, because once you start to trust in yourself, in your thoughts, in your decisions,
That's when I really think you start laying the foundation.
I think that's also where real confidence comes from, to be honest.
Like you can wear a nice outfit and you can have your hair done and you can have whatever it is that makes you think, it gives you confidence.
To me, confidence actually comes from within.
And it comes from the choices that we make, it comes from the trust we have with ourself.
The way I like to think about the trust with myself is like it's almost like an inner compass and the more we develop it and the more we listen to it, the stronger it gets.
I think that that's what I was missing for a really long time was just this, this inner compass that was guiding me.
I really had to practice building trust with myself in order to get there.
And so the easiest way that I found to build trust with myself is mimicking how you would build trust in any other relationship.
The first one, And probably the biggest one for me is being honest with myself.
As much as we can be hard on ourselves as human beings, I think we can also bullshit ourselves a lot of the times and like cut ourselves slack.
And I found that when I was finally able to actually be honest and say like no, this is something that you're feeding yourself, putting the blame on someone else, like being able to be that honest with yourself and actually like kind of look yourself in the mirror and call yourself out for your own bullshit is really important.
And I think I think again it's going to sound strange, but it's one of those things that actually gave me a lot of freedom, because it's like as soon as I stopped pretending that it wasn't my fault or like I didn't play a role in it, then I could actually move forward, if that makes sense.
Another way to build trust with yourself is not breaking your own promises, and I think we do this a lot without realizing.
Right like we say, we're gonna go to the gym three times a week and then life gets in the way and it's it's it's those broken promises over and over again that eventually lead us to not having a lot of faith in us being able to achieve the things we want to do or follow through on the things we want to do.
I think one of the things for me at the time was promising myself that I wasn't going to end up in another one of those situations that I'd already been in a handful of times before, and promising myself that I was going to take my time, and promising myself that I was going to respect myself in the way that I'd always wanted to.
You know, like those, those are a little different than promising yourself you're going to go to the gym, but that's the kind of stuff that I personally really had to work on.
Also, this doesn't have to be anything big.
Like if you actually wanna start doing this, you can start with something really small.
Promise yourself you're gonna work out once a week, or promise yourself you're gonna cook a home cooked meal once a week.
And starting with things that you know you can achieve.
Making bigger and bigger commitments over time, like that's how you build up that trust with yourself.
Oh, another one of these things was actually learning to listen to my intuition and listening to my gut.
I don't think I was aware that I was doing this at the time, but this is one of those things, like in hindsight, I think about.
But I used to just ignore my gut instinct and make excuses or justify certain situations or behaviors, when my gut would be telling me what was actually going on.
And so one of these things for me was actually learning to listen to that gut feeling again and like actually first of all identifying what it felt like to have a gut instinct right.
I think there can be some confusion around, like what's anxiety and what's your intuition, learning to listen to that and learning what that feels like.
And then now getting to a point where actually one of the things that I use the most like whenever I need to make a decision, I get really quiet and I it's gonna sound so crazy I really try to listen, like what my body's telling me, what's the gut instinct, what's the first thing that comes to mind?
And this is where building trust is such a big part of being your own best friend, right?
Because Now, before you even think about involving other people or getting advice on something, you ask yourself first and you listen to your intuition first.
And I think that that's pretty cool.
And then the last phase was really figuring out like, how do I actively live my life as my own best friend?
Looking at my life and seeing how I can make choices that consistently reflect self-love and self-respect, asking myself how I can best show up for myself.
One of the things that I really had to work on was setting boundaries and not feeling guilty for setting boundaries or even ending certain friendships because I didn't feel like they really aligned with me anymore.
Saying no to things that I really didn't want to do but almost felt obligated to do because I knew someone was going to be disappointed, you know.
It's almost like doing the things that you actually want to do but, for whatever reason, don't allow yourself to do because of how someone else might feel or how you might disappoint someone else.
You know, like those were the things that I really had to start leaning into.
Another thing that I just thought about is that living as my own best friend also means making the tough choices sometimes, and I think for some people this can mean like staying in on a night where you really need to recharge, but for me, it's actually the opposite, because I love being at home, and so when I'm being my own best friend, I'm also forcing myself to do the things that I maybe don't want to do but that are going to be good for me in the long run, such as going to an event or like networking with people, holding myself accountable to the things that I maybe don't want to do in the moment, but I am going to be grateful that I did in the long run.
Choosing the thing that you want most over the thing that you want right now.
That's a big part of being your own best friend too, is knowing when you need to push yourself to do the thing you really need to do.
It's crazy the amount of times I've had to pause filming today or refilm something because of the noise that's happening outside.
I swear, if I lived in any place other than New York, this stuff would happen so much faster.
But it is what it is.
Anyway, that's pretty much everything I wanted to share with you guys.
I hope Some of it resonated with you.
If it did, I would love to hear.
And if you guys are in this journey right now, or if you've been through it yourself, I would love to hear what you took away from it.
I love you guys.
Thank you so much for watching.
And don't forget to check out my linear picks in the description box and use my code.
And I'll see you in the next one.
