Hello and welcome to or welcome back to Trying Not To Care.
If you're new here, my name is Ashley and I upload every single Monday and I'm just so excited to have you here.
Today's a special one because it's the last episode of 2025, which is so insane to me because I started Trying Not To Care in January of 2022, so it just blows my mind that we've been doing this for four years now.
But this will be the last episode of the year.
I always like to end the year with an episode revolving around our goals and intentions for the new year.
So I want to give you one last episode that's good to have with you to start 2026.
So today we're going to be talking about how to build your dream girl mindset for the new year, how we're going to set ourselves up for success.
Action is arguably the most important thing to achieving your goals, but the mindset plays a huge part in making sure you have the momentum to go after what you want and also to know and be sure of what you want.
You can't be confident in what you want or align yourself with your goals without knowing who you want to be and sticking to that and being secure in who you are.
We're going to be talking about building who you want to be, shifting your identity to match the higher version of you, reframing old mindsets to match your goals now, and affirmations that will help carry you through 2026 and keep you on track.
So with that being said, let's get into how to build your dream girl mindset for 2026.
The first thing that we're going to do is figure out who we want to be, because mindset and action go hand in hand.
For example, let's say that you're in law school and you want to be a successful lawyer.
A lawyer is going to have a mindset that's on growth.
They're going to be very confident.
They're going to be a problem solver.
And they're going to be very ambitious.
Your mindset and what you spend your time on and what's important to you is a direct correlation of who you are and the person that you want to be.
You might be listening and be like, Ashley, I don't know who I want to be.
I just want to be a better version of me.
I want to be confident.
I want to be happy.
I want to be successful.
But I don't know where to start.
And I don't know what that looks like.
And I don't know how to get to any of those things.
I don't know how to become those things with where I'm at now.
It's hard to just become those things without having a clear path or having an idea of what makes you those things.
It's hard to be confident without having anything to back up the confidence right.
So something that I like to do that I think is really helpful and I actually talked about this recently on TikTok, if you want to go listen to it and get some quick guidance is looking at the people that you gravitate towards and do you find inspiration from.
When you're trying to figure out who you want to be or you're trying to become something but you don't know how to become it, It's a lot easier to look at other people who possess what you want and follow their lead.
I'm not saying to go and copy them and lose your individuality, but other people are a mirror of us and they can tell us a lot about who we are and what we like and what matters to us.
The things that we choose to see in other people and what we pay attention to can tell us a lot about ourselves.
When you look at someone and you point out all of the things you don't like in them, you say they're stupid and they're ugly and you call them all of these names.
You're telling on yourself, because the reason that you don't like that in them is because you don't like that in yourself.
For example, let's say a girl posts a bikini photo on Instagram.
And when you see the photo, your eyes immediately go to her stomach.
And that's not because she posted that in hopes that you would look at her stomach.
She's not doing anything to emphasize her stomach.
She's not posting that photo for you to examine and criticize her body.
You're looking at her stomach because that's an insecurity of yours.
But the same thing is true when you point out things that you do like in other people.
You're able to recognize those things because you see those things in yourself.
We gravitate towards certain people that we have things in common with, even if that's a bad thing, good or bad.
We gravitate towards people that are like us.
It's hard for a lot of people to come out and say, I like this certain thing about myself.
I like this trait.
This is a strength of mine.
I admire this about myself.
So they don't.
But we do follow certain celebrities online and we do admire certain things about our loved ones.
And that in itself can tell us a lot about ourselves and what we like about ourselves.
So look at the people that you admire and that you pull inspiration from, and figure out what about them that you like, because that will tell you a lot about who you are, what your core values are and what actually matters to you.
For example, I am a huge fan of Emma Chamberlain.
I'm heavily inspired by her.
I think it's so cool how authentically herself she is.
I think she does a really great job expressing herself through her style, through her storytelling, through her video editing.
And I really admire that she doesn't follow trends.
If anything, she creates them.
She's a leader.
Now, looking at Emma being an inspiration to me, I can infer the reason that I'm drawn to her is because she's creative, she's strong and she's a leader.
That tells me those are traits that are important to me, either because I see that in myself or it's something that I aspire to become.
Looking at people who inspire you and figuring out why they inspire you is going to tell you who you are at your core or who you want to be, without other people telling you who you are or who you should be, because you're just naturally gravitating towards these people.
You're naturally gravitating towards things that matter to you.
So figure out who inspires you, who are the people that you feel pulled to, that you find yourself checking in on, that you find yourself looking at and being like wow, they're so cool.
I wish I was more like them.
I wish I could do these things.
I wish I was like that.
And then figure out why do these people inspire you?
I gave this example on my TikTok, but when I was watching the Taylor Swift docuseries, I caught myself being inspired in awe of Taylor, which happens quite a lot.
But I was like, why do I feel this way right now?
And I realized it's because I admire her work ethic.
She's doing all of these crazy things that she does.
She's writing music.
She's training for her concert.
She's rehearsing for her concert.
She's performing three hours, multiple days a week for like two years.
That's insane.
And the fact that she does it in such an effortless way and she enjoys doing it is so inspiring to me.
My attention is on her work ethic.
Why is that something that I'm drawn to?
It's because that's something that's important to me and that's something that I want to work on.
I want to be a successful person.
I want to not only have incredible ideas, but I want to be able to put those ideas into action and bring them into reality.
Figure out who inspires you or make a list of people who inspire you.
And then ask yourself, why do I feel this way about this person or about these people?
What about them am I drawn to?
This can be their work ethic.
This can be their creativity, their confidence, their intelligence, their kindness.
Whatever it may be, write it down so you can be sure of what matters to you.
So that way you have a list of important traits or goals that you can now align yourself with in 2026.
The next thing that we're going to do is figure out how we want to feel in 2026.
If you want to feel secure and confident and powerful, you're going to have to have a mindset that supports it.
It's going to be pretty hard to be a confident woman if you're constantly beating yourself up, you know, giving into your insecurities, letting self-limiting beliefs drive what you do and believing that things aren't going to work for you.
Your mindset cannot contradict your goals.
Make a list of how you want to feel.
It might be easy to go back and look at the people that inspire you and pull from that.
For example, work ethic is important to me.
So I want to feel confident.
I want to feel powerful.
I want to feel motivated.
I want to feel productive.
I want to feel creative.
Those are feelings that are associated with my goal.
So I'll write them down and then I'll figure out what I can do to make myself feel like those things.
One way to figure out how to align yourself with how you want to feel is by looking at the past the past year or just throughout life, where certain experiences or certain people made you feel the opposite of how you want to feel.
When was the last time I felt weak?
When was the last time I felt insecure?
Were there people that I surrounded myself with in the past year who made me feel that way, or made me feel like I'm unable to be a successful person?
Have I been around people who constantly belittle my goals or make fun of me or make me feel like I have to put myself in a box and I can't do what I want to do?
Again, make a list of those experiences or those people who, So you're able to clearly identify things that you need to separate yourself from in 2026.
So that way you're not surrounding yourself with people or putting yourself in positions that are going to push you away from the person that you want to become.
Once you have an idea of what's important to you, how you want your life to look, how you want to be, you're going to make another list of who are you in the year of 2026.
What do you look like?
What does your life look like?
How does she dress?
How does she do her hair and makeup?
How does she spend her time?
What does she do for work?
Who are her friends?
How do her friends treat her?
How does she think?
What does she no longer tolerate?
How does she treat herself?
How does that version of her handle comparison and rejection and uncertainty?
You want to be so specific with the details as if you are building a character for a movie or a TV show or a book.
You're basically reinventing yourself.
You're creating a higher version of you.
It might seem like a little bit too much, a little bit too detail-oriented to be writing down the makeup that we're wearing and how we're doing our hair and who our friends are, but you want to be so specific so that way you're able to align yourself with the mindset that this version of you would have.
If this higher version of you has very high levels of self-respect and she doesn't let people walk all over her and she doesn't let people play with her emotions, I'm going to tell you right now she's not going to be sitting at home thinking about how can I convince my friends to invite me to plans next time.
How am I going to convince this person to like me?
What can I do?
She's secure.
She knows she doesn't have to do anything.
She's not going to entertain that.
She knows who she is and she knows she doesn't have to change herself to make people like her.
And she's definitely not going to hang around people that are going to make her feel bad about herself.
You need to make sure that what you're doing in 2026 and what you're thinking about in 2026 aligns with the higher version of you that you're envisioning, which leads me to identity shifting.
It's one thing to know what you want.
It's another thing to be it.
You may be able to identify the person that you wanna become and the mindset that you wanna have, but if you're not willing to make changes to who you are and how you wanna live your life, you're never going to become that person.
Like I just said, if you want to be a confident person who has high levels of self-respect in 2026, you need to let go of the people and let go of the things in 2025.
That doesn't align with that.
You can't go into 2026 hanging around the same people who make you question your sanity and make you question if you're even friends, and make you question if you're good enough.
You need to let go of what no longer serves you to make room for what does.
And I talked about this in last week's episode if you want to go listen to it after this.
But you can't have contradicting thoughts and feelings and people that don't align with your dream life or the dream version of you.
You need to let go of self-limiting beliefs, old versions of you, habits that no longer fit your new level, people that don't support who you want to be, and you need to replace it with things and experiences and feelings and people who not only match it but elevate it.
Replace those things with daily positive self-affirmations visualizing the higher version of you and your dream life, habits and self-care routines that align with your new lifestyle.
People who have the same goals and desires and passions as you.
You can't just want these things or wish for these things.
You need to make changes to become it.
One of my favorite quotes that I think is from Mindset, Magic and Manifestation is is visualization without action is just a dream board.
Identity shifts happen through action and repetition, not just visualization and planning.
So yes, the first few steps are figuring out who you wanna be and how you need to change certain things, but you can't just stop there.
You need to actually take action.
I love journaling, and something that I really enjoy doing when it comes to goal setting is writing down a day in the life of the higher version of me, how my dream version of me would spend a day in the life.
But I write it as if I'm planning that day out now.
So 6 a.m., I wake up right when my alarm goes off.
I do all my self-care.
I put on a cute workout set.
I go to my workout and then I come home.
I take a shower.
I make a coffee.
I change into a cute outfit and then I sit down and I do my work and I do X, Y and Z.
Whatever your goals are or how you believe the higher version of you would show up.
You're going to write that down and plan it out of how your day would look.
All your habits, all your routines, hour by hour, as if you're planning your day out today.
Again, you're going to be so specific so you don't miss anything.
So you can't be like, well, I don't know what the higher version of me would do.
I don't know what things to change in my life.
Make a routine and then follow it as the version of you now.
Follow it as best as you can because habits eventually turn into a lifestyle.
At first you're just building habits, but eventually, through repetition and dedication, you will become that woman.
You really want to embody the energy of that version of you daily, how you speak to yourself, the decisions you make, how you handle setbacks.
And at first it's going to feel uncomfortable because it's not how you normally live your life and how you normally react to things.
But if you want the things in your life to change, you need to change.
You need to make the small but important shifts.
It can be as small as not snoozing your alarm or not calling out of work or not ordering takeout four days of the week.
Like I said, it can be uncomfortable.
It can be hard.
But what's important is that you act from self-respect and have your eyes on the prize, even on low energy days, even on days where you don't want to do those things.
Ask yourself, would the version of me that I'm trying to become skip this habit?
Would they skip this routine?
Would the higher version of me sleep in or would they wake up early?
Would the higher version of me be late to a meeting or would they be 15 minutes early?
In the same way that we're going to be changing our habits to align with who we want to be, we also need to be changing and reframing our mindset.
You might be like, I want to think more positively.
I want to be a happier person.
And you can absolutely make that happen.
But you need to let go of the way you're thinking now if it doesn't align with the person that you want to be.
We need to be letting go of any thoughts or ideas that no longer serve us and shift them to fit more with the lifestyle and the person that we want to become.
If you want to be a more positive, confident, happier person, your mind also has to reflect that.
Because like I said, our minds and our actions go hand in hand.
Your thoughts, your emotions, your views, your values, your ideas, all of that makes up who you are.
So you can't say...
I want to be positive but then continue to think negative thoughts or say mean things to yourself or say mean things to other people or consistently look for the downside in things.
One of the most important things I think everyone should work on or should tackle as soon as they can, is their self-talk.
Self-talk in general makes up a huge part of our lives and how we think of ourselves, positively or negatively.
The way that you talk about yourself is the way that you view yourself and what you're capable of.
A lot of our negative self-talk comes from our self-concept.
Your self-concept is the story you believe about who you are, what you're worthy of and what's available to you.
Every habit, every relationship, every experience is a reflection of that story.
For example, if you believe that you are unintelligent, you're going to base all of your decisions off that belief.
You're going to hold yourself back from opportunities that you believe you're unworthy or you're incapable of exploring?
You're not going to speak up or speak your mind out of fear of being wrong or sounding dumb and being judged by other people.
And you're not going to allow yourself to grow and become more intelligent, because you truly believe that is who you are and that's what you're deserving of.
So you can sit here now and be like oh, I wanna do X, Y and Z, I wanna accomplish all these things in 2026.
I wanna be the best version of myself.
But if you don't work on your self-talk and start talking positively to yourself, talking kindly to yourself, It's going to be really difficult to push yourself to work towards your goals and to see them through, because you basically have a critic in your head telling you that it's not going to work out and that you're not worthy of having whatever it is that you want.
You need to turn the critic in your head into your biggest supporter, into your biggest fan.
So instead of being met with, You can't do that.
You're not smart enough.
You're not pretty enough.
You're not interesting enough.
Anytime you try to take a step towards your new life or your new identity, the voice instead will say keep going.
You deserve this.
You're capable of this.
You can do this.
Kind of like how I said, to look back at your past and look at the things that made you feel the opposite of how you want to feel moving forward.
I want you to also think of the things you find yourself speaking negatively about regarding yourself.
What are the things you tend to criticize yourself on or that you're insecure about?
Maybe when you're getting ready in the morning, you're looking at yourself in the mirror saying I hate how I look.
No matter how much makeup I put on, I never look like the other girls.
I'm not pretty enough.
Or maybe when you go to give a presentation at work, you're telling yourself I'm gonna mess this up.
Everyone's gonna think I'm so stupid.
Everyone's going to wonder why I was chosen to give this presentation.
I shouldn't be giving this presentation.
Try to nail down the times and the instances where you've spoken negatively about yourself, particularly the things that keep coming up, the negative self-talk that you deal with regularly.
After you have those in mind, we're going to reframe those mindsets.
I probably should have told you to take out a notepad at the And next to each one you're going to write down the opposite, or the shifting idea of this thing that you keep telling to yourself.
If you write down, I'm never going to accomplish my goals.
I'm so far behind.
You're going to reframe that mindset and you're going to write down something along the lines of I'm going at my own pace and what's meant for me will find me.
If you write down, I can't give this presentation because I'm not ready.
You're going to write down.
I build readiness through action, and I'm capable of getting through this.
If you write down, I hate how I look.
I'm not pretty like the other girls.
You're going to reframe it and you're going to write down I don't have to look like the other girls, because I am unique in my own way and I'm beautiful in my own way.
Writing these down or just saying them out loud might sound cheesy.
It might feel a little corny.
But self-love in general can be kind of uncomfortable.
Like I said before, it's uncomfortable to admire yourself or praise yourself, or be proud of yourself.
So saying these things isn't going to feel natural.
But just like building a habit, the more you say it, the more you believe it.
And that's when you make the mindset shift.
The goal is to upgrade your self-concepts.
And every time you praise yourself or you speak kindly to yourself, you are rewriting your story and shifting the way that you view yourself.
Any negative thing that you say about yourself or the way that you view things in a negative light can always be turned into a positive.
It's really just how you view things.
If you're someone with a scarcity mindset and you're afraid of not having enough money or not having a good enough job or not being pretty enough, you can turn that around and build a sufficiency self-concept by saying what's meant for me will always find me and things will work out for me.
The same thing with what I said before.
If you're saying I'm behind, you can turn that into I'm going at my own pace and it's going to work out for me.
If you're someone who's afraid of stepping outside of your comfort zone and you're constantly telling yourself I'm not ready enough for this, I'm scared, I can't do this, you can look at that and look at the discomfort as evidence of growth.
It's the same concept or idea that you're focusing on and all your energy is going to just worked into a way that's positive and going to encourage you to work at it rather than give up on it.
It's one thing to know what you want or how You want to be perceived.
But if your self-concept hasn't changed, you're going to keep living like the old version of you, even while saying that you want more and that you want to change.
I want to end today's episode with affirmations that actually rewire your identity.
It's important to note that generic affirmations don't always work.
They need to be custom to you, they need to be meaningful, to make an impact on you and your mind.
You can look up affirmations to help you build confidence, affirmations to be more successful but if you're reading this affirmation online and they don't resonate with you or they don't mean anything to you, they're not going to help you.
I think the more specific and detailed you are with your affirmations, the more they're going to affect the way you actually view yourself.
I would go through the list that you've made with everything that inspires you, how you wanna feel, how you envision your dream self, past self-limiting beliefs and insecurities that you've had, and figure out what you need specifically to work on.
If you're feeling insecure, Don't go looking for a vague affirmation that everyone else is saying.
Figure out what it is that you're feeling insecure about, whether that's something physical emotional mentally, whatever it is, and have that be your focus.
I don't know if I've ever spoken about this, but...
I've been pretty insecure about my speech for the past couple years, really since I started this podcast.
Maybe it's just because I'm more aware of me talking.
And I wouldn't necessarily say I have a speech impediment, but when I'm nervous or I'm talking a lot, I'll stumble over my words and just have difficulty speaking, sometimes paired with like jaw issues.
It feels like my jaw gets stuck, which is one of the reasons I got Invisalign to help me with that.
But that was something that I was insecure about.
So at one point, that was a focus in my affirmations.
Obviously, my affirmations change daily.
But, for example, before I go to socialize or even when I'm about to record the podcast, if I'm having difficulty speaking or if I feel like my words are getting jumbled up or I'm just not feeling confident, I'll say I am confident in my words.
My words hold value.
People want to hear what I have to say.
I don't need to rush through speaking.
I can take my time.
No one's expecting me to be perfect.
No one's expecting me to have a perfect speech.
And it's okay for me to make mistakes.
Not only are these affirmations helping build my confidence and reminding me that, whatever I have to say, I have the right to say.
I don't need to be nervous to talk.
I don't need to bite my tongue.
There's people that want to hear what I have to say.
They also calm me down and relax me.
So that way I'm not so anxious about how the words are coming out of my mouth or how they sound.
And it takes away the perfectionism of it that I struggle with.
Taking the time to say affirmations and be intentional about speaking kindly to yourself and being supportive towards yourself is a huge part of rewiring your identity.
The old version of you would have allowed you to struggle.
The old version of you would just accept that this is how it is.
The old version of me would just accept I'm not good at speaking.
I sound weird.
People are going to make fun of me.
I'm just not going to talk.
The higher version of me says, no, I am going to talk because I have a lot to say.
I love to talk and I want to and I love myself enough and I respect myself enough and I support myself enough to say we're going to work through this issue and make a weakness of ours a strength.
Like I said before, affirmation should be very personal and custom to what you're working through.
But some that I continuously go to that I think can be added and be useful to the affirmations you might say are I trust myself to handle what comes next?
I'm doing my best.
My best is enough.
I'm safe to be seen as my full self.
I'm capable of any opportunity that's presented to me and I'm capable of conquering any obstacle or challenge that I am faced with.
Repetition, paired with emotional safety.
You know, feeling secure enough, feeling okay enough to be vulnerable and open with what you're struggling with and allowing yourself to work through it and overcome it, leads to rewiring your identity.
It takes a lot to admit that there's things that you're not happy with about yourself and that you want to work on.
It takes a lot of strength to point out versions of you that you don't love, or places in time where you felt weak or not good enough.
And instead of looking at all of that and feeling shame or wanting to hide from it, you embrace it and learn from it and grow from it.
That is what we're focusing on in 2026.
We're not focusing on being the perfect version of us.
Just because I'm saying the dream version of you or your highest version of self doesn't mean an unflawed version of you.
There's always room for improvement.
The goal for 2026 is just to be better than 2025.
Me against me, always.
We're learning from our mistakes.
We're tweaking parts of us that we think we could improve on.
And we're leveling up the way that we view ourselves and the way that we treat our lives.
That is where I'm going to end today's episode.
I hope that it was helpful and gives you a little bit of a push or a little bit of motivation for 2026.
Let me know if you have any questions about today's episode.
If there's anything that you want me to expand on, you can leave that in the spotify comments or you can ask me on instagram.
I'll also leave some affirmations in the show notes.
If you want to come back to them and, you know, write them down.
There's not going to be an episode next monday, so the first monday of the new year, just because i'm taking it off, i'm spending some time with some friends and family, But I hope that you have a good rest of 2025 and I hope that the first week of 2026 is so good to you.
Thank you so much for spending time with me this year and for your continuous support towards me and trying not to care.
I'm genuinely so grateful and so excited to be able to share another year with you and have the opportunity to just sit down with you every Monday and talk to you.
It's the highlight of my week and yeah, I just love you and I'm excited.
So Here's to 2026.
Can't wait to do it with all of you.
Okay.
Love you.
Bye.
