Welcome to the Elevated Edit Podcast.

I'm your host, Blakely Ramsey, and the goal of this podcast is to discuss all things personal development, wellness, and the art of editing your life in an elevated way.

From mastering morning routines to mastering your mindset, we're going to sift through the noise and empower you to take elevated action.

Make sure you catch the show notes for all the details.

Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome to the Elevated Edit Podcast.

If today is the first day that you are listening, just a disclaimer.

Today is going to be a little different than most of the episodes that I put out.

I typically have a very structured episode with an overarching theme with some personal anecdotes thrown in.

But today is completely raw, completely vulnerable.

I am opening the door to what my 2024 has looked like.

And if you know me in real life, you know I have gone through a huge personal shift and it has impacted almost every aspect of my life.

And I am very fortunate that I was able to go through this shift and a very intentional way.

It was something that I chose out of a place of feeling miserable.

I've mentioned on this podcast before that everything just kind of came to a head last December for me and I realized that while I had so many good things and so many things to be grateful for, I had this restlessness and I felt like I owed it to myself to figure out why that was happening, why that was there.

And I created an action list for myself to really do some self exploration and work through some traumas and some personal issues that I had and some mindset issues that I had.

And I created a very tedious, I guess is a good word for it, action list for myself because I knew in the past I was like a go big or go home person and I would set these big goals and had to have these big aspirations.

And this year I knew that I was gonna have to slow down and pump the brakes and really do the deep work and really look at my life and my decisions from a bird's eye view.

Instead of like rushing past things, I was gonna have to face things head on.

And I've done a lot of work and it has been not always super fun, but it has been so worth it and I've learned so much and things have shifted for me in ways that I couldn't even imagine.

And I feel like this year I finally found my voice, I found my backbone, and I have finally found the courage to stop caring so much about what others think.

And if you are like me, you know that's not easy.

And I wouldn't say that I don't care at all.

But I have definitely given myself the freedom to stop caring as much.

And so today that's what I'm doing.

I'm sharing the raw and the real everything that I've learned this year, things that I've gone through.

Because this might resonate with you as well.

And if even a small part of this episode resonates with you, then my job is done.

I feel like multi passionate, high achieving women often hold themselves back because they worry too much about other people's opinions, what other people think.

We also have this massive fear of failure.

And this year I had to confront a lot of those fear fears head on.

And like I said, it was not always fun.

It was really scary.

It was super, super uncomfortable.

And there were months at a time where I did not see any progress at all.

And it was really intimidating to just keep moving forward not knowing what the end result was going to be.

But it has been the most transformational, the most magical year of my whole life.

I am so thankful that I put in the work and had the self discipline and the consistency and the willingness to confront a lot of things head on that I needed to work on.

One of the first things that I worked on was caring less about what others think.

For far too long, I cared way too much about what other people thought thought about me.

I wanted to make everyone happy.

I wanted to avoid disappointing anyone at all cost.

And in doing so, I feel like I really held myself back from what I truly wanted.

And I think a lot of this stems from the fact that, you know, when I was younger, I was the new kid.

From preschool to sixth grade, I had a new school every single year.

And then I had the same school from seventh grade to 12th grade.

But I started working when I was 12.

And this is not like a sob story, sweatshop kind of thing.

I had a.

I was fortunate enough to have a family member that owned a restaurant.

And I started off at 12.

I was the.

I was able to roll silverware.

That was all I was allowed to do at first.

And I'm really good at rolling silverware now, in case you're wondering.

It's kind of one of my hidden talents.

And then I was promoted to bus girl and the bus girl could also do refills.

And so I was able to like interact with the tables a little bit more and I loved it.

And then I was promoted to cashier and that was fantastic for me because I was Able to talk to people and I was able to make sure that they left the restaurant in a good mood and I could joke around with people and form relationships.

And then I got promoted to waitress.

And it was pretty much game over after that for me because I quickly realized it didn't matter what their food tasted like, how fast their food came out, whatever the situation was, I could make as much money as I wanted if people liked me.

And that was great in some ways.

And in other ways I feel like that kind of started a slippery slope.

And then When I turned 16, my family opened a restaurant and I worked a lot.

You know, I obviously loved school and I was a cheerleader and things like that.

But my big passion was work.

I would work, you know, during the week and then of course on the weekends, like, I don't want to sit at home and watch freaking cartoons.

I want to go make money.

And then I went to college and I worked at a very busy sports bar across from Bomb Stadium in Fayetteville.

And that was the first time that I made real money.

Our schedules would literally like on Friday and this was the year round girls.

So we had the seasonal girls that, you know, they really didn't need to work and they would only work for, you know, they'd make it through a couple baseball games and they were tapped out like by the end of a baseball season we would have like, we'd start out with like 20 girls and we'd end up with like six.

But there were a few of us that were year round girls.

So we were baseball, basketball, football, there were some other sports in there too.

And we would start on Friday, we'd all get out of class, we'd get there about four, maybe five, and we'd work until one in the morning and then we'd all go out and drink.

And I don't know how I was able to do this.

Now I'll go to bed at like 8 o'clock.

We would all go out and drink and then we'd get there at like 8 or 9 in the morning and we would work.

And when I say work, I mean we would not take a break.

Like we would like share bowls of Mac and cheese in the back and not take a break.

We work from 8, 9 in the morning until like 9, 10 o'clock at night, sometimes later.

And then we'd go out again and party all night.

And then on Sunday, Sunday was usually.

This was like, no, this was like a baseball, baseball schedule.

And I feel like basketball somehow.

I don't know Anything about sports, I just knew I was making money.

But basketball, we typically have like a basketball game on Sundays or something.

And so those of us that had worked all weekend, we would go party, we would come in late, so that way we didn't have to do any of this setup work.

And I'd work from like 11 to 2 on Sunday and then I'd go home and crash.

But I made like a thousand dollars in a weekend.

And for a college kid, that was a lot of money.

And then I went to wine and spirit sales and then I went to real estate.

And so my whole money making life has been revolved around people liking me.

I've never had a job where I could just go to work and not smile and not have a personality and still make the same amount of money in every job I've ever had.

I.

It's essentially been com.

Commission based.

I mean, obviously waiting tables is not commission based, but it, it kind of is and it's just a different structure.

And then my wine and spirits job had a base salary, but the majority of our money was off of commission and bonuses.

And so I have literally spent my entire life making other people happy so that I could pay my bills.

And look, this is not, I'm not like a victim, like, oh, this is such a bad thing.

It was just something I needed to become aware of because I didn't have a line between making people happy at work and making people happy in my personal life.

I was the yes girl at work.

Like, yes, of course I'll get you more rent.

Yes, of course I'll drive to Little Rock and get you this case of Crown Royal that you forgot to order.

And it's, you know, the week before Christmas.

Yes, of course I'll, you know, show you a house at 8:30 at night.

I had to be the yes girl because people needed to like me in order to make money.

And that, like I said, it correlated to my personal life.

Yes, of course I'll run and do this errand for you.

Yes, of course I'll, you know, drop everything and do this for you.

And so that's something I really had to work on this year.

And it's.

That has been super hard for me because like I said, it's been ingrained in me since I was 12 years old.

And I have made a lot of money and I have given, been given a lot of praise and received a lot of success from making other people happy.

And so that mindset shift has been extremely difficult to work through.

But what I am Realizing is that a I am just a valuable person in general.

I don't have to constantly kiss up to people and if someone is mad at me or upset with something that I do or a boundary that I put in place, it just is what it is.

It's not the end of the world.

I don't have to make everyone happy.

And it's been so freeing.

And the funny part in all this, and of course the irony is that now that I have a voice and I have a backbone, I feel like people respect me more.

And my relationships have gotten so much stronger.

There have been a handful of people that have left my life or not wanted to work with me because of my boundaries.

And my mindset at this point is carry on.

I.

My life is so much easier when I work with good people, organized people, people that have their own boundaries and people that respect mine.

Everything in my life is easier when I'm surrounded by those kinds of people, whether they're friends or co workers or clients.

And so I have had to really be okay with releasing people this year.

I've had to be okay with sticking to my boundaries.

Even when people push back, when they get upset, when they threaten to leave, I'm like, okay, here's the door.

You know, I.

If you walk out, five more people are going to walk in that are aligned with what I want and where I want to go.

And it has been so amazing just to see it play out and to realize that my worth is not tied up and everybody liking me all the time.

I don't have to be liked.

I don't have to be likable.

I don't have to be happy and always be high energy.

Like if something bothers me, I can speak up and the world doesn't end.

And I know that might be common sense or like duh for some people, but for me, that was a huge, huge thing to overcome and it's been amazing.

And I've realized that you can't please everyone.

And that's perfectly okay because when you stop trying, you can free up energy to pursue what truly aligns with your purpose.

And that is exactly what I have done in 2024.

I've stopped spinning my wheels trying to make everyone happy and I've honored what mattered to me.

Lesson number two that I learned this year is discipline and consistency pay off.

So I have always been a pretty disciplined person, but as far as consistency, I have been a very squirrel and shiny object person.

And I also self tap, self sabotage because I didn't have a Lot of confidence in myself.

I didn't really have a very high self worth.

And as a result, I feel like in the back of my mind, I didn't feel like I deserved good things.

I didn't deserve to give myself discipline.

I didn't deserve to give myself consistency because I knew that I would grow and I knew that I would achieve the things I wanted to achieve.

And deep down, I didn't feel like I deserved that.

And yes, that is super backwards, but that is, you know, part of the unraveling and working on yourself and journaling and therapy and meditation and facing things head on is you realize that a lot of your mindset are like, they don't even make sense.

They certainly don't serve you.

And it wasn't anything that I let myself, you know, get down on or like, was hard on myself about.

It was just like, okay, well, that's not serving me.

And that really, honestly doesn't even make any sense for where my life is now and where I want my life to go.

So it's my responsibility to fix this.

And the first thing I did this year as far as discipline was I did 75 hard.

And so if you've never heard of the 75 hard program, for 75 days, you have to do two workouts a day.

One of them has to be outside.

You have to drink a gallon of water.

Take a progress picture.

You can't cheat on your diet.

No drinking.

Read 10 pages of a personal development book.

I think there's one more thing that you have to do.

I can't remember.

And I made it 55 days, which I thought was pretty great.

I did want to make it all 75 days, but I feel like the 55 days still had an impact because the thing that I got out of it was, oh, wow, I can do this.

And the.

The day that ruined it, I was at Oakland and I was with my work friends and I was like, you know what?

I want a freaking margarita.

And so I had a margarita.

And I don't regret it because I thought 75 days was great, but it really kind of opened my eyes to like, wow, I can do whatever I want to do if I set my mind to it.

And I feel like that program and putting myself through that just kind of showed me like, wow, I am capable of doing hard things.

I am capable of waking up and going outside and going for a hour walk.

Even if it's pouring down rain, even if it's snowing, even if there's ice on the ground.

I can do two workouts a day.

I can do.

The hardest part of that program is taking the progress picture.

Because being raw and looking at yourself in the mirror every day and taking a picture and having an album of pictures of yourself is.

I mean, you can't lie to yourself.

It's very.

That is the, that's the part that's the hardest.

I thought that the two workouts today were going to be the hardest.

Other people have Talked about the 10 pages of reading that.

That ain't nothing for me.

I can fly through a book.

I already drink a lot of water.

Not drinking was pretty difficult because I, like I said, I love wine.

I loved a good margarita.

But taking the progress picture for me was, whoa, that was a big one.

But it gave me so much confidence in myself and it also showed me that like, consistency doesn't deliver overnight results.

But like, if you allow yourself enough time, the rewards are massive, you know?

I've lost 40 pounds this year through a lot of different avenues.

I am 75 hard.

I think I lost maybe like 10 pounds in those 55 days.

So that certainly didn't help.

I think with my hormones working out twice a day and like, being that restrictive and that strict was not good for my body.

It helped me mentally, but physically I don't think it helped.

Walking 10,000 steps a day has been huge.

Drinking a ton of water.

I have done the ozempy.

I feel like people are like, no, I don't do Ozempic.

Like, yeah, I did it from May until August and it helped a ton.

I feel like it kind of taught my mind what it was like to be full and what it was like to not think about food non stop.

And that was huge for me.

I never had the like, oh, I'm not hungry at all because I'm on Ozempic.

Like, girl kept eating right through it.

But it did teach me, okay, I am eating because I eating is fun to me and that's not necessarily good for me or my goals.

And so I've done that.

I've done the B12 shots with lipo at Medispa with Jessica trying to think of what else I've done.

I've gotten pretty strict on my supplements.

I used to take like all these freaking supplements and now I just do a stick of glossy in the morning and some AG1 and then some colostrum powder.

So I've simplified that.

I've tried to clean up my diet as much as possible.

I've slept a lot.

I feel like regulating my nervous system all the Other things that I've done this year, kind of like the personal work has really regulated my nervous system a lot.

And it.

I used to wake up every morning at 2 in the morning.

I had cortisol face.

I was so overstimulated.

I was so burnt out.

My nervous system was just shot.

And now I go to bed.

I'm not joking, y'all.

I've been going to bed at like 7:38 every night, and I have been sleeping like a log.

Like I don't wake up.

And then I started these nad shots, and when I started those, I have been waking up.

So I've been going to bed at 7:38, but I wake up at 4, 4:30 with no alarm, and I spring out of the bed.

I have so much energy.

I feel so flipping good.

My mind is clear.

All of the good things.

I'm trying to think if I've done anything else this year that's really helped.

Oh, I've tried to lift weights three times a week.

I.

I really enjoy lifting weights.

I don't enjoy the thought of knowing that I have to lift weights.

And so once I get started, I'm usually pretty good.

But, yeah, I feel like that's what I've done this year.

I've got about 15 more pounds that I want to lose, but I was pretty proud of the 40.

And I have discovered that for me, discipline has created freedom because showing up for myself, even in small ways, has built momentum that has led to really big changes, and it's been pivotal for me.

So next lesson I learned this year was that slowing down has helped me speed up.

So I have always been very go, go, go, very hustle, Work hard.

When you work hard, work harder.

I used to judge people for having fun or taking a break, taking a nap.

I would have never taken a nap before.

And now, like, I'll take a nap in the middle of the week, just randomly.

Like, I won't even be super tired.

I'm like, I kind of feel like I need a nap.

And it has been the best thing for my productivity.

I did not realize how crippling my schedule was before.

I mean, I was packed, you know, I.

All during the week, I would typically be going from a combination of work to the boards I was sitting on, to personal obligations, to all the things.

I'd be running from like 7 in the morning on a Monday to like 7 at night on a Friday.

And then my Saturdays and Sundays would also be packed.

Like, I would have showing scheduled, I would have events scheduled.

I would Be, you know, so many commitments.

And part of me is really thankful that I did all of that because I did learn a lot.

I grew a beautiful network.

I'm not, not proud of all the work that I did, but it was not sustainable in the long term.

And so this year I've really slowed down.

I have stepped down from a lot of boards.

I've stepped away from a lot of commitments.

I've said no to a lot of things.

I have virtually cleared my calendar.

I am working from home now.

I renovated my office at home.

We are putting the finishing touches on.

If you follow me on Instagram.

You saw the wallpaper that almost ended our marriage?

Not quite, but it was so bad we had to take a break.

We had to take like a couple days in between because we were so agitated with each other over this wallpaper.

I chose a wallpaper with a really complicated pattern and like matching it up.

It's not like an easy pattern to just hold up and match up.

You've really got to like shift the wallpaper.

And then there were.

It was just a whole ordeal.

Um, but I've been working at home.

I have been starting off my day with my 10,000 steps.

I have turned my phone off a lot.

I've turned off my notifications.

I've deleted apps, deleted Facebook and TikTok.

I have just in general slowed down so much.

And I don't know if I want to keep the speed forever because I am very high energy person.

I love being productive and I love creating and I love being around others when I have the energy.

But I needed this year to slow down and kind of connect with myself.

And I am really thankful that I took the time to do it.

And I think for me, one of the things that I didn't even realize was happening was in an attempt to avoid dealing with some of my traumas and some of my issues, I just worked harder or I said yes to another commitment.

I would chair another event, or yes, I'll be on another board, or yes, I'll come over and help you do whatever.

Like, literally I would just say yes to things all the time.

I would get home at 8 o'clock and I would still have an hour and a half of work that I had to do.

And I'd be working in the bed.

Like I was like, bring my laptop to bed with us.

And then I'd wonder why I was waking up at 2:00 in the morning every night.

Because I literally like never slowed down.

And I have really had to slow down A lot and face a lot of those fears head on.

But in all of this, I have discovered that slowing down has helped me speed up because I have a.

I've been able to, like, clear a lot of unnecessary things off of my plate, and it has allowed me to laser focus on where I'm going, who I want to be, who I want to be with me, and what is really important.

And that has been game changing, pivotal for me.

I have made more progress in my career this year.

I've made more money this year.

I have made more impact this year than ever before.

And I have worked at least half of what I've worked any other year of my life.

Um, I mean, I would say right now, like, hour wise, I'm probably working like, 30 hours a week.

And that is with real estate and the podcast and the courses and the personal brand.

Like, I'm not working a lot at all, but because I'm so laser focused and I have such good systems in place, and I've delegated a lot.

I hired a really good va and she actually has a va.

So I essentially got two for the price of one.

I've delegated a lot of stuff, taken a lot of things off my plate.

I've given a lot of people their responsibilities back.

I am able to get 10 times as much done in those 30 hours as I was getting done in the 80 hours before.

And a lot of it was because I was doing so many things for other people and I wasn't doing a lot for myself.

And I really thought at first I was gonna feel selfish.

But now, when I do say yes to someone and I do commit to something, I show up at 150%.

I show up rested.

I show up energized.

I show up organized.

I show up with an action plan.

Like, I am on it right now.

And when I do say yes to people, I don't feel guilty at all.

I don't feel frazzled.

I show up, we execute.

It doesn't take us a long time because my mind is sharp.

I'm planning boom, boom, boom, and then we're out of there.

And so for me, giving myself the freedom to see what it looks like to slow down has allowed me to speed up in ways that I did not even realize.

Like, I've had so much free time this year to try hobbies.

Like, right now I'm learning.

What is the front of that book?

Say, calligraphy.

I'm clearly not very good at it.

I can't even remember what it is, but I've been practicing calligraphy.

I am reading a lot of fun books.

I am enriching myself so that when I do go back to my work, whether it's, you know, showing a house or writing a contract or recording a podcast episode.

Episode, I'm showing up in a way better way than I was before.

I'm not showing up exhausted.

I'm not showing up frazzled.

I'm not showing up rushing, trying to get to the next place.

You know, if I would have gotten lunch with a friend last year, I'd have been looking at my phone the whole time, sending emails, Okay, I gotta get out of here.

I gotta go to this next thing.

I literally have, like, 45 minutes.

I'd have been, like, so jittery, so anxious, not being able to be present in the moment.

And now I can go to lunch with a friend and I can turn my phone over.

I don't care who calls me.

I don't care who emails me.

There's very few things that are important enough for me to tear my attention away, tear my attention away from what is happening in the present moment.

And that has made me a better friend, a better wife, a better child, a better.

All the things I.

All of the areas of my life have improved by slowing down.

And then the last big lesson I've learned this year is embracing failure and being a beginner.

I have a pretty big ego.

I have typically gone after things in my life that I was already good at.

I've always been book smart.

You know, I made a really high score on my act.

I tested out of, like, all my AP classes.

I.

College was relatively easy for me.

I'm good at taking tests, and I knew that about myself.

And so I always just kind of lean towards, like, academic things instead of pushing myself.

And what I really love is being creative and being passionate in a creative space.

But I'm not necessarily always good at it.

And I forced myself to get outside of that box and be creative this year.

And, you know, the podcast has been one of those things.

I've embarrassed myself a lot.

I failed a lot this year.

I've tried a lot of things that I never thought I would try before, and I've been really bad at them.

But it has been such a joyful year.

It has been.

There's been so many things where I'm like, wow, I was really bad at that.

Perfect example is when Jessica and I were in Paris and we went to the palace of Versailles, and I booked a.

I booked it.

I did it.

I booked us a Six hour bike tour through the gardens of Versailles.

Because that sounded magical and it sounded wonderful.

But I knew that I didn't know how to ride a bike.

And I don't know, in my mind, I guess I thought it was just gonna come to me.

And I crash and burned.

About 30 minutes in.

When I say crash and run, like, I literally crashed into a human being.

I.

My bike fell.

I, like, literally was laying on the ground.

It was so bad.

It was so embarrassing.

I cried.

I cried in the gardens of Versailles.

I left the bike, I left the tour.

I left everyone.

I was like, I'm done with this.

I am tapped out.

I've got, like, tears pouring in my face, my knees bleeding, the security guard to get into the palace.

It's like, ma'am, are you okay?

Like, he didn't even check my ticket.

It was just so hilarious, so embarrassing.

Oh, my gosh.

But just trying it, even though I completely failed, crash and burn was something I would have never done before.

And it made me feel good about myself even though I was a complete and utter failure at it.

I was like, you know what?

I tried.

And now I have a hilarious story to tell.

And my knee.

I don't know what I did.

Like, I, like, don't know if I cracked something, but I still have a bruise on the front of my knee.

Yeah.

And that's a story that I'm gonna be able to tell for years to come.

But failing and trying new things and being bad at things has forced me to shift my perspective.

And it has allowed me to let go of perfectionism and rediscover the excitement of learning and growing and being a newbie and being bad at something.

And I have learned that failure is not the end.

It is just a stepping stone.

And a no is not a no forever.

It might just be a no for right now.

And that sometimes the joy can come from just showing up and just trying new things and being willing to start messy.

And I am so thankful that I put myself through a lot of those new things and things that I wasn't good at.

Because looking at my calendar for 2025, there's a lot of things on my calendar that I'm brand new at.

And I'm not sure I'm going to be good at it.

And I'm going to be not good at it in front of a lot of people.

But how am I ever going to get better if I don't take that first step?

I'm all about elevated action.

And if I want to grow and I want to improve, I'm going to have to start taking action.

And it's scary to think about, but it's also exciting.

Like, I'm excited to be embarrassed now.

Like, I'm excited to be bad at stuff.

I'm excited to, like, get up in front of people and look like an idiot because I know that first time is going to be the hardest time.

And after that, I'm going to get better every single time.

I'm going to learn every time I fail, every time someone says something rude to me, I'm going to learn from that.

I'm going to learn from feedback.

I'm going to learn from getting in rooms that are with people that are smarter than me.

I'm going to improve.

And by the end of 2025, I'm going to have all these big lessons that I learned because I wasn't afraid to be a failure and look like a beginner.

And that has been huge for me.

As someone who is a perfectionist and likes to be good at things and likes to be, you know, a high achiever and the best of the best, I have honestly, really enjoyed not being great at things.

It's been huge for me.

And overall, this year has just taught me to care less about what others think and embrace discipline and consistency and, you know, find joy in failure.

And these lessons have not just transformed my year, but my entire perspective on life.

And it's been a great 2024.

I have no regrets.

There were definitely things that I could have done better, but I went after everything with good intentions and a good heart.

And this is the first year where I have gotten to the end of the year, and I'm like, I left it all on the table.

There's nothing that I wish I could.

I'm like, oh, I wish I would have done that, or I really wish I would have done that.

Like, I've done all the things I wanted to do this year.

And like I said, 2025, I am pushing myself.

Not in a, I've got to work hard.

I'm going to be working 24 7, but in like a, oh, wow.

I expect myself to stand up in front of people and do that, or, wow, I expect myself to travel across the country by myself and do that, or, wow, I expect myself to travel internationally and do that.

And I'm excited, I'm nervous, I'm scared, but I'm excited.

It's gonna be.

It's gonna be a great year.

If any of these lessons resonated with you, I hope that they inspire you to reflect on your own growth this year.

And remember that the messy, imperfect moments are where the real magic happens and where the real shifts happen.

If this episode spoke to you, please share with a friend who might need to hear it.

And don't forget to leave a review.

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I'll see you in the next episode.

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