1 | Hello Its Me
February 18, 2019
In my first episode, I introduce myself, what events led me up to starting the podcast, and why I am ultimately doing it.
Transcript:
Welcome! You’re listening to Your Best Foot Forward Podcast. I’m your host Claire Edwards. Thank you so much for listening. This podcast has been a long time coming!
I built this podcast for the young twenty-something multitaskers. In the middle of trying to balance work, school, relationships, and somehow our own personal health, it is easy to get overwhelmed and lose our way sometimes. To help inspire you to find the best version of yourself, on this podcast you will hear my conversations with people that are putting their best foot forward in certain aspects of their life. Whether that is physically, mentally, in relationships with others, during tough times, new experiences, and more. Since different things work for different people, these conversations aren’t telling you what you should be doing (as you have enough people in this world telling you that), but instead, I hope these guests feel relatable and inspire you to explore new ways to put your best foot forward in your life.
Before we jump into any episodes with my guests, I wanted to introduce myself, what led up to be starting the podcast, and why I wanted to do it.
Introduction
My name is Claire Edwards and I’m twenty-three years old.
I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio with my mom, dad, and two younger sisters.
I attended Miami University in Oxford, OH and graduated in May 2018.
I live in Northeast Ohio, where I work as a full-time supply chain analyst. I do the podcast as a passion project
What led me starting the podcast
My senior year of college was not the easiest. I felt I didn’t know who I was and I that caused me to not like myself. This was scary to me. I knew I was about to enter the real world not knowing who I was. I was so anxious and indecisive all the time, never felt like I was ever doing or saying the right thing, and very insecure about everything. At the time, I didn’t tell that many people how I felt because I was ashamed to show that I didn’t have my life together and was so unsure of myself. It may of looked like I had it together on paper or on social media, but internally I was a mess. I’ve since learned that it’s ok not have it all together, because in reality, no one has it together.
During this tough time, I was introduced to the topic of self-awareness during a leadership and creativity class I was taking in the Fall 2017 semester of my senior year. I knew what self-awareness was, but I never took action to be self-aware, step back, and reflect on myself. During the class, we looked into our strengths and weaknesses, how we interacted with others, how we could spark our creativity, who we were as a leader, and more. We took all these aspects of ourselves and looked into the things we could do to be our best selves and add value to the world. I loved exploring self-awareness and felt like it brought me hope.
We touched on journaling and how it could help in the self-awareness process. So many people had told me to start journaling and I just had never gotten myself to do it. Journaling allows me get everything out. It is a way to understand my feelings instead of running away from them and reflect on my life. I’ve been journaling for a year now and I can’t imagine my life without it.
Fast forward: I’ve graduated from college, I’ve moved to Northeast Ohio, and I’ve been working my first full time job. It was October 2018 and I’d been exploring self-awareness for about a year. I knew I was coming up on a year of journaling, so I wanted to look back at my first few entries. While looking back, I didn’t realize how bad my mental state was. Reflecting on how unhappy I was when I started journaling and looking at what I wrote one year later, my mood, feelings, and perspective on life had done a one-eighty. I immediately felt joy and disbelief looking at how far I’d come. I had noticed through this journey of self awareness and becoming the best version of myself that I found a new confidence in who I was and started to understand myself and who I wanted to be. I know the journey continues and there is no such thing as perfection. I will continue to grow and figure out how to be my best self in each new phase of life.
After all of this, I had an itch to still do something more with what I experienced. I wanted to go beyond journaling and extend to having conversations with people on topics of self-awareness and being your best self. I couldn’t figure out what that itch was.
One day, I’m on my way home from work listening to Katie Dalebout’s Let It Out podcast. If you haven’t listened to it, you should. She mentioned she was hosting a podcast workshop and a light bulb went off. The opportunity was right in front of me and I had to take it.
I enrolled in Katie Dalebout’s 6-week workshop. I loved it. I learned so much from her. She was so encouraging. I don’t know how I would have ever started this without it. I am here with you all today because of her workshop.
Now to get real with you
I can tell you when I decided to start a podcast, I didn’t consider the fact that: first, would need to get used to hearing the sound of my voice all the time, and second, I didn’t really have any experience interviewing people. This is something you would think I would consider, but didn’t. I even started recording myself talking during my thirty-minute commute home from work to get more comfortable.
Here I am doing something completely out of my comfort zone. It may not be the best podcast in the world, but I’m learning as I go and putting my best foot forward. It’s all going to be worth it because I want to do this podcast to inspire even one person to put their best foot forward in their life. Inspiration is intangible and unmeasured, but is one of the most valuable things I receive from my family, friends, other podcasts, and people I follow on instagram. I would like to pay it forward and inspire you to go out and put your best foot forward in your life.
What it means to put your best foot forward:
Your best is different than my best, which is different than someone else’s best. There is no best way to live life. Everyone has something different they do to put their best foot forward and strive to be the best version of themselves.
One thing we may have in common is it can be overwhelming and exhausting to think about putting your best foot forward all the time. When you eventually decide to take those steps to be your best at everything, you get caught up in this balancing act and drive yourself insane. Ultimately, in the end, you feel overwhelmed with life and don’t want to pick one thing to do. You end up binge watching One Tree Hill on Netflix for the third time in a row. I’ve been there (probably a good thing that One Tree Hill was taken off Netflix for my sake but that is just a side note).
It doesn’t have to be this way. Don’t make putting your best foot forward seem hard. Putting your best foot forward and becoming the best version of yourself means finding the small manageable things you can do each day. It means finding the small ways you can create stronger relationships with the people you care about. It means changing your mindset about a negative situation. It means finally taking that next step in your career. It means being more productive with your time. It means dedicating yourself to a healthier lifestyle. It can mean taking the steps to make your heart a little happier at the end of the day. Eventually, all those little steps become huge strides to being your best self.
By listening to Your Best Foot Forward and hearing conversations with these guests, I hope you feel inspired to explore new ways to put your best foot forward in your life.
To wrap up, I want to say a couple special thank you’s to Katie Dalebout for creating a killer workshop, all the podcasters I collaborated with, and especially to my family and friends who supported and encouraged me to do this project. I couldn’t do it without you!