Speaker 1: You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is so exciting you guys. Today's
Speaker 1: the day. Today is the very first day of my
Speaker 1: very own podcast, I Choose Me. I have been working
Speaker 1: and working towards this for so long just to get
Speaker 1: to this very moment with you, and you have no
Speaker 1: idea how grateful I am that you are here with me,
Speaker 1: that you chose to listen today. Look at that, you guys,
Speaker 1: just made your very first choice on the I Choose
Speaker 1: Me podcast. Woo celebrate that. This is a crazy statistic.
Speaker 1: I heard we make like thirty five thousand choices a day.
Speaker 1: Think about that. That is a lot of choices. I mean,
Speaker 1: we make so many choices before we even get out
Speaker 1: of bed. I've made a lot of choices, some good,
Speaker 1: some bad. But I'm going to go on record here
Speaker 1: and say that I don't really believe in bad choices anymore,
Speaker 1: because if I didn't make choices that were bad or
Speaker 1: you know, that had some negative consequence, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: learned anything. I wouldn't have gotten the messages that I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to get to move forward to, Like the next level.
Speaker 1: You know, I want this podcast to be a safe
Speaker 1: space for us to share with each other, to get vulnerable,
Speaker 1: to talk about our choices, our good ones, our bad ones.
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to
Speaker 1: share my choices with you, the highs and the lows
Speaker 1: of my life, and we are going to take a
Speaker 1: look at them. Because if you think about it, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool to sit back and sort of examine the
Speaker 1: choices that you've made in your life. Right to think
Speaker 1: was that a good choice? Was that a bad choice?
Speaker 1: What did I learn from that? Would I make that
Speaker 1: same choice again? My answer to that is usually going
Speaker 1: to be yes, because, like I said, I don't believe
Speaker 1: there are any bad choices. Were exactly where we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be. But I want us to start sharing because
Speaker 1: I feel like we're all walking around with these secrets,
Speaker 1: you know, secrets from our lives that were afraid to
Speaker 1: share with other people, were embarrassed to share with other people.
Speaker 1: But the fact is we are all going through the
Speaker 1: same things. We are all making very similar choices out there.
Speaker 1: We just have different circumstances. So that in itself is
Speaker 1: going to connect us on this podcast because we're all
Speaker 1: in this together, and I want you to feel comfortable
Speaker 1: knowing that it's okay to share your choices, and I
Speaker 1: want you to be unapologetic about them, about who you
Speaker 1: are and who you are meant to be, and I
Speaker 1: want us to start loving ourselves just a little bit
Speaker 1: more every day. But first, I want to explain where
Speaker 1: this podcast came from. The genesis of it all. The
Speaker 1: title is a little weird. I choose me, But in
Speaker 1: order to explain that, I'm going to ask you to
Speaker 1: rewind all the way back to nineteen ninety five. That
Speaker 1: was almost thirty years ago. If you can wrap your
Speaker 1: brains around that. AnyWho, for all of you Beverly Hills
Speaker 1: nine of two and zero fans out there, and you
Speaker 1: know who you are, you are probably going to know
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this. My most memorable line in
Speaker 1: all of the ten years of the show was on
Speaker 1: season five, episode thirty, when my character Kelly Taylor Hello,
Speaker 1: she had to choose between two of the hottest, most
Speaker 1: popular guys on television at that time, Brandon Walsh and
Speaker 1: Dylan McKay. I mean, that is a tough choice. Jessica
Speaker 1: Klein was a friend of mine. She was our writer
Speaker 1: our producer, and she wrote that line for me, and
Speaker 1: it was just three little words, and I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I didn't really understand them when I was saying them.
Speaker 1: I didn't really get it. And I just was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you think this is what I should say, then
Speaker 1: I will say it. I was just trying to do
Speaker 1: my job, you know, And I didn't understand the poignancy
Speaker 1: of that line. I was twenty one, maybe twenty two
Speaker 1: years old, and I was just sort of winging it
Speaker 1: and making it up. Fast forward to now, like now,
Speaker 1: while I'm grown up, we're all growing up still, it's happening.
Speaker 1: I'm growing up right now in front of you. I
Speaker 1: kind of think like, if you're not growing, you're slowing.
Speaker 1: That's my motto. If you're not growing, you're slowing. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm about to get really vulnerable with you guys. A
Speaker 1: few years ago, it was like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, I was feeling really lost. I was
Speaker 1: I don't know, life was just moving forward, you know,
Speaker 1: years were going by going by, but I didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was moving toward. I didn't feel like I
Speaker 1: had that goal, you know what I wanted to do next.
Speaker 1: Have you ever felt that way? I have three girls.
Speaker 1: I love them so so much, but they were getting
Speaker 1: older and they honestly just didn't need me as much.
Speaker 1: I was a pary I mean, I was a piry
Speaker 1: empty nester, if you know what I mean. I was bored.
Speaker 1: I was depressed, I was restless. I was frustrated with
Speaker 1: my career. I wasn't getting the roles that I wanted
Speaker 1: to get. I didn't feel like I was giving anything
Speaker 1: to the world. I was doing a lot of waiting,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know which direction. I didn't know where
Speaker 1: to go or what I wanted. And so many people
Speaker 1: talk so much about purpose. I wanted to find my purpose.
Speaker 1: I realized that I've spent my life just going with
Speaker 1: the flow. I never had a plan. I never wanted
Speaker 1: to be an actress. I never wanted to be a mom.
Speaker 1: I never thought about my wedding day and what that
Speaker 1: was going to look like. I just I never planned
Speaker 1: for things. I never dreamt about what I wanted. I
Speaker 1: didn't go to college, and I never had that sort
Speaker 1: of time to lay out my life and think about
Speaker 1: what I wanted to achieve. It was a whirlwind you know,
Speaker 1: my life, and I just never had that opportunity to
Speaker 1: stop and think about what do I want? And I
Speaker 1: had so much, you know, at that point, I was successful,
Speaker 1: and I had a home, and you know, I had
Speaker 1: this happy, seemingly happy life, and I felt selfish for
Speaker 1: wanting more, honestly, like I didn't think that I was
Speaker 1: allowed to want more. I was paralyzed, basically with uncertainty
Speaker 1: and confusion and fear, fear of making a deliberate choice
Speaker 1: and then not having whatever it took to make that
Speaker 1: choice happen. Like I didn't want to fail. I was
Speaker 1: afraid of failing. Growing up, my mom had every self
Speaker 1: help book ever written, every fad diet book ever written.
Speaker 1: They lined the shelves in our house, and I gotta
Speaker 1: be honest, I was a little embarrassed when people would
Speaker 1: come over and they would see all the self help books.
Speaker 1: I would be like, yeah, those were my don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. But I started to kind of look through
Speaker 1: those books from time to time, and eventually I started
Speaker 1: to read some of them, like from cover to cover
Speaker 1: Jonathan Livingston's Seagull, I'm Okay, You're Okay, The Road Less Traveled,
Speaker 1: My favorite was a book called How to Feed Your
Speaker 1: Family on twelve dollars a Day. It was this little paperback,
Speaker 1: green cover book. It had no pictures in it of
Speaker 1: any food, so you really had to make it up
Speaker 1: in your mind. But there was this banana bread recipe
Speaker 1: that I used to make all the time, and it
Speaker 1: worked very well when I wanted to bribe my sisters
Speaker 1: to do something for me. So that banana bread recipe
Speaker 1: was definitely worth it. But there was this other book,
Speaker 1: this other book about astrology, and you know, it like
Speaker 1: broke down your birthday and what you were going to
Speaker 1: be like or what you should be like on your birthday.
Speaker 1: Mine April third said I was strong willed, creative, sometimes stubborn, impatient,
Speaker 1: fiercely loyal. All of these things they were true. But
Speaker 1: then at the end it said I was destined to
Speaker 1: be a leader, a public figure, and it said famous
Speaker 1: you guys, And I was like, this is me, Like
Speaker 1: at twelve, what, No, I don't know what that's not.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't
Speaker 1: know anything. I'm just a little girl who likes to
Speaker 1: ride her pink dirt bike through the cemetery and talk
Speaker 1: to the dead. People. I mean, I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time alone you guys, but I just didn't get it.
Speaker 1: I didn't think like I was going to lead anybody
Speaker 1: to anything. I couldn't even figure out what I wanted.
Speaker 1: And as time passed, life happened in a bizarre turn
Speaker 1: of events. I did become famous, I did become a
Speaker 1: public figure, and so here I was still not knowing
Speaker 1: what I wanted. I had this you know, life, and
Speaker 1: I was supposedly fulfilling my fate according to that book.
Speaker 1: I was a wife, a mother, an actress, a producer.
Speaker 1: I was doing all the things. But I still felt incomplete.
Speaker 1: Somehow I felt unfulfilled in a way that's really hard
Speaker 1: to explain. I still didn't have my purpose. COVID came,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that was a wild time, but you know what,
Speaker 1: it allowed me to slow down. It allowed me to
Speaker 1: be alone a little, to think and to be introspective.
Speaker 1: I started to take stock of my life, like where
Speaker 1: had I come from, what had I been through? My
Speaker 1: Midwestern roots, my parents who were both educators. I started
Speaker 1: to just really look at all of that. And then
Speaker 1: I remember that damn astrology book, and something just kept
Speaker 1: urging me to look back in order to move forward.
Speaker 1: And when I looked back, I kept seeing that line
Speaker 1: come up for me, Jessica Klein's line, I choose me
Speaker 1: so weird. And then I started hearing it around me.
Speaker 1: You know. I would meet women and they would tell
Speaker 1: me how Kelly Taylor had chosen herself, and in that moment,
Speaker 1: they realized that they could choose themselves. And I started
Speaker 1: to see the significance of it and the impact that
Speaker 1: it had had on so many people. The phrase started
Speaker 1: becoming part of my everyday vocabulary. I was reading it,
Speaker 1: I was writing it, I was saying it, and you
Speaker 1: know what, I started believing it. I started living it
Speaker 1: with little things like throughout my day, my choices about
Speaker 1: being healthy, about going to work out, about eating better,
Speaker 1: choosing better for myself. I started to choose myself more.
Speaker 1: And then, you guys, like a light bulb in my head.
Speaker 1: I am telling you, I had that moment that Oprah
Speaker 1: talks about that I had always wanted. I found my purpose.
Speaker 1: I got a clear message that I was supposed to
Speaker 1: use my voice to spread that message to teach people.
Speaker 1: That is why I'm in your ears today. I am
Speaker 1: here to tell you that it is okay to choose yourself.
Speaker 1: It is okay to take time from doing everything for
Speaker 1: everybody and choose yourself to mentally, physically, emotionally, start turning
Speaker 1: some of that love that we give everybody else, start
Speaker 1: turning that inward just a little bit. I want you
Speaker 1: guys to know that taking care of yourself is an
Speaker 1: opportunity for you to rediscover who you are, who you
Speaker 1: want to be. It's an opportunity for you to regain
Speaker 1: your power. It is not selfish, and anybody that ever
Speaker 1: tells you it is selfish, just walk away, because taking
Speaker 1: care of yourself is not a selfish act at all.
Speaker 1: When you start taking time for yourself just even a
Speaker 1: little bit more, you're going to see your life start
Speaker 1: to unfold in the most beautiful, mind blowing ways, ways
Speaker 1: that you were afraid to ever dream about. I promise you.
Speaker 1: And we're never alone. That's a message that I want
Speaker 1: you guys to know, because I felt alone a lot.
Speaker 1: But we're never alone because we always have us and
Speaker 1: I never really understood that. So this is what I
Speaker 1: started to do. It may sound a little weird, but
Speaker 1: I started to look in the mirror. At first, I
Speaker 1: would be like, oh, hi, Hello, who are you? I
Speaker 1: don't know you. What do you want? This is weird?
Speaker 1: And then I started saying, hmm, you know what. I
Speaker 1: love you. How about that? I started saying nice things
Speaker 1: to myself in the mirror. I started to say, you
Speaker 1: are beautiful, and at first I did not believe it.
Speaker 1: But the more I said it, the more I believed it.
Speaker 1: And I just kept doing it. And that led me
Speaker 1: to sort of start talking to myself even when I
Speaker 1: wasn't looking in the mirror, just like in everyday situations.
Speaker 1: I would start talking to myself to that little girl,
Speaker 1: that little innocent, totally scared girl who used to ride
Speaker 1: her dirt bike. I would say, it's okay, You're okay,
Speaker 1: we got this. I got you. I started to sort
Speaker 1: of like be my own mommy in a weird way,
Speaker 1: and I started to be my own best friend. I
Speaker 1: started to love myself. I don't know. I would suggest
Speaker 1: you start doing that. Look in the mirror, see that
Speaker 1: little girl and tell her that you love her. And
Speaker 1: I promise you if you start doing that, like I said,
Speaker 1: that's going to blow your mind. Here's how this is
Speaker 1: going to work. Every week, we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about choices. We're going to talk about your choices. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about my choices. I'm going to let
Speaker 1: you in on a very intimate level. I'm going to
Speaker 1: bring some of my very favorite people onto the show,
Speaker 1: and We're going to talk about the choices that I've
Speaker 1: made and what I've learned from them, and you will
Speaker 1: probably be able to relate even though our lives are
Speaker 1: totally different, but you'll see you've probably made some of
Speaker 1: the same choices I've made, or maybe you want to
Speaker 1: make some of the choices I've made, and maybe that
Speaker 1: will help you, you know, to move forward. So we're
Speaker 1: going to bring in people my inner circle is going
Speaker 1: to come here, my manager, my longtime best friend, my husband,
Speaker 1: everybody that I listen to is going to come here,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk it yah, And you know what,
Speaker 1: We're probably gonna end up having a lot of fun
Speaker 1: along the way because some of my choices have been
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, little little out there, but like I said,
Speaker 1: I learned a lot from them. And I want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. I want to hear directly from you,
Speaker 1: what topic you want to talk about, what choices of
Speaker 1: mine you want to hear, and what I learned from them,
Speaker 1: So write me. Let us know what you want to
Speaker 1: hear about on the I Choose Me Podcast. And if
Speaker 1: this message isn't enough for you, next time you go
Speaker 1: on a plane and you hear that safety message, you know,
Speaker 1: the one that nobody ever listens to where they tell
Speaker 1: you to fasten your seatbelt, you know, and they also
Speaker 1: tell you to put your oxygen mask on yourself first
Speaker 1: before you help others. And that's what I want us
Speaker 1: to do here together. I want us to put our
Speaker 1: oxygen masks on first. Let's do that together right here
Speaker 1: on the I Choose Me Podcast. I love you. Now,
Speaker 1: go to a mirror and tell yourself that you love yourself.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week, guys,