048: The Independence You Haven't Given Yourself Yet

The holidays are meant to be enjoyed...not feared.

Whether you're celebrating the Fourth of July or simply enjoying a summer weekend, it's possible to have fun, make memories, and still support your health.

In this episode of Wellness Reset Thursday, Fredricka Davis shares simple, realistic strategies to help you feel energized, avoid the all-or-nothing mindset, and enjoy holiday celebrations without feeling like you have to "start over" on Monday.

You'll learn why small, intentional choices matter more than perfection and how a few simple habits can help you maintain your energy, support your immune system, and keep your wellness goals moving forward all summer long.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

•  Why "gift your body what it needs first" is one of the simplest wellness strategies you'll ever use 
•  How hydration impacts your energy, cravings, and overall health—especially during hot summer weather 
•  The 80/20 approach to healthy living that makes wellness sustainable 
•  Why eating protein and fiber before sweets can help stabilize blood sugar and reduce overeating 
•  How to enjoy holiday foods without guilt or feeling like you've ruined your progress 
•  The importance of sleep, recovery, and nervous system regulation during busy weekends 
•  Why one indulgent meal doesn't undo your progress—but giving up might 
•  Fredricka's favorite batch-cooking shortcuts to make healthy eating easier all week long 
•  A simple mindset shift to help you reset anytime—not just on Mondays or January 1st 

This Week's Wellness Reset

Before your next meal, ask yourself:

"What does my body need first?"

Maybe it's water.

Maybe it's protein.

Maybe it's vegetables.

Maybe it's rest.

Gift your body what it needs first...then enjoy the celebration without guilt.

Small resets create lasting change.

Mentioned in This Episode

Join the free Limitless Living Facebook community for additional wellness tips, meal prep inspiration, recipes, and encouragement.

Reflection Question

What one simple choice could help you enjoy this weekend while still honoring your health?

Remember, wellness isn't about perfection.

It's about creating a life that feels good to live.

Grab Your Free Reset Guide and more at www.fredrickadavis.com

Continue the conversation inside the here: Limitless Living community.

If this episode resonated with you, you can also send Fredricka a message through the Fan Mail link in the show notes. Your questions may be featured in a future episode.

And if you know someone who needs to hear this conversation, please share the episode with them.

Your reviews mean the world to Fredricka and help other women discover the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Hello and welcome back to the Limitless Living Podcast. I'm your host, Frederica Davis, wellness expert, entrepreneur, speaker, coach, and creator of the Limitless Reset Method. If you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And if you've been listening for a while, thank you so much for allowing me to be part of your week. So every Saturday we slow things down a little bit, and it's Reinvention Saturday. This is where we talk about identity and purpose, passion, and becoming and creating a life that actually feels like it's your own. And today happens to be the 4th of July here in the United States. It's a big one this year. We're celebrating 250 years of independence. There are fireworks going off all over the country, families are getting together, parades are happening, picnics and celebrations, and just a ton of wonderful things. So depending on where you're listening, maybe you're spending time with your family, maybe you're relaxing, maybe you're traveling. Either way, this holiday in particular got me thinking. Now I'm not talking about politics here. I'm not, I'm also not talking, now I'm not talking about politics here. I am also not talking about taking a vacation or having a long weekend. I'm not talking about finally getting a day off either. I'm actually talking about something much deeper than that. When was the last time your life actually felt like it belonged to you? When was the last time you woke up feeling excited about the life you are creating instead of simply managing the one you have? Because here is what I have realized. You know, we can live in the land of the free and still not feel free. We can have choices without feeling like we have any. We can look successful from the outside and still feel very trapped on the inside. And this is no matter where you live in the world, you can have this experience. And I think that's where so many people find themselves today. While our country is celebrating its freedom, I'd love for us today to spend a little time talking about your personal freedom because I believe that's the independence many of us are all actually craving. Now, I've come to believe that most of us aren't trapped by walls. We're trapped by invisible prisons. And the tricky thing about invisible prisons is that after a while, they start to feel normal. We normalize them. We stop guessing and questioning anything about them. You stop noticing them. And then you start to believe it's just the way life is. In reality, it really isn't. So there are freedoms available to every one of us that have nothing to do with where we live or how much money we have, or even the job we have, or what season of our life we are in. These are our internal freedoms. So today I wanted to share five of them with you. Because as I've looked back over my own life and as I've worked with thousands of clients over the years, I've realized these are the places where we tend to lose ourselves. So freedom number one is freedom from your old stories. Now we all have them, I have them, you have them. It's normal. We all have them. These are the stories that quietly play in the background of our minds. You know, it's the I'm too old, or it's too late, or I'm not smart enough, or I'm not qualified enough. I don't have enough money to do that. People like me don't do things like that. I've already missed my chance. Or I failed too many times already before. I'm just not that kind of person. Do any of these sound familiar? Here's the thing. Most of these stories did not even begin with you. They didn't even begin in us or with us. They likely came from experiences we had and moments we had, or someone else's opinion, or maybe they came from a disappointment or a rejection or a failure. They likely came from something that happened. And somehow we turned those experiences into our identity. So instead of saying, I experienced failure, we began saying, I am a failure. So instead of saying something like, Oh, I really failed at doing this, we turn it into a statement more like I am a failure. And that's an identity statement now. It's not a situational statement. We've now taken it and turned it into an identity. You get the difference? I experienced failure versus I am a failure. And instead of saying something like, that relationship ended, we start believing I'm not lovable. And here's another example. Let's say a relationship ended. And it could be for any number of reasons. Maybe that person did stop loving you, but they stopped loving you because they wanted something else more. But instead of us just simply thinking, okay, they changed their mind. We go into, I'm not lovable. And that becomes the story. So these stories become our prisons, not because they are true necessarily. In fact, most of the time they're not, but because we've repeated them now so much, so long, and long enough that they now feel true. And freedom begins the moment that you start questioning those stories instead of automatically believing them. So freedom number two, as I see it, and in my experience, is freedom from other people's expectations. Now, this one is huge, especially for women. How many decisions have you made in your lifetime because they were expected of you? How many dreams have you put on hold because someone else wouldn't understand? Or how many times have you stayed quiet or stayed small or stayed comfortable because you were worried about disappointing someone else, or you were worried about what someone else would think. I've done it. I'm betting you have too, at least at some point in your life. Now, there have been seasons in my life where I spent so much time trying to meet everyone else's expectations that I stopped asking myself what I actually wanted. And one day, all of a sudden, I realized that wait a minute, I'm living a life that really looks great, but it isn't really mine, and it doesn't really feel as great as it should. So let me ask you something. If you never had to explain your choices again to another person, how would that change what you want? Really? What would you want if you didn't have to explain your choices? Not what should you want, and not what sounds responsible or what everybody else expects, but what would you honestly want? Sometimes that question alone changes everything. Now, freedom number three, that's the freedom from survival mode. This is one that is close to my heart because I see it every single day. I have lived it. And if you grew up with some level of surviving, it can feel much more natural to you than breaking free of this. So I see people surviving all the time and just getting through and making it and pushing harder and pushing through and just holding everything together, duct taping it, crazy gluing it, and just holding it all together somehow, and checking off another list, another list, and just checking off every day and keeping going and living from obligation instead of intention. Now, survival mode isn't just financial. It isn't just emotional or physical or mental either. It's it's your nervous system, it's nervous system overload. It's living under constant stress or always reacting and never breathing. You know, those shallow breaths that we take instead of the deep, relaxed breathing. It's never slowing down long enough to ask yourself, what do I actually need? You can't hear your own wisdom when you're constantly in survival mode. Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is pause, take one deep breath and ask yourself, what would actually support me right now? There have been several times in my lifetime, for sure, probably more than that, where from the outside, I look like I had everything all together. And I'm an independent kind of a person. Anyone who knows me, who's listening, will vouch for that. I'm short. So to most people, it would look like I have total freedom and I've got it all together. Now, there have been seasons in my life when that was how it looked. And I owned my own business and I was raising my daughter, and people were coming to me. It looked like I had unlimited freedoms. And people often told me that they admired everything I was accomplishing. Some even thought I had it all together and would make comments about, man, I just don't know how you do it. I don't know how you keep it all going. I couldn't do what you do. You really have it all together, so on and so forth. You get that picture, right? But inside, something kept whispering to me, there has to be more than this. Not because I wasn't grateful for what I already had. I absolutely was, absolutely always was. And not because I thought I deserved more necessarily. It wasn't about that either. Something inside me simply knew. I wasn't living as freely as I was created to live. Now, that can mean a lot of things for a lot of people. That can mean that you have more time freedom, more financial freedom, more freedom of choice, more opportunity, more sense of purpose. There's a lot of things. For me, it was a little more time freedom. For me, I wanted a bigger reach for what I knew my purpose to be. But I was also carrying expectations and excessive responsibilities and other people's opinions, stories about who I am supposed to be, stories about what success was supposed to look like, stories about who I had to become. And I'll give you an example. I've heard other women say this, you know, refer to themselves as doers or fixers. And that is always something that I've easily identified with. Because there were moments where I had to be a fixer, and or I was put into a situation for that. Uh, and I had to be a doer, or I was put into a situation for that. And as a result of that, those became my stories on replay. So, do you can you relate to that? Do you have that? Do you feel like you're always the one that people turn to and that you're the fixer or the doer? Not necessarily a bad thing, only not such a free place to be if that's how you identify all the time. So, you know, we get these stories in our head about what success is supposed to look like. Maybe it's supposed to look like your college degree. Maybe it's supposed to look like you own your own business, maybe it's supposed to look like a big house or whatever, but there's stories. And then what happens is those stories, those beliefs, they become invisible prisons. And it wasn't until I started questioning all of those stories that I started to see things changing in my life and moving me closer to what I really wanted. And the same thing is true for all my clients now that I help do the same. Now, freedom number four is the freedom to become. Notice I didn't say freedom from, I said freedom to. So freedom to become. Because reinvention, what's next for you in your next chapter? It is not about becoming someone else. It's about becoming more of who you are, more of who you've always been underneath everything else. It's permission and curiosity, it's possibility and allowing yourself to ask, what if? What if I could? What if it's not too late? What if the best chapter hasn't happened yet? Now that's freedom. And freedom number five is freedom to choose again. Now, this one might be actually one of my favorites. Because every single day you get another choice. If you woke up and you were able to breathe, you have a new day with a new choice. You can't rewrite yesterday, none of us can, but you can absolutely get to write today. Maybe yesterday wasn't what you wanted, maybe last year wasn't what you wanted, maybe last 20 years weren't what you wanted. But you are still here, you are still breathing. That means you still get another choice. And choice, now that's freedom too. That's a big equal to freedom when we have choice. So here's what I'd love for you to do this week. Grab your journal, sit somewhere really quiet, start and finish this sentence ten different ways. I truly felt free and then finish it. When did you feel free? Answer that ten different ways. Don't edit it, don't overthink it, just write it. And then ask yourself, what's one belief, one habit, or one obligation that's keeping you from feeling that freedom? So the question would be what's one belief, one habit, or one obligation that's keeping me from feeling that freedom? Just one. Now, finally, I want you to ask yourself, is that actually true? Or have you just believed it for so long that now it simply feels true? So again, that last question is, is that actually true? Or have I believed it for so long that it simply feels true? And then finally, this week, I want you to take one action, just one, that the freer version of you would take. Not the whole plan, not your five-year vision, not this big giant monumental overhaul and undertaking, but just one step because freedom grows one decision at a time. So as I close today, we are celebrating this whole weekend here, freedom in our nation. Tomorrow the fireworks will all be coming to a close, the celebrations will end and life will go back to normal. But what I hope is that this one thing stays with you. The greatest independence you'll ever experience isn't political, it isn't around country, it is within yourself. It's personal. It's the freedom to think differently, to dream again, to believe, to heal, to choose again, to become. And maybe, just maybe, this is the year you finally stop living inside the invisible prisons and you start living the life you've quietly been longing for. And you know, we're a little bit more than halfway through the year, but it's never too late to start. If today's episode spoke to you, I'd love to continue this conversation with you. Come join us inside my free Facebook community, Limitless Living for Women Who Are Becoming. This is where women just like you are having honest conversations and creating lives they don't need to escape from. You can also visit me at fredericadavis.com where you can find my free reset guide, upcoming workshops, etc. And remember, freedom isn't something you're waiting for. Freedom is something you begin to choose. One thought, one decision, one brave step at a time. And until next time, be rooted, be resilient, and be limitless.