Hello, my name is Angie Leigh Monroe, and I am your Girlfriend!
Hello and welcome to Warrior Divas Real Talk for Real Women. I am your host Angie Leigh Monroe, and it's going to be an awesome show today. But first before we jump into how awesome this show is going to be, I want to take a moment and just invite you to our conference in October, October 11 and 12th it's going to be in Grapevine, Texas, and it's going to be awesome. I say, I know I think I've used my quality of awesome for the day, but I'm telling you, it's going to be awesome. We are hosting it.
At the Courtyard Marriott in Grapevine, just north of DFW Airport. So it's super easy to get to if you're flying in for it. And it will be a time for us women to come and reveal our inner strength, our femininity, walk confidently and boldly into the future that's calling for us. And the name of the conference is Divas impact unmasked, so it's going to be a great time if you'll go to divas impact.com. You can find out more details there, get your tickets and all that stuff. But now that I've changed you with all that gooey, gooey goodness that I talked about with the conference, and that's something for down the road. But we're going to talk today about some things that have been on my heart to share. So, I'm going to start off by saying, Hello, my name is Angie Leigh Monroe, and I am your girlfriend. Because girlfriends can dish right. So this is important.
Maybe
Because we need to define what a girlfriend is, when we as women start talking and engaging and, and doing things together, we need to know who a true girlfriend is. So, years ago, I ran conferences, we've talked about that before. I've run conferences, and we pick out games and we pick out things for the audience members to do and things to do between sessions and things like that. One of the games that always got thrown out there was Who's your girlfriend. And so the, the context of this game would be, we would have staged people that would walk through a large crowd of women talking to several with something on their teeth, or their skirt tucked into the back of their pants, or coming out of the bathroom with toilet papers stuck to their shoe, right? And we would see how many times it took for somebody to tell them that they had something wrong with them, right. But and not only that but how they told him because remember, there's a quote a meme that's floating around out there right now that says, “Be the woman that fixes another woman's crown but doesn't let the world know it's crooked.” So telling somebody that they've got something in their teeth, is one thing, announcing it to the whole audience that's around you is a completely different thing. We all want to be told that we've got something on our teeth like a girlfriend telling me I've got lipstick on my teeth, or a brand saying you know, your shirts not fixed right or your tags sticking out. That's fine. A lot of times they'll just come up and discreetly fix it. They won't necessarily even tell me that it needed to be fixed. Those are some strong, strong girlfriends right there, right?
But sometimes we need to know who's not our girlfriend.
Mm, I'm going to dig a little bit in some of your
lives a little bit and maybe even be a little bit revealing about some of mine as well. But if you have friends that are not
adding value in return
they're not your girlfriend. We're going to do this a little bit. Bill Engvall dollar right and so here's your sign it's going to be they're not a girlfriend. So if they are
making fun of others, putting others down thinking others are less than them and bullying others
they're not your girlfriend, because eventually, they'll do that to you. If they're always telling you Yes when you know good and well you should probably be told No, they're not a girlfriend.
And if your girlfriend is always bashing on others to you gossiping dishing telling you nasty things about other people, you can be for dang sure they're doing it telling other people nasty, dirty things about you when you're not around. They're not your girlfriends.
So some of y'all maybe wanting to push the pause button or move on right now because I may be
poking the bear a little bit, but here's the deal.
I believe in you, I think you are better than some of the friends that you're surrounding yourself with. I know this because I've had seasons of my life when I've had some not so good friends. Here's another thing. I've had seasons of my life when I've been a not so good friend. So I'm not calling out anything in any of y'all that I'm not willing to face or willing to address for myself or haven't addressed for myself. What I'm doing is helping us get to a new higher level of who we are, what we're called to be. And to do that.
We're just going to start to realize
what we need to accomplish with our girlfriends. And to accomplish that. I'm going to use a word that's going to make several of y'all cringe. Detox. I know the fitness world has ruined that world. That word for us detox right. So A lot of times we go out, we have buns with our girlfriends, and we're talking and we're yelling shut up to each other and we're calling each other the B word. And we're saying all these other things. Those are little toxic barbs that just start to creep in and start eroding away at our own self-image in our own self conscious. And you may think it's funny and you may instantly you may hate being called it, but you may instantly want to say it to somebody else. Stop.
Don't do it. Instead, find something else positive to say.
I want to see a show of hands if you're driving. Just one hand will do but a show of hands, who out there has toxic friends in their life.
So for those of you who raised your hand, you need to do a detox.
For those of you that didn't raise your hand, you're either well far well ahead of the game on this
Where you may actually be the toxic friend? Oh, wow. or hang on? Did I just say that?
Did I just say that? I'm going to repeat, repeat that again?
You are either way ahead of the game if you don't know any toxic people, or you may be the toxic person in most of your relationships.
Yikes. See, somebody loved me enough to say that to me a few years ago. And it revolutionarily changed my life. Yes, is revolutionarily a word? I don't know. I just made it up. I think I'm not sure if it goes in the dictionary. I want credit for that work. But here's the deal.
detox may be as easy as separating yourself from your friends, finding a new group of friends to hang out with maybe pulling you aside and saying, you know, I need to work on me and who I am and not
let other people's outside influence outside mindsets, outside beliefs about who I am and what I can become skew where I'm going. Or it may be more complex if it's your spouse or your boss, or even yourself. So have you ever gotten sick and tired of yourself? I have. I've gotten sick and tired of myself especially when I was early married. I was constantly nagging my husband. Here's a fun little fact about Angie. So I signed my name lots of times when email first came out with an ‘Ang’ well, autocorrect corrects it to nag. And let me tell you, I had automatically become a nag in my marriage. I was becoming a nag constantly. And it wasn't anything having to do with what my husband was doing or anything like that. It had to do with about how I was feeling about myself, where I was going and what I was feeling accomplished in
So you have to choose to do better for yourself and for the lives that you want to positively impact. You have to set boundaries for yourself, and what you will allow yourself to be exposed to and set boundaries for how you will allow others to behave. So here's the deal. When my kids were little, you know, I said in one of the other episodes, we had a couple of ways that we would treat our kids when we'd go into places but my husband every time before we got out of the car, he set an expectation for how our kids were going to behave in the store we walked into, he would say, you know, we're going to put our hands in our pockets, and our kids would put their hands in their pockets, and they would walk through the store with their hands in their pockets. They wouldn't touch things. They wouldn't pull things off the wall. They wouldn't do all this stuff. It goes in we're not going to act goofy in here. We're not going to act goofy. So he had them repeat it back to them. They knew from an early age how to walk, talk and behave in public. Now they got a little bit older and some of their pants didn't have pockets on them. So then they got really smart and they're like, but our pants don't have pockets.
My husband would go, Okay, then put your hands where your pocket should be. So our kids would walk through the store with their hands where their pockets would normally be and still knew how to behave.
How many of us forget how to behave? We see. I've said it before the Kardashians, the Bad Girls Club, The Real Housewives of bad behavior, all of that stuff examples all the time. You can turn on social media and see people bashing people and arguing with people in finding things to get upset and offense offended about and that's not what we're focusing on today. What we're focusing on is detoxing from all that.
Stepping back, taking a look, a lot of times we get drilled into that Facebook posts that came up. And we want to argue that point. But as we're arguing that point, we miss out on so much more that's going on around us. There was a post shared the other day that kind of had me concerned for where we were going woman posted a question. I thought it was a really great question. And so I put it on our page and wanted to see what the dialogue was about around this question. And the question was, is there a war on women in this country?
You know, to me, that seems like it's a very simple question. But as you dig in, it has very complex ramifications as you begin to answer it. Because you have to identify a couple of things being at war Is meaning that there are enemies on both sides, means you're in a battle, it means you're in a conflict, it means that you're going at any measure possible against the other person.
The other part of the phrase was in this country. You know, I know there's a lot of things happening inside the United States right now that women feel attacked over, but we're not alone. There are atrocities happening to women all over the globe right now. And we need to not just get pigeonholed into what's just happening in our own backyard. Yes, pay attention to it. Yes, speak to it, but pay attention to what's going on around the world. Because what we do over here may have a ripple effect for what's happening over there.
So as we asked this question, and it came up, it was a loaded question. Not many men commented on it. There were a few though, that had the bravery to comment on this post. And it was amazing how well the men were received in this post. When they came in, we're ready and willing and open to be engaging in the conversation, not argumentative and bashing. Okay? So we had women that came in and they started bashing right away about whatever their political view was, whatever their personal view was, whatever their biblical view was, but those that came in and just wanted to have a conversation. It turned out to be some of the best conversations I've seen in a while. And why is that? Because I took away their defenses. I told them, they had to show respect. They could not argue and show disrespect for other people they had to come in open and honest with everybody. And they can ask questions for clarification, but not to bash each other. So a few days later another friend of mine pet tagged me in another post was a post that I have watched this man and another woman go back to back for a year now over all sorts of polar issues. And the fact is, is a lot of times when we get on these polar issues, we start attacking personally over something that is not personal. We're talking about political views. Now I hear you I can hear it. It's almost like little birds mumbling in my earphones right now. I can hear women going well, women's rights being taken away our personal ok. I can hear you talking about that, but it's a political issue too. So choose to see the person that you're having the arguments with, it's going to get rough out there, it's only going to get rougher and choose your battles. Not every post on Facebook is a battle. Not everything that comes out of Washington is a battle. Sometimes the battle is right in our own backyard. We have had children taken one out of their home and one off the street in the last week. That's a personal battle for these parents. That's not a political battle. That's a safety battle.
So my challenge right now, as we go forward with this, is we start looking at who's your girlfriend, who are you doing and walking life with? is I want to challenge you to start identifying what your boundary is? who you're talking with?
Who you're allowing to talk into your life? You don't have to all see things eye to eye. If you've got too many people in your life telling you yes and not enough people telling you no, you don't have a good measuring stick to be are sharpening yourself like iron sharpens iron. You have to have the resistance.
That's what a detox does.
Now, I know there's several of you right now that are probably going, Oh my god, she just went off the rails.
I may have, but I'm sick and tired of listening to women fight over symptoms and as never dealing with root causes.
So one of the things we're going to talk about in our next episode is about some of those root causes. But today I want to, I want to talk about how we react. Whoo. See, when I was in the office, I was
I worked at with a bunch of the guys they kept telling me women need to not react. They need to respond, respond. Well, first off, I got upset because I could see just as many guys going off and throwing a fit just as I could women, but they put the word woman in front of it.
Well, today, I'm putting woman in front of it, because that's my audience. That's who I'm talking to.
When you use your attitude, and your outrageous injustice for what's going on, to throw at people,
you may take them off guard for a minute, but you're building a wall that you're going to have to get through later.
So how can we approach this a little bit differently?
You know, we've got the horse of Troy, the Trojan horse that came in it was filled with all these people brought in as a gift, and they attacked from inside the Trojan horse. How can we
Be a Trojan horse, to shift things in this country and around the world for women?
We do it by taking them off their guard.
We do it by detoxifying our souls, stop giving money to these organizations and the shows and these things that do nothing but spew hate and anger and divisiveness, and we start finding a way to mend the way.
Now, I have organizations that I'm part of that I don't see 100% the way they do, they don't see 100% the way I do, and that's fine. Because what we are focusing on is, what our commonalities are, and how we can move forward together to make a better cause. So, in that post the other night when my friend asked me to comment on his post,
I got a little serious with him.
I told him that I was
sick and tired of everybody talking about the symptoms, instead of dealing with the root cause issues.
So this is my vow to you as we build out this podcast is we're going to talk tough talk, we're going to talk about root cause issues. We're not going to be talking about the symptoms of I have all my girlfriends but I'm miserable. Well, it's because you're surrounded yourself with the wrong girlfriends. Or I have no girlfriends and I'm miserable. Let's because you've shut yourself off from building authentic relationships.
Those sound very simple. But I'm speaking from places of healing places of things that I've walked through or helped others walk through. These are not things that I'm pointing out and saying you're wrong, and you're the only one wrong these are ways of me saying, Hey, you know what, I got a flashlight and I see you're in a dark place right now. Let me come into that dark place.
With you, and let's walk out of that. So if that's where you think you are in this world right now, you can reach out to us anytime you can reach out to us through our website through our Facebook pages, we are happy to chat with you and connect you with someone that can help you walk out of that dark place. If it's not me, I've got other people in our organization that can help you with that as well.
But the first thing is, is I want to be your girlfriend, and I want to be the one that tells you
there's a better place for you. There's more for you out there right now. And we want to help you accomplish that. So my question right now is,
where do you want to be? And what type of girlfriend Do you want to have? And what type of girlfriend Do you want to be?
Those are three powerful questions. Where do you want to be? What type of girlfriend Do you want to have? And what type of girlfriend Do you want to be
and hopefully over the next
Few weeks, during the podcast, you'll be able to start to realize some of the things that may be limiting you. Or some of the things that may be huge. Or they may just be teeny tiny little things that just a small adjustment will set you on a new course that you had never even dreamed possible.
My hope is that as we go through these podcasts that you will start to open up, start to talk with us, follow us, connect with us. Give it to me, give it all to me, some of the good some of the bad, I don't care, beat me up, tear me down. I don't care. Because through all of that what we do is we find our better selves. And we begin to evolve and we begin to identify with each other more.
Now one of my favorite people in the world is
Our everyday diva that we have this week or this week's everyday diva is Missy Han singer. She's an army wife, she actually worked at the Pentagon, which I think is super cool. And she did some really high tech stuff there that I don't even know that I'm allowed to know what she did because she kind of just doesn't talk about it. But she's one of my inspirational partners. She's also a life coach. She works with several of our women here with the Divas impact team. And she has faced several challenges of her own. She has some health issues, you know, being married to a spouse that's in the military is a challenge. She was a single mom for a period of time before she got married to her husband, Nate now, but you will never hear a complaint coming off her lips. I mean, this woman exudes joy everywhere she goes
You will not walk away from her that she hasn't paid you a compliment. I mean, it gets a little. Okay, Missy, you've paid me six compliments today. Come on, it's okay. You know she's that happy and that joyous and she's constantly looking for the good in the people that she engages with to pull that goodness out. So if you get on our Facebook page, you'll see a picture of her you'll hear about her you will know about her. And I just want you to give her some shout outs at the everyday divas posts because she is an amazing person making a positive impact in the global world we live in
and so if you'd like to nominate an everyday Diva you can do that if you just email us at blessed at divas impact com you can nominate an everyday Diva to be highlighted on our show and on our social media page. But today I want to thank you for joining us and stay tuned for our next episode. But
In the meantime, be sure to connect with us on our Facebook page Divas Impact on our website. divasimpact.com And until next time, this is Angie Leigh Monroe, reminding you to be a diva and make an impact.