May 1, 2024 • 17 mins
'I Choose Me' was once a line in a script for Jennie Garth's character on Beverly Hills 90210, almost 30 years later, they are words to live by.
In this episode, Jennie describes feeling lost and lacking purpose until she put those words into practice.
Learn about the benefits of putting yourself first, why it's not a selfish thing to do, and why it's time to embrace our choices once and for all! Jennie Garth is ready to examine some very personal choices, and invites you to do the same.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Oh okay,
oh my gosh, this is so exciting you guys. Today's
the day. Today is the very first day of my
very own podcast, I Choose Me. I have been working
and working towards this for so long just to get
(00:23):
to this very moment with you, and you have no
idea how grateful I am that you are here with me,
that you chose to listen today. Look at that, you guys,
just made your very first choice on the I Choose
Me podcast. Woo celebrate that. This is a crazy statistic.
I heard we make like thirty five thousand choices a day.
(00:48):
Think about that. That is a lot of choices. I mean,
we make so many choices before we even get out
of bed. I've made a lot of choices, some good,
some bad. But I'm going to go on record here
and say that I don't really believe in bad choices anymore,
(01:08):
because if I didn't make choices that were bad or
you know, that had some negative consequence, I wouldn't have
learned anything. I wouldn't have gotten the messages that I'm
supposed to get to move forward to, Like the next level.
You know, I want this podcast to be a safe
(01:30):
space for us to share with each other, to get vulnerable,
to talk about our choices, our good ones, our bad ones.
And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to
share my choices with you, the highs and the lows
of my life, and we are going to take a
look at them. Because if you think about it, it's
pretty cool to sit back and sort of examine the
(01:55):
choices that you've made in your life. Right to think
was that a good choice? Was that a bad choice?
What did I learn from that? Would I make that
same choice again? My answer to that is usually going
to be yes, because, like I said, I don't believe
there are any bad choices. Were exactly where we're supposed
(02:15):
to be. But I want us to start sharing because
I feel like we're all walking around with these secrets,
you know, secrets from our lives that were afraid to
share with other people, were embarrassed to share with other people.
(02:35):
But the fact is we are all going through the
same things. We are all making very similar choices out there.
We just have different circumstances. So that in itself is
going to connect us on this podcast because we're all
in this together, and I want you to feel comfortable
(02:56):
knowing that it's okay to share your choices, and I
want you to be unapologetic about them, about who you
are and who you are meant to be, and I
want us to start loving ourselves just a little bit
more every day. But first, I want to explain where
this podcast came from. The genesis of it all. The
title is a little weird. I choose me, But in
(03:20):
order to explain that, I'm going to ask you to
rewind all the way back to nineteen ninety five. That
was almost thirty years ago. If you can wrap your
brains around that. AnyWho, for all of you Beverly Hills
nine of two and zero fans out there, and you
know who you are, you are probably going to know
where I'm going with this. My most memorable line in
(03:45):
all of the ten years of the show was on
season five, episode thirty, when my character Kelly Taylor Hello,
she had to choose between two of the hottest, most
popular guys on television at that time, Brandon Walsh and
(04:07):
Dylan McKay. I mean, that is a tough choice. Jessica
Klein was a friend of mine. She was our writer
our producer, and she wrote that line for me, and
it was just three little words, and I'll be honest,
(04:28):
I didn't really understand them when I was saying them.
I didn't really get it. And I just was like, Okay,
if you think this is what I should say, then
I will say it. I was just trying to do
my job, you know, And I didn't understand the poignancy
of that line. I was twenty one, maybe twenty two
years old, and I was just sort of winging it
and making it up. Fast forward to now, like now,
(04:52):
while I'm grown up, we're all growing up still, it's happening.
I'm growing up right now in front of you. I
kind of think like, if you're not growing, you're slowing.
That's my motto. If you're not growing, you're slowing. But anyway,
I'm about to get really vulnerable with you guys. A
few years ago, it was like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
(05:12):
before the pandemic, I was feeling really lost. I was
I don't know, life was just moving forward, you know,
years were going by going by, but I didn't know
what I was moving toward. I didn't feel like I
had that goal, you know what I wanted to do next.
(05:33):
Have you ever felt that way? I have three girls.
I love them so so much, but they were getting
older and they honestly just didn't need me as much.
I was a pary I mean, I was a piry
empty nester, if you know what I mean. I was bored.
(05:53):
I was depressed, I was restless. I was frustrated with
my career. I wasn't getting the roles that I wanted
to get. I didn't feel like I was giving anything
to the world. I was doing a lot of waiting,
and I didn't know which direction. I didn't know where
to go or what I wanted. And so many people
(06:14):
talk so much about purpose. I wanted to find my purpose.
I realized that I've spent my life just going with
the flow. I never had a plan. I never wanted
to be an actress. I never wanted to be a mom.
I never thought about my wedding day and what that
was going to look like. I just I never planned
for things. I never dreamt about what I wanted. I
(06:37):
didn't go to college, and I never had that sort
of time to lay out my life and think about
what I wanted to achieve. It was a whirlwind you know,
my life, and I just never had that opportunity to
stop and think about what do I want? And I
had so much, you know, at that point, I was successful,
(07:01):
and I had a home, and you know, I had
this happy, seemingly happy life, and I felt selfish for
wanting more, honestly, like I didn't think that I was
allowed to want more. I was paralyzed, basically with uncertainty
and confusion and fear, fear of making a deliberate choice
(07:28):
and then not having whatever it took to make that
choice happen. Like I didn't want to fail. I was
afraid of failing. Growing up, my mom had every self
help book ever written, every fad diet book ever written.
(07:49):
They lined the shelves in our house, and I gotta
be honest, I was a little embarrassed when people would
come over and they would see all the self help books.
I would be like, yeah, those were my don't worry
about it. But I started to kind of look through
those books from time to time, and eventually I started
to read some of them, like from cover to cover
(08:10):
Jonathan Livingston's Seagull, I'm Okay, You're Okay, The Road Less Traveled,
My favorite was a book called How to Feed Your
Family on twelve dollars a Day. It was this little paperback,
green cover book. It had no pictures in it of
any food, so you really had to make it up
in your mind. But there was this banana bread recipe
(08:32):
that I used to make all the time, and it
worked very well when I wanted to bribe my sisters
to do something for me. So that banana bread recipe
was definitely worth it. But there was this other book,
this other book about astrology, and you know, it like
broke down your birthday and what you were going to
be like or what you should be like on your birthday.
(08:53):
Mine April third said I was strong willed, creative, sometimes stubborn, impatient,
fiercely loyal. All of these things they were true. But
then at the end it said I was destined to
be a leader, a public figure, and it said famous
you guys, And I was like, this is me, Like
(09:14):
at twelve, what, No, I don't know what that's not.
I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't
know anything. I'm just a little girl who likes to
ride her pink dirt bike through the cemetery and talk
to the dead. People. I mean, I spent a lot
of time alone you guys, but I just didn't get it.
I didn't think like I was going to lead anybody
(09:36):
to anything. I couldn't even figure out what I wanted.
And as time passed, life happened in a bizarre turn
of events. I did become famous, I did become a
public figure, and so here I was still not knowing
what I wanted. I had this you know, life, and
(09:57):
I was supposedly fulfilling my fate according to that book.
I was a wife, a mother, an actress, a producer.
I was doing all the things. But I still felt incomplete.
Somehow I felt unfulfilled in a way that's really hard
to explain. I still didn't have my purpose. COVID came,
(10:19):
and yeah, that was a wild time, but you know what,
it allowed me to slow down. It allowed me to
be alone a little, to think and to be introspective.
I started to take stock of my life, like where
had I come from, what had I been through? My
(10:40):
Midwestern roots, my parents who were both educators. I started
to just really look at all of that. And then
I remember that damn astrology book, and something just kept
urging me to look back in order to move forward.
And when I looked back, I kept seeing that line
come up for me, Jessica Klein's line, I choose me
(11:06):
so weird. And then I started hearing it around me.
You know. I would meet women and they would tell
me how Kelly Taylor had chosen herself, and in that moment,
they realized that they could choose themselves. And I started
to see the significance of it and the impact that
(11:26):
it had had on so many people. The phrase started
becoming part of my everyday vocabulary. I was reading it,
I was writing it, I was saying it, and you
know what, I started believing it. I started living it
with little things like throughout my day, my choices about
being healthy, about going to work out, about eating better,
(11:48):
choosing better for myself. I started to choose myself more.
And then, you guys, like a light bulb in my head.
I am telling you, I had that moment that Oprah
talks about that I had always wanted. I found my purpose.
I got a clear message that I was supposed to
(12:09):
use my voice to spread that message to teach people.
That is why I'm in your ears today. I am
here to tell you that it is okay to choose yourself.
It is okay to take time from doing everything for
everybody and choose yourself to mentally, physically, emotionally, start turning
(12:32):
some of that love that we give everybody else, start
turning that inward just a little bit. I want you
guys to know that taking care of yourself is an
opportunity for you to rediscover who you are, who you
want to be. It's an opportunity for you to regain
your power. It is not selfish, and anybody that ever
(12:55):
tells you it is selfish, just walk away, because taking
care of yourself is not a selfish act at all.
When you start taking time for yourself just even a
little bit more, you're going to see your life start
to unfold in the most beautiful, mind blowing ways, ways
(13:15):
that you were afraid to ever dream about. I promise you.
And we're never alone. That's a message that I want
you guys to know, because I felt alone a lot.
But we're never alone because we always have us and
I never really understood that. So this is what I
(13:35):
started to do. It may sound a little weird, but
I started to look in the mirror. At first, I
would be like, oh, hi, Hello, who are you? I
don't know you. What do you want? This is weird?
And then I started saying, hmm, you know what. I
(13:56):
love you. How about that? I started saying nice things
to myself in the mirror. I started to say, you
are beautiful, and at first I did not believe it.
But the more I said it, the more I believed it.
And I just kept doing it. And that led me
to sort of start talking to myself even when I
(14:19):
wasn't looking in the mirror, just like in everyday situations.
I would start talking to myself to that little girl,
that little innocent, totally scared girl who used to ride
her dirt bike. I would say, it's okay, You're okay,
we got this. I got you. I started to sort
of like be my own mommy in a weird way,
(14:41):
and I started to be my own best friend. I
started to love myself. I don't know. I would suggest
you start doing that. Look in the mirror, see that
little girl and tell her that you love her. And
I promise you if you start doing that, like I said,
(15:03):
that's going to blow your mind. Here's how this is
going to work. Every week, we are going to talk
about choices. We're going to talk about your choices. We're
going to talk about my choices. I'm going to let
you in on a very intimate level. I'm going to
bring some of my very favorite people onto the show,
(15:24):
and We're going to talk about the choices that I've
made and what I've learned from them, and you will
probably be able to relate even though our lives are
totally different, but you'll see you've probably made some of
the same choices I've made, or maybe you want to
make some of the choices I've made, and maybe that
will help you, you know, to move forward. So we're
(15:44):
going to bring in people my inner circle is going
to come here, my manager, my longtime best friend, my husband,
everybody that I listen to is going to come here,
and we're going to talk it yah, And you know what,
We're probably gonna end up having a lot of fun
along the way because some of my choices have been
(16:06):
pretty crazy, little little out there, but like I said,
I learned a lot from them. And I want to
hear from you. I want to hear directly from you,
what topic you want to talk about, what choices of
mine you want to hear, and what I learned from them,
So write me. Let us know what you want to
(16:27):
hear about on the I Choose Me Podcast. And if
this message isn't enough for you, next time you go
on a plane and you hear that safety message, you know,
the one that nobody ever listens to where they tell
you to fasten your seatbelt, you know, and they also
tell you to put your oxygen mask on yourself first
before you help others. And that's what I want us
(16:49):
to do here together. I want us to put our
oxygen masks on first. Let's do that together right here
on the I Choose Me Podcast. I love you. Now,
go to a mirror and tell yourself that you love yourself.
I'll see you next week, guys,
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Oh okay,
oh my gosh, this is so exciting you guys. Today's
the day. Today is the very first day of my
very own podcast, I Choose Me. I have been working
and working towards this for so long just to get
(00:23):
to this very moment with you, and you have no
idea how grateful I am that you are here with me,
that you chose to listen today. Look at that, you guys,
just made your very first choice on the I Choose
Me podcast. Woo celebrate that. This is a crazy statistic.
I heard we make like thirty five thousand choices a day.
(00:48):
Think about that. That is a lot of choices. I mean,
we make so many choices before we even get out
of bed. I've made a lot of choices, some good,
some bad. But I'm going to go on record here
and say that I don't really believe in bad choices anymore,
(01:08):
because if I didn't make choices that were bad or
you know, that had some negative consequence, I wouldn't have
learned anything. I wouldn't have gotten the messages that I'm
supposed to get to move forward to, Like the next level.
You know, I want this podcast to be a safe
(01:30):
space for us to share with each other, to get vulnerable,
to talk about our choices, our good ones, our bad ones.
And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to
share my choices with you, the highs and the lows
of my life, and we are going to take a
look at them. Because if you think about it, it's
pretty cool to sit back and sort of examine the
(01:55):
choices that you've made in your life. Right to think
was that a good choice? Was that a bad choice?
What did I learn from that? Would I make that
same choice again? My answer to that is usually going
to be yes, because, like I said, I don't believe
there are any bad choices. Were exactly where we're supposed
(02:15):
to be. But I want us to start sharing because
I feel like we're all walking around with these secrets,
you know, secrets from our lives that were afraid to
share with other people, were embarrassed to share with other people.
(02:35):
But the fact is we are all going through the
same things. We are all making very similar choices out there.
We just have different circumstances. So that in itself is
going to connect us on this podcast because we're all
in this together, and I want you to feel comfortable
(02:56):
knowing that it's okay to share your choices, and I
want you to be unapologetic about them, about who you
are and who you are meant to be, and I
want us to start loving ourselves just a little bit
more every day. But first, I want to explain where
this podcast came from. The genesis of it all. The
title is a little weird. I choose me, But in
(03:20):
order to explain that, I'm going to ask you to
rewind all the way back to nineteen ninety five. That
was almost thirty years ago. If you can wrap your
brains around that. AnyWho, for all of you Beverly Hills
nine of two and zero fans out there, and you
know who you are, you are probably going to know
where I'm going with this. My most memorable line in
(03:45):
all of the ten years of the show was on
season five, episode thirty, when my character Kelly Taylor Hello,
she had to choose between two of the hottest, most
popular guys on television at that time, Brandon Walsh and
(04:07):
Dylan McKay. I mean, that is a tough choice. Jessica
Klein was a friend of mine. She was our writer
our producer, and she wrote that line for me, and
it was just three little words, and I'll be honest,
(04:28):
I didn't really understand them when I was saying them.
I didn't really get it. And I just was like, Okay,
if you think this is what I should say, then
I will say it. I was just trying to do
my job, you know, And I didn't understand the poignancy
of that line. I was twenty one, maybe twenty two
years old, and I was just sort of winging it
and making it up. Fast forward to now, like now,
(04:52):
while I'm grown up, we're all growing up still, it's happening.
I'm growing up right now in front of you. I
kind of think like, if you're not growing, you're slowing.
That's my motto. If you're not growing, you're slowing. But anyway,
I'm about to get really vulnerable with you guys. A
few years ago, it was like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
(05:12):
before the pandemic, I was feeling really lost. I was
I don't know, life was just moving forward, you know,
years were going by going by, but I didn't know
what I was moving toward. I didn't feel like I
had that goal, you know what I wanted to do next.
(05:33):
Have you ever felt that way? I have three girls.
I love them so so much, but they were getting
older and they honestly just didn't need me as much.
I was a pary I mean, I was a piry
empty nester, if you know what I mean. I was bored.
(05:53):
I was depressed, I was restless. I was frustrated with
my career. I wasn't getting the roles that I wanted
to get. I didn't feel like I was giving anything
to the world. I was doing a lot of waiting,
and I didn't know which direction. I didn't know where
to go or what I wanted. And so many people
(06:14):
talk so much about purpose. I wanted to find my purpose.
I realized that I've spent my life just going with
the flow. I never had a plan. I never wanted
to be an actress. I never wanted to be a mom.
I never thought about my wedding day and what that
was going to look like. I just I never planned
for things. I never dreamt about what I wanted. I
(06:37):
didn't go to college, and I never had that sort
of time to lay out my life and think about
what I wanted to achieve. It was a whirlwind you know,
my life, and I just never had that opportunity to
stop and think about what do I want? And I
had so much, you know, at that point, I was successful,
(07:01):
and I had a home, and you know, I had
this happy, seemingly happy life, and I felt selfish for
wanting more, honestly, like I didn't think that I was
allowed to want more. I was paralyzed, basically with uncertainty
and confusion and fear, fear of making a deliberate choice
(07:28):
and then not having whatever it took to make that
choice happen. Like I didn't want to fail. I was
afraid of failing. Growing up, my mom had every self
help book ever written, every fad diet book ever written.
(07:49):
They lined the shelves in our house, and I gotta
be honest, I was a little embarrassed when people would
come over and they would see all the self help books.
I would be like, yeah, those were my don't worry
about it. But I started to kind of look through
those books from time to time, and eventually I started
to read some of them, like from cover to cover
(08:10):
Jonathan Livingston's Seagull, I'm Okay, You're Okay, The Road Less Traveled,
My favorite was a book called How to Feed Your
Family on twelve dollars a Day. It was this little paperback,
green cover book. It had no pictures in it of
any food, so you really had to make it up
in your mind. But there was this banana bread recipe
(08:32):
that I used to make all the time, and it
worked very well when I wanted to bribe my sisters
to do something for me. So that banana bread recipe
was definitely worth it. But there was this other book,
this other book about astrology, and you know, it like
broke down your birthday and what you were going to
be like or what you should be like on your birthday.
(08:53):
Mine April third said I was strong willed, creative, sometimes stubborn, impatient,
fiercely loyal. All of these things they were true. But
then at the end it said I was destined to
be a leader, a public figure, and it said famous
you guys, And I was like, this is me, Like
(09:14):
at twelve, what, No, I don't know what that's not.
I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't
know anything. I'm just a little girl who likes to
ride her pink dirt bike through the cemetery and talk
to the dead. People. I mean, I spent a lot
of time alone you guys, but I just didn't get it.
I didn't think like I was going to lead anybody
(09:36):
to anything. I couldn't even figure out what I wanted.
And as time passed, life happened in a bizarre turn
of events. I did become famous, I did become a
public figure, and so here I was still not knowing
what I wanted. I had this you know, life, and
(09:57):
I was supposedly fulfilling my fate according to that book.
I was a wife, a mother, an actress, a producer.
I was doing all the things. But I still felt incomplete.
Somehow I felt unfulfilled in a way that's really hard
to explain. I still didn't have my purpose. COVID came,
(10:19):
and yeah, that was a wild time, but you know what,
it allowed me to slow down. It allowed me to
be alone a little, to think and to be introspective.
I started to take stock of my life, like where
had I come from, what had I been through? My
(10:40):
Midwestern roots, my parents who were both educators. I started
to just really look at all of that. And then
I remember that damn astrology book, and something just kept
urging me to look back in order to move forward.
And when I looked back, I kept seeing that line
come up for me, Jessica Klein's line, I choose me
(11:06):
so weird. And then I started hearing it around me.
You know. I would meet women and they would tell
me how Kelly Taylor had chosen herself, and in that moment,
they realized that they could choose themselves. And I started
to see the significance of it and the impact that
(11:26):
it had had on so many people. The phrase started
becoming part of my everyday vocabulary. I was reading it,
I was writing it, I was saying it, and you
know what, I started believing it. I started living it
with little things like throughout my day, my choices about
being healthy, about going to work out, about eating better,
(11:48):
choosing better for myself. I started to choose myself more.
And then, you guys, like a light bulb in my head.
I am telling you, I had that moment that Oprah
talks about that I had always wanted. I found my purpose.
I got a clear message that I was supposed to
(12:09):
use my voice to spread that message to teach people.
That is why I'm in your ears today. I am
here to tell you that it is okay to choose yourself.
It is okay to take time from doing everything for
everybody and choose yourself to mentally, physically, emotionally, start turning
(12:32):
some of that love that we give everybody else, start
turning that inward just a little bit. I want you
guys to know that taking care of yourself is an
opportunity for you to rediscover who you are, who you
want to be. It's an opportunity for you to regain
your power. It is not selfish, and anybody that ever
(12:55):
tells you it is selfish, just walk away, because taking
care of yourself is not a selfish act at all.
When you start taking time for yourself just even a
little bit more, you're going to see your life start
to unfold in the most beautiful, mind blowing ways, ways
(13:15):
that you were afraid to ever dream about. I promise you.
And we're never alone. That's a message that I want
you guys to know, because I felt alone a lot.
But we're never alone because we always have us and
I never really understood that. So this is what I
(13:35):
started to do. It may sound a little weird, but
I started to look in the mirror. At first, I
would be like, oh, hi, Hello, who are you? I
don't know you. What do you want? This is weird?
And then I started saying, hmm, you know what. I
(13:56):
love you. How about that? I started saying nice things
to myself in the mirror. I started to say, you
are beautiful, and at first I did not believe it.
But the more I said it, the more I believed it.
And I just kept doing it. And that led me
to sort of start talking to myself even when I
(14:19):
wasn't looking in the mirror, just like in everyday situations.
I would start talking to myself to that little girl,
that little innocent, totally scared girl who used to ride
her dirt bike. I would say, it's okay, You're okay,
we got this. I got you. I started to sort
of like be my own mommy in a weird way,
(14:41):
and I started to be my own best friend. I
started to love myself. I don't know. I would suggest
you start doing that. Look in the mirror, see that
little girl and tell her that you love her. And
I promise you if you start doing that, like I said,
(15:03):
that's going to blow your mind. Here's how this is
going to work. Every week, we are going to talk
about choices. We're going to talk about your choices. We're
going to talk about my choices. I'm going to let
you in on a very intimate level. I'm going to
bring some of my very favorite people onto the show,
(15:24):
and We're going to talk about the choices that I've
made and what I've learned from them, and you will
probably be able to relate even though our lives are
totally different, but you'll see you've probably made some of
the same choices I've made, or maybe you want to
make some of the choices I've made, and maybe that
will help you, you know, to move forward. So we're
(15:44):
going to bring in people my inner circle is going
to come here, my manager, my longtime best friend, my husband,
everybody that I listen to is going to come here,
and we're going to talk it yah, And you know what,
We're probably gonna end up having a lot of fun
along the way because some of my choices have been
(16:06):
pretty crazy, little little out there, but like I said,
I learned a lot from them. And I want to
hear from you. I want to hear directly from you,
what topic you want to talk about, what choices of
mine you want to hear, and what I learned from them,
So write me. Let us know what you want to
(16:27):
hear about on the I Choose Me Podcast. And if
this message isn't enough for you, next time you go
on a plane and you hear that safety message, you know,
the one that nobody ever listens to where they tell
you to fasten your seatbelt, you know, and they also
tell you to put your oxygen mask on yourself first
before you help others. And that's what I want us
(16:49):
to do here together. I want us to put our
oxygen masks on first. Let's do that together right here
on the I Choose Me Podcast. I love you. Now,
go to a mirror and tell yourself that you love yourself.
I'll see you next week, guys,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.