Yeah I downloaded your sprite and noticed that even the lighter colors are too dark. Are you making your own palette or did you get this one from another person?
You can get palettes here:
https://lospec.com/palette-list
Using a lighter palette is not something you must do, but one thing I use to do is keep testing lots of palettes and chosing the one I liked most.
Make the changes on the sprite and then choose your palette, I believe you will get better results and if you want you can share the results so we take another look
in your opinion hows the pose?? i took my time on this first frame the shading and proportions really make me second guess myself and slow me down significantly, A big big thanks for everyone's help! i used the the gif supplied for reference :3