I’m not sure when it started or why, but for my whole life and I’m pretty it’s the same for lots of people I know, we’ve been taught that success is something to be scoffed. I have early memories of the women in my life seeing someone else succeed and either “blaming” it on something negative that propelled them like “sleeping their way to the top.” “It’s not who you know, it’s who you blow.” Or it was made to seem like they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth and never had to work for anything.
Rarely did I ever hear any of the women (or men for that matter) in my life say, “I’m so happy for them, they deserve every single success they are enjoying.”
Success was a like a dirty word in my world. So, I grew up looking at everyone through that lens. I think I also grew up thinking that since I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon, I didn’t deserve success. I barely had a spoon growing up. My upbringing was mostly plastic sporks. And, I never really embraced my sexuality enough to use it to “get to the top.” So, in my mind, that meant, I didn’t need to try that hard. I just needed to get by.
As a teen mom, I thought my only job was to raise the kids the best way I could. I refused to work nights. I declined “management” positions because I didn’t want my kids to have a mom who was never present because they already got that from the other parent. So I just went through the motions, existing, momming, making enough to pay the bills.
It used to break my heart that the only way my kids would ever see the beach when they were younger was to let them go on vacation with friends. But that’s how all 3 of them saw the beach for the first time. It wasn’t with me. And I loved the beach so much. But we couldn’t afford vacation.
So I tried to raise my kids the opposite way that I was brought up. I told them they could be anything. I told them they could go anywhere. I told them to embrace traveling. I told them to go where they wanted whenever the wind blew them that way. I never told them their dreams were too big or too small. I never wanted to limit what they believed they could do, because I felt like I had always limited myself.
Fast forward to a month before my 45th birthday. I had been watching this lady Shelley on Instagram for almost a year. Shelley was the mom I wished I had been able to be for my kids. She would get up in the morning, she would journal and workout- aka- she would do something for herself. Then, she would make breakfast for her kids, walk them to school, go to the grocery store and fill the fridge with the most delicious, healthy meals, and she looked happy to be doing all of it. She was the BEST stay at home mom I had ever seen.
Eventually, she asked me if I wanted to work out with her. And she asked me if I wanted to build a business like she was. And that little voice in my head quietly told me “you can’t do what SHE does. You don’t deserve that.” But every day, Shelley kept showing me and telling me through her stories that I COULD do what she does and that I DO deserve it.
And so I joined her just to start getting in shape. They say to surround yourself with the kind of people you most admire. And I admire her so much. Mostly because she’s just a normal person trying to be better every day. She is brutally honest about her struggles. She doesn’t just show you her highlight reel. She shows you the daily truth. And I find that to be priceless.
After a month, she had instilled a belief in me that I had been trying to find my whole adult life. I can do hard things. And I deserve every single good thing that comes into my life.
Today, I watched Shelley announce that she had just hit a HUGE milestone in her business. She ranked Diamond, which is a really fucking big deal in our businesses. It’s my next goal and she just hit it.
My upbringing would tell me that I should be jealous. Or that I should make some sort of excuse “why” she did it. But the real reason she ranked up is because she has worked her ass off every day since the first day we ended up on each other’s social media pages. She has shown up every single day. She has stumbled and regrouped and got up and kicked more ass.
And I’m so happy for her. And I’m happy for me because I get to follow in her footsteps. And I get to have her as a leader. I get to surround myself with her positivity and her influence. And I know that she is not locking the door behind her after she goes through it. She is holding it open for every one of us who are just a few steps behind her.
And that is what this business is all about.
I NEVER thought I would become a Team Beachbody Coach. And now, because of Shelley, I know exactly the kind of coach I want to be.
I could literally go on and on. So I will stop here and just say, Shelley, I’m so happy for you. And I’m so proud of you. And thank you. Thank you for showing up every day. Thank you for believing in, not just me, but all of us, when we have trouble believing in ourselves. You are the leader I never knew I needed. I can’t wait to see where we end up next!
RouletteWeekend 