As you may have heard, we just rolled out our new name and branding for my company, the BOLD Leader Collective. BOLD stands for Be Owners of Your Life and Destiny. Last week, I talked about ownership, and today, I want to talk about the “L” of BOLD:
Your Life
Let me start by asking you a question: Are you truly living? Or are you going through the motions? Are you living limitless? Or are you letting the world and your circumstances define who you are and what’s possible?
Five years ago, I woke up and realized that the life I was living wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t love my career, I didn’t love the church we were going to, I didn’t love how I was showing up all the time—frustrated and angry at the world around me. I wasn’t satisfied with life at all.
The other day, I came across an old journal entry from that time. In it, I had written about how I wanted a business that would allow me to travel anywhere, make an impact on a global level, and help people not be victims to their circumstances anymore. I wanted some type of product that I could utilize to not only make a decent living, but also to change people’s lives, businesses, and the way they interacted with the world. I didn’t stop there. I also wrote how I wanted to change corporate America, the healthcare industry, and how we conduct business on a daily basis.
Pretty lofty goals, right?
Fast-forward to today and I own a company that does all those things.
If you had asked me back then how I was going to accomplish all this, I had no idea. At the time of this journal entry, all I knew was that I wanted a different career and a better relationship with my husband. So I started there. I did my research and went to the best seminars and workshops I could find on these topics—Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, one called “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage” (which was actually good, but it didn’t fix our marriage, that’s for sure). At those seminars, I talked to a bunch of different people. That was how I met Nora, and the rest is history.
Once we get clear on what living looks like in its fullest expression, it’s crazy what shows up!
I think sometimes we think that if we sit at home, opportunity will come knocking at our door. Instead, I shifted into action. By achieving one step, I had access to the next step. By taking ownership over just two pieces—my career and my marriage—the rest of the pieces, the keys to what I was searching for, were dropped in my lap. But it took five years from when I wrote that journal entry.
To create lasting change, you can’t fix everything all at once..
As the owner of a personal development company, I’ll be the first to tell you that the personal development industry as a whole is failing us. Why? This industry promises quick fixes and lifelong changes almost overnight. My company used to do our entire life-changing curriculum in the course of a single weekend. And it was hell. I love a good conference, but you can’t go from being totally disconnected with yourself and who you are to living fully in just two days!
Whether it’s change for our businesses or change for our lives, we have to first set a vision of what’s possible and then bring it into a daily practice in order to really see sustainable change. (That’s why New Year’s resolutions do not work, and are even proven to be harmful.)
My motto in life—perhaps both consciously and subconsciously—has always been no pain, no gain. I’m such a go-getter that when I see what I want, I hit the ground running. But as you can imagine, this practice is not sustainable. When I go from zero to a thousand, I’m left burnt out, frustrated, and blaming everyone else around me.
Sometimes the hardest thing is the smallest thing. To truly live in alignment, we have to first accept where we’re at and then choose to move forward one step at a time. Start with changing one thing in your day, then add on. You have to give yourself space to learn. It’s important that you build in those small steps or else you’ll burn out, lose confidence, and your limiting beliefs will take over.
What is one thing in the next 30 days you can do to get you closer to your end goal? (This assumes that you already have a vision for your life; if not, our upcoming Clarity Collective can help with that!)
Nobody looks back when they’re facing death and thinks, “I should have stayed in that job longer” or “I should have fit into society more.” We only get one life. We were created to thrive, not just survive. It is my core belief system that life is a gift. My personal goal in life is that I will set people on fire to live theirs. Your life is on purpose; live it to the fullest!
