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I remember I was like, this feels so awful. It feels so hard. I feel like I'm carrying the weight of everybody on my back and it's gonna be okay. Here's what I would tell my younger self. When it feels like everything is falling apart, there are going to be more times than not when you are new to business or even just new to where you're at in business. You're at a new level where it feels impossible to achieve what's next that is completely normal. And the reason that things feel impossible is because we've never done them before. So. So we have no evidence to support that they are possible. The thing that I remind myself of in those moments is I'm like right now in this moment when I want to quit, when I feel awful, when I feel like everything is not going my way, when I feel like fires are popping up left and right, and when I feel like my goal is this like far fetched reality that I feel like is a joke to even believe. Today, I remind myself, today is the day that I can create the evidence for my future self so that my future self believes it's possible. So if you look at every day as like today is a chance for me to create evidence for myself to make it more possible tomorrow, we're able to conjure up the courage to keep going because we just know if I can get through today, it gives me more evidence so that tomorrow it doesn't feel quite as impossible. The first time in my life when something felt truly impossible was when I weighed about 220 pounds and I was like, I need to lose weight. And the thought of losing £100 felt so frightening and so difficult. It just felt like such a tall task to take on. I anchored myself in. Even if my brain is telling me that it's impossible to do this, I just need to take action like somebody who believes it is. If I eat food like somebody who's losing weight, if I exercise like somebody who's losing weight, if I have a lifestyle like somebody who's losing weight, I will lose weight. It's the laws of physics. I cannot argue with that. I remember starting and being so terrified to step on the scale because I felt like I'd been in this cycle for so long where I. I wanted to change, but I felt like I didn't know how to change. I never put my best foot forward because I was scared. I was scared like, what if it doesn't work for me? What if I didn't lose weight? What if it's Been a week and nothing has changed. What if my situation's so bad that I'm the one that it doesn't work for? Through my whole journey of losing weight, it was almost like my eyes could not catch up to reality. I remember I'd lost 35 pounds, and I would look in the mirror, and it was hard for my brain to realize that that was even me, because when I walked around, I still felt like I was at 220 pounds. And some people may not believe today that I walk around and still feel like I'm overweight. It's almost like because I lived my life that way for so long, my brain has more memory of me being that way than not. That was the first time that I can recall being in a moment where it felt truly impossible. It felt like it was such a tall task, and I didn't have any evidence to support that I was going to be able to do it. But it worked. Despite all that, it wasn't even. You know, a lot of people talk about confidence, but I think it is. It's evidence. Evidence for me that I can think really doubtful thoughts, I can feel really negative feelings, and I can still accomplish my goals. That translated over to me and the first time I started a business, because the first time I started business, it was the second most terrifying thing I think I'd ever done because I'd never run a business before. I'd never managed people before. I'd never managed money before. I'm taking steps forward, but I don't know if they're in the right direction. I remember people would say, like, wow, amazing. You started business. This is so great. And I just felt like I was just feeling around in the dark consistently. And I don't know who to trust because I don't have the proper skill to judge who I should trust as to what I should do. Now when I look back on those times, I feel nothing but wishing I could go back to them, because those were the times that gave me so much strength. Because when we're going through the times where we feel like there's no end in sight and it feels impossible, when what we don't realize is, like, that is what's going to set us up for future success. Being able to develop the character trait of persistence, of patience, of, I would say, tolerance of negative feelings, those are all incredibly useful skills when it comes to achieving any goal. We always set these goals that we want for ourselves. But then we forget that there's this moment after we've set the goal and right after it, we're feeling good. We're feeling like everything's amazing. And then we step into reality, and then we realize, like, I don't have half the skills required to meet this goal. And you know what it feels like to acquire skills, because what you realize is that you have deficits. And you feel those deficits because you're doing things that you suck at. And then when you're constantly doing things on a daily basis that you suck at, you're in an environment where the decisions that you've made because you don't have the skill to make them are constantly reminding you of your deficits. It feels very punishing. And that's why most people stop, because they can't handle how it feels. You can let those same things drive you into the ground or drive you to success, and the only difference is your actions. It's not that we're going to feel any different. It's not that the people that keep going feel better than the people who quit. In fact, they feel worse because they keep going despite it. Feeling. I've just now seen and had my life play out enough times that I've realized that feeling is the price you pay for success. The only way to get to the highlights of your life are to go through the lowlights. I still vividly remember eight years ago when Alex and I were sleeping out of motels where we had less than a thousand dollars in our bank account, where Alex's partner stole all the money from the bank account that we did have. Everything was falling apart. We had family members in the hospital. We had people with alcohol problems. We had our business burning to pieces, and we had no money and honestly, no help or friends. I remember at that point in time, a perpetual feeling of stress. Waking up every 45 minutes with nightmares about your business and about having no money, about the situation you're in, about the risks you're taking. You know, it's. It's this constant feeling of unease, and there is literally no relief. And I think for the first two years that we were starting the business, I felt like that consistently. I felt ashamed. You know, I wasn't taking care of myself. Like, I stopped working out as much. I was drinking more, looking at our situation, looking at even just like, what I had stepped away from. I had personal training, I had clients. I had, like, a nice apartment I lived in. And now we're living out of extended stays in motels. And I'm thinking, like, I don't even know if we can keep doing this at Times, you know, it just felt very dark and very lonely. I'm embarrassed. I remember so many nights I would just go and take a shower just to cry. I think a lot of people go through that when they're starting a business, when they're making a change, when they have some really hard that are going on in their lives. But we don't want to talk about it. You know, nobody wants to talk about pretending to take a shower so you can cry. But that's the real that we go through. It's not like I don't experience those emotions. Still, what it taught me to get through those two years and not give up is that if you don't give up, you can find success. If you keep going through all of those emotions, you can have the same success as anybody else. It also taught me that people who find success are more willing to feel those emotions than those who aren't. Because I really think that the only reason people tap out is because they say it's not the situation, it's their emotions that are arisen from that situation. Here's the thing. In the times in my life when I have exited a situation because of emotions, the emotions find their way back and they will pop up in a different situation. Unless you want to spend your whole life running and downsizing your goals so that you can avoid those emotions. You have to just go through it and just accept that it's going to feel awful and hard, but you're not going to die. And that's what I would tell myself. I remember I was like, this feels so awful. It feels so hard. I'm so exhausted. I'm so tired. I feel like I'm carrying the weight of everybody on my back and it's gonna be okay, you know? Sorry, I'm tired today. I think a lot of people struggle with, like, just juggling like more things than you have hands for, you know, is that part of it is like just the breadth of all the things you have to worry about. It is. And it's funny because, like, I think I'm crying because I feel it right now. I'm talking about the past, but it doesn't go away. It never goes away. You gain the tools to deal with it in a better way. You figure out how to manage this, figure out how to prioritize, learn what's important, what's not important, what to say, no to what to say. You know what, we can do it later. Because when you're first starting, everything feels urgent because it's new. You don't you don't understand what a priority is because you just don't know. And then eventually you learn how to prioritize. You learn how to say no until you just go through it one time. You can't gain the skill. You just don't learn until you fail. It sucks because the failure is what feels so awful. And it feels embarrassing because you feel like there's people around me that love me, that are watching, or people that work for me or my friends who I quit my job and I told them about it. But at the end of the day, better to fail and try again than to just have never gotten in the arena. You know what I mean? Because most people just never step in. Everything in life is now romanticized. Everything's got filters. Most people compare their business, their life, their significant other to whatever is on Instagram. What I see now is that so many people are going through hard times because they're comparing themselves to this romanticized version of business or relationship or life that somebody else just puts up on social media so they think there's something wrong with their situation. They're like, I can't keep going because it's clearly so up. No, it's just that everyone else hides and lies. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing. It's just that everyone else is lying, which is just the truth. We look at hundreds of businesses every week, and people are like, oh, there's so many business in America. And it's like, okay, well, let me show you how many actually make money. Not a lot of, you know, let me say, how many actually feel like they're not on fire all the time? Not a lot. I just think more people bullshit now, and it makes it harder for people who are just getting started, because it makes it feel like you're doing something wrong, and you're not doing anything wrong. You're doing it right. If it feels hard and it feels like you want to quit, you're probably on the right path. When times feel really hard and things feel impossible, what makes it even harder is when you feel ashamed of that. I tend to be the type of person who doesn't want to talk about it and wants to hide it. Even with Alex, you know, we're business partners and we're married, and we're going through stuff. I wouldn't tell him how much I was struggling with something. I stole the opportunity for him to support me in a way that he really could. And I remember it was a few years ago when I was just going Through a really hard time. It got to the point where it was like I couldn't hide it from him. It was just like I was so not myself. And he clearly saw that. And finally when I opened up to him, I just remember he had skills to help me in an area where I was deficient. And what it did, too, is it opened up a dialogue about things that he'd had to deal with that I had no idea about. And then I was like, holy. Like, all this stuff that I've been struggling with. And because I don't share it, I never find out that somebody else has gone through it and already learned their way out of it. And I can just leapfrog my way by hearing what they did. And sometimes that person is spouse. You know, sometimes it's somebody on your team, Sometimes it's a friend, It's a family member. There's a difference between, you know, venting and emotionally dumping on people and then sharing, hey, I just want to let you know, this is what's going on with me. If it seems like I'm a little off, this is why. And then I always like to say, like, no action needed. It's just an FYI. And I know for myself, when I try to hide it from people around me, it just makes it much worse. How can anybody help you if they don't know what's going on? How can anybody support you if know that you would, like, support? And how can you give anybody else opportunity around you? You know, if you have a business, for example, like Step up, if they don't know that there's a gap if you just share what you're experiencing, there's often so many more people that can help you than you thought. In my past, I would feel resentful that I would have to solve a problem that I didn't cause. I think what a lot of people do and what I probably did when I was younger is try and make the other person solve it. Try and make somebody feel bad and hopefully make them feel bad that they would solve the problem that they caused. But when you do that, you miss the opportunity to gain the skills to solve the problem yourself and the confidence that comes with solving the problem. When I was dealing with a lot of the stuff from my mother and having a lot of anger from my childhood and what I had dealt with there. And I realized all of these things that I felt resentful of her for and that I was hoping that one day she would come fixed, like, she would clean her up, and then she would just be a functioning mother again. And then I wouldn't have to deal with these problems that were left. When I finally realized that that was just never going to happen, I was like, so what are you going to do? I think until I was in a situation where I realized the person who has caused this problem is no longer here. So what does that leave me? Do I just live with this problem forever? Do I just deal with it? Do I just allow it to exist? Or do I take ownership over the situation and say, this is my life, I'm an adult and I can figure out how to solve this problem on my own, whether I like that or not. It's either that or you live at somebody else's will. And I wasn't willing to do that. And so though maybe I'm not the one who caused the problem, it's now my problem and I have an opportunity to solve it. There's so many times in life where it's like, we can blame our boss, our friends, our ex boyfriend, our family, our aunt, our sister's boyfriend. It just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who caused the problem. It's now yours. So if you are able to be a problem solver, I think there's so much opportunity for growth. When I realized that, I was like, all the hairy, leftover problems that nobody wants to solve, I'll take them. I will take them because that gives me more opportunity to grow than anybody else. I realized at an early age that a lot of, I guess you could call it acting out on our emotions is to get something from somebody else that we don't have the skill to articulate or ask for for. When I was going through a really hard time and I told people about it, it wasn't even necessarily because I wanted help, but I wanted them to console me. I wanted them to give me some sort of attention because maybe I felt lonely in going through whatever I was going through. And when I realized that about myself, I was like, I don't want to do any behaviors that are attention seeking. Okay, then I need to develop the skill of asking for what I need, of articulating my preferences, of asking for help when I want it of. And for letting people around me that are close to me know the things that I'm. I'm wanting. And once I realized that, I think now it's brought a level of awareness to seeing it at others. And I see people in situations where they're having a really hard time and they are keeping themselves stuck because they're seeking attention through acting out on their emotions. And then they are surrounded by people who indulge them in those emotions and they feed into it. And they almost make it worse by saying, you're right. The them, they're all awful. This is so terrible. I'm so sorry. And I think people confuse empathy with enabling. You can be empathetic for somebody and also remind them that they can get back up on their two feet. And I would say that that is much more helpful than somebody emotionally vomiting on you day after day after day because they're upset about something. It's not a fact that because you feel a certain way, you can't do something, you just really don't want to and you allow those emotions to be the reason. I would say that in those situations, what you want to do is ahead of time, walk through what you were going to do when the occurs. Okay, when I'm in a situation where I feel like I can't keep going and my boyfriend says something to me and all I want to do is flip out like a crazy on him, what am I going to do in that moment? And you have to remind yourself, am I going to leave the house for 10 minutes? Am I going to go on a walk? Am I going to put myself literally in a timeout in my room? What am I going to do to remove myself from the situation long enough for my emotions to dissipate so that I can act rationally? If I know that I'm not going to be good for Alex, I just tell him I'm leaving. And I have. In the past, I've gotten 10 times better, but I never want to put my emotions on him. And so I will just exit myself. Maybe it seems rude to leave for a moment, but I think what's worse is to just take somebody out, all your anger out on somebody like they're your punching bag. And that's what a lot of people do. And I think that's why a lot of people get divorced, break up, friendships end because you end up treating the people that are closest to you like your personal punching bag. We've reinforced in society this behavior of when someone feels something bad, we should feel bad for them and treat them differently. And I actually think that that keeps more people stuck because it treats them like a victim of their thoughts and feelings. And you're not a victim of your thoughts and feelings. But unfortunately, a lot of people are surrounded by family and friends and coworkers who care about them, but they enable this cycle by continuing to reinforce it every time they cry, they console them. They give them attention. Now you teach the person that in order to get attention, they have to cry. I think that a lot of people stay in that space because they're getting something from it that they don't even realize. This behavior of, you know, feelings and thoughts are valid. All these things, right? Okay. Valid versus useful to indulge in are different things. Something can be valid, meaning we can say, oh, that exists. But we can also say, just because it exists doesn't mean it's a fact. Even in the sentence, like what we're talking about. This video. I feel like I can't keep going. Well, you are. So the feeling's wrong. You are continuing to keep going. You don't feel like you can keep going, which really just means the language is incorrect. You really would prefer not to keep going, but you are. Feelings exist, but how useful are they? There's many times my feelings have led me in the wrong direction. I don't find them to be reliable sources of information. Most people work themselves up with the language they use about the difficulty they're going through. So when you look at even just how people express, it's a lot of misuse of language, I would say, which is like, I'm really anxious about the speech I have. Are you anxious or is it, I really care about the speech I have, and I really want to do a good job because I really care if I deliver value to this audience. And I think a lot of people trade the word care for anxiety because it's probably more popular right now. But in reality, I think there's a lot of situations where you just care a lot. It can get to the point sometimes where I would say that mismanaged care can become anxiety. If you don't manage your thoughts around the things you care about, then it might turn into maladaptive behaviors, and then that creates an anxious loop. But I think it comes from a great place. I think that in order to do great things, you want to care deeply. If I wanted to not be successful, what would I do? I'd be like, cool, be lazy, and don't give a f about anything. So if you want to be successful, part of that is, I would say it's like the curse of care. I care deeply about my team, the partners we have, the people that watch me on social media, like, to a degree where, like, those things all can very much agitate me if not going well. Right. And I could say that that gives me anxiety. It gives me this. But I I remind myself I care, and I would rather care any day over not giving a sh T. About something. I've had people be like, you know, tell me how you really feel. Like, don't downplay it. And I'm like, if you knew how powerful language was, you would know why I'm not upplaying it because it makes it feel worse. There are so many ties into different parts of the brains with the words that we use that you might feel completely calm. But then if somebody asks you to say the word with an elevated tone five times in a row, you might notice your heart rate elevates not because there was anything happening, but because eventually language can cause the reaction in your body. And so a lot of people say, I'm so anxious. I'm heartbroken, I'm disgusted. I feel like I'm gonna die. I could be like, I'm so anxious, there's so much going on. I'm so overwhelmed. Or I could say, you know what? We have a lot of new things that we're trying right now, and it's really important to me that they go well. And I know that I have the capability for them to go well. I'm probably overthinking some of that. And so that's resulting in feeling a little bit more stressed than normal, you know, and this isn't a forever thing. It's gonna end eventually. It's a season, and I'll get through it. And I don't think there's anything I need to do, but I care a lot about making sure these things go well. And so sometimes I get elevated stress. It's like even just comparing those two things. One, the second one is reality. You know, we feel things within the context of a situation. It's not like we are always feeling this way about these things. Most people being precise with our language will help us soothe ourselves much more than working ourselves up with our language. If you want to achieve anything, you have to accept that you're going to care about those things. Most people who don't succeed, it's because to some level, they don't care, probably because there's not high enough stakes.