Have you ever told yourself a bunch of stories around what you can and can not do?

Whether in awareness or buried deep in the subconscious of your brain—You’ve told yourself these stories by way of feeling safe or holding yourself back.

  Not putting yourself out there

  Not thinking that you have what it takes

Holding back on really going for it because if you don’t give the full effort, you’ve somehow left room for the “exit strategy.”

The “exit strategy” is when we tell ourselves these lies:

  You never really gave it all you had…

  You could have done more…

  They are just better than you…

We’ve implanted beliefs in our brain that just don’t belong there:

  You’re not good enough

  You don’t have what it takes

  They are going to see right through you

  You’re going to fail

Each one of these barbed wire beliefs crushing us to our core—disintegrating our confidence, eating us from the inside out.

We self-sabotage, we doubt ourselves, and then we feel defeated when what we wanted to happen just doesn’t happen.

When the dream we had still sits on the shelf.

When we let down others around us.

When we stop feeling connected to ourselves but instead feel like a helium-filled balloon untethered to the earth.

The question then remains: How do we turn this ship around?

How do we stop getting in our own way and begin to live to our full potential?

It’s all about course correcting.
It’s all about recovery.
It’s all about how you reveal your whole self in bouncing back.

We all hit a few bumps in the road—we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t but our resilience is proven in how we recover from falling or failing.

It’s in the lessons we learn and the perspective we take—it’s in the power that resides in each one of us to take something that might feel like the end of a road and listen deep within for the gift that resides in transition and change.

Almost 2 years ago, I was ready to pivot my business from BaileyFrumen.com to Own Your Power (the title of my book). We had begun building the team, making big plans for the branding transition, then just as the change was starting we were faced with a trademarking issue that would prevent us from changing the name of the company.

I was crushed.

All the time, effort, and energy spent on gearing up for the change—not to mention the mindset shift I had to do to take the leap from something I had built and known into the unknown of a new brand (even writing about it now brings back memories of the butterflies I was feeling during that time).

I felt like I failed.
I felt like I didn’t have what it takes.
I felt like a fraud.
I felt like I would never figure it out.

And frankly, I was even telling myself a story around this legal issue being a sign that I shouldn’t move forward (have you ever done that? Tried to convince yourself that one set back meant that everything you’ve wanted shouldn’t happen).

But it isn’t about the way we fell as much as it’s about the way we get back up.

So rise I did—that didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen alone. It happened with time and support, help and love, compassion and patience with myself, and most especially willingness to be open to learning the lessons as hard as they were as seeing the gifts that reside in the toughest parts.

Life can throw us all sorts of curve balls and it’s not about the mastery of “having it all figured out” but rather choosing you. Choosing sticking with it, choosing what feels like your destiny—choosing to get in the mud and mess to figure out exactly what you want your one-and-only life to look like.

Here’s to you and me and everyone else out there who’s just trying to figure it out