It’s Your Past that PREPARES You
You want to know something funny about this picture? I just went to post it to Facebook & it tried to tag me as her.
These creepy things that recognize our faces... apparently don’t know me & my sister apart. I’ll take that as a compliment though since I’m the older one & at least now I know that if I ever need to rob the world’s largest bank, I can just blame it on my sister.
But, seriously, this girl right here HAS been my partner in CRIME and in life forever & I can’t even count how many times I had to pinch myself this last weekend because now we are partners in BUSINESS, too. It's such a blessing that both my little sister & I have been able to build online fitness businesses that we love, BOTH of us have been able to quit our other full-time gigs to do this on the side & pursue our passions full time & BOTH of us landed ourselves on this Leader Retreat that only 8 out of 3,000 coaches got to be on. 😍
How in the world did we do it?! We have such different personalities, such different life stories but when you bring it back to the beginning... we both started out pretty much the same. NEITHER of us is afraid of hard work. When I think back to when we were kids, I see a pretty blessed life. Sure we had chores out the wazzoo and I started working at the age of 15 but we had loving parents, we were given permission to go after our goals, we had school & soccer & friends. Then, right after high school for me & just when she was beginning, so much of our world shifted...
A lot went down in our family. To top it off, our parents sold their house & got divorced. I started experiencing scary symptoms (which wouldn’t be diagnosed as an autoimmune disease until 8 years later). My sister moved in with friends. I found & married the most incredible guy I could have never imagined for myself, Nick. And, then just when things started feeling more normal, it all changed again.
This time, Nick got sick & I’m sad to say, he never got better. Losing my husband to cancer when he was just 27 years old was a shock. Having a baby to take care of in the midst of it all turned out to be a blessing. But, Nicks death didn’t just impact me & my little girl, it impacted thousands... and it definitely impacted my family. Nick had become like a big brother to my sister, a shoulder to lean on for my family as they all struggled through the change. And, then, just like that, it seemed, he was gone.
Kinslee Isaman & I were asked to create vision boards this weekend & with tears in our eyes we got to share our dreams with the rest of the girls. It was incredible to find that our dreams didn't just involve ourselves, or even just our immediate families... Our dreams were full of what we want to do for other people. For our parents, for our brother & sister in law... for our teams & the brave babes who do our online bootcamps... Our dreams were honestly for the world.
What we do now has NOTHING to do with losing Nick. Then, again, maybe it has EVERYTHING to do with it. Because we both realized from a young age that our hard work could either go toward building other people's dreams or building better lives for us and other people.
We are here to make an impact. We are here to make a difference. We are here to help more people make every single breath count... and we are here in hopes that we might give people permission to be MORE, to live BRAVER & to show up BETTER today because tomorrow isn’t promised.
Remember, you guys, it’s not your past that defines you. It’s your past that PREPARES you.
