Well Gorgeous, it’s hard to believe but it’s the end of another year!
And what a HUGE one 2018 has been for us, and for me personally.
I’ve had a beautiful hypnobirth and become a momma of two and a #boymom, and we’ve moved twice, once just two days after the birth!
And my VLX Bombshells business has grown over 600%, making this our first six-figure year!
I am sitting here a little wiped out, exhilarated, and amazed, all at the same time. It’s almost hard to take it in!
In reflection, I thought of lessons from the year, both sweet and bittersweet, and I thought it might be helpful to share them.
So here we go …
Watch and listen here or read below:
1. Never take advice -financial or otherwise – from anyone that goes against your gut and Holy-Spirit-guided intuition
To say that I have had quite the learning curve managing the explosive growth of my business would be the understatement of the year. In fact, it’s felt like a much less elegant version of this – with plenty of face plants in the water:
I’ve made some brilliant decisions and I’ve made some really dumb ones. Dumb ones that have left me not in the spot I wanted to be at the end of the year, but I can’t let that detract from the incredible accomplishment and the hundreds of women we’ve been able to help.
Frankly, no one taught me what you’re supposed to do when your online business takes off, and I’ve done a lot of advice-seeking over the year.
What I found is that when I made decisions prayerfully and from my gut, they were the BEST move. When I took others’ advice that didn’t feel right to me but seemed logical, I regretted it.
The Lesson: Trust yourself, even if you’re in new territory. The Holy Spirit can speak through your hunches and your bodily reactions to ideas and suggestions. If someone gives you a suggestion that just doesn’t sit right, ignore it.
2. If you don’t love it, and you don’t have to do it, don’t do it.
Hint: most things, you don’t have to do!
I am quickly becoming the queen of outsourcing, and am much more comfortable saying a loving ‘no’ without needing some cooked up excuse.
It kind of occurred to me after a while that people all around me were setting their own priorities and saying no, and I was missing out.
Missing out on things like life satisfaction, time with my family, mental peace, physical wellbeing, the work I’m called to, and daily enjoyment.
No more! As they say, ‘if it’s not a heck yes, it’s a heck no!’
The Lesson: Identify the things that only you can do and love, and think outside the box to remove, delegate, or reduce everything else.
3. Dress well.
Working from home on my own terms gives me the option to not shower and stay in my workout wear all day.
Which sounds amazing, but when you look like a slob, you feel like a slob, and when you feel like a slob, you act like a slob.
Needless to say, that is not conducive to productivity or joy!
I found that by intentionally showering, putting on a cute outfit and makeup, I felt better about my day, I did better work, and I felt like I was actually participating in the world and living my life as opposed to ‘waiting’ for it to begin.
It also made me more likely to do a live video on social media, which is a major part of my work and how I communicate with my community, so that was a perk!
The Lesson: How you look is a massive part of how you perceive yourself, and how you perceive yourself influences the way you act in the world whether you want it to or not. So dress like the woman you want to be now, and watch yourself become her!
4. Be truly present with your children.
My sweet kids are just the best. They are so intelligent and intuitive and imaginative and happy to play on their own so much.
And Lord knows there are a million things to do all the time, especially with the kind of action-packed year we’ve had.
But the bottom line is, they need me to get down on their level, put down my phone and my excuses, and play.
And I need that too.
I follow several women on social media who lost children this year. And it was like a smack in the face – APPRECIATE your children. ENJOY them. DO NOT MISS THIS TIME WITH THEM FOR ANYTHING.
I’ve committed to spend one hour every day with no distractions, down on the floor holding and playing with them. I’m sure I won’t be perfect, but this is too important to put off one more day.
The Lesson: Your children are not an inconvenience in the way of the important things in life, they ARE the important things in life.
5. Insist on being grateful.
It sounds horrific, but gratitude has always been hard for me.
I think it’s a combination of being very driven, which generally includes a focus on the goal ahead and the things that need to be done or improved rather than how far we’ve come and how good things are now, even unfinished or imperfect.
And, a heightened emotional sensitivity which means that I am always aware of someone being upset – or the possibility that they could be soon, so I have to work quite intentionally to relax into peace and joy even when others haven’t.
I’ve learned that gratitude must be insisted upon – it’s not something you can ‘get to’ when everything is done and peace and joy are guaranteed, which they never are. It’s something that must be thrust onto the scene, pulled into your life, as a way of being deeply peaceful and joyful even when you know there’s farther you want to go.
I just bought myself this beautiful gratitude journal for Christmas, and I love that it takes normal gratitude lists and pulls them into greater depth and awareness and application in your life. Definitely looking forward to making it part of my regular routine.
The Lesson: Gratitude doesn’t just ‘come’ into your life – it must be brought into your life.
6. Give yourself permission. No one else is going to.
Permission is one of the biggest struggles I see most of the women I work with face. It can look so many different ways – you may feel you give yourself permission easily, but odds are I can find a part of your life where you’re not.
We spend an entire module on permission inside the O Class, and while most women assume they won’t need that one, inevitably, dozens email me that ‘that was the module that changed everything!’
I’ve long been afraid of being in trouble or having someone upset with me, and it wasn’t until I realized that, even though I was in a city where no one knew me yet and I had no obligations to meet, I was wrestling with giving myself permission to even take Juliette to a park and cafe. Like somehow I was a ‘good girl’ if I stayed home and ‘got things done,’ even if there weren’t things that needed doing, or I could do them later.
It’s a process, but as long as you are within God’s guidelines, giving yourself increasing levels of permission in all areas of your life is the surest way to move quickly toward a greater calling – and much greater boldness and joy.
The Lesson: God has given you permission to live your calling and enjoy your life – now you have to receive that permission and give it to yourself!
7. Hire wisely, let go with love.
With the massive growth of my business this year, I’ve hired more assistants and contractors than ever before, and it’s come with plenty of lessons!
I am endlessly grateful for the amazing women I get to work with, but I am also very grateful that I decided to make careful, slow, prayerful decisions about bringing each one onto the team. The handful of times I took others’ advice about who or when to hire (or not), I massively regretted it and had to spend time unraveling their mistakes and access to our software and files after I let them go.
When I do let someone go, as furious as I may be if it has turned out that they weren’t actually doing the work they said they were or something similar, I get my reactions under control before I let them know that we will no longer need their help. It doesn’t serve anyone for a relationship to be terminated badly, even if it wasn’t a great relationship!
The Lesson: When you bring on employees, recognize that that makes you a boss, and therefore you need to act like a good one: wise, confident in your own decisions, kind, and classy.
8. Own your expertise.
Last fall when God made it so clear that he wasn’t going to advance my life or business or even give me a sense of peace until I stepped up and started teaching about His design for sex more boldly, I realized something critical: even if you don’t have every answer out there, if you are farther along the path than most people, you’re an expert.
And the hardest person to convince that that is true might just be yourself.
I was almost forced to step into an ownership of my expertise. Nothing in my life or biz was going to budge until I did!
And the beautiful thing is, HUNDREDS of women have had their lives and marriages transformed because I did.
The Lesson: You may not consider your knowledge sufficient to be called expertise, but someone else may need it, and if it can help them, who are you to say it’s not good enough?
9. Let God into the equation.
We had a couple of developments with my husband’s job this year that left us scrambling to make changes fast and wondering why what seemed so obvious and easy to us had not worked out.
Honestly, I found myself a little upset with God for a few weeks, which I almost never do because it is such an obvious waste of time to argue with the creator of the universe!
After I wasted a few weeks with that fruitless attitude, I turned to God instead and asked ‘why’?
And the answer I got was that He wasn’t going to tell me straight out, but that it was to protect us, just as I’d asked.
I don’t know yet what that means, but it’s sufficient to me that there is a reason, and it’s a good one, and – as God loves to point out – it’s actually what I had asked Him for, and here I am being upset about it.
The Lesson: Shockingly enough, God does know better. Trust Him. You don’t have to understand.
10. Take care of yourself – preemptively.
A few weeks ago I got hit hard by a serious bout of mastitis – an infection from breastfeeding. I’m talking the works – fever, chills, too weak to move, dizzy, etc.
It was perfect timing – right before Christmas, travel for a family wedding, and several large businesses launches, and right on the day of my monthly back-to-back coaching calls. I am being facetious here for sure 🙂
As I lay there, I tried to think of how this could have happened – I almost never get sick, let alone this sick!
And the answer became obvious – I had been eating way more sugar over a birthday weekend and with the beginning of the holidays, I hadn’t been taking my vitamins or eating well or getting enough sleep.
A recipe for illness.
As a mom, there are more germs in our house than ever, and the load on my body and its nutrients is doubled since I am breastfeeding.
It’s an easy time to get lax and lazy with wellness practices and great nutrition and self care, but it is actually ESSENTIAL to not let that happen.
Not only is my system weaker than usual with the demands of #momlife, but two little people are depending on me, and my body needs to function so I can care for theirs.
The Lesson: Your body matters because the callings you live out in it matter – take care of yourself before you’re forced to!
11. Beauty matters.
Earlier this year I took the DISC analysis and while the D I S C part didn’t feel too accurate to me, the values assessment that followed it was DEAD ON.
At the top of the list? An off the charts value of beauty, and independence.
I already was aware of the desire for being a free-wheeler and doing what I like rather than what I’m told – heeelllloooooo, entrepreneurship!
But BEAUTY. Seeing in front of me that that was my TOP value (above independence even!) made SO. MUCH. SENSE.
Now let’s be clear – when the stuff hits the fan and dirty work needs to get done, I can roll up my sleeves and get it done. I cared for my mother who almost died, and I now spend most of my days cleaning up kiddos’ bodily fluids haha!
But when I have an option, and I am able to control my own appearance and environment, I THRIVE on beauty. As in, it changes everything about my calmness, my intuitiveness, my ability to vision and speak to God, and how joyful and patient I am.
I believe women were specifically designed to, among many other things, create, cultivate, and curate beauty, and most of us have latent needs for beauty in our selves and surroundings, and way more power than we realize to make that happen.
I could go on and on on this topic, and you’ll see much more about it this year, but that’s all for now! 😉
The Lesson: Form IS a function – don’t treat moments, practices, and spaces of beauty as a ‘luxury,’ treat them as a necessity.
12. Understand you may be called to fight because others can’t.
When we found out my husband was going to be unexpectedly transferred, our landlord was anything but helpful, and threatened legal action if we weren’t out of our home by a fast approaching date – which happened to be my due date with Donovan. There was no mercy or bending.
When we did everything as we should, they came up with made up fees and kept our security deposit – and the reviews of their company online showed that they notoriously did that to tenants, threatening with anger and bluffing.
The story isn’t over, but we will be doing something about it, and our primary motivation is not to ‘get back,’ but to protect others who they might try to harm in the future.
The Lesson: If you see someone abusing people and getting away with it, and you have the chance to do something about it, have the courage to stand and fight when others can’t, so that in the future, they won’t have to.
13. Keep your mouth shut!
There are so many times when it is time to speak up.
And there are so many times when it is not.
We live in a culture of ‘give them a piece of your mind’ and ‘tell them how it is’ but the bottom line is, flying off the handle with our words is one of the most dangerous and damaging habits we can get into.
Controlling the tongue is what James considers one of the most important disciplines there is because of how destructive thoughtless or unkind words can be.
If something needs to be said, get your emotions under control and say it with truth and love.
If something doesn’t need to be said and you’re just indulging your urge to emote unhelpfully, go for a run and put a sock in it 🙂
The Lesson: Zip it, my love 😉
14. Prepare to be surprised.
I had so many aspects of our life ‘all-planned-out’ this year.
Obviously we were going to stay in DC for another year. Or, not.
Well then if we were leaving DC, obviously the baby would be born well before the move so I would be almost a month out of birthing when we needed to empty and leave the house. Or not.
I seem to re-learn it all the time, but the reality is that I am not in control, and even when that seems like a terrible thing, it always seems to turn out ok. In fact in the long run looking back, it turns out … better!
The Lesson: Plan all you want – it is still a good idea! But keep a little smile on your face and a loose grip on your calendar, because everything may shift when you least expect it.
15. Pare down.
When we faced the above surprises, we decided the best move was for me and the kids to live with my parents in Maryland for a month so I could be close to DC for follow-up medical appointments, and then to move to Dallas to live with my in-laws for six months through a few family weddings and the holidays.
What it came down to was me, 36 hours after birth, sitting on the floor of my closet nursing Donovan, pointing to random piles of clothing, asking someone to throw them into my suitcase. The move-out cleaners were just one room behind us and moving fast, so I was pointing to things I thought we could need, and and my mom and our babysitter were shoving them into any suitcase we could find.
I was just guessing at what our needs, desires, and even locations and temperatures (!) were going to be over the next half year, and I was still in the fog of birth and the slap-in-the-face of coming back from the hospital, only to be out of our home two days later.
It sucked at the time, no doubt about that, but what it taught me is that I really can be just fine on less.
I don’t promise to stop shopping any time soon 😉 But I am ready to fill many bags for charity and only keep my favorite things!
The Lesson: Less may not be more, but it is simpler!
16. Outsource to up-level.
There is NO WAY ON THIS PLANET that I would have been able to accomplish (or survive!) everything that happened this year if I had not had, and BUILT a very strong support team around me. This is something I want every woman to hear!!!
If you have young children, and/or are running a business, something in your life is going to break down if you don’t have someone reliable to outsource tasks to. And the things that break down tend to be the ‘important but not urgent’ – your marriage, your sex life, your relationship with God, your health, your relationship with your children, your mental and emotional sanity and stability.
There’s just no way. Woman after woman comes to me burnt out and overworking, checking off the to-do list while having drifted farther and farther from her husband, health, and happiness.
And I can tell you this, to recap a lesson above: NO ONE is going to give you permission to hire support.
I will skip movies, shopping, and weekends away for the rest of my life if that’s what I have to trade to afford regular support. It’s worth every penny.
The Lesson: Living a high impact life requires a lot of people to be around you helping. Don’t hesitate to hire most of them.
17. Prioritize hearing the voice of God – otherwise you are getting off path or treading water.
When you are moving quickly through tasks and goals, it is all too easy to get caught up in your own strategies and senses of what’s right and the best next move.
What I’ve learned is that no matter how much ‘sense’ my own plans make, if they aren’t in line with God’s, they either aren’t going to happen, or me trying to force them is going to make a mess – the least of which is that I will end up where I thought I wanted to be, but unhappy.
Now I catch myself when I start constructing plans from my own ideas and ESPECIALLY when there is any kind of anger, resentment, or justification in my spirit – that’s a dead on sign that I’m creating something that is barking me up the wrong tree, if you will 😉
Instead, I get alone out in nature with meditation music on my iPhone and a journal in my hand (or the notes app – makes it easier to find these divine downloads later!) and seek His voice when I’m making any next moves.
I not only get clarity, I get reassurance, conviction, courage, and peace – how can you pass that up, right?!
The Lesson: Seeking God’s guidance on your next big move at least once a month must be a non-negotiable if you want the best possible life!
18. Celebrate yourself!
Similar to the lesson of giving yourself permission, know that you are also the only person responsible for CELEBRATING yourself.
It’s the nature of high achievers and problem solvers to look around and find the things that still aren’t done or right and need to be improved.
Unfortunately, we also tend to do this to people around us, which can make being grateful for people in our lives something that must be intentional, and we can also do it to ourselves.
What haven’t I done yet? What didn’t I do well enough? Why couldn’t I do that thing I did really well, faster? What if I can’t get it right again next time? AHHHHH!
Can you feel the stress yet?
Multiple high performance studies have shown that people who take the time to look back at how far they’ve come more easily retain the stamina and emotional strength to keep plowing ahead, but people who only look ahead at how much farther they have to go tend to more easily get discouraged by how much is still ahead and even give up.
The Lesson: Don’t look back in regret or longing (a la Lot’s wife) but DO look back to review your incredible progress and achievements and give yourself some praise!
So that sums it up Beautiful – a year’s worth of big lessons for sure! What stood out to you here? What lessons did 2019 teach you?
I hope you all had a beautiful 2018, and I wish you the most flourishing and joy and adventure filled 2019 ahead! Here’s to an amazing next year!!
