RISE: Made For More

This past weekend I have had the privilege of being able to attend one of the most unique experiences of my life; one I hope I get to remember forever. It is called the RISE women’s conference and was packed with approximately 4,000 women. It is led by Rachel Hollis, a motivational speaker and so much more. Guest speakers came in for talks such as Dave Hollis, Trent Shelton, Ruthie Lindsey, and Stacey Flowers to name a few. The whole concept of the 3 day conference was owning your past, present and future. Digging into your past and pulling out traumas, hidden things we have pushed away but that are affecting how we embrace the present, identifying patterns of the past and how they affect us today. Owning our present, teaching us about habits, how we get habits, how bad habits start with a trigger and how to identify our own triggers, how to be grateful, how to create new and improved habits, and how to overall focus on our own health and wellness and loving our body AS IS.

AS IS, LADIES, AS IS!

Owning our future was about turning our crazy passions and dreams into an actual, doable reality and how to get there. How to show up every day even when it’s hard, even when we forget our why. She gave us tools on how to remember our WHY and how to create the “How”.

What struck me the most and what I will always remember about this conference is the sense of community it brought. I am an introvert by nature, but thanks to years of theater, teaching others in front of a classroom, and having a job that necessitates extroversion in order to be successful, I am a pretty good extrovert when I need to be. Even though it’s scary and seems like 7^th grade again, I can go up to a table of women I don’t know that are talking to each other and ask if I can be their lunch buddy. However, this conference had such community that the whole concept was that everyone was approachable. There were no mean girls. Everyone- although so different- such different backgrounds, different traumas, different beliefs, different cultures, different futures- everyone was the same in that we all were here for the same reasons. If you weren’t approachable then what were you even doing here to better yourself? I met a handful of beautiful women that I had amazing conversations with, and I admire their story. Even after the conference, with the help of social media- us 4,000 women that were connected at this conference can stay connected online and use each other as constant reminders to use what we learned.

One of the most heartbreaking moments of the conference was a sector called “Stand up for your sister” which had the whole arena in total tears before lunch on the very first day. We each filled out a piece of paper, checking off boxes-anonymously- of experiences we have been through- traumatic ones. Experiences such as, “I have struggled with anxiety”, “I have abused alcohol”, “I have been raped”, “I have lost a child, “I have lost a parent”, etc. We had ample time to fill it out and wipe our tears in silence before we all folded our papers and handed them to our neighbor.  Then handed that paper to another neighbor. And another. And another. Until our paper was sure to be 20 seats in any direction, and we had a total stranger’s paper in our hands, full of tear marks. The concept of “Standing for your sister” was that when those traumas and experiences were called, if our paper we now held from a stranger had it checked then we stood for her, our “sister”. The idea was so that we could see the earth-shattering amount of volume of women that stood for things that I at least thought was supposed to be a small percentage of women. When you think you are the only one dealing with past traumas and current breakdowns, rape, divorce, abuse, anxiety and depression, but then see literally the entire room of 4,000 women stand up at once when “I struggle or have struggled with anxiety” was called. The amount of women that stood up when they read “I have been raped” was absolutely gut wrenching. I was personally shaking and this still brings tears to my eyes on the amount of women who stood for “I have lost a child” as I felt deeply for them as a mother. Ladies we think we are ALONE in dealing with these experiences because no one talks about them! We stick with high level small talk but don’t know that we all have the same level of understanding to help one another out on a deeper level. No one is alone! There was not a dry eye in the audience by the end, including Rachel Hollis herself.

               We learned about perspective- about how multiple people can see the same situation unfold and all walk away with a completely different understanding depending on their viewpoint. We were challenged to think, are we standing at the right perspective for the issues that haunt our own self? Are we giving something in our past too much weight that doesn’t even matter? Do we need to adjust our camera lens in which we view the world? Not one of us on this planet lives in the same world. We live on the same planet, but not the same world. We each walk through with a different understanding of how things work and why we are here. The biggest take away I got from this portion was that life is not happening TO us; its happening FOR us- And that is the camera angle I want to always see the world and remember when I am facing tough times or moments.

               We were challenged in finding a word that we can carry with us the rest of 2020. A word that we can pull up in times of great need to help us get through. A word to remind our self WHO WE ARE and who we WANT TO BE and who we need to always reach to be. The word is supposed to scare us, not be a complacent, easily attainable word. I struggled with this at first, tossing around a few. I liked ‘ambitious’, ‘autonomous’, ‘adaptable’, ‘audacious’, (for some reason I had a thing with “A” words I guess). But as much as I liked them, none of them felt right enough to be *my* word, a word I love enough that I could get tattooed on me if I wanted. But then today, I saw a word and I knew it was mine.

EXTRAORDINARY

adjective

adjective:extra-ordinary

1.      very unusual or remarkable.

Synonyms: remarkable, exceptional, amazing, astonishing, astounding, marvelous, wonderful, sensational, stunning, incredible, unbelievable, miraculous, phenomenal, prodigious, spectacular, striking, outstanding, momentous, impressive, singular, signal, preeminent, memorable, unforgettable, never to be forgotten, unique, arresting, eye-catching, conspicuous, noteworthy, notable, great, out of the ordinary, unusual, uncommon, rare, surprising, curious, strange, odd, peculiar, uncanny, unco, fantastic, terrific, tremendous, stupendous, awesome, amazeballs, out of this world, unreal, wondrousremarkable, exceptional, amazing, astonishing, astounding, marvelous, wonderful, sensational, stunning, incredible, unbelievable, miraculous, phenomenal, prodigious, spectacular, striking, outstanding, momentous, impressive, singular, signal, preeminent, memorable, unforgettable, never to be forgotten, unique, arresting, eye-catching, conspicuous, noteworthy, notable, great, out of the ordinary, unusual, uncommon, rare, surprising, curious, strange, odd, peculiar, uncanny, unco, fantastic, terrific, tremendous, stupendous, awesome, amazeballs, out of this world, unreal, wondrous

I want to strive to be extraordinary for Abigail. An extraordinary mom. An extraordinary wife. An extraordinary sister. An extraordinary student. An extraordinary employee. This is my word!

            We were also challenged to face our past by thinking about writing our story. By deluging our memories, traumas, life on paper we can look at it from a new perspective and find patterns in our own life. By identifying past patterns and digging up hidden memories or parts about ourselves we forgot, we can enter the new time of our lives armed with new forces and plans to combat those patterns. Also, just being able to share your story in complete vulnerability is healing. I do want to try this and hope to start that project in 2020. As Ruthie Lindsey quoted, “If we don’t own our story, it owns us”.

            Rachel Hollis taught us about our fears of failure, about how they are all rooted into three main categories: Loss of security, loss of love, or loss of pride. Most fears all end up trickling down to a true root of loss of pride, but those are the fears we need to move past. We are not afraid of failing, we are afraid of people watching us fail. But what we really need to walk away with is failure is not something to be afraid of at all, and in fact we should chase failure and embrace it. Failure is a part of the journey, not the end. If you set out to write a book, or create a sculpture, or build a house, and everything was okay, you got to the end with no setbacks… Do you think that’s your best book? Best house? Best sculpture? Or how about the book you rewrote 100 times, or the house that fell over mid build and you made a new plan and made it even better the second or even third time? Failure’s are not the end. They are just curveballs we can use as momentum to keep going. They happen for us, not to us- and we are meant to walk with information to improve what we are trying to do. Failure is only failure if we give up. Rachel also engrained in us that if we compare ourselves to others, we will always feel like failures. If you want to start flipping houses and think “I will never be as good as Joanna Gaines”, but what you don’t realize when you have those thoughts is Joanna Gaines wasn’t amazing when she started out either. She probably had an idol she looked up to for inspiration but she carved her own path and kept on going and did it anyway. Do you think J.K. Rowling’s first copy of Harry Potter was any good? Probably not! Did Michael Phelps start out an award winning swimmer? No! No one starts out as perfect, they get there little by little. We SEE them as perfect because that’s when they are entering the public eye. Don’t believe it! Fears that are destroyed come back as confidence.

            The second day (yeah, that  ^ was all day one !) was all about owning our present. Owning who we are today and what we are doing about it. About how “Goal weights” are garbage and we need to throw those away. She encourages daily habits instead which will foster a healthy state which is all we should care about- taking care of our body that has taken care of us- not punishing it into a size 2 jean. If we don’t take care of what’s going on in our mind first, then even getting into a size 2 jean still won’t be enough. It will never be enough until we fix our mind. I have a lot of work to do with this mindset and it will be a daily struggle but the best thing I can do in the struggle is to adapt these positive habits, bless my body with good food, and every time I have a negative thought about myself I need to replace it with a positive one. With the help of Amy Porterfield on stage, we all came to the realization that people that feel like they are not enough on the outside (or too much on the outside- boobs are too big, our stomach is too big, arms too big, whatever) we compensate for these negative things by wearing more expensive clothes, or clothes meant to hide those flaws, or we compensate with our personality but those personality traits are FAKE. That’s not who we are and if we show up how we truly are, body flaws and real personality, that is the best thing we can do for us and our peers, for our children. Rachel’s powerful slogan is “Move your body- Change your mind”. Its not “CHANGE your body, just MOVE your body.” Know the difference. To truly love myself as is today, no matter what. To love my body for not just how it looks but what it can DO. To thank my body every day for what it can do. To love it every day for continuing to beat my heart every day and send blood to my brain. To be able to walk. To be able to hold my baby, to climb stairs, to play with my baby. It is an amazing body and I am making the next right steps to truly love it for what it is. We finished that segment with a hard exercise. We had to write down all the crazy things we hate about our bodies and then had to turn to our neighbor, a stranger we did not know, and tell her all the things we just wrote down. And I kid you not, we all wrote down the same things and yet thought each other were all beautiful!! I told my neighbor that I hated how big my arms were and how I couldn’t wave without them flabbing in the wind and she said she hated hers so much she got surgery, now she can’t raise them above her head and she regrets it every second. What is that?? It was an exercise I will never forget.

            Guest speaker Trent Shelton came and inspired us to adjust our mindset. To stop talking ourselves out of greatness. Instead of talking myself out of reaching for something because I am not qualified, instead replace that with a FACT of why I am qualified. To stop giving other people permission to place limitations on my own life- regardless of how close those people are to me, they are not me. To stop taking advice from the wrong people. To stop accepting the “cant’s” in your life- “I can’t do that, I can’t do this”. We can literally do anything. With research, determination and practice, we can do anything. People will judge us no matter what, its just human nature. They will judge us and hate us even when WE think we are our best selves or our worst selves. So, if they are gonna judge no matter what, why not just be our best selves then? My biggest takeaway from Trent, was he asked us to think about- when someone is around me, how do I influence them? If people hang out with me or have even a small conversation with me, do they walk away motivated and feeling good? Or do they walk away drained and feeling negative about whatever we were talking about? That really sunk in with me because it is easy to forget that what we go through does affect others. The way we carry ourselves and present ourselves to our family, friends and coworkers does affect others. Its so easy to think “I’m not doing great and not living my best life but its okay I’m just going to internalize it all and everything’s fine and no one will ever know”- but in reality- those people are spewing out sadness, negativity, doubts, and putting down others to bring others to their own level. So this may have been my biggest motivator yet- is that I want people to walk away from interactions with me feeling good about themselves, good about their space, their day, their world, the task they have to do- not dread, fear, insecurity. This is going to take a LOT of work! Its easy to complain to others when others are complaining to you and having a mini vent session! Others are complaining, you want to fit in and so you join in with the pool of complaints, so you feel connected! 100% the easier path. But nothing great in life is easy. I have to do the hard work to get on a higher path, and hopefully I will start noticing that I don’t as often hear negativity around me anyway because I have inspired others.

            On our last day we transitioned to the concept of owning our future and planning out how to turn out crazy dreams into a reality. One way that Rachel Hollis herself has done this is she started writing down her dreams every day as if they’ve already happened (past tense). If you write them down as goals, it scares your brain because they seem too big, too insurmountable, too lofty. But if you write them down as if they already happened, your brain gets used to it and even starts to accept it as reality. Then you can push past the fear and start living the life as if these things are true and make concrete steps to make them a reality. So, I am going to lay it out there and be really vulnerable. She challenged us to write down our dreams for where we want to be in 10 years, no matter how crazy or ridiculous they may seem. So here goes!

1. I am a published author and N.Y. Times Best Seller and have gone on book tours and have seen the difference my book has made for other people.

2.    I am a successful and well known and sought after real estate photographer.

3.   I have written and sold scripts for multiple television shows and movies.

4.   I travel the world and show my daughter new cultures- and we fly first class.

5.  I solve world problems working hand in hand with world wide organizations like NASA, WHO, CDC, Google, Microsoft, etc. using predictive analytics and machine learning.

6. I speak worldwide to audiences to tell them about #5.

7. I am a successful innovator, having created multiple inventions and ideas and worked with big home and health technology companies such as Microsoft, Johnson& Johnson, Google, Apple.

8.  I have a successful podcast with a huge following, number one in its category.

9.  I have my own business and company with employees that has turned one of my business ideas into a reality.

10.  I work with big tech companies on developing new uses for virtual & augmented reality that’s used not for gaming but for training people and for therapy. 

Ahh! There they are, some of my crazy dreams! I don’t know how I will maintain a life where all of those are true at once but that’s beside the point!

            Dave Hollis came to speak and was excellent. He gives a much different perspective than Rachel as he comes from a past of being afraid to change and fearing who is wife was becoming on her own personal growth journey. Fear of losing her. So, he coached us in some new ways about how not to let others get in our way on our future journey. He warned us the people we hold closest and love the most will try first to get in our way; to say our dreams are too big and unattainable, to say we won’t do it and why don’t we just keep doing what we’ve always done because it’s working? They will attempt to keep us at their level with them because they don’t also want to go on this journey at this time but that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge that and still go on our own journey. He also challenged us to accept the fact that we get in our own way and need to change our relationships with social media. He challenged us to accept reality that when we are browsing facebook, Instagram, snapchat, whatever- if we see something that makes us feel uncomfortable, less than, smaller, negative in any way- UNFOLLOW THEM. Facebook has this thing where you don’t have to unfriend them and make it awkward (unless you want to), but you can just unfollow them and remove them from your newsfeed! On Instagram, no one will notice if you don’t follow them anymore. Remove the beautiful models that make YOU feel LESS THAN THEM because they are posting fake pictures of themselves because THEY are insecure! Remove people that make you feel like less of a mom or less of a wife. Remove things you see that make you upset in any way! Unfollow unfollow unfollow! And stop watching the news if it makes you upset! There are new ways now to stay connected to the news you DO care about without having to sit through stories of rape, abuse, murder, etc. Get that crap out of your morning routine! I subscribe to an app called “Medium” that allows you to pick what topics you enjoy and they send you emails every day with GOOD articles about these topics. Do not let room in for negativity. And don’t worry, if a huge world event is happening- you will still know.

            Dave also challenged us to change our relationship with our calendar. It should be reflective of our values and our visions, not obligations and things we do not enjoy. Not things that aren’t helping us get to that 10 year vision. He said something that really stuck with me- “When someone asks you to do something – if its not a HELL YEAH, then it is a HELL NO.” Period!

            Stacey Flowers came on to coach us on who we surround ourselves with and why we do what we do. She gave us a metaphor based on her years as a waitress. Women go to a steakhouse and want steak. We order a beautiful steak and can’t wait for it to come. We wait the 20 minutes and the waitress comes back and brings all our friend’s plates and gives us…… a chicken. We didn’t order a chicken, we ordered the steak we came for. She said there are four types of women. The first kind immediately says, “I didn’t order the chicken, I ordered the steak!” The waitress apologizes profusely and offers to go replace it but the woman says no, no no, I will just eat it, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.  It will be great, the chicken looks great. So she eats the chicken but the whole time is sad she didn’t get the steak she came for. The second woman says to the waitress, “how dare you bring this chicken, I ordered the steak! You got it wrong! I am standing up for myself and showing you how wrong you are!” The waitress apologizes and offers to replace it but the woman does not want to be further inconvenienced by waiting another 20 minutes and says NO, she will EAT THIS CHICKEN but she will complain to her friends the entire time. The third woman won’t say anything. She doesn’t want to cause a fuss so the waitress doesn’t even know a mistake was made! The woman just eats the chicken in silence and is sad she didn’t get the steak she came for! The fourth woman- she sees the chicken being handed to her and she politely tells the waitress, “I am sorry, but I ordered the steak.” And she waits the 20 minutes again for her steak to come because that is what she came for and that is worth waiting for. Now, which woman are you? The metaphor here is that the steak, the steak is our best self- it’s the person we want to be that we need to put in the hard work for (i.e. the extra 20 minute wait) but too many of us just accept the chicken because its easy. It won’t cause a fuss. It’s not an inconvenience. It’s easier than waiting for what I really want. So, start waiting for the steak!

Overall, I took away from this weekend five main points:

1.     I thought my dreams had an expiration date, but they don’t.

2.     I can figure ANYTHING out if I know my why and if I put the effort in and keep showing up, and keep trying.

3.     All women have the same fears and insecurities about themselves and turns out no one is judging you for how you look, they’re too focused on how they look!

4.     If someone has an opinion about you or something you’re doing and you don’t like it, who the F cares? Move on!

5.     Every experience that we have had and have every day, *Every little thing* has happened to us for a reason. Good, bad, traumatic, whatever- we have been put through these experiences to teach us something. We have survived. We have come out stronger and we are still here. Ever since returning I see the beauty in more things and can more easily pick out the new patterns I learned in other things I see now, i.e. TV shows, other peoples content, songs, movies, etc. Positivity is everywhere as long as you are open to seeing it.

            I really did think my dreams had an expiration date and I’m starting to see now that dude, I am only a THIRD of the way through life and I have so much more time. I have accomplished SO MUCH in the last 10 years and cannot wait to see where the next 10 will bring me. When I was a teenager/young twenties I had a lofty goal thinking I was going to be “the next big writer with a best seller and my selling point was that I was so young and boy look how talented she is and yet so young!” But now in my 30s I have subconsciously felt like a failure because I could no longer have that dream of people shocked at how such a good book could come from a “young” writer. But GIRL people publish their first book at the age of retirement! It is not over! Does it matter if I had written an amazing book at the age of 22 vs the age of 32, if its amazing either way? No! The point is that it’s amazing, and it will be written when its meant to be written. Life is not happening TO me, it’s happening FOR me. The book will come! The dreams will come.

            Ladies & Gents, I wish I could have summarized every single thing I learned and took away but ya’ll, these are just the highlights!! There was SO MUCH content jam packed into 3 days. If you have the means and ever get the chance to go to one of these conferences, I highly recommend to go, just for the experience. That being said, I am now re-listening to Rachel Hollis’ book (Girl, Wash your Face) and have been listening to her podcasts, and a lot of the same content I heard at the conference is in her other content as well. But the conference does give you something you can’t buy at a store- the sense of community, the participation factor, showing up, dancing with 4,000 women, being really vulnerable to present your true self in front of total strangers.


Thank you for reading!

Here are some pictures throughout the conference: