When I was a kid, the Lolly Dolly was my favourite toy.
I slept with it. I took it in the car. It even went to doctor's appointments with me.
Being born with severe clubbed feet requires casting, bracing, and luckily no surgery, but lots of doctor's visits before the age of 5.
5 years of wear and tear on a doll can make it pretty grimy. One day my parents were acting pretty weird. I had my smelly, dusty, dirty Lolly Dolly under my arm, when all of a sudden my mom was smiling ear to ear.
She pulled out a NEW Lolly Dolly and handed it to me.
My parent's stood. Waiting.
I eyed it up and down. Set aside my old Lolly Dolly, and whipped the new one halfway across the room!
NOPE. BYE FELICIA. I WAS HAVING NO PART OF IT.
I picked up my old ratty one, screamed, " I DON'T WANT A NEW ONE!" and walked away.
My parents also told me that when I was a baby, the doctor put his cold stethoscope on my bare chest, I ripped it out of his ears and threw that across the room too.
I had no problem showing what I liked, and more importantly didn't like.
I now see this echoed in my own son, Oliver who's 6. He doesn't sugarcoat his words. He doesn't dim his emotions.
He hasn't learned or been told to "tone it down."
He's hasn't been told that he's "too much."
As I got older, that was the message I heard.
Too loud, too fierce, too competitive, too bossy,
Then too fat after I stuffed down my emotions and stopped speaking up for myself.
Until one day I decided to rebel. To love myself just as I was. I stopped wearing so much makeup. I threw out the scale.
I said,
"I don't like that. I won't accept that. No."
Maybe it's time to stop dimming our light, sugarcoating our words, and saying yes when we want to say no. Maybe it's time to stop trying to say the right thing or saying nothing in fear of judgement.
When I look back at my tweens,teens, high school and college, I don't remember that girl who threw the doctor's stethoscope halfway across the room when she felt something she didn't like.
I don't remember the girl who threw the Lolly Dolly across the room, who didn't choose the bright, shiny and new version, always thinking the grass was greener on the other side.
But I do now. My 30's have been a decade of reckoning, rebelling, unlearning, sitting in the grime and the muck and knowing that something beautiful comes out of the same shell. You don't just toss it away. You upgrade the inside.
Where do you start?
1. Stop wearing the weight of others expectations.
You decide how, when, and what you want in life. Where you spend your time, energy, and money. What you want to speak about, teach about, write about. When I started sharing content about upgrading our self-talk, story, and business strategy, I got more unsubscribes from the newsletter and more of the right clients buying courses and coaching packages.
2. The right story is the one you don't want to tell.
The best story telling is from a resolved place, instead of a dumping victim place, and that takes work to get there. I wish I had gone to therapy sooner! Now I can re-live a story and tell a story in the moment, instead of manufacturing how I want you to feel. Take your pain and make it power.
3. Get unhinged.
I used to carry most of my weight in my abdomen. I stuffed it down. If you want to scream, scream. Cry, cry. Get pissed. Celebrate loud and proud. The world needs more women stepping into their power and being themselves and men getting it done like they know how. We need both. We need creators, innovators, unreasonable people standing up for what's right and creating communities that matter.
And once that's all released and sorted,
Get to work. Launch something in the next 90 days.
"Until a sale is made, no dollar is earned and no life is changed."
~Richard Rossi
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