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The key to thriving as women in business? Connect and collaborate, not compete.  Why are we stronger together? There's this outdated belief that women have to compete with each other in order to get ahead. That's why we have terms like "crabs in a bucket". If the crabs are in a bucket and one of the crabs tries to get out, the others will pull it down. That's why we also have the Tall Poppy Syndrome, where the ones that stand out will be the ones that are cut down or attacked. In a little bit, I'm going to share another visual that I have around women competing for the same spots. Society has also taught us to believe that there's:
But really, that couldn't be further from the truth because when we connect and collaborate instead of competing, we all rise together - we all get to have success, maybe not at the exact same time, but in some way or another, we will succeed. Research backs that up, which is amazing because women who support other women are more successful, more fulfilled, and create a bigger impact in their industries, whatever that industry is. When I chose collaboration over competition One time that I chose to collaborate over compete was when someone else in my community started to do collaborative books, just like I was already doing collaborative books, and she was hosting women's events, and I was hosting women's events. We were very similar.  When we let the walls fall down, we found out very quickly that we both had the same struggles, the same challenges, and we had the same set of morals, values, beliefs, and we both chose collaboration. We've been in each other's books multiple times. We have supported each other's events, each other's endeavours, and we talk maybe once or twice a year just to be like, "Where are you up to and how are things going?" I tell you, we both got to move ahead and move up because of that relationship. Why the Competition Mindset holds us back But you may be thinking, "Yeah, but Diane, I see people online, what they're doing," and "Someone else got ahead of me at work, they got the promotion, and I didn't." There are certain circumstances where you'll get burned, or there is only one spot, but I want you to think about the competition mindset. We don't want it to hold us back. You may have heard about a scarcity mindset or a fixed mindset, rather than an abundance or a growth mindset respectively, but a scarcity mindset is telling us that there's only room for a few women to make it to the top. But in reality, the more we help each other, the bigger we all win, and the bigger space that we take up. It's not women competing against women, it should be women competing against others for the same positions or the same awards or whatever it may be. According to a Harvard Business Review, research shows that women are often overlooked for promotions due to bias. But when women sponsor and advocate for each other, leadership opportunities increase. The more women are talking about other women, and especially in those right rooms, that's where the opportunities for these women will increase, and that's hopefully how we create gender parity. There's supposedly the belief that we won't have gender parity or gender equality until 2158, and if we want more women to be in there, we have to work together to get each other in. Maybe you help someone else, and they get ahead of you, but then they're going to reach out and bring you up. I want us to change how society is around it because the biggest barrier to women's success isn't other women, it's outdated systems and limiting beliefs. Sadly, we see in some countries that outdated systems are coming back. Things that we've already fought for are getting removed, taken away, and hopefully these are just moments in time that they are just because of certain people and the equal right will be brought back in. The other image I wanted to share is a lot of times I work with women who are female leaders in corporate, and one of these times I was brought in to do my Dynamic You Program, and one of the participants said to me, "Diane, I'm not going to be able to be honest and truthful and share my feelings or any vulnerabilities because other women will use it against me." This was really sad because this was a male-dominated industry, a great company who felt that they were going to put together this women's networking group for their staff that are female. I thought that was amazing. You would think you'd all get together and support each other, but she told me how it really was. The image it gave me is like we're playing musical chairs, and women are all going around these chairs, or there are even men going around the chairs, too. Let's say there are 10 chairs, and eight of them are blue and two of them are pink. When the music stops, all the women fight for the two pink chairs because they think that those are the only chairs they can sit in. Rather than feeling they had the right to step into blue chairs too, we as women fight against each other, instead of taking any of the chairs. Shifting your mindset What are you going to do? The answer is - Shift your mindset.  Get away from a scarcity mindset and instead of wondering;
How about if you said, "How can we win together?" Or "How can I support something that she's wanting, and then how could she support me with something that I'm wanting?" The power of connection We need to find a network. We need to uplift our network. According to Business Wire, 80% of women leaders credit networking as a key driver of their success. If you're not part of these networking groups, women's groups, co-ed groups, and you're not building those relationships, you're leaving opportunities on the table. I've had so many doors opened for me and so many opportunities given to me through the people I have met. When they're thinking of who to give a speaking engagement to, or who to refer a client to, they can only do that if they know and trust you. How to connect with women who lift you up Join networks, mastermind groups, professional networks, women-focused business communities. Some will be free. Some will be low-cost. Some will be a higher investment. Even though I said cost, it is an investment. But if it's not giving you an ROI, and you've properly committed, then it may be time to move on to something else. If you currently are in something that is not fruitful, move on, but only if you have actually committed to that group, you've shown up, you've done the relationship building and it’s still not paying off. You can also go on to LinkedIn or other social media. You can connect. You can comment. You can support others. I always pay attention to the people who support me, and I'm like, "Whoa, look at that person. They're liking my stuff. They're commenting." You can also just attend events, workshops, or retreats because you never know who you're going to meet. I've met people at soccer, at the Comedy Club, at church, at so many different places because I was open to learning more about others. Think: Is there someone that you've been seeing online or through some group? My challenge to you as an action step is reach out to them and have a conversation. You never know where it's going to lead. I actually did this recently. I've been reaching out to some women in other countries to connect, to have them on my podcast, to see what synergy is there. It felt a little awkward giving video messages to them to be like, "Hi, you don't know me, but I want to connect with you and maybe have you on my podcast." It felt really awkward. Tell you, I was nervous about doing it. But what's the worst that can happen? Ghost you or say no? I just had a beautiful conversation with an amazing lady, and you'll probably hear her in an upcoming episode. Collaboration over competition What do I mean about collaboration? Some of the biggest businesses and movements have been built through collaboration. They both have networks, and then by combining, they get to cross-pollinate and then cross-harvest with both of them expanding their network and their reach. Now, there are so many different ways you can collaborate. #1: You can partner on events, programs, or business ventures, instead of just trying to do everything solo. If you don't feel like you want to go into something and have a 50/50 contribution to an output, then maybe you could just refer. #2: You could have people that you refer to. If someone's not the right fit for you, and you find that you keep getting a certain person coming to you - for example, I don't really do career counseling. I don't write resumes or cover letters for people. I have someone who I pass to for this need. Pass them to a woman who is right. If you're like, "Well, I don't know." Well, go find them, ask on LinkedIn who is someone who's great at XYZ. #3: Another thing you could do is co-create content. You could do a podcast swap. You could host on each other's webinars. You could have a summit and bring people on or be on theirs. You could guest blog. You could be on their YouTube channel. You can do an IG live together. So many different options or you start your own mastermind, or bring trust or think tank, where you bring together a small group of women who are going to share advice, resources, and opportunities. Mindset shift: Stop thinking about other women's success taking away from yours. Instead, look for where you can collaborate instead. Wrapping Up As I wrap up, I just want to say, let's break the cycle. It's so easy to follow and fall into comparison mode, and I can be so guilty of that, and I compare myself, and it sucks. It feels bad, and you feel jealous or envious or you beat yourself up. But let's flip that. Let's flip that into support mode, collaborative mode, connection mode, and maybe you do start lifting other women up in order to be able to investment in them. Really, with us just celebrating International Women's Day, I want us to think about how we can rise together. Imagine a world where women collaborated instead of competed. Imagine a world where we connected rather than competed. If we could amplify other people's voices. That's why I have guests on the Dynamic Women Podcast. That's why I have my collaborative books because I want to give a platform for other women's voices, words and expertise that I don't have. If we choose to do that, then that's the type of world we're going to create. Because when we build real connections, real collaborations, we all thrive.
The final challenge I'm going to give you today is: find one woman that you can connect with or support and send them a message, make an introduction, start the conversation, send them a video message over social media as I did, and then invite them to a Zoom chat, just to get to know each other. It might feel awkward, but hey, if that's the worst thing that you're doing right now, it could end up with nothing. It could end up with a no, or it could end up with a really cool connection or collaboration. Give it a go, and then let me know how it goes. Send me an email [email protected] or find me on one of your favourite social platforms and let me know if you did this challenge, or any of the little forward actions that I said throughout this blog, and let me know how it goes. If you feel like you want to talk to me about being a collaborative author, about being a podcast guest, please just know that is for women only, because it is the Dynamic Women Podcast and the Dynamic Women Leadership Secrets book. Just reach out to me [email protected]. I'd be happy to have a chat with you about next steps. Until next time. Stay dynamic, everyone. Read more here:
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Shockingly, we will never, in our day, see gender equality. But rather than focusing on that hard truth, I will share in this blog what we can do and how, thankfully, the theme of International Women's Day could actually propel us forward.  It is International Women's Day on March 8 every year. It's a really important day. I hope you celebrate it by attending or listening to some sort of International Women's Day event. There are so many all over the place. I'm usually booked and overcommitted to too many events this year because my family has a major trip planned I have decided to step back and focus on them. It’s a day to celebrate the achievements we have had so far, as there are many strides that women have made in leadership roles and for our rights. The theme for this year is Accelerating Action. As stated in their website, “At the current rate of progress, it will take until 2158 which is roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity, according to the data from the World Economic Forum.” The scariest part is it seems like we're going backwards in a lot of countries in the world, taking away women's rights that we have earned, that we have fought for, not me specifically or necessarily, but we as a gender have fought for decades, to try to be able to vote, wear what we want and have an education. Sadly, many of these pieces are being eradicated, are being pulled back, and it's horrible. Continuing from the IWD website, “Focusing on the need to Accelerate Action emphasizes the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality. It calls for increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers and biases that women face, both in personal and professional spheres.” A lot of times this is pointed to the Western world, and I will acknowledge the privilege that I have being a Caucasian woman in Canada. For all the women in other countries where women have less rights or even no rights, my heart aches for you. For the women in the same country as me, who are marginalized, my BIPOC communities, I stand with you. As women and as a gender, we need to break these barriers and injustices. How to Accelerate Action There are many ways we can accelerate action. There's actually a list on their website. So for my piece I'm going to talk a little bit more about women redefining success and leadership. #1: Breaking the Glass Ceiling There is something called the glass ceiling. Here's a stat that I pulled from wbcollaborative.org. As of 2024, women hold approximately 7.8% of CEO positions in S&P 500 companies, a slight decrease from 8.2% in 2023. That's pretty sad. Less than 10% of these CEO positions are held by women. How are we going to change the economy, industries, business, and society, if we don't have as many women in these roles?  When I was preparing last year for my International Women's Day event for the LEAP conference by Women in Construction, I pulled up more facts around the broken rung phenomenon, and this actually is where I focus my energy more than breaking the glass ceiling because I think that's been around for decades. People are like, “Well, I can't get to the top.” The reason is the first rung of the ladder is broken, meaning you can't even get up the ladder to break the glass ceiling because you can't get past one of the lower rungs. If you can't get past that, you can't get up the ladder. Stats from mckinsey.com say, “Despite these advancements, women often face challenges such as gender bias and the "broken rung" phenomenon, where for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women are promoted.” This is just for the manager roles. Not even in CEO roles. That’s much less. That number just gets lower and lower, all the down to less than 10%. If we can just focus on how we move ourselves up to manager, getting sponsors in the company, meaning people who will vouch for you, people who will be in the boardroom and say your name, people who will mentor you to that next position, and people who have the power to choose the woman when there is an option. A lot of times, because I coach women, I talk about taking these things back into your own hands, seeing how you can fill in that rung or basically jump past it. It might mean you have to go to a different company to be able to do that. But the onus shouldn't always be on the woman to figure out how to get up the ladder. I think it should be those who are in the company with more authority in the organizational chart of the company, people above them, there should be succession planning and building of leaders, younger leaders, inexperienced leaders, building them up in equality of women and men because we lose a lot of women in the workforce due to pregnancies and having children, and while that's fantastic they are having a family because they have the right to do that. Women are totally able to make their choices for themselves, but we need to put more energy into them getting up the ladder. #2: Shifting from the ‘Shoulds’ to True Success The second thing beyond breaking the glass ceiling and being able to get past that broken rung is shifting from these ‘shoulds’ to true success. When we think of traditional metrics of success, we think of titles, salaries, promotions, and then we think of what you can do because you have more money.
But these ideas are evolving as I speak more about “let's switch from really measuring our life according to success”, and “let's measure our life according to satisfaction”. I believe that and I'm seeing it in a lot of the younger generation, they're valuing their life balance and their mental health and freedom a little bit more than maybe my generation or those ahead of me. We valued loyalty, commitment, hustle and not letting anything faze us. We stick to what we say we will do no matter what. But many women are now prioritizing purpose-driven leadership and values-based business models. I love that, and a lot of companies are doing really well when they are value-based. It’s not just about making a quick buck. It might be about giving back to charity, about building a sustainable or an ethical business, about hiring local, about making and producing local purpose-driven leadership. It might be around actually supporting the customer and the client, rather than just increasing the profit margins. What we can do in our own lives is shift from those ‘shoulds’, like “I should do this, I should do that” to “What do I really, really want” and stop measuring our lives according to success and start measuring our lives according to satisfaction. I've been preaching that forever, and I'll continue to preach it. It's a simple, yet powerful shift. When you wake up tomorrow, ask yourself, “What do I want? What do I want today?” You may be like, “Well, I'm already committed all day.” But maybe you have 10 minutes, and what do you want in that time? Then what do you want three months from now? What do you want in your free time on the weekend? What do you want a year from now? What do you want five years from now? What will truly make you happy, not just what will make you successful or be perceived successful from external achievements? #3: Leading with confidence and authenticity The last piece is leading with confidence and authenticity. There are so many different leadership styles, whether you are a servant leader or believe in service leadership. BTW we have an author speaking about that in our Dynamic Women Leadership Secrets book. It’s important to embrace all these different leadership styles. This is going to help us as women to lead more effectively and fulfill our careers.  We're not just stepping into the shoes of potentially the man before us, or the woman who had to act like a man to get into that position before us, we get to show up in our leadership style, and we have very special leadership styles as women, and so we need to tap into those qualities and really just show up as who we are. Even if people think we're a little bit too much, let's take up some space because it's obvious in the world that we have to be honest and blunt and bold and be not aggressive, but assertive in how we show up. That's something you can do every day: speak to what is important to you. If we go back to the values-based business model, purpose-driven leadership, we can also have that for our lives. What is our value-based life? What is our purpose-driven life? How are we going to show up that way? And really focusing for ourselves and for the teams we're growing, or for the employees we're leading, or for our even just our family and friends. What strategies can we use to leverage emotional intelligence? EI is huge for being able to know ourselves and to be able to show up, honouring how we feel, being aware and intuitive of that, and then taking the next step, not only for ourselves, but in our interaction with others. The other piece of leading with confidence and authenticity is to foster inclusive environments. We've heard recently about the US government not honouring DEI anymore, and whatever you believe around culture or gender or whatever it may be, we need to foster inclusivity. Even if everyone is exactly the same and everyone likes each other and there are no major differences, we still need to make sure everyone feels included. Now that doesn't mean that if you're a solo business owner, you need to make sure everyone in the world sees themselves as your client or your customer. No, I mean the environments that we're creating need to feel inclusive, that people are welcome to be there, and if you’ll make a group that is just for your culture or your community or your faith, that's okay. But if someone is curious and wants to find out more, do you open the door to them? Do you have a loving conversation? Do you allow curiosity? If it’s a workplace with a lot of different kinds of people, do people feel supported? Do people feel heard? Do people feel like they belong and are honoured, supported, and cheered on for their own skills and talents and ways of being? Wrapping Up When we think back, Accelerating Action means, let's speed this up.
I trust if you've read this far, you're on point with what I'm saying, and if this brings up for curiosity or confusion where you wonder, “I don't know how to do this piece. How do I take bold action? I don't know how to measure my life according to satisfaction, rather than success or whatever it may be” reach out to me [email protected]. Until next time, stay dynamic. Read my other blogs:
I’ve been hinting at this for weeks, and this week, I’m finally sharing my story of losing my spark and what it took to reignite it. As you’re reading this, ask yourself,
Because I'll tell you, the strongest people in your life, the ones who outwardly are doing really well, who are super confident, successful, driven, connected and have lots going on (have a really full life) could be the ones struggling, are depressed, the ones who have lost their spark.  This story, I’d say, is the first major time because anytime I’ve lost my spark since, I’ve been able to catch it. I've been able to know what it is. I'll explain a little bit why I didn't know I had lost my spark and the reasons why I didn't want to acknowledge it. How I lost my spark I'm now 45, and this was when I was about 28 years old. For years, I was in a constant cycle of checking boxes. I got the job I wanted, the home, the life, and success in all these different areas. On paper, everything looked great, so I had a good job, and I was engaged to be married, and we were planning on buying a home, and I was staying fit, had friends, and a loving family, and I was ticking off all the success boxes, but deep down, I felt empty. I was showing up every day. I was doing what was expected, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. I'd worked so hard to build this really successful life, a life that was supposed to feel fulfilling. I was doing everything right, but instead of feeling accomplished, I felt drained. I felt disconnected. I was really depressed, and I thought this is just maybe what life was to be like, "Oh, this is just how it is." Maybe there are not as many daily exciting things, or I'm not traveling, or whatever it was, but at the core of it, I felt unfulfilled and exhausted. I was hiding my true feelings just about how crummy I felt, and I was juggling everything. It's not that I necessarily was overworked or overwhelmed, but I was juggling everything, keeping up appearances. But inside, I felt like I was fading. It was like my spark had disappeared. I didn't know how to explain it. But no matter what I achieved, I couldn't bring it back. When I was little, I did well in school. I was the president of the clubs, the captain of sports teams. I knew a lot of people. I wasn't necessarily friends with everyone, but I knew a lot of people, and I knew how to perform at a high level. I knew how to be driven, how to achieve, how to get things done. I was independent, self-reliable, all these great qualities, which I'm sure a lot of other successful women who feel this way have also been in that situation, but I couldn't bring the good feelings back. No matter what I tried, I couldn't bring back that spark. I was pouring all of my energy into things that truly didn't fulfill me. I didn't know at the time. What would I do? I would work harder. I would try to be everything to everyone. I was numbing that emptiness, that void that I just couldn't fill. I was numbing it with distractions, things like wine, snacks. I kept thinking,
I thought the happiness “would come when”, and the problem with "would come when" is that the goalposts just kept moving. I’d say, “I got there,” and then I would feel empty and would set my focus on the next goal, "Okay, well, now it's when I achieve that, or when I get this." I actually thought I could figure it out on my own. I was doing all the things and keeping up appearances, as I said, but it wasn't until my friend pulled me aside at work and said, "Diane, you've lost your spark." I was like, "What?" "Yeah, you've lost your spark." I said to her, "You can see that?" She said, "Yeah, what's going on with you?" Then I started bawling because I was like, "Ah, the cat's out of the bag. I'm not hiding it as well as I thought." But I felt wrong for being unhappy, like I was super ungrateful for the life that I had at that time, for all the things I had succeeded at. I thought, "How dare I say that I'm not happy? How dare I say that I'm struggling with all the success I had?" Some of you might think, "Oh, first world problems, Diane.” But when we have our basic needs met, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and then we have even our wants met, none of it matters if, at the core, we are feeling off. From her pointing this out, realizing at that point that I couldn't do it all on my own, I decided to do something completely out of my comfort zone. I hired a coach. Now, when you think,
But the thing was, I wasn't good at being vulnerable because I was always in these leadership positions. It's true. It's lonely at the top because I didn't feel like I had people that I could open up to and confide in and speak my truth about how I was really feeling. It was super strange at first sharing with my life coach, and I was in my pragmatic, analytical brain focusing on solutions, "Okay, so we're going to do this and this and this and this." I thought it was all about goal setting and such, but it wasn't. I wasn't used to being vulnerable like that. I wasn't used to admitting that I needed help, beyond the help that everyone would need. But inside, something told me that this was what I needed, and that decision changed everything. How coaching helped me Working with my coach gave me a perspective that I could not see for myself. It was like someone held up the mirror to my face and said, "This is exactly what's holding you back, and here's how we're going to move forward." That's what you need in these times when you've lost your spark where you're like, "Where am I? Who am I? What do I like anymore?" That's the time when I started reconnecting with the person I used to be. That vibrant, passionate version of me that I thought I'd lost because I looked back and said, "Wow, who is that person that did that? Who is that person that just said, 'Oh, I'm going to go live and work in Japan, and I'm going to go travel here. I'm going to jump out of a plane.'” Who is that wild, carefree, life-loving person? I understand that every day is not travel and moving to another country and jumping out of a plane. But I didn't want to feel stuck anymore, and so coaching helped me to stop feeling bad. For the first time in a long time I actually felt alive again because it seemed to go over probably a couple of years. I've had this happen to me, a bunch of times throughout my career, where I've had these moments of like, "Where did my spark go?" I start to feel like it's Groundhog Day and so disconnected. From that, I've been able to create a life that feels aligned with who I really am, not just what looks good on paper. I've learned how to prioritize myself, set boundaries and focus on what truly brings joy to my life. If you're like, "Oh, I know those things. I know about setting boundaries, prioritizing myself and focusing on what brings me joy," but you're not implementing them - that's the thing. I knew a lot of things, as do you, but they’re no good, if you're not implementing them. There were a lot of things I didn't know. I didn't know about balancing your life in all 10 areas. I didn't know about measuring your life according to satisfaction. I didn't know about living more in alignment with my values, not my morals, but my values, the things that energetically are powerful for me and have resonance. Now, because of those things, my relationships are deeper, my energy is brighter, and I finally feel like I'm living more authentically. Then if you're like, "Well, but Diane, if you realized all of this at that point, then how do you keep losing your spark?" Well, what I see is there's a progression to who we are and what we do and how we develop. My goal is to be 1% better than the day before. When you keep moving up in your success levels, it's like new level, new devil. There are new challenges and new negatives and new feelings of pressure and responsibility and new titles you have to live up to, and new rules where you have to be not only the super woman, but the superhero where you do well in every area, plus you need to save everyone in every area that you're doing well. As you move up, there are new pressures, so you develop differently, and then you fill your time with different things. There are times when I've needed to reset, or there have been times, like after both kids, I had postpartum depression. During COVID, my father died. My whole business model changed from live events to online. After building my online business, my Facebook account was deactivated, so I lost all my Facebook ads, everything I was doing there, every picture I'd ever taken and posted on Facebook. My kids were at home during COVID, and I had long COVID. One of the times, I coughed for eight months straight. That's another period of time where I lost my spark. Another time is when I filled my calendar with more analytical things, things around strategy and figuring things out. My coach called me out and said, "Diane, you are in the work boots, and you need to be back into the sparkly shoes." That rings true for our lives. It's about getting back into the joy and out of the dissonance, the things that are creating friction and sucking your energy. People have commented at different points in my life. Yes, my friend commented, "You've lost your spark," or "Something's off," or "Are you okay?" Then later they'll comment, "Wow, you have this special glow, this new energy about you. You seem to be doing exceptionally well." These sort of comments will come. Some of those comments still came when I had the mask on and was pretending everything was good. But when I've been able to flip it, there has been a glow. I'm in one of those glowy times right now. I am. Because I feel alive. I feel confident. I feel light again, like I'm not carrying the weight of the world anymore. In the no spark times, I felt like I was just surviving, like "I just had to get through the next day, and then I had to do it all over again." You've heard this before, go from surviving to thriving, but I did it in a way that feels true to me. I think that's most important. I see now that the spark actually was never fully gone. That's why I'm doing the ReIGNITE program because the spark is still in there. It's gone from a blaze to this tiny, little ember, and it's just buried under things like expectations, responsibilities, distractions, titles, lack of space, and overwhelm. What I needed wasn't more achievement or more things or more tasks or more material items, but I needed more alignment with what truly mattered to me, every single time. What got me here to where I am today, after each of these times, and what got me out of each of these sparks was just deciding that I was totally done with feeling empty and burnt out, that I made the decision to invest in myself by hiring a coach and take the steps to ReIGNITE that spark and rediscover the joy I had lost and the joy in the new version of me. The joy of a 25-year-old Diane to a 45-year-old Diane is very different. Before it was things like jumping out of a plane, bungee jumping, canyon swings, water rafting. These wild things. Now for me, it's different. It's African drumming, it's stand-up comedy, it's glassblowing, massages, time with friends, church. Totally different. What worked for me It’s really recognizing that something needs to change. Awareness is the first step, and I had to admit to myself that the way I was living wasn't working. Then I needed to reclaim my identity, not from this identity of what others put on me, or society put on me, or that I have just sort of ended up in, and I started focusing on who I really was and allowing that to come out.  I am a little bit feisty. I am a little bit edgy, but often when I can get into these places, I'm playing the perfectionist. I'm playing the goody-goody. I'm playing the person who doesn't make mistakes, and not because I'm hiding my mistakes, but because of the pressure. I get to not focus on these roles but instead focus on me and not just check the boxes. It's important that I really continue to make prioritizing myself so crucial. I learned how to say no, to set boundaries, to make space for things that bring me joy and energy, not just space for things that I've been requested to do, and it's so important for me to connect deeply with others. Just yesterday, I had what was to be an hour or two with one of my VA clients, and it ended up being like four hours of us connecting deeply. But that means that I need to always remember, don't hide behind that polished facade. I had to start building authentic, supportive relationships by being vulnerable. As I let go of perfectionism, I had to stop trying to do it all and instead focus on what truly aligned with my values and my desires. Also, stop measuring life according to success and instead focus on what brought me more satisfaction, which sometimes then doesn't bring accolades. If you’re reading this and feel like this is true for you, then let's talk. Because I believe you can do this, too. You can come out of that place where you've had a lack of spark. A short story about my client I should share a little story with you about one of my clients, who I'm going to call Jane. She really felt like she had lost herself, and she wanted to get her vibrant self back again. She came to me, super confused because, like me, she had a great partner, she was raising her kids, she was building a business, and yet she felt like something was missing. She said, "I don't know what it is," so similar situation to me, and she felt like something was off, like she lost herself in all the titles that she had, and she didn't feel anything lit her up anymore. Like, "What makes me happy? I have no idea." Basically, she was living in black and white, and she also seemed very flat. There was a heaviness, flatness to her. She definitely had lost her spark, but thankfully, through some coaching, we were able to uncover her spark again. We were able to get her back to her best self, not just herself, but to her best self, in under six weeks. This is why I created ReIGNITE, by the way, doors closed last Friday, depending on when you're reading this. Doors are closed. However, if you email me [email protected], I could open a spot for you, depending on where you're at. Share with me what’s going on for you. That's how I started with my coach. I poured my heart and soul into an email to her, and she was like, "I'm taking you on for sure." Anyway, let's go back to Jane. She was so much happier after, and it made her marriage improve. She showed up as a more engaged parent. She was more confident, so her business did better. The best part of all of that is when she said, "Diane, I feel like I'm living in colour again," and that's how it feels when you lose your spark. You're in black and white, and when it comes back, you're in colour. Wrapping Up That spark is there, right? It's still waiting for you to uncover it. If you have a friend in this situation, send them this blog for sure, and they can reach out to me as well. The key thing is to shift from that feeling of being unfulfilled or burnt out to a feeling of being alive and aligned. That's how you're going to have more success in life. You don't have to become someone new. You don't have to change everything about your life. You just really need to reconnect with who you are, and take the steps to bring your spark back. I know it's possible. I did it with the help of a coach, once, twice, three, four times over the years. It's a lot of years. 20 years that I have been losing my spark and then getting it back, and I continue to increase my success along the way. Share this blog with a friend who you think, "Yeah, maybe, she has lost her spark, and she needs to hear your message." If this resonates with you, reach out [email protected], no matter when you read this, I don't want you living in black and white anymore. Until next time, get your spark back and stay dynamic. Read my other blogs:
We celebrated the 300th episode of the Dynamic Women Podcast. I was joined by a bunch of friends and supporters and I answered their tough questions and vice versa. This is part 2 of that episode. What's one myth or stereotype about women that you believe needs to be debunked? And why? As you're thinking, I did a post the other day about how people judge me when I go away with friends, or even when I do an overnight in Whistler that I do once a year, and they'll say, “How could you leave your family for ten days? What about your children? What about your husband?” I' reply, “What about them? They're good!” Yes, my children are jealous, but my husband says, “You work hard, so why don't you get to go and relax and recharge?” I think the stereotype that women shouldn't be leaving the home to have a little personal vacation is wrong. Needs to be debunked. We need our time away to recharge and relax and have new experiences. Anyone else have an answer for this one? Barb: Two things. One, kind of a little bit on to what you were talking about. This idea of women, they have to be working, and they need to be in the house and everything. I can remember when my children were young, and I would be traveling for work, and people would be asking, "But who's looking after the kids?” My husband and I are an excellent 50-50 partnership and family rearing. My mother's like, "But who gives the kids baths?" It's a different era, and this is now 20 years ago, so the times have changed since then as well, but there's still this kind of idea that a woman can't leave the house to do their job if they have children because there isn't someone back in the house who can look after them. It has been changing. It hasn't completely gone. I think the other thing for me is this idea that you can't have emotions. Maybe I'm not sure if it's a stereotype that women have more emotions, or if it is just the way that our society was and has brought up, but I think I personally show more emotions in the things that I do, and I think that there's a lot of research now about emotional intelligence that shows that great leaders have a better understanding. Not—I don't mean just bursting out into anger or fear or crying or whatever emotion might come along, but that the control and the understanding of emotions is a much bigger part in what our society needs. I think women have this, and I think it's great for our society if we have more people with these abilities leading our children into the next era.” Patricia: “When women speak assertively, they're often perceived as aggressive.” Pamela: “I think I was just thinking about this because I'm like, what could it be? But I think it's the myth that we can't have it all. We can have it all, especially in this day and time. There's VAs, we can delegate, and we can have it all and feel that fulfillment at the same time as we are bringing our family in. I mean, now people work from home. Your families are with you. You don't have to farm them out, or take them to wherever they need to go. I think that myth—we can have it all!” Actually, COVID, I think, helped us out a lot to be able to be normal about things. I can remember I was in a mastermind, or in a training or something, and my son came in. I somehow left the door unlocked. He came in wearing a ninja costume, and he's an extrovert, for sure, and he loves attention, so he was in the camera, and I'm like, "Get out!" Then he leaves, and he comes back with a sword, and he starts putting the sword in the camera, and everyone's laughing, and no one shamed me, which was really good. I think that's where COVID has helped us a lot. I'm going to do kind of the quick answer to a few of these questions, and then I'm thinking about doing longer episodes to really honor the answer to them. Paula’s question for me: Over the last 300 episodes, I imagine you've learned so much. My question is, what is one of the most surprising lessons you have learned, and the one that perhaps you never saw coming? I had to think about this. What came up was actually something I mentioned earlier, is the episodes that get the most listens are the ones where I'm super vulnerable. But like, no surprise! So many people commented on my post where I felt judged that I just did the other day. Many people commented because it’s true about how I'm feeling and they connect with it. The super vulnerable ones get more views, get more downloads, whatever, than the ones where I'm polished. I think that's also true for how I consume content. I want to see someone being real and know the behind the scenes. Lydia’s question for me: What was the number one thing that you feel led you to be successful as a speaker and entrepreneur? Actually, it is one thing, which is really funny—it's one word: implement. Or execution. I go to Vegas three times a year to meet one of my coaches, and there's a big mastermind, and he loves to pull me up to the front to say, “Hey, can you talk about that day you made a sale from stage and made $90K.” He loves when I tell the story, or these other stories because it’s fanning his flame and I play it up. Because it fans his flame, and all is good.  What I say to them is, implement. People will tell you strategy all day long. You will come up with great ideas all day long, but you have to actually get it out there. You have to do it. I'm very quick in action, whether for years and years it was only me and then I had Canadian assistants, and a time when I paid contractors, and then I had my virtual assistants. There's always someone that helps me to get things out quickly. But before, it was me. But before that, I think what's helped me just in life to be successful is my mother's belief in me. She would say, “You can do it. You can do it.” I remember I invited her to a talk in my hometown, and I said, “Mom, you can come to this one. I got you a ticket.” She says, “I can't come.” I said, “No, it's a public event. You can come.” Then she said, “No, I can't come.” I said, “Yes, you can - it’s local.” She said, “I can’t because I'll be nervous.” I said, “Why will you be nervous? You don't need to talk to anyone.” “No, no, no, I'll be seeing you speak, and I'll be nervous.” “Why? I'm the one speaking?” “I know, but I'll be nervous.” “Why? I'm going to do a good job.” “I know you will, but I'll still be nervous.” “Why?” “Well, I never understood all the things you've done.” “Mom, you always said ‘you can do it’, and I believe in you.” “Yeah, but I never understood how you actually could do it.” And it's funny, because she always said to me, “I believe in you, and you can do it.” Then in my head the conversation would be, “I’m so scared, but mom says, I can do it, and mom believes in me, so I'm going to do it.” Then I did it. Sometimes I go so far away from that girl, and I ask:
I have these moments of who was that, and then I have to reconnect with her. Maybe that's a takeaway for you, is to believe in yourself, and the greatest thing is now I get to be that belief for others. There's a funny quote that I say, “If you don't believe in yourself, hire someone who does”, because it's the same thing. That gave me a “How can I” attitude because it wasn't about “Could I do it?” it was about “How can I do it”?
It's twofold: my mama's belief in me, but then my quick action to implement, and I just see it through. Wrapping Up Reaching the 300th episode of the Dynamic Women Podcast is a milestone I’m truly grateful for. It’s been an incredible journey filled with insightful conversations, powerful stories, and invaluable lessons. Throughout this special episode, I had the honour of answering thought-provoking questions and hearing inspiring insights from an amazing group of women. Their contributions made this recording even more meaningful, and I couldn’t be more appreciative of the time and energy they brought to the conversation. To all of you—whether you're reading this blog or you listen to the podcast or watch the YouTube—I want to say a heartfelt thank you for being part of this journey. Your support, engagement, and encouragement mean the world to me. This podcast has always been about empowering dynamic women like you, and I’m excited for what’s ahead! Speaking of what’s next—stay tuned for the next episode, where I’ll share about the times I lost my spark, when I felt like an imposter in my own life, and how I found my way back to fulfillment and joy. If you have a topic, question, or story idea you'd love to hear on the podcast, I’d love to know! Feel free to reach out at [email protected]. If you haven’t yet, I’d truly appreciate it if you could leave a review of the Dynamic Women Podcast. When you do, send a screenshot along with your mailing address to [email protected]—I have a little surprise waiting for you! Thank you for being part of this incredible journey. Until next time—stay dynamic! Diane A special shoutout again to our guests:
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We celebrated the 300th episode of the Dynamic Women Podcast. I was joined by a bunch of friends and supporters and I answered their tough questions and vice versa. Sharing with you below some of the questions and answers from this recording. A recap of the Dynamic Women Podcast This is the 300th episode. We're in our fifth year. My goal with this podcast is to share my experiences, share my truth about all areas of life for women, a lot of it based on businesswomen and how to have success and be dynamic. In those years, I've done a lot of personal solo episodes, but I've also brought on amazing guests to do shows with me. Also, we've done panels, and I'm proud to say that we've won five awards. \We were third in the list of top 50 podcasts and Jenna Kutcher was ranked number one. I was pretty proud of that. We're in the top 2.5% of all podcasts. That's the exciting news about the podcast.  Question 1: In your experience, what defines a dynamic woman? I'm going to just tell you why I chose “Dynamic Woman” as the title. Back in 2013, I started a community called Dynamic Women. We were doing live events across eight different locations. Then the podcast came from that. Why I chose Dynamic Women is because when I thought I was going to call it Confident Women, I realized, there's going to be a lot of women saying, "I'm not a confident woman, so I can't show up at this event."' But it was funny, when I thought of the word “dynamic,” I asked myself, “What does that even mean?” We'll probably get a lot of people saying, “I'm dynamic!” Those are the confident ones, and then the not-confident ones will say, “That sounds cool. Maybe I'm dynamic, I don't know, but it sounds like a cool place to be, and I'm going to meet some great women,” and that's actually what happened. After you tell me what defines a dynamic woman, I'll tell you what all of these women told me at these events. Pamela: “‘Dynamic,’” for me, I mean, just reading the actual definition, constant change, active, you're lively, you're energetic, you're spirited. I think it's a woman who is always on the go and continuously learning and continuously reinventing yourself because to keep up the pace with everything and the way it's going, that's what I see it as.” Barb: “Similar to Pamela, I went to the definition because I didn't know what “dynamic” meant. I don't know, am I a dynamic woman? I have no idea. Yet, one of the core components of what I talk about and how I help people is about leading people through change and understanding - our lives are filled with change. Everything that we do, if we can't learn how to overcome the change that we have to get through, and we will always be going through change, we can't be successful. The fact that we're here, whether you are on camera or not, whether you speak or not, the fact that you've shown up in some way says that you've gone through enough change that this is a place that you can be. I think you fill your place with some incredible women that are filled with dynamic abilities.” Lydia: “I took a little bit of a different approach. I did not look at the definition, but to me, a dynamic woman is a woman who knows herself, knows who she is. She creates her own unique style and lives by that style. She builds a community, and she shares what it is that she has learned that brought her to the place that she's at currently.” Patricia: “Well, of course, she's a resilient woman, and I love to say, “Know your gifts and give what you can.” A dynamic woman knows what fuels her up, what helps her flourish, and she takes that energy and her gifts, her strengths, her skills, her knowledge, and she gives what she can to make a positive difference in the world.” The reason why I started Dynamic Women was because I was sick of surface-level networking. When it's like, shake a hand, take a business card, and then you see the person the next week, and they shake your hand, and they give you a business card, and you go, “We met last week,” or you meet people and they're like, “Oh, what do you do? You're a coach?” Oh, and they're looking for the next person to speak to. I was like, forget that. I'm going to start a community where we actually aren't allowed to sell ourselves. We have to meet as who we are, rather than what we do. By getting to know each other, that know-like-and-trust will happen, and we'll get to know each other in different ways, and then we'll want to do life and business together. When I asked at the events, “What makes a dynamic woman?” and all these words were coming at me, it was so interesting to see they were juxtaposed. They're complete opposites: great listener, great communicator, creative, analytical. They're funny. They're thoughtful. We even got really fun ones, like “sassy pants.” I'm like, “Sure, okay!” We have both sides, and there were so many different definitions of who a dynamic woman was that it was so interesting. This happened every single time I opened up a new location. Karen’s question for me: My first question is around the fact that there's a trend going around with people having coffee with themselves, a younger version of themselves 10 years ago. What would that conversation look like for you? And what’s your biggest regret? If I can, I'd actually like to go back to the younger version of me, past 10 years because I've been in this business for like 15 years. If it was 10 years, I'd probably say, “Start the podcast sooner.” That's what I would have said to her at that moment. Also, my children were young then and I wish I would have said to her, “This is not how life is going to be like. You're just in the trenches now, it will get easier, and you probably have postpartum depression. Go take care of that.” I wish that would have clicked in sooner, but it's hard when you're such a driven high achiever, to be able to not just push through the hard times. But my biggest regret actually, and this is something I think should be taught in the school system is actually measuring my life according to success. This was a game changer for me. As I was mentioning, high achiever, top performer, pushing always like, “Oh, I can be president of that. I can win that award. I can achieve that.” It wasn't a case of “Will I go to university?” It was “Which one and how many scholarships will I get?” It's always been check-the-boxes, reach the success, and get awards and achievement. That's where my focus went. Always measuring my life according to success until I hired a life coach. I did the Wheel of Life, and I realized, “No wonder I can't keep life balance between work and life because work is actually just one area.” I now work on a 10-area wheel of life. That was mind-blowing, that, “Oh, it's not about success,” because I was at a moment in my life where I had checked all the boxes, had all the success, was engaged, going to buy a house, doing all the things before I'm 30, great job, all the stuff. I wasn't happy. I was like, “Well, how am I not happy?” Then I felt super bad because it made me seem ungrateful because my life was so successful on paper, and yet I felt like a void. I won't go into it too much because that'll just wreck the next episode. I'll have nothing left to say, but when I could start measuring life according to satisfaction and look at all 10 areas, I realized, “Wow, I'm not happy in that area, and I'm not happy in that area, and I'm not happy in that area, and that's why I'm unhappy and eating nachos and drinking wine at night” - it was mind-blowing. My biggest regret is that I didn't know about that until I was 29, and so if you're right now going, “But I don't know about the life wheel and the 10 areas and measuring my life according to satisfaction.” Okay, so we need to talk, and I'm going to show you, and life's going to be a lot nicer for you. One piece I also want to add to that is the other thing I realized, and probably what I would tell myself or my younger self, even 10 years ago: Always align yourself according to your values. I don't mean my morals or my faith beliefs and following the Ten Commandments. I don't mean that stuff. I mean my value for things like adventure. I love being a trailblazer, but not the one that's like, “Look at me, I did all these things, and I'm awesome.” More so like, “Hey, I went ahead. I did this thing. Now I'm back with you. I'm going to show you. Here are the steps. Do you want me to walk with you, beside you, behind you, in front of you? Like, I'm going to make it so easy for you.”  I also have a value, which came from the word “challenge.” I like challenge, and challenge came through my sports, my love of sports, and I tore my ACL when I was 28, and so I was unable to play rugby at a competitive level or soccer anymore at a very competitive level. I lost a part of myself, and so I had to bring challenge into my life for fun, to feel alive, and so I wish I had known earlier to really stick with my values, and if I always chase my values, I will always have energy and resonance and happiness. It's when I say yes to things that aren't in my values that I feel dissonance and friction, and it's not fun. Karen’s follow-up question: Diane, so the follow-up is: the first thing you said was one of the things you would have done sooner is your podcast. How does that podcast relate to your values, the wheel of life that you talked about? How does that all come together? I'm really excited about this question. Two pieces: So the 1st piece actually is that I love efficiency. That's a value of mine. This podcast helps me with efficiency. On the other side, the efficiency actually helps me balance my wheel. Before, I used to do a blog and do a YouTube video and then do all my social media and then do my newsletter, and I did something new for everything. Well, that's stupid because it's not efficient, and you have to do so much work. When I did the podcast, I started to realize this is a repurposing machine. The podcast is also my YouTube video because I record on video. If you're a podcaster and you're not recording on video, record on video and then use that for something. Then my team now takes the transcription and they make it into my blog. If you've been reading my blog and listening to my podcast and they sound similar, it's because it's the exact same thing. The blog is just cleaned up a little bit because I speak not as well as I guess people write, or my team transcribes it and fixes it, and then I look back and I go, “Why did I say it that way? I'm going to change it.” Then that is turned into the newsletter and turned into all my social media posts. Then the newsletter and the social media posts refer back to YouTube, the blog, and the podcast. I actually called it Content Multiplication Magic (a program I developed), how to make one piece of content into all these different pieces. Even better if you have a virtual assistant to do it for you. It has given me time back in my life because it's much easier if I'm a speaker first and a writer second - or a writer fifth, I don't even care about writing as much as I do speaking. But for those of you who are writers, you would write first, and then you could read it, and that could be your way of repurposing content and being efficient. When and where are you most satisfied in your life? It's not the success piece. This is satisfaction. Where do you feel that contentment, fulfillment, happiness? Where is that for you? For me, a lot of satisfaction comes on the soccer field, and when I tore my lateral meniscus, the orthopedic surgeon looked at me and said, “Do you do this for fun or fitness?” I'm like, “I love it.” He's like, “Okay, then keep doing it. But it's not the smartest.” Cathy: “Right now, I'm the most satisfied I've been in my life, and it's because I've learned to make decisions based on what I want, what I need, and keeping in mind that if it's not going to either maintain my happiness or increase my happiness, then it probably isn't a good decision. That was where this little guy. He's two and a half now, and I've realized he's 24 pounds, not 20, but he still just wants to be with me. He is my source of exercise. We do a lot of long walks together and gets me outside. I've lost over 30 pounds in two and a half years and gotten fit. It's helped keep my brain clear to focus on my job, focus on my work, and what it is I want and what I'm going to do with it. It’s where I am and what I am doing. Recently, I moved to Halifax. Since I moved here, I lived out in the country, and just being in the city is a whole different dynamic. It recharges me in a way that I didn't even expect when I made this decision. It was based on the fact that I was having way too many in-person meetings to be commuting 65 kilometers each way, two to three times a week. It was too much, and I said, “Well, here's the financial side of it.” But that's not why I'm doing it. I don't want to spend that much time away from home. I don't want that. I don't want to come home and be exhausted. As much as I love the dog, I'm exhausted. I have to make supper. I have to do laundry. I have to take the dog for a walk. I probably have taken him for two walks. I just didn't want that stuff in my life. I wanted the simple life, much simpler, much clearer. Lots of outside time, lots of opportunities to network and start to build my profile more here in Nova Scotia. I had one in BC, but not so much here yet. So that's all the things that are starting to happen, because the dynamic has changed.” The thing that I'm hearing from Cathy is that she looked at “Where am I not satisfied? What am I not happy about? I'm going to do something about it.” That's what’s important around measuring your life according to satisfaction, rather than measuring your life according to success. I've worked with people who have, on purpose, taken demotions instead of promotions, in order to have the lifestyle they wanted or worked one day less a week and maybe made a little bit less money, but they were fine with that. Even better, if you can do both - make more money and work less. Paula: “I was really thinking about satisfaction, so I'm glad you asked this. When you were talking about your own striving for success, and it just really allowed me to reflect that it's that shifting away from success to satisfaction has allowed me to blossom more. I think that's what I would say, and to really refine what it is that allows me to flourish. I think that is the key because success to me just - we're just constantly on that little hamster wheel, but in satisfaction, allows you to take a step back and sit in what it is that's surrounding you, and what it is that allows you to flourish and really, really understand I think the deeper points of yourself through satisfaction.” I love the word “flourish.” That's what we're wanting, right? We want to flourish in our lives. We don't want to be like ho-hum, every day is the same, and life sucks. That's why I actually created the ReIGNITE program, because when I lost my spark thankfully, my friend called me out and was like, “You lost your spark.” I definitely wasn't flourishing on the inside. I was flourishing on the outside, and then my face had to keep up appearances with “Everything's good,” but that's not how things are. Lydia: “It's interesting the last several years, I have put myself in a place where I move around a lot, like last year, for example, I went to Australia twice. I stayed for three months at a time, and that was part of me developing that I have to be satisfied and know who I am no matter where I'm at. It's not being responsive to what's going on around me. It comes from within me. I feel satisfied because I can be in that place no matter where I go." That's goals, everyone. You can be satisfied no matter where you are. I went to a conference, and a lot of the people attending were complaining about everything and blah, blah, blah, complaining, complaining about this speaker and that speaker and this abstract not matching, and all this. I was just like, “We can be in this place of dissatisfaction and annoyance and frustration and anger, or we can be like, what's one golden nugget that I'm going to learn from this person?” It made me think about how we're in control of our own state. Sandrine: “I am more satisfied when I'm being productive. I can be very happy doing nothing like I do lots of dog sitting. I have my happy moment. But to be satisfied, I need to be busy and productive. I only get satisfaction, I think, from that, whether it is from cleaning the house or helping someone or planning, but I think productivity - and people shouldn't know “Oh, you work too much, or you move too much, or you can't relax.” I really take a lot of pleasure and satisfaction by being on the move, and as happy as I can be doing nothing, to really be truly in my element, I need to get things done.” I think that's the key thing Sandrine is bringing up is knowing what makes you happy. That's the hardest question when I talk to audiences when I'm speaking, or even when I was in a professional women's group, and we were waiting for the event to start. I asked, “What do you want?” They were like, “What do I want for lunch?” I'm replied, “No, what do you want in life?” “Oh, I don't know. I never really thought of that. I don't know, a bigger house, more vacation.” A lot of times, people come to me and they confess, “I don't know what I like to do or want. I have all this time off, and I haven't booked it because I don't even know what I would do with the time if I'm not working.” Pamela: “I love to sing. I love to connect with people. Writing and also my podcast, I love that. I love interviewing people and having them share their story. I love to hear how they took their power back when they went through scenarios, but that connection with people and just really helping others. If it can involve music, I love that too. That really fulfills me.” Rochelle’s question for me: How do you GROW into being a leader? First, the leadership part for me comes around having a really high work ethic, commitment, and doing what's right. I think of my times when I was younger. When I was chosen as captain of the teams, no matter the sport, I was often the captain, president of clubs, and president of Student Council. Then, when I grew up and was doing all this stuff, I had a very high work ethic. In soccer, I would be there first, and I'd be already ready and warming up. I would be doing all the drills to the top of my ability. I had to be the top because I'm like, “If I'm going to be your captain, I need to be able to run further, farther, faster.” I would train on my own, and I did a lot of things to raise my own bar so that I could then expect others to raise their bar. Because if I wasn't going to do it, why would they do it? Then also looking at “How can I empower others?” That was probably one of the lessons that I learned and it was news to me that not everyone could do what I could do, or as quickly as I could do it. This sounds a bit egotistical now that I'm sharing that. But I was surprised. I was very surprised because things did come easily to me. When I moved up in my company pretty quickly. I was everyone's friend until I was promoted. Then all of a sudden, people don't want to be your friend anymore when you're evaluating them. I had to keep up the small talk. That's the hardest for me, when growing into being a leader. Because I just like, “Let's get it done.” What I realized too is because I can think of like 20 things, and then I implement the things, and then I'm like, “Oh, it's easy,' and blah, blah, blah.” But it's not for a lot of people, it wasn't. I had to realize that I had to share with people like this level and then this level and then this level, but I get so excited, and I'm like, “But here's the whole thing and all that,” and people get overwhelmed. What I realized is to be a great leader I had to go back to when the teacher sat me beside the struggling kid, I had to remember to share at their level and then help them to build their confidence and not to focus on making it perfect. In business in general as well - make it be easy for them to replicate. The more I made everything look perfect, the more people felt they couldn't achieve what I achieved. I had to learn to turn up the vulnerability, because people think, “Oh, you're so perfect. Everything comes easy to you.” But the reality is, “No, I've had this trouble and this struggle and this and this.” I think the other part of me being a leader was sharing enough of my vulnerability that people thought, “Okay, I could do that.” An audience member yelled, “That gives me hope!” I asked, “What do you mean?” She goes, “You showed me that video of you in the beginning, you sucked. Now look at you. That gives me hope that I can do the same.” And I was like, “Oh, thanks - I think!” Haha! When I learned how to share my vulnerability, not as a weakness, and to show my imperfection, that's when I really became a good leader. Then the last thing I need to share is “Eat humble pie and make small talk.” Yeah, I have to do that. I feel like I need to do a whole episode on that question. That's a good one, and it actually leads me into a side note here. We're putting out “Dynamic Women Leadership Secrets,” launching in—or being published and available at the end of May. A special shoutout to our guests:
Wrapping Up Reaching the 300th episode of the Dynamic Women Podcast is a milestone I’m truly grateful for. It’s been an incredible journey filled with insightful conversations, powerful stories, and invaluable lessons. This was just part one of the episode, so go to the next blog for the rest of the questions! If you have a topic, question, or story idea you'd love to hear on the podcast, I’d love to know! Feel free to reach out at [email protected]. If you haven’t yet, I’d truly appreciate it if you could leave a review of the Dynamic Women Podcast. When you do, send a screenshot along with your mailing address to [email protected]—I have a little surprise waiting for you! Diane Read my other blogs:
There is a happiness mistake that successful women make, and I don't want you to make it. Have you experienced this? You've achieved so much, checked all the boxes, and still felt empty or wondered, "Why don't I feel as happy as I thought I should?"  Well, there was a moment I can remember that I had checked every box that I needed to check at that point in my life.
All of this should have made me feel fulfilled, but something was missing. I kept thinking, "Maybe if I work harder, maybe if I achieve more, or I push through, I'll finally feel the way I want to." I then tried all of that, and then I thought, "Hmm, maybe something's wrong with me because if no amount of success filled that gap, that void, then something must have been wrong with me.” But this is the big mistake that people - successful women especially - make around their happiness and their joy. They think that external achievements will automatically create internal happiness. But no, no, no, no. Why isn't success enough? This is the myth that we've been sold. Society tells us: achieve more, you'll be happy; then buy more, you'll be happy, and do more because then you'll achieve more, and then you'll be happy. But many of us have spent years chasing that success, chasing the promotions, chasing recognition, chasing the perfect life, or at least just being driven enough to go for all of these things. But then we get to a point where we feel that happiness just still feels out of reach. It's like, "Oh, I got there, but I’m not as happy as I thought. I got that other thing, and sadly, it's not as fulfilling as it seemed, and I got the latest thing I wanted, and it's not as satisfying as I had imagined." When I had the moment where my friend Rozz called me out for losing my spark it was really hard, but freeing to have the realization pointed out to me. (I'm going to go through it in more detail in a future blog post. I’ll talk about two stories of where I really lost my spark and how I got it back). After working with a coach, I realized that I was measuring my satisfaction based on external validation. Why isn't success enough? Well, first, I told you, society says that we need to achieve more, so it's pushing us to measure life according to success. I learned I need to measure my life according to my satisfaction because success is external validation, but happiness comes from internal alignment. Have you ever felt off and you didn't know why? Well, that's when something isn’t aligned. You see, achievements don't automatically create joy. We have to be intentional that our achievements are actually fulfilling us internally, not just externally. But the common trap that successful, high-achieving women get into is that they feel like…
It goes on and on and on and on, and the answer is no, because once they get there, success is fleeting. It falls through our fingers. Part of it, we don't celebrate, but the other part is that it's not aligned internally. Now, you may feel happy at the time, but it doesn't stay - that's the fleeting piece - or sadly, it's not even existent at all. I had a client early on in my years who had built a business with two of their friends and ended up selling it for $75 million, their cut was $25 million. This was about 14 years ago, so you can imagine it was and still is a lot of money. And they were only 32. But once they had all the money and didn’t have to work anymore, they thought, "Oh, I'm not happy here. Why?” "I thought this would make me happy. This is what I've been building in university and beyond for years. I focused 24/7 on this goal, and it didn't bring me happiness." It was shocking for them. What we had to do was find that internal alignment. Why do we fall into this trap as successful women? I'm going to give you three reasons. Reason #1: We confuse achievement with fulfillment We measure success. We measure ourselves according to our job title, our income, our milestones, and our purchases, even if we're not materialistic. We want a nice home, or we want nice clothes, or we want a nice vacation. Also, because we're measuring our success according to these things, fulfillment feels a little bit harder to measure. It's intangible because it's feelings of joy, peace, alignment, and happiness. We can't really say, "Oh yeah, I've reached that mark of happiness." This is because we can't see it, and we don't know the path there. We're choosing that success path instead. But the mistake, again, is chasing those external wins without considering our internal desires.
But when we confuse achievement for fulfillment, we will constantly be chasing happiness. Reason #2: We delay happiness. It's the "when… then I’ll"
The problem is, the "then" never comes because you're continuously putting another goal ahead of it, or there's something bigger now that you want. Or you get there and you decide, "Oh, there's something else now in order for me to feel confident,” or just even if it's the epitome of whatever it is. You're only grasping at that intangible feeling because it wasn't the right thing to do in the first place. Reason #3: We prioritize being productive over being present Oh, I'm so guilty of this! Have you been guilty of prioritizing being productive over being present? Because you can’t achieve a goal if you're just hanging out with friends and laughing and having fun, because we're conditioned to believe our worth is tied to how much we accomplish.  It's been ingrained in us. We stay busy not only to achieve. But we stay busy because slowing down feels uncomfortable, and sometimes being alone with our thoughts and our feelings - oh, that's when we go, "There's a little voice telling me I'm not happy. There's a part of me that's pointing out what's missing here.” True happiness doesn't come from that next task. It's from being present with our lives, with ourselves and our loved ones and the things that are in alignment with us. How to create true happiness How do you create true happiness, then? How do you do it? #1: You have to redefine what success means for you. It's not about, "What do I want to achieve?" It's "What actually makes me happy?" and then creating a version of success that includes this and is aligned with your values, not just what society tells you what you should want. Even better, if you start looking to measure your life according to satisfaction rather than success, you're going to be choosing the correct goals and the correct way for you to be spending your time and where to focus. #2: Stop waiting for a milestone to give yourself permission to enjoy life. Some of our goals are five years along. Some of our goals are 20 years along, and even then some goals are out of our control. We might never realize them because some are just stripped from us, like if we get fired or we lose a big contract. Joy isn't the reward for success. I'm going to say that again: joy isn't the reward for success. Joy is something you cultivate daily. Joy is a choice in your life. Simple practices you can do to have more joy in the moment, rather than waiting for that big win or that big achievement, celebrate those small wins, celebrate who you're being along the way to the big win, nd mke sure to add things into your schedule that help you to feel alive. Things that I've done are - well, soccer definitely does, and that has for decades, but things like I did like African drumming. That was wild! The next thing I want to do is glassblowing. Soccer lights me up. Painting lights me up. Stand-up comedy lights me up. You can reconnect with the things that light you up. #3: Switch from that external validation to internal fulfillment. Focus less on "What am I achieving? What do I need to achieve today?" and ask yourself, "What do I want to feel today?" When you check in with yourself, and you ask, "Does this activity/task/goal/friend/situation/event have me feel energized or drained?" Energized is resonance. That's an alignment with you, your values, your wants, desires, needs. If it's draining, then it's in dissonance. There's friction. It sucks your energy. It's not in alignment with your values, your wants, your needs, your desires, your passions. Give yourself permission to add more of the joy in and let go of the things that don't bring you joy. ReIGNITE It’s time to ReIGNITE that spark and live with more happiness by putting the solutions above and more into place. The easiest way to do that is in ReIGNITE! It’s such an amazing program. I'm so excited about it! It is a 90-day one-on-one coaching program with me, together designing the opportunity for you to be able to feel happier, and not only feel happier but ReIGNITE the spark that is inside of you.  To stop feeling disconnected and like you're juggling it all, and instead, reconnect with that piece of you, that vibrant, passionate person that maybe feels like a distant memory, and you miss that confident person and the one who used to shine. That excitement, that energy. The good news - she's just missing, but that doesn't mean we can't get her back. Because the fire is still in you, we get to work together. It's not about reinventing yourself; it's just uncovering that bold, vibrant version of you that's been buried under the weight of busyness and expectations. Really, this is your wake-up call. It's time to stop playing small. It's time to stop succumbing to all this success pressure from society and to start fully living and be in your happy. There's a very special journey. I encourage you to go and check it out. If you're ready to jump in, hit the cart, and let's get this journey started. If you're unsure, there is a little form there you can click, you can fill it in, and you and I can have a one-on-one conversation because, trust me, I only want to work with people who this is right for, and I want you to feel like this is the right choice for you. Then you can be excited to get that spark back. Really, the last question is: are you ready to ReIGNITE your passion and get your spark back? Are you ready to have more happiness and not succumb to these mistakes? Then join ReIGNITE! Share this with a friend, and stay tuned, because there are more amazing blogs coming up. I'd love to have you in ReIGNITE. Letting you know February 21st is the date that the doors close, or when three people join the program, whichever comes first. I'm wishing you a fabulous day. Until next time, stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
I have had times in my life where I've had to draw a line in the sand. If you’re reading this, you're probably feeling a little bit that way already. I’m going to share with you the five signs so that you know if it's time for you to draw the line in the sand and the three steps of what you need to do next when you feel like you need to draw that line. This might be your wake-up call.  What it means to draw a line in the sand This phrase is really a metaphor, and it means to set that firm boundary saying, “You can't go past this” or a clear, non-negotiable decision. That could be for your own life, so rather than a boundary to others, it could be just some decision you set for yourself. It's that point or line which you refuse to go over or into. It could be in relationships, with work, your personal well-being, or any area of life, but we want to be able to do this now because if you're not going to set boundaries, if you're not going to reclaim yourself, especially as a high-achieving woman, you know what's going to happen? You're going to be so exhausted, so burnt out, that there's going to be an extreme. I've seen this in clients coming to me extremely sick, burnt out, having anxiety attacks, having to quit their job or stop their business, or leaving a marriage when that was not the issue. So many things can happen, almost like a blow-up or an explosion. We want to draw a line in the sand if any of these five signs are happening for you. The 5 Signs Sign #1: You feel constantly exhausted and depleted It's not just once in a while - it happens a lot, and so you're running on empty. You're always giving but never replenishing. Life feels like a never-ending to-do list, and you're like, "How can people even sit and watch TV? I have so much to do!" Or if you are sitting and watching TV, you're thinking, "Ah, I have so much to do, I'm just procrastinating," and you don't even get to rest or relax. You're feeling like, "When was the last time that I felt energized? When was the last time that I had an abundance of energy and that I didn't have all these to-do's on my mind?" I've had times where I would work every day, rather than just weekends being off. I would work in the evenings, I would work on vacation, and I just kept being pushed. I'd miss important things, or I would have a day off, but I'd be so exhausted I'd get sick, or I would just have to lay there and do nothing. I couldn't go and do anything fun. Now, this is an extreme. You might not be to that point. You might just feel like, "Oh yeah, the pressure of my to-do list," or "I'm feeling like there's a lot going on," or "I'm feeling a bit tired." It could be the extreme, or it could be the start of the extreme, but this is one way you might have to draw a line in the sand. Sign #2: You feel invisible in your own life This is because we have so many titles and so many roles that we take on.
I could go on and on and on. Because of all these titles, you've really lost sight of your true self. Wondering, "Who am I now?" You think about maybe changing your role. "Who am I now?" You're showing up for everyone else but not enough for yourself. Changing your job or business? Then you’re thinking, "Who am I now outside of my previous title?" What happens is empty nesters ask, "Who am I now without the kids?" You may fight me on this and say, "No, I do show up for myself. I go to the gym. I take myself to get my nails done." But are you truly showing up for yourself? Is there time and space to be you and do what you want to do? Some signs of this:
Sign #3: You are checking boxes, but you still feel unfulfilled I’ve heard women say (me included), "Okay, I have a home, and I have a good job or the business I want, and I just achieved that project, and I just did this, and this is great, and I went on this vacation." You agree, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I have a successful career, responsibilities managed." But even though you've had so much success, something feels off. Wondering, "What is it? Why am I feeling unfulfilled?" Or you're asking yourself, "Is this really it? I've worked for all of this stuff. I've worked doing all these things, and then I ask, is this it?"  The misconception is that more achievements equal more happiness. More awards equals more satisfaction. More material things equals more fulfillment. It's not always the case. Because we may achieve or buy that thing and then not have the fulfillment or the satisfaction or the happiness we want. So then we try to fill it with something else because maybe the things we're filling our life with aren't really the things that light us up, that get us going, that put us in resonance and give us energy. This takes me to the next sign. Sign #4: You've forgotten what lights you up You say, "Well, I don't even know what lights me up anymore." Hmm, "When I was younger, I loved this, I loved that." Or, "Oh, when I see that, I long for that." Well, in this case, you might be at a point where passions and joys really hit the back seat. Why? Obligations, responsibilities, goals. You're driven, so you're getting a lot of things done, and well, there's just no time for your passions and your joy. Or you don't remember the last time you did something just for yourself - a hobby, a passion, something you really want to do. The shift is starting to realize joy isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Joy, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction is not the secondary ROI (return on investment) for your goals. It should be one of the first. We must stop measuring our life according to success. Instead, we need to measure our life based on our satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, and happiness. Sign #5: You know something needs to change, but you feel stuck You look at your life, "Oh wow. I have all this success, or I have all these things that are going well for me, or all these things that I'm busy," but something's off. Maybe you're not even aware that life isn't how you want it to be. You may say, "Is this all there is? Is there something off? Why isn't life how I want it to be? But I don't know what's wrong, and so I don't know where to start.” If your solution is, "Well, maybe I need to remove some commitments so I can do some things that I want," but then you don’t because you have a fear of disappointing others, or you'll make the wrong move. Or you decide to make a bigger move, "Maybe I should quit my job, maybe I should find new friends." But you've frozen and don’t move because you're thinking about how you don't know what the next step is. You don't have the clarity. You don't have the confidence to do that. The key insight here is that discomfort, that fear that's going to keep you stuck, and that stuckness is so much worse than the discomfort of change or the chance that you're going to hurt or annoy someone. Because really, when you put yourself first, people will not always like it, and that's because you're not making every single one of their needs the top priority. But you know it's going to be okay, because what if they put themselves as a priority, and you put yourself as a priority? You'd have extra to give each other. Well, those are the five ways you know that you need to draw a line in the sand. I'll go through them again:
3 steps of what you need to do next What do you do next if you’re now thinking, "I know I need to draw a line in the sand, but what do I do? What do I do, Diane?" Step 1: Awareness Well, first, congratulations on acknowledging that change is necessary. This is the first step. Awareness is key. Once you're aware that this is something that needs to happen, then you can make a conscious change. Because a lot of times we make unconscious changes - we just quit the job, or we ditch the friend, or we leave our marriage, or we run away, or we buy the expensive car, whatever it may be in your solution to the crisis. But just acknowledge that change is necessary. We don't need to wait till we hit rock bottom. We don't need to wait till we have an anxiety attack, or we're burnt out, or we get a terrible diagnosis. You don't have to wait for that. Step two: Get support. Women struggle asking for help, and we shouldn't. The smartest people out there are the ones asking for support and asking for help, and you have to stop trying to do it all alone. We are not meant to be silos. Especially as women, we are meant to be in community, meant to be with our tribe. The greatest growth comes from coaching (I may be biased, but it’s what saved me)- someone in your corner who has the desire to see you succeed and the knowledge and expertise to help you get there. Step 3: Reignite your passion Once you've drawn that line in the sand, you get to reignite your passion, reignite the spark that you know is in there. Don’t worry if you’re wondering, "Where'd it go? And can I fan it and make it stronger?" Just start small. Get some help. Get that support to help you figure out what your passion is, what that spark is, and make some space for it - a little bit of joy every single day. The last part around reigniting your passion in step three is really about what are the non-negotiables for happiness? Is it a non-negotiable to have a walk in the forest every day? Is having Sundays free a non-negotiable? Is not starting your work day at 5 a.m. every day and only working 35 hours a week a non-negotiable? It's still a lot of hours - maybe only working 20 hours a week. Wrapping Up Those are the five signs why you probably need to draw a line in the sand and the three steps to get there. Now here's the invitation: You don't have to settle for burnout, exhaustion, or feeling disconnected. The next step for you after realizing that and acknowledging the awareness that you need to draw a line in the sand is to join my new program called ReIGNITE. ReIGNITE is a 90-day one-on-one coaching program with me. It is new. It is fire. I'll tell you that. I've got three spots where I'm going to help women to reignite who they are, to be able to reconnect with whatever it is that they were before. Because so often we are already amazing. It's not about changing who we are. It's about reigniting that, reconnecting with that. It's time for a change. You know it. You've accomplished so much, you've checked the boxes. You've had the successful career or the busy life or the thriving family, all of these things, and it's everything you've ever wanted. But it's now time for YOU. You're exhausted from juggling it all. You've lost the most important thing: YOURSELF.  I encourage you, go check it out. You have until February 21st or until the three spots are taken to jump into ReIGNITE. You can just go in and sign up. There's a full-pay or payment options. If you're not sure if it's right for you, there is going to be a little form you can fill in. I'm happy to have a one-on-one conversation with you to discuss if it is the right fit for you, because I know there's a fire still inside of you, and I want to work with you to be able to help you to reclaim that spark, to be able to stop living life on autopilot.
It's not going to take six months or years to do. It's just a 90-day process. You don't have to reinvent yourself. We're going to uncover that bold, vibrant version of you that has been buried underneath the busyness and the expectations, and we're going to replace that overwhelm together with joy. We're going to ditch the "shoulds" and help you to really, truly shine that light again. This is your wake-up call. This is your time to stop playing small and to start fully living. Let's reignite together. If you have any questions, reach out [email protected]. If there are any topics that you'd like me to cover, please reach out to [email protected]. If it is beyond February 21, 2025, when you are reading this, feel free also to reach out to see if I'm running this program again, or you can check the landing page that talks more about it. Until next time, stay dynamic! Read my other blogs: Hint: The people who have the results you want are probably delegating. They're not doing everything that you are doing, and it's helping them to get further faster.  How do I know that the people who have the results you want are probably delegating? There are only so many hours in the day. When you look at small or big companies, the difference between a solopreneur and them, or even if you have a team of employees, the way to get ahead is by leveraging other people's time. Especially other people's time who are going to do the things that you don't want to do. They're going to do the things that maybe you have been doing, but they're going to do it better. They're going to do it faster. They're maybe even going to do it with more passion than you have for it. Now I'm going to go over a little bit about my journey with hiring support, and how I have been delegating. I also encourage you to show up on Friday, January 31, to my free training that's going to be talking more about how to delegate, what to delegate, and how to build your business and reach your goals with the help of a virtual assistant. What is a Virtual Assistant? A virtual assistant is someone who works virtually, and the benefit of is they can be from anywhere in the world. The ones that I match with my clients and the ones I use personally for 40 hours a week are from the Philippines, and there are many benefits to that. What my VAs do for me The thing that might be in your head right now is, “Well, I don't know what I would delegate.” I'll give you a brief overview of the things that my VAs do for me. Presentation design, handout creation, audio/video editing, putting it together for a course or a program, landing pages, email sequences, CRM management, email responses, research, tech, website updating - there are so many things that my two main VAs, Kristine and Karissa, do for me. They are amazing, and it's allowing me to not only have the results I want in my business because I have time to do the program development or to work with my clients, or to travel for work, and then they get to take care of all the backend stuff. I record a video every week, a Zoom video so you can watch it on YouTube because my team edits it and posts it on YouTube. You can listen to it on the podcast. You can read it as a blog here because my team transcribes it and puts it into a blog format and adds photos and then publishes it. You can get connected to all of these pieces through my newsletter, which is also put together by my team. Then how about my social media? My Facebook posts, LinkedIn, videos, short-form videos, stories, and carousels are all created by my team. Social media content creation, social media scheduling or posting, also social media management, are all taken care of. People say to me, “Diane, you're everywhere. I see you everywhere. I see all your posts and all the things you're doing.” The thing is, I'm NOT everywhere. It's just that I'm leveraging the content that I have. I'm repurposing this one video into all the different pieces. A key thing here is a lot of people go and hire a copywriter and a digital content creator, and then they say, “Diane, how do I get them to be able to speak or write like me?” Well, they're not you, and they don't have your expertise, and unless you're going to be able to transplant your brain into their head, they're not going to be able to write exactly like you and have the knowledge like you.  Now, the workaround is the repurposing of your content. Because then everything is coming from you, and all the video is you, but it only is a 10 to 15-minute video. The other thing is, I have found copywriters who have been able to write like me. The crazy thing is, I read my posts, and I would say, “Oh, was that their post or my post? I don't even remember. Is that my words or their words?” I have no idea. But the problem is, they were getting paid at such a high level, and that rate kept increasing, increasing, increasing. While they were amazing, I'd have them, and then I'd have other contracted people and eventually I've got like 10 people I’m contracting. That's 10 meetings and 10 invoices to pay at North American rates. I have such joy being able to meet with my VA clients and ask them, “What are your goals for 2025? What are your goals for the next quarter? Let's have your VA do tasks to help you reach those goals faster. Increasing your results, or to free you up so that you can go and work towards these goals.” What you can delegate You may think, “Well, what would I pass off so that I could go and work on other things?” Well, how about many of the things I just suggested? I used to do my own blog from start to finish. It was like five hours every week. It was pretty ridiculous, but once I put this into place, the time has been cut down drastically because I only have to approve it. Side note: please make sure you approve everything that goes out for your business. If you’re still reading, then you’re probably realizing that his is why people are getting results that you're not getting in their business. You;re trying to do too much. You're doing tasks that are below your pay grade. You're leaving money on the table because you're not able to serve as many clients or customers or sell as many items because you're stuck doing these lower-end tasks. Not only tasks you need to delegate, but decision-making you need to delegate. If you're like, “But Diane, I have a team of people.” Well, do you have those people working optimally? Could you have those people that you pay a high rate to (because of where they live or their expertise) - could you have them create a wish list of tasks that they want to delegate to a VA? Do you see where this is going? If we continue to leverage not only our time but the time of the people that work with us, we are able to get more results. Plus, how many times have you been Googling or YouTubing, how to do some sort of tech thing, or you're learning a new platform and you're watching all of their training videos? Again, this should not be you. It should be your VA. Getting results not just in business but also in personal life Why else and where else are people getting results that you want? Maybe in their personal lives? This will be my last podcast where I'm doing it the week of because the next two weeks I'm going to be in Mexico. I'm going to pre-record my video that my team will put on YouTube, my podcast, and my blog for the next two weeks. I'm going to pre-record them before I go and know that the content will be taken care of. Will I have to approve some things? Yes, but will I have to record when I'm gone? No. Will I have to do all that work when I'm gone? No. The key thing is, I get to wake up on vacation, feel like I'm on vacation, go and sit by the pool, be anywhere, do anything I want, without the worry of “What am I posting today?” or “Oh, I have to make that handout.” I know that even if something comes up that doesn't need me, I can easily pass it off. Not only am I getting the results that I want in my business - and maybe you're seeing that in other people - but I'm getting the results I want in my life. I do Pilates twice a week. I am able to go for walks during the day and do other things that are important to me. It's not that I'm not busy, but my time is filled with things from all areas of life. In the middle of the day, I had to go and drop something off to my daughter. I had the time to do that. I was able to do that. If you are looking at other people in your life or other people online, and you're saying,
If you want any of these things and more, either the process of them or the results of them (results being maybe clients, sales, customers, more opportunities, more invitations, better relationships in the business) - if you're wanting any of that, this is the year that you delegate, ideally to one person who can be there for you in many different facets of the business. That's why we hire general virtual assistants so that they have a wide range of knowledge, anywhere from social media content creation, scheduling, and management to the video/audio editing and research and CRM management and email sequences and landing pages and more. They've dabbled in all of it so that they can be that go-to person for you. You’re Batman. You need Robin. You need someone there to help you and help you with all the things. A “yes” person who says,
At a fraction of what you would be investing if it was someone local because the cost of living is different. Wrapping Up I'm going to plant that seed for you: if you are busy, if you want to attain more, if you want to have more things happening for you in your business that don't rely on you, if you want a more relaxed life, if you want more sleep, if you want to be able to actually take a vacation, then this is the year.  This is the message. This is me, hard truth, telling you you have to delegate. You have to delegate to someone. You have to delegate more. I'll tell you, when my clients start working with a virtual assistant, and they're like, “Oh, okay, I'll pass off this, and I'll pass off that,” they eventually get to a point where they're like, “Oh, that's cool. I want that done, and I want this done, and I want this done.” I do that all the time. I'll screenshot things or send ideas and new platforms because I know that my team is there to support me. It doesn't all fall on my shoulders. As I wrap this up, if you are wanting to have the results that you see other people get, it's time to delegate. If you want to learn more about this, I encourage you to attend my session this Friday. It’s called “Build Your Business & Reach Your Goals with the Help of a Virtual Assistant”. I'm going to talk all about what you can delegate and share our hiring process with you so you will learn more about that and can feel more comfortable. I'm going to answer your tough questions about:
I'm going to show you the super simple processes that we use and how I give you a lot of my systems and processes, a lot of my IP as a coach, a speaker, an event facilitator - all the things that I'm doing across all my social platforms and all my content creation. I share all of these as training videos and checklists and all that. I'm going to share that with you on Friday about how you can get access to all of those. Now if it's beyond Friday, I encourage you to reach out to [email protected] and ask for a replay. We might have a replay, we might not. If you're reading this later, that's fine. We'll see if we can hook you up to get you access to that, or reach out to me at [email protected] if you're serious about getting a virtual assistant, and we can have a conversation about Virtual Assistant Made Easy, where I connect you with a virtual assistant that I've already vetted, that we already know has the skills and the abilities, and that you can just easily move in, copy and paste a lot of my training videos and my checklists and start working with them with my support. Read my other blogs:
Today, I’ll share about why high achievers self-abandon and how to stop. This one is near and dear to my heart because not only do I coach people to not self-abandon by putting tools into place, but I also have suffered over the years with a lot of self-abandonment, not realizing really what it was because I have been praised for the perceived positives of self-abandonment. What is self-abandonment? It is ignoring your own emotional, mental, and physical needs to gain approval from others, meet the expectations of others, or avoid conflict.  For me, as I've become more confident, more outspoken, and felt permission to do that, what I realized is it wasn't necessarily to gain approval - I just didn't want to rock the boat. Maybe you've been there too. Maybe you're asked to do things, and you say “Yes” to the request because it's a fair request. But the problem is, normally, you maybe could say “Yes”, or it would be natural or good for you to do this because it's your skill, or you've volunteered before, but at this point, you're exhausted. Or there are times when you silence your opinions because you just don't want to upset others, and so it's like you're choosing to keep the peace, but then you're silencing your own opinions. You're choosing a good path; however, you're self-abandoning, which causes a lot of harm to yourself. Why do high-achieving women self-abandon?
We are, as high achievers, super driven, and so we're more prone to this because of things like, perfectionism. We want things to be perfect, and so we're just going to keep pushing and keep going, which means we'll self-abandon in order to have it be perfect.
2. People pleasing In people pleasing, we’re not doormats, but we can put other people's agendas before our own. That also comes from the fact that we're probably leaders, we’re caring for others, and we’re responsible for a group or responsible for the family, and therefore we put other people's agendas, other people's needs, before our own. Even though we know that we technically are supposed to put the oxygen mask on ourselves before helping others, it's just so hard to do because it seems like we can hold a lot of responsibility and everyone needs us all the time. 3. Fear of failure Another reason is fear of failure. By admitting defeat, or by taking a more gentle or gracious approach to yourself, maybe we won't reach success. A lot of times, we're proving our worth because of the desire for external validation since our worth comes from the things we achieve, other people's belief in us, and other people's opinions of us. Then, having to prove ourselves causes us to push through, even though we don't want to do something or don't have the energy to do it. We start to overwork When we overwork, we get into that place of exhaustion and we take on too many responsibilities, or we start neglecting our personal health for our professional success.
Probably - I've been guilty of these for sure. I hear so many stories from high-achieving women who have missed out on important events in their lives and their families' and loved ones' lives because they were pushing for a result. Then the thing is, society backs that up. There are cultural pressures as well. Being that I am Caucasian, my parents are British, there are not as many cultural pressures on me. I'm quite privileged, and I will admit that, but there are many cultures where you have to honour your family, you have to give up your goals, your desires, your education, for the care of your family members, to do what your partner says, or your parents say, or whatever it may be. My own experiences of self-abandonment I'll share how I used to self-abandon, how I’ve grown, and how it still happens sometimes. On the past, workshops, or trainings, I’d often focus on helping others instead of my own progress. When I caught on quickly, instead of asking questions or deepening my learning, I’d help struggling peers. This left me behind and forced me to catch up later, and it wasn’t my job to help—it was the organizer’s. At conventions, I prioritized supporting friends, even attending workshops irrelevant to my goals, instead of choosing sessions that advanced my personal or professional growth. I’d also engage in hallway chats, missing keynotes or activities because I felt bad cutting conversations short. I used to skip breaks, even when drained, choosing to support others over recharging. As an empath, I’d absorb others’ emotions which left me depleted and not get the needed rest. Now, I’ve learned to prioritize alone time, taking breaks to recharge and reflect. Finally, I used to rush home immediately after events, leaving no time to decompress. Now, I arrive a day or two early and leave a day or two later to allow space for rest and integration. These changes help me stay present, achieve my goals, and still support others—just in moderation. The negative effects of self-abandonment Negative effect #1: It takes an emotional toll when you're self-abandoning This could be self-abandoning once, many times, or just a life of general self-abandonment. This can give you chronic stress because you're not having downtime. You're not listening to your needs. You're not getting what you need to nourish and support you. Chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, and these are big ones: feelings of emptiness or resentment. When I think of emptiness, I also think of depression. Let's just dive off of that. If you're feeling any of that, you are unable to achieve what you want to achieve. You're unable to be going for the things you want to go for, to believe in yourself, to have confidence. This is going to start to erode so many foundational pieces of you, and you don't want that to happen. Negative effect #2: Physical effects Things like fatigue and exhaustion. You're going to have sleep problems because you're thinking about these things, or you don't get enough time to sleep, and other health issues that come from neglecting self-care.  You might get sick more often. You might not be healthy because you're not moving your body and you're not doing the things that you need to nourish yourself. If you're not eating properly, then you're not getting the right amount of energy. There are so many different consequences like high blood pressure and having cortisol spikes. This can lead to so many other things like diabetes, and we can go on and on and on. I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to go into it, but there are so many others. I even had a client whose retinas detached. There are so many things physically that can happen to you from self-abandoning, which is really sad. Negative effect #3: Your relationships Also in relationships, when you're consistently self-abandoning, it can hurt you in two ways. First, you self-abandon for other people's needs, and then they take advantage of you, and then there's resentment. That's not a positive relationship. It can also strain relationships. People close to you may become frustrated if you constantly self-abandon for others, feeling like you’re choosing them over your loved ones. This can create a sense of double standards and lead to a loss of authenticity, especially if you become a people-pleaser or fail to speak up for yourself. I saw an example of this at an event last weekend. One of the wives seemed to have given up asserting herself. Her husband was behaving ridiculously—drinking too much, acting macho around his friends—and it was clear she had stopped speaking up. She had lost her authenticity in the process, which was really sad to witness. Negative effect #4: Personal identity is affected When you self-abandon, you're telling yourself you're not worth listening to your own needs and wants. You aren't allowed to speak up about what is true for you, what you need to be able to put boundaries on things. It's really eroding your self-esteem. That's huge for confidence. It's going to leave you disconnected from your true self because your true self is going to be like, “Well, anytime I speak up, I'm not listened to.” Eventually those voices, the self-awareness, the intuition, they start to quiet down, because it's like, “Why bother? I'm not even listening to myself so why would I bother speaking up?” My recent self-abandonment experience Recently, at a convention, I brought my family along. While this time went smoother than a previous chaotic experience—thanks to clear boundaries and communication—it was still intense managing their needs alongside mine. To recover, I planned two days of solo downtime after the event. However, a situation arose that challenged me. Someone had no place to stay and was prepared to sleep outside. My values of care, safety, and belonging made it impossible for me to ignore them and their situation, even though I desperately needed my space to recharge. Initially, I tried to honour my boundaries, but as the night went on and no one else offered them a place, I let them stay in my room. While they weren’t very grateful and tried not to be disruptive, the lack of sleep and loss of my personal space left me emotionally drained and teetering on burnout. I realized I had self-abandoned to honor my values, which led to feelings of resentment and frustration with myself. This experience taught me how tricky it can be when values drive self-abandonment. It's a hard lesson, but I’m learning to balance honoring my values with taking care of my own needs. How to stop self-abandonment These are all the things that I do normally to not self-abandon, the things I go through with my clients to help them as well. #1: Set some boundaries Gracefully say no to people. You can protect your time and energy. You can set some boundaries around how things will be, and that's probably what I should have done here—really set some super clear boundaries. #2: Reconnect with yourself  Do things like journaling, meditation, take alone time for yourself, so that you know what you need and what you desire. I had to talk to a couple of friends about this afterwards to just understand what happened. Then I was like, “Oh, shoot, what happened, and why I feel so bad is because I self-abandoned. I didn't listen to what I really needed,” and that kind of hurt, and so the next day, I had to super honour that boundary of needing my room to myself so that I could have one night to recoup. #3: Practice some self-compassion Practice some self-compassion if you do end up self-abandoning. Don't criticize yourself. Just give yourself some kindness. I had to do that in this case, just like you would to a loved one, someone you care about. What would you say to them? Then come up with a plan for the next time. #4: Prioritize self-care It needs to be in your schedule. You have to put “me time” in there. I love honouring the Sabbath. Sunday is my day. I get to do the things I want. Oftentimes, it's sunny. I go for a walk. I go to church. I do some journaling. I do my devotional. Maybe I cook. I do the things I want—that's my “me time”. Get really good at prioritizing self-care by asking for help from others so that you do have time. It doesn't have to all be you. You are not the martyr of everyone around you. Delegate tasks, including mental load tasks, and decision-making tasks. #5: Challenge your perfectionism If you feel like you're super driven and you like things done a certain way, what is that costing you? You can let go of perfectionism. It will help you to get more done more quickly and not burn you out in the process. You don't have to sacrifice who you are and your well-being to have things be perfect. Trust me, if you feel like you're suffering from perfectionism, your eight is probably other people's ten, right? Or your six is someone else's ten, and your eight is someone else's fifteen out of ten. Think about that. Wrapping Up If you're good at not self-abandoning, will you never face a time when you self-abandon? You probably will. You might not be calling it self-abandonment, but just take a look at your life and moments and situations and ask yourself:
That's why I went to people's workshops when it wasn't even the topic I wanted because I wanted to seem like I was a good friend or a good supporter. When I learned later, so many of their friends never came. Then I was like, “Why am I doing this?” You get to decide how to live a life that is both successful and satisfying. We want to have both, not just one, not just success. We want to be satisfied, and so you deserve to be prioritized in your own life. You deserve to be on your list of priorities. I'm not saying that everything needs to change today, but what if you just made one small change this week that would eventually lead to big transformations? One percent, one percent, one percent to the point where you look at your life and you say, “I'm not self-abandoning anymore.” That's what I want for you. Want help to do it? You have a few options: The Breakthrough 2025—is a great place for you. I can promise you, I will never let you self-abandon in those sessions when we are going to go through your Breakthrough Blueprint. That blueprint is going to keep you on task. There are tools in there that will not allow you to self-abandon. It’s a group program with many benefits like having like-minded people, learning from other people's blueprints, and listening to me coach others. If one-on-one is more for you and you'd like support with self-abandonment, or to have this be your breakthrough year, then reach out to [email protected]. Until next time, everyone. Stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
Happy New Year! We are in 2025 now, and I'm glad you're reading this blog today (or you can also watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to my Dynamic Women Podcast).  You know, the incredible energy we feel at the beginning of the year, that excitement to make big things happen? Many of us say, “This is going to be THE year”. But let's be real - that motivation can fade really fast, and now that we’re in the third week of January, a lot of people have already given up on their resolutions. Today, I'm going to share with you three of my favourite strategies for keeping that New Year's motivation alive. Also, it's going to help you avoid burnout and make some real progress on your goals. I'm also going to share how you can stay focused and on track all year long. Importance of New Beginnings There's something really powerful about a fresh start. There's the nice newness and the ability to just say, “Screw last year! Last year is gone”. We get a clean slate. It's a chance to let go of those old habits, old goals, and maybe old people that aren't serving you, to step into something new for a whole new year. I've experienced this firsthand myself. Some years, I'm excited to see the year-end, saying “good riddance,” and other years, I reflect, “Oh, that year was so good!” But no matter where I'm at, when I can get intentional in the new year about what's coming up - when I sit down, map out my goals, and stick to the plan - that's when things really change for me. Having that really clear blueprint. But here's the thing: starting strong is one thing, but keeping that motivation going forward is what makes the difference. Maybe you're thinking, “I've started off strong. I did the plan. I am ready to go. I have a lot of motivation.” The truth is that it's really easy to start strong, but it's not easy to keep that motivation going. That's really what makes the difference in your results. That motivation to keep going and the motivation to reach your goals. I'm sure you've heard now, and I mentioned it a little bit earlier, about how so many people have already failed at their New Year's resolution, and we're only just three weeks into January.  I know that when I used to be a bit of a gym rat (meaning I was at the gym all the time, all year, many times a week because I was doing a lot of training for rugby and soccer), I hated going to the gym in January because all those people were there who made their New Year's resolutions. Good for them, but for all these new gym-goers, it made the gym really busy, and I couldn't use the equipment I wanted when I wanted. I was really happy that by the end of January, most of them had fallen off. But as I got into more goal setting and into being a life and business coach, I thought, “I really want them to succeed and reach their goals and continue the motivation towards achieving them. I don't want people to drop off from that New Year energy and motivation. I want the motivation to be sustained throughout the year. Three reasons why motivation fades Reason 1: You get overwhelmed by the big goals If we look at the goal of going to the gym, “I'm going to go five days a week,” and then that quickly turns into being too many, and you're too sore because you’re just starting out. When you're doing some of those activities for the first time, it really can be painful for muscles that haven't been worked. When we set really ambitious goals, New Year's goals, or just goals in general, it can feel exciting at first, but the sheer size of the task or goal can lead to overwhelm. If you say, “This is the year I write my book,” or “This is the year that I'm going to launch my new website,” or “This is the year I'm going to plan this trip and that renovation,” and there seems to be all these massive goals - and that's great, and you should have really great goals - but then people don't know where to start. Then they procrastinate, or they just do what they can, but they get stuck, and eventually they give up. We're overwhelmed by big goals, and that is if they've actually made the right goals. I've said in previous blogs about a lot of times people make the wrong goals because they don't go through an actual process, similar to the process I take people through in The Breakthrough 2025. Reason 2: They have a lack of clear direction. Without a clear path, it's easy to lose focus. Maybe they start strong. They have this goal. It might even be a big goal, but then they're not even sure what the next step is. How do I get there? How do I do it? They feel stuck. Have you ever put together a piece of furniture, like a bookshelf, but you've lost the instructions? Oh my goodness, yes, it's so hard! This happens when you move, and you'll naively say, “Oh, I'll remember how to put the bed back together. There are only five screws.” Then you come to put the bed together, and it's a nightmare. You don't know what the next step is. If you don't have a clear direction or a clear plan, you're going to feel stuck. You're going to lose motivation. That's just how it is. Reason 3: You lack immediate results. It’s hard to have lots of motivation when you don’t see the results quickly. Let’s look again at the gym example, if you're going to the gym three times in the first week because it's a short week. Then, the second week, you go five times, and you come into your third week, and you go twice, and all you've felt is pain, and you don't see yourself getting stronger yet. You don't see the difference in your body yet. It's so natural to be motivated by that instant gratification in the beginning, but big goals, or even small goals, require consistent effort over time. We know that, but even still, when the results aren't immediate, motivation will fade.  Practical steps You're like, “Okay, Diane, so if these are three of the big common issues why motivation fades, then how do some people seem to go forward? How do some people seem to stay motivated all year? How do you stay motivated?” Well, while I've given you three ways that motivation can fade, there are so many more. These are the top ones that I'm seeing, at least at this time of year. Here are some practical steps. You need to build in some routines to support your goals Obviously, if we go back to the problems, instead of getting overwhelmed by the big goals, break them down into smaller goals, manageable steps, focus on the micro wins, build your self-confidence and maintain your progress. You need a map. Instead of have a lack of clear direction, you need a map, or as I like to call it, a blueprint, like we have in The Breakthrough 2025. We have the Breakthrough Blueprint, and that's going to help you to provide clarity and help you to know where the next step is. (Side note: you could still join The Breakthrough 2025. I can still help you to come up with that blueprint, that plan, if you don't have it yet, and you're going to be able to get the support you need to have the right size goals and the right focus and the right path.) Rather than thinking of immediate results, focus on that process rather than just the outcome. Instead of feeling like you lack immediate results, celebrate those consistent efforts. Maybe it's not, “Oh, the book's written,” but it's, “I wrote two thousand words today.” If every day you could write 2,000 words, depending on how fast you want to write your book, how big the book is going to be, that's going to help you build the trust in yourself that you can attain this goal and build motivation. Building routines to support your goals Let me go back now to the building routines that support your goals. For example, every day, I spend five minutes in the morning before I get into everything just to review what are my priorities for the day. I look at my blueprint:
I've seen this work really well for my clients. Those participants in The Breakthrough 2025, they tell me all the time how these small habits, these tools - like having their guidelines, having their values, having their theme, and their new paradigm, along with the breakdown of all of their goals, have really helped them to be able to prioritize what they need to do. It's helped one of my clients, I know for sure. She was like, “Wow, this helped me achieve more in one month than I used to do in six months.” Monthly check-ins The other piece that’s really going to help you (they're the practical steps) are monthly check-ins. Because how many times - if these people at the gym in that first month had had more check-ins, more knowing that they were going to have to report to others and say how they did, that would help them. Check-ins also give you accountability because if you know that other people are going to be looking at your goals, looking at your plan, to see if you did it. Are you sticking with it? Yes! Then to have them celebrate you at those monthly check-ins, to be like, “Wow, so good!” We've done like air high-fives or Zoom high-fives before, to acknowledge their results, “Wow, look what you've accomplished! That's so amazing!” That increases the motivation as well. Monthly check-ins with accountability because if you know that by the end of the month you have to report on how you did in that accountability, you are more likely to be motivated by external reasons, and the results and acknowledgments give you more internal motivation. What does this mean for you now? You now know that you want to maintain, you want to keep that motivation throughout the year. That spark of the new year, the new beginnings. You now know the areas causing you to lose the motivation, and you see some ways that you can boost the motivation and sustain that moving forward. Now, the easiest way is to join The Breakthrough 2025. If you're feeling like you could use extra support to stay on track, if you don't want to muster the motivation, then this program is exactly what you need. Probably over 10 years ago, I remember seeing Brendon Burchard, and he said, “Do you know power plants don't have energy? They make it.” It's just like motivation - you don't always have the motivation; you have to make it. But what if someone else could help to boost your motivation? In The Breakthrough 2025, you're going to get a clear, actionable blueprint. It's going to help you map out your whole year with tools to help you combat a lack of motivation and to help you achieve the goals. You're going to get accountability, as I said, and support from amazing, like-minded women, and you're going to have tools to track your progress and adjust when life throws you curve balls or takes away your motivation. Also, coaching and strategy from me. One of my favorite success stories is from a participant who went from feeling completely stuck and feeling like, “I don't think I can do this” and not having much motivation to reaching her goals. She ended up hitting one of her biggest goals within just a few months of joining. She had a massive goal in the first 30 days, and then every month thereafter, she was reaching and clearing off her big goals right away. That's what happens when you have the right framework in place and the right motivation. Wrapping Up You know motivation is something that you need, and the New Year's motivation, the new beginnings motivation is where the magic happens. There is an opportunity for you to carry that forward all the way through the year. Break down your goals, celebrate your milestones, your wins, and stay accountable. Small actions every day, planning every day is going to help you to move forward. I encourage you to take a small action today. What's one thing that you can do to keep the motivation going? Maybe it's writing down that top goal. Maybe it is reaching out to me about The Breakthrough 2025, and if you're ready to go all in, I encourage you to check out The Breakthrough 2025. Do you have questions? Email me at [email protected]. You don't want to miss our first monthly check-in this year so that you can meet the group and have some really great momentum towards your goals and your plan for 2025. Thanks so much for spending time with me today. Let's make 2025 our breakthrough year together. Until next time, stay dynamic. Read my other blogs:
What an incredible journey the Dynamic Women podcast has taken us on 2024! We closed the year with 293 episodes and also celebrated our 5th anniversary!  As I look back at 2024, I'm still amazed by the raw honesty and powerful insights our solo and guest episodes have shared. You've told us how these stories have touched your lives, changed your perspectives, and even inspired you to take bold new steps in your own journeys. Let's revisit the episodes that you, our wonderful listeners, couldn't stop talking about! Have you been wondering if you're a trailblazer and looking for different descriptors of how you could be one or tips and tricks in order to step into being a trailblazer? Then this episode is for you. Diane Rolston, our host, is joined by three Trailblazer Secrets Collaborative Authors to share with you what makes someone a trailblazer. Here are some questions they answered:
Have you felt the power of other people cheering for you? And have you also felt the disadvantage and the annoyance of people competing with you? If so, then you're going to want to listen to this episode and share it with friends so that you can both be cheerleading for each other. In this episode, Diane Rolston shares five ways you can cheerlead others more because the more we cheerlead for each other, the more room there is for everyone to succeed. If you listen to the last episode about the benefits of accountability, our host, Diane Rolston, mentioned that she would do the flip side. In this episode, she talks about the bad side of accountability and the five things you should avoid. Don’t miss:
In the previous episode of the Dynamic Women Podcast, I shared with you Author Panel 1 of the Trailblazer Secrets Book Launch Party. Now this week, I’ll share Panel 2 with you! The moderator, Tanya Steele, who is also a collaborative author, asks some burning questions to our panel members, Barbara Wallick, Cora Naylor, and Jeanine Becker who are all authors in the Trailblazers too! Don’t miss:
Have you been thinking, “It's a new year. I need to make a plan. I need to make some goals and resolutions. I need to do all the pieces in order to have the greatest year”? In this episode, Diane Rolston talks about how to map out your successful year and what you need to do first because the way you’re doing it may not be the most ideal. There are some crucial pieces that you could be leaving behind. Don’t miss:
Have you been feeling like you're a little bit off track and you don't know which direction you should be pointing yourself to go? Maybe you've been doing a whole bunch of different steps and you don't see how they can all be united in one path. In this episode, Diane Rolston talks about finding your North Star and its importance. Don’t miss:
Have you been thinking about making your goals? Then you're going to want to listen to this episode because Diane Rolston will talk about the art of goal setting. Don’t miss:
Have you been wanting to be a trailblazer, but you missed out on our Trailblazer Secrets Book Launch Party? Well, you get to listen in on one of our panels today in this episode. Listen as Paula Kent, our moderator, asks some burning questions to our panel members, Leah Grant, Tina Collura, and Ashley Mckie. They are all collaborative authors in the newly published, Trailblazer Secrets Book. Don’t miss:
Have you been feeling like, “Oh my gosh. I just have too much going on right now” or “Life is moving at a really fast pace”? Then maybe you need to make your own snow day. In this episode, Diane Rolston talks about how a consistent “Snow Day” could be what you really need.
Have you been thinking that maybe you need to be a trailblazer? Well, in the latest Dynamic Women Podcast, five Trailblazer Secrets Authors joined our host, Diane Rolston. Listen up to this episode as they discuss the importance of trailblazers in society. Don’t miss their answers to these questions:
Wrapping Up: There you have it - the episodes that made us all stop in our tracks, hit pause, and really think. But honestly? Picking just ten episodes feels almost unfair because every conversation we've had this year has been pure gold. To our amazing listeners who make this community what it is - thank you. Whether you're catching these episodes for the first time or taking a second listen, I hope these stories continue to light that fire within you. Because that's what Dynamic Women is all about - real talks that spark real change. You can tune in to the Dynamic Women Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Captivate, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast streaming apps. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and leave us a review - it helps other amazing women find these powerful conversations! Plus, do you have any topics that you want me to tackle this 2025? Send them through [email protected]. Here's to many more powerful conversations ahead!
Are you frustrated that you keep losing momentum? In this blog, I deal with this very common problem so that you don't have to be frustrated by it anymore and I would love for you to steal my strategy for not losing momentum.  Losing Momentum As you may have seen, I recently launched The Breakthrough 2025, and we just had the first big session where I took my clients through the phases to be able to create their own Breakthrough Blueprint. Then we have monthly calls now moving forward to make sure that plan gets into place. Before joining, one of the women told me, "Diane, I think this is the right option for me because, you know, I get going, and I start doing some stuff, and then I lose momentum." Have you ever felt that way? Losing momentum is the worst when you've already got a little bit of movement going. Getting that motivation in the beginning can be so hard. First, it's about believing that you can go for something. Then it's putting the right pieces into place, staying inspired, and then being motivated to go for it. Well, it's so easy to lose momentum and motivation. The sad thing is, if that continues, you're going to lose confidence that you can actually do the thing you're set out to do. I want you to be able to steal my strategy so that you don't lose momentum. Now, do I lose momentum? All the freaking time! I do, but there are things I have in place that really help me be able to continue things and keep going. Why we lose momentum Reason 1: Burn out Sometimes we go too hard, too fast, and we burn out. If you could imagine running a race, even a 5K race, and you decide the first kilometer you're going to sprint the whole way - probably you won't even be able to sprint a full kilometer - but you decide to sprint, and now you're like, "This is too much. Can I even finish?"  That's often what happens when people go for goals. They're so inspired, so excited, they've got this surge of energy, and they try to do it all, and they start neglecting themselves and their needs. If I'm going to keep my momentum going, I need to make sure that I am properly fed (I get hangry), that I have the right amount of sleep, that I'm caring for my emotional needs, whether that be by doing my daily devotions, praying, journaling, walking, phoning a friend, whatever it may be, so that my emotional and mental needs are being met. Super crucial. Reason 2: You get stuck At some point you get stuck, and then you go,
You're stuck in the place of, "This happened, and I'm stuck, and I'm here, and I don't know how to move forward." I encourage you to adopt a "How can I?" approach. Now, it's not always easy to have the "How can I?" approach when you're by yourself. Because you're in a silo. It's like if you think of a field with a tree in it, and it's windy, and that tree is being battered because it's by itself. The key thing for momentum and for being able to figure out those times that you're stuck, is to have others around you. Have others for the strategy. Then you can say, "Hey, this is where I'm at. How do I move forward?" Have others for the support and the cheerleading, so they can tell you," Come on, you can do it". Also, have people around you for accountability. Because how many times are you feeling stuck, but you're not really stuck? Maybe there's some sort of limiting belief holding you back. You need others there to be able to call you out and be like, "Get over it. Let’s go. Get it done!" Also, when you are in the first stage, when you go too hard too fast, you need people around you to remind you:
Reason 3: Negative self-talk Another piece is you start to believe the negative self-talk. If you are burnt out or you're stuck for too long, the negative limiting beliefs are there as well. How do you manage that? Well, there's so much we can do with coaching. But what I do, even before all of that, is I make sure when I'm winning, when I'm achieving, when I've checked things off my list, that first I am celebrating my accomplishment. Second, that I am being witnessed by others because I'm sharing with them what I’ve done, and third I'm pulling the wisdom from each win. This is a crucial piece of my year, and a crucial piece of every time I accomplish something. Now in The Breakthrough 2025, when we went through the reflection process - boy, did people perk up. Being celebrated by sharing and having other people acknowledge them was huge. Later on, you’ll be able to use the gained confidence as momentum to get past the lack of motivation or inspiration. At any point when we feel we have run out of the confidence to keep going, we can look at past successes to help you to continue on. Motivation Mountain Years ago, I did another blog around the Motivation Mountain and the importance of celebrating successes at the top of the mountain, at your achievement, at your peak, rather than climbing all the way down and up again. Because a lot of times it's the down, it's the valley, it's the stuckness, where we lose motivation, confidence, we get into our limiting beliefs and we get burnt out. That's when we need the momentum from the celebration, from the achievement, from the learning, from the golden nuggets.  That's what we did at the kickoff session of The Breakthrough 2025. This client who joined, who said, "Every time I get going, I just seem to lose focus, and lose momentum". That's not going to happen for her now. Why? She's not going to be burnt out because we have a plan for how she's going to move ahead with a Blueprint of tools, values, themes, guidelines that are going to help her stay the course. She's not going to feel like a silo. She's not going to be stuck because she's got my strategy, the cheering of the group, the accountability of a structure and these monthly calls. Even better, in VIP, where you get one-on-one calls with me, laser sessions and additional mastermind Hot Seat times every month. She's not going to lose momentum, motivation, inspiration, or confidence because she followed my process of reflecting, redefining and realizing. Wrapping Up If you want to fully steal (or let’s say use) my strategy, I encourage you to show up for The Breakthrough 2025. Yes, our main session is complete, but you have access to the recordings. You have access to me through a private online group, and you have our monthly calls for support - to make sure that not only do you not lose momentum, but you actually get to hit the accelerator button and go even faster. While you may think, "I missed out. I missed the boat of the Jan 6th session," think again. We've got 12 months, girl! We've got 12 months to do this together. Do you want to invite me to plan with you, to support you, to cheer you on and give you strategy along the way? Then make sure you click the link to pick up The Breakthrough 2025. You definitely will be grateful to yourself that you did, and you get to join an amazing community of women who are planning boldly, living intentionally, achieving purposefully, and they're going to reach all their goals with tons of momentum. Read my other blogs:
Let me guess: you've worked hard, you've checked the boxes, you've achieved so much this year, and yet, if you're being honest, every year feels the same. It's not that the same things are happening, but it just feels the same - not that amazing, or it was amazing but just feels a little bit empty.
speakers, high-achieving women, go-getters, driven, A-types who have the promotions, the achievements, the family milestones, and are being acknowledged for a job well done, but they still feel like something is missing. I’ll tell you a little story about a client of mine. We're going to call her Marianna, and she came to me at the top of her career, doing exceptional. She said, "Diane, basically, I have plenty of money. I have a great career. I have achieved so much this past year, and I have many other accomplishments, yet I kind of got to this point and I think, 'Is this it?' What else am I missing?" This was in, November - and she says, "I look back at my year, and I think, what is missing? What am I missing that will light me up? That's going to make me feel different. It's like it's Groundhog Day, over and over and over again. Yes, there are new successes, new achievements, and new projects. But there's something missing inside," and if you have been feeling like something inside is different or missing, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. There's this emptiness that can come. High-achieving women like us, we often fall into this cycle of doing and doing and doing more rather than ‘being’. I'm not just talking about ‘self-care being’. Let's just sit and let's go to the spa and let's meditate - no, like the being of really being present, listening to our emotions and feeling them, and being in that place of being able to hold space and not jumping ten steps ahead, and being in enjoyment and being where you can listen to your intuition. You have self-awareness. There's so much more here on the being side. But you see, high achievers, we are pushed by the external and the achievement, and that's amazing, and that's why we are so successful, why we've got to where we are, but that also can lead to things like burnout, loss of purpose, and a feeling of stagnation. You wouldn't necessarily say, "I am stuck," but you’re not moving as much as you want, and the year feels like the last year. They start to blend together, even though you might say, "Well, that was the year I accomplished this," or "That was the year I had that happen." You may set goals like
But the goals are just that - they're goals. They feel almost uninspired. We can feel disconnected from them and disconnected from what really lights us up. What lights you up? I was asked this years ago when I was on stage at a program. "What lights you up, Diane?" I was like, "Oh, what lights me up is when my clients have a breakthrough." They responded, "Really? You have a young child. I thought you would have said your child lights you up." I was like, "Oh, right," because I went into default answer.
I was disconnected to what really lights me up, which was the moments of joy on my daughter's face, that wonder of a child, or the giggle of my son when he was a baby. These things are not just around children or people who light you up, but what things light you up? For me the other ones are playing soccer, being at the beach, travelling, my faith and so much more. I can remember working with a client who was working probably 80 hours a week, extremely successful, confident in what she does, and yet felt really nervous about taking time off. She said, "I just don't know what I like anymore. What will I do with my time off? What do I like to do for fun?" The deeper issue here is that when we live by default and we're going towards our goals and our achievements - as great as those are - we start to move away from intentionally designing our life and our year based on our deeper, true desires and values.  We don't have time for those because as we're busy doing the achievement piece, we can drift further and further away from our desires, our values, what lights us up, what puts us in resonance, that energy, that flow - the things that you could do for hours or for days. We love it so much we don’t think about eating or taking a break or anything. What is that for you? I know that when I am facilitating, when I'm leading, and I love when I'm leading I don’t need anything because I’m in such resonance, I even forget about going to the bathroom, even though when I'm at my desk by myself, I probably have to go every hour or more. When we think of it, how much of our lives are we spending in that joy place, in what lights us up? Why this happens Why does this happen? Why do we get into this place? Now, I shared a little bit about because we're doers, I shared a little bit about because we're driven. We're going for the achievements and the goals. But a lot of that also comes from societal pressures. The pressure to be good, the pressure to achieve, the pressure to be everything to everyone, all the time. The…
Let's just continue with all the roles we have, right? There's a lot of societal pressure. There's no real push or pressure from society saying, "Connect with what you really love and go do that," at least not in this North American style. Then there's fear of change. Especially as we're getting older. I'm 45 now, but I find there's more of a fear of change because we get set in our ways, and we know that when we change things majorly, it can affect those around us, especially if we have employees or staff, spouses, or children. There are a lot of pieces that are already put in place. It's not that we can't adapt to change - we do, we're very flexible. However, we get to that place of asking ourselves, "Do I have it in me? Do I have it in me to change? I don't know if I do." Then these problems also happen because we have a lack of clarity. After all, we're not necessarily spending the time, investing the time to ask ourselves, "What do I really want?" Then sitting with that and the being so that we know exactly what's coming forward. When I ask myself questions, it's so hard for me to just sit, and I find that so often in my clients. They're like, "Here's the answer, here's the answer, here's the answer." Instead, let’s pause. I know it’s so hard as a doer, to not be doing. But if you can percolate on it. Sit with that question and come back to it a few times, you’ll get so much more clarity. I have to take myself for a walk in the forest when it comes to getting clarity on things. Or I need to pray about it, I need to sleep on it, because otherwise, I will just make a quick decision. Or simply, we just don't have the tools. We don't have the process to reflect and plan properly, and I'm going to tell you how you can do that. But here's an example: Most of us, we set our goals based on what we think we should want, or what we think is next in our path, not what truly fulfills us in that resonance piece, that energy piece. That's why so many New Year's resolutions fail. They fall flat because they're not based on deeper wants, deeper desires. We say, "Yes, this is the year that I organize my house, and this is the year that I lose 10 pounds, and this is the year that I make more money, and this is the year that I buy that new car I've always wanted." But it's not coming from this deeper place. The Solution How do we break this cycle? Well, there is a process that I've been doing for 14 years now: Reflect, Redefine and Realize. Every single year, I go through process which is now a proven process because not only have I done it for years, I took two other coaches through it, and then I moved it over to working with clients and taking clients through it. In the past, it was called Dynamic Year, and now it's called The Breakthrough 2025.  I take you through my three-step process. Reflecting - We're looking back at the past year to take golden nuggets from it so that we can move forward. Redefining - Setting the foundation for the next year by using The Breakthrough Blueprint process, so that your plan is really rooted in intention, authenticity, and your purpose. Not just the doing, but the being. So it helps you to be super confident in life and with what excites you. Realizing - It's great that we make the plan, we look back and we reflect - but then we need to be able to realize it. We turn that Breakthrough Blueprint into reality with inspired action and intentional steps. This final step is the one that helps you throughout the year to be able to take consistent action, purpose-driven action, and having the coaching and the tools to help you get there. Too many people just go, "Boom, here are my goals." Or "Here's my vision board," and they let the magazines, the images in the magazines, or the images they pull online dictate what will be on it. Or, as I said in my last blog, "Oh, this word, this is my theme for the year." They haven't actually gone through a process of being - a proven process - to get these pieces, to get their theme, their guidelines, their values, their new paradigm, and their goals. These five key things that need to be part of their blueprint - they haven't actually gone through a proper process to do it. It's all great, and you can have some success with it, but the depth of success, the impact of those things, is far higher when you've done it through a process. Wrapping Up My lovely readers, reflect right now about your past year. What would you change if you could? If you're really ready to break the cycle, or if you're just ready to be like, "Actually, my year is good, but I want to be better," or if anything that I said today resonated with you, then I do invite you to join The Breakthrough 2025. Because really, it's time to stop spinning your wheels, and design a year that you love rather than a year that is made by default. This process that I go through every single year is the reason why people say to me, "How have you had so much success?" or "How do you do all you do, even with young kids? I see you everywhere, and you're doing all these cool things - you must be so busy." I am achieving, but I'm not too busy because I am content and I can achieve my goals faster with my Blueprint. I invite you to check it out. The Breakthrough 2025 is a full-year coaching, and accountability support program. We do the kickoff on January 6th. This is your year. This is your year to have a change. This is your year to break through. This is your time. Let's make 2025 your year of the breakthrough. We're going to plan boldly. We're going to help you to live intentionally and achieve purposefully. Share this blog with a friend, as we know sharing is caring, and if you really want to lift others up around you in 2025 to the level that you're at, or at least to make things better and easier for them as well, then share these blogs with them. Until next time, stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
I'm going to share about designing your breakthrough year and how you can start now. We don't want to wait until we're well into the new year. We want to get a jump start on it right now!  Imagine waking up every single day in 2025 feeling clear, confident, and completely in control of your life.
Many times I talk to people in my day-to-day life, or at events, and they tell me about the goals they want to achieve. Then I see them again, and they haven't achieved their goals yet.
I'm going to share the things you really need to do if you're going to have 2025 be THE year - the year for you, the year for you to have that clarity, confidence, and control, for you to reach your goals, for it to be an amazing year. Then you’ll get to the final day of the year, and you’ll say, “Oh, I don't think I could have squeezed anything else into the year. I don't think I could have achieved anything else. It was such a fulfilling, big year for me - this was THE year!” First Piece: You don't want to miss out on that motivator, which is achievement. A lot of times, I see people having the same problem. They wait for the perfect time. How many times have you told yourself, 'I'll start planning' or 'I'll start doing things” or “I'll start reaching my goals when things calm down, when things ease up, when I'm not so overwhelmed or busy”? But here's the truth: there's never a perfect time, except right now, to get going on things. It's important that when you choose to do plan, as I mentioned before, we want to make sure we have the right process, the right 3-Phase Process to go through. Don't wait for the perfect time, and then don't just willy-nilly make goals or a plan without a proper process and reflection. I’ll share more about the process that I go through and have been going through for 14 years, and one that I take my clients through. It’s crucial. Reflection and intention are so important. Otherwise, we just do the same things over and over again, and most people rush into the new year without reflecting on the past year. That's why so many resolutions fail - because they're not the right ones, and they're not rooted in clarity, not rooted in purpose. If you don't have clarity and purpose, you're going to choose the wrong goals, or you're going to choose the goals, and then you don't have enough motivation behind them to have them work. Reviewing my year is always the first process that I do, and people say to me, “Well, Diane, why bother reviewing? It’s a new year, new you.” It helps us to celebrate what we have achieved. You don't want to miss out on the greatest motivator, which is… achievement. As adults - and I see this in my clients or the women in the audiences that I speak to, and I see it in my friends, people I network with - we have successes, but then we skip past them to get to the next task or the next goal. We don't celebrate at all. When we don't succeed, or we don't do it exactly how we want, we'll dwell on our failures. We're reviewing our failures. We're beating ourselves up because of these failures, and we can't seem to get going again. People who are successful and satisfied (key thing: successful AND satisfied) - and companies that are doing extremely well know the benefits of reviewing your year. I don't just mean reviewing your financial statements, your fiscal year, your target numbers and such, but reviewing more about it, like how it felt, what you were proud of and even the soft skills. Second Piece: You don't want to make the same mistakes again. The biggest wasted resource in learning is not learning from our mistakes. We’ll often finish a project, an event, a launch, and we'll review that process. We'll review what we did to see where we can do better next time, but we don't always learn from our regular everyday experiences or the culmination of the whole year and all those experiences along the way. Instead of capitalizing on this wealth of knowledge, it just seems to slip through our fingers, and it's usually just forgotten. Often we just jump into the next year. We set up some big goals, and we end up making the same mistakes again, and we wonder why we have similar results. If you're saying, “No, I reach all of my goals all the time, no problem.” Okay, well, what would be the next level? Where could you actually get to if you put in the time to review? The 3-Step Results Process If you want 2025 to be like THE year for you, your breakthrough year, then you need a three-step results process. It's the one I follow, and this helps me to create my plan every single year. Step 1: Reflection I talked about reviewing, but we're going to use the word 'reflect' so that we're not coming at it from just an analytical space. Reflection brings in the emotions a little bit more, so we're going to be able to gain some clarity by looking back so that we can move forward more intentionally and powerfully.  We're going to look at,
We're going to acknowledge the achievements, the wins, the lessons learned. Then acknowledge the disappointments, the lessons learned. We're going to let those go. We're going to uncover patterns and let go of anything that no longer serves you. Now, the purpose is this is to give you clarity, and self-awareness, to build a strong foundation for your breakthrough year. Step 2: Redefine Many people create goals by default, like whatever just comes to them, rather than actually redefining what's most important to them. We need to do this to be able to set the foundation for your breakthrough year by redefining your vision of success. A lot of times, people just look at success as achievements - what they get, what they earn - rather than satisfaction. I want to create a plan that has both. I want to be successful AND satisfied. In the pursuit of my success, I want to be satisfied every single day on the way to success. Does that not sound better than just being satisfied on the days that you actually have success? This step is going to help you create the pieces. That's what I go through with my clients, to create all the pieces for your Breakthrough Blueprint. Theme: We start by creating a clear, bold theme for your year to set the tone and direction. Now, a lot of people, what they do is they go, “I like that word,” or “This word came to me,' or 'That's my favorite song, and I like that word that the song is titled.' That is a stupid way to come up with a theme. I'm sorry if this is how you do it, but these are really lightweight, surface-level themes. What you really want is a bold theme that has come from doing the reflection in the first section that's going to help to set the tone and direction for your whole year. Guidelines: Then establishing some clear guidelines - these are personal rules and boundaries. They're going to support the theme, and they're going to support all the other pieces that you put into your breakthrough blueprint. Now, a lot of times with guidelines, people are like, “These are things I need to learn. These are boundaries I need to create.” But they haven't come from that reflection process because, as I mentioned, most people don't bother reviewing or reflecting - they just jump into the creation process or the planning process, but they've missed out fully on this bit before. Values: When you get to do this, you start redefining success on your own terms. I guide you through uncovering your core values because they help you make authentic decisions, stay motivated, and build confidence in what truly matters to you. You're aligning your goals with your values. Paradigm: We now have theme, guidelines, values, then we need to support ourselves by having a new paradigm because otherwise, going towards these goals, and wanting to honour the rest of it, the limiting beliefs are going to step in the way, and they're going to break up your chances of being able to achieve your goals. Having that new paradigm is going to help you to not only break free from old beliefs that have been holding you back but let you grab the reins again so that you're in control so that limiting belief isn't really focusing or pushing your decision-making anymore and limiting what you can do. Creating Goals from all areas The fifth and final piece is creating our top goals by looking at all areas of life. Now, we're not creating 100 goals, we're creating like three-four goals, but we look at all areas of life. Otherwise, my business owners, you're probably going to create 10 business goals. Or, my high achievers, you're going to create 20 goals that you want to achieve in just a couple of areas of life. We don't want to do that. By doing this redefining process, this really ensures that the plan is rooted in intention, authenticity, purpose, so you can confidently pursue a life that excites you. I'm done with people having dull lives! I don't mean that people are boring, but what if we took a stand for having things in our life that excite us - more passion, more purpose, more resonance? That's the type of life I want for all of you. Step 3: Realizing After we go through the reflection, the redefining, creating that breakthrough blueprint, we're going to go to the third phase. Now you might think that this is like, “Well, now I'm going to get results.” Okay, hold on - it's more that realizing is the process through which you achieve everything on this blueprint. You're going to turn the vision that you have, that we've created for the ideal life, with inspired and intentional steps, rather than just, “Here's the next thing I have to do, here's the next task I have to do.”
 When we can set some actionable, meaningful goals, they're going to align with our theme, our values, our new paradigm, our guidelines, and we can use this breakthrough blueprint to create a step-by-step plan that prioritizes your progress towards your goals. Key thing here: without overwhelm. Because these other pieces are like tools, supporting the goal, helping you to get there. Then in order to realize your goals, we can't just stop at making that plan. We have to have some accountability. A lot of times it comes through coaching, community support, regular check-ins, so that you not only just say what you have done or haven't done, but you get to celebrate your wins. You get to course-correct when needed. Did you know that a plane is off course 95% of the time? Course correction, course correction, course correction. You need multiple course corrections throughout the year to make sure you're staying the course and to make adjustments for things that come your way. Planes are adjusting to wind, weather, storms, and other planes. The same thing happens to you. You need to course-correct when needed. Sometimes you know that yourself. Sometimes you need a coach to call you out on it. Now, in this realizing stage, the main purpose of it is to help you to take consistent, purpose-driven action to bring your breakthrough year to life. This plan is a living blueprint, a living plan, they're living goals, meaning they are going to continue to change and grow. Do you know what's really cool? As you up your confidence, as you have more clarity, as you have more achievement, oftentimes, what is possible and what this blueprint can do for you - it expands and grows and stretches so that you actually have more success than you thought, in the beginning, you could achieve. Pretty cool! Wrapping Up I'm announcing a special invitation: if you're ready to stop waiting, start creating your breakthrough year, I invite you to join me for The Breakthrough 2025, and together, we're going to plan a life that feels bold, intentional, purposeful. We're going to get you not only to be at the end of the year feeling really good about what you've accomplished but feeling good every single day - with clarity, confidence, and feeling like you're in control. You're taking action to get the results because of the three-phase results process. Got questions? Email me at [email protected]. Otherwise, join The Breakthrough 2025. I hope to see you there. Make sure you don't willy-nilly create your plan this year. Make sure you start now because I know that it's possible for 2025 to be your breakthrough year. Read my other blogs:
If you're feeling like you're reacting to life rather than actively designing it, then you may be falling into the trap of being reactive rather than proactive. Today, I'm going to talk about how to go from reactive to proactive, basically allowing you to design a life you love.  If you’re reacting to life, then you’re not actively designing it. This matters so much because living proactively lets you focus on what truly matters: YOU - what you want, what you need, your desires, your passions, and the legacy you’re meant to leave in the world. This topic came up because just this week, in the last quarterly session of the Dynamic Year Program (now called The Breakthrough 2025), we worked on what I call the Dynamic Life Blueprint (now called the Breakthrough Blueprint). That’s your theme, guidelines, values, new paradigm, and goals for the entire year. The feedback I got was incredible—women shared how much better they were able to focus and achieve their goals because they were proactive in designing what they wanted their lives to look like. I'm going to go through some main points around the problems of reactivity, the power of being proactive, and how you can shift from being reactive to being proactive, and what that would look like for you. Now, I mainly speak to high-achieving women, success-driven women, and women who are easily or maybe just through hard work, are able to get so much done and achieve so much. Then they get to a point when they meet me, and they say,
There are so many things that come up, and a lot of times it's because we are dealing with being reactive. The Problem with Reactivity Now, the problem with reactivity is we are constantly responding to oeoples’ needs, wants, agendas, and goals, without prioritizing our own Many times, when I'm speaking on stage, doing a keynote or a workshop, We go through an activity where I get them to write down all the things that are a priority, they name their kids, their work, their marriage, or even their pets. I hear people say, “I'm not even on my own priority list.” Sometimes, they add in their health or spiritual life—but rarely do they put their own name on the list. That's because we're often being reactive to what society wants for us, or making us like that whole “should” idea, or it is that feeling of the pressure of “I have to be the greatest mom, the greatest wife, the greatest neighbor, the greatest daughter, the greatest friend etc.”  In being reactive to those pressures of society, we start to forget, or we don't even look at the pieces that we need, want and desire. When you're being reactive, you're going to feel out of control in your life. You've given up the reins. A lot of these women have taken back the reins, and that's how we move into the power of proactivity. Being proactive because if we're not, the default will be work. Our default will be other people's agendas. You may be like, “No, I get a lot done, and I put my needs above others.” I once had a client who really wanted to go away on the weekends, and her daughter felt like she didn't have much of a life, and so she was constantly asked to dog sit. She then felt like, “I can't go and do things because I have this dog to take care of.” Then, on the flip side, I've had clients who have grandkids and then their kids expect them to take care of the grandkids or because you're not perceived to have a very stressful life, even though you're working, but they see you around, they think that then you can take on all these board positions or these other rules where it's just too much, and you don't realize it's too much until you've said yes, yes, yes, yes, and that's when you're being reactive. The Power of Being Proactive When you're being proactive, you're defining your priorities, your needs, your wants, and then you're able to put those things ahead of others. I'm not saying you're a parent and now neglect your kids. No. If we think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the need for a secure and safe environment, food and water, and then we get into love and other things, once your kids are fine, once other people you’re responsible to are fine, you get to step into that place of being proactive for your own desires. But if you’re most often saying “yes”, or you don’t know what's important for you and then saying yes to everything else, how are you ever going to create space for yourself? The power of proactivity gets you to a place of creating space for yourself that aligns with your goals, with your values, and with the things that are most resonant or energy giving for you. Sometimes, when we fall into reactivity, we're saying “Yes” to things that are causing us dissonance, lack of energy, a little bit of friction, and we only have so much time and so much energy and so many resources to give. When we are being proactive, we're actually able to get the things that we want done. Shifting from Reactive to Proactive When we think of it this way, that shift from being reactive to proactive, it's so crucial to be able to take the time to pause and to look at:
Without thinking, “Well, this is realistic. This is what other people have.” It's like, what do YOU want? What does that look like for YOU? Once you are able to measure your satisfaction in life, this is something I do in my one-on-one sessions, in my special Satisfaction Shift Strategy Sessions. It's also something I do in Dynamic Balance. When you do that, it's going to be so clear as to where you need to put your time, your energy, your resources. In Dynamic Year, I was talking before about how we create your theme, your new paradigm, your guidelines, your values and your goals. Again, when you have that and when you have the wheel of life with the wants and needs for six months or a year from now, you're going to be able to start each day with a plan of what to focus on.  Rather than sitting back being reactive, waiting for others to set the agenda for you, you're in this really sweet place of “I already know what I want.” I get to not only be proactive in this, but I get to implement things at a pace that's going to have me be even more successful and even more satisfied. Having that plan is really going to help you to set some boundaries, protecting that time that you have, protecting your energy, keeping you in resonance and really protecting your resources, because we know that we only have so much time, energy and money to go around. These are the key things. These have been game changers for me as a high achieving woman who's been constantly driven to do and do and do and do some more. I find that there come moments where…
If you're suffering from any of those, then it could be that you’re being a bit more reactive in your life, and you're not really able to fully design a life you love. When designing a life you love, you’ll face realities about what life is, and you can't put everything in your control. But what if you could grab back the reins? Because maybe you're feeling like, “I'm on a runaway train, and I don't know where this track is going, and it feels completely wrong.” Or you're in a bus being driven by someone else, and you want to get off, but you just can't. When you get to be proactive, create your own plan, and create what truly matters to you. life will be different Not only will you be able to satisfy your needs, your wants, your desires, and your ideal life, but think of the legacy that you're going to leave. Think of the impact you're going to have on others. I knew I’d be limited if I was to drop everything for everyone else all the time. If I were to say “yes” to everything that came across my desk, I'd have no time. We are only given so much time on this earth. I hope that today you're going to be thinking about, “Am I being reactive? Am I dealing with other people's shoulds, other people's agendas, other people's priorities? or is there time, space, energy and resources for me and myself?” If this is something you want to go through, the Wheel of Life and measuring your satisfaction and coming up with your Breakthrough Blueprint, reach out to me. We have the NEW program called The Breakthrough 2025 coming up soon. Email me [email protected] if you want to be on the waitlist. If you prefer to do it 1:1, please feel free email me [email protected] I'm happy to talk about how we can go through this together. I hope you switch from being reactive to proactive. Even if you're like, “I'm super proactive and I have a plan”, there are things that you can really evaluate to see if you are fully, completely on the right track for you. Stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
In my previous blog, I shared about one of the core beliefs that sabotages your happiness - “I am not enough”. In this blog, I’ll walk through the second core belief, which is “It’s never enough.”  You might say:
Scarcity Mindset You get into this place of achievement addiction. You might not even be aware that you are addicted to more:
It creates this never-ending chase. The goalposts keep moving, and every milestone, every goal that you achieve, you’re not going to celebrate it properly, and it’s going to feel hollow. You’re addicted to the achievement. You’re chasing that high. This, maybe, is moving you into the "It’s never enough" zone. It brings you into that scarcity mindset of hoarding your resources, holding on to them, holding on to opportunities, not fully going for them because you’re afraid that they’re going to run out. When you’re in scarcity, you’re not sharing, you’re not collaborating, you’re not connecting with others in the same way because you’re holding on. You have a lot of reluctance, not only to celebrate but to enjoy these successes. The sad thing is, the success feeling is fleeting. It’s not a long-term satisfaction or happiness. These two beliefs--I am not enough and It’s never enough—they will sabotage your happiness if you haven’t already sabotaged it. Comparing yourself to others The "It’s never enough" also brings in constant comparison: comparing yourself to others:
and comparing yourself to your past achievements.
It’s tiring comparing yourself to others. It’s so tiring. Overworking The belief of "it’s never enough" can also take you to a place of overworking, and overextending yourself. You keep working tirelessly over and over and over to somehow earn some satisfaction. But it’s not enough—or it’s never enough—is this thief of joy. Because even though you’re trying to earn the satisfaction, it’s at the expense of something: health, relationships, your joy, your confidence, your relationships with family, your partner, kids, friends. It goes on and on and on.  When you’re overworking and overextending, you have such a difficulty delegating to others. That also comes in from before, when I spoke about perfectionism. It has you not being able to trust other people to help you. When you’re keeping everything close together, just like with a scarcity mindset, it brings you to a place of isolation or feeling like you’re alone, even though you’re in a group of other people. What happens? What happens to you in this case? Well, it takes you to one of two places.
Rather than just, "How do I want to chill? How do I enjoy where I am? What really matters to me right now?"  "It’s never enough" is always pushing you to the external rather than bringing you into the internal. Because you’re there, you definitely have FOMO—a fear of missing out. You say yes because you don’t want to miss the next big thing. You say yes to things, and then you’re thinking about the future and all the things to do. But then you’re sacrificing on current moments, the present-day moment, and the future, because we know the goalpost keeps moving. It keeps going further and further away, and you’re living in the future rather than today. You don’t want to miss out on anything, but you’re constantly striving, and eventually, the never-enough people, they get burnt out. 2. Not only do they have anxiety, but they full-on will burn out. Because if it’s never enough is a thief of your joy, if it’s keeping you from your satisfaction, sabotaging your happiness, then it’s going to be draining your energy, leading to more stress and eventually burnout. We only have so much emotional, physical, and mental capacity and bandwidth. When I heard the expression, "I don’t have the emotional capacity right now," or "I don’t have the emotional bandwidth," boy, is this ever true for the boss, the high achiever, that woman who is driven to do more, always more. It’s so true. We get to that point where we’re like, "I just don’t have enough left right now to deal with this," or "I’m just so tired. I can’t even be there," or "Emotionally, I don’t even want to talk to anybody right now. It’s just... it’s been too much." But even when “It’s never enough”, we still push on. Because let’s be real here: some of the things that we’ve been praised for are our resilience, our flexibility, our commitment, our ability to manage it all and multitask and do it all. Let me tell you, it’s going to take you to a bad place. Take some time now to look at "It’s never enough" or "It’s not enough" and ask yourself where these negative influences and effects are true about your life. Again, be honest about it. Wrapping Up If I can be of any support, please reach out to me at [email protected]. Share this with a friend who you think either needs to be looking at these things because they’re on their way to burnout or a lessening of their confidence, lack of joy, or whatever it may be. Or if you just have a friend who you think, "Wow, she’s doing so well, but I want to keep her safe. I want to keep her happy. I want her to be in the good zone here with her achievement level," then share it with her. Until next time, stay dynamic and focus on not just being successful, but take a stand for the AND-Be satisfied as well. Read my other blogs:
For high-achieving women—whether you’re the boss of a business or a boss at work—these two core beliefs, "I am not enough" and "It’s never enough" can manifest in profoundly negative ways. They often sabotage your happiness and success, despite all the achievements you’ve already attained.  Today, I’ll break down how "I am not enough" shows up in your life. I’ll cover “It’s never enough” in the next blog. Even if you think, "I don’t have that problem," you might! I wouldn’t have thought so either because I have a lot of success and happiness. But when I reflect—whether through coaching others, receiving coaching, or guiding women in my Dynamic Year program—I find that 95% of the time, the underlying limiting core belief is "I am not enough." Thankfully, Brené Brown’s research confirms this to be true. So let’s dive into the details. I’ll walk you through some key indicators to see if this belief might be affecting you. Be honest with yourself as we go through them. (This is part one of a two-part series. In my next blog, I’ll discuss "It’s never enough.") How "I Am Not Enough" Shows Up 1. Perfectionism Overload You’re striving. You’re going towards these unsustainable standards, which can lead to burnout, self-doubt, or a lack of confidence. Fear of failure is stopping you or basically paralyzing you, and preventing you from moving ahead. It might prevent you from taking a healthy risk, a good risk for your business or your career, like going for a promotion or even some innovation in what you're doing. 2. Imposter Syndrome It’s where you feel like a fraud despite the awards, the accolades, the success, and what everyone says about you. BUT you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Oftentimes these women, they don't celebrate themselves and their achievements. They dismiss their achievements as, “Oh yeah, I just got lucky there” or “Other people helped me.” For years and years, I quoted the Business Insider’s quote around how women and men view success differently. Men attribute their success to their innate skills and talents, while women attribute their success to luck and help from others. That's BS. It's great for men that they have this positive view of it, but come on, ladies, we got to step up in this way. 3. People-Pleasing You're over committing because you want to gain validation from people. You're doing everything for other people's agendas. You have no time or energy for yourself, for self-care, for your hobbies, for personal joy, for just downtime or doing nothing. That's because when you're feeling like “I'm not enough” you have big difficulties setting boundaries and then sticking to them, which causes you to feel overwhelmed, burnt out, maybe even a little resentful. Is that true about you? 4. Chronically Comparing Yourself to Others When you're comparing yourself to others, you're viewing them as
 Which really feeds those feelings of inadequacy inside of you, and I don't want you to feel that. Then you start feeling this unrelenting feeling of, “I'm falling behind” even though you're excelling. 5. It’s affecting your decision-making You take on too much because of, as I said before, the boundary thing, you feel like you can't say no, or you're making poor decisions because you're not in your own confidence. Wrapping Up All of these things will eventually affect your self-worth. I've mentioned it along the way, it's going to start eroding your confidence, if it hasn't already. Even if you say, “I am a confident person,” you have to think how much of your confidence has been eroded up until this point. Then you question yourself:
There's always that feeling of inadequacy. You can see how this mindset, this core negative core belief, this limiting belief of “I am not enough” can really be detrimental even to confident women, successful women, high achievers, and bosses. This is one that you really have to take a look at and ask yourself, “How many of these pieces are true about me?” If any are, then have a good, hard look at where and what's underneath this “I am not enough” feeling. Stay tuned for the second part of this blog, where I share about the other belief “It’s never enough.” You can also listen to the podcast episode where I talk about these two core beliefs or watch my YouTube video for it. Read this blog:
High achievers don't have to be more or have more. I’ll share about why we’re doing this, what causes us to do this, and share some examples.  Hopefully, It’ll encourage you to drop this pressured way of being—and learn to just chill, relax, and have a more enjoyable life. You might be thinking, “But my life is great, and I don't feel this way!” As I go through this, reflect on whether it's really true for you. #1: Cultural Conditioning Society does this to us. It loves to hype up people who are always busy. “Oh my gosh, you're always busy! You're doing all these great things!” It becomes an Olympic sport, “Oh, amazing. You just performed really well”. I’ll admit it—guilty as charged. I’ve been there. A lot of my external validation used to boost my confidence: getting good grades and being praised for doing everything. Before, I was everywhere, doing all the things. Now, I’m doing a lot of specific, selective things and I have a team to put a lot of it together, which makes it a lot easier for me. It’s so easy to fall into because of cultural conditioning—or let’s call it Pinterest Perfection Pressure. Everything has to be perfect. Often I don’t take pictures of around my house, other than where I am right now at my desk, because my house is a mess. I don’t always have everything put together, but it always has to look perfect or be perfect. Let’s be honest, it’s not. But it’s so easy for us to think that our value comes from doing. For example, you feel like you have to turn your kid’s birthday party into a Pinterest masterpiece with a balloon arch, handmade snacks, bespoke takeaway bags or grab bags—and every other part of our life kind of seems the same way. We have to dress this way, and everything we do has to be at this high level. Cultural conditioning and society—it’s screwing us over because we don’t. How often have you wished you could invite a friend over for coffee, but didn’t because you didn’t have a Pinterest-perfect living room? Or how many times have you wanted to go somewhere or do something, but didn’t because you felt like you didn’t have the right outfit to wear? It doesn’t matter. What’s more important are the people we’re with and our experiences. #2: Perfectionism This is one of the biggest things that revs the high achiever. You’re setting these sky-high standards for yourself, and anything less than “I nailed it. 150% perfect” feels like a failure. You keep pushing harder and harder and harder. You may think, “I’m not a perfectionist; I just like high-quality work.” That’s one thing. But when you’re losing sleep, not having a balanced life, not spending time on hobbies or with people you love and care about, then your perfectionism—or your desire to nail everything—is taking you to an extreme that’s not good for you. This can also be called overachieving overload. You’re overloaded with this mindset that everything has to be done at a high level. I remember being coached once about my perfectionism—I said “once” because there were many, many times—but I remember this one time when I envisioned one massive pillar. Imagine this big, big pillar, and something was on top of it. I was trying to get my project, my goal, to be at that level. The problem was that because it took so much effort to get to perfection—let’s be honest, high achievers, your “really good” is probably someone else’s excellent. Your perfectionism is like 150%. No one’s going to notice anything above 80%. In this coaching session, there’s this one major pillar—it was so high in the clouds, and I couldn’t quite get there to put my project up. But then I noticed all these lower pillars of unfinished projects. All I needed to do was take them from a “7” to an “8” to finish them. Just a little bit of extra effort would complete them. When I saw this, I envisioned all these pillars of finished projects instead of that one impossible pedestal project. That just would be too much. Maybe this shows up for you when you spend hours tweaking a work email like it’s going into a museum or will be printed on your T-shirt—while you’re juggling ten other things and letting important stuff slip through your fingers. It doesn’t really matter that much, but you’re making it matter more. Perfectionism is one of the things that's pushing you to feel like you need to be more, have more. #3: Fear of Failure or Rejection You’re terrified that if you stop being the go-to person or stop crushing it all the time, people will think less of you—or worse, forget about you. You’ll be irrelevant. You won’t be special anymore. But special in whose eyes? These other people?  I call this the AKA “What will they think?” spiral.
Who’s the “they”? Probably people you don’t even care about anyway. The people who you don't love. The people who you wouldn't want to hang out with. But that's really hard because once you get into that spiral of “What will they think?” it's really hard to get yourself out of it. For example, maybe you agree to run the PAC at the school or a charity, maybe you agree to run a fundraiser for them. Even though your calendar is super busy, it's like busting at the seams because “If I just show up on the day to help, or if I just donate money, that will seem like I'm a slacker, and what will they think? What will they think of me?” They won't reject you. There are other ways that you can be involved. Sometimes, a polite “No, but wish I could” is okay as well. We all have our own seasons. We're not meant to do everything every time for everyone. 4. Comparative Mindset You’re constantly sizing yourself up against others. This often happens on social media as you're scrolling, you're like:
 Like on and on and on and on, whether it is your friend, your co-worker, your neighbors, other people who are in the same industry as you, or someone's perfect Instagram feed who are getting paid to curate it to be that way. There will always be someone doing more and being more than you, at least on the outside, but you're probably comparing one part of your life to someone who's perfect in that area, and another part of your life to someone else who's killing it in that area, and one part of your life to someone who's 10 years ahead of you in their experience and their success, and it's going to drive you nuts, and you're never going to win. We know the show Keeping Up With The Kardashians. We could be Keeping Up with the Jones. You've heard that expression, and that's what it is. We're looking at someone else's stuff, and we think I need to have that, be that too. Seeing that other person's marathon metal doesn't mean you need to go and run a marathon or start training for a triathlon. You see someone else's spotless house, but what is behind the camera and how torn and broken are their relationships if that's the only thing they’re focusing on? You see someone else's home-cooked dinner, but did they pick it up at the store and then put it on their own dishes? You can do that with lasagnas, right? Then you're wondering how you've already lost it in life today. I can remember when I was in the early years of running my business, I felt like, “Why am I not achieving more?” My business advisor said to me, “Diane, can you add up all the hours that you are working on your business?” It was just the times that my kids were at daycare, and so it ended up being about 25 hours max. She said, “How do you feel that you can build an empire on part-time hours?” True. If you say, “Diane, I'm working full-time hours, and it's not happening.” Well, what other pressures and responsibilities do you have? Do you have aging parents? Do you have young kids? Do you have pets? The list can go on and on. Do you have your own health struggles? You don't know that other people aren't dealing with or are choosing not to put their energy and time into, that really should be. I was comparing myself at the time to coaches who didn't have children, and it made me feel a little bit like I was a wild horse that was in a barn, and I was like, kicking at the gate to like, “Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.” But what I would never have given up was the ability for me to spend these days with my kids, and I'm not shaming anyone who didn't have the privilege of being able to do that, but stop comparing your today to someone else's years of getting into that place. Don't compare your today to someone else's supportive environment to have that. #5: Validation Seeking Oh, we're all about the gold stars. “I like me a gold star.” “I like me a checkbox.” But if no one notices how hard you're working and how much you're crushing it, it's like it doesn't even count. You're looking for others' approvals and others to validate you, where really you need to validate yourself. AKA, I call this the Gold Star Syndrome. We're always seeking that external approval, but what if we just got approval from ourselves instead? Maybe you organize your pantry by color or by size, and then you wait for your partner to notice, and all you get is, “Yeah, that's cool, but where are the chips?” They don't care, but you've put a lot of time and energy into this, switching that so it just can be for you, rather than that external validation will help you feel more valued. #6: Lack of Self-Acceptance This is really sad because while you may love yourself and be confident in yourself, because I know a lot of high achieving women are like that, deep down maybe you feel like you have to earn love, and you earn that love and that respect by doing more, being more, being better, achieving more, supporting others in a bigger way. While if you were to just sit still and just chill, that feels super weird. You're like, “No, I’ve got to be busy. I can't just watch a movie. I have to fold laundry at the same time” because I can’t just watch a movie and enjoy myself. This pushes you to always be multitasking. Let’s call this the “Mirror Meltdown” because you’re looking at yourself too hard. If we think of this definition as just the physical appearance, and not even everything else in your life. If you looked in the mirror and then you nitpicked every wrinkle, every flaw, every laugh line, and forgot that you're basically the superhero for everything that you have accomplished and in everyone else's lives, all the support and the amazingness that you are to them, you lose. You lose because you keep feeling like you have to do more and be more to be able to accept yourself. Wrapping Up I'm curious which of these six resonated with you the most. Which ones are you guilty of, or which ones are you like, “Next year, I am going to focus on this one.” I'll let you know that our “Take a Stand for the And” Strategy Sessions are extended right now until Friday Nov 29th at 11:59pm PST. I’m seeing the value it's giving people to have clarity on where these hidden cycles are stopping them, to be able to “Take a Stand for the And” and have a clear strategy that they can put into place moving forward. There are only a few left because the deadline is this Friday, so make sure that you don't miss out and get your session today. Read my other blogs:
Today, I’m going to share with you the five ways you know you’ve created your ideal life. As we dive in, I’ll let you know that I originally recorded myself on video saying this and there is an activity where I ask you to close your eyes and think, feel, and imagine something. You may prefer to listen to this on the Dynamic Women Podcast or my YouTube Channel. Then I’ll go through these five ways you’ll know if you have created an ideal life, and you can treat them almost like a checklist.  Later, I’ll also share how I can help you to take this further, gain clarity, and truly step into a higher level of your ideal life. Start with a Visualization In a moment I’ll ask you to close your eyes and plant your feet firmly on the ground. Now, for my high-achieving women—women like me, driven, A-type, wanting to accomplish so much— I want you to imagine a life where you’re not only successful but deeply satisfied in every area that matters to you. As I go through the 10 different areas of life, imagine that in this ideal life, you are thriving. You’re not just living; you’re reaching your goals and feeling fulfilled in every area. You’re not merely ticking off boxes, but you’re savouring each accomplishment. When I look at this with my clients using the Wheel of Life, I’m always asking that question: What’s possible in these areas? I encourage you to grab a notebook, piece of paper, or something.
Now, think about these areas and ask: What’s possible in each of them? Take a moment to imagine this. Were you able to really imagine it? If not, pause reading now, go back, do the activity again, and take as much time as you need to really feel into this ideal life, not just look at the list of things. Five Ways to Know You've Created Your Ideal Life As we go through these five ways, score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 or by percentage. Be really honest and go with your trust decision. As I share about each way, ask yourself: Do I have this? Is this true about my life? I encourage you to score each. How true is this for you? You can use one of two scales: a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being fully true and 1 being not so true, or you can use a percentage—80% true, 20% true, or whatever feels right for you. When we get to the five ways, please trust your gut on your answers. Once I explain each point, go with your initial response. This will show you the pieces that might be missing. 1. Fulfilled and Intentional You wake up every single day knowing that every moment counts. You’re intentional about how you spend your time—it’s like you’re investing it. You’re choosing to fill your life with experiences that matter to you and your loved ones. You’re living your bucket list now, not saving it for “someday.” You're intentional with every minute of every day, and you feel fulfilled. You're not spending time by default where when you got a couple extra hours you decide, “Oh, I'll just work.” Or you clean up the house. You're scrolling on Facebook or watching Netflix. How much do you feel fulfilled and intentional? 2. You Prioritize Yourself with Confidence There are two pieces here. A lot of times people aren't even on their own priority list. In this way, if you prioritize yourself, you do it unapologetically. You do it naturally as part of your day, part of your week, part of your life. Score yourself on this, are you doing it without guilt? Do you feel apologetic when you sleep in, when you read a book, when you go to the gym, when you say no, when you take time away for yourself, like your own holidays?  Are you understanding that taking care of yourself fuels your ability to show up? Again, this is investing in yourself. Then you can show up fully in all areas of life.
Score yourself at a 10 or a percentage on how well do you prioritize yourself with confidence. If you're going to go for a walk for your mental health, your physical health, and someone says, “Hey, can I touch base with you right now? Can I ask you a question? Or can you help me with this?” Are you apologetic or does your tone come across that way where you say, “Oh, I'm actually going for a walk, but maybe I don't have to.” Really check in with that and be honest. Score yourself in how much you prioritize yourself with confidence. 3. Connected to Freedom and Desire Your life feels expansive. It feels alive. It has energy. It's filled with choices that are bringing you fulfillment and keep you energized. If you're in touch with what truly excites you and brings you resonance, are you reconnecting with the freedom you once dreamed of? I know for business owners, that's probably why we get into business, is for that freedom, but you can still be a nine to fiver who has freedom of time and freedom of decisions for what you're going to do for yourself. You’re in touch with yourself. Hopefully you haven't killed that little voice, the one that shares what sparks you, fires you up and gets you really alive in the world. Often, people will shut up the desire, push down, push aside the desire, and eventually you just stop feeling. One of my clients shared with me in the past how she was afraid to take vacation because she hadn't been in for so long. She just worked all the time. It was the default. She’s a high achiever and did very well in her career. She was afraid to take time off because she didn't know how to have fun and how to spend her time anymore. That’s an extreme, but are you connected to freedom in life, and your desire of what you're wanting? Score yourself on how well you are connected to freedom and desire. 4. Shining Authentically Shining is actually a pillar in the Dynamic You program of how to be a dynamic woman. It's one of the nine pillars. In this case, score yourself on shining authentically.
A lot of people are shining, but they don't want to be seen, or they feel like they need to fly under the radar because other people are intimidated by them, jealous, or they're just not feeling like they get the same response when they're true to themselves.  Do you allow yourself to be seen, celebrated, and valued simply for being your authentic self, not a role you play, not a mask you put on, not in “I'm on right now”, but like your authentic self? Are you confident in your being? Do you radiate joy and strength? I'd like to be in this place all the time. It's not always true for me, but I was at an event recently for the ICF (International Coaching Federation), and the lady beside me said, “We didn't get to talk much today, but you really shine brightly.” I was like, “Oh, thanks”. How much out of 10 or percentage wise, do you get to shine authentically, not shine again for your awards, your titles, your results in business, but how much do you get to shine as you, as a person? 5. Abundance of Energy, Time, and Resources The last way that you know that you have really designed your ideal life is, do you have an abundance of energy, time and resources? Score yourself on that out of 10 or on a percentage. In your ideal life, it's not always about the things you have, the things you've bought, the things you've earned. It's having an overflowing supply of energy, time, and resources, whatever that may be, empowering you to live each day fully.
This is how you have an abundance of energy, time, and resources. You're financially secure with the freedom to invest in experiences and opportunities, not just the red bottom shoes, not just the diamond earrings or the flashy car, but in opportunities and experiences that enrich your life. Enrich, not make you rich. They enrich your life. In this area and in this way, your time is yours to design. Really that is freedom. Even if you're working nine to five, do you get to design that time? Do you get flex time? Do you get to choose what you work on throughout the day? When you come home, do you also get to design that time? When you get to design how what you do with your time, it's your time. You're putting into place the ability to pursue passions, and rest when needed and wanted. You get to spend quality moments with the people who matter most to you, even if that's yourself, that's fine or a fur baby. This abundance fuels your joy, enabling you to live with ease and generosity. Score yourself at a 10 or score yourself on a percentage of the abundance of energy, time and resources. See, I didn't say money because when you create your ideal life and you have all these five ways then money, titles, success, don't matter as much. You start to live a new way of life that has you being successful and satisfied. Wrapping Up How did you do on these? Is there room for improvement? I'm guessing, yes. What I encourage you to do is, I have a really special opportunity right now. It's called, the “Take a Stand for the And” Strategy Session.
You will leave this 1:1 60-minute session with me with a clear, practical plan to align your success with the fulfillment you're craving. What I shared today in this blog is part of a talk I did called, “Enough: How to End the Cycle Of “Empty” Achievement Chasing and Step into A New Era of Success and Satisfaction,” and so you've heard me say, “success AND satisfaction,” that's why this session is called the “Take a Stand for the And” because that's what I'm doing for you. As a fellow high-achiever, you may have checked off all the boxes, yet you still feel something's missing, or you've reached a career milestone, business milestone, but you crave a deeper sense of satisfaction, then this is for you. It’s also for you:
The session is $395 (normally, $495), so I encourage you to jump on this. Grab this session. Because really, this one hour can truly change your life. When you take a stand for both success AND satisfaction, you will take that first step toward living fully, thriving, and making a lasting impact in the world. Because it's not just about what you do every day, right? It's not just about your career. It's not just about your business. There's so much more. Make sure you watch out for my next blogs because there are some really amazing things happening. Some really great additions are coming, and new offerings and cool projects, and I wouldn't want you to miss any of it. Make sure that you are living according to these five ways of having an ideal life and trust that I can support you to be able to do the first step to get there. Read my other blogs:
In May 2024, I celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Dynamic Women Podcast and a group of dynamic women joined me in a Q&A session. One of them is Paula Kent, who is not just a client, but has become a friend of mine. In that podcast episode, she said, “I've been with you for a long time and watching all of this transpire in your five years. That was 2019? Wasn't the world a different place then? My question really is to touch on that length of time. Five years isn't that long, but so much in the world has changed. I also imagine in the podcasting world. If you think about episode one, and where we are today, how would you describe some of the concerns expressed by dynamic women and other female entrepreneurs? How have you had to adapt your podcast and change the content? Even maybe some of your messages over the last five years?”  Here’s my answer: Yeah, good question. Well, I've grown in my business. I feel like a lot of the episodes are around my growth or my challenges, and what I'm seeing in my clients, as you've said, has probably changed. But as I've grown in my business over the years, my clients have also grown. I'm attracting a higher level of woman, higher achievers, people with bigger challenges. It's funny, I remember working with my business advisor and saying, “I thought when I got to the next success level, things would be easier.” New level, new devil. You get to that next level of success, and you face different problems. But the interesting thing is, a lot of the problems are the same. From earlier in your business to later in your business, there are still issues of life balance, mindset, confidence, and strategy. That doesn't change, it's just at a different level. It also doesn't change between the types of listeners I have, or the types of clients…
It doesn't matter who you are. It does seem to go across the board. Same with age and culture. It's so crazy how it's the same. I think though, over the years, the journey for me has been a little bit more about being more raw, more real, more open, because what I realized is the people online who know me, and out in the world, they get Diane that's on stage, or Diane that's on social media, and I am real, but there is a deeper realness that comes when I'm with my clients. You would know that, Paula, and a bunch of the other people here. All of you see that quirkier side of me or the edgier side of me, or the goofball side, and this is what I'm trying to bring in a little bit more to the podcast.  I think I'm a teacher at heart. I love to teach, to share, and to empower in that way. But a lot of times the response I get the most from is when I show the rougher side and the edgier side, and the softer side and the more vulnerable side. That's where people connect with me more so my evolution has been to share more of that side, not just to let it be seen by the people close to me. It's not that I am choosing online to not be my goofball self. But when you have one message I want the content to be the message. Paula added, “I think sometimes for myself and listening to the podcast, there are moments of serendipity, when you are speaking what I maybe haven't been able to bring to the forefront. I think most recently was about feeling alone, and women in leadership. I think that you know, you're really touching on that rawness and these words and these emotions that are maybe something that we don't want to face, but we need to talk about it and share. Thank you very much. I would love to say I have listened to every single one of them, but I listened to most and every single one exceeds my expectations. Thank you.” Here’s how I replied: Thank you. Thank you for asking that. One other thing I did want to add in is around who I feel like I'm speaking more to now. When I go and record, like today's is amazing, because you're all here and I get to talk to you, which feels like a two-way communication, even though I'm taking more of the mic. But when I record the podcasts, I imagine the woman on the other side who's listening, who's folding her laundry while practicing her next presentation, who is working on a project with a deadline, or who's going for a walk midday at work, or whatever it may be. I'm imagining her and that woman has changed slightly over the years. Now more so, I want to speak to that same high achiever, the woman who's putting herself out there, but I have such a passion now for women who are choosing to fly under the radar. They're choosing to fly under the radar because it's tiring to be cut down. It's the tall poppy syndrome. It's the crabs in the bucket being pulled down when you try to get out or when you stand out. As someone who, over my lifetime, every time I've stood out, I've been cut down somehow. My thing is, I have to just get back up, and keep going, but it's hard. It is so hard. That's where a little bit of why I did that episode around feeling alone is because the strong high-achieving, successful, confident women don't get checked on. I wanted to give them a place where they could hear from someone else who's not just trying to keep up appearances. But who will say, “Yeah, this part sucks and that sucks”. Another client and friend of mine, Jill, also asked a question that segues really nicely here. She said, “How do you deal with unfounded, inappropriate criticisms that being in the public eye exposes you to? Because you rock.” Here’s my answer: Thank you for your kind words Jill. Thankfully, she put this question in advance because I really wanted to think about this one. As a soccer player when I was 10 years old, my own teammates on a boys team didn’t want to partner up with me. They didn't want me there because I am a girl. Then the coach said, “Do you know why Diane's here? Because she's better than most of you.” Well, great, thank you for that. I know his intention was good, but it did not help at all. Still no one wanted to pair up with me for drills. I decided that I didn't want to be there anymore, so I left and I went and played basically a level lower just to be playing with girls who accepted me. In high school, I ran for student council president and the guy who was my opponent attempted to turn everyone against me to try to win. He didn’t win, but it was painful to have him say bad things about me and turn people against me. This caused me to not go for valedictorian which had been a dream of mine because he wanted that too and I didn’t want to battle him again.  This just continued. I've been slandered in business. I've even had people be mean to me at a Christian retreat, who later told me she doesn’t like herself and couldn’t understand why I’d be kind to her. It all came from these unfounded inappropriate criticisms. The thing that's helped me to get through it is good friends and fans. Oh my goodness, when a lot of those things happened, they're so crazy and unfounded that I had to go to friends and be like, “Am I really like that? Does anyone think that?” They're like, “No, it's so untrue. Don't even think of it.” But if you don't have people that you can go to that you trust that you know, and who know you, then you won't be able to get through it. I've basically gotten used to people talking about me negatively. There will always be haters and often that means you are successful. The sad thing is, it's people who don't even know me. Then I just remember, I have people who love me, who really know me. If the people that really know me love me, then I'm good. I've worked on myself so much. I'll admit my faults and weaknesses and I've done the work. When inappropriate comments come in, criticisms, and such, I always look at and ask, is there any way their perspective could be valid? What can I learn from that, and then I let everything else go. I just saw a quote, by Goi Nasu. “An entire sea of water can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. Similarly, the negativity of the world can’t put you down unless you allow it to get inside you.” I thought that was so good. So good. So true, right? Over the years, as I've shared before I've censored myself. I don't take sides on controversial topics to protect myself. But I'm changing that now. With a few neighborhood friends, I spoke up to a few things that I don't necessarily agree with. That's based on my faith and building my Christianity. It was uncomfortable to say, and I could see her face change and, I said, I still love you as a friend. But I feel differently. I think that's okay, and that's healthy. Then the other side of it is when someone gives me a compliment, I search for more. Not that I'm like, “Oh, tell me more about how great I am.” But if someone says, “I really liked your presentation,” like my talk at the WNORTH conference in Whistler and people said, “Wow, you were so great. I reply, “Thank you. Can you tell me what was great about it?” Because “so great” doesn't tell you as much as, “Wow, you were so energetic. I really liked it when you said this piece. I felt like you were speaking to me.” Now I really understand what the compliments are based on. I always ask for more and the reasons why, like these:
The last question is what I ask after every coaching session, “What was your biggest takeaway from today?” After trainings, talks, keynotes I ask, “What's your biggest insight or your golden nugget?” I always ask that because I'm going to squirrel that away as positive feedback. Same with when my clients do the Dynamic Year program every year, we list all the accomplishments, celebrate them and grab all the wisdom, so we can pull on the positivity, and reasons why we’re awesome. That way we won’t let those once in a while comments or people hurt us. Then other things I do is, I just protect my energy as best I can. I think that comes with age as well. Also, a lot of times people are acting out of jealousy, a lack of confidence, feeling not enough or they've been hurt. Hurt people hurt. Where I can, I confront them. I ask them, “Hey, what's going on for you? What happened there? What was your intention for what you said/did?” I remember I come at things with a heart of mercy and grace, as much as I'm able to give that as a human. Otherwise, if they are so terrible, I don't engage. That's the hardest thing because I'm like, “That's not fair. What you did is unfair, and it's wrong and you're lying, and you're twisting my words around or whatever it may be.” But sometimes not engaging is the best and then just praying about it. It's funny at church, they list off all the people who are sick, or dying, or tragedies hit them and they say now lift up someone that you want to pray for. I often lift up the people who have hurt me the most. In those moments, even though they're not, facing a surgery or in the hospital or dying. I'm still like “Lift these people up”, because that's the only way I cam help them without being hurt again. Wrapping Up Reflecting on these five years with the Dynamic Women Podcast, I’m grateful for the growth that’s come from connecting with listeners and sharing honest conversations. This journey has been about more than just podcasting—it’s been about showing up authentically, embracing vulnerability, and offering a space where women find support and encouragement. Through challenges and moments of self-reflection, I’ve gained resilience and a renewed commitment to the values that drive me. I’m thankful for every listener who has been part of this path, and I look forward to deepening this journey together, bringing even more inspiration and honesty to each episode. If you have topic suggestions, email me directly at [email protected] and I’ll be glad to consider them! Read my other blogs:
Today, I’ll dive into how to find the right virtual assistant for your business needs. (This is the second blog in this series, “The Ultimate Guide to Bringing on a Virtual Assistant”. Read the first blog here where I share about “What Tasks Can a Virtual Assistant Handle for Me?”) How I started in this journey Now, I'm going to be upfront. I took a program on how to hire, even though I have a background in hiring. I used to work in the corporate world, and every single quarter we went through the hiring process, and I was trained in hiring, then I led the hiring, and I felt very confident in that process.  Then moving into working for myself, I hired contractors and freelancers, then hired executive assistants for my business. I also went through that hiring process, but I still invested in someone teaching me how to hire because this was hiring for a virtual assistant in the Philippines, also known as OFS or Online Filipino Specialists. I’ve been taught this process. I paid for this process, so I will not fully teach this process because it's her IP, and I want to honour that. But what I will do is I will talk in general about the things that you need to be thinking about, looking for, and know that you don't need to be really good at the hiring process. That's why we have Virtual Assistant Made Easy because I can hire your virtual assistant for you or match you with one of the VAs on our team that we currently have. We have 13 VAs working with around 33 clients that we have so that is an option, but I'm going to tell you a little bit more about what we do and what we work with so that you can be think about, “Who is going to help me with this process?” Creating your wishlist When you're starting the process of hiring a virtual assistant, whether they are going to be online, international and or someone from your country, you always have to be thinking about what your wish list is. We always ask our clients, “What goals do you have?” It's less about “What are the tasks that you want to delegate”, and more about “What are the goals you have or your business needs”. One of the activities I have my clients do is think about:
People often are concerned, “How do I work with a VA from the Philippines when they are working such a different schedule?” It doesn't have to be that way.  My two main VAs, Kristine and Karissa, work for me starting at about 3PM Pacific Time, but for them, that's like seven in the morning, and it depends on if we're in daylight savings or not, but that's a good time for them. Sometimes at six, sometimes at seven, and they prefer to work during their day. When I hire virtual assistants, I always ask them, “When do you want to work?” They'll say, “I can work anytime”, and I'm like, “But what's ideal for you?” The reason I ask is that some of them like to work through their night. They prefer it because it's cooler, quieter, maybe the internet's faster. No one's bothering them, or that makes them just available during the day to their family. Some of them like to work during their day because maybe they have kids, and they don't want to be working through the night. They want to be around during the day, maybe to be able to get up and take them to school and then come back and work. I always ask, “What's ideal for you?” because I want them to work at the best time for them because I know they're going to be the freshest, and they're going to give me their best work. That's most important to me. Also think about:
You're never going to find someone who knows every single software or platform that you have at an expert level. If you read my blog “What Tasks Can a Virtual Assistant Handle for Me?”, I talked about specialists and generalists, and so I'm going to continue talking about generalists rather than specialists, though some of these different specifics will be helpful with specialists as well. Are there any top qualities that you want them to have, both personally and professionally, and is there anything else that's important to you? You're going to know what you need, and if you don't know all the questions asked, that's where I come in. I ask all these questions. I have two surveys, a “Getting to Know You” survey, and “What Are You Looking for in Your VA” survey? There are a lot of things that people don't think about. They’re things that I've learned in the process and in working with my team of VAs for four years that have really helped me to be able to know the ins and the outs. My hiring process Anytime we go and post job postings for what we're looking for, it's quite the process. We normally get about 300 applicants who apply within about a 24-48 hour period, so we need to wean those down. We have them do a test task, written interviews, interview with me, and a trial week where I put them through activities and tasks to test their ability. These are standardized tasks that we have been using with all of our VAs over the numerous times that we've hired. We hire basically all of them that have been successful in that process. There are covert tests, overt tests, along the whole journey, and I've had to make it extremely black and white whether they pass or they fail at each piece because I totally wear my heart on my sleeve. I read their personal stories and I just want to hire people. I want to give them a chance if they're new, I want to help them out if they're struggling, and hire them if I like their personality but their output is not as good. The process that we have now refined doesn't allow me to hire anyone that I just want to help out or like. It only allows me to hire the people that are the right business decision. I find so many times in people who I've talked to who have tried to hire, they didn't hire the right person to start with, or they wanted to give them a shot, or they didn't have a thorough enough process. They're missing pieces that they didn't even think of to ask about, to test on, and they're giving people way too many chances. Our process takes about 40 hours of time between my VA Kristine and myself, and takes about two weeks to do or more. I really love our process. We've had people from our team say, “Can my wife, husband, brother, friend, neighbor apply?” I reply, “Sure, go ahead, but they have to pass the tests.” I say to my staff, “Please do not help them. Please do not give them a heads up on anything”, because if later, we find out that they're not as good and they just somehow got through with your help, I won't be happy. Our VAs are very good about not helping because they also don't want to come back to them where their family member or friend, neighbor or whatever it may be isn't actually as good as they came across because they were helped. Anyway, we do this process, and we're looking for specific things that are probably concerns that you're having, especially in hiring a virtual assistant from another country, things like,
There are a lot of things that we are looking for in these Filipino VAs and then I hire based on four major criteria:
Even from the very beginning, including the application, it’s very specific about what we're looking for. I hope that it weeds out a lot of people. It also has a really good write-up about us, what we do and what we're looking for and what we're wanting to offer to our virtual assistant. That's a little bit of our process, and then once we have them on board with us, and I've tested them out in the trial period to see what they can do, and I personally review everything, then we bring them on, match them to our clients with as much of that information as possible that's going to tell us, “Yeah, this client's wish list is a really good match for this VA”. Usually, we have someone on our team, or we've just hired someone who is going to be a really good fit for them.  When you are coming into bringing on a VA, as honest as you can be in the beginning and as much prep work as you can do, the better. A lot of people come to me, and say, “Oh, Diane, I'll come to you as soon as I know what I'm going to delegate. I'll come to you as soon as I have my systems and processes in place.” Don't. Don't. Don't. Let me help you with our program VA Made Easy to figure out what to delegate. Let your VA make your systems and processes for you. I train them on how to do that so that you don't have to document processes. Don't try to figure out the hiring process. Just let me match you with one of ours, and then if you're like, “What if I don't like them? What if it's not working out?” Well, my goal is to work with you and to work with them to make sure it is a long, lasting, fabulous relationship, where they are extremely efficient, and you can maximize their time. The more of the hiring and onboarding process I can help with the better you will be matched with a VA because you’ll be clear about the tasks you want done and the hours you want them to work, and I can lead you through all the things you never thought of, like asking if they have a backup generator. Once we make a match, it’s usually a very strong match. The thing that a lot of clients are worried about is “I have to be all prepared before I can actually start working with a VA”. That's actually not true. You just have to have some tasks ready to go. This is why the first couple modules in working with me are going to help you to
These things are crucial in starting to work with a VA and hitting the ground running. Thankfully for you, I set all of that up for you so you don't even have to worry about it, and our VA’s know how to use it. The other thing I have found to be extremely beneficial is making sure that the VA doesn't work for anyone else. You may think, “Well, if I'm only going to give them part-time hours, like ten hours a week, How am I going to give them enough work or enough money to help to keep them employed with just me?” Well, you can't. They're going to need at least 40 hours. But the other thing is, unless you're willing to give them 40 hours, they will work for other people, and they will have other clients and situations pulling at them. What we have decided to do is give the VAs all the hours that they need from just our clients, and so that you know that your VA is not out there looking for other work and trying to line up the next client or the next project. They don't have to worry about that. They have stable consistent employment at a minimum of ten hours per client. They know that they have clients coming in. If one client drops off, they know that I'm going to find another client. This helps them to focus primarily on working with you, and their other clients that are through us. They have stability. To go and hire on your own, unless you're going to give them 40 hours, you probably can't do that. You can't ask them to not work for anyone else. We have, “Cooperative Clients”. If you know that your VA has three other clients, if there's an emergency that someone has, or maybe even you have an urgent task, You are like, “I need this done.” Then they're like, “Well, I'm working for someone else right now. I'll see what I can do.” So they spin around to the other client and they say, “Hey, one of my clients has an emergency. I need to do this right now. Are you okay if I work on these social media posts later today?” More than likely, this other cooperative client will say, “Yeah, no problem.” That's the benefit too, is that your VA:
That's another piece to be thinking about when you're looking to hire a VA. A lot of people have come to me after hiring a VA themselves, and the VA has ghosted them. The VA has not been performing the way they need to be. The VA has quit on them because they found someone better to work for, meaning more money, more hours, better tasks, whatever it may be. Then they're left in the cold. Some come to me, and say, “They never worked out”. If they've hired an agency, a company, who matches them with someone, they come to me and say they didn't feel like they got that personalized connection to the company, and then when it's not working out, they're they're left on their own to try to figure things out. That's definitely not the approach we take. I call it more of a boutique style, where I personally talk to you. I personally know the VAs and I match you, and then if it's not working on either side, it's my job to talk to both of you and help to make that work because it's much easier to get that to work. A lot of times it's just a miscommunication. But that's the good thing about having a mediator in there, to be able to help both sides to be really happy because it helps you to be more efficient with the time that you have, and to get more done and to work better together for the long term. But hey, if it doesn't work out, I'm also here to support that and to match you with another one of our VAs. There are so many things to think about in that process of finding the right virtual assistant for your business needs, but the key thing just to be thinking about is what's your wish list, so that you can specifically request what you're looking for. If you want me to hire your virtual assistant for you or match you with one of our team members, then please reach out to me, [email protected]. We'd love to invite you into the VA Made Easy Program where getting a VA is much easier, and you're going to have the proven strategies that I put into place in my business and through my experience. Not only hiring Kristine and Karissa and being able to work with them for 40 hours a week for the past four years, but also hiring my team who are successfully working with 30+ clients at the moment. If you have questions, feel free to reach out. I'd be happy to clarify any questions that you have. But remember, it's not going to get any easier if you keep trying to do everything yourself. Today might be the day where you need to pass off some work. Please know that this blog is also recorded as a podcast on the Dynamic Women Podcast, as well as on my Diane Rolston YouTube Channel. If you prefer to watch it or listen to it, you have both options. If you're wondering, “How did Diane do it all?” I don't do it all. I record one video per week, and my team creates the YouTube video, the podcast, the blog, all the social posts and the newsletter that shares about all of them. Do you want that process done? Reach out. Let's connect and have you join VA Made Easy. Until next time. Stay dynamic. Read my other blogs:
For my 5th Dynamic Women Podcast Anniversary special episode, I invited incredible women from my community to join me in a Q&A session. One of the topics that came up was my virtual assistant business, sparking a conversation about how I built my team and how VAs can transform the way we work.  Natasha asked, “I’m curious to know, how did you grow your virtual assistant (VA) business? What are some of the most common tasks that you find VAs are most helpful for?” Here’s my answer: Awesome. Good question! For those who don’t know, I do have a team of 13 virtual assistants in the Philippines. They’re all working virtually. Eleven work with my business clients and two with me because there’s so much to do in a business or even your career that passing off work is so important. One of the most common questions I get from clients is, “What do you delegate? What do you pass off?” That’s why I created the Virtual Assistant Made Easy program because I realized people aren't sure about what to delegate. There are two ways of looking at it. 1. Specialist Virtual Assistant - They will do some specialized work for you like copywriting, cold calling, SEO, website design, these sorts of things that require a higher level of expertise, and you're going to pay a higher amount for that one specific task. 2. General Virtual Assistant - I think general Virtual Assistants are more helpful, because they can do a whole bunch of tasks. They can do social media content creation, social media management, like scheduling your posts, maybe interacting or commenting for you online. Then we get into things like newsletters and email management. It might be graphic design, video or audio editing, research, data entry, email campaigns like in a CRM, where you'd have all of your clients. I also have them do my PowerPoint presentations. They develop them in Canva. If you have seen the Dynamic Women Secrets books that I have, one of my main VAs has helped to format the book, design the cover, and upload it. All the tech stuff as well is really helpful because I know sometimes I’m like, “I don't even know what's going on with this website. Can you figure this out? Can you update this on my website?” These, I'd say, are the most common things because a lot of my clients are coaches, trainers, speakers, and small business owners who are selling a service or product. If you want something like cold calling, high-level copywriting, or Facebook ads development and management, I suggest you go to a specialist. But you know, with our clients, we help them to look at, “What are the goals you have? Therefore, what should you have your VA do to help you reach those goals or to take stuff off your plate so that you can do the tasks to reach those goals?” I do have a document of 229 tasks that you can pass off to a VA that I give to my clients, as well as a document that says what to give your VAs when you are on holiday, too busy, or sick. Because then those tasks don't need a bunch of setup and explanation. (Send me an email at [email protected] if you want to talk about having your own VA and have getting a copy of these documents.) I hope that answers your question, Natasha. Natasha: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Congrats again on your five years. That's so exciting. You’ve come a long way. Then Catherine asked, “This kind of segues from the whole VA thing because I don't have a VA, so I end up doing all this stuff myself. What I find lately is information flying at me from all angles. It's personal work, business emails, texts coming in Messenger group chats, WhatsApp, phone calls. You name it, it's all coming at me. Some days, I'm just like, “Have I missed something big?” That is one of my things. Sometimes I have, and I sometimes don't understand whether it's me who has too many things coming in from too many places, or it really is just, I won't say it's an age thing. But the world has changed so much again, since 2019, things have gone bananas crazy. We all feel this urgency to keep up with everything else. What I find is that on a daily basis, I tend to say that one, that one, that one, that one, I mark them and go ahead with them, and I never get to the rest of them, so then my inboxes are just chaos.  That's my big thing because you know me, Diane, systems I can do, but chaos, I can't.” Here’s my answer: Yeah, well, actually, that's what I would say is your solution: have a process or a structure that you put in place to help you deal with it. When I start my day, I will look through all my platforms, look through everything and I deal with anything that needs me right away. There might be a potential keynote. Someone's asking, “Diane, can you keynote our conference?” I want to jump on that right away. It might be a quick question from a client. The other thing is I flag messages for follow up, but then I have to be diligent to actually put it in my calendar, or my schedule later in the day to go back and deal with those. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I have my cleanup time, where I go back through, I just filter my email for all the flagged ones. Then I go through and deal with them. It's finding what works for you. I also benefit from having my VA Karissa, who is on all my social platforms. She'll say, “Diane, you have a message on Instagram that you need to reply to.” But if you don't have someone, then set for yourself a little reminder to go and check in to see if you have messages or comments. I remember the time I dropped the ball. I had someone reach out and said, “Hey, could we have a consult about this thing.” I didn't see it, so I didn’t respond. Thankfully I was still able to salvage it and she is now my client, but this isn’t always the case. The key thing is, you've got all of these places where information comes in. First off, can you teach people not to reach out to you on certain platforms? Sometimes clients want to reach me on Facebook. I suggest, “Let's move this to email.” I actually have one coach of mine who doesn't do email at all. Not at all. His assistant does email, he does not have an email. It just stops you from reaching out if you need him. But you can I can call him to leave a message and then he'll call me back when he can. Figure out, What are the channels you prefer communicating on? Then, when you go to do it, how long have you given yourself to actually reply? “Touch it once” I think this is one of those cleanup methods for in your house, you should only touch something once and put it away where it belongs. So if we bring it over to our inboxes, how many times are you “touching” or interacting/reading each email? Then what is the way that you're not going to forget to reply to ones that don't have an urgency, but they need to be replied to. Then give yourself some grace. Maybe there is a little thing that's near the bottom of your email that says, “Hey, my emails might be shorter than normal, just to make sure that I have the time to reply to everyone.” One of my clients writes me a book every time she writes me an email, and I read it, but that's the way she communicates. I know other coaches that say if it's more than three sentences, I'm not reading it. Maybe setting some parameters there. There's also a wise woman I know, and I love how in her footer of her email, she says, “My hours might not be your hours.” This is good because she often replies in the evenings around 10 or 11 o'clock at night. But if you're working for someone else, like contract based as you are, you might not want them to see you working at night because it gives the idea that, “Oh, I can reply, and I can message her and she's going to reply at those hours.” If I'm doing a final go through all my social and my emails that late, I will schedule those emails for 7am the next day, so it looks like I'm really on the ball in the morning. But I'm actually replying at night. Catherine followed up with: “The challenge isn't with the actual work. It's with trying to get everything else up and running and going and then I just get caught up in what I call “the administrivia”. I'm like, I don't have enough income coming in on the side stuff yet to actually have someone do it. I'm probably going to lose the bit of help I get from my daughter because she graduates from law school and is going to be a lawyer. It's a big transition for her and I'm like, “Now what am I going to do??”” Diane: There are so many different ways to be organized: simplify things and create structure would be my two main ones. Tanya added her thoughts: “Can I add to that a little bit, Diane? Even for me, when I started using the VA, for the first time, it was stuff that I could do. In my brain as a person who's been in business for a long time. Number one is I can do it, so why would I pay somebody to do it? Then I thought, well, do I have enough income coming in to pay somebody else to do it? When I got into the VA services, yours specifically, they took on these tasks, the ones that you've mentioned earlier, and I was shocked how that left me available to actually sell bigger ticket items, as opposed to the smaller stuff for that person to deal with. I had to work through myself that it was okay, that somebody else could do it for me, because it really increased my business significantly. I just wanted to encourage anybody who's listening out there, those things that we worry about, sometimes they work out to the best if we just kind of step into it and give it a shot.”  Diane: There you go. Wise words. Wrapping Up Building a successful business—especially with the help of a virtual assistant team—has allowed me to scale, focus on the tasks that matter most, and deliver greater value to my clients. Delegating may feel daunting at first, but as my own journey and the insights from my clients show, it opens up time and energy for you to focus on the high-level work that drives growth. Whether you're new to VAs or looking to refine your delegation skills, consider taking the leap. Remember, building a reliable support system not only enhances productivity but can lead to incredible results. If you want to know more about my Virtual Assistant Made Easy program, email me at [email protected]. Read my other blogs:
1. Steal My Strategy for Delegating 2. Craving the Best of it All 3. “What Tasks Can a Virtual Assistant Handle for Me?” Today, I'm answering the question, “What tasks can a virtual assistant handle for me?” I'm going to share:
Let's get started There are a lot of times when I talk about having a virtual assistant in a large group, and later, I'll start sharing with them the types of tasks my VAs are doing for me and have done for me. They are shocked and respond, “Wow, your VAs DO ALL that, and they CAN do tech?” Virtual assistants aren’t just there for email responses, calendar management, and data entry. It's so much bigger than that, and specifically, when I talk about this, I'm referring to what my team of virtual assistants has done for their clients, who are mainly speakers, coaches, trainers, business owners, and what my two main VAs have done for me. It's a total of 13 virtual assistants, all from the Philippines, and the cool things they get to do.  When we think about bringing on a virtual assistant, it's so important to understand what you’re hiring for, and what you can delegate. That really determines what type of person that you're going to have. You're either going to be hiring a specialist or you're going to be hiring a generalist. For business owners that want to hire a VA, it’s smart to hire a generalist. A specialist would be someone like a web designer, someone who does Facebook ads or SEO, maybe just specifically help you publish your podcasts. But when we go over to the generalist side, they can do a wide variety of tasks from content creation to video and audio editing. When my clients come to me, they say, “Oh, maybe I'll get a VA when I figure out what to delegate.” When you come on board with my team, you don't need to figure it out. I will help you. I have a lot of activities that help you to get super clear about what to delegate and then how to delegate it really well. Definition of Common Tasks I'm going to give you just an idea and an overview of a bunch of tasks that you can delegate, the ones you shouldn't, and some that might surprise you. Some common tasks, as I mentioned, would be things like email management, scheduling, calendar management and such. These are administrative tasks, and yes, that is what a virtual assistant can do for you, but that's not the limitation. I want you to think about all the areas in your business that you would need help with. Do you need help in your marketing department, your HR, your delivery, or your sales? What types of tasks then do you need in each of those areas? In marketing, you would have your social media content creation, social media management and scheduling, and so there are a bunch, even just in that one area, many tasks can be delegated. Then, if we look at HR, maybe it is helping to reach out to people, and put together agreements. Maybe we get into sales, and it's emailing with clients, creating lists of leads. There are so many tasks and that's just two departments of your business or two areas of your business, and we can go deeper and deeper and more specific in all these different types of tasks. I don't want you to just think about the admin tasks. I want you to think of everything - social media, content creation, scheduling, and management, video and audio editing, graphic design, research, doing everything in regard to your YouTube, your podcast, your newsletter, CRM management, creating your programs, books, book publishing. It goes on and on and on and on. You may think, “Well, I don't know how to do all of these things.” Well, a lot of times your virtual assistant will come with these skills. That's why we hire general virtual assistants who have a lot of these skills or we provide training videos and checklists.  They're not going to know every single skill on every single platform, meaning they might come to you with experience in a CRM, like using Keap or Infusionsoft, or they might know something like Zoho, but they might not know other platforms. You just have to be willing to have them transfer the skills over or you share how to use it, or even you're going to be able to have them learn it themselves by going to YouTube, using Google and using the training videos on the platforms that you have. Be less about, “Oh, they have to have all this specific knowledge.” You will not find a unicorn who knows everything. Instead, you're looking for someone who has a wide range of skills with a wide range of platforms and a lot of experience who is willing and able to learn. Specialized Virtual Assistants A lot of my VAs are general virtual assistants, but they come to me with some specialized VA skills like graphic design or project management. In the past, we have had some that had bookkeeping, and now we have some that do have website design, SEO, but again, unless you're going to be hiring multiple people, hire the generalist first, then see what specialists you need. You might later need someone who will do Facebook ads for you. Hire a specialist. You will need some cold calling done? Hire a specialist. In these cases, you're just going to add them in for a short amount of time and pull them out because you have your VA that's going to help you with everything else. Bonus Tip: the specialist can create the strategy or get it set up and your VA can implement the strategy and maintain what they set up. Now, when we look at what they can do if you're hiring abroad, as I hire in the Philippines, there are some tasks that you don't want them to be doing. For example, if you want a website, hire someone who does that for a living rather than forcing your virtual assistant to figure it out. Our virtual assistants can do updates to websites. We do have one that can build websites, but still, it's probably a better use of your time and your money to go hire a specialist for this - unless you get matched with him as your VA - this is what happened to one of our clients who is very happy with her new website. Also, there are some tasks they might not want to do, like cold calling. And even if they said they would give it a try, you have to have the proven scripts and give the proper training. Many solopreneurs don’t. And since with sales calls you get one shot with that client or that lead, so you really want to hire someone who has these specific skills. Hire someone who is an expert at this that can lead the way for you, rather than you having to take the lead if you're unfamiliar with that process. How Business Owners Use VAs There are many ways that my clients use their virtual assistants. I'll share a little bit of their examples, and then I'll share what mine do for me. Many of our clients have speaking as part of their businesses, so we have virtual assistants who help with the whole process of speaking. Once the client has booked our client as the speaker, then the VA steps in to send all the assets, the headshot, the bio, the social media links, the speaking abstract and title, or whatever it may be that the client is asking for. They can be the liaison back and forth, making sure that specific emails were sent, that payment was received, all these different pieces around that speaking process. They can also create social media content around, “I'm going to speak at this place.” “So excited to be speaking here.” “Come see me at this conference where I'm speaking”, then upload photos from the speaking engagement and all the assets. A lot of times with my speaking engagements, one of my virtual assistants (I have two main ones) go through social media and see who commented on posts about me speaking at the event, who posted about me on stage, and who shared photos or videos. She then pulls all of that information, and creates a folder on our Google Drive so that we have all of that content there, as well as connecting on LinkedIn with everyone who was in the audience that we know based on the posts because they're commenting and liking and sharing, and they're tagging us. The other win that came from this came from posting about how you are excited about having a speaking engagement or throwbacks to a speaking engagement that happened six months or one year ago. We've had some of our clients get inquiries and get speaking engagements because of having all of this social media proof online. Every month, our clients share their wins with us, and one of the wins was “I had someone reach out to me based on my LinkedIn post, and I got a speaking engagement!” Another task that's very helpful for our clients who are coaches or trainers/facilitators, is repurposing group sessions. Since they often have group coaching or training sessions that were recorded, but they maybe aren't allowed to post them online because of the clients’ confidentiality. However, there's so much amazing content and coaching that they are giving, and so one of our clients has asked their VA to make reels from the video and get the golden nuggets from the video but with just their face and not their clients. From a 90-minute video, I think they were able to make 65 reels! Otherwise, that would be a waste, but because we can pull the different learnings and educational pieces from the client, there's so much content being made for social media. That saved the client lots of time in making reels, and she didn't need to think of new content because there was already content created. Another thing that's really amazing is having your virtual assistant make your newsletters. I don't know how many times people or clients of mine on the coaching side have said, “Ah, I'm kind of behind on my newsletters” or “I'm not emailing my list.” Well, what if your virtual assistant could take information that they heard you say in one of your trainings or create your newsletter based on your key messaging points, and make sure that happened every single week and was being sent out to your audience? Then we can even take it a step further of who's engaging with it, who is opening it, who is showing a desire for your content. Then start taking a list of those names and then creating a new set of emails for them to kind of warm them up even more, potentially, to offer to them, or set up a call with you, whatever works best.  What my main Virtual Assistants do for me In my business, I have two virtual assistants. I'll share a little bit about what they do for me. One of my VAs, Kristine, takes care of a lot of my emailing that I send out to all of my clients in my CRM. When I have a new program, she's the one that sets up all the reminder emails. She's also the one who actually sets up the programs online. I just give her my videos. She edits them, puts an intro, outro, and sticks them on my learning platform. She does the creation of a lot of my PDFs, my fillable PDFs, my eBooks. She helps me publish books and does a lot of my tech stuff She helps me in hiring my virtual assistants, which is amazing. She also helps in the payment side, so doing payroll for all of my virtual assistants. She helps with so many different pieces, and she also does my newsletters every week. Email marketing is extremely important, and updates to my website, and the list goes on and on and on. Karissa, on the other hand, does a lot of my social media, and so she edits my podcast and does podcast publishing for me as well as the promotion of it on social media. To make the repurposing easier, I designed the program called, “Content Multiplication Magic”. It was created for my clients so that they could learn how to make one piece of anchor content (a video), and from that video, then create all of their other content for the week, which is such a time saver, because I used to create a different YouTube, podcast, blog, social posts all by myself. Now what we do instead is I record one video on Zoom. It is then repurposed or edited out by Kristine for YouTube, then the audio is pulled, and then that is published to the podcast by Karissa. Then she transcribes that. She makes it into the blog, which I read over and check after she's edited it (like I’m doing for this one). She then publishes that, and makes all my social posts that promote the blog, the YouTube, and the podcast, as well as just other stuff that I'm putting out there. She also helps me in responding to comments on my posts if I haven't been able to get to it. And if they're very specific, she flags them for me, sends them to me, and makes sure I reply. There are a lot of other things that Karissa does as well that are beyond that structure of Content Multiplication Magic. It's really exciting to see how they are taking on more and different tasks and new things, and they're starting to have more decision-making, project management abilities that they're showing, which is absolutely amazing. How to identify tasks to delegate I'll give you a few tips. I take my clients through these really amazing processes and activities in order to get super clear on not just which tasks to delegate, but which tasks are going to help you reach your goals, and then which full systems can we delegate so that even more is passed off. The cool thing is I teach how to pass it off in a way that your virtual assistant will actually document the process for you, and create your SOPs (standard operating procedures). What's a quick thing that you can do? #1: Write down your daily tasks Not sure what to delegate? Starting today, write down all the tasks you do every day. It’s going to show you where you actually spend your time. You can even track how much time you're working on it, and then you'll be able to know if you're going to pass it off or not. I do this consistently. I have a 6-step P model for being able to delegate. I'm going to share that in another blog, but, I'm constantly pausing to look at what I'm doing in my business, what my goals are and what's taking my time, and then I delegate as I need. That's the first thing you can do. Just write down everything that you're doing in a week, and then see what are these time-consuming tasks that you can delegate. #2: Write down your Wish List Another thing that you can do is ask yourself, “What's on my wish list?” What are the things you wish you could do in your business that you haven't done yet? For example:
Also, what's on your wish list of things you wish you could do? Where are you dropping the ball? What are the things you're not doing well that are causing some trouble in your business? Write those things down because those are probably things that you can delegate to your virtual assistant, or you will do those things yourself when you delegate a lot of other tasks. Wrapping Up There's a lot I can share with you. I'm constantly coming up with more things to delegate, more strategies that I use in my business, as a coach, trainer, paid speaker, author, podcaster, YouTuber, women’s group organizer etc. All these titles. All these things that I do. There's so much possibility here. I could talk about this for days and days. But what I would love to gift you is my list of 229 Tasks You Can Delegate to a Virtual Assistant. It is not an exhaustive list. This is a list that I only give my clients when they're in the VA Made Easy Program. But if you're serious about hiring a VA, just send me an email, [email protected] with a subject line, “229 Tasks List Please” and let me know in it, maybe something you've learned from this or why you want the list, and I'm happy to shoot that off to you. Otherwise, if you're on social media and that's easier, you can always DM me. I hope you will take some time today to identify at least three tasks that you could delegate. I promise you that once you start delegating, you're going to have your eyes wide open. The blinders will come off, and you're going to see all the amazing things that you can delegate. Stay tuned for the next blog. If you have other questions, please email me [email protected] and if you're like “Diane, I just need your help hiring a virtual assistant and working with one” please set up a time to chat with me, and we'll see if this is a great fit for you. Until next time. Stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
Today, I’ll be talking about the High Achiever's Thanksgiving because, let's be honest, as high achievers, we’re so driven that we often have work or business as our default or achieving as our default. Holidays, long weekends, unless we're out of the house and away, and even if we are away, it is hard for us not to work and achieve.  I’m going to take you through five different pieces that I hope you can apply to your next holiday, whether it be your Thanksgiving, and if you’re like, “Oh, I'm in Canada and I missed it,” don’t worry, you can still apply it to your weekends, your times off, your holidays—meaning vacations—and every single holiday moving forward. Sound good? #1: Power of a Pause As a speaker, there's often a strong power in pausing for the audience to digest what you've just said. The same goes for high achievers; we need to pause before we dive into the next thing in our lives and businesses. Why is that? Well, we're always thinking about the next tasks. We finish one thing and jump into the next. But Thanksgiving and holidays are such perfect times to pause. Give yourself permission to step back, even if it's just for a moment—a day, or half a day—and breathe. For example, take an afternoon off: no work, no planning, and no listening to personal or professional development books. Enjoy a meal with loved ones. Usually, during Thanksgiving, we do that, but let yourself be fully present without the pressure of being productive. That includes not worrying about laundry, cleaning your house, or maybe raking leaves or whatever else you might be doing. Now, I know that for my weekend, two of the days were filled with my son's soccer tournament, and that was fine because we were still hanging out with family. I chose to spend time between games reading a book. This year, I decided I'm not making a traditional Thanksgiving dinner—like a turkey dinner—because it takes a long time. Instead, I picked up some Good Food meal kits, and I even got the ones that are pretty much prepped. All I have to do is throw it together! The onions were already cut, which I'm so excited about. I'm going to have my family help me prepare that for dinner. #2: Success is more than Hustle We hustle so much, and during the holidays, I want you to remember that success isn't just about working harder or achieving more; it's about enjoying the process of what we’re doing and building meaningful connections as you prepare for what’s next. You need to have that downtime. You need to avoid hustling all the time so you can build up your energy and emotional reserves before diving in again. You'll find that you have more clarity, intention, energy, and motivation to move forward. For example, take time during the holidays to recognize how balanced your life is—or isn't. Do you have an even distribution of family, work, and personal goals like home, health, spiritual life, friends, and all ten areas of life? If not, maybe the holiday is a good time to focus on how you can better integrate these aspects of your life before the year ends. We only have a few months left. #3: Nurture your relationships This is a wonderful time when no one expects you to be working, although I know that some of my American clients reached out to me today and this weekend. That's about boundaries, and it's all good! But during the holidays, shift your focus to the people who support and encourage you—not just your clients, fan base, or audience, but your family, friends, and maybe even your team. Give them more attention.  As high achievers, we often get wrapped up in our goals, don’t we? We totally do! But relationships are just as valuable as any professional goal, milestone, or relationship. We need to nurture those things because, at the end of the day, we want to come home to a loved one or receive a text from someone. During this holiday, spend some quality, undistracted time with loved ones. I know I'm guilty right now of writing this blog, but I’m just about to jump on the couch with my family to watch the first movie in the Beetlejuice series because this weekend, we'll see the second one. They already know that this just has to get done first, and then they will have me. Maybe reach out to someone during the holiday who has helped you in the past year, month, or week. Perhaps it’s a colleague, mentor, or friend, and let them know how much you appreciate their support. This morning, I connected with a client of mine. We did talk about some professional things, and then she said, “In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'm SO very grateful for all you do and are. Life before and after Diane and the VA Made Easy program. I appreciate you to the moon and back.” Super sweet, right? Let these people know how much you appreciate them. Even if it's not their Thanksgiving, you can still express your appreciation, whether it's a different holiday or while you're on vacation. Take that time to be grateful for and appreciate your loved ones. #4: Redefine Productivity This isn't an easy one for me because when I'm on holidays at home and I have this extra time, I think about what can be done around the house or what other jobs I can fit in. Or I might think about what other professional development books I can read because I have some many. If you're tempted to stay productive over the holidays, just remember that rest is part of the productivity cycle. You have to rest. I think of this in soccer: I can perform better on the field when I’ve had a sub, drink water, and sit for a moment. I also know that I can’t play soccer games day after day. I need those rest days to give my body time to adjust to the energy I just expelled and to recover from the hits I took—yes, there’s still some physical contact in my league! I know that in those rest days, I am able to do things that are lighter, maybe go for a walk and such and so the same is for your holiday time. Use this time to recharge and reflect because resting now will help you operate at your best moving forward. Usually, when we have holidays and long weekends, it's a short week, and we need to hit the ground running to pack five days' worth of work into four. You know how that goes! Instead of working through the holidays, I suggest that you engage in activities that bring you joy and actually schedule them in. Otherwise, you might be tempted to let work be your default and fall back into that habit. Read a book, meditate, or relax with your family. We’re also going to play some games, and watch a movie. I think the rain has stopped, so I might get out for a walk. But remember, rest is fuel for your future productivity! Remember high-achievers, if you want to perform better later, you need to rest now. #5: Gratitude in Action Since Thanksgiving is about giving thanks. It's a perfect opportunity to practice gratitude in action. Maybe you're someone who writes down five things that you're grateful for every day. This is part of the practice from my Dynamic Year Journal, but this might also be the time to put gratitude into action. If you reflect on what you’ve written in your gratitude journal, or what you pray about and are thankful for, or even what you’re grateful for at this moment, consider writing a note to that person. Maybe you can send them a thank-you card or just text them, as I mentioned earlier, expressing your appreciation for their support or for helping you in different ways. If you’re grateful for things like food, why not donate some food to the food bank? If you're grateful for your financial success, why not give financially to something?  This gratitude and the action of it takes it from just a thought to an actual behavior and something you’re doing. This way, you’ll have the memory of giving or appreciating. Gratitude is super important, especially for us high achievers because it keeps you grounded. When you’re achieving a lot, it’s easy to get caught up in your ego. Gratitude reminds you that success isn't just about hitting goals. We need life balance; we need to acknowledge the other side of life. It’s also about recognizing the people who have helped you along the way and appreciating what we have in our lives. This weekend, I was a little bit ticked because I had to get up at 6:30am on Saturday morning for my son’s soccer tournament, which I thought, “Long weekend, and I can’t even sleep in.” Then I thought, “Check yourself, Diane. Check yourself because you have a house to sleep in where people just got hit in Florida with not one, but two hurricanes, and so you have a home that is safe, electricity, and clean drinking water.” I could go on and on and on and on, but being in North America and being where I am, I am currently safe from natural disasters, and I'm safe from gang violence and fearing for my life and political threats and all these different things that can come out. May I suggest that you take that gratitude that you have and write it as “Thank You” notes, record a voice message, so people actually hear your voice of how you've impacted their life, that's huge. You can also do some volunteering. You could donate to things close to your heart. But that's a key thing. Think about where you have the gratitude, and then put it into action. Wrapping Up I'll give you a run-through of them again.
Thank you so much for reading my blog. I would love it if you have some things that really stood out to you in this blog, then you reach out to me [email protected] and share this with a friend. Until next time, stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
Have you ever been called a good girl? In this blog, I may say some things that push some buttons, provoke people, or wake them up around a particular thing or two, but it is going to be about the importance of stopping being a good girl.  What am I going to cover? Well, I'll talk about the definition of a good girl, my experience as a good girl growing up, how the world benefits from good girls, how you can benefit from being a good girl, how others view good girls, the negatives as well, and what I suggest you be instead. I'm going to need your help at the end to come up with a new title. Stick with me, and then reach out at [email protected] or send me a message on any of the platforms I'm currently on, and let's start a discussion about this. My definition of a good girl It can be defined as:
My experience as a good girl growing up Growing up I was an honor roll student, which I think gives me good girl status. I was the captain of many sports teams, both at school and on rep, competitive, or All-Star teams. I was the president of many clubs, businesses, and other things. I've been a leader in many facets of life and held managerial or supervisory roles. My experience as being a good girl can also be seen as being a leader, and a high achiever. Have you had good girl status in those titles or areas as well? What kinds of positions or titles have you had where you’ve been a ‘good girl’?
How the world benefits from good girls The world really benefits from good girls, but then I'm going to talk about why maybe you should stop being a good girl.  The world benefits from good girls. Let's go through a few ways.
But how can you personally benefit from being a good girl? Benefits of being a good girl The benefit of being a good girl is that if you're doing good actions, there are no repercussions for bad actions. You're going to excel in what you do and get ahead. It's nice that others look up to you, so you step into a leadership role. There's also no guilt from wrong decisions because you're doing good things. Then you're often rewarded—recognized, promoted, or given nice things, opportunities, and nice acknowledgments. How others view a good girl When we're little, people say, "Good girl". I try not to say that to my kids. Instead, I say, "That was a good decision" or "That was a good action," so it’s not about labelling them. I was often told I was a good girl as a kid. This is where I don't want to be seen as a good girl anymore because society often views the good girl negatively. She's seen as a goody two-shoes, a rule follower, a brown-nose. I got a lot of that in high school because I was doing all these good, high-achieving things. I'd hear from my best friends, "Oh, so-and-so was saying you're a brown-nose," and they'd stick up for me, saying, "Oh, Diane's cool." They weren't listing all the things I did that were bad, though I did do some things that weren't so good. We don't really have this "good boy" label. The stereotypical "good girl" is present in movies and shows. Over the years, I've seen my achievements as good. I see some of the titles and positions I've held as being a good girl, but I don't necessarily want to be called that anymore because there are many negatives to being a good girl. Let's look at a few things. As an honor roll student, I felt pressure to be a good girl. I remember one time when I didn’t realize a homework assignment was due. It was due after lunch, and I was in the library freaking out, knowing I wouldn’t finish it in time. I started crying. There was so much pressure for me to be good at school—or at least that’s how I internalized it. The assignment was worth only a small percentage of my final score, but I just couldn’t handle it. When I was the captain of sports teams—rugby, soccer, volleyball—I had to set the bar for others. That's a lot of pressure. I would play injured, show up to things sick and even play a full game even if I was exhausted. One time when I was healthy, I remember running laps for warm-up and lapping my teammates, who were five to seven years younger than me. I had to motivate them to go faster, but they saw that as negative. For me, it was just about setting the bar. This is where we need to be. When you’re like that, there’s no margin for error.  In work too, I can’t count how many times I’ve been sick, hurt, dealing with headaches, emotional problems, or life problems, but I had to push through because I was a good girl who did the things and got them done. I had high standards for myself. Maybe you feel that way, too. When I was president of the student council—or maybe you’ve been president of something—you realize that your job is to ensure things happen, but you can’t do it all. As a leader, you lead by example. You practice servant leadership, but sometimes that means others let you do it all. When you’re a manager setting guidelines and making things fair, there can be an “us and them” or “her and them”. I felt that, too, when I was promoted at a company. The people I used to work alongside no longer invited me out for drinks or talked to me as much. I felt left out because I was the good girl. I couldn’t be my full self as a good girl What I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older, more experienced, wiser, and since I worked on myself, is that being a good girl is a good thing in many regards, but it has stopped me from authentically being myself. Being a ‘good girl’ has stopped me from making mistakes, calling on others, and showing weakness. You could say this is true for all high achievers. This is where I need your help to develop another name for "good girl." It’s not "bad girl"—that’s not the opposite of good girl. Is it "authentic leader," "high achiever," "authentic high-achieving leader"? What is it? The benefit of not being a good girl, is permission to be real. It's permission to be raw, rough around the edges. It allows that margin for error. It allows you to be vulnerable and human and to have an off day. If you've ever been in certain positions as the good girl, it’s like you have no room to make a wrong move, and that’s a lot of pressure. Wrapping Up What do you think? Is it time for you to stop being a good girl? Let’s keep all the benefits—the good things I've mentioned, not just for you but for the world—but let’s change it to also include permission. Permission to be yourself, to sometimes say, "No, I don’t want to do that," "No, I don’t want to include everyone," or "No, I’m not going to go there." It’s like we’re not allowed to follow what our heart desires or what our gut tells us if the decision that we feel we should be making is pressured by others or society. I’m curious—what are your thoughts? Are you a good girl? Are you seeing that maybe you need to ditch the good girl title to provide some space to grow even more? Because I feel like having the good girl persona is just playing a role rather than being your true self. Maybe there are times when being a good girl means you’re not in resonance with what your heart and soul truly desire. Maybe you’re on a path or making decisions just so you don’t upset others, let them down, or face the disapproval of others. Maybe you’re in a career you don’t love or aren’t passionate about, but you feel like you can’t change it now. There's so much more here to unearth. It's something that I've been pondering over, but I'm excited about this new side of the good girl. Maybe it's the good bad girl. It's the good, real girl. I don't know. Let me know your thoughts and your takeaways from this blog. Also, sharing is caring, so share this blog with a friend or even better on your social media because what we need to be doing is raising others up as we rise ourselves. This could be a really good discussion point for you and others around you. Until next time, everyone. Stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
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