My biggest inspirations to create my life: Mom, Madonna & ME

I am excited to be answering another,  “Ask me ANYTHING” question from Emily M.  

"What's your biggest inspiration for how you consciously create your life?"

My answer? Women! They’re my biggest inspiration. It was hard for me to just choose one woman though that inspires how I create my life so I’ll share them all.

My Mom:
My mom has always believed in me, and usually more than I even believe in myself.  It’s this trust that she has in my abilities and skills as a woman in business that helps me to reach for things that seem beyond me.  While she never pushes me to go for more, she supports whatever I do. I’m blessed to have gone through life having her as my BIGGEST cheerleader.

She also gives me permission to choose my own path in life, as she did.

Around 50 years ago while in England, my parents were dating. He left to work in Canada and she stayed.  Eventually after the mail strike ended, my mother got a letter from him. While on her train ride to the ballet school she taught at she read my Father’s proposal.

My dad was working in Ontario and wanted her to be his wife and for her to move to Canada. She didn’t know much about Canada, only being able to look at things in print, or hear what my father had to share. However, she decided she wanted to check it out for herself before she said yes.

Obviously, she eventually said yes, but it wasn’t as easy as it would have been today. With no Internet, Skype, FaceTime, Email or Facebook, and the phone being too expensive she could only communicate with family by snail mail, there really wasn’t a lot of information available, and she couldn’t communicate with him often.
​
I often think about how hard that must have been, but if she was able to do that back then, I know I can be here, on the other side of Canada, and also live my dream.

Other Women:
There are so many well-know women is our present and past: Oprah, Mother Teresa, Brené Brown, Marie Forleo, Madonna, and countless others who inspire my path. (Yes, Madonna! If you want to know why her and the others feel free to ask.)

However, it’s also the women around me: mentors, friends, my clients, women in business,  and other women I’ve never even met. I see so many qualities in them — from what they do to who they are — that shape what they can accomplish. I see where they are ahead of me in their life by age or success and I use that to inspire what I want to achieve and where I want to be in the future.

Seeing how others live can give permission to how I will create my life. However, I have to be careful not to compare myself, to not let the ego beat me down or take me away from my purpose.
​
I won’t be exactly like them because I’m a curator of what I love. I collect what it is about what they’re doing and who they’re being that I love, and like a pioneer, I put it together in my own way. I’m attracting, and creating my own dreams, my own vision of the life I want. Then I will continue to Blaze a Trail for other women in a similar way.

---

My Future Self:
In coaching I often take my clients through a guided meditation where they get to meet their Future Self. To see yourself 5, 10 or even 20 years in the future is really powerful. Thankfully I was able to go through this with another coach and meet myself in the future.  
​
Of course I didn’t actually meet her in real life, but I tell you it felt that way. I went to her house, I saw where she lived, how she lived including the 2 floors of windows and the colorful artwork.  I saw what she looks like and what it felt like to be around her: she was calm, welcoming, grounded, successful, knew a lot and was having a great impact on those she connected with.

Then she gave me a gift, a key. But when I went to take it from her, it disappeared. She said, “You’re the key. The key to unlock the greatness in others.”  This one statement has fueled a lot of my decisions and strongly impacted how I create my life. For that I’m grateful.

So to you reading this, to Emily and to all the amazing women out there – what inspires you? Who inspires you? Who are the women in business that you admire? And are you even consciously creating your own life?  I’d love to know.
​
Mwah!

---