While many types of privilege have played a role in my story, I ask you to please not let my advantages or anyone else’s disempower you by making you doubt your own potential.
If anyone had told me how big a setback teen motherhood could truly be when I became a new mom at age nineteen, who knows what kind of future I would have lived. If I’d realized how many statistical advantage points it would cost me on the great socioeconomic scoreboard, maybe I would never have powered through college and raised my son to one day go to college and pursue his dreams. (He recently started college, by the way—proud mama over here!) If I had focused on the odds that were stacked against me, I might not have believed I could overcome abuse, buy my own home, build a fulfilling career, travel around the world, or publish a book. I’m so thankful I had the naiveté to believe I could own it all.
As the second-wave feminists of the 1960s recognized, “the personal is political.” I know that sometimes we focus too much on healing the individual within the existing system and not enough on dismantling the unjust systems that cause the individual to suffer in the first place. It is my hope that this book can do both: embolden you, the reader, to take ownership of all you desire in this life—so that you can be part of the solution for others still struggling. For this reason, we will spend a lot of time discussing our life legacies.
Ultimately, this book is about putting aside all the reasons you might fail. It is about making it no matter what. It’s about beating whatever odds are stacked against you so that nothing can hold you back from succeeding—whatever success looks like for you.
You own your choices.
You own your body.
You own your time.
Your life belongs to you.
What Would You Like to Change?
If you could wave a magic wand and change something about your life or the world—anything at all, big or small—what would it be? It doesn’t have to be just one thing. Let your mind run free.
Think about it. Write it down. Or discuss it with a friend. Hold these goals in your mind as you move into the rest of this book.
Whatever it is, I truly believe you can have it. If you want your partner to contribute more around the house…if you want an extra twenty thousand dollars in your savings account…if you want national media exposure for your nonprofit organization…if you want a three-month sabbatical to study Spanish in Barcelona…if you want to help a phenomenal woman get elected to the Senate…if you want that Senator to be you…whatever you want, you’ve got to own that dream even if you don’t yet know what the steps in the process will be. It’s your life. It’s your work to do. Nobody can do it for you. You’ve got to own it all.
If you’re up for the challenge, this book is your guide to owning your goals, your time, your career, and every other aspect of your life, including the legacy you want to leave behind for future generations.
Once you take ownership of your life, it changes everything. It’s like having a key that can unlock any door. It’s like waking up and realizing, “I’ve been in charge all along. For a while, I forgot. But now I remember. Whatever I want, I don’t have to wait for it. I can create it.”
Own where you are. Own where you’re going. Own your deepest desires. Own your impact. Own your life. Own it all.
Own Your Goals
Inside This Chapter
•Why it’s crucial to take the biggest risk you can stomach today (even if it’s very small).
•Why envy isn’t necessarily a bad thing—and how to use envy to clarify your next set of goals.
•Why it’s important to announce your goals publicly rather than keeping them a secret.
•How to identify counter-productive thoughts in your head (like, “I don’t have what it takes”) and say something new.
•The story of how I opened the very first Barre & Soul studio and how I learned to embrace small risks, then slightly bigger risks, and then even bigger risks.
•How to stop procrastinating and start moving your life in the direction you want (because this is your one and only life—and you don’t want to miss your shot).
Take the Biggest Risk You Can Stomach Today
On a sunny spring afternoon in Boston nine years ago, if you happened to step into the Starbucks on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley Street, you would have seen a terrified-looking woman sitting in the corner pretending to drink a cup of coffee, but really just fidgeting with her clothes and staring awkwardly at her own résumé.
That was me.
I was camped out inside this coffee shop because I wanted to deliver my résumé to my (hopefully) future boss—and I wanted to do it face to face. I figured I’d make an extra good impression if I walked up to hand it to her in person instead of emailing it like everybody else. (Plus, this would spare me the agony of wondering if she’d gotten it, should she neglect to reply.) I even printed it on fancy, creamy white paper. Very profesh.
I was applying for a job at exhale (all lowercase, no uppercase E, because they’re cool and stylish like that), one of the top fitness, wellness, and spa companies in the country, not to mention the home of one of the most authentic Lotte Berk-based workouts in the industry (Lotte Berk was the dancer who originally created the fitness movement now known simply as “barre”). They’re known for their elegance, attention to detail, and elevated aesthetic—down to the state-of-the-art lockers in the changing rooms and the upscale products in the showers. They’re like the Ritz Hotel of fitness: swanky and luxurious.
I remembered having met a few instructors from exhale back when I was working on being certified to teach barre classes. It was like meeting a group of cool, impossibly beautiful cheerleaders from a fancy private school. The exhale instructors were just so…pulled together—the top of their industry, the crème de la crème. Even though I was just a newbie barre instructor, I knew that one day, I wanted to be one of them.
But first, I needed to get hired.
I wore my very best (purchased on super-clearance, or else I couldn’t have afforded them) pair of lululemon yoga pants (also too cool for any uppercase letters) that day, trying to look the part. There was a particular manager I wanted to meet. I knew she’d be finishing up a class in a few minutes. Yes, I’d already checked the schedule; borderline stalker behavior, I know! With a drop-in rate around twenty-five dollars, I didn’t have the money to actually go and take her class, so instead I planned to march up, shake her hand, and hand over my résumé at precisely the right moment.
But first I needed to, you know, leave the Starbucks. That was proving to be more difficult than I’d imagined. I was sweating despite the frigid air conditioning, and panicky thoughts kept racing through my mind. “I’m not qualified.” “I’m not a good enough instructor.” “Maybe she’ll be annoyed that I bothered her.” “Oh my God, everything is riding on this. I need this job.” “If they say no to me, what then?” At that time, barre had only a cult following and there were very few options for barre teachers, aside from opening a studio, which I was nowhere near ready to consider.
I was in a precarious financial situation, just barely scraping by as a part-time barre teacher at a different studio in the suburbs. To support myself and my kids as a single mom, I knew I needed a full-time job. A real job. And I knew that working at exhale would mean working