MY BIRTHDAY EPISODE 🧁🤍 | 4 lessons I’ve learned in the last 40 years + how you can apply them into your life too.

In today’s post we’ll chat thru…

① ANNOUNCING SPRING for THE SISTERHOOD MEMBERSHIP (Feb 23-Mar 3)
② 4 LESSONS I’ve learned in the last 40 YEARS

LET’S DIVE IN. 🖤

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Hey hey SISTERHOOD and Happy GAL-entine’s Day!!! 🖤👯‍♀️ Today’s episode is poppin’ in a day early bc it’s. my. 40th birthdayyyyy!!! 🎉🧁🥂

Before I get into the GOOD stuff, though, I’ve gotta kick this episode off with some GOOD. FREAKING. NEWS. 🗞

There are T MINUS TEN DAYS until we open enrollment for SPRING in The Sisterhood Membership !!!

We only open The Sisterhood Membership FOUR times a year and February 23rd thru March 3rd is your window to join us this SPRING SEASON. If you want to be FIRST in the KNOW when enrollment opens, be sure to click on the link below to get on the wait list.

This season is all about MOVEMENT + MINDSET 💦🎧 -

STRENGTHENING YOURSELF FROM THE INSIDE OUT.

HERE’S THE DEAL…

A positive mindset will not change a crappy situation. Neither will movement.
But building mental + physical strength can change YOU.
And when you change + strengthen YOU, it changes + strengthens your ability to handle the crappy situations.

WE ALL GET OFF TRACK. WE ALL GET STUCK FROM TIME TO TIME. WE ALL FACE SETBACKS.

THE QUESTION IS…
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

THIS SEASON I WILL GIVE YOU TOOLS + RESOURCES TO HELP YOU…

▫️simplify movement + move your body in ways that feel good for YOU

▫️set goals, build sustainable habits, and feel confident in your routines

▫️feel worthy in who you are + learn how to get out of downward mental spirals

▫️speak kinder to yourself (+ others)

▫️evolve from a fixed mindset to a growth based mindset

▫️check in on your mindset each day + focus on your progress

SO…IF YOU’RE READY TO STRENGTHEN YOURSELF FROM THE INSIDE OUT BE SURE TO GET ON MY VIP WAIT LIST.

Okay okay…that was ONE of my birthday gifts to but it’s not all. Let’s get back to today’s topic - TURNING 40 + all the lessons I wanna pass on.

First of all. It’s so WILD to be 40. Like. I have VIVID memories of when my dad turned 40. My stepmom threw him this “Over-the-Hill” party which I feel like was really popular back in the day. There were tombs and cross bones and skulls and RIP decorations all over the house. And as a child I remember thinking “WOW…40 must basically be the age you die.” 🤣 I laugh thinking about it now bc gosh…I’m 40 and yet I STILL feel like a child in so many ways. So many areas of my life I’m still growing and evolving in…I’m still on pursuit. And God-willing, I’m nowhere near being done, yet. 40 in my reality is not what I envisioned 40 to be like when it actually arrived.

And I’m glad for that. It can be really easy to fall into this mindset trap that the best days are behind you. I’ve done this before when it comes to my performing days, my business career, my health and fitness goals. And shoot…even being 40 and not being a mom yet is a tricky space to navigate. But in today’s episode I wanna dig into a few of the lessons I’ve learned over the years that not only have helped me re-frame my mindset around what it means to be alive and on journey (something I’m gonna teach you MORE on in the spring membership hint hint), but also lessons I pray help YOU navigate your journey, too…wherever you’re at in it. I’m breaking this up into big overarching lessons + themes from each decade so I think it’ll be fun to take ya’ll back with me. 🖤

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MY BIRTHDAY EPISODE: 4 LESSONS I’ve learned in the last 40 YEARS

① NAME YOUR BIGGEST FEAR so you can tame your biggest fear.

When you peel back all the layers, everyone has ONE core fear and for most of us this is a fear that started + stemmed from our childhood. A way we began to interpret the world based on circumstances unique to each of us. I’m starting with this lesson bc it’s been the thing that has walked with me my entire life - as core fears typically do. IDK if you know what keeps you up at night. What gives you anxiety. Or the one thing that causes you the most suffering, but I do. I’ll take you back.

When I was four my dad decided to leave my mom for another woman. I have no ill will towards anyone in my family, so this isn’t about that. When I’m in my healthiest frame of mind, I truly believe that my parents did the best they could with what they had. I think that’s true for all of us. And. That moment of my dad leaving…gosh I could be standing there like it was a fake scene in a movie to this day. My mom is laying in bed. My dad was leaning against the dresser. It was tense. My brothers were not in the room. And I remember trying to hug my mom bc as a little girl I knew this wasn’t good…whatever was happening. That day birthed my biggest fear - everyone will leave. Or you might know it as “ABANDONMENT.”

At that time, my family dynamic was different than all the other kids at school. No one I knew had separated parents. Everyone had a mom and a dad and a full dinner table each night. I spent my youth living primarily with my mom and the court allowed us to see my dad every other weekend and two weeks in the summer. The worst was the holidays. It was designed so that every other holiday was with one parent and I HATED that feeling of my brothers and me packing up in my dad’s mini van…leaving my mom alone on Christmas Day. I hated it bc I hated abandonment.

Fast forward to fifth grade. I went to school in a tight knit, very safe community. The kind of place where you ride bikes until the street lights come on. I had my friends that I grew up with from K thru 5. On Halloween day that year, my best friends came up to me and decided they didn’t want to be my friends anymore bc I played the flute and was smart. My gifts and talents were dorky and bc of this they didn’t want to be my friend. Insert Abandonment. On a day when a child is supposed to be souped up on candy and festivities, I begged my brother to go trick or treating with me so I wasn’t totally alone.

None of this is a pity party. It’s a picture I want to paint for our core fears. We all have them. And like I said…they are a major source of repeated suffering in our lives. Once you figure out your core fear you’ll see how it wove itself into your life over and over again. I could go thru so many other examples of feeling like everyone would eventually leave bc this fear has gone WITH ME. And yours are the same. I didn’t know when I was four or in fifth grade…or shoot even in college, that I feared abandonment. It wasn’t until I really started to get involved in therapy and healing from past trauma that I realized this woven thread. Looking back, so much of my actions, behaviors, relationships, and patterns came down to this one fear. It’s like I walked around my whole life blind to what was weighing me down. And it was freeing once I figured it out bc then I could be like “Oh Hey…it’s you old friend…I know you. I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to keep me safe but it’s actually doing the opposite so let’s try something different.”

Taming your fear often looks like doing what’s counterintuitive in the moment. Your fear is only there to keep you safe. It’s your mind’s way of trying to protect you. So taming your fears often looks like reminding yourself that you are safe and just like anything else…it’s a process. This is my first lesson bc it’s probably the first major thing that impacted me…but it’s a lesson I continue to face over and over with a fresh perspective, even as I grow and evolve.

Once you figure out your fear there is FREEDOM bc once you can NAME your fear you can TAME your fear. It no longer has to have a hold on you. While fear may often be interpreted negatively as a sign of weakness or vulnerability it actually offers valuable insights for growth and transformation if approached from a place of curiosity rather than resistance. So I encourage you to get CURIOUS every time you notice your fear pop up.

3 things that will be helpful for you as you navigate naming + taming your fears:

• Identify your core fear - You can’t conquer a fear you don’t know you are battling, so the first step is to name it. What is the thing you are worried most about? And for a little help, five of the most common core fears are abandonment, failure, loss of identity, meaning, or purpose, and the fear of death, sickness, or pain.

• Pinpoint where it stems from - This is helpful for me bc I can start to take the blame off of myself, not so that I place it on someone else, but so I detach from the fear. I am not the reason people leave. You are not the reason that didn’t work out…there’s an underlying story that’s been playing on loop since you were little. Figure out that story so you can see it as such.

• Flip the script - Let’s say you have a core fear of failure. Your definition of failure might have been shaped by your perfectionist mom who never accepted anything less than an A+ on your report card. The next time an opportunity comes your way that might involve the potential of failure, you can make a choice to flip the script of your definition of failure by redefining failure as not trying at all instead of defining it as never messing up.

② YOU CAN’T BEAT THE PERSON WHO NEVER GIVES UP.

Ya’ll I wish I could take you back to the beginning of all my greatest pursuits…

Performing.
Learning the flute.
Graduating cum laude.
Teaching littles in the elementary classroom.
Transforming womens’ health as a fitness coach.
Building businesses that were once ideas.
Even this podcast.

Ya’ll. I was not GOOD at any of those things when I started. And when I say “not good” I mean…there might not have been much hope for me. If you saw me trying to learn a dance combination. Picking up my flute and reading music. Studying to ace a test. Getting a side stitch from running (okay jogging) a mile. Posting for the first time on social. My first episode of this podcast. They are all laughable. Not natural talent. Not even by a landslide.

What I learned at a young age was that if I wanted to be EXCELLENT at something…I had to keep showing up to train for it. I couldn’t just TRY…I had to learn how to TRAIN. I adopted this TORTOISE MENTALITY in my life that has been a key piece of what’s made me unstoppable. Slow and steady wins the race. My gift is my GRIT.

My middle school band director, Mr Boylan, would always say…⁣

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“𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵…𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘔𝘈𝘕𝘌𝘕𝘛.”⁣

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How true is this and how freaking WISE was my middle school band director?! ⁣Most of us were taught that practice makes perfect. But you can practice something WRONG over and over and over again and it won't become PERFECT. You'll just embed behaviors in your life that aren't serving you. ⁣

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This is why REFLECTION is key. ⁣I might sit here and talk about grit and slow and steady, but if what you're ACTUALLY doing isn't getting you to where you want to be…you’ve got to change it. Practice something new. And then stick with it long enough for the fruit to show up in your life. If you want something bad enough…be the kind of person who withstands the storms and shows up anyway bc you can’t beat the person who never gives up.

③ FOLLOW THE PATH. NO. MAKE YOUR OWN PATH.

If you and I had met 20 years ago (and shout out if any of my friends/family are listening bc they know…) you would’ve known that I wasn’t going to be like the rest of them. I wasn’t going to “follow the path.” I kind of always went to the beat of my own drum. I would attribute this to performing while traveling the world at a young age. It just gave me a perspective that a lot of my peers weren’t fortunate to have. I also am the youngest in my family so I witnessed “the path” unfold for my siblings which allowed me a chance to decide if that was meant for me or not.

Fun fact. I was engaged right out of high school. He was a musician. I was the colorguard captain. And we performed together for many years. From the outside looking in we had the perfect relationship and to us, it seemed like we were following the right path that I witnessed so many of my friends go down. School. College. Meet someone. Get married. Have kids.

But I started to have this really strong internal gut feeling that this wasn’t what I should be doing. That I was too young to get married and that there was more life ahead for me if I would walk away. We had already picked a date, the venue was reserved, and everyone knew about our engagement. So walking away wasn’t easy. Initially I lost a lot. I lost him. I lost my friend circle (bc they honestly didn’t understand what the heck I was doing). I lost money. I love my apartment (I moved back in with my mom…he stayed). I even lost a few of my coaching jobs bc we worked together and one by one the band directors would call me and let me go bc they didn’t want this awkward scenario. It truly sucked before it got better. 20 years later…looking back. OH. MY. WORD. What a BRAVE choice 20 years ago me made for ME TODAY. I’m beyond grateful for her.

10 years later…I found myself in a similar situation. I went to school for education and landed my first official teaching job in Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Miami, FL. I taught elementary education there for 10 years and one day…I got this really strong internal gut feeling that this wasn’t what I should be doing. That if I stayed I would stay stuck in a life that was less than my potential. And hear my heart. I don’t think staying in a classroom means you’re playing small. I’m saying it was the deep weight that I was carrying and I knew I had to leap. I had my boyfriend at the time move out. I started an online fitness coaching business. Again. I lost a lot in the beginning. The boyfriend. The friend circle. The respect of people who didn’t think I should step outside of the box I was put in. But. 10 years later…I look back and OH. MY. WORD. ya’ll. What a BRAVE choice 10 years ago me made for ME TODAY. I’m beyond grateful for her.

IDK…have you ever gotten those really strong internal gut feelings that are leading you into something that seems so outrageous…so different from the life you’re currently living? What do you DO with those feelings? Stuff them down so far but always look back with a little bit of regret for what you didn’t do? Or do you listen? Maybe not at first…but eventually…do you listen? Because the thing I’ve realized is those feelings are FOR you. They seem ridiculous in the moment and really. freaking. scary. I get it. I’ve made a lot of scary leaps. But staying in my comfort zone would’ve led to a life of regrets and I don’t want that for myself and I don’t want that for you either.

I also think this is a perfect moment to point out that I’m 40 years old and not a mom yet. For so much of my life I was deeply afraid of becoming a mom bc I didn’t think I would be any good at it…and truthfully I was carrying so much past hurt that I couldn’t be open to the idea until I began healing. I never DIDN’T want to be a mom…I just always thought it would be something for “later.” Well. Later is here and we’ve struggled to conceive a child for the entirety of our relationship and marriage…going on 10 years now. This is a totally loaded topic for a totally different episode, but I wanted to bring it up here bc I want you to know that your timelines don’t have to make sense to anyone else. It might not be motherhood, but whatever that thing is that everyone else has done but maybe you don’t have any intentions of pursuing or it just hasn’t happened for you YET…let’s make it ACCEPTABLE that our time lines are OUR own.

Instead of following the path that everyone else follows…what if you pursued the things that deep down you knew were calling you and refused to apologize for your time lines? When you’re faced with those fork in the road moments where those gut feelings are strong…there’s honestly only ONE path…it’s the one that’s true to YOU if you’re brave enough to listen.

④ CREATE WHAT YOU CRAVE.

And that brings me to my last lesson and the thing that has been beautifully blooming for me in recent years. This idea that YOU CAN CREATE WHAT YOU CRAVE.

Full circle back to my youth and the fear that gripped me for much of my life (that people would eventually leave). Once I was able to NAME that fear the process of TAMING it was by living a life where I created the things my inner child craved. The two biggest things being -

A beautiful home.
An execeptional marriage.

I’ve watched a lot of my family divorce over the years and the warm, inviting idea of home crumble with it. I love my family dearly and watched all of their unique situations but despite that, I wanted to be the chain breaker in my family that said NOPE…I will work to build an exceptional marriage. I will create the kind of home environment that I crave. And I’ve worked hard + continue to work hard to adopt this mindset in everything I do.

CREATE WHAT YOU CRAVE.

Over and over in my life I’ve realized that if I wanted something…if I craved something…no one was going to come and rescue me and do the work for me. I realized that I had to CREATE WHAT I CRAVED.

If I CRAVED friends…I’d have to CREATE the friend circle.

If I CRAVED a loving + inviting home…I’d have to CREATE that.

If I CRAVED to be healthy + fit…I’d have to CREATE the routine that would help me get there.

If I CRAVED a job that offered me freedom + choice…I’d have to get out there and CREATE it.

CREATE WHAT YOU CRAVE.

And I embody this thru lots of self awareness and a whole lot of action. You’ve gotta pair your wants with your work.

But hear my heart. I want you to realize something. When you see someone who is “creating what they crave” and you feel a little jealous of their success, happiness, fulfillment, etc…please know a couple things. One. They worked really freaking hard for that. Creating what you crave is a lifelong process. And two. Most likely they were not brought up in a successful, happy, fulfilled family. At some point they had to become THE ONE in their family to break the chains for everyone else to follow. They had to become a different example for how you could do life. What if YOU are the chain breaker? What if YOU are the ONE who is supposed to forge a new path? It’s not easy…and you don’t always want to be that person. But gosh…looking back it’s so so rewarding friends.

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As I pause and reflect on my 40th birthday, I hope these small nuggets of wisdom are speaking into the corners of your heart + mind where you need them most. I truly believe that our journeys, and lots of times the struggles, are the very things we can use to pass along to others who are on their path. Things like healing from your biggest fears. Adopting a tortoise mindset. Listening to that deep inner knowing that’s guiding you even when it’s scary. And being brave enough to create a life you’re in love with.

ANNNNDDDD. If you’re loving this podcast + my style of all things self care, growth, community, and conversation today you’re going to LOVE The Sisterhood Membership. SO one last shameless plug that enrollment kicks off in 10 days for Spring where we’ll be diving into MOVEMENT + MINDSET. It’s probably my FAVE topic we’ve done so far and that’s saying a LOT bc I’m obsessed every season. But seriously…it’s gonna be so good. Either get on the waitlist by tapping the link below OR shoot me a DM on instagram (@inspirebeautybritt) and LMK you want in for the spring so I can keep you personally posted. Okay. Happy GAL-entines. Happy Valentines. And cheers to the lessons we’re learning day by day. 🖤🤟🏼

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