433: Decide it’s your time to shine with Ashley LeMieux

Hi, everyone. I'm so happy you've tuned into the show. Whether you have listened before or you're brand new, I'm so grateful for you. You have no idea. And this episode is brought to you by my Become Aligned course. And podcasts are amazing. And I know that you know that because you guys all listen to them, and I do, too. And sometimes they are not necessarily enough because while we're listening, sometimes we're passively listening and we're not actively listening. So the reason that Chris and I. Chris is my husband. The reason we've created this course is because we get asked so many questions outside of the podcast on how we started living the life that we live now. A life of happiness, of abundance, of really understanding that life is always full of problems every single day, but there's always a solution. And how do we shift back into a mindset that's going to keep us happy, keep us together, keep us successful, and keep us in thriving relationships? And that is what our, our Become Aligned course is about. You guys, we cover everything from mindset to the rituals that we do every single day. We talk about different energy sources that's really gonna provide you with lasting energy. We talk about your purpose and what that actually means, what it is and how it's ever changing. We're gonna tap into your beliefs, we're gonna show you how to build a tribe to support where you're going. And we're definitely going to talk about wealth, abundance, money, all of the good things, and how to sustain all of this. Because while, like I said, POD are absolutely awesome, you don't necessarily sit down and actually write out a plan for yourself. Because as much as I can sit here and tell you on the podcast, what we do and how much, how many different people that I can interview, it's important that you actually learn how to apply these things in your own life. So if you've been listening for a while and you are ready to go deeper and you really want to get some direct training and be able to dive into your life and yourself and your mindset, this is the course for you. I don't know about you, but I absolutely have points in my life where I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm doing. Sometimes I hit walls where I don't necessarily feel happy anymore, and I haven't sat with myself long enough. I haven't really let myself think. I haven't written out how I actually feel. And so many people who took this course said that it was completely life changing and they revealed a lot of things about themselves, about them, about their. About their relationships that they weren't really looking at or they were avoiding. And it's about having those tough conversations, not only with other people, but really with yourself and knowing that you have the tools and the access to the tools. And we're going to teach you all of the tools that you need not only to move through things, but to actually thrive on the other side. So, you guys, I would love for you to join the aligned community. It's such a special group of human beings and you get lifetime time access. This is nine different modules where you're going to be working through each area of your life at your own pace. So you might need something on abundance, you might need more on, you know, money, you might need more on your purpose on your tribe. This is where you can really go deep on exactly what you need and make sure that you're not missing any of your blind spots. If you are feeling stuck or if you are wondering how everyone is doing it and how they're managing it all. This is a truly honest course about how to have a thriving life and manage and deal with all of the different problems that do come up in your life and understand that not everyone is going to support you and not everyone is for you and you are not for everyone. And that's okay. It's finding your people. It's forgiving yourself. It's creating a life of abundance and choosing your own purpose and your happiness. So, you guys, you can go to becomealigned.com that's becomealigned.com and you guys know that because you're listeners, I'm gonna give you an awesome deal and an awesome discount and I cannot wait to see you in that community. And also let me know if you join because it is such an awesome, awesome community. And also I'm really proud of this course. Chris and I poured our heart and our soul into this. Everything that we've done, everything that we've learned, we've invested so much into ourself that this is everything that we have applied in our lives. And if you want to know how we've done it, we put it all on the table. We've put it all in this course. So if you want to know, go check it out@becealigned.com so let's get into the show.

I didn't know how to find the light anymore to keep pressing forward, and my journey through that and all of that pain is now what has ignited everything that we're doing now.

Welcome to the earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author. Each week I'll bring you a guest or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves, get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. I am thrilled about today's guest because not only is she freaking amazing and somebody who is so incredibly inspirational every single day on social media and in her everyday life, but she is also going to be a speaker at the Bliss project this year, 2020. And I couldn't be more excited to share her with you guys because she's just that real down to earth, been through a lot of stuff and has so much beautiful wisdom type of person who just shares her heart. And before I share who that is, I want to remind you that if you are feeling like you are supposed to be a speaker, if you have been put on this planet to share a message, if you have gone through something big and you know it's time to share and you know you are meant to have retreats or you are meant to run workshops or have big events or small events or masterminds, or you actually want to invent a new position within your existing company and facilitate connection or facilitate transformational experiences, then you guys go to eventlove.com eventl u v.com because in January 2020, Lindsay Schwartz and I have collaborated together to put you in a room and put you through a certification program to make you feel more confident, get you clear on your message, teach you how to pitch yourself, teach you how to have profitable events and actually make this something that can support you. Not just support you, but be insanely profitable. So if this is something that you know that you want to do, go to eventluv.com if you know that you are ready for that next step. You will feel confident when you leave this room. So you guys, today my guest is the amazing Ashley Lemieux. She is the author of the new book born to shine. You guys have got to go out and get it. It is incredible. She's a sought after public speaker and a wildly successful lifestyle influencer. She's the founder of the online community the Shine Project, where she's a cheerleader for women and creates resources and tools that have ignited a path of clarity and fulfillment for hundreds, thousands of women around the world. Through her fashion and lifestyle brand Shop, Ashley Lemieux, she empowers women who do to show up confidently and courageously to their lives. She believes that you can turn your pain into your power. And this podcast is all about that. So I can't wait for you to tune in, because if there is anything that you have been letting become an excuse or a roadblock or get put in the way, it's actually your strength. And you're about to find out why. So let's get started. Ashley, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me. I've been so excited about this. Lori, it's so crazy.

We were talking about how we met, and like, most all friends are meeting nowadays, I am pretty sure I was looking for different hashtags of different Nashville ladies who were kind of doing similar things as me for a possible book tour there, and I just stumbled across you, and I was like, like, whoa, who is this? And why are we not friends yet? So I secretly have had this intention. Like, I've been holding this intention for a while, and it's only taken a year. And actually, in the grand scheme, like, it's all divine timing because if you just trust and know, like, wow, this woman, woman has such beautiful energy. And I feel like we have similar. It's like I'm kind of complimenting myself. It's like we have similar energies.

So I was like, we hear each other.

Yes. I was like, I love her. I love everything she says. I'm so inspired by your content on Instagram. Like, you have no idea. I have a couple posts I've gone through that just pop up in my feed. I'm like, wow, you are. This is why I'm so excited for your book, is because you are a beautiful writer and you just know how to deliver a message and feel like it just feels like you understand the places that we're in. So I just want to say thank you for being such an inspiration online, because I know that that is not always easy to sit and pour your heart out online.

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Thank you. And I feel the exact same same way about you. And something that I think you do really well and that I try to do is that we're kind of experts now in the human condition. All of those things that you don't ever want to be an expert on, but that you go through or you experience different pain points in your life, or you have these different experiences that kind of are just forced on you that you never chose, but now you have them. So now you're part of this human condition where you have to sift out and figure out, well, now what do I do with my life and in my life? And as I've kind of focused on that and realized that everybody else feels exactly like I do, if I can help them bring words to things that they feel so that they know that they're not alone in that, then that's where I find my biggest fulfillment.

That's so beautiful. You actually remind me of this quote that I just saw the other day. It says, if you don't learn how to transform or transmute, basically transform your pain, you'll transfer it. And I always think about that because it's like you're just this beautiful. You have this beautiful way of transmuting what has happened and turn it into something that's so powerful for other people. And if we don't do that, we're going. Going to transfer it to the people that we love or, you know, if we can learn to transform it into our purpose. It's, like, so huge. And I feel like that's exactly what you've done. You've literally taken these things that have been huge challenges in your life and turn them into, you know, your purpose, which is massive transformation for other people and sharing that truth. So I would love for you to share. I know that you've had two, you know, really defining moments in your life that have brought you to where you're at now, but why don't you kind of share the projects that you're doing right now, but then how you got to those.

Yeah. So my focus for everything that I put out online is to help women uncover their power. And the two things that I'm most excited about right now is that my debut book, Born to Shine, comes out finally this October. And surrounding that, we've been doing live events and live workshops to really sit with women and to help them clearly identify where they're at, where they want to go, and then what practical things need to happen in the in between so that they can get from where they are to where they want to be. And I have learned that for me, that was the hardest part. Going through trauma and pain is so hard. And at first you think that those life defining moments going to be the hardest thing that you go through. But then you start living in this in between where life is different than it was pre trauma or pre pain and you don't know how to live in it anymore because it's all different. It looks different, it feels different, it tastes different, everything is different. And so not knowing. It took me so long to unbury myself from my pain and to figure out where I now point my ship because I. It all felt so chaotic that it overwhelmed me. So with Born to Shine, this book that I just, I've spent the past couple of years writing and it's a tool to help women shine no matter how dark their life might feel. And so all of the projects that we're working on and the content we create and the live events that we're doing is I want every single woman to know that the light inside of them belongs to them and that nobody and nothing else can take it away. And now that you have it, you have the opportunity and you hold both the match and the bucket of water. You hold the match to ignite your light and to keep going or to dance it out. And so the question becomes, how do I keep igniting my light, my light, even when life gets really, really hard? And that's what born to shine in our events help women uncover so needed.

And so incredibly powerful. So how did you get to those places? Oh my gosh. I know we have an hour. So we're good?

Yeah, we're good. You know what's crazy is, especially in this online world, I'll preface by saying we can see what people are doing right now and think that it was really easy for them to get there or that they caught a lucky break and they're, you know, now here they are producing the book or the event or the whatever. And that is such a tiny part of the iceberg of my story. It has taken me years to get to this point and I guess to start we have to go back a little over six years ago when I'm a new entrepreneur and I'm newly married and I'm trying to figure out life and my husband and I get a phone call that asks us to become parents overnight and we take guardianship literally overnight of a four and a six year old who are brother and sister. And at that time we were not seeking out to become parents. We weren't trying to adopt, we weren't wanting to become foster parents. We were really immersed in our life and growing our businesses. And we get this phone call and I know that you felt these things in your life, Lori, but you know those moments where you just know that it's right and that it was always supposed to be. And so even though it feels crazy, you just know it's right. And so you go all in on it.

Yes.

Yeah. That's what becoming a mom overnight was for me, is that I just knew that I was their mom. So for over four years, for over half their lives, we're a family. We're fully operating as a family. We become mom and dad. Everything that we do centers around our kids. And we thought forever and always we were going to be a family. We had no reason to think otherwise. And the long story short is that going through the final steps of the adoption process, we experienced an unexpected contested adoption, which meant that we spent over a year and a half in court fighting to keep our family together. I was drugged through the mud. The kids lives were just in so much uncertainty and upheaval. All of us were scared out of our minds. I was in court all of the time, just, oh, it was just so frustrating and so horrific and the betrayal was so intense. But during that time, I just knew that we would be together forever because how could we not be? You know, it didn't logically make sense. And so I kept telling myself, this is just the trial. This is just the trial of our faith. And this is what we have to walk through and pass through so that our family can be safe and happy forever. So it's all worth it. So after two years, I'm on the other side of the country for work and I get a phone call that we had had an unexpected court hearing called last minute, and it was while I was planned to be away, but we were sure it was not a big deal. And so it was okay if I wasn't there. And my husband calls me and tells me that the court has decided that they're sending the children away from us and that it's going to happen in 12 hours and I'm not able to get home to give, you know, tell my kids goodbye. And we're not allowed to tell them what was going on. And my husband had to drop them off at school the next morning and act like it was a normal day. And then they were picked up by state workers to be told they were never coming home again. And that was the last time that we saw our kids. And that's, you know, the very short version of the most painful, excruciating, horrific moment of our lives. And that was two years ago now. And the past two years have been filled with me trying to figure out how to find life again after it was all taken from me. And probably, you know, the first six months, I was just. I was existing. I was just trying to get out of bed. Honestly, I was just trying to keep myself alive. I didn't want to be alive anymore. And, you know, this sounds. Might sound so weird, but I wasn't in a place where I wanted to take my own life, but I didn't want to be living it, if that makes sense. I didn't want it anymore. And I felt so buried by so much pain for so long that I didn't know how to find the light anymore, to keep pressing forward. And my journey through that and all of that pain is now what has ignited everything that we're doing now.

Kind of just want to, like, sit and hug right now. It's where I'm at. So, like, I was listening so much. I'm just sitting here in shock and in awe and also really wondering about, you know, how does one even find. Even figure out what closure is? Because you couldn't say goodbye, right? You couldn't go back and tell them what actually happened or how did that. How has that. Do they know? Have you been able to have contact?

No. It's killed me because I also know, you know, to say this the most politically correct and to be sensitive to, you know, our stories that I. I know that there is another side to the story because we have our side and then we have the opposing side. But that means that the kids haven't ever been told our side, if that makes sense. That truth isn't something that they have. And that kills me. The only way we were allowed to say goodbye is we had to write them goodbye letters. And then. And they were giving them these letters. And, you know, even to this day, though, because I know at some point they're going to be old enough to find me online. I just. They just are. And so I write them letters still on my social media, specifically on Instagram, for the intention of one day. I can't wait for them to come and see them and just know without a doubt how much we love them, how much we fought for them, how. How much we honor them still, even though they're not with us anymore and that they can know without a doubt how loved they are.

There are so many challenges to business that I don't want starting to be.

One of them for you.

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So this is the ultimate. Like I talk, I talk about something all the time. The learning how to close those loops that we never get closure on, learning how to make peace with them ourselves. And this is kind of the ultimate being able to figure out how to close that loop yourself. So can you share just that journey of what that looks like to create some pe of mind on your own for something that seems like it could never ever feel peaceful or okay again?

Yeah, this is such a big question because it's taken me so long just to be able to sit with it and not try to fix it. Because I know that there's just some things you know in this life or in the near future that are so beyond my control that how do you find peace with it so that it doesn't eat you up and just. And just kill you every day? Which is what me losing my kids did to me. You know, I lost every part of who I was. But then, so then probably a year ago I remember I looked at myself in the mirror, you guys, I looked like. I looked like, picture the scariest movie you've ever seen. And whoever the star is of that movie, whether there's some type of crazy monster skeleton or whatever, I looked in the mirror and I was just this lifeless monster of. It looked like everything had been sucked out of me. And I went to my husband. I said, this can't be my life. I said, I can't wake up in 30 years and be sad because I wished my life away because it was too hard for me to live inside of it. And told him that I had to figure it out. I had to figure out how to live a fulfilling and joyful life while still feeling pain. I started to learn and uncover that there are two things we feel when we experience pain and grief. One is pain and the other is suffering. And they are separate things. And what I was doing is I was reliving things and trying to change things beyond my control and allowing it to bury me. I kept allowing myself to suffer. Suffering is a lack of hope. Suffering is just complete hopelessness. And the hopelessness that I felt just kept burying me deeper and deeper and deeper. Then I learned that pain can disattach from suffering. And that in pain, if we sit with it and stop trying to run away from it, that it can actually teach us. I learned that we're not supposed to outrun pain and we're not supposed to outlast it, and we're not supposed to do all these things with it, and we don't need to be afraid of it. But what we can really do is invite it in and ask us and ask it what it is that we need to learn. And then just be still with it and listen. And sitting with your pain requires so much effort, energy, and acceptance of how things are on your end. And it took me a long time to get there. Tangible tools that I did. I did a lot of therapy. I still do EMDR therapy. That's something that I really had to do. And through that, I realized that the one thing that I could never lose with my children, even though everything else had been taken away, was love. So every time I start feeling anxiety or the suffering and the hopelessness, I have to loop around and go back to love. Because no matter what happens, the love cannot be taken away, it cannot be destroyed. It only gets magnified, only gets bigger. So if I can focus on that, then that's where my peace comes from, is love. So, yeah, that's where I'm at right now.

Wow. So for people who are in this position of not being able to see a way out right now, like, maybe they are just like you, where it was, you know, in bed. Not necessarily to the point where they don't, you know, they don't want to take their lives, but where they're at a place of they just don't even know how to be happy or get excited about life or create something. When you were in that place where you had said that you were trying to figure out how to feel alive or live your life with pain, what were some of the answers that you got when you were asking, what are the lessons? What should I do? Like that listening period, and tell us about what that listening period is like as well?

That's such a good question. The listening period for me is going to look different from you who are listening. But I think the principles still really apply. During that period. My husband and I had to move. We had to leave Phoenix. We had to get out of the house that we raised our kids in. We had to go to a new environment where. Because for a while after we lost the kids, we traveled a lot. I kept trying to explain escape things. I would numb out, honestly, to Netflix. I can't even tell you how many times I've watched the Office Seasons. I mean, I just. I found things that I could either numb out to or I just kept going really fast. Took on so many work projects, just trying to run faster than my theme. And so then I realized we needed to leave it all and go to a place where we could slow down, where we could refigure out our marriage, where we could refigure out who we were now as totally new people. I call it having new lenses of life is like someone smashed the glasses that I was wearing before. That allowed me to view life and the way that I saw things and then gave me a totally different color set of glasses now that I had to try to figure out how to see through. And so during that time, I lost who I was or who I thought that I was. Then I started learning that my pain was actually my opportunity to really become who I am at the core of everything. And as I started following that and really leaning in to who I am and what I wanted and trusting myself, I think that that's one of the biggest things that I struggled with and that a lot of people struggle with. When you go through loss in these times that just knock you flat on your back is that you stop trusting life. And when you stop trusting life, you also stop trusting yourself. I Didn't feel safe anywhere. So tactically, like a really small thing that I still do. I have a sticky note on my mirror, and every single morning, I look in the mirror and I say, what is on the sticky note? And it says, I am safe. I trust the process of life. I trust myself, and I am safe. And I had to work really hard at getting to this place where I felt safe again to live my life. Part of that safety also came from allowing myself to feel joy again. When we get comfortable feeling pain, you know, the loss of my kids brought on this pain that I honestly didn't know existed. I didn't know you could feel that level of pain and still live through it. And once that became my new reality, feeling joy was really hard and really scary because it meant that if I felt joy, I knew how bad now the crash was once that joy was taken away. Like, I knew the depths of the despair that I didn't know, but. And so I almost felt more safe feeling stuck in this constant cycle of pain because at least I would know what to expect, and at least I wouldn't have to wait for the next shoe to drop. And I had to learn that joy and pain can coexist and that you're allowed to feel joy, and you don't have to punish yourself, and you don't have to feel guilty for feeling it. I felt really guilty for a while because I thought that it meant. The lie I told myself was that if I feel joy, then I'm a bad mom. And I'm a bad mom because I couldn't protect my kids. And if my kids aren't feeling joy right now because of where they're at, then who am I to feel joy? And so I didn't feel like I was allowed to feel joy. And that's something I really had to work through to get back to a place where, okay, I'm allowed to feel it. And now how do I become not afraid to feel it again?

So many great things there. I want to go back just to where you said, you know, you look in your bathroom mirror and you say, I am safe every morning. And I think maybe for some people, if they had the same response as me sometimes, you know, we can say those things. And after things have happened that are so traumatic that can make you feel unsafe or unsure or untrusting. I've almost had to redefine what safe means, because I think to the. You know, we grow up thinking safe means, like, you won't feel pain and you won't be Harmed and there won't be trauma. So can you tell me a little bit about how you've been able to have those words actually, you know, really sink to the core and have meaning for you when you say them and trust them? Because maybe redefining safety means something else.

Absolutely. And I love you. Brought up such a good point, is that my safety now is. Is so much different than it was before. Because, you know, when you're a mom and when I had my kids, safety meant that my kids were with me and everyone was healthy and happy and, you know, we're living our lives together. And that's not my definition of safety anymore, because that's gone. That's gone. And so at first, I had to. Something that I really had to do was I had. And this sounds so simple, maybe and silly to some of you, but I had to start a morning routine that added purpose back into my day. I felt like my purpose had been taken away from me because going from a mom to not being a mom, nothing else mattered to me. I felt so purposeless. I felt so worthless. So I had to add purpose back into my day. And one of the things that I asked myself, I asked myself four questions every morning. And one of the things that I ask myself is, what is my intention today? So I have something to focus on. And another thing that I ask myself is, who can I serve today? And then another thing that I ask myself is, what can I let go of when I get to that question? That question helps me redefine what safety means. Because when I let go of the things that aren't serving me or that are causing me anxiety or stress or suffering or fear or whatever, then the only things left are the things that I feel like are keeping me safe, and those are the things that are allowed to stay. You have to do this really intense gut check on yourself and be really honest about what is it that you need to let go of? And every single day, I have to sit and meditate on this. I will literally watch myself pick up. I'll close my eyes every morning, and I watch myself pick up vintage glass plates. And I write with a Sharpie in my mind on these glass plates the things I need to let go of. And then I watch myself just release them every single morning so that I'm not holding onto them anymore. And in replace come those things that keep me safe, which honestly, always goes back to love for me, where I feel safe is my truest, best self, the love that I feel in my heart that nobody else can take away or diminish. That's my safety, because it always exists. And then the last question that I ask myself every morning is, why am I worthy? Why am I worthy to live out this intention today? Why am I worthy to let this go? Why am I worthy to feel safe? Because again, for a long time I didn't feel worthy for any of it. And for a while it was really hard for me to look at myself in the mirror to honestly answer those questions. But it's something I really had to focus on. And then the amount of EMDR therapy that I've done to help my triggers and my PTSD and those things diminish and be replaced with other thoughts has also helped that process. So this hasn't been just an easy, I'm going to look in the mirror every day and tell myself I am safe. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying is that I had to, like you said, I had to redefine what that meant. And then I had to go through really grueling steps to be able to catapult myself into a new thought pattern that wasn't destroying me, but now is serving me and helping me grow. And I always say, you know, you never can move, you never move on from the hard things that happen. You never can just like erase them, right? But you can move forward. So that's my goal every day, is what can I do today to keep moving forward as my truest and best self.

Do you feel like in your heart, you know that there will be a time where you feel complete peace around it and you can see from a 30,000 foot view what it was all for.

I honestly, I don't. I hope there comes a time I live with the hope, you know, that things aren't okay right now, but someday they will be. I live with that hope deep within me. I also have to be careful because I battle between, you know, my kids were taken. And so no matter what happens in the future, these years together and all the trauma that we went through, that's always going to be there and it's always going to have an effect on all of us. And it's, you know, it got into the time, like right now I should be getting my kids ready to go back to school. School and we should have been able to go back on summer vacations that left lasting memories. And we're never going to get that time back. And so I don't, I haven't ever felt like there's going to be this moment where Everything just comes perfectly together. But I think that's part of life. I think that part of life is knowing and trusting that even when it doesn't come back perfectly back together, that you can still shine through it and you can still feel joy and you can still ignite the fire that's in you. And that's actually why I wrote Born to Shine. Because as I've gone through this, I needed to read something that wasn't perfectly packaged up, that had like this miraculous ending. Because. Because sometimes the miracle is, is that you uncover your power to keep going, even though it was so hard that it should have destroyed you. Sometimes that's the miracle. And I needed to write something that spoke to who I was and what I was searching for when my life was not ending up as this perfectly wrapped package. And that's something I've had to come at peace with, is that it's never going to be how I envisioned it to be. And that has to be okay.

How was that process for you writing? Was that. Did you find it was healing, therapeutic, challenging? What did that look like?

You know, I. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I was little, I always would tell you that I wanted to be a writer to help heal people's hearts. Like my little 8 year old shy self, I wanted to be a writer to help heal people's hearts. Wow. And I came to this point two years ago and I write online and do these things, but it's so different writing a book as you know. And I got to this place where I honestly felt like in my healing journey and in my forward progression, I kept feeling I was just hitting this brick wall over and over and over again where I literally could not progress forward until I wrote this book. And it's something that I wrestled with for a while because I know that in order to write what I needed to write as you, I know you felt this way that you have to tap into some of those dark places that you didn't want to go. But once I got there and was able to process through it in this way of writing helps my healing process so much more than if I would have just kept it hidden in the dark for so long. I talk about some really heavy things in this book that would still be buried and would still be eating me alive and taking my energy had I not been able to process through them and also give purpose to that pain.

You know, so many things you're saying. I feel like for whether people have gone through massive trauma in their life or Whether it's something that even in their mind, they're comparing right now. Like, oh, well, I haven't gone through that, so I don't know if I can understand. But we understand how trauma works. It's like. Or where they're comparing, but they still feel like there's something really challenging in their lives. I feel like so many women want to make purpose of what has happened in their life, but maybe they feel like it's not significant enough, or they're so afraid to start something because they do want. They're afraid of the pain and the fear that comes with starting their mission and their purpose because they just want it to be successful. And they see the success online and they see success of all these different people. And I find that we can get so, you know, when I talk to women or when we really sit down, it's like they get so paralyzed in the fear of the pain or the failure that could come with not having something work out. So they don't even get started. What. Can you speak a little bit of life into where those women are at?

Yes. First of all, if you've had these feelings, I want you to know that so do millions of us. We all have these. We all have these feelings. I always am so surprised, the amount of women who tell me. They say, ashley, I have a story to share, but it's just not as good as this person's or it's not as strong as this person's, or I haven't been through as much as this person. I'm always. My jaw always drops because I'm like, it's not supposed to be the same. You're not supposed to be the same. You're supposed to add your specific value and light into this world that nobody else can because you have gone through your specific set of challenges and experiences that can serve people in a way that no one else can because nobody else is you. And so that question just. It just needs to be completely obliterated, because this isn't like a scale of who's had it harder, who's had it best. That's not what life is. Right. Life is about taking what you have and then being able to share it, to uplift others, to help them along their journey, too. The question I want to ask you to ask yourself is this. What will I miss out in my life if I allow fear to prevent me from moving forward? And every time I ask that question, and it's something worth pursuing, what I miss out on is so much greater than the fear That I have to start listening to that. The other thing that I think is important to know is that I think that we all kind of give ourselves this false reality that we're not supposed to feel afraid to do things, and that there might be a time in our life where if the stars were really aligning and if things were really supposed to happen to us, then it's just gonna work out perfectly and we're not gonna be afraid and we're just gonna feel on top of it all. When in reality, I feel fear anytime I do anything, anytime I launch, I'm so afraid and so excited to release this book because I know it's going to change people's lives. But then you have the fear creep into. And so moving forward and creating impact and pursuing your passion and helping other people change their lives has nothing to do with you not feeling fear. And I'll tell you right now that you can let that go. You're going to feel fear. But why you do it has to outweigh that fear so that it can continue to sustain you as you reach those hard moments and you can keep moving forward. The other question that I ask myself is not only what do you miss out on if you don't pursue what you want to do, but what do the people and what does the world around you miss out on if you hold back from it? Because I believe that all of us have a moral obligation to help serve each other with what we know. And if you have had these experiences, which you have, because we all have these experiences that are only ours, and if we're holding back from our moral obligation to help serve the greater good around us, then you're not living in that purpose, you know, and that to me is so much greater than the fear that I feel that that's what leaves me, instead of having my fear just halt me from doing the next thing that I know I'm supposed to do.

I always wonder with people who are really actionable and also kind of understand that journey of fear's really your co pilot. Like, it's just never going to go away. That seat's always there and it's always there. It's always occupied. I always wonder. So some of the things I. At different points in our life and different points of our journey or whatever things that working on projects we're working on, of course there's that fear around it, but I find that there's different things that kind of motivate you or that you think about more. I know in the beginning of My journey in comparison, I had sat in so much fear of just things like what will happen if I don't fulfill my purpose, or so much pain of, wow, the pain of inaction for me started to become a lot stronger than the pain of anxiety and depression. All of these things of not taking action became so much stronger than when I thought about just finally taking action or criticism or judgment. So have you had something like that in your life that you kind of refer back to where you're like, okay, can't be as painful as that. And do you use that as like a tool, or is that just me?

No, I love what you said, honestly. And this. I don't know how this is going to sound, but I always say nothing's going to ever be worse than losing my kids. I think, though, that that's what pain teaches us and why pain can then become our power. Because when the thing happens to you that you're so afraid of and you see yourself live through it and keep moving forward, you now have this new uncovered power in who you are and what you're capable of doing. So hitting rock bottom sometimes, not sometimes, every time. When you hit rock bottom, there's literally nowhere to go but up. You don't need to be afraid of that thing anymore because it's already happened and now you can move forward from it.

Oh, my God. That. You couldn't have honestly said it better than how my brain actually functions and gets me to do the big scary things. I'm like, well, I did that and lived through it. So, yeah, so I know something's gonna happen from this. So for. For people who don't have that reference point yet, how do we create something that says, okay, you know, I don't feel that I've lived through the most painful thing yet. But how can they. Is there a phrase or something or something they can lean into or a prayer or something that they can do or say, knowing that, yeah, this, maybe this speech, you could. Could completely pass out or barf or something terrible could happen, or you could lose someone you love. But, you know, how do we move forward with these fears of something that hasn't happened? We don't have a reference point.

I think all of us have these experiences that kind of help define our lives, right? So whether it's the worst thing you could picture happening or just a painful moment, I think a lot of times we define our lives by those hard moments, right? Like the time that I lost my kids or the time that this happened, or the time that this happened. To me, that was really hard. I think sometimes that's how we define our lives. But what if you defined your life by the strength that you've had to get through everything? What if that's your focus? What if instead of thinking of the times that you have failed or that you've fallen short or that you've done whatever, what if instead the focus on your life is the strength that you've had to keep showing up and to keep moving forward? And so that's something that I've tried to change my reference point around of. And I love that we're talking about this so much because I, you know when I say nothing's ever going to be worse than losing my kids, Right. It's kind of we can create these cycles and these patterns in our lives where we are just waiting for the next shoe to drop. And it's such a horrible cycle to live in. And so instead if I can focus on the strength that I've had to do certain things or to overcome certain things and then lead from there, then that can become my reference point.

So how would you, when you're thinking of that, it's really funny. I'm like a very tangible. I like to see it in sentences or pictures. When you yourself are thinking of, instead of referring to that point of. Nothing can be worse than when you lost your kids. What would it look like in that sentence in your head? If you focused on the strength of getting through something, what would you actually picture?

Okay. Okay, so I'm going to make everyone close your eyes right now. You're peeking right now. I can see you and you need to close your eyes. Okay? So close your eyes. And I want you to picture a room that is just completely dark. There is no ounce of light in it at all. And this can represent any pain that you've been through, any disappointments, any failures that you've had. That darkness represents that. And there's no ounce of light. Now I want you to take a lighter and maybe like a heart shaped candle or something and I want you to light it. And I want you to see how that one little light lights up the dark. Now I want you to view your own heart as that light so it can have just this little, little light in that dark, dark room. And your, your heart now is the source of that light, no matter how small it is. Now when you're in that room, there's now other people in that room with you who are sitting in the dark. And I want you to watch your little light hit Each person in that room, and when it hits that person, I want you to see their light turn on. So go through row by row and person by person. And how easy is it for them to catch a glimpse of your light? And when it catches a glimpse of your light, how easy is it now for theirs to be turned on row by row? And now the entire room until you get to the very back seat and the very last person. Now every single person's light is lit, and the whole room looks almost like daylight, all because of your little light that you decided to ignite. So for me, you can open your eyes if you've done that. For me, that's what that image looks like. That I know that I can be in complete darkness in my life and still ignite that power within me, even if it's just a little bit that then affects other people, that lights up the entire room. So as I keep going back to that image over and over and over again, it gives me the confidence and the power that I need to keep reigniting myself so that I can help other people ignite, too. And then collectively, we're all able to come together and feed off of each other's energy and just get brighter and brighter and brighter.

So a theme that I keep hearing, and thank you so much for that. I literally scared myself because my nose bumped into my microphone while I was picturing that.

Beautiful.

I was so in it, and it was so beautiful. I'm like, I can see you doing this in front of. Yeah, I was having my own visions of all of these amazing things and people lighting up. So anyway, I just. Number one, thank you for that. That was so incredibly powerful, and that's something that people can do every morning. What really happened there for me was the realization of kind of the obvious thing in my life and what I always go back to, but what is easy for me to forget is that if you want to find your light again, it's like you have to desire to want to help other people. It comes down to other people. Everything that you've mentioned is helping other people to shine, Helping other people, lighting yourself up so that you can help light up other people. And I will tell you that the way that I was raised, in just a lot of my childhood, I felt really isolated, and there wasn't a big talk around helping other people, you know, really helping them, like, see their own light. So can you tell me a little bit about what. What that even means, what that looks like, the power of really helping other people and getting out of Your own head and out of your own way to do that.

Yeah. Oh man, that's so good.

I.

What I have found is that when I am able to help other people ignite themselves in their lives, it kind of gives me this power back in mind because it gives me this purpose and this passion to keep going through the stuff even when it's hard. And it can be really simple. It can be every single morning when I ask myself the question, who can I serve today? When I'm in this mindset where I'm actively looking and hoping for the opportunity to just help somebody today get to that next step in their life. It's amazing to me what opens up and what I focus on that I wouldn't normally focus on if I was just going through a busy day. For example, every time I answer that question in the morning and focus on it, without fail, I know exactly who I just even need to text that day just to make sure that they're having an okay day that day. Exactly who I need to make a phone call to just to tell them that they're loved. And I was thinking about them. And so helping other people ignite their life isn't always and usually isn't this huge world changing experience. Right. It's being able to be in a place where you can personally connect with somebody who feels like they aren't scene. And. And when you do that, and I don't know why, but something magical just happens where it helps relight you as well.

Oh, I love that. It's so true. I found that to be so true in my life because kind of the last place when your light feels dim or out is thinking of helping someone else light up. But it's like always the key. It's always the key. Of course you have to figure out how you can get back into your own light. But it's crazy how quickly that when you maybe you step into helping someone before you even feel ready. Has been super, super dramatic for me to just change my mood and get out of my own head.

Exactly. And I think you just said something that's really key is that it helps change your mood.

Yeah.

Your own head. And so, you know, as we go through the cycle of, you know, if you feel depressed or you feel angry or you feel, you know, just that cycle that keeps going, at some point you have to do something differently that propels you out of that, that circle, I call it the circle of fear. Like you had to do something that gets you out of that and you have to disrupt your Thoughts by doing something good and new. And for me, it always starts with reaching out of that circle to help somebody else so that I get out of my own way.

Oh, man, it's so true. This is just reminding me right now, like, I have. I have so many amazing things going on just in my business, but I'm finding that if I don't truly collaborate where I do something, where I have to show up for somebody else, I'm feeling really lonely. And loneliness leads to anxiety, leads to a bit of, like, blueness or depression for pretty much no reason, because I'm meant to be connecting. So, yeah, it's truly like, I have to create things that I need to show up in person for other people or, like, really connected online via Zoom or different things like that. So it's so powerful no matter where you're at, whether you're in a super dark place or whether you're like, huh, my energy's pretty low and I can't figure out what it is, or I'm not excited or I'm not feeling inspired right now. So, so important.

Yeah.

A question that I want to ask you is when you get ideas, because you're somebody who's brought a lot of really beautiful ideas into the world, you have a few amazing project going on, whether it's the book or the Shine project, which people, you guys, you need to look more into that. You can look her up. I'll hook up all the links to this podcast when it comes to ideas, because there's a bazillion ideas, right? And a lot of us, especially a lot of the audience that's listening to this podcast, we can be idea machines. But then all of a sudden, you know, we can think, this idea is amazing. And within the hour or the day or a week, we can start judging our idea and start to think it's a bad idea. How do we bring these ideas that feel divine in the moment to life and have faith in them even when they've lost their excitement? How do you not judge your ideas?

That's such. Oh, that's such a good question. And actually, I'll tell you this quick story because it's just so applicable right now. And then to do this, like I told you before, growing up, I always wanted to write a book. I just knew that I was supposed to. I'm supposed to write, and I'm supposed to touch people in that specific way. But also growing up, you hear that authors don't make money, and then it's too hard to get published. And what am I really? What's gonna be my real job? And years I lost sight of that, even though it just burned so deep inside of me. So two years ago, I was approached by one of the biggest literary agents in the country who picked me up to write a book proposal for those who aren't familiar with writing books, which I wasn't until just recently that you get an agent usually and you write a book proposal and you go give it to different publishers and you kind of shop it around and then you try to find the great fit and then they pay you then to write the book. Well, we had spent over six months writing this proposal and. And I was so excited because my agent doesn't just pick up people he represents, like you, everyone listening, you've listened to or you've read for sure, the authors that he represents. He represents people that I have been my online mentors forever. And so I was just so confident in that and so excited that he was giving me his time and he believed in it. And I had booked six week trip to Europe to go write my book. And the trip started the day after the deadline was due for the publishers to give us their final bids. And I'll tell you that on that final day, right before we left on our six week trip, that I got my last no. Every single publisher, all 30 of them, said no. And I went to this space where I was really mad because I thought that it was. Was this divinely appoint or. Yeah, this divinely appointed thing that I was new. And so therefore it should have been easier, but instead the doors were slammed and I wasn't good enough. And the experts in their field told me that my people didn't want a book from me and all of these things. Right. That just. And so I tossed it out. And I was like, I'm not writing a book for all the reasons we talk ourselves out of doing things. And then three months later, I just knew, I just knew that nobody else's opinion mattered because this is what I was supposed to do. And so I started, I wrote a book, I hired my own editors, and then it actually did get picked up by a different publisher because I had started the process, but had I quit, it wouldn't have. So I do something now called clarity mapping. And it's a process that I really have had to uncover the past couple of years that helps me get from where I am to where I want to be. And I'm excited because I'm creating a course around this actually right now because it's so important. But with that clarity mapping is write your idea in the middle of a piece of paper. Just write it and then just let it live there for a minute. And then around that idea, what I do is I write down every single possible way and place that that can be brought to life, and then I choose one of those places where it can be brought to life. And I go all in on creating a strategic plan of action onto how it's actually going to come to life. Because I think that what happens is when we have all these ideas, the idea sounds great, but then where we talk ourselves out of it and where we feel that fear. For example, with me writing a book without a publisher, I didn't know how to write a book. I didn't know how to get it produced. I didn't know how to get it into bookstores. I didn't know, you know, like, I didn't know these things. So then once I sat down though, and found clarity around it and really figured out, well, if I am going to really self publish, where can I go to get a book printed? Who are the best editors that I can hire to bring the to life? And I think having a plan sets you up for success so that you don't talk yourself out of it because of all of the unknowns. Because really you can figure anything out that you want to if you want it bad enough. And honestly, not getting a book deal that first time has been the greatest blessing in my life because of all the things that I learned along the way that I would not have experienced otherwise.

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that story because I, like, that is typically what the path for my life has looked like. And I think people Forget that like 30, you can feel pretty, you know, crazy after you have people who are supposed to be the experts tell you that you are not, in so many words or for me, quote unquote, you're not special. That's like a really crappy place to.

Be.

What I was told. Yeah, exactly.

Like, I can only imagine some of the things that came back, because they do. They literally almost need to say something so that you just stop coming back. Like, they have to give you a reason. So even if the reason is real or not, you're like, ouch, that hurt. You start to question yourself. So it's so vital for women like yourself to be sharing these stories to say, you know, this is what it's going to look like, this is what it's going to feel like. It's going to make you question your worth. And then you're going to settle in, and then you're going to realize, like only you can define your worth. And that's so incredibly beautiful. And I love that information on ideas. I'm actually going to do that because I have some right now. So thank you for that. So is there anything like. Honestly, I have so many things that I could ask you. I wish this was like a Tim Ferriss podcast where it's three hours, but it's not. Is there anything that's on your heart right now that you want to share or that you wish more people asked you or that you really feel called to share?

For whoever is listening right now, I just really want you to not hear. Just. I don't want you to just hear what I'm saying, but for just a moment, I just want you to really, really feel what it means that you are born to shine. And that's something that is so important to me that you feel, because in that you'll be able to feel your worth and your value and your light and your worthiness and all of the things that you have to offer yourself and the world around you, no matter how dark it might feel. And I just want you to know that no matter how dark it may feel, nothing ever takes away from the fact that you are born to shine. I just want you to know that on a heart level, not just a brain level where you hear it, but where you can feel that, because that is where your true identity is.

Thank you so much for that. And you guys, I know that you can tell that. I just feel like you dropped us right into our heart space because you definitely spoke from that. So just the power of listening to somebody really show share their truth, which means you can share your truth and drop people into that same space, which is so incredibly beautiful. So, Ashley, can you tell us where we can get your book? And I know that you have some things that can go along with that right now, if you get it right now.

Yes. So my book, Born to shine, comes out October 8th. I'm so excited. So you can order that right now, pre order it online, wherever books are sold, if you order Amazon, I know it will get you to that. It will get to you that very day. But what I'm really excited for is that if you pre order Born to shine on October 7, we are doing a live Born to Shine event. And you can go to theshineproject.com to see what that event is like, but it's going to be in person. And everyone who Pre orders, the book gets exclusive live stream action to it. And during that night, we are going to help you uncover your power so that you can just feel like you are ready to go light the world on fire. And I would love more than anything to have you guys be a part of that night. So all you have to do again is go preorder the book. I know Amazon's been dropping it down to $10 every so often, so for 10 bucks, you can come and have this really special night with us online.

Well, I know I'll be there live stream, so that is absolutely happening. So excited. You guys go order the book. I'm telling you, there are certain people who I will absolutely stand behind and vouch for that. You can. You are going to feel a shift. So make sure you go grab that book. It's. The links are all included here. And Ashley, I always end on one last question. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Okay, so you are in passing with a total stranger and it's only like 30 seconds, whether it's on the sidewalk or you're on a. A really quick elevator ride, but they just randomly look over at you and ask, how can I make myself happy? What do you say?

Oh, that's such a good question. How can I make myself happy? Again, it goes back to sister, you got to let go. You got to let go of all the other things that aren't serving you that you might feel obligated to feel or you might feel like you aren't deserving of feeling or that you think other people need you to feel. And you got to let all that go. You got to feel inside what's your very deepest truth. And you have to go all in on that, no matter what the outside circumstances of your life looks like.

So beautiful and so powerful. And you guys, if you loved this episode as much as I did, make sure you share it with your friends. Friends, text it right now because I know so many people need to hear this wisdom. Thank you guys so much for listening. Until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone. Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review. If you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment, tell us what you think. Tell us what you want to hear. More of it would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn. You're happy. Thanks again, guys. Bye.

Bye.