Like Serena Williams says "It's not a comeback if you didn't go anywhere..."

Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women

Hello, and welcome to Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women. This is your host Angie Leigh Monroe. And as I like to remind you, I am your girlfriend. So, we are going to dish a little bit today, but before we get started, we want to be able to talk with you in real life in our Facebook group, and even other social media streams. Just reach out, touch base with us. I know we've got a lot of people out there that are authors and speakers that listen to our show. Maybe you're wondering how to be a guest on the show. Maybe you're wanting to submit a blog or magazine article to our beautiful new magazine, then go on to our DIVASImpact.com and put in a request there. You can submit it all online there. And then also, don't forget about our conference in October, it's going to be amazing. It's DIVASImpact.com/unmasked is where you can find out information about it.
So today, we're going to talk about staging a comeback, right? So, if you're staging a comeback, I think I heard Serena Williams say you got to go somewhere first before you can have a comeback, right? Well, Serena Williams didn't go anywhere. She just had a baby, she stayed in shape the whole time she was pregnant, stayed in shape after her pregnancy, all of that stuff, and came back and just kind of cleaned up the court with people in truth or in a true Serena fashion but how many of us feel like we have things come out of nowhere in just BLINDSIGHT us, right. Like a railroad train going down the track and out of nowhere gets wiped out by mudslide. How many of you can say that you've actually had a situation in your life where that felt like it happened? Well, I know I've talked before about 2013. But let me talk to you about 2014. 2014 I had already booked speaking engagements I had from June of 2014 on. I was setting my speaking calendar; I was making plans I was excited. My youngest one would be graduating high school. And after 20 something years of raising children, I was going to be able to do what I wanted to do, and not have to worry about other people's schedules and, and just only be yourself possible to my husband and I for my schedule. And I know there's a couple of moms out there that have given up on your dreams, and I want to challenge you today to not give up on your dreams. One of the biggest things you can do for your children is pursue your dreams with a passion, because it helps them see that they can pursue their own dreams, right. So, one of the things that I hear from women all the time is I don't have the energy to dream. Well now you don't have the energy to dream you're too busy fanning the flame of your husband's dreams, the fan of the flame of your children's dreams, and taking care of me all the snotty noses and, and carpooling and all the stuff that goes in between all of that, right. But here's the deal. We've talked about it before, we're going to talk about it again, in the future, I'm sure you've got to take care of yourself first. It's not selfish to take care of yourself first. So, 2013 was off to a good start. I had all these things booked and planned. And in the summer of 2013. For the fall, for the following summer in 2014. I was super stoked. I was writing talks right and left, I've got file drawers of talks that have never even been heard people, file drawers of them. Because I was still honing my craft, even when I didn't have a platform to speak it from. Can I get an amen on that? If I really wanted to be a speaker, and I did not have the bandwidth to go out and do it at the time, I would still write the talk that I was going to give what was important what was impression upon me at the time. And you know what, now all I have to do is go back through those drawers and clean up those talks today for where we are today. There's some lessons I've learned since I wrote that talk that now makes that talk even better. say there's something that you're wanting to do today and you're going there's no way I can do it, but there's something you can do towards it. So how do you stage a comeback; you start doing today what you can so that your comeback can be epic.
So, like I said 2013 July, end of July rolled around and I woke up to the most god awful wailing sound I had ever heard. I ran downstairs and it was my youngest daughter. She had had a few classmates that

had been killed overnight. in a car accident. These are classmates when I say their classmates, they were more than classmates. My daughter was a trainer with their high school football team, wrestling to basketball team, you name it baseball team. She was the trainer for the high school. And a lot of these guys she had grown up from elementary on with, we had had them in our home. We had car pulled them. They were special young men. And in an instant, we lost three of them in one car accident out in New Mexico. And it didn't just impact my daughter. It impacted the whole community that was around us. And it was the next day that I went and I had a conversation with my friend Carrie. And we had determined that it was time for me to step away from volunteering in this department I was volunteering at the church is just that season was ending, right? I mean, we all have seasons in our life. And it was time for this one to end. And about a week later, my oldest daughter called home from college and told us she was pregnant and about a month later, we found out it was twins, the house we had bought, owner financed, something had gone awry with the people that we bought it owner financed with and we were going to be homeless at the end of October, which happened to be the same day that my son was leaving to join the army and my fake son Ricky was leaving two weeks after him.
Let me just tell you, going from a high in July of this is what my future looks like to being at the end of October going. Where am I going? What am I doing? What does this look like? It was a total mudslide running the train off the tracks moment, right. And it was during that time that I really felt that I just need to push pause. I didn't know what the future held. But I also know that I couldn't see it well enough to make future plans. I needed to be in the moment. And that's what I'm talking about with some of you right now. Some of you right now just need to be in the moment with your family, maybe you've got little ones maybe you've got ones in junior high, in high school. And, and for me, I don't know about you. But for me, my children needed me more at home during their junior high and high school years than they ever did during their elementary and preschool years. They needed someone to be accountable to, they need to know that mom was going to be there and checking the homework and making sure they were in bed at night. And, going where they said they were going to be going and not just wandering willy nilly all over the town, right? So that that puts a damper on things when you have to be a little more hands on, and you're thinking the teenage years or when I'm going to be set free, and it's really not that way, a lot of the times you need to progress and you need to be more involved. As hard as that season was that when lasted until December of 2015 or December of 2014. So basically, July of 2013 to December of 2014 was all focused-on family. I still wrote I still had hopes I still had dreams, I just didn't have a deadline or a date to those hopes and dreams coming real. So that's my message to you today. Your comeback can still be a comeback. If you just take a step towards it, no matter what it is just a baby step towards it each and every day.
Now, a couple of years ago, I had a friend of mine who was going through a bit of this and you'll read about her story a little bit in our magazine that's coming out this month. And as she was talking, you know, several of us even in those rough times where we were those words for the year, what is our word of the year going to be for this year, you know, and you know, depending on which group of friends I was with, there were some that were all about, I chose this word and then there are some that were like God gave me this word well for. For me, I was really going okay, what is the theme for this year going to be? I really want to call word the sheer like tenacity or you know, flex or you know something about how strong and powerful I am and all that stuff. Yeah, I got the word discipline that year. Who likes the word discipline? Come on, right. But you know what it was in that year of building that discipline that led to putting things into place for where we are today. One of the other things that came about was I was truthful and honest on social media that day, said, I asked for word like tenacity and I got the word discipline. And a friend of mine said, Well, I never saw you as someone who needed to be reminded that you are tenacious. See, I was asking for something already had so wouldn't have to do the work to be disciplined out, right? What does all this have to do with having a comeback?
Well, a few years ago when my friends start going through her, her challenges, you know, she was a CEO, I think it was the CEO, CEO, CFO, she was a C level executive with a trucking firm, right, her dad ran a trucking firm when she was growing up. And she was running this trucking firm. And she handled all the finances, she handled all the management of the trackers, the equipment that was going in and out and they hauled freight to and from the oil fields. So, there was a it was a pretty big deal and large volumes of money flowing in and out. And she made over six figures a year, she had a husband that worked out in the oil fields, and he was a welder. So, he made a pretty good amount of money as well, that had a nice piece of property, over 10 acres. With a house and a barn that had an apartment that she could lease out to people or let people stay in if they needed to. I mean, it was just a good place for them to be, and she has a story. And boy is her story a good one, right. And so, as she has her story, and she's walking out her story, she feels called to serve as the leader of a pregnancy Crisis Center. But let me just tell you, the pay for running a trucking company may be over six figures, the pay for running a crisis pregnancy center is not, like it is a third of the cost of what it costs what she gets paid for the other one, right, But that didn't matter to her. Because she knew in her heart of hearts, where she was being called to. She stepped out in faith. She put in her notice. She accepted the role as the leader of the CEO of this organization. And wow, let me just tell you, the turnaround she did with that organization in no time flat was amazing. I mean, the buy in from the community the things that they were able to do and continue to do.
Excuse me, I had to get a drink there.
She is just an amazing person. She also was feeling she is walking in her purpose. And about three to six months after she took over that role. Her husband decided to leave her safety net of income decided to shrivel up and go away. She was a little disheveled that she was making things go. She was still ever present in her girl's life, she was still learning the things she needed to learn, she was still stepping towards things she needs step towards, and she was still being faithful to who she was the circumstance of what her husband did, his choice of leaving her did not change who she was and who she was going to be. She didn't immediately quit working at the lower pay and go back to the other one. She trusted that she was where she was supposed to be, doing what she was supposed to be doing.
My mentor and friend John Maxwell reminded me a few years ago, she was in the middle of this, that when we're in the thick of the thick of the nasty of what we call the gross parts of life is when we are prime for the making for a miracle to happen in our life and a big one at that, right? Because I mean, sometimes you can't go in a lower, Something's got to give for you to move up. I get tickled when I think of so many people that are striving and plucking away trying to make things happen. And I'll be quite honest with you, as I'm recording this today. I'm kind of in the middle of this myself. I'm got some amazing things that have been happening. But there's just this one part we're not quite broken through yet on. And I'm trying to decide is it time to shift directions? Or do I keep pressing forward? And I'm not sure what's on the other side of it. But have you ever seen the cartoon of the guy with the little pickaxe and he's in the little tunnel and he's chipping away, chipping away and chipping away. And he finally decides he's going to give up and walk away, and literally it shows just a few inches beyond where he stopped is a whole tunnel of diamonds. So how do you know when to stop scraping by to get where you're wanting to be? Well, it goes back to what are you purposed for? What is the call on your life. If the path you're on is what your purpose for and the call for your life and lines up with your mission, then you will absolutely keep moving forward. I remember story Shalee Johnson said a few years ago, she's read her book “Push”, and if you've not ever read her book, it's a great book. But she talks about; she was on the line her and her husband and kids and gone snow skiing and she really didn't like the snow ski clothes she could find she thought they could do better. And so, she was going to design this whole new line of ski gear, right. And so, as she started looking at it and thinking about going and doing the skier, she started looking at how much this time this was going to take out of her life, how much energy it was going to take out of her life, and how did it line up with the overall mission for her life. And when she realized that it really didn't jive with anything else in her life, she realized that even though she could do it, and she had the money and she had the resources, she could give the time to it and stuff like that. It really wasn't something moving her closer to her overall mission. So, I want to challenge you today, start writing down some words, what is the mission for you?
My name is Angie Leigh Monroe, My mission is to empower and equip a global community of women change agents to make a positive impact on the world we live in.
Period, boom.
Everything I do has to be measured up against that, if I am doing things that is not empowering and equipping women, and it's not going to leave a positive impact. I don't do it. It's that simple. So, you position yourself to make this big comeback, by knowing where you're going and why you're doing it. Because you're going to measure everything else against that. I have walked through a lot of things with a lot of people and been through some rough things myself, as well as watching others go through their rough things. And one of the things I've learned, is comebacks are normally bigger and better than the original. So when I stepped off the stage in high school and stopped speaking and stopped doing what I was doing, it helped to know that eventually, one day, I would want to be back there even though I didn't know and believe a lot of the times that that was possible. But once I started writing, once I started putting things into action serving around people that were speakers working around the stage doing the things that I was doing that led up to it, it made perfect sense that when I sat down a few months ago, with a few key people that could help move me exponentially fast; forward faster and at a at a higher degree of thinking that I ever thought possible that we would be able to accomplish all the things we've accomplished in the last few months. I'm not negating all the work that happened before that, but the breakthrough happened in May. The breakthrough came when I was at the end of my rope. Remember that old sign poster from the 80s or 90s that had the cat with the hanging off of a piece of rope and it had a knot in it or whatever it said hang tight. You know, literally March, April, May of this year, I was just hanging tight, trying to figure out where we're going, what we're doing, what's this looks like. We didn't have the magazine back up and running. We didn't have the blogs back up and running. We didn't even have a podcast had been talked about for a year, but we didn't have the podcast, and we certainly didn't have a conference planned. And now we've got all of those things done. We have a learning center that we are launching later on this year. Live to the public in January, you only get access to it in October if you come to the conference. But in January, it'll go live to the public. And let me just tell you, all of that is because of the steps I put in place when I thought no one could see them. Let's see there were silent cries of my heart. There were things that I did, disciplining myself every day to write whether I ever thought it would be published or spoken or whatever. All of those little disciplines are leading to what you're seeing today. So, you may be in a place that it may be a while before. You have that big splash moment. But let me just tell you something. There are a lot of movie stars out there that are seen as overnight wonders who were anything but their overnight wonders because all of a sudden, you're hearing about them all the time. But you know, Bradley Cooper was on Law and Order SVU several years before he ever won an Oscar. Before he ever played Chris Kyle, you've got so many people that played so many roles and so many commercials for years and years and years before they ever struck it big. The lead dad off of This Is Us. He tells you flat out I'm not an overnight success. I've been in the business for 20 years, I'm a 20-year success. You know, it's what are you doing today to poise yourself for a comeback. Some of you may just needing a breakthrough. You don't need to come back. You're needing a breakthrough. You've not even been there yet. You've just are hoping to get there one day. So, whatever it is for you, whether it's launching a business, starting a nonprofit, writing a book, whatever it is, you have that power within you to move yourself forward.
Now I told you a little bit about my friend Connie and what we're talking about today. But Connie Wyatt Coleman is our EVERYDAY DIVA this week. She is a woman of many talents. powerful beyond measure. Like I said she's currently serves as the CEO of wise choices pregnancy Resource Center in Decatur, Texas, but let me tell you about my little girlfriend, Connie here. All right. Connie recently just got remarried. So, she is a woman who was adopted at birth. So, she has the pleasure of knowing our adoptive mom as well as her biological mom. She has walked through some of the biggest challenges of her life. Not always good ones, but not always bad ones either, and one of my favorite stories about her working at the trucking company was one of the guys came in one day and didn't have the truck parked just right, and apparently he didn't know Connie's background, right? So, she told him, you need to go straighten your truck up. He goes if you want it straight and you go and straighten it. So, she did. She got into that truck, pulling that trailer, drove it around, came back, parked it back, but put it nice and straight, and then the keys and said, and it better be parked like that every time. She wasn't showing off. She wasn't doing all that stuff. She was letting him know, something he didn't already know. Yeah, you may be able to test her but she's going to test you right back. She is a woman that she says she's a self-proclaimed type a control freak. I don't know that it's all self-proclaimed. But anyway, she is also a coffee addict. Yes, she's a coffee addict. She loves her coffee. And but those aren't the things that make her great. What makes her great is when her life was going down the railroad tracks and everything look like it was going nice and smooth in that mudslide hit. She never gave up hope. She never gave up faith, and she did not make any knee jerk reactions. She stayed steady the course, and she has come out smelling beautifully because of it, because so many people have watched her walk through that adversity and see that it can be done with grace, it can be done with dignity, and it can be done with excellence. So that is why she is our EVERYDAY DIVA today. And so, if you want to reach out to her, you can find her on our DIVAS Impact page, “DIVAS making an Impact” Facebook page. She is amazing. And she will be speaking at our conference in October so you'll get to meet her there. So, until next time, when we talk about bigger and more challenging things. This is Angie Leigh Monroe, your host of Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women and I look forward to seeing you then. Bye now.