I.

What if
II. Part 1: Excuses to Let Go Of
A. Excuses aren’t attempts to lessen the blame attached to a fault, they seek to
defend or justify faulty behavior.
B. What are the excuses you have been believing?
C. Excuse 1: That’s Not What Other Women Do
1. “In the absence of experience or knowledge, determination makes the
difference between where you are and where you want to be!”
D. Excuse 2: I Am Not a Goal-Oriented Person
1. You have learned to be a million other things
E. Excuse 5: I Can’t Pursue My Dream and Still Be a Good
Mom/Daughter/Employee.
1. I don’t have to have work and family balanced perfectly at all times. The
scale tips in either direction at certain times.
F. Excuse 6: I’m Terrified of Failure
1. I can achieve anything if I’m willing to work for it. Not because I’m
especially gifted, but because I’m especially dedicated to improving along
the way.
2. Sis, don’t be afraid of failure. Be afraid of never achieving anything at all
because you were too afraid of what others might think of you for trying.
G. Excuse 7: It’s Been Done Before
1. Everything has been done before
2. Stop comparing your beginning with my middle!
3. I did not wake up like this. And that person you’re comparing yourself to?
Neither did they.
4. There’s zero pressure to be perfect now, so you can just have fun and get
better. Your potential for improvement is exponential.
5. You are beautiful and worthy of good things, and if you don’t believe that,
nobody will.
6. You have to begin with the way you speak to yourself and the things you
believe you deserve before you attempt a new goal. First learn to love
yourself well and give yourself credit; then reach for more.
7. If you try for your goal, you probably will suck for a minute, but you won’t
stay there for long. You’ll work to get better, and you won’t even need
caffeine pills to do it.
8. My why was powerful; my why made me feel passionate enough to figure
out my how.
9. If you find yourself worried about the idea that someone else has already
done it, you need to flip the script on whether that’s a bad thing. If
someone else has done it, you can research and model behavior and test
out your own theories using their road map as some kind of guidance.
You can combine their how with your why to create something epic.
H. Excuse 8: What Will They Think?
 1. All you can do at any stage and season of life is try your best, and
someone else’s opinion of how you’re doing or what you’re doing is . . .
none of your business.
2. When other people’s expectations start to dictate your actions, you’re lost.
3. Their intent is to tease you and belittle you at best or tear you down and
hurt you at worst. Either way, ain’t nobody got time for that! This person’s
behavior does not have a place in your life.
4. Nobody could make us feel bad without our consent. I’m going to add to
that. Be very careful you’re not consenting to let your mind make you feel
bad when nobody else actually did anything.
5. The irony is, most of the time, nobody is actually thinking about you.
Nobody actually cares what you’re up to, and if they do they’re not judging
you or making fun of you behind your back. It’s not like you hang out with
a bunch of ogres, right?
6. And if they do dislike you, it doesn’t matter. It. Doesn’t. Matter.
7. Assuming that someone thinks the worst of you when you have no real
evidence to back that up isn’t about them—it’s about you.
8. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what they think of you; it matters what you
think of you.
III. Part II: Behaviors to Adopt
A. Your behaviors are the way you act day in and day out. Your behaviors are your
habits. They manifest in the actions you take, the words you say, and the way
you live your life.
B. Behavior 1: Stop Asking Permissions
C. Behavior 2: Choose one dream and go all in
1. 10 years, 10 dreams, 1 goal
a) Where do you want to be in ten years
b) What t’en dreams will help you get there
c) Choose one goal to work on right now
2. The goal needs to be specific and measurable
3. The goal needs to have a strong why for leverage.
D. Behavior 3: Embrace your ambition
E. Behavior 4: Ask for help
1. Your inexperience doesn’t mean you won’t succeed; it just means you
haven’t yet.
2. Stop wasting your time on activities you hate as penance for the time you
want for yourself.
F. Behavior 5: Build Foundations for Success
1. Get healthy
a) Hydration
b) Wake up earlier/give yourself one hour in the day
c) Give up one category of food for 30 days
d) Move your body everyday
 e) Practice gratitude daily
2. Get your personal space in order
a) Fill your spaces with reminders of your vision and future life
3. Build a great community
4. Develop great habits
5. Establish a morning routine
G. Behavior 6: Stop Allowing them to talk you out of it
1. if you’re not in the game with me, then you don’t get to call any plays, and
you darn sure don’t get to offer negative comments about the work I’m
putting in!
2. Ask yourself if this person should be in your life - seriously
3. Prépare before you see them
4. Plan intentionally to make it easier
H. Learn to say no
1. “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.”1 Meaning, if someone asks you to do
something outside of your regularly scheduled programming and your
immediate gut reaction isn’t “Hell, yes!” then you should absolutely say,
“No, thank you.”
2. if everything is important then nothing is.
3. If you allow other people to dictate your schedule to you, they absolutely
will.
a) Respond ASAP
(1) “only touch something once.”
b) Be polite, but honest
(1) A yes to their agenda is a no to yours.
c) Be firm
IV. Part 3: Skills to Acquire
A. Even if these aren’t things you currently possess in your arsenal, you’re still
entirely capable of making them yours.
B. Skill 1: Planning
1. you cannot get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you are.
2. The finish line
3. The starting point
a) What assets, resources, and habits do you currently have that are
going to help you with your journey? How can you expand on
them and use them for exponential growth?
b) What habits do you have that might derail you or push you off
course? How can you be intentional in planning around those in
advance so they don’t sneak up on you?
c) What good habits could you develop to replace those negative
ones?
4. THE GUIDEPOSTS + MILE MARKERS
 a) find at least twenty ideas for how I’m going to get there. I put down
anything I can think of, and since it’s a brainstorm, I don’t debate
whether the idea is good. I just write it down.
b) what are the three major things that, if you actually achieved them,
they would—without question—get you to your goal?
c) Make possibilities lists to get to each goal marker
d) if you’re not getting effective answers, it’s because you’re not
asking effective questions.
e) Go all in.
f) Who you are is defined by the next decision you make, not the last
one.
C. Skill 2: Confidence
1. How you look
2. How you act
a) You can make yourself feel anything you set your mind to as long
as you back it up with action.
b) Fake it till you make it
c) “I acted confident in what I could do as an event planner, and then
I backed it up with research and hard work to arm myself with the
skills necessary to pull it off.”
3. Who you hang out with
a) You want to be more confident? Hang out with people who are.
D. Skill 3: Persistence
1. It’s going to be a journey and you’re going to have to fight to get where
you want to go, but it’s also going to be worth it.
2. The reason that we’re willing to stay on the road, to keep pushing to get to
the next level, is that we’re not like everyone else.
3. It’s not easy to achieve a goal. It’s tough—but, girl, so are you!
E. Skill 4: Effectiveness
1. Replace your To-Do lists with a Results List
a) Maximum five bullet points per day
2. Reevaluate Efficiency
a) What’s the one thing you could do right now, today, that would
make everything else unnecessary?
b) What’s the one thing I could do right now, today, that would help
me achieve all of this faster, easier, more efficiently?
c) Is there a better way to do this?
3. Create your own productive environment
a) Zone marker
4. Know what distracts you and avoid that thing
5. Course correct
a) Check in every sunday to plan your week, focus on your outcome
and ask yourself if you are truly headed toward your mile marker.
 b) If so, great! If not, what can I do this week to ensure that I get the
results I’m looking for?
6. Skill 5: Positivity
a) you can choose your attitude, your focus, and your intentions for
any situation, no matter what it is.
b) You can drink the water and wake up early and have a plan and
work on it every day, but if you don’t have the right attitude, you’re
dead in the water.
c) I am one of the happiest gals you know because I choose it every
single day. I choose to practice gratitude; I choose to surround
myself with things and people who support positivity.
d) I regulate my thoughts because thoughts control feelings.
e) Are you actively monitoring that? Are you working to control the
way you think about yourself and speak to yourself? Because you
are not stupid, so stop telling yourself that you are. You are not
ugly, so stop thinking it—even occasionally—when you look in the
mirror. You are not a bitch, even if you’ve done bitchy things in the
past. You are not ignorant or mean or unlovable or unworthy or
falling short or any of the other stupid crap running through your
mind.
f) So every time you find yourself thinking something negative,
remember DMX. Stop yourself, drop the hateful litany, shut ’em
down, then replace them with good stuff.
g) Sometimes you’re going to sprint at them headlong and
sometimes you’re going to take the smallest inch forward, but
you’ve got to keep yourself in the game.
h) You cannot control the circumstances of your life; you can only
control your reaction to them.
7. Skill 6: Lead-Her-Ship
a) I need you to embrace the idea that you are a leader. In fact, we
all need you to do that.
b) by embracing your calling and refusing to hide your glow, you
wouldn’t just make your world brighter. You’d light the way for the
women who would come along behind you.
V. Believe in your dang self!
A. You’re going to be there every single day, so you better believe your life is worth
fighting for!
B. It means that you’re going to have to do a lot of things that make you
uncomfortable.
C. The easiest way, the fastest way, to get where you want to go is to not quit on
yourself.
D. Doubt will kill more dreams than failure ever will. But belief in yourself will give
you the strength to get back up again and again.
E. You’ve got to take it one single day at a time. If an entire day feels too
overwhelming, I’m going to ask you to take it an hour at a time and to keep
reminding yourself: This is who I am.
F. Remember how we visualized the very best version of yourself, your dream
version of who you are? This is who you are on the inside.
G. Like Lady Gaga says, baby, you were born this way. It’s not your job to make
yourself fit into anyone else’s ideal. It’s your job to start believing in who you are
and what you’re capable of. It’s time to be yourself, unapologetically, and to show
the world what happens when a woman challenges herself for greatness. It’s time
to stop apologizing for who you are. It’s time to become who you were made to
be.