Ep #95: Can You Really Do Anything?

Want to have it all? Well, the best day to get started is TODAY. Welcome to Love Your Living, a podcast for ambitious women who want to take their life and business to a WHOLE new level of success. I’m Brooke Keeling, multiple six-figure business owner, passionate entrepreneur and your host.
Welcome to another episode of the Love Your Living podcast…
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Love Your Living podcast. I am your host, Brooke Keeling, excited to be here with all of you. So, spring is on its way. The sun feels so good shining. As most of you know, I am in the Midwest and, lucky for me this year, I’ve been a little bit more held up than usual because I had a baby.
And it was kind of a perfect time to have a baby because I got to hibernate a bit. But I’m so excited for the sunshine and spring and fall are pretty much my favorite seasons. Spring is just such a fresh new start for all of us. So, I hope you’re feeling that vibe too, wherever you’re at in the world and the country. It’s just a refreshing time to do a reset and think about life and feel that energy and love and sun on our skin.
I’m also feeling so much love and gratitude for everything in my world, even the hard stuff, and being a momma of two, finding my way there and puppies and projects and all of the things. I’ve had such a perspective of gratitude, stepping back into my world after having my baby. And I don’t know what shifted there, but I’m doing everything that I possibly can to stay there.
What’s so interesting is one of my team members came back from a vacation recently to the beach, and she said, “When I was there, I just didn’t give a shit about anything. I just felt like all of the little things that I worry about or all of the little things that I carry on my back day to day, I just didn’t care while I was there.”
And I thought to myself, that’s super-powerful because, one, that’s one of the things that I say all the time about us spending time out of our business, allowing ourselves to check out, even when it’s really hard to get away or we feel like I’m going to lose business because I’m not working in my business.
It is so incredibly powerful, especially as you get busier and busier, or maybe you’re just starting something out, or whatever it is, to be able to give yourself the mental space to just check out, to fill up on life and energy and give yourself that space to come back and be able to see clearer. You have a totally different lens that you’re looking through on life when you’re able to step in and out.
So, I told her. I’m like, you need to remember that right now and figure out what it is that you need to do, going into a really busy crazy time in our business, you need to set yourself up for success and figure out how you can stay in this zone a little bit more because you’ve been coming back, she thought, I don’t want to worry about these little things. I don’t want these little things to consume me and it’s very freeing and I want to feel more free.
And this is exactly how I felt coming back from my maternity leave; just being able to have more clarity on what it is that I truly want, what it is that I don’t want, what matters, what doesn’t matter. Having this calm approach to even some of the hardest things and being able to make decisions in that state versus being high anxiety or really overwhelmed or stressed out.
And that’s so incredibly important. I mean, sleep deprivation, one, we all need so much sleep, which I’m not getting right now. So, I know, on a higher level, like how do I stay I this place? Because this is such a powerful place in terms of how you build your business.
So, if you guys are feeling like right now you’re feeling so overwhelmed or you don’t have the answers to things or you’re really frustrated, I want you to think about taking time out of your business. Like, truly, take time out of your business to just go and be happy, to find something that gets you in a playful state, that doesn’t get you into goal-setting, goal-planning and visioning.
That just gets you out of your mind completely and into your heart. It allows you to laugh and have fun. You need to do this for yourself and you need to do it for your business too because doing that allows you, again, to come in with a totally different perspective.
This is the hardest thing to do when shit is hitting the fan or things are really, really, really busy. And it’s what we need the most. It’s the same thing with working out. When we say we don’t have the time to work out, my life is just so crazy, how could I possibly get on my Peloton boke? How could I possibly go for a run? How could I possibly do a yoga class right now? That is when we need it the most.
It’s when we’re the most balanced and we have the time within our life or that balance within our lives that we are taking the time to do those things and we feel so good. And then, all of a sudden, us feeling so good drums up all of this business and all of this good stuff in our life, and then all of those good habits start to fall by the wayside because we’re focused on only this one thing and the success. But a lot of that success came from us taking really incredible care of ourselves, nourishing our bodies, working out, having time out so that we can bring more love and light and energy and more of what we do want into our life.
So, really be mindful of that. And maybe it’s time for a little bit of a spring reset to just get yourself feeling good again and really seeing some of the stuff that maybe you no longer need. Or maybe you need to take a weekend away or book yourself a trip so that you can gain some of that clarity.
There is a question that has stuck with me over the past few weeks. One of my coaching clients asked me this at the end of my call a couple of weeks ago. And it got me thinking about it, and also my answer that came so quickly to it.
And her question was, “Do you really feel like people can truly be whatever it is that they want to be?” And her example was, say I want to be a famous singer, I want to make it big, I want to become a famous singer. And this is what I want right now, I want your help doing it and I don’t have the greatest voice. Do you really think that I could become a famous singer?
Now, that’s just an example. But my response to that question was yeah, yeah, I do. I truly believe that I could be anything that I want to be. And I want you to believe that you can be anything that you want to be too.
And I thought about that a little bit more and I had watched the Taylor Swift documentary recently. And the story behind that was her acknowledging that she wouldn’t be the star that she is – every level of success, there becomes more pressure to continue to be successful. So, you hit a certain level and it’s like, oh, she made it.
But now, her next album has to be even better than the last album, and then the next album has to be even better than the last album. And that’s daunting. The Ralph Lauren documentary, same exact thing. Each year, there was more demanding pressure to be even better than you were last year. And this is a man that’s in his 70s still designing.
And he has said most people will come up to him and say, it must be so easy now, you just throw a collection out each year. And he said, every year gets harder. I have more pressure. I put more pressure on myself and I get more stressed out every year because I have to somehow do better than I did last year. I have to reinvent something. I have to come up with something new. I have to stay on trend, or they tweet that I died, that my career’s over, that this, that that, you know.
So, there’s this pressure of continuing to be excellent and having excellence, being in this excellent state. But going back to this question, can you be anything that you truly want to be – and I do truly believe this, and now I have kids, I want my kids to know that they could do, be, have whatever it is that they want. But it’s also going to come with hard work.
It’s going to come with commitment too. It’s not just going to be like, I want to be a star, I want to be a celebrity, I want to have a sold out concert, I want to be the next Beyoncé and not do the work that’s he did to get to where she’s going.
And this is such an eye-opener to this world that we have of instant success and wanting everything now, everything at our finger tips, wanting this big life, wanting to achieve these big goals but not being committed to actually doing the work that’s going to get us there.
Now, one of the other – Kobe Bryant, he’s been in the media a lot and there’s still so much that’s coming up around him and the loss of him and his daughter and how great he was. And whenever I see stories like this, I do become obsessed with understanding what made someone successful. I love learning what made someone successful. And almost always, it’s such a longer road than what we thought.
I just read Jessica Simpson’s book a couple weeks ago and same thing with her. You don’t even realize the adversity she’s had to overcome in order to become the success that she was. She was up against people where constantly she was being told no. she was being told, you’re not good enough. She was getting beat out like every single day by Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. That was her time frame. Beyoncé, they all came up at the same time and were competing against the same labels signing them and the same opportunities.
And she wasn’t the best at all of the things. She wasn’t Britney Spears, buts he still kept going and she still, in the face of no, she kept getting out there, kept trying, kept working towards what her goals are, and now look at her. She’s a multi-billionaire with this brand, not with singing, but all of the little life lessons.
As I always say, it’s a journey. You never really understand what your goals are and where you might end up. Her life, she just kind of followed and allowed all of the adversities to grow into the most beautiful thing. And you hear that with almost everyone’s story. But can you truly be who you want to be?
I started reading a book from one of Kobe Bryant’s coaches. He’s coached some of the greatest greats; Dwyane Wade, he was Michael Jordan’s coach. Michael Jordan was his first celebrity basketball coach. He’d coached a lot of big basketball stars.
And one of the questions that he poses in this – this book is called Relentless. So, I think that I’m pretty tough love, hardcore. This book is relentless. This coach is relentless. This is a book that I have a lot of life coaches in my world, they would hate. They would absolutely hate this book because it’s about, hey you need to show up and do the fucking work.
And it’s the tough love. It’s doing the things that you don’t want to do the most. It’s that pressure of becoming the greatest great and then staying there or going even higher. It’s what creates greatness. It’s these athletes that don’t stop at a certain level, they just continue to want more.
And the whole reason, the intro to this book was all about if you are this person where no one really understands the success that you crave or people are judgmental about you wanting certain things, or your ego. You know, so many people didn’t like Kobe Bryant because of his ego.
Do you think that he actually cared about what other people thought about him? No. He was working towards excellence and that didn’t really matter at that time of all of the stuff that comes along with it. And so, this coach wrote this book identifying three different levels of greatness.
One is the cooler, the second is the closer, and then the third is the cleaner. If you’re a cooler, you’re a team player. You’re pretty damn great. You’re there, you’re showing up, you’re awesome. You’re rooting on your team. You’re always there for everybody, you have high energy.
The closer, like anything else, you’re a closer. You’re great, you’re not unstoppable. So, closers, amazing. They can get to a certain level and maybe kind of hang there. The cleaners, they are relentless. They are unstoppable. They are going beyond and proving the unknown. They are continuously pushing themselves to become even better than what they were.
They are the ones that are there at 3AM doing free throw shots. They are the ones that are training outside of training. They are the ones that are going and working on their game when they have a torn ACL, just to finish up the team. They’re the ones that the teams rely on that are unshakable. Their determination is unshakable. The relentlessness is unstoppable.
They are cleaners. Not many people actually go to that level that are cleaners. Michael Jordan was one of them. Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, of course, they’re all cleaners when they’re playing the game.
So, this man coached a lot of these pro athletes. He coaches other people. And he doesn’t just write the book based on if you’re an athlete or not. He said there’s coolers, there’s closers, and there’s cleaners in any area of life, whether you’re an athlete or in business, or you’re in school, you’re a student, wherever it is, you can see them. And his job is to bring them out and train them at a whole other level of greatness for them.
And one of the key points that he says is, which brought me back to this question is, “I’ve worked with some of the greatest athletes of all time. And it is not the ones that are born with a gift, that are born with height, that are born with a certain profile or talent. It doesn’t come down to that. It comes down to their mindset and their willingness to do the work.”
And one of the quotes that I really, really loved about him is he said, when people first come to me – and I’m telling you, if you want a swift kick in the ass, if you need someone to just be like, hey motherfucker, let’s get to work, you should read this book because it’s hardcore. This coach is hardcore.
He will say – Michael Jordan, I think, when he retired, he said, “If I ever see you in my neighborhood again, I’m going to shoot you.” Because he is such a hard trainer. He would train his people – he would say, if you pass out in the middle of a workout, I’m going to go over and make sure that you’re still breathing and you’re alive, but then I’m just going to walk away. Let you throw up on the court, let you clean it up, and when you’re ready to start training again, come and get me.
It isn’t like, oh we’re done for the day or I pushed you too hard. It’s like, when you’re ready, let’s continue on. He is relentless. This is how he coaches his people.
And the reason why he coaches them so hard is he’s coaching them to get into this zone, into this zone that nothing is going to affect them, no circumstance, no thought in their mind is going to shake them when they get on the court to play the game. So, he wants to get them to their breaking point where he knows they just go into this alter-ego and they just perform. Thy are unstoppable, and that’s how he trains them.
But he doesn’t start with the body. He starts with the mind. He said, “When people come to me, I don’t start with their physical condition. It’s their mind. You have to first train your mind and then your mind will train your body.” But you can’t start with the body first. You have to start with the mind first. The mind is where it all starts.
And we’ve talked about this so many times, where it’s like, mindset, mindset is everything, mindset is everything, get yourself in a good state, get yourself in a good mindset. This is the man that has coached the top athletes.
Tony Robbins who has coached Serena Williams, some of the greatest people, when they’re breaking down on the court, it’s not their bodies that are breaking down in these moments. It’s their mind that is breaking down. And so understanding that we have to learn how to train our mind. We have to learn to train to create the outcomes that we want in our life.
And that training comes from adversity. It comes from the toughness. It comes from those moments where you are training for game day. And that’s what he does with his people. He’s training them and training them and training them so that when they go out, they know their mind just, like, slips right into this, what he calls the zone.
And so, going back to this question again and thinking again, like, okay, can you truly be anything that you want to be? If you want to become a star basketball player, if you want to become a professional singer, if you want to become the best hip-hop dancer. Like me, I decided I’m going to take hip-hop classes this year.
It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do and learn and I want to have fun. I know that if there was something that I wanted to be, if I wanted to become Beyoncé’s backup dancer, I know that I could do it. Do I want to? Am I willing to put in that time and that effort and that commitment? No. I’m not. And that’s the biggest difference.
It’s another concept that comes out of this book that is really, really fascinating. So, it’s having clarity as to where you’re at, understanding what your goals are, and then deciding and being open and honest with yourself; are you willing to commit to what’s necessary in order to achieve those goals? So, I just answered that question for myself. I can phrase it in two different ways and give you guys examples so you can apply it to your own world.
Say I want to become Beyoncé’s – I do want to learn hip-hop. I’m going to find hip-hop classes where I can go just to have fun because I want it for fun. I want it for play. I want it to move my body. I want to learn something new and just, like, bring the kid out in me. That’s why I want to do that. That’s the outcome that I want for it.
Now, say I want to become Beyoncé’s backup dancer that’s a really big freaking goal, and I’m 35, and in my current life, I’d probably have to stop everything that I’m doing. Do I believe that I could do it if I really wanted to? Yes. What would I do?
Okay, this is where I’m at today, a mom of two, 35 years old, white girl in the Midwest, what do I have to do to become Beyoncé’s backup dancer? I’m going to have to train absolutely crazy. I’m going to have to go and figure out who does Beyoncé train with, where does she train, what type of music is she putting out, what is she looking for? Who do I need to hire?
And literally, every single day of my life is going to be spent working and training with the best dancers that I possibly could that are going to put me in position to have an opportunity to become a backup dancer. And whether that happens a year from now, which it likely will not, this is me having to commit to this goal and say, you know what, this could take 10 years but I’m committed to making it happen. I guarantee you that I could do that if I really, really truly wanted to do that.
But I don’t want to. I don’t want to give up my life. I want to be a little bit more realistic right now. It’s just not something that I want. I don’t want to train that long in a dance studio. It’s just me being real.
Now, in my real life, looking at what my goals are, I absolutely can be clear on where I want my life to go. I understand what my vision is in my life. I understand where I want my businesses to be. I have some bigger goals that I want to achieve.
I thought, over the last year, maybe I want to write a book. And I’m like, yeah, maybe I want to, maybe I want to eventually. It’s not a goal that I have within a year or two years, but I know eventually I do want to write a book.
And I’m very confident that I will have a book out in the world over my lifetime. It might not be a year from now, it’s not an immediate goal. It may not even be in five years. But I know that down the road in my world I will have a published book.
What am I going to do to get there? Well, I am going to do some research on what it takes to get published. I’m going to talk with a lot of my peer group, my own network that have written books and understand, like, where did you start from? I’m going to hie a writing coach. I’m going to dedicate time and clearly understand how much time I need to dedicate; how much time is it going to take me to write a book?
I already know some of this stuff. And it’s just by me saying someday I’m going to write a book and my mind being open to it, and then I can kind of pick these nuggets out of my life as they come up and kind of understand what that process looks like. But I know that that will happen.
With all of our goals, we just have to understand, like, what it’s going to take to get there. So, anything that I have achieved in my life, a lot of times, I set goals and they don’t happen within a timespan that I set.
So, I go after really big goals, and maybe they don’t happen within that year that I wanted them to. But they sure as shit happened. If they continue to be a goal on my radar, they absolutely happen and they are a reality in my world. It may take me a little bit longer to get there. It may not have been the path that I thought, but I know, like I know, like I know that it’s going to happen.
And that’s something that I had to be more real with myself too, is not killing myself and not saying to myself, well this isn’t ever going to happen. It’s just not yet. Or I’m not ready yet. Or these are some of the things that need to happen first.
Because even with big goals too, we don’t even comprehend, we don’t even understand what needs to happen first. We don’t even understand who we need to become. We don’t understand what lessons we need or financial resources or the type of leader that we need to be in order to make certain things happen.
And so, a lot of times, it’s just a longer journey to get there. And then there’s some goals too that I’ve set where I’ve thought, well my life has changed. This isn’t as important to me or this isn’t really my goal anymore.
I went through this with my real estate business when I launched Love Your Living, actually. I thought, you know what, I don’t even know if I want to be in real estate anymore. And my goal previous to that was independence. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to create this whole vision that I had.
And then I had my daughter and I thought, I don’t even know if I want to be in the business anymore. I surely don’t want to go independent. I’m just going to kind of stay where I’m at right now and my focus is all on Love Your Living. And at that time, Love Your Living was going to be a design brand.
I wanted to work more on the design aspect of creating home and bringing home and business together. But it had much more of a design element to it as well. And I also was working on sourcing product, sourcing actual product.
And as I started to discover that and understand what does it take to wholesale, what does it take to collaborate with different brands, what would it take for shipping, for sourcing products that I create, what type of manufacturing contracts do I need to have, what type of insurances do I need to have, all of those things that I looked into, I realized on that way, I was like, I don’t want to have product. I don’t want a physical location for Love Your Living. And it’s morphed into something completely different, totally different already.
And it’s such a young brand, but it’s a passion project for me. This brand has taught me more about myself than I could have ever imagined. It’s opened the doors. It’s shown me the way by just being curious and allowing myself to move through all of it, which is one of the things that I’m most grateful about and proud about it as well.
And then, through working through that as well, I found my love back for real estate. Not only did I find my love back for real estate. I also created a whole other branch of investing. And now I want to create another brand and another pillar of investing within it.
And so, the fascinating part of that is you set out to do one thing and then life kind of takes you through this whole process. And it’s beautiful when we allow it to be beautiful. And sometimes in the moment, it’s like, well what the fuck is going on? Nothing’s working. But it’s working exactly the way that it’s supposed to and it’s kind of guiding you when you don’t actually feel like you’re being guided or want to be guided in that moment in time.
But my point is, coming back to all of this, I know I’m so confident in what my goals are now, and even some of those goals that maybe I had four years ago that kind of got put on the backburner, I took a different direction, are now coming forefront again. But I had to learn these different lessons and I had to navigate through these different areas of business and life questions and circumstances in order to come back and figure out, okay, yes, this is exactly what it looks like and this is what I want, now let’s move forward with it.
And for me, that question, knowing where I’m at, where I’m going, am I willing to do the work? I absolutely am willing to do the work and it’s just a constant question every single day of what needs to be done in order to get us closer to those goals. If you’re not asking yourself that question every day, you need to be.
You need to be really conscious about where your time is being spent and where you’re going because that’s where your energy is directed and your focus is directed, on the work that you’re doing every day to get you closer to that. And are you willing to show up for yourself and your goals?
And I see this so often where people say, “I want this, but I don’t really want to do that. That’s not really my thing.” You guys know this book, if that’s you, because I’ve been there too, “Well yeah but that’s not really me. I don’t really like that.” If you think that these athletes liked what they did every single day or the type of coaching or what was involved, they would not be the athletes that they are.
And so, I think some of it really is this combination of tough love and also feeling good about the work that you’re doing, but we can’t forget that there’s work that needs to be done. So, we can set goals, we can have intentions, we can have all these feeling states and creating joy in our world, but we also have to do the fucking work too. There’s two parts to it. and train up to get better.
And know too, I have a few people in my life that are going through really hard times right now, and I can tell you that the people, there’s a mental strength and a physical strength behind it. There are people that I think, “Okay, this isn’t the end of the world,” but it’s building strength. It’s flexing a muscle, right?
And there’s people that are going through, like, you always have to remember there’s people that are going through so much worse than you are. It’s all perspective which I absolutely love. But I have a few people in my world that are going through tougher times in business and it’s seeing how they maneuver through them, which is so telling of what their success is.
It’s that confidence or even at the hardest time being able to say, like, okay what’s our lesson here right now? What can we learn from this? What’s beautiful about this? And being able to continue to go. It’s being able to have your world, like, rocked one day and picking yourself up off the floor and continuing to go.
And every time something bad happens or every time you work through and maneuver through some of these hard times, you’re flexing a muscle. You’re becoming stronger. And the next time that happens, it won’t take you quite as long to rebound from it. And the next time, not as long. And the next time, pretty soon it’s just like, “Hey, I’ve got this. This is nothing. I’ve been through that.”
So, know that if you are going through something that’s tougher right now, it’s the storm shall pass. It is just a phase and it’s training you. I like to say this because I’ve been through some really tough times where I’ve had long five-mile hikes where I talk to myself the whole hike and I ask questions and what’s beautiful. We’ve all been there.
And it’s all training for the most biggest beautiful version of your life. And sometimes you don’t know how it’s going to work out. You just have to trust that it is and keep showing up and keep doing the work and keep getting curious and keep getting better with all of it. That’s our job in our own world.
So, if you’re thinking to yourself so and so is better than me or is this really possible or can I be top of my market or can I reach seven figures in my business or am I good enough… Yes, you are. Yes, yes, yes, you absolutely are. You have to believe it first and then do the work and train up and skill up.
What I also think is really, really important in this moment, in these trying times, is surrounding yourself by other people that are not going to go down that dark hole with you. And I’ve talked about this before too, but really seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and being able to be your cheerleader, rather than being your therapist, where it’s like, okay I’m just going to quit at doing this because it’s too hard.
You’ve got to surround yourself by people that are going through those hard things and said yeah, I totally get it, this is a bitch right now but we can do it. We’ve got this. We can do hard things. Your tribe of people around you, your circle is so important, where, you know, you can cry, you can let it out, but let’s get back to work then, right?
Believe you can do anything and you can do anything. Beyoncé has the lyric that says that she can do anything. She’s a boss. Alright, y’all, I hope you have a really great week. I hope you got some little nuggets out of that. I hope you really truly understand that whatever your goals are, you can achieve them. You just need the right tools.
If I was going to go out and be Beyoncé’s hip-hop backup dancer, I cannot do that on my own. I have to go and create a plan that is going to get me there and it’s going to take some intense training to get there, but you can do absolutely anything. So, I hope you know that. I hope you can see that and I will see you all next week.
To team up with me to grow and scale your business to multiple six figures and seven figures while creating a life that you absolutely love, head on over to loveyourlivingonline.com/application. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your goals, your dreams, your aspirations, and how I can help get you there, loveyourlivingonline.com/application. You can also check out this link in the show notes. I cannot wait to hear from you.