Making Me Happy: April Update!

Happy Friday! As we close out April I wanted to take a moment to pause and reflect on what's happening and making me happy right now, because this month has been INCREDIBLE! 

I'm starting to become a strong believer in the idea of marking "fresh starts" by your birthday instead of January 1st. Let's face it, January is the worst possible time to feel motivated and inspired when it's dark, freezing, and all you want to do is hibernate until spring...and it's such an arbitrary marker of time.

Birthday months, however, are magic. (If your birthday is in January, rescind my previous statements!)

Birthdays are where the real fresh starts happen.

In case you can't tell, April is my birthday month!

It's not my favorite month of the year, at least in the midwest, because the bipolar weather drives me CRAZY (we literally went from 40-80 degrees in a 2 day span here in Chicago the other week), but I always feel a sense of new beginnings and energy starting to buzz deep inside of me.

The month began with fun times and FRIENDS!

I hosted a brunch for the local coaches on my team Inspire Joy, and we had a great time bonding, connecting, drinking mimosas, feasting on our fave healthy brunch foods, and watching crazy snow blow horizontally out the window.

April isn't just my birthday. It seems like all my best girlfriends were born this month too!

My best friend Ashley came into town for a weekend with her husband Matt and we met up with some other friends to do Trapped in a Room With a Zombie, which was pretty much what it sounds like -- you're locked in a room and have 60 minutes to solve clues and puzzles to escape, while a zombie tries to eat you. I was voted "most scared of the zombie." What can I say, I'm super gullible and easily frightened, haha!

Then the next weekend, my friend Anna visited and we had an epic girls' brunch at Yolk and a day of shopping on Michigan Ave!

On the fitness front, I've been getting outside to run more (and found an awesome track near our apartment), and started Tony Horton's new bootcamp program, 22 Minute Hard Corps!

I FINALLY convinced Ben to do the program with me. It only took two years of Beachbody coaching to get him on board, but seriously the workouts are only 22 minutes so there's literally no excuse.

We're halfway through the 8 weeks and I'm surprised by how much I love this program! I'll definitely share a review later this month. It has also been super motivating to have Ben doing it with me :)

Despite the random SNOW we've had this month, the flowering trees are finally blooming and it makes me so so so so so so happy. I've been trying to get out of the house everyday to get my 10,000 steps in and the photo feed on my phone is full of flowers.

When we finally buy a house I'm going to plant a forest of flowering trees in our yard (except for the ones with white flowers that smell bad...can't ever remember which tree that is)!

And then it was my BIRTHDAY! I turned 29 on the 26th.

My parents came up to visit last weekend and we had a blast! As the oldest child, it's rare for me to get one:one time with them so it's always special :) The weather was finally warm for a hot second, so we had a great time exploring our neighborhood, eating tons of delicious food, and drinking way too much wine.

My actual birthday was a chilly rainy Tuesday so I took myself on a date and checked out the 3 Arts Club at the new Restoration Hardware flagship store and gallery downtown and oh my gosh it's so gorgeous, I felt like I was inside Elle Decor. I'm going to go there all the time and pretend it's my house! As soon as I publish this blog post I'm actually going back there today to meet my friend Amanda for lunch haha.

Then Ben took me out to dinner at Gather, my favorite restaurant in our neighborhood (get the cured salmon!).

One of my coaches Leslie has the same birthday as me, and she summed it up perfectly: "It may sound vain, but having a day that reminds you of how loved and cared about you are is truly such a gift."

YES! Amen.

I am feeling so incredibly blessed and loved right now, and looking back at posts I wrote just two years ago makes me realize how much can change in such a short period of time.

I'm finding myself and my purpose, and I'm feeling so excited and hopeful about this year. I'm definitely ready to take my twenties out with a bang!

xo Anna

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I'm becoming a life coach!

Oh hi, I’m back!!!

I haven’t blogged in a month and I’ve missed you so much, but the truth is that I needed to take some time off to turn all my focus and energy inward. I’ve been doing a ton of learning, growing, personal development, and comfort-zone busting lately and I’m so so so excited to start talking about what’s been going on behind the scenes in my life EEEEP!

Yes it’s true, I’M OFFICIALLY TRAINING TO BE A LIFE COACH!!

AHHHHH I can't believe I'm officially saying this! It's literally a dream come true for me.

The thought of life coaching has been in the back of my brain for a really long time, but I always blew it off for various reasons. “It’s not legit,” “I can’t do this,” “it’s not a real job,” excuse after excuse, especially since I’ve been trained as a formal scientist and all this feel-y stuff is new for the rational side of my brain.

But for the last 2 years I’ve been on this CRAAAAZY journey of self discovery that all started when I hit the breaking point at my old job, discovered Beachbody coaching, realized that I actually DID have control over my future and my life, and decided to design my own dream job.

Only I had no idea what that "dream job" was going to entail or how it would all pan out, so I’ve basically been on this crazy inner adventure in search of the Real Anna, noticing what made me feel good, investing in SO many e-courses, reconnecting with what I love and what makes me feel most like myself, and hustling my butt off.

THE BACKSTORY

For most of my life I blindly accepted what was drilled into my head in school, the traditional story: succeed at everything, get good grades, find a good steady job, and the harder you work the more money and success you’ll receive. (Also: you have to have a traditional job to be worth something and a valued contributing member of society).

So for the first 24 years of my life I did everything I was told to do. I got good grades. I achieved. I hustled. I set the bar ridiculously high for myself. I got a full ride to a prestigious grad school.

And then I finally launched into the real world and came face to face with the terrifying realization that I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life! And the job market sucked. Not a great combo.

I knew I wanted a job that made me feel excited, fulfilled, and would allow me to make a difference in the world, and I wanted to be fairly compensated for the work and talent I brought to the table, but I struggled to align the vision in my head with the reality of the job market, and “settled” for a full time job at a great non-profit that aligned with my interest in environmental science … but I never felt settled on the inside. There was this constant restlessness in my heart, this little voice that wasn’t satisfied because by searching for happiness and fulfillment in external things like trying to find the perfect job, I wasn’t being true to myself.

WHAT IS TRUE FOR ME

I’ve always known what makes me happy (although it took a bit of work to uncover and dig it all back up!)

• Reading

• Learning

• Creating beautiful and useful things

• Writing

• Being outside

• Helping people

• Making a difference

• Being seen and understood for who I am

• Belonging to a community

• (more recently) Eating healthy and working out

I’ve always been a “helper,” it’s been drilled into me since the ripe old age of 2 when my first (of three) younger siblings was born.

From the age of 10 to 18 I wanted to be a pediatrician so I could help kids.

I love mentoring and playing that "big sister" role, even when my advice is unsolicited ;) When I was a senior in high school, I wrote an entire Guide to Surviving Band Camp for the only other girl in the trumpet section.

I’ve always been passionate about making the world a better place, which led me to pursuing multiple advanced degrees in Environmental Science and Geography.

In every job, I’ve always been the person my co-workers trust to share their secret dramas, their relationship problems, their personal issues, and I LOVE hearing about all that “deep stuff” that we keep hidden and buried because we’re afraid people are going to judge us. I love being a sounding board and helping others see through the drama and bullshit to what’s actually going on in a situation.

I love helping people understand they aren’t alone. I LOVE LOVE LOVE watching women discover that they deserve to treat themselves better, and that they have all the confidence and joy they’ve been looking for inside them all along.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE JOURNEY

The incredible thing is that I wouldn’t be at this place without every single prior experience I’ve ever had, and even all my random stepping stone jobs (babysitting, working in a lab, doing field work for The Nature Conservancy, heck even bagging groceries) have taught me something about myself. NOTHING you ever do in life is a waste of time, even if down the road you never end up “using your degree” or building on one specific career path. It’s ok to pivot!

But hands-down the biggest turning point for me was getting involved with Beachbody. I discovered Beachbody coaching at a moment when I needed it the most, a breaking point if you will, when my inner “true Anna” couldn’t take any of the bullshit I was giving her and I was about to crash and burn at my job because it was draining my soul (sounds dramatic but I know you’ve had a soul sucking job before!), and I held onto this new opportunity like a life raft because (1) it aligned with so many of my strengths and passions and also (2) I could see the financial opportunity.

Beachbody coaching has given me a community, coaching experience, financial freedom to chase this new dream without putting pressure on it to support me, and I will ALWAYS keep running my monthly health and fitness accountability groups and growing my team, because we have something really amazing going on and I love sharing the business opportunity with other women just like me.

Beachbody is so much more than a health and fitness company. It’s a movement of second chances, fresh starts, and transformation. It led me back to myself, who I really am beneath two decades of putting on layers to conform to what I thought society expected me to be, and it helped me realize I CAN make a living by being myself.

So in case you’re wondering, my Beachbody biz is not going anywhere except up!

FOLLOW YOUR BLISS

Last spring was when I started to seriously consider the prospect of going one step further and pursuing some sort of life coach training, five or six months after I had quit my job to work my Beachbody business full time.

I’ve found that when you’re following your curiosity down the right path, the universe will throw all sorts of random signs and coincidences in your way, and last winter I was kind of struggling to get my business off the ground, feeling lost and overwhelmed, and started to come across all these blogs of beautiful, creative, passionate women who were doing EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED TO DO. What did they have in common? They were all life coaches.

Then I scrolled across a random post on Instagram from one of the Tone It Up girls in Chicago I followed, saying that she was moving back home to chase her dream of being a full time life coach and I thought BINGO! I Immediately reached out to ask her more about how she made it happen and to meet up to chat before she moved.

That girl became my own very first life coach. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to invest in a life coach, I mean is it really worth it? I’m pretty good at journaling and reading personal development books, but I knew that I had to do this and it changed my life, blew me wide open, and made me 100% certain I needed to do this too. Yup, investing in a life coach is SO worth it, if you’re ready to make big shifts in your life.

Fast forward another 4-5 months to last fall. I had continued to build my Beachbody team and was finally starting to feel financially stable, and was tooling around on the internet exploring different life coach certification and training programs.

The thing with life coaching is that it’s pretty unregulated, and there’s so many different ways you can seek training or certification. I wanted to make sure I found a training program that was recognized, successful, had high integrity, would give me the tools and knowledge I needed, and also aligned with my heart and vision for my business. I’m done with academia and didn’t want a cold or sterile training course - I wanted one that would allow me to shine and align with my values of authenticity, creativity, and self expression.

TRAINING WITH BEAUTIFUL YOU

God led me straight to the Beautiful You Coaching Academy and it just felt SO good. I stalked some of the BYCA coaches, and really resonated with their messages and approach, so I knew this program would help me become the coach I really wanted to be.

It took me weeks of inner conflict before I pulled the trigger, but last fall I did it, and in February I started my online training!

I’m halfway done right now, and it’s been hands-down the 2nd best decision I have ever made in my life, right after marrying Ben (duh). I'll definitely share more about the program and experience when I'm officially finished, but I can't say enough good things about Julie Parker, her team, the course, my fellow trainees, my gorgeous coaching buddy Aneesa, and everything about it.

I finally feel like I am aligned with my purpose. I don’t even know how to describe it because it’s something you have to feel to understand, but let me put it this way: my anxiety is GONE. I am full of hope, confidence, optimism, and know for certain I’m on the right path.

WHY LIFE COACHING?

What I’ve noticed from spending the last two years working with hundreds of women in my online health and fitness accountability groups (and mentoring a team of over 150 other coaches), is that when women want to learn how to eat healthier, workout, lose weight, and gain confidence and energy, or change any aspect of their life, they’re seeking external solutions for what they think is an external problem (weight or physical health).

But really it goes SO MUCH DEEPER than that.

It’s about the weight, but it’s not about the weight.
It's about the job, but it's not about the job.
It's about the relationship, but not about the relationship.
It's about the binging, but it's not about the binging.

It’s about how we FEEL on the inside, and our relationship with ourselves.

It’s not just about learning how to eat healthy.

It’s about learning how to love yourself for who you are, right now, and believing that YOU ARE WORTH more. Believing deep down in your core that you’re worth investing in yourself through time, money, and energy. Learning it’s not just OK to put yourself first, but it’s NECESSARY in order to be truly happy.

Doing the outer work (exercise, losing weight, eating right) is relatively simple. Just follow the steps. Health and fitness will always be a huge component to my coaching because it IS so important to honor and respect our physical bodies, but the outer work is just one piece of the puzzle.

Doing the inner work to get you to where you actually want to be is freaking HARD, and that’s why it’s so important to have support along the way, someone to guide you and cheer you on and light the path, encourage you when you want to give up, and teach you how to recognize who you were meant to be.

And that’s who I want to be as a life coach!

I want to help women on a deep and profound level, support and guide them through the process of figuring out who they are, and help them create a life and livelihood that lights them UP and allows them to make a massive impact in the world in their own way.

So that’s what I’ve been up to! Stay tuned for so much more as I figure out the direction of my own life and business :)

Does all this make you say OMG YES HELP ME ANNA? (I love you).

In addition to my monthly health and fitness coaching, I’ll be taking on a small number of one-on-one life coaching clients at a special intro rate by early summer and I can’t wait. AH!

If you want to be the first to know, make sure you’re signed up for my newsletter because I’ll make the big announcement there first!

And thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for reading this, supporting me, and being here to follow along my adventures.

xo Anna

Beachbody does not guarantee any level of success or income from the Team Beachbody Coach Opportunity. Each Coach’s income depends on his or her own efforts, diligence, and skill. See our Statement of Independent Coach Earnings located in the Coach Online Office for the most recent information on our Coaches’ actual incomes.

The Statement of Independent Coach Earnings can be found by CLICKING HERE!