Aundrea DeMille

Wake up and check your feelings for unconscious bias when you first see someone who looks different from you. When you see someone is your knee jerk reaction fear or acceptance?

Allow yourself to be open to change. We must be willing to honestly explore our biased feelings, even if they are shameful. We must be comfortable getting uncomfortable in order to reshape our minds. Know that you can make a difference. We can all be the pebble in the pond to create a positive ripple effect in our lives. Everyone can help heal the divide by having uncomfortable conversations. We may not be able to change the world, but we can all change OUR world, one conversation at a time. We must be willing to hold space, have empathy for others and share lived experiences with everyone.

If a woman takes up yoga or starts a book club for her mental health would that be considered selfish? Most people say “no” and would applaud her efforts. If a woman assertively works late and misses her kids’ baseball game, would that be considered selfish? Most people say “yes” and shame her. How do powerful women balance work, love and life? By being selfish. As a society, we tend to have negative feelings associated with the word selfish. Those negative feelings are social programming and are not real. Together, we can take the power back and redefine what it means to be selfish.

Together we can explore how being selfish actually creates a perfect work, love and life balance for powerful women. As a successful business owner, author, speaker, podcast host and mother of five boys I know what it takes to selfishly thrive in all areas of life. It starts with reprogramming our subconscious minds by first waking up to our feelings, second planting new ways of thinking into our minds and third changing our feelings from negative thoughts about being selfish to positive thoughts so that we can enhance ourselves, our families and our communities.

There are several character traits that one must embody if they are to be successful, but I would have to say that the top three are pushing past fear, being persistent, and removing all safety nets.

Push Past Fear: Fear is simply our mind resisting change. Once we learn to recognize the feeling and lean into it, we can be unstoppable.

Be Persistent: If you want to be successful, then you need the relentless ability to keep moving forward despite setbacks, obstacles, fear, rejection and roadblock. I chose to rely on why I wanted to be successful.

Remove Safety Nets: We must be willing to burn the bridges and not have a safety net to fall back on if we fail if we want to be successful. Too many people don’t take risks or they take small risks because they know that their parents, friends, or loved ones will help out when things get hard. Success comes when we decide that we will have no options for failure and that the only option is to succeed.