Becoming A Better Human Being with Amy Ledin
If there is anyone worthy to be called Wonder Woman, it is Amy Ledin. She is a mother of six, a cancer survivor, a wife, a multi-million-dollar business owner, and so much more. On today's show, she talks about her life of dynamism including her weight loss journey and having a healthier mindset. As a woman with so much on her plate, she has managed to keep her feet on the ground and ignite her business and life to success. Using self-affirmation, self-love, her faith in God, and her Daily Agreement Cards, she was able to establish self-awareness that pivoted her to become a better human being.
—-
Listen to the podcast here:
Becoming A Better Human Being with Amy Ledin
This guest that I have coming on is such a powerful lady boss. Let me give you a little bit of her background story. She is a mother of six. She is a cancer survivor. She's a wife. She's a multimillion-dollar business owner, a birth mom, a bonus mom and so much more. She has an incredible story on weight loss that she lost over 90 pounds. She's kept it off for over fifteen years. She put a baby up for adoption. She has had gone through so much pain as far as her cancer journey. She's come out with a victory on that. She made some different decisions in her life that could have totally flat-lined people, but she turned that almost catastrophic event in her eyes into something that she built on to make her the woman that she is now. She shared her story all over. I listened to the last podcast that she did and it's so beautiful how she gives so much hope and light to people that have gone through crazy stuff. I want to share with you my amazing beautiful friend, Amy Ledin. She is a mindset coach. She is a boss. She is all things. Amy, thank you for coming on.
Thank you for that amazing introduction. Mindset coach, I wish, but it is definitely a passion. Maybe that's a future thing.
Every time that I see you on an Instagram story, you are a weight loss coach. You are a mindset coach. You are doing all of it. In my mind, you're a mindset coach.
It does start there.
I want to dive right in. I don't want to waste any time. I want for you to share your background story as far as your weight loss journey and some of the keys that have kept your feet to the fire in business and in life.
It's funny because I read someone saying, "Your mess becomes your message.” Mine has been several messes to become my message. I was an overweight child. I struggled with my weight. My first diet had to be around twelve or thirteen years old. My mom was a struggling dieter. I pretty much saw that all the way into my mid-twenties with her in terms of her finally having a gastric bypass. I do not see it as a mindset issue, but honestly trying to pick the right diet. I constantly was trying different diets and hoping probably, not knowing at that time but self-assessing, looking for self-love, self-worth and all that. It wasn't successful. I finally got to about 230 pounds.
After I had my son, I was at the park. I luckily did have an internal moment where it wasn't to just look good. It was like, "I am the mom that's sitting on the park bench lazy." I'm tired. I don't want to get up and play because I don't feel comfortable in my own skin. I had that moment and luckily went home. I started Weight Watchers and Tae Bo videos. I’m counting my points and I was so out of shape that I’m doing an eight-minute video. I did that until I lost about 70 pounds. From there, I got involved in the gym, which led to me getting involved. I started taking so many aerobics classes that my aerobics instructor was like, "Can you take me to class when I go on vacation?" That was the first, "I want to do this."
I moved into personal training. The personal training led to me wanting to hire a coach for myself. I was at a place where I had lost all my weight, but it was my external success. It wasn't my lifestyle. I was good at following a program, but I had sabotage and not knowing at the time I still hadn't dealt with my self-worth. I was still chasing an external, hoping to build some internal. That led to a lot of restriction and overeating. Still on the outside, it was maybe looking at the same people but struggling a lot. That led to why I hired a coach who now is my husband. Many years ago, I hired him. I'd already lost 130 pounds. I was on the crazy train and was like, "I can't continue this. I can't sustain it this way. I'm doing so much cardio. I'm under eating because I fear food. I didn't want to go back to the pain of being heavy so much, which was for me but it's not for you when you're struggling like that.
I met him, hired him and loved his philosophy. Along with some of my mindset and behavior things, we've slowly evolved over the years but kept that hardcore philosophy from many years ago to where we are now. We are a team and have been online coaching since. My experience and his science together are what brought me to where I am in terms of my health coaching. Through that, I've had several journeys. I got pregnant in high school, which I was already heavy before that. If I'm searching it within myself, after having that baby, I wanted to have no evidence of looking like I was a mom because I didn't have that baby. I did start to chase it in an unhealthy way. I've tried everything that was out there because I wanted to get at least somewhat my body back. That leads to now.
In the past episode when you were talking to Jasna, you were saying that when you were at a heavy point, you weren't feeling mentally in a good spot. When you became "fit" on the outside, you were mentally hurting even more. I want you to talk a little bit about how you were able to maintain a healthy weight, but also you've got into a healthier mindset?
You have to chase behaviors. You have to chase the internal dialogue because while the outside was looking okay, I was cheating on myself. I might wake up in the morning and go "Amy, you're going to do 90 minutes of cardio and you're going to eat 1,200 calories." First of all, it was probably very unrealistic some of the expectations I had on myself. I'm already doing that and being someone that is totally externally focused. You're willing to do whatever to get there. It's why some people with anorexia, go so far down that path. They're chasing what they think is external looks and really it's just that internal. For me, the shift finally was becoming obsessed with keeping my word to myself. All those little whispers that I said to myself I had to correct because my voice of compromise in restricting because I would be good on my diet and I'd overeat at night.
The next day that would lead to me saying, "You don't get to eat as much. You're going to get up. You're going to run." I'd get in bed in my negative self-talk, who'd never talked nice. It was like, "You are going to do this tomorrow and this and this.” That cycle never stopped. That also got me to start chasing this number that I thought I'd finally get to and be happy. Before I knew it, I went from being probably healthy at 145 to 116 all through restriction and punishment. Not knowing at the time I was struggling with self-worth still. This was my armor, my body. I finally now had at least the outside by evidence of my affair.
In two words, self-worth. You have no self-worth. It's like self-love. A lot of people are mistaken in what self-love is. Self-love isn't telling yourself something in the mirror. It's living to the code that's been sewn into you. What has been sown into Erik and I is some core values. We grew up in Christian homes. When you're not living that, you don't have that self-worth or self-competence. The outside may look it. For me, I have got a lot of shame from maybe not living always right with my adoption. Not feeling worthy has caused that disconnect. When you have that, you're insecure when you think about it. You may hide it and people don't see it.
When you’re insecure and someone fills that little void, you perk up. For me, I've been achievement-driven. When I started spending conversation time with Erik, I like to make him proud in terms of even being as a client. It didn't start out with this sexual thing. It was an emotional affair. We explained to our spouses, which was devastating and hard even for us to understand we do something like this. It's that this is a symptom of a bigger issue. While Erik and I are so blessed that God has blessed this mess to become something amazing, if we wouldn't have fixed ourselves at that point, we wouldn't be where we are now because you'd still have that symptom that does not get fixed.
If we wouldn't have made God the most important part of our lives and truly use that as our fulfillment, we continue to seek it out. That's what we didn't realize we were missing. We were missing that true relationship with God. I thought I had a relationship with God. I had a fear-based relationship with God. Everything I saw my life look like was rules. They’re like when you go bowling, when they put the little railing because of boundary things up, that's what they are for us. They're there for us. I always saw it there because I have to do it. Once I got that relationship, I now want to be better. It's not even related to dieting. It's everything. You now want to show up as your best self. That's self-love. Self-love is treating yourself the best way and that is taking care of yourself physically and mentally. The trigger for both of us was not having that self-worth and seeking it out in others. If your cup is not full, you can't be pouring out to others. You suck it. For us, that's probably what triggered it.
That's transparent. It's courageous for you to share your story on that because that is such an unsaid thing that people don't talk about. They have an affair or they do things that aren't in alignment with who they are as human beings, but they do it to fill a void. They have to do everything in their power to fill the void, but one vicious cycle turns into another vicious cycle. It keeps feeding the beast. How do you get yourself out of that through God?
For me, it's anchoring my day with that first and foremost. The relationship is a practice. It's getting better and better at having those conversations. That was a big change for both of us. We had a moment together where we were like, "We now see what God's will is," because once we had children and see how we feel about our kids, it changed everything. We had never related. We never thought we were worthy of that. The first thing was knowing it. Within our own marriage, realizing that it is not your do. It's your who and we’re reminding each other of that all the time.
Self-love is treating yourself the best way, and that is taking care of yourself physically and mentally.
I'll be the first to admit I'm always working on it. I get my who and my do confused. When we're achievers and we're always running after the goal, we get self-worth, once again filling the void. When we anchor in who we are in Christ, it's amazing how you don't have to feel all this pressure inside. You operate out of peace, which is your power. You're that much more effective. You live out your mission because of it.
You show up. I am totally in tune there. I get so cheesy in that I want to be the best human. I want to serve. I want to give to my community. That's when you feel that the most because our mission is to share love.
With what you put in place for yourself, your relationship and God is number one. That's how you brought healing to yourself and your marriage and now to all parties involved in that. Even when you show up on Instagram, it's so inspiring because you're sharing your truth of what God is speaking to you and you want to pay that forward to other people. A couple of other things that I've seen on Instagram that have been inspiring to me is your DAC cards. You need to dial into that because I'm excited to jump on that train and also your future self-journal. Talk a little bit more on the DAC cards and let's shift over to the future self-journal.
DACs, they're Daily Agreement Cards. It turns into something you can use as a regular journal. I tell everyone those first 30 days to make the cards so that you're staying present and aware. Most people that follow me were in health and fitness. This is for anyone that's struggling with keeping promises to themselves. It's not a to-do list. It's agreements that you make. There are some rules that we have that you follow and we tell them, “It's not rules. These are helpers. These are little guard rails that keep you being your best version.” Every day you come up with an activity agreement. These are agreements you choose because a lot of people feel forced into things at times.
In your best self, you chose the things that you wanted to do so follow through with it. Show yourself that even in the moment of feeling the next day when you don't feel good, you do it. You've got to have an activity rule. You have to have a nutrition rule. It could be that you're going to eat a couple of servings of vegetables. It could be, "I'm going to drink more water tomorrow," anything nutritionally related. You have to have one agreement that I give you ten options from. These are agreements that better you. This could be any of the following, a ten-minute meditation, a ten-minute worship/prayer time, twenty minutes of reading.
It could be ten minutes of visualization. It could be doing gratitude AM and PM. It could be you doing a cold shower with breathing. There are a couple of others. Of those, you’ve got to choose one. I tell everyone, "Over time, I would want you to be doing a lot of these." At least one and they have to choose one of their own from any area of their life. I tell people the best place to start is what's nagging at you at night. What's that internal dialogue telling you that needs to get done? Sometimes it might be a task. Sometimes it's a behavior. Sometimes it's an activity. For example, it might be for me, "I'm not going to hit snooze tomorrow because maybe I've done it a few times and it's nagging at me and I'm not getting stuff done."
Putting that on there and once I've made this agreement card important to me, I start to keep my word. We do a challenge every month for free in our community. The reason why I do this is you're not excited about a little card that means nothing to you so we’ve got to make it matter. We almost have to trick our brains into thinking it's important. Those first seven days, I'm almost immersed with the group because I want you to get excited. We're all excited for each other. We're doing these cards. We come back to achieving stuff every day. It's making us feel good. The other thing is the losses because you do track it. It's a win-loss tracking, not perfection. If you have a loss, the rule is you've got to come up with two strategies that would have you winning.
This is because I see this all the time in dieting. I'll get a biweekly from a client and they'll say, "I had a lot of stress this week so I did this." You lost because of the stress. They don't stop and go, "What could I have done to change that?" Stress will always come. They act like they're never going to have stress again. They don't even think to have a strategy. The loss allows you and forces you to be like, "I cheated on chips again five nights in a row. If I finally put a strategy in place, how about I turn off the lights in the kitchen and I tell myself, "No eating after 7:00 or how about I stopped buying chips," or whatever the strategy is.
Most of us are on autopilot. We're complaining about things in our life. We're not doing anything about it. We're breaking agreements/promises to ourselves all the time. That's why you have this low internal confidence. If you make the card matter, what happens over time, you start getting aggressive with what you want to put on your agreement because one, you realize that hard work is what equals feeling amazing. Test days are your best days, especially if you win it. As the card starts to matter more, I started to get more aggressive with my goals on there in what I wanted to maybe accomplish in a day. My next card, I put that off for so long when I put it on my car that night, I got it done the next day because now that matters to me. My personal integrity matters the most. I would get out of bed if I forgot to do something. You start to see that what you say to yourself you do. Your confidence is through the roof because you realize, "If I know I do what I say I'm going to do, I can set any goal, I know I'll achieve it eventually." I know I will because I do what I say I'm going to do.
The confidence in Christ is number one and number two is building your confidence in other ways like this. That is another powerful way because when you look back and you're like, "I accomplished this. I accomplish that.” It gives you that motivation and inspiration to be like, "If I did that, I could do this."
That's what we did, like day seven I have what's called an, “I did it list.” I make you take your seven cards out and write down some of the highlights of the week that you realized that you did because we’re put to forget. By age 35, we're 95% hardwired. It's hard to chase a new behavior and change it. It's why habits are massive and you’ve got to start small. If you can trick yourself into getting excited about being your best version, you'll start to chase that naturally. You'll see in certain situations you're like, "My best self just behaves this way." That's where you see lasting change, especially when it comes to nutrition. It's not about following a program. We all know what we should be eating and we know if we're overeating. We know by the way we feel, we ignore it. Take away a program as we give to clients. If you don't have a program and you're out to dinner, does your best self-order an appetizer, a meal, a dessert and three drinks? We know that's wrong. It's like we try only to follow up program and ignore the rest. I'm trying to teach you how to be your best self all the time in all areas. Health and nutrition happened to be a great place to measure it and it's a catalyst for change in every other area.
#PersonalDevelopmentOnSteroids. It starts with the diet, the nutrition and the lifestyle. It can expand to all different areas because something is how you do everything.
The future self-journal, that was not mine.
To backtrack to DAC cards, I got number two and number three. Number two is it has to be something nutrition-related. Number three is one of the ten. What was the first one?
First one is an activity agreement. It could be I'm going to the gym and you've got to be specific. It might be taking the rest day. When you start tracking it, if you see you took six rest days, is that your best self? Even if I wasn't a health coach, I would say everybody should be moving every day.
Number one is an activity. Number two is something nutrition-related and number three is something that's going to help you feel better about yourself overall or make you your best self. It's so simple because it's not even overwhelming for someone who's maybe a mom that is juggling so much, but she can win the day for herself. I love how you put a W over your DAC cards when you win over an L. What I love about that is you don't feel like you're doomed when you’re "Last." You've won when you are strategic to course-correct what you did that wasn't in alignment with your best self.
Think of it this way, if you leave the card as an L and you do nothing about changing the L on your head, you're left thinking you're a loser. The moment I change strategies, my reticular activation system is going to go look for ways to win next time automatically. You might fail the next few times. It's because we're hardwired. The more you communicate with yourself, it's like when you overeat. If you don't say anything to yourself and you keep going on, you'll continue to do it. Once you start saying, "This does not make me feel good to eat this way." You're more aware. Next time, I might journal it, "This does not make me feel good." Eventually, you're then in the middle of eating a meal and go, "I'm not going to overeat because this does not make me feel good." That's the same with the DACs. It takes the intention to your next day because that's the rule. You’ve got to do it the night before. I'm big on this.
You got to be so intentional if you are a negative thinker. For every negative thought, you need to have five positive.
You can't wake up and write out your DAC for that day. You will cave to emotion. It goes with even nutrition like go have pizza. Go enjoy the dinner out, but choose that the night before. Don't do it because you had a stressful day at work and now you decided to go hit outback for dinner. You planned it and you're not caving. When you cave, you will overeat. People do because they feel like they're bursting that bubble and now it's sabotage. When you go into a cheat meal planned, it's amazing how you're more aware and you enjoy it more. There's no guilt. You're not rushing through the meal. You're enjoying it. You’ve got to have some food rules every day. You’ve got to be aware of what's your plan for tomorrow? What are you eating? Is it behaviorally? Are you traveling? You should be nutritionally aware like they are with activity.
That is a powerful card. I cannot wait to take that challenge with you because when you can master little components of your life, it's going to help you in business. It's going to help you to be a better wife, a better mother, a better human being or husband or whoever you are. Thank you for clarifying on that. We can jump on over to the self- journal.
The future self-journal was something I have been working with Nicole LePera. She is on Instagram @The.Holistic.Psychologist. For the audience, you have to go follow her. She's probably one of the fastest-growing accounts because her stuff is so open and honest. She came out with this thing called a future self-journal and she had a template for it. It's along the lines of rewiring yourself for the future. Every 30 days, you can choose an area of focus because there are many things I want to fix about myself, but that would be too much for your brain. She says that it's ideal to focus on one area. For me, my first one was that I wanted it to be less reactive and more responsive in situations.
That was my focus. For 30 days, the template starts with you first affirming yourself. I have an affirmation. I do try to stick to the same thing for three days because remember too much of everything, you're not going ever to get honed in on one thing. That's why she even says, "This is going to feel like a lot of repetition in some areas of your daily journaling, but it's for a reason.” I do my affirmation, some gratitude and I go right into stating, "I'm changing the pattern. I am focusing on shifting the pattern of being reactive. I now respond. I'm able to step back.” I state my statement of where I'm focusing. From there, it leads to asking three traits of my future self.
Every day I write down three traits of my future self. I keep them the same because I'm trying to do this. Mine are integrity, love and playfulness. Sometimes I'll even write out why. I try to let it flow in the morning. Sometimes it's a longer one than others. You move into, "By living these traits, my best self shows up and this makes me feel," and you go into all the feelings of how it makes you feel. "When I show up this way," give examples of how you show up. Since I'm looking into the vision of my future, I'm going on my day, I do it in the morning. I already either look for situations where while I'm on calls with clients, I make sure I'm staying responsive and listening to them and things like that because I'm trying to base on this.
When I'm with Erik, in times where I may take his tone too personally because remember it's all about you. I am able to step back and know his true love for me. It's where you find you're struggling. I had one that I ended up doing for 60 days. I shift the thoughts that are negative towards me. The moment I have a negative thought, I change it to positive. I talk throughout the day, the times that I may struggle with that. You start to notice patterns and where you're able to change it. I'm struggling with gym time for a while coming into the gym and not feeling good. I started in my future self-journaling, "When I show up to the gym, I'm ready to work out. I'm excited. I have energy." By about day eleven, I was showing up that way because I've been telling myself to show up that way.
I love it. I tell clients all the time. It is a form of therapy because we have our kids doing it. Our kids are 30 days strong where they have a kid's version that you can print out from her website as well. It's all for free. I love it because your kids every day have to write a unique quality about themselves. My kids know that we repeat it. It's the same thing as they're learning it's not you're going to have 30 unique qualities, but it's so neat to see what they write about themselves. Every day they have a daily goal because it has some daily intention. That's been great for them to do as well. It's a great tool.
Talk about a personal development plan. It focuses in on one thing because as humans we want to bite off so much so quick and we want to become our best self, like yesterday at least I do. How do we dial it into what does our soul need? When you look at your total self, what is not in alignment that keeps pulling you down? That's a powerful stat of what you used at age 35, 95% of the way that you do life is by default. That's a little unnerving. When you start looking at that, "How can I make sure that I am not living life by default, but I'm designing my life and I'm intentional with what I'm doing?"
91% of your thoughts are exactly the same as they were yesterday as well. Have that little small window to change to hopefully set a stage of dominoes to go that 91% that you're always thinking has now slowly become all positive, especially if you're a negative thinker. You’ve got to be so intentional. For every negative thought, you need to have five positive. That's how hard it is.
Tell them how they can get access to that self-love or that future self-journal. Tell them how they can get access to the challenge and be a part of that.
For the DACs, we do a challenge on Facebook every single month for free. If you look up LBC Community, it's a private group so people can share. Some of these cards might have intimate details. Maybe no drinking, things like that. We keep it private in there. We have a daily thread that goes up. You're able to share your card. It allows you to see other ideas and have cheerleaders. Our community is so tight that people are always cheering each other on. I share them on my Instagram. It's either @Amy_Ledin or @LeanBodiesConsulting. For future self-journal, if you type it in, “Future self-journal,” hers will pop up first. If you go onto Instagram, Nicole LePera is @The.Holistic.Psychologist. She has several. She's got her future self-journal. She now has a re-parenting one. If you come from childhood trauma, she has a whole template that you need to write letters to yourself. It's a lot of great healing tools that she gives all for free.
Talking about self-healing, a lot of times I want to end by asking tons of questions about your entrepreneurial journey, but I'm more in tune and inspired by your journey. How did you walk through your cancer journey? Who were the people around you? What was your environment and how did you get yourself to a place of healing?
The journey was long. Six years was a long time that sometimes we even forget some of the journeys. I wish that I would have journaled a lot of it because it was a crazy up and down place.
How did you find out that you had cancer and what were your emotions the whole way through? Share from start to finish.
When I found out, I was in shock. My daughter was only a year old. I was going for a yearly check. I had a little bit of bleeding. They decided to do a colonoscopy and long story short, found a tumor in my colon. They did emergency surgery in a military facility. They probably should have tested that tissue but they assumed I had colon cancer and we started treatment right after. Even though they thought they got it all, there were still markers that showed some lymph nodes. I went on treatment. I had FOLFOX and FOLFIRI, several treatments and nothing was helping. I had more scans and they found that I had another tumor on my iliac artery right on my hip.
That's when they decided to do a biopsy on that and found out that I had non-small cell lung cancer at stage four because once it spreads outside. That was a huge shock. Having a couple of years of the wrong treatment was pretty upsetting. Not being a smoker or anything and hearing lung cancer at first was extremely scary too. I live down in the States. A lot of people didn't realize that Erik and I were not together yet. We were still healing from even the affair. I had a daughter. We had a baby together. I was down in Virginia with a nine-year-old and a thirteen-year-old as a single mom. I’m working online and going through chemotherapy, losing my hair, all of that.
Even though at that time, I can't say I had the best relationship with God that I have now, the true relationship. I still was always trying to use that and pray and stuff. Nothing compared to the real faith now. During the journey, Erik and I especially towards the end, one thing that Erik was so great about was even though I knew he was terrified because there were times it crippled him. I never saw that. He never showed that to me in his daily life. He would book trips, buy cars and buy experiences and things that always left me knowing like, "He does believe." He didn't even see it that way. He once surprised me with a G Wagon, which was an incredible experience in itself because I had come home from chemo. I was super grouchy to him when he was like, "Can we go stop by the dealership? I have some paperwork."
You got to be so intentional if you are a negative thinker. For every negative thought, you need to have five positive.
I don't even know how he finally convinced me, but even the whole way there, I was not in the best mood. He surprised me with that. Many people saw that as like, "He's buying me a gift." I saw it as, "He has real faith I'm going to be here." He wouldn't go get this and not think that I'm going to be here. That helped build up my faith. The last time that I got bad news. This is after many times of taking the best foot forward. I'd gotten some bad news and it was basically we're out of options. Erik was instead of going to the place where I was going, which was, "What are we going to do?" He'd stop and read a passage he'd been reading about having stress, anxiety and how to deal with it. He was like, "Either we’re in, either we have things completely or we don't. Are we in or not?"
It was going all in. When we got the next scans, we know it's going to be good. We kept saying that and we were living that way. Even in my behavior, my attitude working out, working on new projects in business, I showed myself subconsciously, “I'm not going anywhere.” When I got the good news three weeks later that they had no explanation, we knew exactly it was that faith. It was 100%. There was nothing that convinced me. I had gone through every visualization of exactly what they were going to say to me, what the scans would look like, my response to Erik, what we would be saying to each other, how we will be feeling.
All of that, to the point I could feel that emotion. It hadn't happened yet. Him saying that to me and it's finally going through like, "I'm stupid here if I'm even wavering after all this time. We're in, let's go all in." We did a few faith tests financially during that little three-week period where we invested $130,000 into coaching. I would have felt horrible if I'm not around and Erik had spent all this money. You've got to think about those things when you've got a family. We were like, "This is going even to show more that we have faith." That was our test and so it was amazing.
That is the power in prayer. That's the power of faith. That's the power of having a power partner that believes in things, even sometimes more than we do when we're in that weak moment. How powerful it is to surround yourself with that type of environment.
I've had some crazy full-on meltdown moments. If I would've had some crazy meltdown husband, how would that work? When he would have moments of other times of weakness and I need to be there for him. You've got to have someone that can hold you up because we are human. We're not perfect. I used to beat myself up when I would struggle. I had to remember I'm not always going to feel like I'm going to be so chirpy and be here. You need to have God, obviously, but you need to have that partner here in your life that's going to be reminding you of that.
Let's hear the good news. We celebrated and that’s how we met at the FAST Foundation.
I had gotten the news and the cool thing was with stage IV lung cancer, it's the six-month marker that matters a lot and the year. If you can stay in remission for six months, you go from having less than 1% five-year survival rate to 70%. June 30th I had gotten the news that they had no explanation. There's my miracle. We were waiting for the December six-month marker. That was huge. We started pouring into it that last month, asking people to pray for us. I would get into the emotion every day, got the great news and that was amazing. On June 30th I was getting the news that it had been one year. I'm a walking miracle in that way and there have been a few others now of us in that. What an amazing circle to come to that.
Your perspective in life has changed so much. Even when we were at the mastermind, you were so happy to be up at ungodly hours, which I love. You're so disciplined. You're like, "I'm living life. I'm excited to be up at 3:40 in the morning."
I'm definitely not always that way. I could hear my husband is like, "I hate it." If I want to anchor those, I already can go there because of all my experience. All I have to do is look at some of those pictures during that phase or remind myself of I'm here to watch my kids get married. That was a massive fear for me that I can't take a day for granted. I can't. I've seen too many of my friends and people that I met through my journey, they didn't get to have another day. Even when my kids, my daughter had a meltdown one day and I showed her a picture of this friend I knew through cancer with his three daughters. I said, "Leilani, you are not having a bad day. These little girls don't have a daddy here, that could be a bad day. Their daddy doesn't get to be here to take them to school.” Sometimes we need those reminders of we're here to spend another day here. I want to make sure it counts and I want to live on purpose.
Sometimes when maybe business can be overwhelming or maybe the kids are overreacting or we're overreacting or something that feels like a whole meltdown happening in life. When you put it into the perspective of we've got another amazing day to live life here and totally take that for granted. I am so blessed and honored to know you, Amy. I want to ask you the last three questions. I want to know if someone met you and said, "Amy, I want to become the boss of my own life and call the shots. What is my first step?"
It's daily agreements. Where are you breaking promises to yourself? There is somewhere in there that you're breaking promises. Once you can start making those promises in those areas and you hone in on strategizing that, it’s going to take you anywhere. It's like goal setting in a behavior way.
What is your definition of a boss?
Someone living in on their terms.
Any last words of wisdom that you would love to share with my tribe?
Honestly see everything happens for you. Ed Mylett taught me that. You do see everything happening for you. I've had a lot of what I consider some crappy situations in my life. Some brought on by me, but some that weren't. I could have looked at my journey with cancer in a super bitter way. If you start seeing every single thing for you and what you can learn from it, it's amazing what it changes with your perspective.
Amy, thank you so much for your investment in time on the show. I know that life is such a gift to be able to spend that with my audience and share. My challenge to all of you that are on here is if you've hit rock bottom moment or you've hit that point in your life where you're like, "Why is this happening to me?" Do what Amy said, not asking yourself, "Why is this happening to me?” Thank God that this is happening to you, whatever it is and find the lesson in it. Amy, I want my tribe to find you, to follow you and be mentored by you because you are incredible. I want to add as much value to your tribe as well. Tell us where we can find all your handles.
My handle on IG is @Amy_Ledin, that's my personal. Our business, training and fitness is LeanBodiesConsulting on Facebook. That's where we have a big presence because we’re there for years. We have our private community and anyone is welcome to join. It's called LBC Community. That's where we do our daily shares. We do lots of videos there. We love our little tribes.
I'm excited to be a part of it. Here's my challenge like every month that I talked to you about. My challenge is for you to fire your fear, feed your fate and become the boss of your own life. Get after it.
Important Links:
@The.Holistic.Psychologist - Instagram
LBC Community - Facebook
@Amy_Ledin - Instagram
@LeanBodiesConsulting - Instagram
About Amy Ledin
Amy is a mother of 6, a cancer survivor, a wife, a multi-million dollar business owner, a birth mom, bonus mom, and much more.
She used her pain of being overweight as the catalyst for major change in her life, losing over 90 pounds and now keeping it off for 15 years.
She used her pain of placing a baby for adoption while in high school as a catalyst for personal development growth.
She used her pain of having stage 4 NSCLC as the catalyst for taking ownership of thoughts and self talk.
She has used her pain of marriage wrecking affair to finally face the inside and find self worth and love.
Amy uses her mess as her message.
Through it all, she finally found a real relationship with God, and that was truly the lighter fluid she needed to feel complete.
Her passion is coaching people who want to uplevel and become their best self.
Amy shares her biggest mindset hack with us--this woman didn’t beat cancer, build a million dollar business and maintain a beautiful family by not working diligently on herself.