a promise you make to yourself—a promise you keep renewing and practicing, day after day, like yoga. And just like with yoga, there’s no perfection, but there’s continual progress. There’s always another level you can master, and, even when there are setbacks and difficult lessons to learn, there’s grace, beauty, and joy in the process.
Your Life Belongs to You
All the pieces of your life—the parts that you love, and the parts you don’t—each hold choices for you to make. No matter how unlucky your current circumstances or how unlikely your dreams might seem, what happens next is driven by what you choose. Ultimately, taking ownership of your life means recognizing that you are not helpless.
Even if someone does something horrendous to you—like what I described in the first pages of this book—even then, you still get to choose how you’re going to respond. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying abuse is right or that it’s OK. I’m saying that in my experience, once we move beyond “right/wrong” and “victim/villain,” we get back into the driver’s seat of our lives. The less we identify as victims, the more powerful we will feel. We get to choose what we’ll say, what we’ll do, and where our story goes from here. We can reclaim our power. We can refuse to see ourselves as helpless.
Despite whatever social, cultural, economic, and historical factors might be stacked against you, despite the current political climate, despite everything that has happened to you in the past, you must claim ownership of your life. If you don’t, who will? In doing so, you will discover how powerful you can truly be.
Right now, you might be thinking, “This sounds like a really privileged point of view, Andrea!” So I think this is a good moment to stop and talk about privilege—a hugely important cultural conversation that we’re finally having—because when we are willing to acknowledge our own privilege, we can take responsibility for our role within systems that are fundamentally inequitable. If you’ve been reading my story and thinking, “What you overcame is nothing compared to what I’m up against!” please stay with me. I wrote this book for you.
I had a difficult childhood. You’ve already heard a little bit about my family. When I was fourteen years old, I felt so unsafe at home that I ran away. I slept in clothing donation dumpsters and crashed on strangers’ couches. I skipped school for months. A lot of times, I didn’t know where I would get my next meal, or my next shower, and that’s just a small piece of my story.
Yet looking back now, I can see that even through the hard times, I was luckier than many, many people on this planet. I had access to things like clean drinking water and medical care; I was able to get crisis services when I needed them. I have never been persecuted for my religious beliefs, skin color, physical limitations, or sexual orientation. That’s just the hand I was dealt. I don’t want a high-five, nor do I want pity for any of this. Those are just my circumstances.
While many types of privilege have played a role in my story, I ask you to please not let my advantages or anyone else’s disempower you by making you doubt your own potential.
If anyone had told me how big a setback teen motherhood could truly be when I became a new mom at age nineteen, who knows what kind of future I would have lived. If I’d realized how many statistical advantage points it would cost me on the great socioeconomic scoreboard, maybe I would never have powered through college and raised my son to one day go to college and pursue his dreams. (He recently started college, by the way—proud mama over here!) If I had focused on the odds that were stacked against me, I might not have believed I could overcome abuse, buy my own home, build a fulfilling career, travel around the world, or publish a book. I’m so thankful I had the naiveté to believe I could own it all.
As the second-wave feminists of the 1960s recognized, “the personal is political.” I know that sometimes we focus too much on healing the individual within the existing system and not enough on dismantling the unjust systems that cause the individual to suffer in the first place. It is my hope that this book can do both: embolden you, the reader, to take ownership of all you desire in this life—so that you can be part of the solution for others still struggling. For this reason, we will spend a lot of time discussing our life legacies.
Ultimately, this book is about putting aside all the reasons you might fail. It is about making it no matter what. It’s about beating whatever odds are stacked against you so that nothing can hold you back from succeeding—whatever success looks like for you.
You own your choices.
You own your body.
You own your time.
Your life belongs to you.
What Would You Like to Change?
If you could wave a magic wand and change something about your life or the world—anything at all, big or small—what would it be? It doesn’t have to be just one thing. Let your mind run free.
Think about it. Write it down. Or discuss it with a friend. Hold these goals in your mind as you move into the rest of this book.
Whatever it is, I truly believe you can have it. If you want your partner to contribute more around the house…if you want an extra twenty thousand dollars in your savings account…if you want national media exposure for your nonprofit organization…if you want a three-month sabbatical to study Spanish in Barcelona…if you want to help a phenomenal woman get elected to the Senate…if you want that Senator to be you…whatever you want, you’ve got to own that dream even if you don’t yet know what the steps in the process will be. It’s your life. It’s your work to do. Nobody can do it for you. You’ve got to own it all.
If you’re up for the challenge, this book is your guide to owning your goals, your time, your career, and every other aspect of your life, including the legacy you want to leave behind for future generations.
Once you take ownership of your life, it changes everything. It’s like having a key that can unlock any door. It’s like waking up and realizing, “I’ve been in charge all along. For a while, I forgot. But now I remember. Whatever I want, I don’t have to wait for it. I can create it.”
Own where you are. Own where you’re going. Own your deepest desires. Own your impact. Own your life. Own it all.
Own Your Goals
Inside This Chapter
•Why it’s crucial to take the biggest risk you can stomach today (even if it’s very small).
•Why envy isn’t necessarily a bad thing—and how to use envy to clarify your next set of goals.
•Why it’s important to announce your goals publicly rather than keeping them a secret.
•How to identify counter-productive thoughts in your head (like, “I don’t have what it takes”) and say something new.
•The story of how I opened the very first Barre & Soul studio and how I learned to embrace small risks, then slightly bigger risks, and then even bigger risks.
•How to stop procrastinating and start moving your life in the direction you want (because this is your one and only life—and you don’t want to miss your shot).
Take the Biggest Risk You
