Angela Gargano (00:00.642)
Welcome back to What If It All Goes Right. I'm so excited to dive into this topic today about living your life by design. Now, I cannot take credit for this idea. This idea has come from a book that I read called Stop Acting Like You're Going to Live Forever by my close friend Jodie Cook. And a quote she had in this book really resonated with me and now I'm using it.
in all my keynotes, in my life, in all sorts of different areas. So the quote goes, if you're not living your life by design, you are living your life by default. And again, I'll say that again. If you're not living your life by design, you are living your life by default. So the first thing I want to do is let's define what living by default even means. Living by default means you're letting life happen
You're reacting to situations instead of creating them. It's falling into routines, letting other people's opinions dictate your choices, or staying stuck in patterns that do not serve you.
Angela Gargano (01:16.79)
On the other hand, living your life by design means stepping into the driver's seat. It's about intentionally creating a roadmap for your life, deciding how you want to feel, what you want to achieve, and how you're going to get there. It doesn't mean that everything is going to go perfectly. In fact, it probably isn't.
Trust me, I've had to share so many of my setbacks, but when you live your life by design and you face those obstacles with a plan instead of letting them derail you, it is a game changer, right?
Because living your life by design can be a little scary, right? What if you fail? What if it doesn't work out? What if it doesn't go as planned? And like we said, that is absolutely going to happen, but that is in fact part of the journey. But personally, I would rather all those setbacks happen than me later on go back and regret and say, I actually didn't even live the life that I've been wanting to live. I've been allowing all these things to dictate.
what is next for me instead of taking control of that on my own.
Angela Gargano (02:32.366)
So before I dive into some great practical tips on what you can do to live your life by design in the new year, I'm gonna literally give you action steps and things that you can do right now in order to shift this perspective and make this happen. I just wanna share a few defining moments in my journey when I could have easily stayed on autopilot and let life happen to me. Let the default take over.
So number one, which a lot of you probably already know already is when I tore my ACL on national television. So I was literally in the best shape of my life. I was competing on American Ninja Warrior when suddenly everything changed in one instant. The injury left me physically and emotionally broken. I could have let it define me, but I realized I had a choice to sit and wait for things to get better or to design my comeback.
And I chose to take control and it changed everything for me. I literally walked into American Ninja Warrior for the season. Now I had been rejected a couple years in a row before that. And I was so ready, literally did everything right. Or so I thought, I did everything right. And when I got there, I was a little, cocky, you know? I'm like, I got this. I'm going to be a top female. I'm going to become a top female. And then life just completely shattered that dream for me.
when I got to the final obstacle I needed to get to in order to become a top female and when I landed, I completely blacked out, collapsed on the course and had to be carried off in front of everybody.
And yeah, I definitely, and I want to be very clear about this, I definitely didn't just hop right back in and be like, I'm going to live my life by design tomorrow. Right? It took me a lot of time. And actually it took a lot of people trying to help me and show me and say, hey, this is an opportunity. This is a blessing in disguise. And I was just like, yeah, right. Like, stay away from me. Like, you don't know anything. You don't know how I feel right now. Everything is falling apart.
Angela Gargano (04:38.328)
And it took time for me to sit in, to sink in, to feel all those feelings that I needed to feel and then push past and say, you know what, actually I have control over this narrative and what happens next for me.
So I don't want to talk about the story and just the things that I've done to help me live my life by design and make you think that this was an easy journey and make you think that right away I was like, yes, I got this. Absolutely not. Like it was definitely stuck in it. But what I would love to do for you is if you are having a moment or if you're in the moment right now or the moment comes up in the future, take the moment that you need to feel whatever is that you feel about it, because it sucks.
It sucks when things aren't going necessarily right.
And feel those feelings, but do not get stuck there. And I actually went to an event the other day and one of the Olympic athletes said, you kind of have to have short-term memory with when things are going wrong. So this way you can just move on from it, right? Have those feelings and then it's time to move on. It's time to get up and keep going. And you have the power to take control of your life and not let that default, which again, the default would have been, you tore your ACL, your career is over. That's it. That's it. The universe was like, that's it for you.
Or by design, you're like, no, no, no, I know that is not my story. I know what is next for me. I know I can take control in some way. So just important to know. I also was told that I was too muscular to model. So for years, I really wanted to be a fitness model. That's all I wanted to be. I was doing fitness competitions. I was starting to feel more confident in my body. And I just knew internally that I have it. I have it. I can do it. I knew it.
Angela Gargano (06:25.988)
I went nuts sending in and taking pictures and doing whatever I had to do to get into a really well-known modeling agency that all the people that I looked up to were into. And I sent in the pictures, all the portfolios, never heard back from them until one day I was in California and I knew they had a California office where you could just walk in and I went there. I went there and I walked in and...
I kid you not, I walked in and the head guy, who's normally in New York City, was actually in the office. And I gave him my portfolio, I had a conversation with him and he said, okay, like he saw that I had things, like I had been in magazines before and things along those lines. He's like, okay, cool, what I'm gonna need you to do is do a shoot, I'm gonna give you the guy that you do a shoot with so this way you can get some more photos. I'm like, sweet, like, did I do it? Like, did I make it? So I did everything he said. I shot with all the people he told me to shoot with.
Got all these amazing photos. I felt like they looked great. And then by the time I sent them into him and I kept following up and following up, following up with him literally every, every week, he said to me something along the lines of, can't remember what exactly what it was, but it was pretty much saying that you're too muscular and manly to be a model. And I remember I showed this email to somebody else who was within the agency and she was like, I know exactly what he's saying here.
and she was pissed. She was like, Angela, she's like, I know that you can do this. Don't let this one thing that this person said to you, let the take over you. Because again, right there, I could have just been like, well, he said I'm too muscular and too manually, too model, so why even try? But instead, I didn't let it stop me. I didn't let the opinion stop me, and I created my path. And I'm proud to have graced three fitness covers, which is super exciting, and living my life by design. Sometimes I can't even believe it. They're actually right here. They're behind me.
I remind myself of this girl every day, especially on the bad days, I'll look at it and I'll be like, okay, well you did that. So this next obstacle that is coming up, you can push past it because you push past these things. I also had someone tell me that hearing my voice was annoying in the fitness studio. So was working in a really well-known fitness studio in New York City and I really was so excited to work for this studio and the owner,
Angela Gargano (08:42.242)
would come to the classes sometimes. And I was the kind of person that when I teach these classes, I would really try and bring inspiration and life to them. I want you to leave there feeling strong, but feeling empowered in all these different things. And I was told that my voice was annoying. Like he literally took me outside. And I remember my aunt was in the class at the time too. My aunt is like a sassy New Yorker girl. She was like, what is this guy doing? I'm gonna like come beat him up.
He was like, Angela, your voice is so annoying. He's like, I can't even handle it. He literally said that to me outside. I have tears in my eyes because I'm having people tell me, this was a great class or whatever. And whether it be like, he wanted me to work on my speaking and the way my voice was or not, that's fine. But the way he delivered it was so painful to hear that. I could have never again, by default, spoken again. But I didn't want to stop me. And now I'm speaking to hundreds of people around the world. I'm speaking in massive stages.
Someone was like, ha, like I did it. Not only for me, not only to prove him wrong, right, but for myself. Because I decided that I'm gonna take control and if that's something that I wanna do, I'm gonna work really hard and get really, really good at it. So again, those are just a little bit about my story, but I don't want this to be all about me. I don't want this podcast to be about me. I'm gonna take you and tell you some of the things that have, I've personally gotten through stuff, but I wanna give you some action steps.
on what you can do to start living your life by design today. It's so easy to feel like life is just happening to you, especially when you're busy, when you're overwhelmed and again, dealing with setbacks and setbacks are inevitable, they're gonna happen. But the life you want is possible and it starts with one really simple thing. The awareness. It starts with awareness. Taking a moment to reflect on where you are right now.
and being aware, are you happy with your routine? Are you aligned with your goals? Asking yourself, what do I truly want my life to look like? And writing it down. You need to become aware of what you actually want because all of a sudden you might blink and life has passed you by. You didn't even take a moment to breathe to say, do I actually want that? Is that something I really wanna do?
Angela Gargano (10:58.55)
That happened to me for a while when I was a biochemist. was just listening to what everyone else was telling me to do and I was like, okay, okay, I can do it, I can do it. And then I blinked and I opened my eyes one day and I gained this awareness of, wait, this is not actually what I want to do. And that's so important, having that awareness. So I want you to think right now, are you aligned with your goals? What do you truly want in your life? If you were to take away any outside things that were holding you back from doing it, what would you do?
If money wasn't an issue, if someone's opinion was an issue, what would you really be doing? I want you to take a moment right now and really gain that awareness of what that is. Number two, you need to create that roadmap, right? So once you're clear on that and where you are, it's time to design that roadmap. And I want you to start small. I think it can be really easy when you're creating this roadmap to think about that final destination and where you want to end up. But
That's gonna take a little while to get to, and that's okay. What small little steps can you take every single day to move closer to your vision? Remember, progress is progress no matter how small it is, and taking those baby steps are important. We teach this in my Pull Up Revolution program where we're teaching women how to get their pull up, right? I always remind them, if you keep showing up to the bar and looking at the bar, being like, I can't get my chin up at the bar, I'm never gonna be able to get my pull up, blah, it's gonna suck, it's gonna suck.
But if you have a roadmap where you are doing small little steps and smally and getting excited each step of the way on this ladder to get in your pull up, oof, that's the way to do it. That's how the roadmap really happens. And yes, you're going to encounter on this roadmap, you're going to encounter detours, you're going to encounter great days, bad days, whatever it might be, but you're going to be on that map. And eventually you may not see it. You're going to slowly be getting there, right?
Zooming out. Sometimes when we're in the picture, someone told me this the other day, when you're in the picture, you can't fully see the full vision, right? Same thing with your robot. So just knowing that little steps to get you closer and closer to each other. So what little small steps can you make every single day to get closer to your goal?
Angela Gargano (13:11.796)
I kept telling myself for years I want to continue to do more speaking, more speaking, more speaking. Then I zoomed out and I'm like, what little steps am I taking every single day to get closer to that goal? I realized for the past couple years I wasn't doing anything. I'm getting mad that I'm not getting closer to the destination, but I'm not even doing baby steps and I don't even have a roadmap. Let's create that roadmap.
Number three, staying aligned with your vision. So this is where tools like vision boards, core values, manifestation tracks come into play. Vision boards really help you keep your goal in front and center, rewire your brain to focus on what's possible. And I'll dive deeper into how you can create one. We actually have a vision boarding workshop. I'll put the link down here below for that. So if you want to hop into and do the vision boarding workshop, but vision boards don't make things just, they don't make, they don't, if you put something on the board, it's not just going to happen.
It's kind of like when you buy a dumbbell, you buy a pull-up bar. It's not going to lift itself. It's not going to do the pull-up itself. You have to put in the work. But the vision board is really great because it allows you to, again, you gain the awareness of what you want. You have kind of a roadmap on there. And then looking at it and having it kind of buy you every single day, you don't have to obsess over it. You at least can look at it and be like, OK, cool. I'm getting closer to my goals every day. I have a reminder of where I want to go, where my vision wants to go. Because how easy is it for someone else's vision or first life
when life is lifing, for you to lose track of what it is that you actually want. So my vision board is behind me right now. I have it on my laptop, my computer. I also print it out and I put it on my wall so I wake up and see it every single day. And again, doesn't mean I'm obsessing over it. Doesn't mean I'm looking at it all the time. It just means that it is there and the awareness is there. And number four, building consistency. Consistency is so key in this.
Think of it as building a foundation of a house. don't want to rush the foundation. You want to take small, intentional steps to creating lasting change. So you want to make sure that you are building consistency on whatever it is that you want to achieve, whether it be for your health goals and your health and fitness goals. You want it to be small, little steps, really building and creating that foundation so that you can flourish, right? And I love this saying here, you wouldn't want somebody to build the house, your house, right? The foundation really quickly and flimsy and blah.
Angela Gargano (15:29.954)
You'd want them to like take their time, make sure it's right, that kind of thing. You want to do that and that's what's going to help to build consistency is building that strong foundation so that you can do those little steps each day. That's going to lead you closer to the goal. Doesn't mean it's going to be instantly. So vision boards and core values can really transform your life. And I had to sit down and do all of this. And like I said, I do it in the vision board workshop. So if you want like more depth in that, you can grab the link below for the vision board workshop. I'll walk through all of this with you.
And I love seeing the vision boards when you make them. So one of my favorites, like I said, is the vision board. And when transitioning from my job as a biochemist and becoming a fitness professional, I use a vision board to help me visualize the life I wanted, even when I didn't think it was possible. And here's how you can make this really effective. When you make this vision board, choose images and words that represent your goals and values. Place it somewhere you can see it daily. Again, not obsess over it, but just see it daily.
use it as a reminder of what you're working towards. And core values are just as important. It's like your internal compass. So guiding you to stay aligned with your vision. And again, I'll talk more about how to actually do core values in the vision boarding workshop and probably in another episode, it will really define and sit down what your core values are. those core values really are helpful because it will literally tell you what to say no to as well. Like that's not aligned, that's not my core values, not doing that. My team that I have inside of
for Pull Up Revolution and my coaching business, we have a set of core values and I actually read them every single meeting so we have a reminder of what they are. And if anything ever does go wrong within the company or within life, we just go back and it's not about me, it's about, cool, let's go back to our core values as a company. Hey, we had some little things here that weren't aligned with our core values, what can we do, right? So when you're clear on your values, it's easy to make decisions and move towards your goals. So.
Action steps to start designing your dream life. So here's your homework. I want you to reflect on where you're at right now and where you want to go. I want you to write down three core values that matter most to you. I want you to create a vision board or manifestation track to keep your goals on top of mind. Like I said, if you want like more tangibly exactly how to do it, just grab my vision boarding workshop, which I'll put the link here. If you want a step-by-step guide, like I said, download the vision boarding workshop and yeah.
Angela Gargano (17:48.908)
I hope this was helpful for you. I hope this got you fired up in learning about how you can live your life by design instead of living it by default, knowing that you have control. It really takes you getting very, very clear, getting that awareness and really putting that all together. is, it's again, the vision board doesn't magically make it happen. It's just that you now have the awareness of what you actually want. So instead of you getting frustrated every day that you're not getting closer to your goals, you're like, wait, I actually already created.
a roadmap, have awareness of what I even want and now I'm going to get there. So thanks so much for tuning in for the first episode of What If It All Goes Right. Reminder, you're in control of your story. Obstacles are not the end. They're opportunities to create something amazing. And don't forget, go grab that vision boarding workshop. Let me know what resonated with you. And until next time, keep asking yourself, what if it all goes right?
