Angela Gargano (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to What If It All Goes Right? The podcast where we tackle the big questions, celebrate the small wins and challenge ourselves to keep growing even when things don't go as planned. I'm your host, Angela Gargano, and today we're going to have some real talk, heart to heart. Literally a moment of brutal honesty and some brutal honesty that I honestly had to have with myself. This episode is all about being honest.
with yourself. It's about having that pep talk we all avoid, the one where we ask, why haven't I been doing the things I keep saying I'm going to do? Because let's face it, if we can't show up for ourselves, how can we possibly show up for anyone else? We know exactly what advice we'd give our best friend or our loved one when they're struggling. But when it comes to ourselves,
The advice often gets lost in the shuffle. So today we're going to flip the script and we're going to get honest. We're going to take stock and we're going to figure out how we can show up, not just for others, but for ourselves. So let's dive in.
So again, I personally asked myself this question the other day, why haven't I been showing up for myself? Because I'm recognizing some patterns that keep happening year after year when things get really busy, when things get really chaotic, or when things aren't really going as planned. And the first thing that I stop showing up for is me.
So again, I want you to maybe ask your question to yourself. Why haven't you been doing the things you keep saying you're going to do? And this isn't about guilt or shame. It's about awareness. Life gets busy, we get overwhelmed, and suddenly the promises we make to ourselves take a backseat. But here's the truth. If we can't commit to ourselves, how can we expect to commit fully to anything or anyone else?
That means our family, that means our loved ones, that means our work if we're a corporate leader, right? How are you gonna show up for everyone else if we aren't showing up for ourselves, if we're not committing to ourselves and doing the things we say we are going to do? So I want you to take a moment to reflect. Is it fear, fear of failure, fear of success, or fear of stepping outside your comfort zone? Is it a perfectionism thing? Is it that all or nothing mindset where if you can't do it perfectly, you just don't do it at all?
Or is it simply that you haven't made yourself a priority? Whatever the reason is, the first step is acknowledging it. And once you do that, you can start to take action. I really had to do this for myself this year because again, I kept recognizing these patterns where I, for some reason this year, this is like the one year this has happened like vividly in an extra this year. I keep saying that I wanna do certain things and then I keep finding myself bailing on that.
putting it in my Google calendar, setting it up as an appointment for myself, and then just not doing it. I keep skipping over it because I feel like other things were a priority. But the truth is, I'm your priority and those things do matter and those are things want to get closer to my goal. So for me, bit of it wasn't just, it wasn't fear of failure, it was more maybe I wasn't exactly sure what to do and I felt like sometimes I didn't have the
brain power, I felt a little overwhelmed because it was something new, it was something different. So that's what I think one of the things was. The other one I just kept doing excuses for certain workouts that I would book. So I would book a class for one of my favorite places I love to take classes at and I'd wake up feeling tired and I wouldn't want to do it. So I just stopped going. And once you honestly stop going once, it's so easy to stop going again because you've broken that promise to yourself, right? So was trying to figure out why I did that.
Why is it that I was like, you know what? I don't wanna go. And it kept getting in the back of my head that I didn't have the time, but I know that's not true. I absolutely had the time to go over there and go do it. So what else I had to question myself was holding me back from getting my butt up and going over there. So that's some stuff that some questions that I had to ask for myself this year. And movement is a big priority for me. I'm obsessed with movement. I've been an athlete my entire life, but what I think that...
I got in my head about this year was that since I retired from American Ninja Warrior, I almost internally started thinking like, what am I doing this for? Like, why am I going to go in here and work out really hard if I'm not even training for something? But the truth is you're training for life, right? We're training for life. I want a high quality life. I want to feel good. I want to look good and all those things. And movement is a big piece of that. And for me, a lot of times the classes are very helpful because I feel like I'm a part of something again, right?
And that's exactly why I love having women being a part of our pull-up community and our Strong Feels Good community because you're a part of a community. It's a bigger thing. So I really just sit there and ask myself this and say to myself this year in 2025, I'm going to commit to that. I'm not gonna stop doing it. I'm not gonna just say, I don't feel like it. It's gonna be a priority. I'm going to show up. I'm going to make it happen. And for the bigger picture.
And if I do start to make myself excuses, I'm going to ask myself these exact honest questions. Why? Why am I not committing myself to show up to make it happen? And if there's a deeper issue, maybe there is maybe something that you committed to you really didn't want to do. That's okay too. Really acknowledging that and really getting a better understanding of that is going to help you so much in this upcoming year. Now for me, 2024,
also really wasn't the year that I expected it to be. When I reflect back on it now though, I really kind of saw that coming from the beginning because even when I put together my vision board and even when I put together all my beginning of year planning, something just didn't internally feel aligned and right with it. And I also was already in a place where I wasn't feeling very comfortable.
and the relationship that I was in and I wasn't feeling comfortable in other areas of my life. So I feel like when I made the vision board, I didn't really make it from a place of true clarity. I didn't really take a moment to truly be still and ask myself what I wanted. I just kind of threw a bunch of stuff on there. So even when I looked at it, it didn't feel like what I wanted, but I wasn't really sure what I wanted. Right. So I didn't really hit some big flashy goals that I set out for myself.
because again, I feel like I wasn't actually clear. I am 34. I'm now still single. I don't have kids and I'm not a millionaire yet. And at first glance, it might look like I fell short, but when I look deeper into 2024, I realized that it wasn't about doing these external things and these things on my vision board. It was much more about doing internal growth and internal work, which I'm still doing right now.
So 2024 to me was healing from that heartbreak and learning to really truly love myself again. And that's a really big piece of this year coming up is this wasn't just in my relationship. This was coming up in all different areas of my life where I was allowing external noise to get into my head to make me feel like I wasn't good enough or to make me feel like the decision I made wasn't a good one. And I had to really truly
explain myself fully and I was stressed about it when at the end of the day When you learn to love yourself and you internally trust yourself those decisions you're like, yes, like that's my decision your beliefs that you have you like, yes, that is my beliefs and no one is gonna crack you right? So I feel like it really helped me with that because there are certain things I wasn't fond of and I didn't really like but I always kept kind of putting
bringing back and putting myself down about those things because either my partner or other people had a different opinion on it. And it was really important for me to take a moment to gain that awareness and to, like my friends love to say, is get a little curious as to why that keeps coming up. Like, why does that keep coming up? Because just like we said, if you're not committed and showing up for the movements or the goals that you set for yourself, it really expands into other areas of your life.
It's the same thing that goes for this for me as a CEO to get to the next level that I want to go to get to the next level in the speaking and the high levels rent rooms that I am in. It really requires the next version of myself and the next version of myself is really. So into her beliefs and she is open obviously to listening to other people's beliefs, but
she isn't gonna let anyone else's beliefs deter her because she's so true and she's internally knows exactly what she wants for herself. And I feel like that's really important clarity that I had gotten. There were some friendships and other things that just didn't align with where I wanted to go this year and maybe didn't make me feel the most comfortable. And I felt really bad for...
not talking to these people or just kind of like just backing away from it. And my friend reminded me that that I have a choice to do that and that's okay. And I got to own that. And I feel like that's so important to remind ourselves of. It's okay if we made that choice. We don't need to feel bad for anybody else. We don't actually have to have an explanation for anyone else. All we have to do is have that explanation for ourselves. And I feel like that's something that's super big.
So yeah, heartbreak. But I became the best dog mom ever. Like my dog is the love of my life and I'm obsessed with her. And I never had a dog before. Side note, I always had a cat and my cat was amazing. I an amazing cat named Felix. I had her for 18 years. I adored her. But man, having a dog is a whole other thing. I mean, she is just my best friend. We do everything together and...
I'm so grateful that I was able to become a good dog mom and take her to do all these other things this year. So again, wasn't necessarily on my vision board and a big goal I set out to, but a win that I saw for myself from the internal piece to now being the dog mom. I built a team. honestly, I've said so many honestly pieces in here. Two years ago,
I shut down everything that I was doing online because it became very overwhelming and I realized it wasn't going in the direction that I wanted it to go in. And I had a couple of team members, nothing crazy. But I also never really knew that I was gonna become this CEO, that I was gonna become this boss of people, right? I had no idea how to lead. I mean, I know I was already leading, but I really didn't have an understanding of that. And when...
We started to grow the team this year. There's a lot of things that I had to do. I had to have hard conversations. I had to set the standard right away. And I had to really step into a true leadership role. I have to say, stepping in that leadership role has definitely been tough and a growing experience. It's something I really needed to do. But I adore the women who are on my team. Every single one of them, they...
care so much about the mission that we have to help these women get their pull up to feel strong and confident in their body. And they care so deeply. It's so much more than them just working for me. And that from there, that set the standard. And that is why the team is thriving. Because we truly are a team. We care about each other. We care about the mission. And when something goes wrong, it's never about me. It's never like, what do we do to Angela? It's like, this is about this. Let's bring it back to the ladies. What can we do?
to show up better and yeah, I had to go through that piece of learning how to grow, how to lead, how to delegate, how to set up tasks and also how to stop touching things. I'm so bad. If any other CEOs or leaders on here, you might know that it's hard sometimes to lose control, like to put control into somebody else's hands and trust them to do it and not feel like, let me just do it myself. So a lot of growing on my end with that and
Man, there were so many times that I wanted to give up. So I'm like, I'm not good at this. I'm like, not meant to do this. But I kept going and kept going. And I really truly see that in 2025 with this clear vision that I can see exactly where it's going to go and knowing and trusting, trusting again, trusting myself that I can do this. Right. And yeah, maybe again, maybe some of these relate to you. Maybe you feel like you slipped into your leadership role this year as well.
With that leadership role, we were able to help hundreds of women this year conquer their first pull-up. We went all in with doing our workshops every single month. That was the first time we did that for even we did it for like two years, a year and a half, two years. We did the same thing every month. We just kept repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, seeing what worked, what didn't work. And we were able to double our revenue. And what's wild is the whole time. And I'm getting much better with this. This year is one of my 2025 goals is to be
like even more in on the numbers of my biz, but we doubled our revenue. I didn't even realize it because I did spend a good amount of money this year on getting coaches to help me with this process. But I honestly didn't even recognize it. And it reminded me what happens with a lot of women when they come into our Pull Up Revolution program, our Strong Fields Get Program, right? So a lot of times,
And I say this in so many podcasts. I'm sorry if you're hearing this again. When you're in it, you don't really see the bigger picture. And then when you finally zoom out, you do. That's why, you know, measuring things and having something to measure is really, really important because sometimes you just don't think that you're actually seeing progress, but then you actually zoom out and you're like, wait, actually, if I just keep sticking to this, like this is going to work. And it's the same thing with like weight loss, right? Or getting your pull up. may not think you're showing up every day. You're doing the things consistently every day.
think that you're getting anywhere and then you zoom out and you're like, my goodness, actually. So it was really cool to see the numbers at the end of the year and be like, wait, did I really? And it was funny because my wing woman kept trying to tell me that she kept like when things were going wrong, I'm like, things are going wrong, duh. And she'd be like, Angela, look back at the numbers, reflect on, look at this, we're doing it, we're getting there, okay? Maybe it's not perfect, but we're getting there. But what they like to say, new levels, new devils. So there's a lot of things that haven't happened, but I'm going to this year be really conscious about always.
before I'm like emotionally reacting to anything, like looking at the numbers and looking at the proof to really understand the picture and really becoming what I'm liking to call a master problem solver. Cause that's exactly what you are as a CEO is exactly what you are as a leader. That's exactly what you are as a mom, right? We are master problem solvers. And we can just think of ourselves as that. Then when things go wrong, we're just going to be like, okay, something went wrong. I'm just going to solve the problem instead of.
beating ourselves up, why did it go wrong? No. Okay, cool, things went wrong, didn't go the way we wanted. Okay, what can we do to solve the problem and really bring it back to that I think is really, really important, not breaking under the pressure. And what I've definitely realized is that while I have moments like that where I'm like, I never break. I don't break. Another podcast we did, it's like that anti-fragilness. I'm gonna find a way to keep going in my...
Wingwoman has said this so many times to me. She's like, anyone's gonna figure out stuff out, it's gonna be you. And that's like, yeah, a huge indicator of that I'm going in the right direction. I reconnected with my love for speaking on stages and sharing my message. I get to speak on a lot of stages this year and I'm obsessed with it. I love speaking, I love sharing my message. I love sharing the wisdom of it. And I kept saying year after year that this is what I wanted to do. I've been saying this now
long time and I've kind of been like sprinkling and doing a couple here or there this year I did like I think about eight or 10 and
I love it. I love it so much. And it makes sense that I love it because being a gymnast who was a performer, a fitness, Miss Fitness America, also a performer, being on stage in American Ninja Warrior, also a performer, it makes sense that the next piece of this is for me to be in some kind of stage. I never really understood, you know, why do I love the stage so much? But
Through all I've gone throughout my years, I feel like I've lived multiple different lives. I've learned so much and I've gained so much wisdom. And I love being able to bring that wisdom and share it with everyone so that I can help them be successful, especially with our corporate, our leaders, our CEOs. Everything relates, right?
Overcoming challenges is obviously hard, but there is a method behind it. There is a way to do it and there's a way to come out of it and always think of it as an opportunity, like I said, as a master problem solver. So I'm really loving sharing that message. And this year I already have, I think, two locked down, which is really exciting. So a big goal for that this year, which I'm really excited about to continue to get more stages. It's just something I absolutely love doing.
Strengthen my incredible friendships that mean the world to me. I had amazing friendships this year. So I was really grateful for that I met just a great group of women who I could call literally at any time and I'm just really Really grateful. I never felt like I had like a super crazy
close friend group like that. They all did. A lot of them got married and a lot of them are in like, know, relationships now. So it's a little tough because I miss them. But they're still always there for me no matter what. But yeah. And yeah, I tried new things in the business. Some things worked, some things didn't. But I'm proud of myself for just trying it because there were things that I...
kept looking at other people and seeing what everyone else was doing and I'm like, oh man, I guess I need to do that and I did it, hated it, I don't need to do that anymore. So just really learned and gained new skills from doing that. So again, wanted to show you that I'm looking at all these different things because although I didn't have the big wins, the big stuff on my vision board that I feel like actually came true, I feel like there was just so many learnings this year which is so important and that's okay. Some years aren't about big wins.
Some years are about laying a foundation. They're about learning who you are. They're about learning what you truly want and learning what you truly need to let go of. I know that this year is paving the way for the foundation for my next year, which is going to be a breakthrough year. I'm just gonna say it now. It's a breakthrough year. Angela is coming out of the woodwork, be ready. And here's the thing. Some years are about growth. They're not about the goals and that's okay.
Some years help us find clarity on what we do want. Some years challenge us in ways that make us uncomfortable, but those challenges are really opportunities for growth. And if you're in a a season of winter right now, which is exactly what I felt like I was in, where things felt cold, stagnant, or maybe uncertain, remember this, after every winter, there's a spring and there's a summer. So growth is happening, even if you cannot see it yet.
growth is happening even if you can't see it yet.
I feel like I was doing this the other day and I thought this was really interesting to do. So you know for what if it all goes right, my podcast, I love giving action steps. So I'm in the car and I'm going through my year and I've just been reflecting so much lately. And I said to myself, with these moments, in this moment right now.
I always typically want to call a friend, phone a friend, someone help me, talk me through this, whatever. But I said, what if I give myself a pep talk?
because
Like we say before, no one's coming to save you, but you can save you, right? But maybe you just need to speak it out loud and literally give yourself a pep talk. Okay? So I was in my car, I'm driving, and I'm like, I'm going to give myself this pep talk right now. And I'm going to pretend as if I am giving advice to a friend because don't we feel, and I'm sure so many of you listening in here feel this way, you probably give great advice, but then you're like, why am I not taking that advice? Why can I not?
Give it to myself and you literally can. Because you literally have the answers inside of you. Your friends, your therapist, whoever you talk to, they're never really giving you the answers. They're giving you questions to help you discover the answers for yourself. Right? And you can even give yourself a pep talk and snap yourself out of any moment. So I want you to ask yourself some hard questions. You can grab a journal, sit in a quiet place and reflect on this. Like I said, I did this out loud while I was just driving in my car.
And I literally asked myself, why haven't I been doing the things I say I'm going to do? And again, going back from the beginning of the podcast, certain times where I keep saying, I'm going to go to this workout, and I'm just not going. Like, why am I not going? Like, what is, what's the deal, Angela?
What am I afraid of? Am I afraid of anything? What excuses am I making for myself? I'm tired. You're probably tired because you're not doing movement and you're not eating. And if I were to give myself my give of advice to a friend in my situation, what would I say to them? And how can you give that same advice to yourself?
And I want you to just to remind you of that right now. Give yourself that pep talk when you need it.
ask yourself those questions. Again, I always tend to try and go to phone a friend or lean on someone. And there's nothing wrong with that. You can totally still go lean on a friend. But I, in this season of my life, said to myself, you know what? I really want to turn internally and try and work on this myself and see what answers I can find myself to get curious, to sit in stillness, to really get a better understanding of what I need. And also, you can reframe what some successes look like if that's something that's beating you up internally, right? So
You don't need to focus on big external wins. You can ask yourself, internal wins have I experienced this year? What challenges have helped me grow? What clarity have I gained about what I truly want?
And you can just take one small step after this, after your little pep talk, after going through this, you don't need to overhaul your life overnight. You can literally start small. So what's one promise you and I can make to ourselves this week? And how can I and we hold ourselves accountable to that promise? Is it writing it out?
What is it that we're gonna do? Celebrate your progress, not your perfection. It's not about doing it all, it's about doing something. Every step forward is progress, So.
I just want you take a moment and reflect on that. And I want us to hold each other accountable. And I'm going to go through and show you, well, not show you, but tell you more of what I had done to really make this a reality for myself to really zoom out. And this is something that I'm sure a lot of people have already done already, but I'm definitely have ADHD. So it's really hard for me to get sometimes really organized with my goals when I'm feeling like a little bit all over the place. So the vision board is a great visual indicator, but I really wanted to lay out.
some goals that I knew that I was gonna really achieve. So I'm just gonna pull this up. I made a brain dump on a piece of paper and I wrote on top of it like my big quote, I'm a leader, visionary, confident leader, I'm a master problem solver. The secret to success is typically lies and things you're doing every day, which is super true. There's these things that you keep doing to yourself that are either helping you or they're not helping you, right?
So you could actually, the secret to success could be in what you're doing every day. And also the secret to your failures could be in what you're doing, what you're not doing every day that you're skipping, that you're procrastinating or whatever it might be. So I bring them to everything. And then I sat here and I made the goals that I wanted for this upcoming, we'll call it Q1 just to be very businessy. And I wrote exactly for my business, the numbers that I wanted to get into my free event that I'm doing in January, exactly how much revenue
would make me feel good and my team good and everything like that, what exactly that would look like, exactly what I want to do with the podcasts, movement, stuff for speaking, I'm really optimizing stuff and different things to stick to certain saving plans and financial goals that I have, right? So I wrote that all out for Q1.
Like exactly what that looks like those, like, I mean, if I were to think about what success would look like in Q1, what would it actually look like? And how do I, what standard do I have to like hold for myself? And what do I need to commit to and show up every day? And as I show up for, for this every day, it's going to help for my team as well. Right. And so I also wrote it out for personal. So, creating a more structured weekend day, getting movement in everyday note, non-negotiable. I really need to stop scrolling.
I get down this like TikTok rabbit hole sometimes. I love conspiracy theories, but it's not serving me so it needs to go. And sticking to my budget so hard, sometimes I'm just like excited about things, but I really wanna hit certain milestones for financial goals this year, so that I can start to create the life that I want with, you know, maybe at some point being able to buy a home and things along those lines. So I just wanna get really.
really like stick to that and look at it. And it's all these things that I've been saying I'm gonna do, but they haven't really been on paper or in front of me. So you're never gonna know if you're gonna get there. So just stuck to these and I'm just talking to myself about Q1. I'm not thinking about the entire year for myself right now. I'm like, what about if I can just really crush this in Q1? And then I went down and I mapped this out into daily, weekly and monthly things that I need to be doing in order to hit those goals. So they're all divided out. So for business, I everything I need to do daily.
that it's going to help me get to the goals that I created, okay? Personal, same thing, everything I need to do daily in order to get me to the goals that I want to. And it's not a crazy list, like with my personal one, this is a manifesting track I like to listen to, gratitude, drinking water, getting movement in, scrolling less, I mean it's really not that crazy.
And then for business, it's things that are really important, like make sure I'm actually focusing on income generating tasks and not a bunch of random things, because that's hard for me sometimes. Posting, stuff for speaking, there's lots of stuff in there. So really getting clear on what those daily things are that I need to do. And then what's really cool is when you are able to check those off daily, you'll be like, I'm definitely going to get closer to my goals. And then for weekly, same thing. I wrote it out.
I want to make sure every single week I'm sitting down, I'm going on my budget tracker and I'm writing all the numbers in, I'm gaining awareness around my finances and not avoiding them. I want to make sure every week I'm sitting down, I'm planning out my workouts, I'm putting them in my Google calendar, I'm going to make it happen. Order, go get groceries and have the meals all mapped out. Deep clean my apartment, check into my mall, see my friends, do something with Pepper, yay. And for business, know, same thing, a of stuff with finances.
writing stuff for the podcast, financial tracker, team reviews, all sorts of stuff all in here on We Weekly. And then I have the monthly, like what do want to do every month? For a big one, again, personal sale at the end of the month, really go through all those finances and just really check in to see where I'm at. And business, I have a lot of things too. It's really at the end of the month more of like...
tracking, like seeing if I stuck to all these things and where we're at with them, which is really important. So I want to invite you to maybe do something similar. Brain Dumbadalla, do it like this, daily, weekly, monthly goals, have it all written out. Again, like I have mine personal business. You might have yours like personal work, family or something. And then what I did is we use a software in my business, which I've been avoiding, but it's so helpful when you have this.
You can schedule it out in that task manager with the exact days you're going to do it. You can set it as a reoccurring daily task or reoccurring weekly task. And then what's really cool about it is once you have this all set out and put here, you've literally set it and forget it. cause you're going to go, you're going to know every day, it's going to show up soon. It's going to say, is what you have to do. And you know that you're hitting each piece in there. So you're not just like scrambling to try and figure it out. It's already predetermined and pre-planned.
what you were doing and you're going to do that and it's going to get you closer to your goal. So I thought that was really helpful for me to really help with my 2025 with my breakthrough year because I am determined to do stuff for myself to keep focusing on myself to really commit to myself and what I know that I want and I see to be true and just really taking full control of it. This is me taking control. This is me taking ownership. And while I had like some of this before, it was a little bit messy. This is much more
clear to really get you to your goals. And every week you can evaluate if something that you put for your daily isn't working. Okay, cool. You can adjust it. having it all planned out is going to be super important. yeah. So looking ahead, if you're watching this, this is the year 20, 25. I'm not really focusing on flashy goals or external achievements. I'm still definitely going to be focusing on alignment, saying true to myself, my values.
Really creating the life that I want to create and sticking to it and just really going all in on it. And if you're reflecting on your year and feeling like you've fallen short, I want to challenge you to shift your perspective and ask yourself, what did you learn this year? How have I grown? What am I proud of? Because the truth is, even when it feels like nothing is going right, you're still moving forward. You're still growing and the growth is setting you up for something absolutely incredible. So.
I know we went in a couple of different tangents here on this podcast. I promised myself I'm to be recording the podcast weekly. So here we are. And it's so funny. Sometimes I don't fully know what I want to talk about, but there's always something that comes up each week because as I'm continually learning and growing, I know that everyone's probably going through similar things and they, you all probably relate to it, which is great. And yeah, I'm just really happy to have you here. And this is something that's been really
Exciting for me. I'm really enjoying doing these podcast episodes. So I just want to say thank you so much for joining on this heartfelt reflective episode of What If It All Goes Right. And remember, being honest with yourself is the first step to real growth. It's not easy, but it's always worth it. And if this episode resonated with you, I want you to share it with a friend or tag me on social. I'd love to hear your reflections and small promises that you're making to yourself this week.
And until next time, I want you to keep growing, keep showing up and keep asking yourself, what if it all goes right? What if it's already going right?
