Okay ladies, we are officially four weeks into owning our business hustle. By now, you’ve read a lot about my journey as a business owner, and hopefully, you’re rediscovering your passion for your own business and mapping out your own path. This has been a topic so close to my heart, and I really hope you’ve found some value as we’ve dug deeper into these rules each week! It’s not always an easy journey, but I promise you it is SO WORTH it. Before we get into the nitty gritty of this week’s rule, let?s recap our first three rules! (And if you?re new to this series, start out by reading why I?m sharing all my Rules for Becoming a Boss Babe).

Rule # 1: Find your passion

Rule # 2: They don?t care how much you know until they know how much you care

Rule #3: Stop the Comparisons

These rules are so important to successfully walking our path towards happiness and growth. Each week, I’ve ended the topic with a challenge that will help you find your own personal success while staying true to YOU. Last week, I asked you to do the following 3 things:

• Take notice of when you are playing the comparison game.
• Write down your comparison triggers.
• Begin to consciously choose one of my tactics from last week’s rule to help you stop playing the comparison game.

Hopefully, you were able to figure out some patterns that may have you looking left when you should be looking straight ahead! It’s so important to realize YOU possess something NO ONE else has: YOU. Be unique, be different, and above all, be true to yourself.

Which ties in perfectly with this week’s fourth rule!

Becoming a #BossBabe Rule 4:

Be Unapologetically You

Ladies. I’m gonna get real with you, okay? This world needs YOU. It needs your unique perspective. It needs you to share your gifts and dreams. It needs you to share your imperfections and fears. The world needs you to share your story and it needs you to go ALL IN and live your life! In other words, the world and the people in it need you to be unapologetically you!

Have you ever felt like you’re a little…weird? Like maybe your goals are too “out there,” or that no one understands your ideas? Have you ever felt like you don’t belong and that everyone else is doing life differently (yet somehow better) than you? I have a secret for you: Everyone feels that way, at least sometimes! I have felt that way, and I’ll share about it later. For each and every one of you who has ever felt that way, I have three little words: YOU DO YOU.

Do you love renovating flea market finds? You do you. Love getting your stuff brand new from your local Target? You do you. Want to run for office? You do you. Want to stay at home with your kids? You do you. What lights you up may not light someone else up. But really, who cares? No one else will live your life for you, and if you spend your time worrying about what other people will think of you, you won’t live your life for you either.

A big part of being unapologetically you is learning to embrace your imperfections, or as I like to call it, being perfectly imperfect! I will be the first to admit that my social media and this blog do portray the happy and easy parts of my life. But I also use this space to share my imperfections and my humanness.  If you see my stories on Instagram, you’ll see plenty of me with no makeup and/or doing my imperfect best to be the mama and wife my family needs. If you look through this blog, you’ll see posts where I talk about the struggles I have gone through, and will continue to go through, as I keep transforming my life. 

That was such an important lesson for me to learn because I realized I didn’t have to be sorry for being imperfect, and neither do you! Those flaws are what make you more valuable to other people because they see how REAL you are, and they connect with that. This is such a huge thing because what you?re doing is giving other people permission to be exactly who they are, no questions asked. 

Remember I told you I have felt like I didn’t belong? When I started doing bikini competitions a few years ago, I had to deal with a lot of opinions from people in my life. Standing onstage in a bikini definitely did not belong in their idea of what I should be doing! My area of town was always very conservative, and a lot of people frowned upon it. Heck, I’m sure even some of you thought, “Heidi, why on earth are you doing that?” 

It took a lot of self-reflection, and honestly, a lot of guts to stand up and say, “You know what? I?m not doing this for you. This is a HUGE goal I?ve set for myself, and competing is something that might not be appropriate for you, but it’s something I am doing to better myself and my journey.”

Fast forward four years later, and I?ve had so many women reach out and thank me for being vocal about taking that first step. They?ll tell me that competing is something they?ve wanted to do, and seeing me gave them the courage to take that first step toward achieving their goals too! 

It?s so important to realize you have a voice. We ALL do. I think sometimes we?re just scared to share our voice because we?re afraid of not being liked or of offending someone. And we?re scared that if people truly knew the ?real us??how we think, how we feel, and the mistakes we?ve made, we?ll be rejected.

Here’s the reality: We all have this in common. Let your thoughts, your business, and your passion be whatever you want them to be, not what you feel everyone else is doing. You do you.

This week’s challenge is just 2 things, but one of them is really going to stretch you!

1. Notice and write down how many times you say the word “sorry.” If we are practicing living fully and unapologetically, let’s start by noticing how often and why we apologize. What patterns do you see? Are there people or situations that turn your roar into a whisper? Jot them down. Bonus points for this challenge is to stop apologizing so much!
2. Be vulnerable and share something REAL about yourself with someone in your life.  This is not airing dirty laundry or complaining about anything. This is you sharing the real you, the perfect and the flawed.  You’ll know that what you’re sharing is real because you won’t want to say it! You could share a goal that you have that scares you so much you don’t want anyone to know. You could share that you don’t, in fact, have it all together. Whatever! Just get real with someone and watch how the world doesn’t end. It actually expands!  

xo,

Heidi

PS: I’m sharing all of my Boss Babes tips on my YouTube Channel!

Related reading:

How to Become a #BossBabe <3 || Step One
How to Become a Boss Babe, Rule One: Turn Your Passion into a Career
How to Become a Boss Babe, Rule Two: Do It with Heart
How to Become a Boss Babe Rule Three : Stop Comparing Yourself
I am (still) Perfect?
How We Teach Our Kids (And Ourselves) To Be Brave