Raising Wild Hearts
An inspirational show focused on growth from challenge and ideas to take the path less traveled. Ryann Watkin interviews experts and shares resources on education, creativity, nature, spirituality, mental health, relationships, self care, and more. Ryann is a passionate speaker, mom, wife, and educator who asks questions that provoke self-awareness, meaning, and purpose. Psychology, spirituality, family— and where they all intersect— is the heartbeat of Raising Wild Hearts.
Raising Wild Hearts
Balancing Ambition and Motherhood with January Donovan, Founder of The Woman School
What if I told you motherhood is not the end of personal dreams but an expansion of them? What if the traditional view of motherhood is holding you back from achieving your dreams? This is a transformative episode featuring January Donovan, founder of the Woman School, who offers a powerful redefinition of success for mothers and women. January is a seasoned coach, a best-selling author, a wife and a mother of eight who built a multimillion-dollar business in 2 years.
💕Learn More About January and The Woman School Here
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Mothers are high performers they train harder than any other profession, that they're students of themselves, they're students of their children, they're students of their relationship, their discipline, that they are fully alive, that they take care of themselves mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. That they're not sort of this idea that they've let themselves go, this hot mess mama idea, this mommy brain. Sure, we do get foggy at certain times of our pregnancy, but we don't have to become a victim to it.
Speaker 2:Welcome, revolutionary Mama, to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. I'm Ryan Watkin, educator, mom of three, rebel at heart and passionate soul on a mission to empower and inspire you.
Speaker 2:Here we'll explore psychology, spirituality, parenthood and the intersection where they all come together. We'll discover how challenges can be fertile soil for growth and that even in the messy middle of motherhood, we can find magic in the mundane. Join me on my own personal journey as I talk to experts and share resources on education, creativity, self-care, family, culture and more. I believe we can change the world by starting at home in our own minds and hearts, and that when we do, we'll be passing down the most important legacy there is healing, and so it is. Hello friends, welcome back to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast, super excited to share today's interview with you. Today I'm joined by January Donovan. January is the founder of the Woman School. It's a mindset and skillet training school for women. She has 25 years of experience coaching women and is also a two times best selling author. Her books are called Redefine Success for Women, and this is the me I choose to be.
Speaker 2:January was featured in the Forbes list of top self-worth strategists. She built a multi-million dollar business in two years and went from zero to 40 plus countries in three years. She has shared the stage with top influencers and leaders in the world. She has a powerful mission to bring honor back to being a woman, and I know her passion will come through in this interview as you listen to it. It certainly did for me and it's interesting because January talks a lot about skill set training, mindset training, skill building, education for women, learning how to do the things that we never learned to do. And, quite honestly, it was a little bit, it ruffled my feathers a little bit when I went back through and listened, because much of what she talks about has been true for me over the past number of years since becoming a mom and really since becoming a woman, which I correlate with motherhood for me. So I'm really excited to share this interview with you because anything that ruffles my feathers, I think, brings about an air of truth for me. So January says she inspires a message of hope for women who aspire to achieve their highest potential without compromising their marriage and desire for a beautiful family life. Hello, yes, please.
Speaker 2:So she built a multimillion dollar business with her husband while raising her eight children. She believes that every woman, every woman's voice, especially mothers, are needed in every facet of society, now more than ever. So we talk about a ton in this interview. I know that you will enjoy it as much as I did. I ask her towards the end of the interview about her eight children and, like the age differences and just like the logistics of that, we also talk about her fulfillment formula, achievement and success, communication, how motherhood has culturally been looked down upon traditionally and so much more.
Speaker 2:January has kind of a new and different take on motherhood than we've traditionally talked about on this podcast and I think it's really good and I think it's um, I think it's really good and I think it's really interesting. I'm fascinated and inspired by the work that she's doing and the work that she's putting out for other women to do through the woman school. So if you are inspired by this interview, like I was, send the link to a friend and if you have an extra minute in your day, hop down and leave a review about what resonated with you and why you love listening to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. All right, let's jump into my interview with January Donovan. Hi, january, welcome to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me, ryan, I'm so grateful. Get right into some deep conversation.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm so excited. Fellow Floridian, we were chatting before we recorded and we figured out that we it's very small world.
Speaker 2:I love it. I was talking to my daughter yesterday before bedtime and she's like mom, do you talk to people all around the world? I'm like I do, and she thought that was like the coolest thing ever. I was like it's kind of pretty cool. It is pretty cool. So the first place I want to jump off with you January is success, and I want to talk a little bit about the traditional definition of success versus what we can be aiming for as mothers in this kind of new paradigm, as I'm seeing it, that we're in. I agree.
Speaker 1:So I think the traditional definition of success is really focused on achievement. It's having, it's the acquisition. What I truly believe is true success that doesn't compromise our peace or joy is actually fulfillment in every arena of our life, which also means a life of wholeness, and I think that so many women today can't even define what success is. But the automatic assumption is actually achievement, which is why so many women feel unsuccessful. They doubt their value, they feel insignificant, they feel as though they don't have anything to contribute to the world, and I think that we owe it to women to redefine it culturally, but almost also interiorly, for every woman, so that we have an opportunity to actually feel that we can contribute something good in the world, but also for those women that are achieving things void of fulfillment. Then we can say well, is that really true success? What good is having a million dollars and having all these power and position when you've lost part of who you are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because when I think of what you're talking about, what immediately comes up for me is my achieving in my motherhood. So I've achieved so much through and for them and really in myself, and there's still a piece of me that's feeling unfulfilled, because I want to do all these other things and I want to write and I want to have creative expression and I feel kind of a limitation as far as, like, the time, the busyness of the schedule, the meeting, all the people's needs. So what do you say to a mom who's like in it and feeling like she's being pulled in all these different directions and wants to express and wants to achieve and wants to be fulfilled, but feels blocked in a certain way?
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think that goes back into the first question the definition is so rooted in our system that we feel as though fulfillment is not even in the question. And let me give you what I mean as a mother. If I feel that the journey to actually achieving the book writing, achieving the business, or being fully present with my children or writing a book if that is actually the goal is to be fulfilled in context, then we can have the goals, then we can achieve those things, but it almost becomes secondary to the means. It means that the fulfillment is actually the process and not the destination. But that is evidence exactly why so many women feel like what if I want to do this?
Speaker 1:Well, the fact that you're pursuing it in context of motherhood isn't itself actually the success, right? And I think that is exactly the paradigm shift that we have to ingrain and rewire in our subconscious mind, because it's so automatic and habitual that has led to so much guilt and shame and overwhelm in one, because why am I not there yet? Why can I? Da-da-da-da-da-da, as opposed to, I am going to live fully present in the moment in context of pursuit of the dreams that I have and never apart from it, and that is, to me, is true success, because it never stops. You arrive at that next book and you write the next book and then the next summit is there. So then we're always sort of chasing the next summit of our life and never fully present and alive in the people that we love and in ourselves and our relationships, and it becomes a rat race to nowhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what I'm hearing you say is like it's this journey versus the destination. We think that the destination is going to be our happy place, quote unquote but it's actually the journey that yeah right, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it and Tony Robbins, by the way, just to prove that they did a research-based evidence of happy people. The common denominator is progress. And also, if you look at people who have achieved great things in their life and they have achieved it and you see, well, are you fulfilled? It feels good for a hot minute and then, all of a sudden, they're faced with the reality that we may achieve this goal at the cost of my daughter and I's quality time, at the cost of my relationship with my significant someone, at the cost of me actually overwhelmed and stressed. So we have to kind of. That's why I think it's a paradigm shift, because it's so drilled within us and there's a lack of role models of women that are actually modeling the pursuit with grace and in a way that allows us to say it's possible that the fulfillment is actually what we're choosing, what we're after, and not the achievement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm curious what stage of motherhood or womanhood you were in when you discovered this for yourself, and obviously now you're teaching that, but when did you really tap into it and start living it?
Speaker 1:Gosh. So my journey began as a college woman with a mentor that trained me with mindset and skillset unbeknownst to me. There was no language for it. I met her my college, my first month of my college year, and she said January, do you know? What kind of woman do you want to be? And I said Elena, that's silly, you don't have a choice. I guess you do, let's design you for. So for three and a half years I met with her almost every single month, except for the summer. She would give me homework and I would submit my homework, and that became my accountability. My first homework was to get rid of a comparison competition, build a routine to get up at 4.30 in the morning to pray, plan, rep, organize and then make my bed.
Speaker 1:So why am I mentioning that? Because that became almost just a way of being in my life. So all through my college years and then in my motherhood, it wasn't the fulfillment was always the destination and never the achievement. It wasn't the fulfillment was always the destination and never the achievement. So I think that, and you know, it wasn't until later in life that I realized oh, I was training women for free. I realized, in order to achieve millions, not just thousands. I need to build a business. And then I started to kind of dream and expand, but I don't think it was ever at a point of motherhood. I think it was the training that I received prior to motherhood that gave me almost the compass to the journey, as actually the journey is actually where fulfillment happens and not just the destination.
Speaker 2:Right. So you had the infrastructure already built. Going into your motherhood, you had already created these daily habits that made you able to achieve while still being present, while still feeling that fulfillment, while understanding that it's the daily things that add up to a life well-lived.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, but also the continuous training and what I mean by that you know I, I obviously I teach what I teach because I believe in it so much and I feel like I didn't have anything special in my life to help me transition into mother mother in a way that's smooth. I had four children under four. At one point and I looked at it was smooth, I got. I you know it was a heartache was I was able still to study daily. I was still able to train women, but that was because of a training that I received, but also the continuous training that I continue to do because of the foundation it gave me. So even at, you know, pregnant, I still got up at 430 in the morning to learn a new skill set. That was not, it was just part of a way of life that I was privileged to taste. That gave me the continuous, I would say, and continue to, because that you know, kind of you know when I hit a roadblock, what skill do I need to develop? So that was always sort of the challenge and continues to be. That just became habitual in my kind of in my motherhood and achieving things that I feel like seemed impossible. But then I just learned a skill and move on to the next level and do so without compromising, I think, motherhood, which is why I think so much of the root cause of why women are, in you know, unfulfilled or incapable of, I think, being able to achieve the great things that they're called to create, whether in their home or outside their home, is simply because they lack the training.
Speaker 1:That, to me, is the antidote. Like, an untrained woman suffers unnecessarily. You know, we make 35,000 decisions a day and we don't have decision-making skill, we have decision fatigue as mothers by the time 10 o'clock comes. We don't have automated decision skills, we don't know how to draw from boundaries, we don't have standards, we don't know how to pivot. These are skills that are non-negotiable, not just for mothers but for single women, for finding the right partner in our life, for our careers. These foundational skills that I believe, if we just gave women the how, they wouldn't have to suffer, feeling self-doubt, this idea that they can't achieve the things that they're called to create.
Speaker 1:So that, to me, I think, is the antidote, is training. Olympians train, athletes train, business owners train, and if you think about every great thing that they've achieved, they've had to train. And yet women, just because we're born women, we're expected to know how to be one, how to nurture, how to care, how to manage our mind, our emotion. Just think about this, ryan If we go into the relationship without subconsciously burying the scale up, that communication is 7%, only words, 38% tonality and 55% body language. And yet we go in this relationship and we wonder why we have so much friction in our communication skills. If that's not drilled in our subconscious mind, it's gonna be hard to have any relationship, yeah, whether it's friendship or our significant other or our coworkers. So we really are suffering unnecessarily because we are undert-trained.
Speaker 2:Right. So why do you think we're not learning this in school and how do you envision like an education system, perhaps, where our children do get some of this? Or do you think that's like a job that's done at home, or both?
Speaker 1:I think both, while we can't give what we don't have. You know, I can't look at my children If I'm not pursuing a dream that fulfills me, not just in context of achievement. I can't look at my children and say, this is how you achieve a dream. I can't also look at my children and say, as mothers, you give up on your dreams. I have to walk and model for them. So what I think?
Speaker 1:Your first question is why isn't, I think, our world dramatically shifted in the last hundred years? If you think about technology changing the way we communicated, the infrastructure that we used to have when we were living right next to our aunts and uncles there wasn't built in, I would say infrastructure support system, and uncles there wasn't built in, I would say infrastructure support system. So what happened, I believe, is that the world grew fast and furious and we did not catch up with the right skill set and create the right infrastructure in an information world. Secondly, there is an assumption that information equals transformation and in an information world, where information is coming at our fingertips a million miles an hour, we presume that when we read a book, we become that book, that when we read a podcast, we become that podcast. It's like Michael Phelps, simone Biles reading a book on becoming a gymnast and assume that they will become a masterpiece. So I think that confusion is actually causing a lot of burden, that women read hundreds of books and not actually become that person. It creates more anxiety than it is actually freedom. And the third thing is that because life is so busy and fast, we're not stopping and taking the time to make study part of our daily life. So I think those three things the infrastructure, the world changing.
Speaker 1:So I think those three things the infrastructure, the world changing, a world going so fast and just the breakdown of the infrastructure is, I think, what's caused it. Now, why are we not learning in our school system? Well, I think our school system is pumping information almost to a point of, I think, ruining the quality of our life. You think about the homework that they pump into our children, and we have studies now that say that we shouldn't even have homework at kindergarten. They should be enjoying play and creativity, and so I think there needs to kind of almost, an overhaul although I'm not as hopeful to be sincerely honest with you in our infrastructure currently that there will be a systematic change, because I think systems are hard to change, which is the reason why I think the women's school, to me, is a replacement or the supplement to the education system of information, where it's really about training, it's really about not knowing that you need to learn decision-making skill. How do you rewire your brain, how do you actually understand it and then build the skill after skill. So that, to me, I think is a solution is that there's no school on how to be a woman, and the way our school is set up is that it's not just courses, it's really our core four, which is there's a course, a community, a coach and your commitment, because I don't think that it's possible. Apart from it, because when you think about athletes, you think about anybody that trains. They really have accountability, they really have training. So to me, it's so bold, but what would be the paradigm shift? Be the paradigm shift.
Speaker 1:Women come to school to study as a way of life and it doesn't end ever. It's just a way of life, like if you think about doctors, it's always continuous education and so that when, prior to motherhood, they train and brush up on their skillset, on a rhythm of life, a routine, on boundaries, and then, when they have more children to say, okay, let me learn about the development of the child, let me learn about new skillset, layering those skillset and then relationship. That's our vision. The woman's school is that we want to be able to say listen, these are the trainings that you need to prepare yourself for the different seasons and transitions in your life. Just get your, you know your course and your accountability and your coach and then then you're able to transition in a way, because you have the training and you have people that will hold you accountable and it's just a wave of life.
Speaker 1:It's so bold, right, but I do think what else are we going to do? We're not going to change what politics is right now and we're not going to even change infrastructure. I think we need a new model. As Buckminster Fuller said, you can't fight the current model. You have to create a new model that makes the current model obsolete, and that, to me, is the bold vision is a training school on how to be a woman, and I say that people are like, hmm, what is that? And it's sort of a foreign concept, but I'm determined to help women out of their life of misery when they don't deserve that. That was one of them, yeah and until you met your mentor.
Speaker 2:Is that like the turning point for you?
Speaker 1:yeah, I would say it was the beginning of the turning point for me really, prior to that, I hated who I was and I had all, from the outside, looked like a good life, you know, but interiorly to me I was. It was a hot mess. And you know, if you look at the, the feminist movement in the last 150 years, the fight was always for freedom and equality, which I think is a noble fight. But I think it's we're ready for a new fight, because what we have actually the recent data that they came out with Stanford was that, in spite of all the freedom that women have, they're actually unfulfilled. So I think there's a new freedom to be fought in the front lines, and that's what I believe called interior freedom. That's the freedom that Viktor Frankl talks about, which is the freedom to choose our highest good, and so that, to me, the only way we're ever going to learn how to do that is to proper training.
Speaker 2:You say one of your areas of expertise is creating a restored self-image for mothers so they can be the mother they were made to be. What do you mean by restored self-image?
Speaker 1:Sure, I think we're coming at a deficit when we come to motherhood. Let's just look at the way motherhood is portrayed in our culture. It's almost like the second choice, the second class citizen. It's the alternative to this high achieving life. It's sort of the death of our dreams. It's the not so unattractive life. And we might not be saying that, we might not have the right words, we might not articulating it, but on a cultural level that's the assumption that's been, I would say, cultivated in our, I think, for generations. So the new, restored self-image, I believe, is that motherhood is not a second-class citizen. It is vital to the flourishing of society.
Speaker 1:But the new self-image is that mothers are high performers, they train harder than any other profession, that they're students of themselves, they're students of their children, they're students of their relationship, their discipline, that they are fully alive, that they take care of themselves mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Speaker 1:That they're not sort of this idea that they've let themselves go, this hot mess mama idea, this mommy brain. Sure, we do get foggy at certain times of our pregnancy, but we don't have to become a victim to it. We can redeem the way we incarnate and live our motherhood through our life of discipline and training, and I think that's a new self-image that I hope we can, I would say, promote into the world, especially because women in Gen Z are opting out of motherhood. But also, how are we advertising motherhood to our children if we are not modeling the kind of mother that feels like there's life in our life? And that's what I mean the redemption of a self-image first, primarily to our children. But I think as a culture, there's a new model of mother that I think ought to be redeemed in our culture.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting. The perception that I've received from culture, from society, is definitely the second choice. I have family and friends who cannot understand why I've made the choice to stay home with my kids, starting nine and a half years ago, and much of that choice was like I was all encompassed by, and now I'm starting to see there are ambitions that I will not compromise on and there are things that I want to do in my life in addition to being a mother. So let's talk about how we can integrate our ambitious and go-getter self with our nurturing, softer side of motherhood. How are those two integrated in your work?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. So I think that ambition does not mean we're not nurturers, and I think that's also a false narrative. I think that we can do so much, it's just that we can't do it all at once. So I think that's the assumption is that if we, you know, if we don't do it now, then the opportunity is gone and so let's leave our kids and daycare or for whatever reason. Everyone has different circumstances, so this is not me judging, but we bypass the most important years because we think it has to be now. So that's so. I think that's an important narrative is that we can just not all at once, and Rome wasn't built overnight, so that's.
Speaker 1:Number two is that we have to design our life very intentionally. What I mean by that is what does it mean to achieve the things that we want to achieve in context of our mental, emotional, physical health? What does it mean to have the right friendship? And that's why, if you go to the women's school, you have the whole arena. So let's just say I want to write a book or I want to, which I think, by the way, it's not just ambition, I think it's a call, like Sometimes we're faulted for our ambition when actually it's a mask for our contribution, the things that are placed in our hearts, the fact that I want to build a school for me, the fact that you want to write a book, the fact that you want to build a business or you want to be a doctor, a scientist. There is in there, somewhere, a North Star for your contribution to humanity that is unique to you. Nobody can do what you were created for and you can go back to biological evidence of your brain, your cell, your DNA, and realize, well, I'm an irreplaceable woman, nobody can I do unique to your story. So that's a part. So what I think that is that we have got to design our life and say how can I achieve this dream in without compromising every part of my life? So let me give an example.
Speaker 1:When I, when you know, when we built the woman's school, I, I had, you know, we were achieving this dream. We built this multimillion dollar business just shy of two years, but it was by design, I. I looked at my friendship, I looked at my schedule, I looked at my mental, emotional health. I looked at what I ate. I looked at when date night was. I looked at my home life. It can never be. Apart from it, it has to be integrated. So that's always the thing. Is that let me achieve this.
Speaker 1:While this puts on hold that, I guess, is again the paradigm shift is that let me achieve the things I was created for in context of a life of wholeness, and never apart from the fact that I am a mother.
Speaker 1:So, for me, what good is it if I've achieved these great things and we're in 40 countries and we're doing all this but I haven't taken care of myself, I haven't designed the right meals that would create healthy mindset for my children, that I haven't honored my you know my Ryan, my Ryan, and his need for me to be his partner in his dream or date night is sacred. So it's. You know, we have this thing in our school called fulfillment formula, and it's a trifecta. You need all three to be fulfilled. You need a dream. Whatever you want to pursue in context of a life of wholeness, the only way you're going to achieve it is through a life of developing your mindset and your skillset. You need all three. So that's how I tell women that you are here to fulfill the things that you're created for. Just do so through a life of wholeness, which requires a life of discipline.
Speaker 2:So good. I love that you mentioned the word calling, because I very much resonate with that word. I've been diving into that word recently because there's like a whisper I think that many of us here have of. This is the thing, like.
Speaker 2:This is the thing, and if you don't listen, it'll like come up and kind of knock you on the head. And I love, too, that you're integrating this idea of like you have to make healthy and sustainable choices throughout the day to get to the dream, to get to the calling. It's not just like, it's not just going to happen. You have to create a life that will allow it to happen with this infrastructure. That's one of the things that I struggle with. I'm very like go with the flow and like, oh, one day I'm here and the next day I'm there. And I noticed that when I get up consistently at 5 AM, my day is just better for a number of different reasons, including, but not limited to, like having some time by myself in the morning before nobody needs anything from me. So I love that.
Speaker 2:You mentioned that. You know I'm one of those people who's like yeah, but it's easy for you. I'm not that, but I know that we have a tendency to be that, Like you built this multimillion dollar business, you have eight children. You know like, oh, must be easy for you, but you're saying it wasn't actually easy. You put in the work to create the dream. Yeah, Correct.
Speaker 1:And I think the the defining factor is actually the how. It's the training, because you might want that, but where do you get access to that training? I mean, when I say training, it goes back to that core four. You need a coach, you need a course, you need a community, because who wants to get up at five in the morning? That accountability, that infrastructure that you create is what's going to hold you accountable in moments where you don't actually want to feel to live a life of discipline. So I think that's actually the root cause of the problem. Most of us have just never been shown how.
Speaker 1:And I think the danger when we don't know how and I see this through and through is that eventually we doubt our call because we don't have the hundreds of skills that we need. We don't have, we haven't built in an infrastructure of systematic rhythm of life and routine and boundaries or whatever skill that you might be lacking in your life, and so we doubt the very thing that we're here for. But guess what happens when a woman doubts her very call, that whisper in her heart, she starts to look at other women and then she starts to doubt their value. Then it goes into a comparison spiral. And then that comparison spiral leaves her own self-doubt. And then it becomes a wall to deeper connection that leads to greater loneliness. And now she's got such a wall she doesn't let anybody in.
Speaker 1:And now you put that against a world of perfection as the metric for a woman's value. She's literally stacked up against her. She wakes up one day and she realizes I don't like who I am. This is not the life I thought I wanted. I don't even know who I am and I can't stand women who actually are achieving great things. Now she's not purposely doing that. She has awakened to that aka midlife crisis because nobody is training her how which is why I'm so passionate about this because women are suffering unnecessarily and they are getting blamed and shamed for the choices nobody ever trained them to make.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what do you say to a woman who woke up like that one day and went like, oh my God, this is nothing I thought it was going to be. And now what?
Speaker 1:Now what? Well, it's not your fault for the things that you were not given, but it is your responsibility to invest your way forward. So what I would do to women is that the first thing is to honor your value enough to actually invest in you, because nothing's going to happen unless you invest in who you ought to be. So the first thing is like listen, sign me up on training. I have no idea how to do this. I'm on a fork on the road. I can continue to be in denial about the life I'm living and trust that one day I'm going to wake up and stumble into my call and maybe die without ever giving birth to it, or I could risk facing the fact that I feel like a failure. I don't like the woman coming in, but I have a chance at redemption. Yeah, and that's. That's a real choice.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you I can't say that women will choose the latter, because the world is going so fast it takes a whole lot of, I would say, accountability and humility and stop to say I can't go on like this. What often makes women actually stop is when they look at the lives of their children or their broken marriages, and then they'll say, well, wait a minute, maybe I should actually look into this. But at first glance nobody wants to sign up for hard work and the reality is that behind a beautiful life is a woman hard at work on her interior discipline. There's no way around it. There's no way around greatness. You must suffer the life of discipline.
Speaker 1:But the alternative is to never live the life you were created to live. I mean, that is a burden. That's what Thoreau said. Most men are living lives of quite desperation because we never were trained to fulfill actually why we're here on earth. And to me that is an unquenchable burden and I just ache for these women, and you can see it in their eyes. And so I'm. The hardest part of my job is selling women on themselves.
Speaker 2:That's big. So I and I feel like I've been doing some version of this work for years and I still deeply resonate with what you're saying. I do and like I see a little bit of me in that, you know, and you're not alone and I think, oh yeah, we're all in this together.
Speaker 2:Totally, and I think everyone is on some sort of end of the spectrum. You know those who are like deeply unfulfilled and struggling and some version of that on a daily basis. I also think of the quote from Carl Jung the greatest burden a child must bear is that of the unlived life of its parent or their parents.
Speaker 1:Oh, I never heard of that, but that's really profound.
Speaker 2:So good, so good. That aches my heart, wow, yeah, because I think, as moms and I'm really aware of this for me and our family we look at our kids and we want them to play out something that we never did or that we're not courageous enough to do. And that's what you're saying Be courageous enough to find the dream in your own heart and to follow that dream. And in order to do so, you need to learn some new things. We weren't taught this in school, we weren't modeled it at home, and now it's up to us to cut the shit, leave the victim story behind and learn what we need to learn to achieve what we want to achieve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but I don't even I. To me it's becoming so generational, like I, when you see an anxious mom, automatically can I'm just child you can automatically point an anxious mom, it's, it's you. You see, a child is indecisive, you can automatically. So I think that what we are seeing right now is actually generational. But the major thing that I am actually seeing is because, when I did this for 15 years for free, women dabble in their growth and what I mean by that a little bit of here when I can get up and a little bit of here. But secondly, there's not a consolidated information out there that gives you the foundation that you need. You could read a book and maybe grab one skill, which is the reason why the woman's school to me actually is the solution, because you could spend decades and maybe get a little bit, a little bit with a lot of collateral damage. Or you can do consolidated foundational training on hundreds of skills that is curated with thousands of hours underneath that and say here's your blueprint. What would take you 10 years? Would take you a year. Well, it's a lifetime, honestly.
Speaker 1:But do you see what I mean? Because even I, who've done that work, I'm always studying. I've been studying for decades of my life. Even I, who've done that work, who you know I'm always studying. I've been studying for decades of my life. My issue is that there's so much information. How do you consult that information to become actual practical application, which is so much of what I actually do in the women's school is. Take all these big things and say here's your one-two punch PDF on how to make a decision, on how to manage anxiety, how to manage when things don't happen like one pager and we'd need hundreds of those in our back pocket and not take years to learn it, because there is collateral damage from others.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, right For sure. So let's talk a little bit about discerning the dreams we have in life. So how to know if something is our dream versus, like, what we're seeing on social media, which is a really easy example. We're all kind of like out there looking at what people are doing, focusing externally. How do we quiet those external voices and tune into our own to discern what is for us?
Speaker 1:That's a great, great question. So I think the first work that a woman has to actually listen to that is actually the work of rewiring our self worth and what I mean by that. Most of us have been told you are valuable only if and when you've got power. So it's so deeply rooted in our literally cell that even when we discern our dreams we have that in the back of our mind. So I'm going to go for the book because this is going to make me rich and famous or whatever the thing is, and that's going to make me acceptable. So we actually have to rewire the 95% of our brain and retrain our thinking, just like stroke victims need to learn my worth is unconditional. I'm, I'm unique and irreplaceable. What I offer the world is so invaluable, so valuable. Why is that important? Because when we make a decision, it doesn't have that caveat. I'm not doing this to prove myself. So that's number one. And then the second thing is that we need to learn how to discover the desires of our heart, because there's a desire for every season. You know the things that I love. It you know four years ago developed right. So there's, I would say, a skill that women have to study the desires, an isolated idea of who do I want to be, who do I really want to be, what do I desire for my health, what do I desire for my friendship? And as we discover the desires of our heart, it kind of puts in context our dreams. It gives you an integrated perception, right, and say, oh, I really want an incredible, inspiring marriage where my husband wants to be with me, you know, or my children respect me. So I think that's the second part. So how do you then discover the dream? You have to taste the dream. What do I mean by that? So first you undo your self-worth, right, and then you honor the desires of your heart and every part of it and you say, okay, here's three things that I think I want to do right now. And you literally kind of explore it and you say to yourself, let me just, let me just look at a publishing company and see what that would be like to write a book. Let me just see if I can take a class on. You just take action because the next step reveals itself. So that doesn't help with discernment. What I mean when I say action. You're not necessarily committing to something. You just take action because the next step reveals itself. So that doesn't help with discernment. What I mean when I say action, you're not necessarily committing to something. You're exploring what your options are Now not to get into this, in the woman's school there's what we call three types of dreams, or sort of awakening the dream.
Speaker 1:There's a possible, stretch and impossible. Possible dreams are dreams that you know how to achieve. There's no inspiration. You know how to achieve it. Maybe you want to get another car, maybe you have a $200 car payment, maybe you want a $400 car payment. So there's no inspiration. The second one is a stretch trip. You know it's going to stretch you. You don't know how to achieve it, but you really want it.
Speaker 1:The third dream, which is really kind of where our dreams, is something that if you could, you would achieve it, but you have no idea how to achieve it. It scares you and excites you at the same time. You have no path. Like you can't see it. It's like the Wright brothers how would I build an airplane? Like, how do we get a woman's school to be a household brand? Like it's laughable.
Speaker 1:But you know it's going to require your faith. It's going to require you to jump into the unknown, of something you don't know how to achieve. You have no it's guaranteed your failure, but you're going to do it anyway because it pulsates in your heart, because it's connected to your call. See, that's the kind of dream. So we have to distinguish for the three types of dreams, because most women are probably goal setting which is a possible I'm not actually dreaming, because this dream, the impossible, are probably only really two or three. It's not, it's, it's, it's probably not as much. So that's how you discern it is. You first distinguish it and then you move into action and you say if I did build a woman's school, what would that look like for a step? Look like if I did, you know? So, um, I'm giving you kind of a, a quick snapshot of a framework and formula that we teach in the woman's school.
Speaker 2:So that's great. And while we're talking about it, I love all the examples you've used throughout this conversation. Where can we find out more about you and the woman's?
Speaker 1:school. You can go to the woman's schoolcom Uh, and then from there we have a. You can join our TWS community, where I give practical life training on a kind of daily basis, and it's where we are building an army of women that are growing and dreaming together, uh, or an Instagram that's where I primarily do. A lot of my work is um January Donovan or the woman school and Instagram.
Speaker 2:Awesome and I'm curious, before we jump into wrapping up here and I ask you the three questions I ask everybody, I'm curious the age ranges of your kiddos?
Speaker 1:Okay, so married almost 18 years, Our oldest 16,. Uh, oh my gosh. 16, 14, 13, 12, and then an eight, seven, four and three.
Speaker 2:Wowza, wow. And you say about motherhood, mother, mother. And this is why I wanted to know this, because I wanted to frame this Motherhood is not the death of dreams, rather the expansion of them. And if you really feel into that quote, I mean, that's a beautiful quote and I think the reason, probably one of the reasons that you've created the woman school, is because many women don't feel that that is true for them. Many women feel that they have had to make sacrifices, maybe like me. Uh, it feels comfortable to be a martyr and to say, well, I've given up everything so that I can pour into my children, and that's just not true. That just doesn't have to be true. So tell me where you came up with that, tell me how that plays out for you in your life, because I don't want to look at my children and say you're the reason I gave up on my dreams.
Speaker 1:I want to look at my children and say you're the reason I jumped even harder and bolder and worked even harder in my discipline so that I can model for you what it's like to fulfill and fight for your dreams. So I can't expect my children to do something I haven't done for myself. So they get to witness me getting up at 4.30 in the morning pregnant. They get to witness me being a woman of my word and honoring my commitment and I get to walk them that story. So that's where I think it lands for me, but also giving women hope. That says we have to change the narrative of motherhood. That mothers is actually where we dream harder and we discipline harder and we train harder, because now somebody's watching us and their dreams, like Carl Jung talked about, actually hinges on our capacity to fulfill our dreams, like that's powerful.
Speaker 1:You know, my son is a golfer and he is training professionally and he works about seven hours a day. He's homeschooled for it and I can look at him and say I know what it's like to fail. And then you keep going and I can look at him and say I know what it's like to fail. And then you keep going. And in moments where you know there's challenges, he'll always say Mom, you're three feet from gold. I mean because it's not what we say, it is who we are. That ultimately becomes their blueprint to fulfilling their dreams.
Speaker 1:But actually, why they're also here on earth? Because imagine giving birth to your children without giving them the training necessary to birth, the capacity that they're here on earth. I mean it has become a generational burden when unfulfilled dreams and unfulfilling lives become the narrative in our families because we lack the training. This is where we are. This is what causes anxiety. We feel constipated with our purpose and then, all of a sudden, we're anxious. Why? Because we're worrying about the future, because we think that there is something that we were here for, Absolutely. We just don't have the training to give birth to it. Mm-hmm, but it was ours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think many of us have watched our parents and our grandparents even, or great-grandparents, put their dreams aside. I mean I think that was a very common thing. I mean I asked my now 96-year-old grandmother once this was years ago like what would you have done if you could have chosen anything? She had six children and she was a homemaker by all definition and I said, what would you have done? And she just couldn't even like, she didn't even know, she didn't have that dream discerned for her, possibly because it wasn't possible at that time, but some would argue maybe it was.
Speaker 2:I heard someone talking about a book from the 1920s who were talking about essentially all the personal development things that we talk about today. So it just wasn't as commonplace maybe. But I find that interesting and it's something that I've had to filter through is like the unlived life of my family and generational thing. Yeah, it's a real thing. So I think that's a profound mission in the work that you're doing is to put an end to it.
Speaker 2:Like I always talk about being the cycle breakers, Like this is one of the things that we have a duty and a commitment to as mothers is to define what those dreams are, and perhaps I would argue, maybe that dream for some people is to be a mom and to homeschool your kids and to educate them and to be the best at that. Like I once had a coach say to me, like if you're going to be a stay-at-home mom and that's really your dream, then you be the best damn stay-at-home mom there is like the best for you and the best there is, and that's not for me, like it turns out.
Speaker 2:Spoiler alert that's not my dream, you know it's more multifaceted than that, but I think, whatever that dream is for you, once you discern which is really important, to really live that out fully and that's what you're helping women do, I can see. So we're going to wrap up now and I'm going to ask you the first of three questions that I ask everybody at the end of the interview, and the first one is what's bringing you joy today?
Speaker 1:Oh, just today, Just just today, oh, the first thought that really came to my mind is my husband. I mean, he's just my constant and he loves me very tenderly, and it's by all the crazy things, yeah, he brings me, he just gives me great joy.
Speaker 2:Nice. What, if anything, are you reading right now?
Speaker 1:I am reading. I just finished reading the End of Woman. That's the book which is really fascinating about the journey of woman, and I'm just reading right now Lewis Perry's book. There's two books, I mean Lewis Perry's book, sexual Revolution, the consequence of the sexual revolution, by Lewis Perry I was reading that, I'm looking at my library right now, and the Devil and Belladod, or the Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and then I just started the Devil and Belladod.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, thank you. And then the last question I have for you, january, is who or what has taught you the most?
Speaker 1:Who or what Gosh my faith. I think my faith has taught me a lot about being a woman and, at the end of the day, I can't control what happens in life. I can only control my attitude towards life and I think that's given me the detachment to know that there is a purpose beyond this life and that think that's given me the detachment to know that there is a purpose beyond this life and that becomes, I think, the compass on which I live my life and is giving me freedom and peace, I think, in the journey.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Thank you so much for showing up today and all your wisdom and sharing and pouring into us. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.