“It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy” - Lucille Ball
Meet Amanda:
In her own words -
"As a teenager and even into my early twenties I never realized how important it was to invest in myself, love myself or even understand who I was as a person for that matter. My thoughts always went to what others would think, I never even gave myself a chance to have a say in who I should be. I let the opinions and treatment from those around me define what I thought or felt about myself. This led to years of struggling internally with self-confidence, hard life lessons about the people I surrounded myself with and never taking care of my health.
I honestly don’t know if it was a moment or a combination of life changes that made me start to “wake up”, but either way something changed and I wanted a different life then I was leading. I wanted to be an example to my kids that would guide them into a healthy mind frame of who they were and who they would become. To do that I had to really stop and adjust how I mentally thought about myself every day. When I start to think negatively about what I am capable of achieving or how I look, I stop and identify one positive thing about myself. In addition to a positive mental outlook, I surround myself with others who believe in me, cheer me on and let me know when I am off course, this has impacted my life in ways I never thought possible. The standards I set for how I treat myself have been raised to where they should have been all along.
My growing confidence and love for myself is a work in progress, but it has put me on a path that my twenty something self would never have thought possible. I am the founder of Independently Driven, the creator of the VictoryBand. I am leading a company not only making amazing products, but we are creating a community that supports young girls and women so that they can learn to love themselves in a world that doesn’t always foster that mindset. If you take anything away from this let it be that investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. You are amazing and inspiring so give yourself the chance to prove it! I believe in you!"
*** Please follow along on instagram as well and learn more about Amanda. 52 Phenomenal Women is now in its second year! This is week 26 of 52.
Participants in this project will be supporting the efforts of Dress for Success Worldwide – Central. We are all stronger together and it is my sincere hope that we will be inspired by each other’s stories. Now is the time to celebrate as well as encourage one another. Tell your story!***