Celebrating the Peaks

For us entrepreneurs, a significant portion of our lives is spent creating new things. There are three ways I tend to characterize us. We are builders, making something out of nothing. We are cliff divers, taking risks and trying new, even daunting, things. We are mountain climbers, rising to new challenges and finding ways to tackle them one step at a time. Most of the time, we keep building, diving, and climbing, moving from one challenge to the next. This kind of work is some of the most fun I have had in my career. 

But today I want to do something else. I want to celebrate a mountain that I have climbed, and reflect on it a bit. I hope that it encourages YOU to celebrate something in YOUR life and to reflect on it (I’d be happy to be a sounding board for you). For those of you who know me, you know that I have been into fitness my entire life. From dancing to running to lifting at the gym, I have loved being active and moving my body. That has shown up in different ways over the last few decades, from choreographing as part of a dance group in college to getting certified as a Less Mills BodyJam instructor to teaching dance fitness at local gyms for a decade. 

At the same time, I grappled with so many dimensions of my wellness journey. Here are some of the things I got curious about in the last decade…

• What are things outside of fitness that I need to be well?

• How does fitness fit into a more holistic wellness picture?

• What is a framework for how I want to live my life that includes my passion for social change and my desire to be grounded in wellness?

• What are the practices that I need to do every week to feel well?

• What does taking care of my mental health look like?

• How do I track my wellness in a way that isn’t overwhelming or overly cumbersome, and instead encourages continued positive wellness behavior?

• What does success, or being well, look like? 

• What are the wellness outcomes that are important to me? 

• How do I balance having clear outcomes to strive for, but keep my head down and focused on the daily practices that are critical for getting there?

• How do I get out of my own way and not thwart my own progress?

• When I lapse or regress, how do I mentally and physically get back to progress?

• How do I avoid, or even curtail, getting stuck in a cycle of progression and regression, going up the hill and sliding back down?

• How do I balance wanting to be well with wanting to succeed at work?

• How do I maintain motivation and a sense of self-efficacy when wellness change is slow and non-linear?

  
  

Do any of these resonate? Have you ever asked yourself these questions? If so, we have a lot in common on this journey called life. 

Over the years, I have explored these questions and experimented with possible answers for myself. A lot of trial and error, a lot of stops and starts, a lot of climbing up the mountain and sliding back down. All of those attempts started to build momentum and maybe even wisdom on this topic. 

I can’t explain why, but this year, a lot of my thinking and trying coalesced into more steady progress. Maybe it was the culmination of years of trying to get some things right about my wellness. Maybe it was a year when I had more flexibility in my schedule. Maybe it was a year where I felt like I could take more risks and still keep Monarch steady. Maybe the universe had a plan for me for 2025. Either way, here are some of the things I am celebrating, knowing there may be a few more things to add by the end of the calendar year:

1. I found the right wellness tracking approach. I finally got my wellness tracking sheet optimized in terms of the practices I tracked, how I tracked them, the outcomes I tracked, how I tracked them, and how conditional color coding and quarterly averages provided the cherry on top. What I love about what I landed on is how simple it is. It’s easy. I fill in my tracking sheet daily, and it takes under a minute. On Fridays, I look at my week and do a written reflection to celebrate, reflect, troubleshoot, and plan for the next week. 

   
   

2. I got in the best shape of my life. Starting at the end of May 2024, I decided I wanted to not only get back in shape, but get into the best shape of my life. I worked hard every week, focusing on my practices over my outcomes. I had moments of frustration and exhaustion, but I kept going. I saw a lot of progress in 2024. In 2025, with the help of my refined wellness tracking, I was better able to see my progress, understand where I needed to improve, and better see my progress towards my stated outcomes. My focus this year was on consistency. And I have indeed executed on that for the last forty-some weeks. Just this week I hit some of my goals, and I can say that I am in the best shape of my life.

   
   

3. I got a nationally recognized personal training certification. This has been a lifelong goal of mine. I remember having my mom take a picture of me pretending to run, and I made a flyer to advertise myself as a personal trainer and taped the flyers around my parents’ neighborhood. Suffice to say, I got zero replies. In 2016, I bought personal training materials from the American Council on Exercise (ACE), but I didn’t have the bandwidth to dig in the way I wanted. I can tell from the online coursework that I tried again in 2019 and 2022. Every time I tried, I pushed a little farther. I made a study plan for tackling such a large volume of information. I moved through more of the reading and online material. This year, I had a slower Q3 for my business, and I said to myself, this is it. This is your window. There will never be a time when you have this openness to focus on your studying. This is your shot. Take it. And from about 5am to about 8pm for about two months, I studied that material with more intention and determination than I had ever done in my life. I took the test and saw that I had passed. More than passed. That is a moment I will remember for the rest of my life. 

   
   

4. I got certified as an Orangetheory Fitness (OTF) coach. I think the day after I got my personal training certification, I messaged my OTF regional manager, who is also one of my absolute favorite coaches, to see if I might be the right fit to be an OTF coach. To say the process has been rigorous would be an enormous understatement. But I took it one day at a time, never gave up, and kept going. After an intense week-long in-person training, I passed my in-person evaluation. The following week, aka this week, I studied and passed the online certification exam. Next, I will teach off-schedule classes to family and friends. After that, I will be officially added to the class schedule. 

   
   

5. I designed and launched my personal training and wellness coaching practice. I have been wanting to do this for years. I know this because I bought the domain name I wanted years ago and designed a set of learning modules for the wellness coaching component. When I started my strategy consulting practice, when I was figuring out the right name, I remember telling a colleague that it had to match the theme of my wellness practice concept. This year, building off the work of the last several years, I refined my wellness framework, which I call my wellness garden. I have had several iterations before, and I have revised this one many times this year based on people’s feedback and my own thinking. Finally, after passing the exam for my personal training certification, it felt like the right time to design my site, refine my wellness modules, and launch this “wing” of my business, Liberated Butterfly Coaching.  

   
   

When I think about this year and what I did, it feels like I climbed a couple of mountains. Slayed a few dragons. This brought out something different in me. I feel like I shifted into a different gear. I learned some things about myself and about what success looks like to me…

• Keep everything simple. your goals, your process, your tracking, everything. The simpler the better. 

  
  

• Fail a bunch. Because they help bring you to the point where you can cross that finish line. I am so grateful for all of my failed attempts, because they equipped me with so much knowledge and wisdom. 

  
  

• Use lulls to push forward. If something in your life slows down, either because of an external force or because you slowed down or paused intentionally, route your energy towards something that gives you ENERGY, LIFE, and HOPE. 

  
  

• Focus on one thing at a time. Ambitious people tend to have a lot of goals. It’s hard to maximize all of them at once. It’s ok to focus on something and knock it out of the ballpark, and then move on to the next challenge. 

  
  

• Celebrate all your little wins. Every chapter read, every quiz taken, every day of training, every milestone matters and can give you that boost of energy to get across the finish line. Treat yourself to delicious meals, self-care time, etc.

  
  

• Block out the noise. The world is heavy and chaotic. And while I want to be an informed and engaged citizen of the world, sometimes that can weigh heavily on us. It’s ok to not read the news as much or avoid social media for a bit, so you can focus on getting to your goals. That will all be waiting for you when you are ready. 

  
  

• Don’t worry about anyone else. Everyone is on their own path. Don’t worry about how others are succeeding or failing. Don’t compare. Focus on you and only you. 

  
  

Those are a few of my learnings, but I’d really like to hear YOUR reflections on YOUR year. Was it the best year ever? Worst year ever? What went well? What failed miserably? Sometimes the highs and lows come all at one time. In fact, they often do. I look forward to hearing from you.