Leah Gervais:Hey everyone, welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision Show. Thank you all so much firstly for the warm welcome back, if you will. 

Uh, my first episode in a few months was last week. I talked all about a year of motherhood. I talked about my most frequently asked questions as a new mom. It was a lot of fun connecting with those of you who are also moms expecting moms thinking about becoming mothers.

 And so I just wanted to say thank you guys all for the encouragement and I’m excited to be back here with another episode that was requested. And this is about how to keep dreaming bigger. This is a really beautiful topic because it is so easy to miss this. It is so easy to dismiss this way of thinking and to not have this be part of your life. 

So I’m very excited to talk to you about it and I am a little bit selfishly excited to talk about it because I think it’s something that has really resonated with me, especially this year after what happened last year.

So we’re talking about how to keep dreaming bigger for yourself and what a beautiful, almost problem it is to have. If you are feeling like you’ve stopped dreaming bigger for yourself and once did, it could be because like me and many of my clients, a lot of your dreams have come true. 

That’s the good problem to have when you feel like pretty much everything that you wished for, everything that you wrote down in your vision board and in your journal, everything that you had goals for, you now look around and that is your reality. 

And for the most part, I have to humbly say that is the truth for me. I’m recording this in an office that is exclusively my own for the seven figure business I built from nothing, looking over the Manhattan skyline and knowing I’m gonna go home to my healthy son in a few hours.

So truly, so much of my life has come true and I’m extremely grateful for that. And the reality is that’s how a lot of my clients are too. Especially my one-on-one clients who have worked with me closely for an extended amount of time. 

They have transformed their wi lives in the most spectacular of ways, left nine to five jobs and realizing they are never going to work for someone else again, building six, multiple six, seven, multiple seven figure businesses, realizing that 10, 20, even $30,000 is like nothing to them anymore, which is wild because for some of them as well as for me, that used to almost be my entire annual salary. So it feels like it’s probably a very privileged problem to have.

 But regardless of where you fall on this, regardless of if you, if of, if you feel like you have stopped dreaming bigger for yourself because you don’t really know where to go next, or maybe it doesn’t feel quite as privileged as that, maybe it feels a little bit more beaten down.

Maybe you feel like you have stopped streaming as big for yourself because you’re tired, because you’ve been working for a long time really hard and things just aren’t looking the way that you wanted them to or that you thought they would. And that’s real. That’s tiring. That’s exhausting. 

Or maybe you feel like you worked and worked and worked and there was really no benefit of it. That’s not fun either. No matter what the reason, if you are feeling like, sorry, no matter what the reason, if you’re feeling like you want that inner ignite feeling of dreaming bigger again, let’s talk about what it can do for you and how you can get back into that place.

 This is something that I feel like I’ve had to kind of go over to iterations with because when I first started my business, there was so much chatter around me from well-meaning friends and family to strangers to my own insecurities about the unanswered questions.

It would mean if I quit my nine to five, what would I do about retirement? What would I do about my health insurance? What would I do if I didn’t make as much money as I wanted in one month? Did I have enough savings? Would I be able to handle a business of my own?

 All these questions that frankly I wanted to feel confident in, but I didn’t have the answers to and they really scared me. I had to get tunnel vision about when I heard those fears and those scars from other people. I had to get so focused on the certainty that I had to cultivate inwardly that the external fears didn’t get to me. 

And this was very hard. But training myself to think that way is how dreaming bigger about what could be on the other side of those fears for myself, what could be on the other side of health insurance or my retirement fund, which by the way, I contribute more to now than I would’ve if I stayed at a nine to five job.

That’s why it all happened, because I dared to dream that something else could happen. So I know the importance of this, but then it can kind of show up in different ways. This is what this looked like for me over the last year. I had a baby at the end of 2021, and so 2022 was really all about motherhood. It was really just my first year being a mom and taking care of a very helpless, very young baby, which I loved.

 It was the best year, uh, although this one’s already better. But the point is this insecurity started to seep into my mindset again because what I realized is as I started meeting other moms, as I started going to baby play dates and new mom groups and things like that, there was another kind of pervasive conversation that spoke to an insecurity I didn’t even realize I had anymore.

Are you going to stay in New York? So if you’re new to me, you don’t might not know that I live in New York City. I’ve lived here for 13 years, although I did for a year. Uh, we spent a year in Miami during the pandemic, but I moved here 13 years ago when I was 18.

 And it is the love of my life other than my husband . I love New York more than any place in the world. And living here is a dream come true for me. Every morning I still wake up and I’m excited that I get to wake up and that I get to be here.

 So it has never lost its alertness to me. It’s never lost. It’s awesome. I truly think it is the best city on the planet, and I just think anyone who doesn’t like it here is doing it wrong. .

That’s my humble opinion. And anyone who thinks there’s a better city is kidding themselves. . I have very strong opinions about New York. So anyway, I love it here. I love raising my son here. I love living with my husband here. We both love the city. It is just the best for us.

 And logistically, there’s a lot of challenges, perceived challenges that come with raising a family here. One of the most obvious is the lack of space. No one really has a house unless we have a brownstone or a penthouse. Most people live in apartments, which are compared to suburban houses.

 Many of us are used to the United States, which is extremely small. We have a two bedroom apartment and it’s relatively spacious for New York standards. But compared to the house I grew up in or the house my mom has, it’s extremely, extremely small. Um, it’s just two bedrooms and a living room.

We don’t even have a separate dining room. Our living room is big enough where we have a dining room table in it. But that’s pretty much it. And the bigger your family grows, the more that space is something you have to deal with and that you’re limited to. 

Next to the logistics of space that you’re dealing with, you are dealing with an incredibly high cost of living in comparison to pretty much anywhere else in the United States. Apartments that are big enough for a family, which again are quite small in comparison to a house, are typically between five and $10,000 a month in rent. 

Or if you wanna buy, you’re gonna be looking at uh, probably a 2 million minimum for an apartment that can house, um, a family. This could vary obviously depending on where in New York City you live, if you’re in Manhattan versus if you are in the Bronx or Queens for example.

But generally speaking, even in the less expensive parts of the five boroughs, it is still extremely expensive. We were looking at buying an investment property in Brooklyn and even a two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn very far from the center of Manhattan is still not gonna be anywhere under $500,000, which is more than the average home , the average actual house in the United States. So the cost of living is high, the space is low. 

And then there is the big, uh, just black hole of education and choosing how to educate your children here. There are excellent public schools in Manhattan, but they aren’t a given. They are still complicated to navigate on their own. 

And then if you choose the alternative of private schools, then you’re dealing with even more complications, more competitiveness, and of course more money, more financial strain. And couple that with the idea of having more than one kid.

You’re just doing that to yourself. Two, three, if you wanna have four kids four times over, there is a lot to consider that if we were choosing to raise our son in either of the places my husband and I are from, we would not even have to be thinking about we would have a house because they don’t really have apartments in those parts of the country. It would not mean that our cost of living would be cheap, but it would certainly be less than it is here.

 And you would be able to probably live in a school district that has a good public school where you wouldn’t, first of all even have to wonder where your kid’s going to school. I mean, the application process for my son to go to preschool here when he’ll be two is similar to what it was like for me to apply to college.

I’m not kidding. I have to be interviewed. My husband has to be interviewed. Our two-year-old will have to be interviewed. You have to do it a year in advance. You have to pay for the application. It’s wild.

 All this is to say that over 2022, I started hearing another version of that narrative that really saturated my mind when I was starting my business back then. That narrative was how are you going to be self-employed? How are you going to make it work? How are you going to deal with the logistics of health insurance, insurance, et cetera. 

Now this narrative of how are you gonna do this in New York? How are you gonna have a family there? How are you going to raise kids there? How are you going to afford to do it? Yeah, I have a successful business, but honestly, most people that are living in Manhattan that have kids are making just as much, if not more than I am, uh, uh, you know, it’s, it’s, my business is not at the top of the food chain in this city.

Let’s put that, let’s call it what it is. So this started to get to me. I started to have these questions. What are we doing in New York? We’re parents now. Can we still do this? Can we still live here? Should we want a house for our son? Should we want a car? Should we want to simplify his school process? Should we want to leave? Should we start thinking about our exit plan? Are all these people, right? Is this something we can’t handle? 

Is this something we can’t afford? Is this something that’s not right for us? Is this something that’s a pipe dream and it really starts to get under your skin? And then the next thing you know, you’re starting to talk about these shoulds frequently with your spouse, with your friends, with your parents, whoever in your life is kind of your thought partner.

You start having these discussions on your own without the kind of naysayers. So you’re perpetuating the doubt. And little by little logically as can be, you stop dreaming bigger for yourself. Now, if you’re listening to this, you might not relate to my New York City situation at all. Maybe you don’t live in a city that challenges your cost of living or your future. Maybe this is in context to a business that you have or a business idea that you have where you’re thinking about, excuse me, what it could mean to grow this business.

 To have a six figure business, to have a seven figure business, to have a team, to have a full roster of clients, to have a TV show. Like one of my clients is currently in production. What does that mean? Can I do it? Does this make any sense? Is this realistic?

Are other people right that this is probably not gonna happen? So many other people have tried this and not made it work. Who am I to make it work? What’s different about me? Why should this happen for me and not them? Maybe this won’t happen for me. Maybe my time and money would be spent or spent towards something that more likely will happen for me. 

And slowly but surely our dreams erode. It’s a problem. Now, this podcast episode is not about whether or not I’m gonna say New York City. I don’t know. That’s the honest truth. But what I do know and what I can see now from an aerial view is that I will not leave this city because of fear, because I won’t. I don’t wanna make any decision because of fear. 

And two, I am not going to go through life taking myself out of the game before I’ve even started playing the game.

That’s what this message is about. How many times, if you’re listening to this and you’re stressed about money and maybe you’re concerned about investing in your business because you don’t have enough money to do it, let me know. Those of you listening live, if any of you are in this situation right now, you’re feeling like it might be irresponsible to spend money on your business.

 Because what if it doesn’t work? What if you don’t make it back? You once spent money on whatever it was and that didn’t pay off. So what if this doesn’t? Does this make you responsible? Would this put you in a compromised financial situation? Could this stress out your family? Could this stress you out? Could this not be worth it? How easy is it to get to that place before we even are in any situation that suggests that we’re not in a good place?

Open your fridge . Do you have a fridge? Do you have food in there? Are you able to pay your rent? You are doing fine. Stop taking yourself out of the game before you’re even playing the game. You’re not even trying. You’re not even really going for it. You’re not even really seeing what you can do because you’re talking yourself out of it before it even could happen.

 And that’s what I’ve been seeing a lot with the New York City migration movement, right? A lot of people, a lot of people, and I’m not shaming them for this decision, because here’s, here’s what happens. People leave the city before they run out of space or before school gets too expensive or before they’re unhappy living in an apartment. They do it because they think they have to. They think they should. They think it’s what you’re supposed to do.

Now, some people leave the city because they proactively know. They just don’t wanna deal with it. They don’t wanna have to pay for private school. They don’t agree with it. They prefer to send their kids to private schools. They grew up in a house. They want their kids to grow up in a house. That’s great, that’s fine. I have a lot of respect for the decision.

 But there’s equally the school of thought of, I’m gonna do this because I just don’t believe in myself to make it work otherwise, and I’m not even gonna try. And that is taking yourself out of the game before you’re even playing it. That is fear-based decisions. 

And so this episode today, and what people were really requesting was, how can I start dreaming bigger for myself? And the answer is, you need to make sure you’re not making yourself small in the current situation that you’re in.

Take your power pack back, get out of a victim state of mind. Get into the place where you own, what you can do, where you own that. If someone else can do it, by golly, so can you. And stop taking yourself out of the game before you even start playing.

 Realize all the power and all the potential you have in the current situation you’re in. If you are in a business building chapter and you’re feeling scared to move forward, scared to spend money, scared that it’s not going to work, recognize how much you actually have at your fingertips and at your disposal.

 Recognize how much power you have. Do you have a place to live? Do you have a computer to work on? Do you have a credit card you can use? Do you have a job you could fall back on? Even if you don’t, do you have a business you could fall back on?

Are you resourceful enough to make it work? How are you dreaming bigger for yourself? If you’re not seeing yourself as big and capable in the current place that you’re in, you can’t, right? And if you’re surrounded by people, conversations, narratives that accept and normalize this smallness, you won’t unless you have a true sense of tunnel vision that allows you to only see what is true for you.

 And this is hard. It is hard to be around people. Having these conversations that fill your mind with doubt and, and also those conversations only fill your mind with doubt because you already have doubt about that to begin with. When we are so sure about something that we don’t have any question that it will or won’t happen, other people’s doubts about it don’t really matter to us, right? It just kind of goes in one ear and out the other.

But when we already have a little bit of insecurity about it and then other people start sharing their hesitations, that really manifests, that really hits home, that’s really like, oh yeah, they’re kind of right. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I should listen to them. Maybe I should listen to that insecurity that I have.

 So the work and the mindset work is to, and this is why coaching is important, this is why having communities are important, that communities that don’t talk in this way is to get yourself to the place where you are so sure about the outcome that you desire and your ability to do it, that these other insecurities don’t get to you.

 And if you can’t get to that place yet, then just shut them up. . Don’t hang out with those people for a little while. I took some pretty extreme measures in the early days of my business to not surround myself with people that I knew weren’t going to really support what I was doing.

Okay? Nowadays, I’m obviously not gonna cut the other new moms out of my life because I, I love them. And that’s not what this is about. But I have been intentional about connecting with other people who do wanna stay in New York or who are not going to prematurely take themselves out of the possibility of doing it. 

Again, this episode is not me declaring I’m gonna stay in New York for the rest of my life. Maybe we will get to a place where the desire is to leave. But I want to always be following that desire not to be following decisions out of fear.

 And what I see from people in online business and in coaching and in entrepreneurship is they start with these big dreams. They start with these big visions. They have these aspirations for what they can do. And then once they either don’t see the results soon enough, or once they just feel like they have a little bit of defeat or other people don’t believe they can do it, they just sign off.

And there is no greater assurance. I’m gonna say this quickly, or slowly, there is no greater way to be sure that what you want to happen doesn’t come true than if you stop trying to make it happen. Then if you stop with your own momentum, you stop with your own consistency and you literally take yourself out of the game before you give yourself a chance to play it. That is the most surefire way to fail.

 Fails not the best word, but I’m kind of trying to be dramatic here. , that is the most surefire way to make sure what you wanna happen doesn’t happen. So you have to start seeing yourself as not wondering who you are to do this.

 Who are you to be successful? I mean, I could look out in New York City and talk about how expensive it is, how competitive it is, how small our apartments are all day long in an equal and truthful breath. I can look out my window right now and recognize how many million and billionaires there are in this city. 

How many people have had multiple children, multiple generations growing up in this city? How many people don’t even own apartments, but entire buildings in this city? How many people own businesses in this city? How many people have penthouses in this city? I mean, someone’s gotta do it.

So why are we so quick to say that could never be me? That’s them not me. Who am I to be that person? Who aren’t you to be that person? Why are you signing yourself out before you’ve even allowed yourself to try? And the coolest part of this is, when you have this mindset of, I’m gonna go for what I want.

 Maybe statistically my odds are low. It’s obviously harder to have your own business than to work for someone else. It’s obviously easier to make it in a city that’s less expensive than one that’s expensive. It’s obviously less likely that you’re going to hit six figures. There’s something wild.

 Like the percentage of businesses that hit six figures is only like 6% of them. Which by the way, if you’re listening to this and you’ve hit six figures, just let that sit in. You are one of the 6% of businesses that have started and made it to six figures.

So you are exceptional. Don’t forget that. But we always are thinking that we will not be that exception that we won’t. And what’s amazing is when you switch that mindset and say, I’m gonna try, I, you know what? I’m gonna go for it. I’m gonna go for the six figures. I’m gonna go for seven figures.

 I’m gonna try to do what it takes to raise a family in this city. I’m going to try to do what it takes to work for someone or to work for myself and not work for someone else. I’m going to give it my all with my business. If you don’t, if you, and I’m putting in air quotes, fail, let’s say that doesn’t happen. You’ll still end up somewhere pretty freaking awesome . You’ll still end up somewhere where you’re making $500,000 a year instead of a million.

Or you’ll still end up in a really beautiful place. Maybe it’s not as big of an apartment as you wanted, but still something really great. You’ll still probably end up not working for someone else. It might just look different than what you wanted. 

So we have these mindsets of like, here’s what I want. My dreams are sky high. I don’t think I can do it because it’s unrealistic. So I’m not even gonna try because that’s responsible. That’s logical. What the hell is logical about that? Isn’t it more logical to try to go for something really, really audacious and exciting and crazy?

And if God forbid you fail, you still end up somewhere amidst the stars of that wild’s dream versus in square one. That’s what’s logical. The more you give, the more you’re going to achieve, period. Maybe it won’t be exactly what you set out to achieve, but it will still be more than you have now.

And when we get so hung up on these things that we think are more responsible to keep, rather than going for those things, it’s more responsible not to spend my money. It’s more responsible not to spend my time on a business when it might not take off. It’s more responsible not to put myself out there at the risk of being ridiculed. 

You are putting resources that are truly infinite and abundant and at your disposal, above your potential, which is not infinite. You got one life, this is it. This is it. That is how you keep dreaming bigger.

 So I hope that you guys enjoyed this episode today. I hope it gave you permission to recognize where you might be letting these thought patterns sink, sink into your mind that are eating away at an already weak part of you that feels insecure, that feels scared. We all have it. We’re all human. 

Fear is part of our dna N it’s part of our programming. It comes from our innate desire to stay safe. You don’t have to dislike it about yourself, but you don’t have to respond to it. You don’t have to follow it. You don’t have to listen to it. And if you do, you’re going to take yourself out of the game that leads you to your dreams, take your power back. Recognize if not now, when,

If not me, who get out of any victim mindset of where you currently are. And once you find that strength in your current positioning, you can then go back and move forward. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I hope you loved this episode and I’ll talk to you soon.

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