A little bit of an origin story
Hello, hello. Welcome to the GDP community. I'm so happy that you're here. I am just overthinking things a little bit, so I'm jumping on, as you know, I do—the one-take wonder lives. Yeah, I was just scrolling along looking for something and a Skool ad popped up. It said, “Six gentle reminders.” Number one: your first community doesn’t have to be perfect. What? Number two: starting with three members is starting. So hold on a second—how many members do we have as of today? Let’s get into it. GDP, we have 19 active members. What? 19? I’m so pumped. I love it. Okay, number three: you already know and care enough to help someone. I love that. Number four: imperfect action beats perfect planning. There’s no planning here—not on this one. Number five: your people are waiting for you to begin. Are you guys waiting for me to begin? Are you? Number six: community grows when you show up, not when you’re ready. So for context, today I am just getting myself together. It’s almost four o’clock in the afternoon, and there is a parent council meeting that I want to make at six o’clock. In between all that, I have to get dinner going and spend maybe some time with my family. But I thought, okay—I cannot believe that two weeks have gone by since I’ve jumped on a live. I was so excited when this whole thing became possible for me, and then here I am playing shy, overthinking what I’m going to talk about, overthinking what I’m going to share. Something clicked for me with that post about taking imperfect action—just following the flow and doing the things without waiting to be perfect. That message of showing up as you are is really inspirational to me and helps me get out of my head. It connects me back to the origin of this community, to why I created ShineOn and what it means to me. I can’t let it go. I know this is something that’s calling deeply on my heart to show up courageously for. It started years ago, really. I can even cast my mind back to when I was a young girl—10, 11, 12 years old. This kind of thinking and paying attention to the world has never left me. It’s always been with me. The most recent iteration of this story started in 2018, when I decided to take action after being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. I wasn’t managing stress well, and I had a lot of pressure in my life. I had to come back to what really mattered to me, and that helped me settle my nervous system. I asked myself: what would really matter? What would a life well-lived look like, especially if it were cut short? That was a powerful energy—thinking, “If my time was limited, did I make the most of it?” That made me think: am I making the most of my time now, every day? It woke me up to myself and to the choices I was making, to the direction I was heading.