I’m in my Bodacious Audacity-ERA! And I want to remind myself, you, us, that the way forward is having the bodacious audacity to do the thing. I’ll share the stories, you choose your thing, and write your own story. That’s the point of this: to spur you on to live a big, bodacious life.
This is a story of audacity past: the time I had the bodacious audacity to buy an investment property (alternative title: scary as hell, did it anyway).
The Virtual Dinner Party that Pissed Me Off
One of my besties had the genius idea to hire a sommelier for an interactive dinner party. The som selects the wine. We select the menu. The som guides us through a social evening of wine and food, and connection. Absolutely yes!
The catch? The dinner party was on Zoom.
It was May 2020. Peak lockdown. And I was living in NYC. The epicenter for the pandemic in the US. Zoom had become my lifeline! To the outside world. To everyone I cared about. To my sanity.
Yoga with my neighbors. Happy hour with my besties. Easter sunrise with my family. And now a som-led dinner party. I LOVED it!
Until I didn’t.
The dinner party was somewhat of an intimate affair. As the familiar faces gathered around the virtual tasting table, I could see into everyone’s apartments. And more importantly, into their shared dynamics. And even though it had been there all along, the awareness hit me in that particular moment: I was the only one by myself.
In the height of social distancing and the call to flatten the curve, we were all living in isolation. But in this moment, 55 days into lockdown, it dawned on me: some were isolating together. And that was different. It’s not like they had it easier, but I felt the pang of not having another human IRL.
This was my defining moment.
Being pissed off at the current dynamic is pretty much always my cue that it’s time to make moves.
How to Find What Lights You Up, When It’s Been A While
I’ve never been one to fake enthusiasm, and I’m not very good at hiding absolutely-not-vibes. And the more the som tried to get me to engage, the less I wanted to. We were still on the first wine when I typed something in the chat about needing to leave. I turned off my computer. And I went to bed.
The following morning, I got a call from one of my fellow Zoom-dinner guests, Megan. She didn’t ask what happened. She didn’t try to tell me what I missed. She simply said: It’s time for you to go.
My brain had processed that my circumstances were not ok, but it hadn’t quite done the work of what I was going to do about it. That’s okay, because Megan was 2 steps ahead.
I asked her where exactly I was supposed to go, to which she replied as if the answer was there all along: home!
Home for me was New York City. I had bought a place here. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It was 11 years in the making of living my best life in the city that never sleeps.
But everything that lit me up about New York was missing. The pulse. The vibrancy. The buzz of city life. Teaching yoga on a roofdeck overlooking the East River every Saturday. My 20-minute walk to work in midtown. Quality time with my NYC besties.
Three days before the lockdown, I celebrated my birthday with my besties at my favorite spot. That was the last time I had accessed my lit-up-ness IRL. My favorite people. In my favorite spot. Living my best life.
I was so far removed from that now. I squeezed every ounce of lit-up-ness out of those days: my plants, daily sunlight, good sleep, facetime calls, home workouts. But there is only so much you can do to drum up delightedness in lockdown.
That’s when it is essential to have someone to guide you back to the light. Megan had moved to Fort Lauderdale from New York a couple of years prior. The land of milk and honey, by comparison at the time. Her and her husband’s jobs were in healthcare so it wasn’t that they were immune from the low-lows, but she could see the light a little better than I.
And she reminded me. I love spending time with family. I love being outdoors in the sunshine. I love the beach. I love the freedom to work from anywhere.
What lights you up on the inside will light the way for what comes next on the outside.
And what came next was a one-way ticket home to the Sunshine State.
When Alignment is a Long Game
Rewind. My sister Amanda and I had a big, bodacious dream of buying an investment property together. It started a few years prior on a trip home to visit our parents, and since then, we had been investment-house hunting.
We were taking baby steps of aligned action toward the bigger goal. And it was fun! We had yet to find the right property for us, but in the process, it helped us get clear on the need-to-haves, nice-to-haves, and absolutely-nots of our dream investment property.
When we started, we didn’t have a timeline. We were just seeking alignment. We wanted to be the right people in the right place at the right time for the right opportunity. We had all the time in the world.
Until we didn’t.
Once I booked my ticket home, my first call was to Amanda in Dallas to see if she would come too. It was slim pickings on Airbnb, but we found a listing that was perfect for us and within 24 hours we were booked for a month at the beach near our parents.
We made our Airbnb work as a living and co-working space. We had dinner with our parents on most nights. We took family bike rides on abandoned back roads. I never joined another Zoom dinner party.
And as I created new routines in this new space, I found my way to my lit-up-ness again.
And then our month at the Airbnb was up! But New York was still on lockdown. And I couldn’t go back. Not yet. So I did what felt like the most obvious thing, I asked Amanda to rent for another month with me.
But she had a better idea: We should buy the AirBnB!
And just like that, our dream of buying an investment property was back in play. And we were in a better position than ever to do the bodacious thing.
A Double Order of Audacity Please
Was there raging economic and job uncertainty? Absolutely yes.
Was our Airbnb for sale? Absolutely not.
Were we pre-approved for anything? That would be a no.
Were we ready to expose our separate financial positions to get a mortgage together? No one told us about this part.
But we didn’t wait for perfect conditions of certainty. There was no time to stall so we could get our financial affairs optimized. We just took the next obvious step. And then the next one after that.
Only this time, each step got exponentially bigger than the one before it. In rapid succession. And next thing we knew, we were the right people, in the right place, at the right time with the right opportunity to do the bodacious thing.
Side bar: Replace ‘right’ with ‘aligned’ in that sentence and you get a sense of how having the bodacious audacity for anything flows out of alignment. The only urgency is alignment. Everything else in the formula can take as much time as it takes.
Where we once had no timeline for our big bodacious dream, we were now on a fast track to doing the thing.
And maybe that’s the power of two, double the audacity. Double the bodaciousness.
The Rest of the Story
We had the bodacious audacity to think that we could buy an investment property during peak uncertainty. And we did it!
But the act of doing the thing is never the end of the story. Don’t ask about the terrible tile floor I picked out for the renovations. Or the time our renters that would have been a significant source of revenue, cancelled at the last minute. Or the time a 130-pound Saint Bernard damaged our couch.
Because that is the thing about having bodacious audacity, once you do the thing, you cross over to a new reality. In doing the thing, you become a bodacious baddie that can handle everything that comes next.
Bodacious Baddie: who you become once you do the bodaciously audacious thing. Don’t sweat a thing after that, you’ll figure it out because you're a bodacious baddie now!
You are creative and clever and filled with ingenuity and the end result is never as important as becoming the bodacious baddie in the process.
And for all the challenges, the surprises and delights have been better than we could have imagined. This summer marks 5 years of being the bodacious baddies who did the thing and bought an investment property.
If You Want to be a Bodacious Baddie, read this first!
Last week I introduced the Bodacious Audacity Framework. Once you find yourself IN it, here’s what we need to know about becoming a Bodacious Baddie:
🔍It Takes As Long As It Takes
It’s not that you have to have patience necessarily, but it helps to make peace with the need for urgency for the end result. Think of everything that comes before the end result as a discovery phase. Get clear about why you want the thing right and be curious about the possibilities for how you get it and what it looks like.
Amanda and I spent years in the discovery phase for our investment property. That’s how long it took for it to be aligned for us. But even if it’s on a shorter timeline, it’s the same energetics of clarity, curiosity and alignment. You are honing in on the aspects of your dream that are most authentic.
Whatever timeline you happen to be on, be prepared to be delighted!
👯♀️You Need a Vision Holder
Your dreams were meant to be shared. I had a co-creator of my investment property dream, but that won’t always be the case. Find yourself someone that you aren’t afraid to be bodacious with, who will hold the vision with you of what you want that’s bigger than where you are. This is one of the most important supporting roles in your bodacious journey and it could be a co-creator, a coach, a mentor, a bestie and/or a partner. Choose wisely, this person is your confidante, your hype person and it helps if they are invested in your success for no other reason than they want to see you thrive.
🎢 Know that It Will Get Wild
My favorite ride as Disney is Thunder Mountain. When you board this rollercoaster, they issue a warning that feels apropos here:
Buckle your seatbelt and hold on to your hat. This here’s the wildest ride in the Wilderness.
As we begin to live into our wildest dreams, the process most often involves shedding old beliefs, limiting thoughts, and identities that hold us back. You are becoming the person who does the thing, and the bigger the thing, the more you may have to shed.
I don’t say this ominously, it’s the most beautiful thing. Like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It’s just that most people don’t talk about this part and it bears trying to put into words.
I can’t speak for my sister, but for me, there was a lot of inner work that was happening under the surface throughout the process of being bodacious investment property baddies.
For one, I have historically been a conflict avoider. I couldn’t be someone that avoids conflict and also buy and renovate an investment property with my sister. Both could not be true, we wouldn’t have made it (we almost didn’t?). I had both a coach and a therapist in my toolkit at the time and being able to work with them to dig into the why behind the why of avoidance helped me make the necessary shifts. Expect to meet your shadows, your fears, your limiting beliefs and your saboteurs along the way. If they weren’t there, you would have already done the thing.
Welcome those parts of you to the bodacious party. They got you to here, now they’re holding you back. Meeting them and working with them is part of being a bodacious baddie. If you need some guidance on this, I love the book No Bad Parts.
Now It’s Your Turn
When was the last time you were a bodacious baddie? And what’s your next bodaciously audacious big move? GO BE A BODACIOUS BADDIE, the world needs you to be your biggest, most bodacious self.