I reconnected with this fabulous woman, Kelley Tyan, who I met while we were both doing fitness competitions back in the day. We have remained friends. She is a freaking Rockstar because let’s just call it what it is, she has faced a shit storm of life. She persevered when life kept hitting her like a massive wave in the ocean and she never stopped. Instead, she showed up to it like a freaking superhero!
Kelley Tyan has been coaching women in health and fitness for over 10 years. She is a wife, mother of 2 children, a 4X national bikini champion, breast cancer survivor, team builder through her network marketing company, and is committed to empowering women through her fitness and accountability coaching programs online. She has been featured on ABC’s Chronicle for her work with women empowerment, she is the founder of Level Up live event, and she has her own podcast called Addicted To The Climb. Kelley’s passion to transform one women’s life a day has been ongoing from the start while bringing as many as she can to living their healthiest and best life, and she believes a community is a key to your success.
We have all faced adversity, especially most of us women at age 40, but what I admire the most about Kelley is she was able to take this adversity and take it as a test, life was testing her and she knew she just needed to show up and be like “I GOT THIS!”. And she wants to show women that we can all show up when you reach adversities! Gabby Bernstein said it best, “You have to show up for what’s up!”. Showing up can definitely be hard, especially when sometimes you have to put on a mask because you are just having a shitty freaking day! BUT you can’t just show up to work or your business and like I am having a bad day, people! You have to just show up and do what you can to not be taken down by these adversities.
So, I want to fill you guys in on what Kelley went through over the course of a year or so because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Kelley is a Breast Cancer survivor. This is what life threw at her, but she kept on pushing through them, even when the worst of the worst happened.
Kelley was planning a Women’s Bootcamp at a local CrossFit gym and during the prepping and promoting, she found a lump on her breast, super small, the size of a pea! And while she was doing this Bootcamp, she got the call from her doctor that it was indeed Breast Cancer. Just while she was really getting into her fitness and helping others to do the same life through her the first curve ball that should have stopped her or most people right in their tracks, but it didn’t! Kelley chose to be strong and continue his Bootcamp for the women she wanted to help, she wanted to show up for THEM whether she was going through this or not and she sure as hell wanted to make sure that they know if she can do it then they can do it too.
She was tired every class from the radiation, but she continued to show up and kept moving forward and the women to this day just appreciated that. People get diagnoses every single day, and you can stay in bed all day and have that pity party, but where is this going to get us’ Kelley wanted to be strong for her family, for herself and for those women who needed her too. Everything comes down to CHOOSE. She knew that she had to make a choice, she KNEW she couldn’t just lay in bed all day because she had to be there for those women, and yes hse was tired as hell, but she SHOWED UP! You have a business helping to empower women, so she knew she had to get there and show them what empowerment looked like and how anyone can overcome those adversities.
But…. the universe DID NOT stop there with Kelley… Soon after, their family gets a call that her insanely healthy Dad has been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer that required them to wipe his entire immune system and then go into complete isolation for a year. In the meantime, her mom had rheumatoid arthritis and it was hard for her to help out at all with her dad. And 3 weeks into her Dad’s recovery, her mom passed away. Her best friend in the world and life ACTUALLY stopped for her at this point. That was her rock bottom.
Kelley still showed up for her Bootcamp, she still kept moving, but she did hide under a blanket when she needed to because she had to. She had to show up, but she also had to give herself some grace and allow herself to grieve and be alone with herself. It is okay to do both, as long as you keep on moving forward. There was more for her, she was able to find life without her mom and of course, it took time, but she got there.
We have to keep getting back up on my feet. We cannot just stay there under a blanket for our entire life. Life is going to keep going whether we go with it or not or stay under those sheets. You have to continue to show up because showing up IS THE KEY! Everything that has happened in her life has made her stronger. It has made her addicted to the climb and she refuses to go down without a fight!
This helped to shape Kelley’s amazing podcast Addicted to the Climb. The message of it is that we all have something bigger than us, pulling us towards something. That something can be anything, spiritual, empowerment, anything that is pulling you. Something you don’t even know how to stop. But a gravitational pull to make you do this that teaches you the discipline to commit to yourself set the goal and finish what you started!
If Kelley was able to continually work on herself and her goals while all of this SHIT STORM was happening all around her, then you can too! Any women can do it, it is just about committing to yourself and it’s all about the belief in yourself that you can get to the next level if you put the work in and you trust that YOU WILL DO THIS! She wants women and men to know that they too can do it, they can overcome adversity and continue to climb while doing it. They can continue to reach their goals and commit to themselves while also struggling somewhere in life.
All of these things have happened to Kelley, but instead of letting this take her out, she said, “If I let this take me out, how am I showing up to my clients or my kids or my husband.” She was not choosing to be the victim but said this is happening and I need to learn to step up and see how this works into my life.
[Tweet ““Don’t allow a season to become a life sentence.””]
This HAS to be said out loud all the time! All of these things happening to you are seasons in your life and of course, they are not going to last forever, the pain will go away. So, you cannot allow for these things to trickle into a lifetime. It is not what makes you, it cannot be the reason you stop living, stop showing up and being there for your family and friends. Seasons change so you must as well. So shit happened and it knocked you out for a little bit. But you must say, “I am not going to let this season control my life.”!
I want to challenge all of you. When something really shitty happens in your life, and you feel like you can’t go on, or you want to curl up under the blankets and never come out, I want you to think of this. I want you to pick 1 thing, 1 small thing to show up for. Pick something easy and just do all of that. And once you have done all of that I want you to move onto something else to show up. And keep doing it, just like the goals you have, until you are done blaming everyone else for everything that is happening and take charge of what you really want.
Sometimes you have to do the thing that’s HARD. To show yourself and prove to yourself that you can do it. So, if you want to stay stuck than stay stuck, or take the action steps that Kelley and myself give you as coaches because we know the process and what it takes to feel better and we want you to killll it! If you don’t take that action, no one else will take it for you!
We are passionate about what we do!
We see the greatness in our clients!
We know what it is like to struggle!
We are not being harsh; we have just been in your shoes.
We know what it feels like to feel unhappy in our own bodies and want to lose weight and try to lose weight when everything seems to be crumbling around us.
This is all about clarity and when life came at Kelley fast, she was clear that she wanted to show up the best she can to be an example for those women who may have been struggling with the same things as she was. But always remember, be an example to yourself if not your family and friends.
What makes you feel magical’
Really trying to let women see themselves as God sees them. If I had anything I could do in this life, it would be to have a magic potion to let women see themselves as beautiful, wonderful and capable of all things.
LINKS
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FabFitSquad
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/
Website: https://www.kimbarnesjefferson.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661
Kim’s episode on Addicted To The Climb https://addictedtotheclimb.libsyn.com/website/fit-girl-magic-be-your-own-version-of-a-fit-girl-over-40
Links:
Instagram @kelleytyan https://www.instagram.com/kelleytyan/
Facebook Kelley Tyan https://www.facebook.com/kelley.tyan
Podcast addicted to the climb
https://addictedtotheclimb.libsyn.com/website
