Some people would consider my journey a series of failures before finally getting it right. But I don’t see it that way. Each path leads to another and even though a lot of those paths didn’t work out for me long-term, I learned a lot from each of them. I learned that I could live without my tech job when I became a yoga instructor. I learned how to put myself out there on the internet as a food blogger. Even the tech job I fell out of love with gave me the safety net I needed to try and build something on my own. 

What I’m saying is, you don’t have to get it right the first time and the same thing goes for the new year. We’re three months into the new year and most people I know didn’t have a great three months! It happens. But that doesn’t mean you have to write the whole year off. You can turn it around and I’m going to tell you how. 

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about how to turn 2025 around, even if the year didn’t start off right for you. I’m going to share with you three reasons why you haven’t taken any action towards reinventing yourself. I am also going to tell you what you can do about it. This year is not over yet. In fact, let’s work together to make 2025 your best year yet! 

Follow Erika on:
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Website:
http://www.theerikacruz.com

How to work with Erika:

Secure your spot for the Courage Driven Latina program here.

Join the waitlist for the Magnetic Mastermind here.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Transcript:

Hello, hello. Welcome back to this week’s episode of Chingona Revolution Podcast. This is your host, Erika Cruz, and I have a great episode for you today. We are in March. If you’re listening to this at the time that it’s released, we are almost through March of 2025. And you may be asking yourself, how is it already March?

Erika: [00:02:00] Maybe the year did not start out how you expected. Maybe you had these big goals in January, but life got lifey. Life got in the way. Life began to life. And you’re wondering if you’ve already fallen behind. But this podcast episode is here to remind you that it is not too late. You still have plenty of time to completely change your life.

Year, especially because the Astrological year starts with Aries and that is in March and The Persian New Year also happens in March and spring happens in March so while this Gregorian calendar that we follow starts in January. That’s not energetically and from a nature perspective.

That’s not really the fresh start that date was just kind of made up. So while it’s a great [00:03:00] time to reflect and to to set goals for the year and to set intentions. well, January is a time in which we tend to reflect, right? And, and really set intentions for the future.

Energetically speaking, March is actually a good time to start. It’s, it’s actually the rebirth. It’s actually the new beginning. And we see this with Mother Nature, right? It’s, it’s as we are transitioning out of winter, where everything has been shed. Spring is when things begin to grow back. We begin to see the leaves, we begin to see the flowers, the days get longer.

And that energetically just represents that it is a time for new beginnings. So maybe you are shaming yourself because you’re like, dammit, I said that 2025 was going to be my year and here I am, I’m still in the same place. Look, amiga, you are where you are and we cannot change what has happened. Over the last three months, but we can [00:04:00] change the way that you’re looking at your current situation and you have plenty of time to change the way that 2025 looks for you.

Five years ago, I was living in a studio apartment in Sunnyvale, California, working in the tech industry. And I remember at the beginning of 2020, I said, 2020 is going to be my. year. And I had all the intentions to make it my year, but nothing in my life really changed. And in March, the universe shut down my world, right?

A lot of our worlds, because that is when the pandemic started. And in March of 2020, I hadn’t done anything. But from March of 2020, until the rest of the year, I mean, if you want to talk about reinventing yourself, that was one of the biggest reinventions. And I think we all experienced that, right? If you were [00:05:00] alive during that time, you experienced a reinvention, whether you wanted to or not.

And from March 2020 until the summer of 2020, I went from having no personal brand. To having over a hundred thousand followers. And so what my point is that so much can change. I went from being an employee in a tech company to starting a business. And then by the end of the year, I was a full time business owner and I can now looking back, I can tell you all of the mistakes I made.

And at this point, being that I literally help women reinvent themselves and go live their purpose. I can tell you all of the common mistakes that happen that keep us stuck, that keep us feeling stuck, that keep us in the same place. 

So in this podcast episode, I am going to share with you the three reasons that you [00:06:00] haven’t taken action yet when it comes to your purpose, when it comes to reinventing yourself and how to fix them. Okay. So we’re going to talk about the mistakes. that are, are being made and the solution to those mistakes.

And before I get into the mistakes and into the meat of this podcast episode, I want to remind you that the doors for Courage Driven Latina are currently openand they will close on March 19th. That’s a Wednesday. So that is the last day that you can schedule a consult call or that you can sign up. So if you’re listening to this, the day that it is released. Doors are almost going to close, so we ended up extending the launch a few days because I was, well, by the time this is released, I’ll have just come back from Chicago, and I was unavailable for about a four day period for consult calls, which we thought was unfair for those of you who have questions and who may want to talk to me, so for that reason, [00:07:00] we ended up extending the launch, but with that being said, Let’s get into today’s podcast episode because it is definitely a relatable one and it is a good one.

Okay, the number one reason that you haven’t yet reinvented yourself or gone to take action on your dreams, lived your purpose is because you are relying on motivation instead of structure. And here’s the thing, while motivation feels good, it’s not consistent. It’s like that friend that is super flaky that you know you cannot count on, right?

If there was a friend that you know is like either Religiously late or religiously flakes. That’s not the person that you would pick as your emergency contact, right? So motivation cannot be the leader of our goals and dreams. It cannot be in the driver’s seat. In order for you to reinvent yourself and go and live your purpose, you need to have [00:08:00] Structure.

You need to have discipline and structure, not motivation. 

You do not need more hype. What you need is a system that works even when you do not feel like showing up. Okay. So I remember when I wanted to start my own business, I wanted to create content. I wanted to build my personal brand. And this is at the beginning of 2020. And I already had started a food blog, but I was still in my head about showing up in other ways.

I was still in my head about pivoting because I knew I wanted to become like some type of wellness blogger or wellness coach. I didn’t even know what coaching was at that time, but I was just waiting until I felt motivated. And that is why I never ended up taking action. So let’s say that you want to.

Pivot in your career. And you know that in order to pivot in your career, you have to apply for jobs. And in order to apply for jobs, you know that you need to update your resume. And you know that [00:09:00] in order to update your resume, you have to literally sit down and do it, but you’re just sitting there and relying on motivation, but the thing is that motivation doesn’t work Because when we think about the way that procrastination works, procrastination is avoiding an uncomfortable feeling. We only procrastinate if something is difficult, if something is boring, if something is uncomfortable, or if something is ambiguous, which is difficult, right? So like there’s no, no clarity on how it is that we want to do it.

So if you’re relying on feeling motivated, but this task feels scary or overwhelming, you’re never going to get that motivation because you’re just going to keep procrastinating because that feels overwhelming. It feels difficult. It feels scary. All of the different things. Let’s say that your goal is to go and launch a podcast and you’re like waiting for the motivation to come in.

Well, let’s say that you do feel motivated. Maybe that motivation is like, okay, I’m going to go buy a [00:10:00] podcasting mic. Or I’m going to go, um, do research and listen to different podcasts. Well, none of that is actually action. That’s what we call passive action, being stuck in the research phase. Or let’s say that you want to go start your business, but you’re waiting to feel motivated.

Well, newsflash. Let’s say you do have enough motivation to go start the first steps of your business. Business is hard and you’re not always going to feel motivated to show up. And there’s so many things that can happen within business that if you are relying on motivation instead of having a structure of what it is that you’re going to focus on, you’re going to give up literally in the first few steps.

So stop relying on motivation because motivation is not something that you can count on. Instead, what you need is you need structure. And the way that I’ve helped my clients do this, and the way that I’ve helped myself do this, I mean, at the time I didn’t call it this, but obviously this came from my own lived experience and from having coached.[00:11:00] 

over 250 women. And that is a courage project plan. So the courage project plan provides you with the structure and the discipline that gets results. And the reason it works is because the courage project plan has you find clarity on what it is that you’re going to focus on. And then it makes you be really clear about what you’re not going to focus on because you can do a lot of different things, but what is going to make an impact.

And that’s what the courage Project plan helps you figure out what is the action that’s going to help you make the most amount of impact so that you can focus just on that and then that’ll take you to the next step. The other reason that this works really well is because. It looks at your possible obstacles.

It has you say, okay, what are possible obstacles that could come up? And then you create a plan for those possible obstacles. So let’s say that you are planting to planting, that you are planning to pivot your career. [00:12:00] And one of the obstacles is, well, I could go to the interview and I could not get the job.

And then the obstacle contingency plan asks, okay, what are you going to do in the event of not getting that job? Like, what would you do in that situation? And then you’re really forced to think, okay, what would I do? Well, I guess I’d have to accept it first and foremost, right? But the second thing you would do is you would just apply to other jobs.

And then the other thing you could possibly do is maybe even ask the interviewer for feedback. Hey, is there anything I could do better? Is there some skills that you think I should brush up? You could ask for feedback. You can turn it into a learning experience. You can also really just sit with the acceptance of that wasn’t my job, right?

Cause my job’s always going to go to me, which. Just sitting there thinking about, yeah, what is the worst case scenario that can happen and what would I do in that situation? Just having that clarity makes the world of a difference [00:13:00] compared to, Oh my gosh, what if I apply and I don’t get the job? And then you just stay in the, what if, well, yeah, what if allow your brain to go there?

And that’s exactly what the courage project plan helps you do because obstacles will happen. And not only will they happen once they’re going to happen probably over and over and you’re probably even going to come across obstacles that you didn’t anticipate, but just having a plan for obstacles makes you less likely to give up.

And again, it doesn’t rely on that motivation because you already have a plan. You already have structure to. Follow. Think about like when you were in school, school was hard, right? School was hard, but you knew what your requirements were to graduate. You met with an educational counselor. They told you what you needed to, what kind of grades you needed to get, what classes you needed to take.

There was different options with how to get there. And you were able to get to the other side because you had the structure, because you had the discipline. [00:14:00] And, you know, when I say school, it doesn’t just mean, like this could literally be middle school or high school or university. any type of educational system that had a structure that helped you get to the other side.

That’s how we need to treat your goals and your dreams as well. 

the second mistake that I see people making and that I made myself is that they have too many ideas. So, when they have too many ideas and too many options they do not make a decision. And here’s what I want you to know, friends. I want you to listen. This is some hard truth. You are not stuck, you are indecisive, and that is costing you everything, because not choosing is a decision, and that is keeping you in limbo.

And the funny thing is that people are like, Oh, I don’t want to make the wrong choice, right? What if I should be applying to job a and not to, you know, job B, but you don’t apply to any [00:15:00] job. And there’s this thing of like, Oh, what if I miss out on the right one for me? And it’s almost this scarcity mindset.

But if you really think about it, you’re missing out on. All of it by not choosing the, the biggest form of lack and scarcity mindset is not making a decision. You’re better off making a decision and then changing your mind later than not making one at all. So you’re like, okay, I don’t want to make the wrong choice because what if I miss out on the one that’s for me?

And instead you’re missing out on everything. So the mistake is being indecisive. And telling yourself that you’re stuck and looking at all of your different options and weighing out your pros and your cons the solution to this. is making a decision because when you make a decision that gets you into momentum.

And guess what? When you make one decision, very rarely do you stay with that exact [00:16:00] decision, but one decision leads you to another one. So my first decision when I was in tech was that I wanted to start a food blog. And then I did that for a little while. And then that taught me I actually don’t want to do this, even though I still love cooking and baking.

I didn’t want to be a recipe developer. That’s very much behind the scenes. And I learned that that’s not what I wanted. So then I transitioned to a wellness blogger. Because I had gone to yoga teacher training, I had really gotten into mindfulness, I was still loving food, but I was like, no, I want to be more I want to have more of an impact.

I don’t want to just create recipes behind the scenes. I want to talk to people about the things that I’ve learned about being a woman in corporate and how I still take care of myself even though I was burnt out, all of those different things. And then that wellness blog led me to becoming a life and business coach.

So one decision. is going to lead you to the other one. Let’s say you’re [00:17:00] on a trail, you’re, you’re walking a trail and then you come into a fork in the trail. So there’s one trail that goes to the right and one trail that goes to the left. And what’s happening right now when you’re not making a decision is you’re standing in between those two trails and you’re not moving forward at all.

But let’s say that there’s the right trail and the left trail. If you just took steps towards the right trail, you’re moving forward. And then you could keep going down the trail, and then maybe as you go further down the trail, maybe that right trail connects to the left one, but further ahead, and that’s what life is like.

It’s not a clearly paved path that, you know, everybody takes. No, we’re all on a mountain trying to get to our version of this, you know, top of the mountain, and the way that you get there, your journey is going to be very different, but if you’re not moving forward, you’re never going going to get to your journey.

So the solution here is to make a decision. And that is one of the things that we help you do inside of Courage Driven Latina. [00:18:00] We help you gain clarity to make a decision on your purpose, on what it is that aligns with your soul. And we do that not in a year. We literally do that within two weeks. As soon as you sign up, you get access to the Courage Driven Latina curriculum.

Which takes you through the, all of these videos are prerecorded, so you get immediate access to that. And the first few videos are specifically to help you find clarity. There is a guided visualization, there’s a questionnaire, there’s a purpose clarity guide, and that helps you figure out what it is that you want to work on.

And we help you make a decision that you feel good about, and it does not take A long time. Again, two weeks is all you need. Honestly, you could probably get it done in a day. The only reason we say two weeks is because we still like you to come and get coached on the calls because we have weekly 90 minute calls where you get to talk to myself [00:19:00] or if I’m traveling, then one of my support coaches.

But this idea of, Oh, I don’t want to make the wrong decision is really. What it is that is keeping you stuck. So if you relate to this, know that it does not have to take forever for you to find clarity. Okay? The third mistake that both I made and that I see with a lot of my clients, whenever they keep delaying their goals and dreams, and maybe this mistake is something that you’ve been making over the last three months.

throughout 2025, which is maybe why it’s hard to make 2025 your year. Sothat is lacking in aligned community. Because let’s be honest, it is hard to bloom when you are planted in the wrong garden. And this is not to say anything bad about your friends, or your family, or the people who are around you. You can love them. But the thing is, That if you are the only one in your circle [00:20:00] with big dreams or big dreams that are similar to yours, right?

Maybe your circle has big dreams, but in completely different areas. Maybe you have dreams of being an entrepreneur. You have dreams of pivoting in your career. And maybe your friends have dreams of, I just want to get pregnant. Right now. And not that just getting pregnant is, something that is less than the other ones, but they’re just on a different path, right?

Maybe for them, their purpose is like, I want to make a home. And that’s also a big purpose on its own, right? Cause we all came from women. But maybe your friends have a different level of motivation, right? Maybe for them, maybe they are recovering from burnout and all they want is peace. And they’re like, I’m done with money.

I’m done with growing. I’m done with all this. I just want some damn peace. But you are like, no, I don’t want to settle. I don’t want to follow the path that the women before me followed. I don’t want to, I’d rather wait for the right relationship than just settle [00:21:00] for whatever relationship just because I’m not being abused.

I don’t want to just settle for a job because it gives me a paycheck. I want to feel like my purpose is being lived. Or maybe I don’t want to work for somebody else forever. I want to work for myself and I want to change the world. And have an impact on this world, maybe this is how you feel, right? So if you are the only one in your circle with your type of goals, then it’s really hard to get there.

Because what happens is if you’re surrounded by people who don’t have dream, if you’re watching the video of this, my cat is in the frame. Okay, there we go. She’s moved. But if you are the only one in your circle with big dreams, then you’re going to start to shrink just to fit in with your circle. And people who have not been where you’re going won’t encourage you to continue because they can’t understand, right?

I’ve talked about my mom so much. Even my [00:22:00] mom’s been on the podcast where when I told her I was going to leave the tech industry to start my own business, she was not supportive of it. And, and it wasn’t like she was saying insulting me or anything like that. She was very scared for me because she didn’t think it was possible.

She thought I was already in the best possible situation. How could I walk away from it? And that’s what’s happening with a lot of our friends and family in our community. It’s not that they don’t want what’s best for us. It’s that they simply do not understand your vision, right? Because remember your vision is for you, not for others.

And when you are surrounded by people who are also pivoting in their careers, also creating content, also starting or growing businesses. That is a game changer because there is so much power in proximity and the accountability and the power in being seen in a room where everyone gets it. And that is exactly what Courage Driven Latina has [00:23:00] done for my clients.

I wish people said, Oh my God, Erika is the best coach ever. And like, I mean, Hey, people. Do give me a lot of compliments, but do you want to know what people talk about more than anything in this program? It is the community. And it’s true, right? If it was just me in there, I don’t know if it would be as powerful, but imagine having access to women who are growing coaching businesses, who are starting their personal fitness journeys, women who are writing books, women who are pivoting to different industries that they don’t have any experience in other women who are negotiating their salaries.

That is. The stuff that people are working on in Courage Driven Athena, those are the courage projects. I mean, we have people building agencies. We have people leaving steady careers to grow their businesses. We have other people who are like, no, I don’t want to be a business owner, but I really do want to ensure that I’m valued at work.

And because of that, I’m going to. Transition to a different role. And we have other people who’ve never created [00:24:00] content before in their lives and they’re launching podcasts and they’re starting Instagram pages and starting Tik TOK pages, and they’re making an impact. 

So here’s what it takes to actually flip. Because remember, it’s not too late and you can flip the script in 90 days. It does not have to take forever. The first thing we’re going to help you do is make a decision on what it is that you’re going to focus on right now. We help you do this with your courage project.

That’s something that you get done. in two weeks. The second thing is we help you follow a structure. And we do this with the courage project plan, which has the obstacle plan inside of it, literally a step by step plan that tells you what to focus on, what not to focus on. When you’re going to work on it, when you’re not going to work on it, it is so much easier to stay disciplined when you know what it is that your focus is.

And then last but not least, it is getting the right support. And you get that inside of Courage Driven Latina with the community. [00:25:00] You also get it with the weekly calls. And you also get it with having access to this program for an entire year. Change does not have to take forever. Change happens in 90 days.

But once you have that change, then the continued support Especially as your dreams keep getting bigger and bigger, that is invaluable. I actually earlier today did an Instagram live with Kay who was on the podcast. She is a kickboxing instructor. She’s been in martial arts for 20 years. And for the last 10 years, she has been thinking about wanting to do.

Private coaching and wanting to really turn kickboxing and martial arts into her full time job But the people around her who were not fitness instructors just kept telling her all that kickboxing thing Yeah, there’s no money in that or you can’t do that full time So she always had side jobs while she was doing this I met her at the kickboxing gym [00:26:00] that I go to she ended up joining courage driven Latina By the way, Kay is her ancestors are from the Philippines.

So she’s Filipina And this program, she has fit in like a little piece to the puzzle. She is like one of the MVPs of the program, always cheering people on. People have witnessed her growth from doubting if she could actually do this kickboxing thing full time to launching her private coaching business at the gym and doing like small group sessions and a one on one sessions and selling that out.

And now she’s like taking on more clients and now she’s working on growing. Her personal brand and her content. So watching her journey, the women have seen her journey from the beginning into where, where she is now. And she’s only been in the program for like six months or so. So she still has so much time to work on a bunch of different things, 

So earlier on this Instagram live, Kay and I were talking about how things can happen so quickly. So she went from [00:27:00] being in action to launching this business. And it all working out and it happened so quickly and then she’s like, okay, now what?

But there’s always more to work on and there’s always going to be a benefit of how they having extended support. So even though your transformation can happen really quickly, other things may still take time. So I’ll give you another example. I have a client who is a money coach and she. The first three months was the first 90 days inside of courage driven Latina.

She was really just building the courage and the skill to create content and to show up and that happened. Within the 90 days, but now she’s working on. Okay. How do I turn that into a business? So she’s taking action and that only took 90 days and she’s already feeling so much more confident But now to grow a business that’s not going to happen in one week or in two weeks.

We need another 90 to [00:28:00] 120 days for that, right? So while transformation can happen really fast, there’s a benefit of having long term support. I have another client who lost a family member and she had to take four weeks off from the program and couldn’t attend the calls. And she said to me, damn, if this program was still 12 weeks long, I would have missed a third of the program.

Thank you for making this program 12 months long, because even though I missed a month, I still have 11 months left. So even if 2025 didn’t go your way so far, you still have time to turn it around. The thing is that you do not need a new year. You simply need a new decision. And Courage Driven Latina is here to help you make it, plan it, and execute it with a community of like minded women. But remember the doors are closing tomorrow.

So if this podcast episode resonated with you, join us. If you have any questions, you can [00:29:00] send me a DM. Um, if you took anything away from this episode. Tell me as well, please send it to me in a DM or if you’d like to take a screenshot of this podcast episode and share it on your Instagram or wherever it is that you spend time, I would highly appreciate that.

Send this to a friend who needs to hear this as well because it is not too late to turn this year around. Alright y’all, I will see you next week. [00:30:00]