Just a few months ago, I felt like giving up. I thought, “This is it! Time to throw in the towel and start looking for tech jobs again!” I was losing hundreds of followers a day, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I almost gave up. But then I thought about my WHY.

Your why is what will help you keep moving forward. We know this! Our parents have crossed deserts, endured demeaning jobs, and put their children before themselves, all so that the next generation could have a better life. WE were their WHY. And now that we’re in a better place, we can start thinking about our why, too. 

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about what to do when you want to give up. Giving up is not an option. We (or at least most of my listeners) are Latina. We are resilient; it’s literally in our blood. Now that that is established, how do we get back up after we’ve been kicked down? I think I figured it out. I’ve got the results, and I’m sharing them with you in this week’s episode of the Chingona Revolution Podcast!

How to work with Erika:

Join the waitlist for the Magnetic Mastermind program here!

Join the waitlist for the Courage Driven Latina program here!

Resources Mentioned:
Purchase Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl here!

Click here to claim your Manifest Your Marca bot! https://theerikacruz.com/manifest-your-marca 

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

Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST, an Afro-Latina-owned boutique podcast production and copywriting studio. 

Episode Transcript:

Erika: What if the people living your wildest dreams aren’t any smarter than you? What if they’re not more talented, not more qualified, not more special, they don’t necessarily have the it factor? What if the only difference between them and between you is that they have something that keeps them going when things get hard?

Because things do get hard as you are working your way up in your career, if you are starting a business, if you are creating content and building your [00:01:00] personal brand. If you have goals in life, you are going to come across obstacles, and things are going to get difficult. So what if these people don’t have a better strategy, a bigger following, or more confidence?

What if the thing they have is this one thing? And today I’m going to tell you what that one thing is and how to find it for yourself. Because personally, I almost lost it. And almost losing it cost me everything that I had worked for. I’m your host, Erika Cruz. And in today’s episode, I am going to give you the key for what to do when you want to give up I recently visited a book or revisited a book that a friend had recommended to me, and it made me realize something. The book is called Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. If you haven’t read it, [00:02:00] I do recommend it. Frankl was a psychotherapist who survived the Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

And, while that topic is obviously very heavy, there is a big lesson for us. And That’s what I wanna talk to you about today. What he observed inside of those concentration camps and then documented in his books changed the way that I think about everything. So here’s what he noticed, and this is what sets those people apart who do survive and do overcome obstacles. Viktor realized at these concentration camps that the people who survived the concentration camps held on when everything around them was designed to break them.

Even if they were not physically the strongest, even if they weren’t the oldest or the wisest, the people who survived were the people who still had a reason to live. A specific reason, whether it was a person that they needed to get [00:03:00] back to, a partner, a child, or maybe it was a mission they hadn’t finished.

For him, he was writing a book And he had put so much effort into this book, and he thought it was really going to change the industry. And that is what kept him going maybe an unborn child that they wanted to meet. Maybe their partner was pregnant when they got taken away to the concentration camps. Or maybe they just made a promise to themselves. But the people who lost hope, who couldn’t find a reason to keep going,What Viktor Frankl observed in the concentration camps is that the moment somebody gave up hope, truly gave up, they often didn’t survive very long.

Let me say that again. Hope tied to a specific reason to keep going was literally the difference between life and death at the concentration camp. Now, I know that our goals today are not as extreme as a concentration camp. Building a business, growing your Instagram following, providing for your [00:04:00] family, these are all really important things for us today.

I understand that’s not the same as surviving a concentration camp. I want to be really clear about that. But the principle, the principle is universal, that when your why is bigger than your obstacles, you are going to keep going. When your why disappears, so does your momentum. 

And that is the difference between the people who continue going when the obstacles present themselves. It’s not because they’re more talented. It’s not because they have a great strategy. And strategy has its time and place. It really does But you cannot compete with somebody that has such a strong mission. And Joe Dispenza has said, this has actually been documented in studies, but mission-driven motivation is the highest level of motivation. When there is a mission behind what you are doing, you are way less likely to give up. Way less likely Now, I wanna share something that I haven’t really talked about a [00:05:00] lot because I feel like I was still navigating it. But last year, I was losing followers. Not a few followers. I was losing hundreds of followers every single week. And the strategies that had worked for me, that once helped me land over 300 clients, get featured in The New York Times, be on Telemundo, be on CNN, those strategies were no longer working for me.

And I remember sitting with that really thinking to myself, “Is it time for me to go back and just get a job? Because maybe this was a good run, but it’s over. Maybe I’m just… I’ve already had kinda my 15 minutes of fame, and it’s done. Maybe nobody really cares anymore.” And honestly, that thought scared me, that I would possibly go back and get a job.

Not because I was afraid of doing the work in my business, or if I really did have to go get a job, there’s, like, no shame in that at all. But because deep down, I knew I still had [00:06:00] more to offer. I knew I still wanted to make an impact. So I asked myself a question that I really hadn’t asked myself in a while.

I just kind of lost sight of it, and I think we all lose sight of it whenever we are working really hard and things aren’t maybe turning out the way we want them to. And I asked myself, “Why did I start this in the first place?” And then it hit me. I started this because I want to retire my mom. My mom is in her going-on-mid-60s.

She still cleans houses. And even though she’s working less now, she’s still working really a physically labor-intensive job. And I started this because I wanted to show other women, other first-gen women, other women like me, who were told that they need to stay small, that there’s way. So my, why is kind of twofold.

It was wanting financial freedom, but it wasn’t just about the money, right? It’s okay to have a money goal, but there was a deeper goal behind that goal. My why was I want to help my mom. My [00:07:00] why was I want to be a present mom for my future kids. I don’t wanna have to take maternity leave and go back to work for somebody else and decide when I get to be home and when I don’t get to be home I don’t want my mom working this labor-intensive job and financial freedom will support me with that. And on the other end, I wanted to do something that I know was impacting women, that was also supporting them in reaching their financial freedom, time freedom, that they can also give back to their family

And the moment I reconnected with that, I was like, “I can’t give up on this. Not at all.” And this happened at the end of last year. In that moment when I revisited why I started in the first place, my intention was way bigger than my obstacles, bigger than my doubt, bigger than my shame for, “Oh my goodness, if I had all this success, why am I not continuing to get this success?

Why are people unfollowing me now?” I went from taking things personally and feeling like life was happening to me, to [00:08:00] deciding that I was going to do something about this. It really was this empowering shift, and the one thing that happened is that I remembered why I wanted to do this So I made some changes, and in the five months that followed, I grew my account by 15,000 followers My programs got completely revamped. I took everything I learned because, you know, I mentioned earlier that strategy does have a time and place, and I realized that the strategies that I was using that worked so well for me in 2022 are not working today.

Content has shifted, things have evolved, AI has changed so many things regarding how people consume content, how people create content, what works, what doesn’t work. And I took everything I learned from the mistakes I was making, and I applied that to myself. I, again, as I mentioned, grew followers, I revamped my programs, and then my clients started seeing amazing results, better results than they had seen in a very long time.[00:09:00] 

Tangible results that you could see. Women that were getting two hundred views on average on a post were hitting ninety thousand views, a hundred thousand views, fifty thousand views. And women that had never landed a client from their content, never had even made an offer, were landing clients within a week.

Not because I suddenly had everything figured out, but because I stopped letting these obstacles and my doubt run the show I made that decision that my why was so important, I was going to figure this out It’s like we can all be stubborn in areas of our life. Be stubborn with this. Like, be stubborn with your goals. Find other ways. If the way that you are doing something is not working, try something else. But I think as a society, and just as women, we are taught to stay humble, to not let ourselves fail, to not let ourselves be seen trying.

And everything we want is literally on the other side of risking failure. Because when you fail, you still… You’re gonna learn. [00:10:00] Like, when you take action, you’re going to learn regardless. You’re either gonna grow because you succeeded, or you’re going to learn because you failed. Either way, you come out winning, versus if you stay in the same spot forever So this is what I want you to take from this. Whatever you are working on right now, whether it’s building your personal brand, growing your Instagram, starting your business, finally posting consistently, applying to different jobs, the question isn’t just what is your strategy? The question is, what is your why?

What’s the intention behind you doing this? And I don’t mean, again, on a surface level. It’s okay to want to make money. It’s okay to want more followers. But typically, there’s a reason behind that. You want more followers because you think that’s going to bring more opportunities. You want more money, so you don’t have to work as many hours at your day job There’s something underneath even the, the vanity goals I want you to really ask yourself, “Okay, why do I want that? What’s that, what i- what’s going to be possible for me when I make more money? What’s going to be [00:11:00] possible for me when I start posting? What is going to be possible for me when I start this business? How am I going to be impacting people’s lives when I start my business?” When you discover what that is, write it down somewhere where you can see it all the time. If you do vision boards, put that on your vision board because the truth is there will be a moment, probably more than once, when the strategy isn’t going to work, when your content isn’t going to land, when your followers aren’t growing yet, and everything in you says, “Maybe I should just give up.

This is obviously not working.” And in that moment, your strategy’s not going to save you, your why will. So I wanna challenge you today, take out your journal or your notes app or however you like to, document certain things, and finish this sentence: I’m building this because… And then if it’s because I wanna make more money, just keep saying because.

Because, because, because, because. To make more money because I wanna help my family. Because I want [00:12:00] my children to see what’s possible And don’t stop at that first answer. Go deeper. Keep asking why until you feel like you have something that makes you emotional. And once that happens, once your voice cracks, once you get a little watery-eyed, once you feel it in your body, then that one’s it. Because when your why is bigger than your obstacles, nothing will stop you 

I know we’ve been talking a lot about your why, and you might be thinking, “Okay, Erika, I know exactly why I want to do this, but I don’t even know how to do it exactly.” Well, if that is where you find yourself, then I want to invite you to my free training called Is Your Mom Your Number One Instagram Fan?

And yes, the title is very intentional because if the only people who are seeing your content are your mom, your cousins, your coworkers, then this training is for you. I’m gonna be breaking down the three specific mistakes that are keeping your content invisible. These are the mistakes that I was making when I was losing hundreds of followers, and I’m going to be teaching you what [00:13:00] it is that I’ve been teaching to my clients that has supported them with growing their followers, landing clients, all of those different things.

So if you are struggling to post, not sure what’s going to work, what’s not going to work, come to the training because I’m going to give you all of the strategy. No gatekeeping at all. You are gonna learn so much from this, and we will also talk a little bit about your why as well. You can register using the link down below.

So look, I wanna leave you with this. Viktor Frankl wrote something that I keep coming back to, and he said, and I’m paraphrasing here, but he said, those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.”  Let me say it one more time. “Those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.”

The strategy is the how, and the how matters, and we’ll talk about it at the training. But the why, the why is what gets you to the training. It’s what gets you to hit publish on a post when you’re scared.Your why [00:14:00] is what gets you back up after your content flops, after strangers are supporting you more than people you already know, or if the launch doesn’t go as planned, or if somebody unfollows you and you spiral for twenty minutes Your why is your survival strategy, and it’s important to never lose that Think about if your parents immigrated to the United States, all of the obstacles they had to overcome. I mean, some people were in the desert for days. Some people crossed rivers, went days without eating. How did they survive that? They had a bigger why. They wanted to give back to their family So again, I know that we aren’t… Who knows? Maybe you are, maybe you are dealing with, with bigger things, right? Maybe you are an immigrant yourself. But if your goal is to build your brand, build a business, and you’re thinking, “Oh, this is first world problems,” we can still learn so much from this. We can still [00:15:00] learn from the concentration camps, we can still learn from your parents, your grandparents, your ancestors,Because resilience literally runs in our blood

If you took anything away from this podcast episode, be sure to let me know, and I will see you at the training. Again, the link is down below [00:16:00]