259: Unleashing Mom's Superpower: Ignite Dreams Beyond Your Success Ceiling in 2025

Reflecting on Success: How to Dream Bigger with Fertile Imagination In episode 259 of the Mom Founder Imagination Hub, host Melissa Llarena reflects on personal growth, sharing a powerful quote by former pro volleyball player Gabby Reece: 'Never let your successes be bigger than your dreams.' She draws from personal anecdotes and her book, 'Fertile Imagination: A Guide for Stretching Every Mom's Superpower for Maximum Impact,' to inspire moms to dream bigger and leverage their imagination. Shop the book this holiday season using this LINK: https://bit.ly/fertilebook Melissa reads the introduction to her book, highlighting the importance of energy, enthusiasm, and imagination in achieving greater dreams, and encourages listeners to reflect on their past successes and envision even bigger goals for 2025. 00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview 02:17 Reflecting on Success and Effort 05:47 Pursuing Bigger Dreams 09:05 Introduction to 'Fertile Imagination' 10:07 Reading the Book Introduction 15:03 Stages of Rediscovering Imagination 25:06 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

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Share this episode with one female leader today who wants to dream bigger than her successes and needs to find her own way to gather the energy necessary in 2025 to do exactly this!

About Melissa Llarena

Melissa is a bestselling author (learn more on www.fertileideas.com), imagination coach behind the Fertile Imagination to Networking Success Group Coaching Program, consultant, speaker, contributor to ForbesWomen articles that have garnered 4 million-plus views, and the podcast host of the Mom Founder Imagination Hub. Featured guests include GaryVee, Beth Comstock, Suzy Batiz, David Meltzer, and hundreds of other unconventional thinkers. Melissa has been featured in the WSJ, Business Insider, Fox Business, CNN Money, The Huffington Post, and other publications. She holds a psychology degree from NYU, an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and a Transformational Coaching Academy certificate and is training to become a meditation practitioner. Melissa lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and three sons (one singleton and a set of identical twins). Connect with Melissa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissallarena/

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Transcript

  Welcome to episode  259 of the mom founder imagination hub. This is your host, Melissa Lorena. So today's episode is really a reflection on a quote, a life update, and a reading of the introduction of my book, fertile imagination. I think as we draw near to the 1st of January in a month, I wanted to just kind of do a little bit of self reflection because I Do not even believe in January one goals and resolutions.

Instead, I believe in making a decision today. Now this moment, even if everything doesn't seem comfy. So I was listening this weekend to a podcast by Gabby Reese, who clearly is very, very like myself. She's over six feet tall. She was a supermodel in her heyday. She's an. Athlete, volleyball pro player, you know, kind of like the opposite of who I was and who I am.

I am like five feet tall, last kid to be picked at the gym for any team sport and athlete and pro is not in my vernacular, but I do like the word vernacular. So I was a bit more of a, um, cerebral entity, I guess you could say.  And when I was listening to her podcast, which is really about, you know, making sure that you're optimizing for your health, when you are either a perimenopausal, menopausal, et cetera, I really grabbed onto a quote that she said, she actually says over and over in her house.

And by the way, her house is not just like Gabby Reese and some random. guy and three girls. No, her house is Gabby Reese, pro volleyball player and layered Hamilton because he is an ultra surfer, extreme athlete himself. And I'm sure probably towering over Gabby Reese. So, all right, let's get to the quote that is constantly articulated in their home. 

Never let your successes be bigger than your dreams. When Gabby Reese shared that, I really swallowed quite hard because I thought to myself, the amount of fricking effort that I have had to put in order to make my successes Come true  have been fricking extraordinary. And you probably feel the same way.

If you are into success, accomplishing, having some source of significance. So in my mind, I. Immediately went to, as an example, pursuing business school. Now I was not, am not, and will never be a quant person. I'm not into like math Excel. I think if you've been around for a little bit on this podcast, you know, that I have a disdain for Microsoft Excel.

Um, but you know, whatever I honor those who use it. The whole point is I think I had like five or six cavities in my business school experience because of the number of granola bars that I was chewing on in order to get through working through all of that quant work in such a competitive environment.

I certainly gained weight because that's what happens when you're just Eating granola bars, but then on top of that, like it was extraordinary of the effort that I had to put forth in order to complete my degree. And I had to complete my degree. I didn't see this as a nice to have, could I stretch it, et cetera, et cetera.

No, I was on a scholarship and like, I needed to fix what I had kind of created, which was this desire and need to fix Feel more fully baked and get my degree. All of that to say, I was like, Holy cow. I didn't have three kids back then. And that was a shit ton of effort. So here's Gabby Reese saying never let your successes be bigger than your dreams. 

Wow.  I literally have my book right next to me and I'm thinking to myself, holy mother of guacamole. It took two years for me to write fertile imagination, a guide for stretching every mom's superpower for maximum impact. I would say that is my more recent success. It took two years and it's so interesting because I started it in Australia while we were there for about three and a half years and finished it here in Austin, Texas.

And I will say that if getting my business school degree, um, resulted in five to six cavities, trust me, my dentist can certainly show you the receipts for that. Then getting my book definitely done as a self. Published author from the beginning to the end that actually led me to the eye doctor, physical therapist, and God knows what else I had to go through in order to fix what I had to do.

Sort of created, which was some issues because I was looking at the screen for way too long at the tail end, trying to finish my book with copy editing, um, being kind of put up against the wall to figure out what needed to get done as soon as possible within a short period of time and in a very unpredictable way.

So, okay. It seems to me that for me personally, I don't know about for yourself and you might want to really give this a thought, but like for you, like think about your very last success, like for real, think about the amount of effort that it took in order for you to accomplish that success. Okay. Take a big, deep breath.

Now, Can you imagine something that is bigger to pursue or to become in 2025? And right now I'm recording this on December two, and I wanted to just be mindful of the fact that I get that January one is that time and we're like, Oh, all of a sudden I never was, but I can actually become this person on January two, but I want you to just.

Think through your prior successes. I really want you to dig deep and really figure out for yourself, what did it take? What sacrifices did you have to make? What is it that you had to say no to in order to say yes to your self and your ambitions? And here's what I know to be true with regards to any success I have had. 

The unfortunate thing is that the world doesn't stop when I, all of a sudden, write down a goal. Instead, the world keeps worlding, for lack of a better word choice, and basically stuff happens in your favor and some stuff happens in a way that makes your goals harder to achieve. And the idea is you have to keep going, no matter what, whether you're in that up or you're in that down.

So now as you consider the fact that your successes have to be, um, smaller than your dreams. Oh my gosh. So. Like where's this extra effort and energy going to come from? Like, that's a question I ask myself all the time because yeah, I'm a morning person this morning. I was singing from West side story. I feel pretty because I was just feeling happy today, but, but I know for a fact, when it comes down to executing on some of my ambitions