I want to take some time to share an experience I had in 2019 – I got to judge a beauty pageant. I was actually very honored to judge the Miss Valley Center and Junior Miss Valley Center Beauty Pageant in Southern California.

I was so honored to participate as a judge – The platform that these pageants run on is so similar to the things that I am also passionate about and the things that I strive to teach other women, which is confidence, believing in yourself, presenting yourself well, carrying yourself with confidence and poise and grace, conducting yourself well in an interview setting, serving others, and more!

Judging the Miss Valley Center Pageant reminded me of a couple really important things that I think we all tend to forget about ourselves -specifically the vision and the dreams that we once had when we were young.

Remember Your Dreams

Perhaps the most rewarding part of the experience of judging these beautiful, eloquent women who worked so hard in this program to prepare for this pageant, was listening to them talk about their ambitions. There was a portion of the day in the morning where each candidate did a 10-15-minute interview. Me and my four fellow judges sat behind a table with our little name cards and our list of questions, and we asked them questions about things from “why did you enter this pageant” to “what is your definition of beauty” to “what are your ambitions in life?”

Every one of these young women from the ages of 14-16 in the Junior Miss category or from 17-22, were so eloquent, and it was so clear that they had worked so hard on these answers. But the thing that really impressed me was that all of these women had such big dreams for their future. One of them said, “Oh, I’m going to be a novelist. I’m actually working on two novels, and I’m hopeful to publish one in the next year, and then I’m going to publish the other one in about five years. I’m going to become a best-selling novelist, and my books are going to positively impact people.”

Many of them were driven to help others in the field of medicine, so they said things like, “I want to go to this college, I want to get my nursing degree, and I want to become a nurse practitioner.” Or “I want to become a doctor. I’m going to help people, and I’m going to make the world a better place through healing.” There was this common underlying theme of “I want to do this, these are my big dreams, this is how I’m going to make the world a better place, and this is how I’m going to put to use the skills and the passions that I have at this young age of 14 or 22 and use those skills to help other people.”

It was just so wonderful to hear these young women talk about this because they all truly believed – really believed – that they were going to do these things. And why shouldn’t they? They’re young enough, and they have been taught these skills throughout the course of their pageant preparation and their life so far that they can go out and do these things, that they can go out and achieve their dreams, these big things that they want to accomplish, and nothing seems impossible to them right now. They’re primed for greatness. Seeing them speak about these things and hearing them speak about these things, and then watching them present them later on in the evening during the actual pageant portion and deliver a two-minute speech where they talked about the impact that they hoped to make on the world and how they were going to do that was so special. I felt very honored to be a part of the whole process.

But it also was a great reminder for me, and I think for a lot of us out there, that sometimes we forget those things that we really wanted when we were younger – the ways that we hoped, imagined, dreamed – they ways that we would change the world. It’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to forget our childhood dreams. Sometimes those childhood dreams are truly not feasible, but more often than not, we just forget about them because we become distracted.

We forget these things that we wanted for ourselves, and maybe to some degree, we convince ourselves that they’re silly, they’re not possible, they’re childish, and that we can’t do it – we get busy, we get distracted, or we get discouraged.

So I want to challenge you to reconnect with that young 14-year-old girl (or boy) that you were once, and the things that you wanted and the belief that you had in yourself that you could change the world because YOU CAN. Everyone has a unique blend of talents and strengths and gifts and service aptitudes and passions and things that you and only you can do to bring out into the world and make a real change. And, only you can be confident and fulfilled in knowing that this is what you are MEANT to do. I’m here to tell you and remind you today that this is available to you. This is something you can do at any point in your life. It is never too late to discover what that impact is that you’re supposed to have, and then work on making it happen.

How to Make Time to Reconnect With Your Hopes and Dreams

But there are steps that we can take to help remind us of those things and help us connect with who we are because, to be frank, it’s very easy to forget about the things that are important to us. It’s very easy to forget about the things that we either are passionate about, or once were passionate about, or maybe we still are, but we just forgot because we got busy. It is so easy to let that happen. It’s a lot harder to maintain those passions, and those things that make you feel alive, and the things that will really make you feel like you’re having a positive impact on the world around you. It’s a lot easier to forget about it or to purposefully shift it away than it is to actually do it.

So I’m here to remind you that it is okay to take time to reconnect with yourself. It’s vital, actually! But it’s hard because in today’s world, we are so busy. We are busier than ever. Think back to the last conversation you had with a friend, when you asked them, “How are you?” They probably responded, “Oh, I’m great, but I’m really busy.” Because EVERYONE is busy! We all are busier than ever before because we all have more opportunities than ever before. We’re all juggling our jobs, our family, our health, our relationships, and, you know, just being humans, and trying to have a normal, happy life. It’s hard. There’s a lot to juggle.

In that juggling process, it’s easy to just go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next – from work to the gym to picking up your kids to coming home to making dinner to go to sleep, and then doing it all over again the next day. Whatever your schedule is, it’s so easy to get in the habit of moving from one thing to the next and getting into this routine of doing all the things that we feel like we have to do.

Many of those things ARE things that you have to do. Maybe you have to go to work to make money, to be able to provide for your family and yourself and the future you want to create for yourself, but it’s easy to forget that it’s okay to make some time for yourself in the middle of that busy schedule. It’s crucial that you do because if you don’t, you will lose touch with who you are, and you will lose touch with the things that make you special.

This isn’t a hard change to make. Even just starting with five minutes a day (or, 10, 15, 20 minutes a day) of “you” time becomes just five minutes of you reconnecting with who you are, listing out things that you’re grateful for, listing out things that make you unique, shouting out things that you enjoy and that you’re good at, and just digging into who are you as a person, and reconnecting with that person because there is nothing more powerful than really being connected with who you are and having a true understanding of who you are and what you want. (And then taking that next step of fiercely pursuing those things – That’s always been my definition of confidence!)

I encourage you, if this is something that you’re struggling with, if you find that you’re very busy, too busy to feel like you know who you are, which I think a lot of people are in that same boat. I’ve been fortunate in the last couple weeks to connect with some women on lunch dates and in coaching sessions who are struggling with this because we all struggle when we don’t feel like we have a true sense of our identity and who we really are. As human beings, your identity is one of the most powerful things, if not the most powerful thing that you own. If you let yourself lose track of that and become disconnected with who you really are, then everything falls out of wack.

A Challenge for Reconnecting With Yourself

My challenge to you today is to give yourself 10 minutes. Find 10 minutes in your schedule today, whether it’s right now, maybe on your way home from work if you’re driving, or 10 minutes right before you go to bed to just sit quietly with yourself. Maybe get out a journal or a piece of paper, and write down 10 things that genuinely make you happy – 10 things that you enjoy doing or seeing or listening to or participating in. Anything that makes you happy. Write down at least 10.

Then just spend some time thinking about that and why those things make you happy. Then think about how you can do at least one of those things every. day. I promise you, connecting with something that truly makes you happy and feel fulfilled and connected with your own unique sense of “uniqueness” will put you in touch with your identity, and make you confident, happy, and fulfilled. And we all deserve to feel that way!

That’s my challenge for you today. (Yes, I gleaned all of this from judging a beauty pageant). Don’t lose sight of those things that you once wanted for yourself. If you wanted them in the past, there’s probably a BIG chance that you still do to some degree. And it’s okay to want those things! It’s okay to want to have that impact and to make a difference because we are all driven by that to some degree, and you owe it to yourself to figure out what that is for you.

Take 10 minutes today. Connect with yourself. Give yourself the time because you deserve it.

Want more? I would love to connect with you too.