[VERONICA]:
Empowered and Unapologetic is part of the Practice of the Practice Podcast Network, a family of podcasts that changed the world. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom podcast, Beta Male Revolution, or Imperfect Thriving, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Have you ever thought, how did I manage to lose myself? Being a mom is so hard, especially when we’re feeling stressed and disconnected. We exhaust ourselves trying to create this perfect life for our family. You deserve to enjoy your marriage and your kids, without the stress perfectionism brings. I am going to teach you how to identify who you are, outside of all of the roles you play.

Hi, I’m Veronica Cisneros. I’m a wife, mother of three, and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I am on a mission to teach women just like you how to become empowered and unapologetic. Welcome to our girl gang.

[VERONICA]:
Welcome to Empowered and Unapologetic. I’m your host, Veronica Cisneros. Today’s guest is an award-winning entrepreneur, executive coach, CEO of the ReLaunch company, featured speaker in the Silicon Valley and women’s conferences nationwide, as well as philanthropist in the Bay Area. She’s made it her commitment to help people reach new heights in life, their career and relationships. Having faced several setbacks herself, she has a unique understanding of how to help others by providing actionable steps to successfully ReLaunch. You might have caught her on ABCs ‘The Secret Millionaire’ or you probably have seen her speak on major news outlets such as CBS, ABC, Fox, Huffington Post and Yahoo. Holy moly, please help me by welcoming Hilary DeCesare.

[HILARY]:
Veronica, thank you.

[VERONICA]:
Absolutely, absolutely. So I have to say it’s been a little bit of a struggle for both of us just to do this, and we are here. We are here, we are recording.

[HILARY]:
ReLaunched our way to get here. It’s so perfect. It’s such a great way to start this episode.

[VERONICA]:
Right. So can you please share with us a little bit about your story because I’m hearing, you know, millionaire, ABC, all of these things. And it’s like, okay, I have to know who Hilary is.

[HILARY]:
Okay, first off, the name of that show is terrible. The premise is amazing. The premise is all about going undercover and giving people that truly are doing amazing things, money, and getting them more support out there. Recognition, brand awareness, all of that. So the name is awful. But the premise is just so cool. So it’s interesting when you read off all those things, really what I’m here to talk about, and really what the ReLaunch company is all about is that we as women have major relaunches in our lives, as well as many relaunches. And they can be good, and they can be bad. And I guess, you know, somehow I pulled the card where I’m going to have a lot of these so that I can really talk to a tremendous amount of different relaunches that people are going through. And so my story is that it really felt like kind of a roller coaster, because I’d be going along, things are super great in work or my marriage or with my three kids, and then all of a sudden I’d hit that major, major bump in the road. Sometimes it felt more like a pothole that’s, you know, like a New York pothole, just one of those big ones. And I’ve been divorced, I’ve had melanoma, and I’ve had the companies, I’ve launched companies, I’ve had successful ones, I’ve had ones that, you know, crazy, crazy, crazy things happened. And through it all I thought, Okay, well, this is my path. This is my journey.

And then all of a sudden, I decided, you know what, I need to share the process of what I’ve learned along the way with some of these. And then I did. I created the ReLaunch company and I created the ReLaunch effect which is a seven-step process. And thank goodness I did, because all of a sudden I got hit in a seven month period, just this last year, with my mom getting diagnosed with terminal cancer. My youngest daughter was going off to college as my, you know, I would be the empty nester. But of course, she’s not going in the US; she decided to go to Rome, Italy. And, Veronica, you’re probably thinking what’s going on in the world right now. It’s like, oh, my goodness, your baby was over there. And then I had a health scare myself. And with all that, then my daughter ends up in the hospital in Rome, and I have to go over there, my mom passes away, and I decide to sell my house that I built twenty-five years ago. And then to top it off, I ended up being one of the first ones to get COVID-19.

[VERONICA]:
Oh, my goodness.

[HILARY]:
And so, when I started to go down this path of, oh, my gosh, at what point is it just, okay, I’m throwing the flag up, enough is enough.

[VERONICA]:
Yeah, for real. I’m like, already throwing it, waving it.

[HILARY]:
I know, it’s so crazy. But I have to tell you, the only way I got through it and I’m here, talking about the fact that I’m not having just this entire crisis of my own, is because I used the principles that I have been coaching people in for twenty years. And it’s like the product, you know, this works. It’s like, oh my goodness, I’ve seen it work with so many women, but now I’m like, ah, let me tell you, I could not have survived, I couldn’t have, unless I really had leaned in, leaned into this idea around relaunching, and that relaunching is something that you can’t avoid. It’s going to happen. I work with people all the time that are like, hey, Hilary, I feel stuck. I feel unfulfilled. I feel overwhelmed, underwhelmed. And when it really hits you that I don’t want to feel like this anymore, then it’s time for a relaunch.

[VERONICA]:
Yes. So that’s the issue I find most women won’t admit. We get into this place of, you know, okay, so this happened. That’s fine, I’m going to tackle it, I’m going to go ahead and get it done. My kid’s sick, okay, I’m going to tackle it, I’m gonna get it done. My husband lost his job, got it, I’m going to go ahead and do whatever I can here. We’re constantly trying to fix everything, right? At no time do we ever reset. At no time do we ever say, wait a minute, this is not okay, I have to do something different, because different means starting over. And when I use the word ‘relaunch’, the first thing I think of is start over. And although I personally have benefited in so many ways by starting over and just pivoting and repositioning myself and saying okay, well that didn’t work. Let’s go ahead and try here. Most people aren’t able to do that and the reason why is because fear, right? Fear of failure, what does starting over look like? You mentioned divorce, you mentioned selling your house, your daughter, melanoma, and then your mom, it’s like, oh my god, enough. Now to start over? I don’t think I have the energy. So how did you find that energy? How did you get to a place where it’s like, okay, wait a minute. No. I do need to follow the principles of relaunching.

[HILARY]:
Well, Veronica, you’re a hundred percent spot on. There’s this fear of, oh my gosh, I can’t do it. What if it doesn’t work? What if it just continues down this path of like, the spiraling out of the negative thoughts that just mean more negative thoughts and more negative thoughts. I used to joke with a friend, I would call her up and it would be one of these like, okay, all right, you’re not gonna believe this but let me tell you… and it’s almost like, okay, I’m bracing myself, what are you going to tell me? And then she would do the same and I’m like, oh, my God, we’re fueling this terrible energy. But when you start to look at the fear of, crap, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to get back on to that right path, to be able to kind of continue forward.

But here’s the thing – you actually have a choice, which is great. You have a choice; you can do nothing and continue your life down the path that you’ve already been going through. Or you can say, you know what, I really… I don’t want this to be my life. I don’t want in six months, in twelve months to be not even where I am, potentially six to twelve months even further behind. And so when I’m working with women that are going through a number of transitions and setbacks, there’s a point where they say to themselves, I’m done. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I don’t want to be a victim. I don’t want my life to be this way in the future. I want something different.

And then, as we discussed, how do you do it? How do you go about, I mean, it’s one thing to say, yeah, okay, great, Hilary, I want this better life. I want to love my life. I want to love my relationships. I want to love me. And the real problem is this – most people can’t get from where they are to immediately at that love themselves, love life, love, love, love. They can’t do it. They need to start because they need to start liking first, liking themselves, you gotta like before you love. And so that’s where you have to be looking at the fear. The fear that comes with, oh my gosh, I don’t think I have it in me to do it. It’s because who has it in you to go from where you are to like, that Nirvana with the rainbow and ah, you know, all of that. It just seems so far out there. So unattainable. And when you don’t see that there’s actually a path to getting somewhere, what do you do? You do nothing, you just do nothing.

[VERONICA]:
Yeah, well, you do what you’ve been taught.

[HILARY]:
Yeah, you go back to your old ways.

[VERONICA]:
Bingo. You go back to maladaptive coping skills. You go back to what’s familiar because that uncharted territory is so damn scary. Well, I don’t want to do that. You mentioned being diagnosed with melanoma. You mentioned being diagnosed with Covid, and losing your mom, having to go to Rome to be there with your daughter. Those are very, very hard, difficult points where, yeah, I mean, I’m listening to and it’s like, girl, where’s a flag? Because I need one [unclear] before they see me throwing this in? I can’t take it anymore. Like, I need a witness. Don’t see me do this, because [unclear] nobody’s paying attention.

[HILARY]:
I know.

[VERONICA]:
How did that happen? Because, I mean, I’m thinking COVID, which I’ve talked to some people that have had it. And it’s like, it feels like they’re dying, is what I’ve heard. So how did you manage to do this, feeling that way?

[HILARY]:
Okay, so even when I say my story, you heard me say it, but it didn’t define me. Those were things that happened on the outside and on the inside from a being second from the melanoma that I had. But here’s the thing, I chose to look at it very differently. And I think you and I’ve discussed that I have a podcast that talks all about silver linings. And the silver linings of what came from each and every one of my setbacks, my transitions – and I say transitions to transformations – it happened. I mean, I literally now understand my journey, as I said, and life is about the journey. It’s about this crazy, you don’t know what you’re gonna get, you don’t even know what’s going to happen thirty seconds from now. Look at what happened with us this morning. I mean, things are always going to surprise you, they’re always going to come up. And so I just want to, like, highlight a very, very simple way for people to be thinking about relaunch. And when you look at the word ‘relaunch’, and you look at the R-E-A-L… or R-E… I can’t even spell right now. I’m in a different [unclear].

[VERONICA]:
R-E-L…

[HILARY]:
R-E-L-A-U-N-C-H, I just want you to be thinking about the R being this reset. All right. So you know something’s going on in your life and it’s like, I got to reset. I got to just… I now, uh, I’m now in this presence. I’m aware that I need it. And then you have to be very aware with that E, that energy. You are in charge of the energy that you put out into the things that are around you. I could give a lot of my energy to feeling like, oh my god, can I actually have anything more? But what would that do to me? I’d be giving my energy away to something that… I had to get through it, I had to, you know, you talk about, like, a lot of times people put walls up – I was the biggest wall builder. I mean, I built those walls. I mean, I had fifty-floor walls that I had built up. And it’s funny, when you build up those walls, inevitably, you eventually can’t get over the wall. And then you got to look whatever you are dealing with in the face. And when you do, you gotta have that energy inside of you that you’re like, okay, you either have positive energy, or you have negative energy. And so I really focused on allowing myself to say, okay, there are a lot of great things that are still going on. Yes, this one thing is happening to me right now. And sometimes they were on top of each other. But I was the one that was deciding how I was going to interpret my situation.

[VERONICA]:
Hey, ladies, if you’re enjoying this episode, stop what you’re doing, take a screenshot and share it on your social media. Do not forget to tag me. I will share your share on my Instagram stories. I absolutely love hearing from you all, and seeing the positive changes you are making in your life.

[HILARY]:
And so then you get into the L. And I always say, me time, me time, but it’s actually ‘me love’. I need to give me a little love. That’s what I really need.

[VERONICA]:
That’s right.

[HILARY]:
And so, people say oh, you got to love yourself, love myself, love myself. And again, in those hard moments, it’s tough for you to just be like, yeah, party on the inside. You can’t do it. It’s more like, give me another glass of Chardonnay, please. Because it’s funny when we first started in this whole ‘shelter in place’, my husband and I said, okay, it’s the three P’s. Its positivity, perseverance, and Pinot Noir. It’s like, we gotta get through this. But with the love, you have to be looking at it from, you know, start gently with it. You’re not beating yourself up, like, are you kidding me right now? This is now happening? No, in fact, you’re saying, all right. All right. I appreciate what’s going on. I’m now… with COVID 19, I was number forty in San Francisco. So I was very early on, and I was flat on my back. And I kept thinking… and then, ready for this, I had the rare part of losing my voice as well. So I had laryngitis on top of all, and they’re like, we’re not even sure if that has anything to do with it. I’m like, well, great. I have it. And so, what I ended up…

[VERONICA]:
Sign me up.

[HILARY]:
Yeah. And my girlfriend would say, of course you did. Of course that was you. But what it did was it made me realize that, how long have I wanted to do a podcast? I wanted to do it forever. And I’ve always been like, there’s always something out there that’s going to stand in the way, that I can’t do, can’t do. And so I finally decided with my no voice, I’m like, I’m doing it. I’m creating this. And I mean, as soon as I felt better, I was on a mission. And thirty days later, I turn… actually less if you can really believe that. I think it was like twenty-four or twenty-five days. I had that, I did it. And it’s that type of mindset, it’s that loving yourself in those moments.

So now let’s go on to the A in relaunch, and that’s ‘acknowledge’. Acknowledge where you are. And here’s what I find, Veronica, that happens with women is that we look at ourselves right now as this is who I am right this second. But you have so many – let’s just use you – you have the Veronica of when you were three, you have the Veronica of when you’re ten, when you’re fifteen, twenty-one. You have all of those many mega relaunches that you’ve gone through, and you have this circle, this circle of magic inside of you, of these younger women that all comprise you and the wisdom that you have right now, and when you start to acknowledge where you are, it’s a matter of going back and saying, hey, I’m high-fiving you, girl. Because when you were two, when you were three, and you were sick in that hospital, and you were by yourself, or you had that terrible thing happened in high school, or, you know, whatever it is, it’s like, appreciate and acknowledge that you are who you are because of every single thing that’s gone on.

And that… I got to tell you, when we do… I do this awesome exercise where you literally, it’s like, do you remember you know that song? You know, ‘if I teach the world to sing in perfect…’ – I’m a terrible singer, but – ‘in perfect harmony’. You know, that song where everyone’s holding hands?

[VERONICA]:
Yep.

[HILARY]:
It’s kind of something similar. I know, you’re gonna be like, oh my god, can we…?

[VERONICA]:
I’m not gonna lie. I’m not gonna lie.

[HILARY]:
Yeah. Yeah. Can we edit that out? No, I’m kidding. But anyway, it’s that type of exercise that we do. And I gotta tell you, when you finally acknowledge that, you know what, you’re pretty badass, you’re pretty, like, yeah, you’ve done it. You are where you are because of all those things. Because of all those situations, you can then say, okay.

So then the U is ‘understand’. You are all of the past combined and now it’s your time to move forward. Because, if you feel stuck, if you feel like, I just can’t take that first step, you got to understand that you in the past, you’ve taken those first steps.

[VERONICA]:
Boom. Yes.

[HILARY]:
You got through it. Dang, feels good. That’s why that circle, really cool.

And then the C in relaunch is that you’re the ‘creator’. And when you start to create, when you start to move down that path, your confidence skyrockets. All you need to get is that confidence back. And so many of us have lost our confidence, whether you’re divorced and trying to get back out there in the dating world and you’re like, haven’t been out on a date in fifteen years, what do I do? What do I wear? How do I look? How do you text? What is online dating, it seems so awful to me? Those are the things that this process can help you get through. And for so many people, relaunching themselves back out into the world after this pandemic, this is a big deal. This is… for some of us, you know, you walked in, and I use this example of I live in an apartment building right now, in San Francisco. And when I came in to shelter in place, I was one person, but when I leave through those doors, when we are allowed to go back into the world, I gotta tell you, I’ve relaunched myself multiple times, and I’m excited about where I’m going, and the people that I’m working with that have lost their jobs, or I’ve had people now that have decided to sell their companies because they now realize that, you know what, I have a bigger purpose now. I have new ideas, new directions, people who have gone in, and now realize that their relationships need to be relaunched. And that that really is something that they want to focus on. So that’s really cool, when you can be the creator of what you really are trying to do in your life.

And then the last one, the H. The H is actually you have it already, the happiness is here, happiness is inside you. Happiness is one of those smaller women – girls – inside of you. There’s happiness there, we just have to… we have to pull it out, we have to know that it already exists. It is here, right now. And so that’s the overview of ReLaunch, and what we do and how we get there. And there’s a lot of, you know, the seven steps and things like that, that we really dig into. But on a whole, when you start to think about the fear of moving into the next part of this relaunch, it’s not fear based. It’s actually love based. And what’s the opposite of fear? Love.

[VERONICA]:
Mm hmm. You know, I love all the steps because they’re so empowering. They’re basically putting you in this position that you are actually in control. You’ve been in control of your life. It’s now making that active decision to do something different. And it takes little leaps of courage to go ahead and slowly take those steps and they’re actionable steps which I really, really appreciate because I really believe that anybody could take these steps and apply them right now to anything. And I love how you used, you referenced, that little girl. And the reason why is because, in so many ways, we’ve allowed that little girl to kind of take over the car that we’re in and they’re just driving. And they’re scared as hell, driving, passing all the red lights, passing all the stop signs, because they don’t know how to drive. And yet we as adults have not trusted ourselves to go ahead and position ourselves as the driver. But when we’re able to realize, wait a minute, I can trust that I am capable of learning, even if I don’t know the exact steps, or I don’t know what this is going to look like, I can trust that I’m going to get myself through this. Because like you mentioned, I’ve done it before in elementary. I’ve done it before in high school, and I’ve done it before with other past issues. And I’ve made it this far. So…

[HILARY]:
Veronica, Veronica, look at your podcast, Empowered and Unapologetic. I mean, it falls so nicely in. It’s like it’s kindred spirits to ReLaunch. I mean, they’re just, they’re together, working the magic of moving forward. And we do, we call it midlife magic instead of having a midlife crisis. Who wants to be in crisis mode? Who does? Nobody is like raising their hand, saying, hey, I want to be in that line. Because that line really is fun. Crisis, crisis, crisis. No. You want to be like, starting to have fun again. I mean, joy, again. People that are just starting out in their… and it’s not that they’re starting out in their relaunch journey, they’re starting out in now saying, hey, stake in the ground. We might be halfway through our life, we might be further than that. We don’t know. But what we do know is that we want to have better days. We want to have that purpose driven, we want love, my gosh, who doesn’t? If you can operate at love, I mean, it changes everything.

It’s like… I talk about it as being a stool. And if you think about the legs being your work, your business, the leadership, then you’ve got your life, and then you’ve got your relationships, you know, with the love and all that. But love is the seat. Love is, you know, if you have just the three stumps, you’re not going to be able to sit in that chair. But with love, it’s like… and then all you need is to have one little glimmer that is back inside you – we call it a spark, that spark inside you – and when you have a spark, think about what it does in creation of those fires, those passions again. I mean, that’s pretty darn cool. That’s when life gets to be fun. And so that’s what we’re all about.

We have to, you have to take back right now. And especially in today’s world, that there is so much just, I mean, everyone is relaunching. And so being compassionate, being there for other people as you mentioned at the beginning, that show I was on, it’s highlighting other people that everybody you know, when I start talking, it’s like, ah, I’ve got this ordinary, I’m so ordinary, I’m so ordinary, it’s just like, I don’t even know. And within five minutes, I can get people talking about how they really are extraordinary. And it’s just the word extra. That’s it – extra. Well, and extra, the extra doesn’t have to be huge. Extra is not like, a mile. It could be just this very like, small, little, you know, what is that? What is that that you can say right now makes you extraordinary?

[VERONICA]:
Bingo.

[HILARY]:
And let me tell you, those girls inside of you, those women inside you, they’re telling you. They’re telling you that, yeah, you know what? I’m here. I’m still here. I’m still part of you.

[VERONICA]:
I’m ready. Yeah, I’m ready. I’m ready. Well, Hilary, my last question that I ask all my guests – what are you doing right now to live the life you want to live? And I get it. You’re in quarantine. We’re all in quarantine. So I can understand that could be a tricky question. I’m still gonna ask it.

[HILARY]:
So I think right now, what I am doing is I’m really paying attention to other people. I’m really, you know, like, I’m reaching out. I mean, I have it, I do a, you know, three things that I must accomplish today. And it used to be very much like, oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. Now it’s, you know, who are three people that I can reach out to?

[VERONICA]:
Beautiful.

[HILARY]:
Who are those people that I can just acknowledge them, just say, hey, I’m thinking about you. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you right now? Not specifically in your house, but you know, where are your thoughts going right now? And so that’s pretty powerful. I have to say, when you give you get, and I gotta tell you, I’m like, this is one that… I’m saying to myself, I’m like, you know what, keep doing this. No matter if we’re locked in our houses, or if we’re out and about. So important. Women need connection, I need connection. And coming together in this collective way to support each other is even more important now than it’s ever been.

[VERONICA]:
Absolutely. My next question, what advice would you give to the mom who feels stressed and disconnected?

[HILARY]:
The mom who feels stressed and disconnected, I would go back, and I would listen to the relaunch of what those are, and be gentle with yourself, and spend five minutes, five minutes and when we talk about that whole, you know, the reset, and you talk about loving yourself. You know what? When was the last time you were gentle with yourself? When was the last time that you just kind of gave yourself a little squeeze, a little hug and said, you know what? You got it going on?. You are really, really the bomb here. You deserve that gold medal. And right now, I’m giving it to you.

[VERONICA]:
I love that. I love that. Yes, yes. For the listeners out there, how can we find you?

[HILARY]:
So I would love if you went to therelaunchco.com and there is a very cool exercise that we have on there. It’s free. And it is you dating you. And this is not about, like, actually dating. We’re not talking about dating. If you had to go out… think of it if you want to think of it as you hiring you, okay? Any of that. But the premise is, you know, would you like yourself, or would you not? And it walks you through it. And then you’re really going to find out, it’s going to be like, yikes, but it does. It actually, Veronica, helps you do the reset. It helps you start to think about that.

[VERONICA]:
Oh my gosh, I’m totally going to encourage the ladies that are my group to go ahead and do this. Because, yeah, I think we forget, like, we get so caught up in everybody else’s life that if we were to be on a date with ourselves, how quickly would we leave?

[HILARY]:
Yeah, I don’t want a second date. Not interested. It’s like when you say, hey, can we just have like a cup of coffee instead? And you don’t even want to be there for the coffee. You’re like, mm, no.

[VERONICA]:
Oh my gosh, Hilary, it’s been such a pleasure having you. Thank you so much. This was amazing. I’ve learned so much.

[HILARY]:
Wow, Veronica, you’re awesome. I love your podcast. And I’m so happy you started yours as well.

[VERONICA]:
Yes, I know. Yeah, that’s right. We both did this during COVID. It’s happening.

[HILARY]:
I know. It’s so perfect, it’s perfectly aligned for us. And that’s why I was so fired up to be on here because I’m like, oh my gosh, this is just… what she’s doing, what I’m doing, it’s perfect. So kudos to you, you’re doing a great job.

[VERONICA]:
All right, well, until next time. See you guys later.

[HILARY]:
Thanks again.

[VERONICA]:
What’s up, ladies? Just want to let you guys know that your ratings and reviews for this podcast are greatly appreciated. If you love this podcast, please go to iTunes right now and rate and review. Thank you, guys.

Many women lose their own identity in the shadow of being a mom and a wife. We are a community of women who support each other. We leave perfectionism behind to become empowered and unapologetic. I know you’re ready for the next steps. If you want to become empowered and unapologetic, get my free course, Unapologetically Me over at empoweredandunapologetic.com/course.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests, are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.