[BREANNE SMEDLEY]
No. And I just, I love that you brighten every room that you come into. Like, those are the things that build confidence because then athletes and kids are like, I don’t need to perform to earn anything. I am confident. Who I am is enough.
[VERONICA CISNEROS]
Absolutely.

Hey girl. Imagine a life where you feel supported, connected and understood. I get it. Being a mom is hard, especially when you’re spinning so many plates. We exhaust ourselves trying to create the perfect life for our family. You deserve to enjoy your family without the stress perfectionism brings. On this podcast, I provide practical and relatable life experiences. I teach women quick and easy to use strategies to help them reclaim their identity, re-ignite their marriage and enjoy their children. If you’re ready to be challenged, then pull up a chair, grab a pen and paper because it’s about to go down. I’m Veronica Cisneros, a licensed marriage and family therapist and this is the Empowered and Unapologetic podcast.

Hey ladies, welcome to Empowered and Unapologetic. I’m your host, Veronica Cisneros. Today’s guest is a certified female athlete confidence coach who works to empower and enable female athletes to cultivate true confidence, unlock their potential and level up their performance across all aspects of their lives. Ladies, I’m so excited to share her with you. She has a true passion for empowering and enabling female athletes – and their parents. Let’s just be honest. Their parents need to – with the mental aspect of their sport, the missing key to confident and elite performance. Her areas of expertise include goal setting, affirmations and visualization, crushing limiting beliefs. Oh my gosh, I’m like, I’m excited. I’m have three girls. I’m totally excited. Shifting self-talk, overcoming mistakes, yes, performing under pressure, letting go of perfectionism, managing stress and becoming more resilient. Ladies, I am super excited to introduce you to Breanne Smedley. Breanne, you are a complete badass. Hey.
[BREANNE]
Hi. Well, thank you.
[VERONICA]
Yes, absolutely. Oh my gosh. So I have three girls and part of the reason, I’m not like, it’s not that I’m not big on like athletics. My girls used to be in dance and while they were in dance, it was like, I’m just going to read my book. I’m going to kick it over here because the amount of drama that’s happening is like crazy. And I got, I literally, because my girls ended up being in competitive dance and they wanted to do it. So I’m all about it. But I purposely did not like figure out like the whole, what does diamond mean? And what does gold mean? And what does this mean? Because each one was like, it was crazy levels. Purposely I did not find out what those levels meant because I didn’t want to get wrapped up in, “Oh my God. My daughter’s like top.” Nobody cares. Like did your kid have fun? Did your kid enjoy themselves? That’s what I’m all about.

And it was like, ah, I just, I had to remove myself from it. I made some friends, but I was like really picky with the people I befriended for so many reasons, but it was just like, okay, I don’t know, if my kids want to play, awesome. If they don’t want to play, awesome. However, I think if I’m just being completely honest, I think that also scared me into like, right now my kids aren’t in sports. I mean it’s summer, but it’s just, I just want time to have fun. Like you’re not going to get a scholarship tomorrow. Like honey, you’re in fifth grade. Come down. You know what I mean? It’s not going to happen. Not that I’m telling my kids out of it. I’m telling parents that like calm down. It’s not going to happen. And if it does happen high-five but also being a clinician, I listen to a whole bunch of kids that are suicidal, that are teens or now adults that are struggling with their own identity because it all involved perfectionism.

And because their parents pushed them so hard and trained them so hard, they now have OCD. They now have eating disorders and it’s like, their parents are like, where did this come from? It’s not even a big deal. I mean, it was just sports and it’s like, no. What happened, like all of that training, how it conditioned their mindsets to believe that it’s these expectations that they have to meet in order for them to be of any value is what truly, I don’t want to say mess them up because that’s not true, but it’s truly what tainted them. So I’m super excited to have you on, like crazy excited. So can you please tell us about yourself?
[BREANNE]
Yes, absolutely. And everything you’re talking about is so spot on because you’re right. We’re like, oh, it’s just athletics, just sports. Like this should be good. But if that’s the place where athletes, that’s where those things manifest and really, really go off of the court or the field or out of the pool. So yes, backing up, I’ll take it all the way back to high school. So basically in high school I was an athlete. I played sports growing up and volleyball was kind of my passion. I started playing really competitive volleyball year round and by the time I was a senior in high school, I was getting recruited and kind of getting noticed by a lot of colleges and on the outside, you wouldn’t probably have a guess that I struggled on the inside with confidence and self-doubt and perfectionism and worried about letting my parents down and my coaches down and like all of these pressures I was putting on myself.

So while I was a pretty good player and was getting noticed by colleges on the inside, I was like, I don’t know if I want to do this. Looking back, I had this fear of success, like what if I don’t live up to this expectation that people had of me and all of these things that I couldn’t articulate when I was 17 years old? So I decided that I was going to quit. I was like, it’s just too much. I don’t want to play in college anymore. I’m just going to quit. Like, that’s the best option for me right now. And kind of in my eyes disappointed a lot of people, but I was like, at least the pressure’s not there anymore.

So I then went on to college. I was like, I’m just going to be like a student. Well, I had other plans apparently. So I went, and I was a student, but just so happened at the college. I went to had a very, very successful volleyball program and I went to every single match and was like, oh gosh, I actually missed this. I went out on a limb, contacted the coach and was like, “Hey, do you think I could just try out? This is what happened. I decided not to play, but I really feel like I want to achieve. Offer me a tryout with the team.” And I’ll never forget after my tryout, like a couple days later she was like, “So how do you think you played?’ And I was like, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know. How do you think I played? It doesn’t really matter what I think.”

I’ll never forget. She said we think you’d actually be a great fit on our team and we want to offer you a walk-on spot. And I was like, oh my goodness. So I decided to be a walk-on on a division two college with a high, very, very competitive volleyball team. They were actually the national runner up that year and it just so happened that this coach was amazing and she highly prioritized mental training, highly prioritize the mental health of her athletes, and so I got to spend four years really tapping into what it means to actually develop confidence and work on the mental side of the game in order to increase my performance, but also increase my confidence in myself.

So over those four years I became kind of obsessed with like, wow, there’s this mental side of the game. And like, there’s actually was nothing wrong with me. I was struggling with pressures and anxieties that all athletes, all people struggle with, but I just didn’t know that there were skills and strategies that I could use to actually help with these things and help with my confidence. So by the time I was a senior I was a full ride scholarship athlete. I was starting, I was loving volleyball again. I was feeling like playing the best volleyball in my life because I was really able to tap into that side of mental training. So I was taking sports psychology classes, actually got my undergrad in education and became a teacher right out of college, started coaching my own volleyball teams, and became a head volleyball coach.

What I started to notice was that my athletes were struggling with the same exact thing that I had been struggling with in high school. Like it wasn’t automatically somehow and now like, gosh 12 years later I still see athletes that are struggling with this. And I’m like, wow this is something, this goes well beyond volleyball or well beyond soccer or beyond basketball. This is like our confidence that we take with us for the rest of our lives. Like this is what I need to be coaching, is like the mental side of the game and how to help athletes like navigate that anxiety, those spheres, all of those things, because again, like they’re going to, the court is just a reflection of their daily life. So I decided to go become a positive performance mindset coach, then I founded a business with my sister-in-law, who was also passionate about women and females and empowering females and we put our heads together to create this business where we are serving and empowering female athletes and their parents.

So this time I became a mom as well. So I have two little ones, a three and eight weeks old now. My daughter, even though she’s young, I’m like, gosh this needs to start now. Like, how do I cultivate confidence in her now? What can I be doing to help her grow up with that unshakeable confidence and that trust in herself? So that’s where part of our business, half of it is serving female athletes within our programs and then the other half is serving the parents. And because we know that we as moms and as parents really, really influence our daughters and our sons and can really influence their confidence. We like to think, and I like to think like, well, if I just set her up with like the right opportunities and make sure she gets involved in a bunch of different things and she’ll figure it out. But really she’s looking at me and I want to make sure that what I’m doing, and I don’t have to be perfect, we’ll get into that, but that I’m intentional with the words that I say and the thoughts that I’m thinking so that I can really help her grow up in confidence. So yes, that’s where we are now.
[VERONICA]
Yes, I’m like so excited. The biggest thing is, yes, I love how you said the court. Can you say that again? You said the court is what, like tells you a lot about the kid and their upbringing. That’s how I received it, but what was the exact, the court is a reflection.
[BREANNE]
Yes. Yes, the court is a reflection of the comments that they have in their daily life. And really, that’s just where it’s manifest itself because like athletics and it’s just a visible representation of their inner confidence. And it’s where we see our athletes perform and we get to see it like on stage and everything like that, but where we don’t actually get to see that, you know the thoughts that they carry with themselves in those like nervousness, that anxiety off the court, I mean, you might not be able to see that as much; maybe how they’re interacting with their friend groups and things like that, but their sport, that’s kind of where we started focusing is because their sport means a lot to them and to the parents too. They’re like, how can I get my athlete to perform better? And we’re like, okay, well, we’ll work on that, but we got to go a lot. We’re going to go layer by layer and build this down because that’s just one representation of the competence.
[VERONICA]
So what I see with a lot of parents, both professionally and personally, what I say a lot is parents will push themselves. Kids will miss an entire summer because they’re training or wake up early to again, train and miss weekends because they’re playing during games. I respect that and I totally believe that trophies are definitely earned. You work, there’s this amount of dedication that you have toward the sport. Absolutely, it’s not necessarily where everybody gets a participation award, but I totally am for those that have worked their asses off to go ahead and achieve this school. Yes, they are rewarded. However, at the same time, what price did they have to pay for it? So kind of making sure that there’s some level of, I guess, balance with parents and kids and having this better understanding of that child-like mentality because after all they are kids. One story I hear often is a lot of parents, if their kids don’t perform a certain way, their parents will not talk to them for the entire day or the entire week can. Can you speak to like what that does to a kid?
[BREANNE]
Oh yes. I mean, one of the main ways that that we, as parents can help our athlete, even when the athletes are our kids be confident is through making sure that we are recognizing them as people, rather than what they do. Like their sport is what they do, who they are as a person is who they are. And that’s what you want them to have confidence in; is that they don’t need to do anything different. They don’t need to perform, they don’t need to, and all of those accolades like really don’t matter in the eyes of the parent to help them gain or receive love from their parents. So what we coach parents on a lot is that we want to make sure that parents are recognizing their kids just for who they are.

And the goals will happen. They will score points, their report card will come home with A’s on it. Like, those are all great things, but if just praising our kids, when those big milestones are happening, then subconsciously kids are then linking their love and acceptance and confidence with their performance. And they feel like they have to perform to get their parents love, trust, respect, all of that.
[VERONICA]
Acceptance.
[BREANNE]
Yes, exactly. And that’s where that perfectionism comes into, like it starts to creep in and I absolutely struggled with that too. I felt like I was, if we really go deep in here, I felt like I was more appreciated, celebrated when I was performing. So I felt like I always had to perform and be perfect and not make any mistakes because I got more recognition when I was doing those things. And I think athletes struggle with that too. And as parents, it’s just our natural tendency to want to like celebrate just those, like how many points did you score? Or like you guys won the championship. Like, those are great things, but we also want to celebrate like, “Hey, I saw you working hard for that goal. Or I saw you when your teammate was like down and out and you went up to her and you encouraged her.” That shows that you are a supportive person. And in one of our challenges, we do a challenge for moms on how to build confidence in daughters. It’s a five-day challenge. It’s really fun. And the first day is just posting a picture of the mom and the daughter and asking like, what do you love most about your daughter.

And moms, I mean, they’re like, “Well, I can’t pick one thing,” and they’re saying these amazing things about their daughters and it’s so like, just so awesome to read. And it’s like, those things are the things that you need to be recognizing in your daughter every single day, not just when she does, you know, when she scores the game winning shot. That’s great too, but every single day like, I love that you are a compassionate person. I love that you brighten every room that you come into. Like, those are the things that build confidence because then athletes and and kids are like, I don’t need to perform to earn anything. I am confident. Who I am is enough.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely.
[PROMO]
Ladies are you ready for a new challenge? I’ve heard you. I know a good amount of you want to work on your marriage. However, before we start there, let’s start by building up that confidence and so forth. I’m going to help you reclaim your identity. Starting August 1st, I’m running the reclaim your identity challenge. I will be live every single week in this group, teaching you skills on how to reclaim your identity, which will make you an exceptional mom, an exceptional wife and a complete badass. For the entire month of August we are all doing a challenge together. The lady who is the most interactive will be our winner and will receive a one hour private coaching call with. This is a $300 value. How awesome is that? All you have to do is join my private free Facebook group. Go to facebook.com/groups/empoweredandunapologetic, and be sure to invite your friends.

Coaching calls will be every Wednesday at 2:00 PM, Pacific standard time. You do not want to miss this. This will only happen for this month and only the women in the private free Facebook group will have access. So don’t let anybody else take your seat. I want to see you this Wednesday live.
[VERONICA]
So let’s say, okay, so you graduated high school and you were already ready to like, just quit at all. Well you did. You said I’m not doing this anymore. During that time, what do you wish you would have told your parents? Now, knowing what do you wish you would have told your parents or what do you wish you would have communicated to your parents so that they had a better understanding of what you were going through?
[BREANNE]
Oh, man, that’s such a good question. Because like hindsight’s 2020, and I feel like now that I have all this knowledge and like, oh gosh, I know exactly what I was going through. My parents were awesome. Like they provided, they checked all the boxes. They worked hard every game, they were like if you want to play club, you can play club. You don’t have to. They didn’t push me. They were just like, they did everything. I just didn’t have like the skills and neither did they. Gosh, if I were to look back, I feel like, I know this isn’t the exact question that you asked, but I feel like I would, I wish they kind of would have said to me, was that you don’t have to, you don’t have to do any more than what you’re doing to, I don’t know, to have our love or to be accepted. Like, what you’re doing is and who you are as a person is enough. And I think what I communicated to them in the time was that I was burnt out, and it was just too much, but if I were to go deeper, I would have told them probably that like, the pressure is too much. Like, I feel like I’m going to let people down if I don’t live up to this expectation that I’m going to be this like star volleyball player and division one, getting all the, everything.
[VERONICA]
Yes. The other part too, I’ve heard several kids say that, and the other part to it is I know I’m disappointing you, and this is the disappointment I can control, but the disappointment out on the court, the disappointment out on the field, I can’t. It’s so unbearable and it takes me to a place where I don’t feel worthy. So I’d rather cut it off right now because I can’t feel this way anymore. And I don’t want to give it up because I do love it. However, it’s now become something I absolutely resent because it’s constantly a representation of my worth, not me having fun.
[BREANNE]
Yes, man. You just articulated that so well. I mean, that’s what you’re going to want what you do, but I’m like, yes, that’s what it is. Because I was like, I did end up disappointing them because I quit but that disappointment for some reason was easier to carry than the disappointment that I, yes, I like that you just said I couldn’t control out there.
[VERONICA]
Yes. And I that’s, what I admire about you. That you can relate to these athletes because you’ve been there personally and yes, I mean, we could read books and yes we can have all of this education and all of this training. However, if we can not relate with our clients and sort of normalize what they’re going through and have this understanding, then we do them a complete disservice. So like when I was reading up on you as like, holy moly, she’s totally a powerhouse. And I even thought, well, hope she’d be helpful for me because I’m so like, I don’t want, my kids, we challenge our kids when we go hiking and it’s like, “Okay, what two things do you need?” And my little monkey feet, she’s 10, she’ll say, “Mom, I need confidence and I need to believe in myself.”

And confidence I taught her is that ability to trust that you are capable of completing whatever mission, whatever task. And that believing in yourself, you do need to believe in yourself to be able to execute it. So we do this hike every single year, First Sergeant’s, my husband’s retired Marine. Every year on Memorial weekend, we do the hike in honor of the fallen Marines, and every year, every year I regret it, just being honest. So steep. I mean, Marines do it. And there’s my little monkey feet, my two girls are like dying but it’s like, that’s our motto. What two things do you need? Confidence and believe in yourself. How would you define confidence?
[BREANNE]
Yes. Great question. I have a similar definition to you. Confidence is trust in ourselves. And I can tell that’s what I lacked in high school because I did not trust that I could handle the feelings or the pressure. And so that’s was that lack of confidence like, I don’t, that emotion, that feeling, that disappointment, like I don’t trust that I can make it through that. So I didn’t trust myself. So it’s trusting ourselves and our abilities, but also trusting that we can make it through anything that comes our way and that we can sit with emotions like uncomfortable, bad emotions too. And that’s why part of what we teach parents is to validate our kids’ emotions and feelings as much as possible and not move them past. Like you’re feeling disappointed. It’s okay, you’re fine. You’re fine. No, like trust that you feel disappointed, like that’s a feeling. Trust that like validate it.

You feel disappointed right now. And it’s okay to feel disappointed. You can make it through that feeling. And I get a lot of athletes, even not in athletics, kids who are afraid of making mistakes and don’t want to make mistakes. And part of that comes from because they don’t trust that they can get through that mistake. So they don’t, that’s where that confidence is. So kids who have confidence, like they’re taking risks, they’re trying things, they’re doing things because they know like if they fail, they trust themselves. They trust that like, all right, failure, that’s not the worst thing that could happen to me? So they have that confidence because they’re okay sitting with that feeling of failure and, “I can do this. I can handle failure.” And that’s where that confidence comes from.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. So my question to you is how do you raise a self-confident daughter who becomes a self-confident woman? How do we do that?
[BREANNE]
Yes, the magic question and the magic answer. And I wish I had like a line, like just say this to her every day and it’ll be great. Yes, and what we teach in our challenge for parents is there’s a lot that’s out of your control when it comes to our kids. But the one is in our control is ourselves. And we kind of underestimate how much influence we have on our kids and how much we influence we have on our kids’ confidence. So we say there’s three things that are totally in your control, your thoughts, your words, and your actions. So we start there, first of all, with our own thoughts and we’re like, okay, thoughts, like what I’m thinking inside my head about myself. Like no one else can hear it.

That doesn’t or shouldn’t matter when really what we know from research is that we say 50,000 things to ourselves a day and our thoughts really create our reality in our lives. And one model that we teach a lot in our programs with our athletes, but also with our parents is something called the thought wheel. Very simple concept. But if you were to see like, first there’s a situation like situations either are in our control, out of our control. Situations happen. We get to choose what we think about the situation. So that thought, and then our thought impacts how we feel. So thoughts lead to feelings, how we feel impacts what actions we take and then our actions obviously give us our results in our life. So really it starts with that thought. And if we, as moms are saying things to ourselves, like I suck at directions, I am lazy, I’m not a good mom, all of these thoughts that just kind of run in our head, these limiting beliefs, things that are like, kind of going on, they really do impact the results that are happening in our own lives as moms.

And our daughters pick up on these things. I mean, quite literally, like we are our own thoughts about ourselves, are either limiting us or are allowing us to be examples of confidence to our daughters. So that’s where we start, just our thoughts, like kind of becoming aware of what thoughts are going on in our heads, because we know that self-talk is directly linked to confidence. So we have athletes or parents in our challenge. We take them through a process where we’re identifying thoughts that are happening throughout a day and like identifying ones that are limiting, identifying ones that are not productive and turning them into more productive thoughts. An as I’m doing this myself, I have a lot of thoughts around body.

We’ll get to that in a second too, but like as moms, a lot of times we think like, well, as long as I’m saying positive things about my daughter’s body, it doesn’t matter what I’m thinking or saying about my own body when really our daughters are, they’re like, you can’t just tell me that, but you’re saying these things to or thinking these things about yourself. So that’s where a lot of my thoughts are coming around body and around like time. Like I just don’t have time to do this or that. So just being really, really aware of what thoughts are going on in our heads as moms. So that’s kind of the first step, just the thoughts and making sure that our thoughts are in line with the person that we want to be and inline with the confident versions of ourselves that we want our daughters in our kids to see.
[VERONICA]
I’m so glad you guys cover all three aspects with regards to your thoughts, your emotions and your actions. Those are so important. A lot of people are under the impression that no, it’s just the way I feel and that’s it. And very rarely do they take the time to sit and think about like, what is that thought process? What’s actually going on in your head? Because when you’re able to point that out, you are then able to make a healthier decision. So it’s not so much like of a reaction, but you’re able to respond to the situation appropriately. So I love that. I love that you guys have that model. Awesome.
[BREANNE]
Yes. And then going off that, we then go into our words. And I’m not just saying what we say to our kids. I feel like most of us are probably okay with making sure that we’re intentional with what we’re saying to our kids and making sure that we’re focusing on the process rather than the outcome and like building them up. I’m talking like, what do we say out loud about ourselves? And that just, it’s kind of, once we think something, and then we say it out loud, it holds like 10 times more power. So we’re just making sure that, like what we’re actually saying out loud about ourselves is what we want to become our daughter’s inner voice, because what we say out loud becomes their inner voice. And if you haven’t already, in the challenge we have our parents watch, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, that commercial from Dove.
[VERONICA]
Oh my gosh. I already know what you’re talking about. The woman one?
[BREANNE]
Yes, yes.
[BREANNE]
How they draw themselves?
[BREANNE]
No, it’s not that one, but that one’s really good too. This one, I know, I have them watch that one also in a different training, but like in this one, they’re basically interviewing kids and they’re saying like, what do you not like about your body? Like little girls. They’re like, what do you think about your body? What do you like about your body? What do you don’t like? And these little girls are saying, “I really don’t like my thighs or I feel like I have like really big arms or I’m just really slow.” And you hear these little girls saying this, and then they interview their moms separately and ask them the same questions. And their moms are saying the exact same things. Their moms are saying like, “I don’t like my thighs, my arms are big,” and just to see that like, oh my gosh.

And they show kind of like the mom, their daughter’s answers to these and they’re like, “h my gosh. Everything that I say about my body, my little girl is saying about her body.” And it’s just so like, it’s kind of eye-opening, but in the commercial they say is that your daughter’s beauty or your daughter’s thoughts about herself, start with your own thoughts about yourself. So your own daughter’s thoughts about her capabilities start with what you say about your capabilities. Your daughter’s thoughts about her self-confidence start with your self-confidence. So we just really want to make sure that what we’re saying out loud about ourselves is what we want our daughters to say about herself as well. So that’s like, a lot of it centers around body, to be honest because that’s just a huge, what we say out loud about our bodies and —
[VERONICA]
And it’s something that I’ve been posting on my Instagram page, how I’m talking to myself about my own body and like stirring a pot. I was making the kids some pasta and some greens and I was stirring and I was like, oh my gosh, I can eat this entire damn pot. Not even kidding. And then I realized, okay, no, you can’t. You can’t even have any. And it was like, what the hell? Yes, you can but it was just like, okay, this does pop up and doing the work that I do yes, I am very intentional with trying to pay attention to the thoughts that come up for me. This is really, really important for so many reasons, not only because of the work that I do, but because I’m also raising three impressionable little girls. One’s a young lady. She’s 18. Don’t want to talk about it. I’m going to need to go to therapy. I know she’s going to move out. We’re not going to talk about that though, because I’ll start crying.

But yes, it’s like, oh my gosh, I’m guilty of it. And I teach it. I’m in sessions with young girls that are struggling with it. I’m in sessions with moms that are struggling with it and it does happen to all of us. It does. And I appreciate you sharing, with your body, how you did have those moments as well. And I think it’s so important that we do normalize this. The only differences you and I might be able to come back from it and analyze it a little faster than others, but it is something that we all struggle with. How does that impact us with becoming confident women? So you mentioned daughters are sharing the same thing that moms are sharing body-wise. What about mindset wise on how we feel about our own personal self-worth? How does that impact our young girls?
[BREANNE]
Yes. Well, a lot of it, like the third piece of this is action, and I think this is kind of where it comes into. Like if we want our daughters to, sometimes I guess when we say confidence, we know trust in ourselves, but a lot of times you’re, okay, what exactly as a mom, do we want to see in our kids confidence wise? We want to see them going after their goals? We want to see them not tying their self-worth to achievement. We want to see them being confident, speaking up in social settings, making friends, taking risks. Moms have, we have all these like ideas of like what confidence actually looks like and for us if we’re like, hey, I want my kid to demonstrate confidence in all of these ways, the action part of it is like, well, what are we doing as moms to show that as well?

And that can be as simple as like, okay, I want my daughter to take my risks. How am I taking a risk in my life? And it could be simple as like, I’m going to like sign up for a fitness class that puts me out of my comfort zone a little bit or I mean, on a bigger scale, moms, I know Veronica, for you and I like building businesses and going after our passions in that way. How can I tell my daughter, go after your passions, go chase your dreams but I’m not doing that myself. So I think like modeling those small and big actions in our daily lives of how we can really show this is what confidence looks like as I’m as I’m doing it. And it doesn’t mean being perfect. I think it’s totally good and actually useful to say I also struggle with feeling, I feel like I’m not smart enough to do this. I struggle with that too. This is what I’m trying to do. We’re trying to turn that around and we can do hard things. And this is hard, but we can do it, that type of thing. So I don’t know if I exactly answered your question. Hopefully I did.
[VERONICA]
You totally did. And I can relate. I personally shared with my girls, mommy’s struggling right now. Empowered and unapologetic, outside the norm, my private practice outside the norm incorporated, that felt easy. It felt so easy to build my private practice. Empowered and Unapologetic was something, I’m both, I’m passionate about both of them, but Empowered and Unapologetic, it was met with so many failures where I can’t tell you how many times I like cursed it out, wanting to quit. And my daughters were witnesses to me crying and me saying, this is so hard. I launched something and it was unsuccessful. And it was my kids saying, “Mom, you got this.” And it was like, it was me being able to pull from them as well and vice versa.

I love that you’re saying that we build it with being able to show our kids that we’re not perfect and when we’re able to introduce those failures to them, they’re able to also realize, wait a minute, my mom can sit in that discomfort and ride that uncomfortable wave of emotion. I can too. She’s able to bounce back stronger and harder. I can too. And maybe she might fall and rise again, and she’s going to go back, she’s going to do it again. And I love that you’re saying that. And I so love that you’re teaching young athletes and their parents how to do this because it is so important.
[BREANNE]
Kind of going off of that, like having parents be okay to sit in that emotion with their other kids too, and not trying to move, what I said in the beginning, not trying to move them past it and be like, you’re fine. You’re fine. Like, yes, you got this, let’s get back up. Let’s do it. But also like, yes, that sucked. You didn’t make the team. That sucks. Like that emotion is not too big and too scary for me to bear with you. But on the other side of this, like we’re going to learn this as a learning opportunity. And a lot of times our kids see us as like finished products like they don’t —
[VERONICA]
Totally not finished.
[BREANNE]
I know. Exactly. And I mean, I love that example of like, I launched something, it was unsuccessful. Like Lord knows I’ve done that a million times too. So those of us, as moms, if we’re, they can see us in the action of doing that, but maybe if they can’t, allowing our daughters a glimpse into that, by telling them stories of like when we were younger and we didn’t make the team, we didn’t get the thing and we struggled through it and it sucked. Because sometimes they do, they look at us and they’re like, “Yes, all right. You have never struggled with anything or you don’t know what it’s like to struggle with what I’m struggling with.” Yes, it might be a little different, but the feelings, the emotions in the process is the same. So allowing athletes like a peek behind the curtain and our daughters, sons to see this is normal and that’s where confidence comes from so that they know like, I can do this.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. All right. So two questions I ask the people that I interview, guests on the show.
[BREANNE]
I’m your audience too though. So it works.
[VERONICA]
All right. What are you doing right now personally, to live the life you want to live?
[BREANNE]
Yes. This is a great question because it’s so in line with everything that I teach and it’s like, okay, am I doing this too? I would say right now I’m going for it. Like, I believe that the business that Christina, my sister-in-law and I are creating already is impacting hundreds and thousands of female athletes and their parents. But I know that we can reach millions of female athletes and their parents. And it’s scary though, because what’s comfortable for me is my nine to five and my teaching job. And I’m like that’s where I can always fall back on that. I can —
[VERONICA]
Oh girl, no, we’re going to have a conversation after this.
[BREANNE]
I know, I know.
[VERONICA]
We’re going all the way.
[BREANNE]
A session, yes. So I think, but I know on the other side of that fear is amazing, potential, amazing growth in the life that I want and the life that I want impacting millions of women and female athletes. So we’re going for it. We’re doing the scary things. We’re launching things, we’re failing over and we’re getting back up and doing it. So I would say that.
[VERONICA]
I love it. All right. And what advice would you give to the mom who feels stressed and disconnected?
[BREANNE]
Oh, stressed and disconnected. Gosh, I feel that. I feel that too, but for me, I don’t know if this’ll help other moms, but for me, I know self-care gets like thrown around a lot. So I really don’t, I hate kind of that word. Self-care feels it’s a buzz word and just means like bubble baths. And it’s great if that’s your thing. For me, I do something grounding every day just to help me feel myself. For that, for me, it’s journaling and then taking 10 minutes. It’s simple, like it’s summer right now. So I go outside and do it in the morning and then water my garden afterwards. And for whatever reason, it just feels like super grounding to me. Like if I can read a little bit, I can meditate for 10 minutes and water my garden in the morning. I just feel more connected and I feel like just, I don’t know, a better mom and my day is just gets, yes.
[VERONICA]
Yes. Definitely more intentional.
[BREANNE]
That you don’t to be perfect.
[VERONICA]
Amen.
[BREANNE]
It’s okay not be perfect.
[VERONICA]
That’s amazing. Better. It’s actually better if your kids see you’re not perfect. All right. So if we want to work with you, how do we find you?
[BREANNE]
All right. So I have created a page specifically for empowered and unapologetic listeners. So if we go to www.kristinabreanne.com/empowered we have on there all the ways that you can work with us. We also, so this challenge that I was talking about for mom, we’ve decided, we don’t normally release content like this, and give away the videos that we have packaged for your listeners. So if you want to go through the challenge that I was just talking about all you need to do is go to www.kristinabreanne.com/empowered. And there’s an opt in there where you can do the challenge. So, like I said, it was a five-day challenge. It was about like 15 to 20 minutes videos. It was an incredibly powerful challenge to help build confidence in your daughter. So basically expanding on the things that we talked about today. So that’s on there. Also my social media, other ways that that you can work with us is all on there. So all in one neat little place.
[VERONICA]
Yay. Okay. And the last thing, where are you at on social media?
[BREANNE]
Yes, my social media is at Bre Smedley, so B R E S M E D L E Y. That’s where I hang out night on Instagram.
[VERONICA]
Awesome. Bre, thank you so much for jumping on. This has been incredible and I’m so super excited to share it with my listeners. Thank you again.
[BREANNE]
Yes. Thank you for having me on.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely.

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 want to personally invite you to join our girl gang. It’s a free Facebook community for women just like you. Go to www.facebook.com/groups/empoweredandunapologetic. See you there.

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Empowered and Unapologetic is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a family of podcasts that changes the world. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom podcast, Beta Male Revolution or Imperfect Thriving, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards 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.