Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 608 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! What’s goin on out there? I hope this finds you happy and being your best self, even if that means you’re taking it one day at a time! Because lord knows we aren’t always going to be perfect, not with our workouts, our diet, our thoughts, our relationships! The goal isn’t perfection, it’s excellence on our terms, and what it means for us personally to be wildly successful. It’s not going to look like someone else’s. I have a dear friend Renee or my friend Leena and if I tried to keep up with their workouts, I would be a wreck because they’re beasts, so I just let them be an inspiration for me not a comparison…there’s a difference there. Ok? So not what excellence looks like to someone else, but what it is for us. And a big part of that is taking care that we don’t let our thoughts rule our life unless they’re good of course, but let’s be real, our natural human tendency is negative thoughts first, literally our brain gives 5 times more weight to negative information than positive information. It kept our ancestors alive but it’s simply exhausting us.
I was thinking about this because I saw a video this week of a psychologist who was talking about the concept called the Wild Horse Effect. It was a fascinating concept, so of course I have to share it with you,,.. the concept was this.
There was a wild horse running free on the plains. One night a little bat swoops by and nips him on the neck. Just a sting. Nothing fatal. The horse panics and takes off at a dead run, trying to outrun the pain. He runs all night—across creeks, over hills—until his heart finally gives out and he drops dead.
The bite didn’t kill him.
The running did.
His reaction to the bite is what took him out. I was thinking about that story a lot and why it affected me the way it did, like what is this trying to show me? After sitting with it I realized I was fascinated by this because I’ve lived this.
In a way I’ve been that running horse since I was thirteen.
I will set the scene.
One of my favorite things to do when I was a teenager was to roller skate. Our friends would go roller skating every Sunday and I always wanted to go. Sometimes I would get to but other times we just didn’t have the money to go. One Sunday night I rode with friends and my parents had given me just enough money to get into the skating rink and also maybe for a coke, I thought it would be fine. Well Afterward, everybody decides we are going to Pizza Hut. There were several families that went. Mind you, I had just enough money for skate rental and one Coke. SO, now they order these pizzas to split. Well, I didn’t have pizza money. So I sat there laughing, sipping my Coke, pretending I wasn’t hungry, while my face burned hotter than the pizza oven. I wanted the floor to swallow me. On the ride home I was so embarrassed—mad at my parents, at money, at the universe. I made a vow right there in the backseat: I will never, ever feel that broke and embarrassed again.
And I haven’t let myself.
I’ve worked hard, built a beautiful life, traveled the world, married the love of my life, created a design business I’m proud of. We enjoy every bit of it. I’m not complaining. But here’s the part that hurts to say out loud:
That thirteen-year-old girl is still running.
She’s not running from enjoying life—she’s running from ever looking like she doesn’t belong in the rooms she’s now invited into.
I catch myself thinking things like, “Those seven-figure whole-house projects? Those are for designers who grew up with trust funds and silver spoons. Not for the girl who couldn’t afford pizza after skating.”
I’ll see a dream project or a dream client and feel the pull… and then that old sting whispers, “Careful. You step too far forward and everyone will see you don’t belong.” So I stay in the lane that feels safe. Talented, yes. Successful, yes. But not too big. Not too visible. Not too “silver spoon.”
That’s the truth, and it hurts.
The bat bite was twenty minutes of embarrassment in 1985.
I’m still letting it decide how big I’m allowed to dream in 2025.
And I know I’m not the only one.
Some of you guys may have gotten nipped by a different bat.
Maybe yours was a partner who stepped out one time—just once—and now every late night at work or random text message feels like proof it’s happening again, so you check phones and ask questions and build cases until the relationship suffocates. The original wound didn’t kill the love. The running did.
Maybe yours was one harsh criticism early on maybe from your mom for having feeling yourself a little too much, and now every time someone could give you a bigger stage you hear, “Don’t get too full of yourself.”
Maybe yours was one craving you labeled “bad,” so you white-knuckle control until the rebound is worse than the original craving ever was.
The original wound is almost always small.
The running is what wears us out and really just keeps US small.
So here’s what I’m practicing…
When I feel that old flinch come up (the one that says “play it safe, don’t look broke, don’t look like you don’t belong”), I’m learning to pause and ask:
“What am I actually afraid of right now?”
And when I get quiet, the answer is almost always the same: I’m afraid of feeling like that girl at Pizza Hut who couldn’t pay for dinner.
That’s it.
So I’m starting to let that little girl know…. we can afford the pizza now.
We can afford the dream client.
We can afford to be seen.”
The bat is long gone.
But I’ve been running like it’s still hanging on.
Here’s the point I want you and me to carry out of this episode today….
The size of your life will never be bigger than the size of the sting your’e still waiting to feel.
If you refuse to never feel embarrassed, broke, rejected, wrong, or foolish again, your dreams have to stay small enough that none of those things can happen.
My challenge to you this week is when you feel an old story popping in your head telling it to play it safe, maybe it’s inviting a new friend to dinner or taking that new class at the gym…stop and think about what you’re afraid of. “Call it like it is… “Im afraid of feeling like the kid who got laughed at in 7th grade” Or the girl who couldn’t afford a piece of pizza and then ask yourself is it gonna kill me if it shows up for 20 minutes? And in that moment you get to chose if youre gonna keep running or take one step onto the bigger field.
