The world is in a pretty chaotic state these days, from the raging politics, natural calamities, to the fleeting pandemic. To get through all of these non-negotiables in life and realize your dreams, you have to live boldly. Join Julia Gentry and Travis Gentry as they discuss the importance of gathering the courage to take a giant leap and face some risks, allowing you to grow and get to the finish line despite the dangers of failing. They emphasize why the walls of doubt and fear must be torn down in order to move forward, as well as why we should deepen our connections with God and others to properly handle things that are out of our control.
—
Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
Live Boldly and Manifest Your Dreams Today
We’re going to talk about boldness and as I’m learning, it’s a prerequisite to manifest your dreams. The ability to do something you’ve never done, to go where you’ve never gone, and to create what you’ve never created. It doesn’t just take imagination and the ability to see something. We all see some of our dreams within us. We see what’s potentially possible. It’s connecting the dots of how do I get from where I am to where I want to be. I feel like as we’ve learned in 2019, I’ve realized more than anything I need boldness.
Boldness is required. Let’s set the stage because when I started to realize what I wanted, my hesitation started to pop up more than ever before. Those fears, the worry, doubt, insecurity, and judgment. When I started studying boldness, I found the definition to be interesting. I want to start there if we can because the definition of bold is a willingness to take risks. It’s a willingness to step forward. That word willingness is interesting because sometimes we think that it’s about feeling bold and feeling courageous and then taking action. In my experience, it’s never happened that way.
It can happen both ways. After a good workout energetically or if you prime yourself or get in that mode of like, “I’m going to accomplish something.” Energetically, you can change that to then take action but then it’s compounded by action.
Even the action, getting up to do a show at 6:00 AM is not the easiest thing in the world to do, especially because we didn’t stop moving for fourteen hours. Packing on top of four kids, logistics, making chocolate pieces, and running businesses, it was legit. The idea here is that you took the opportunity to create a state change, to get yourself in the mode. It would still be easy to go, “I don’t feel working out now, doing a podcast, feel brave and bold. I don’t feel this way.” It’s still the willingness to do a state change, to go for it, and to still show up. That’s what I want to talk about. Talk to me about those times that you haven’t taken action. What was the difference between the times that you haven’t taken action and the times that you have? Let’s connect some dots.
To me, it always comes back to when we talked about this a bunch of times and you were saying that someone in one of the six-week courses talked about it. When it means something to you, because it’s something that you want, for me, that’s typically sometimes when I don’t take action. If the feedback isn’t right, if the results aren’t what I’m looking for, if I fail or it doesn’t go through or I don’t accomplish it, it means something as opposed to other things, other areas of life where you can hide or stay comfortable. It doesn’t mean anything because you’re not expecting a certain result and a level of accomplishment. You may, but it’s not at the point of you make it mean something about you.
It wasn’t going to get on the course. She said, “After taking this course, I realized that everything I’ve been afraid of is everything I was born to do.” All of us stood there for a minute and almost got tears in our eyes because we were like, “This is what it is.” Everything that I’m afraid to do is the thing that I was born to do. How do you then walk past that? How do you start to recognize that, “Maybe the things that I’m chasing or I want aren’t what I want?” It’s what the world wants. It’s what I used to want and what my friends have. It’s what society tells me I should have. Here we are packing up our lives in the middle of a potential second round of COVID. The world looks very different. We have four children, many people would look at us and go, “You’re nuts.”
I’ve gotten that. A friend stopped by and he didn’t say we’re nuts. He said, “It’s amazing what you guys are doing.” For us, it’s not like, “Look at us and what we’re doing.” We’ve been practicing this for the past years. Moving, traveling in RV, and living in different places. We’ve got clarity and we didn’t push into and we’ve started to stop the show. I don’t know if you call it started and stopped when you only do one and never put it out there. We’ve talked about putting the YouTube channel and the website and all the things together. There again, COVID forced us to do what we’ve been talking about for a long time.
Looking at it from an outside perspective, it looks like with four kids, not knowing 100% of what is going to happen here with the election and then going into 2021. You can live by faith. You can live by fear, but you can live both. It’s putting it to play and practice. As we’ve gotten some of the momenta, we’ve stepped into certain areas, but not fully. Over the course of the last few months, let’s knock and see what doors come open. As doors started to come and open, it’s like, “It’s real.” This is what we want. I believe whether it’s the spring or the medication has gotten better, the vaccines or whatever it is that will help with the death rate and helping people survive it.
Feed your boldness, take action, and move forward. Click To TweetHow many people that had immunity, whatever you want to call it, I just see past that. I see that we’re going to get on the other side. I believe life is going to look different forever in business because it’s forced companies to change and shift. Some of them for the good but unfortunately, some businesses are going out of business and they’re not going to come back. Hopefully, that is where you have to say, “I’m either going to press into it.” One of the businesses that we know, they’re going all in and preparing for when it does open, knowing that a lot of their competition can’t sustain it.
Let’s talk about that because that’s exactly what came to my mind when you were saying all of this. Boldness is the willingness to take a risk. This catering company that is good friends of ours, they are going all in. They’re building a huge facility and they are doubling down. When I asked them, “Why are you doing this? I’m curious, what’s your mindset around doing this?” They said, “We believe that we can either sit back to your point, look at in fear, be reactive and be on our heels waiting for something or we can get on our toes and be proactive and go.”
We believe that though life might look different, we would rather be proactive. When it does look different in a year, we’re positioned to be moving forward, as opposed to going, “We just lost this last year in fear, worry, doubt, and hesitation.” They’re looking at a bunch of different exit strategies. That’s all you can do now. It’s like, “If we move forward if this happens, we go this way. If that happens, we go this way.” You do your best to create a different strategy around making the decision to go forward. At the same time, I love that you say like, “I’m either in faith or fear. I’m either dreaming or doubting. I’m either aware or I’m avoiding.” It is one or the other. I feel like the way to be bold is you can’t avoid the thing that you want. Avoidance, by my definition, would be prolonging the pain. If I keep putting it off, I’m just prolonging the pain of doing it.
You’re comfortable with how you’ve created for yourself.
Defense sells the tickets. The offense wins the game. Click To TweetIf here’s our circle and I live in it and there is safety, security, stability and we see these analogies that in different ways before, but what I want is out there. Everything I want is outside this circle of comfortability, but I have to be courageous and bold enough to go from where I am to where I want to be and to not let space in between terrify me, but inspire me. The thing for me that I’ve had to lean into even more is this idea of trust. If you think about a willingness to take a risk, to go for it and to go all in. In any area of your life, you have to trust yourself and trust that God has your back.
Also, look at it from a new perspective and rethink. Talking to one of our mentors and he brought up a good point. I looked at, I should have, could have done this X. It’s simple, but if you reframe it and look at it from like, “I could have, I should have and I did it.” Stop thinking about it. It doesn’t serve me and knowing that I know now what not to do and now I need to go after it. The time difference of what I want to accomplish is going to be exponentially faster because I have the experience and I know what not to do. It’s being bold and going after it unapologetically knowing like, “Here’s getting clarity. Here’s my game plan. Here’s what I want to accomplish.” This is specifically in real estate for us and going after that as we’re traveling too.
One of the other things that stop people and we included from being bold is first is the avoidance of it. I keep putting it off. That was mine for a while. How long have I been writing a book? It’s forever, ten years. I have been wanting to write this book for so long but I keep putting it off. To your point, is that we then start to do this blame, shame, guilt thing, “I’m too old or I made too many mistakes. I know better. I should have been doing better.” It puts us back because we keep listening to that. Anyone that’s talking that blame, shame, guilt thing in your head, you don’t get anywhere.
You then start stacking everything against you. You keep building this wall in front of you of blame, shame, guilt, regret, all these things and then it’s like, “It looks way too big.” You’re not going to even try because you’re looking at this wall that you’ve created for yourself. You’re like, “I don’t even know where to start now.”
It was self-imposed. There is one thing and Jack Canfield said it and I love this. He says, “The only three things that you can control in this life are the thoughts that you think, the things that you visualize, and the actions that you take.” There’s a difference with our circumstances with COVID, the economy shift, losing your job and sickness is a real thing. When we’re in this blame, shame, guilt stuff, those things don’t have to be real. We make those our reality. It’s learning that in order to be bold and the willingness to take risks, despite the things that are going around you, which we can’t control, that I have to learn how to control my thoughts, how to control what I visualize and what I see and then the ability to take action. Those are the only three things that I can control. When you can start to realize that avoidance, shame, blame, and guilt are self-imposed, now you start to set yourself free, and then you can deal with circumstances.
Putting it in place, we’re looking at what is the worst-case scenario? You’ve got to look at, “If I do this, start this business, change jobs or take this risk on health and fitness or relationship, what’s the worst case? What’s happens if this doesn’t work out in a way 100% I want?”
We’ve done that. Where do we go? What does it look like? How much does it cost us? What would we do next? You have to go through that worst-case scenario and then once you get to that point, we move in with our parents. We shift and we find a short-term rental. We would do a few more deals. When you start to realize that you can walk yourself to the last resort you go, “I’m in.”
For me, we’ve been preparing for this. Our mission is simple, to go out into the world and be the change. Our family helping families, people, and individuals to get unstuck and clear. You’ve been doing that, coaching and working with people. From the real estate perspective, who knows what’s going to happen? It’s going to be a market crash in 2021. It’s not going to be a market crash depending on what the government does with forbearance and the restrictions for our forbearance, foreclosure, rental protection, and all these things. We have no idea, but it’s always a good time to invest in real estate.
Avoidance would be prolonging the pain. Click To TweetIf you change your play or how you do it and you look at it like, “If we get some correction, one, it’s not going to be across the board because every city is a submarket. It’s going to get affected differently.” What I’ve done in real estate has prepared me to go out with clarity and look at these different markets as we’re traveling and building up a team and people. Depending on what happens. If nothing happens, great. If something happens, then you shift and go into that market differently.
The whole point about boldness because it’s so in alignment with trust, if the trust was our roots, boldness would be the fruit. It’s a matter of perspective. This is what we have to understand to get our hands around trust and to get our hands around boldness. It is a matter of perspective. When we did real estate in 2008, most people were getting out of the real estate when we were getting in. That was the first time that I’ve learned the concept of perspective. Some people were like, “You’re crazy. If you’re getting into real estate, this is the worst time to be in real estate,” perspective. Naivety does help us sometimes. Not knowing what we don’t know and almost being like, “Who cares? It’s no big deal.” That’s another perspective.
We are looking at the opportunity at that time. To what you’re saying, some people are like, “It’s the worst time to be in real estate,” but it’s the worst time because it’s what they were doing with real estate.
I was talking to a couple of people who were like, “I feel out of control now. I’m needing more control and a better plan. I need you to make sure that I can compartmentalize and figure something out.” I said to them, “Here’s what’s interesting about what I feel like COVID did more than anything. We didn’t have any more control in 2019 than we do now.” We start to think that we are God because I can plan out Q1 and Q3 and we’re going here, we’re doing this and my schedule looks like this. We slowly were starting to compartmentalize our life, thinking that we were in control and then something dramatic happens and shows us that we’ve never been in control.
We like to think that, but instead of trying to scramble for control now, we’re missing the opportunity to look at things from a different perspective. As long as I’m trying to be in control, I’m never going to be able to be bold. I’m trying to control and I try to put things in my box as opposed to boldness gets me up out of my box. Boldness gets me a perspective that goes, “Where is the opportunity here?” It’s the same thing with real estate. For example, I could be getting in the box, which is fair. All this is warranted. I’m not saying it’s not warranted.
In any area of your life, always trust yourself and trust that God has your back. Click To TweetGo through the fear of the process. You are warranted to go, “What did we do here?” If I stayed there trying to get back in the box of 2019, I’m going to miss what’s next, the opportunity, the perspective and that take boldness, which is simply this. If you could look at your life and go, “I can either continue to try and get in this box and looking down,” or the willingness, that’s all it is to look up and go, “I need a different perspective.” It is what it is and I need a different perspective, which means I need to figure out what is it that I want most. What’s possible here? You then start to take action steps.
In an opportunity sense and business-wise, the need shifted. If you fulfill a need, you get compensated financially. Now more than ever, it’s shifted. It’s like, “Where is the new need?” You were talking to a church and what they’re talking about the need is for the congregation is looking different.
This is what she said, “In theory, we build these walls around the church and the market,” business and church. She says, “What the church has done that’s overarching is fed us a spear of spiritual needs,” which is fair. That’s the whole point of getting us better connected to God. She says, “What this has done more than anything is made us realize that we are also mental and emotional beings.” We need mental and emotional health, just as much as we need spiritual health. She is like, “Your book and what you guys are doing are the ingredients for what we need now because it’s spiritual, mental, and emotional.” It’s the whole being and that’s integrated health.
In order to do this, it does take spiritual alignment, mental and emotional health, which all of us are being tested with. I don’t care how mentally and emotionally strong you were prior to this, everybody’s been given the opportunity to do 100 pushups in this department. If you don’t lean in and go, “It’s my job to do that.” That’s sometimes the hardest part is that you go, “I have to do these pushups,” which means, “I want to get up and spend more time with God.” I need to put my mind on things above.
I need to put my emotions where I want them to be. I have to have the willingness to look up from the fear and to look out for faith, instead of all, the reasons that I can’t trust, I need to find the reasons that I can. I admit this journey of trusting and again if we can go any agreements style. Trust is not going to be easy for me for many reasons until I’ve realized that I needed to look back at my life and go, “I don’t have to trust everybody.” That’s not what I’m saying, but I need to look back and go, “God has been so good every step of the way in my mistakes and in my great choices. Through it all, he’s always been there and he’s always led me.”
One thing has always connected the dots to the next thing and that process of reflecting on that is what’s building my trust. It’s the same thing in our marriage. What’s building our trust, even more, is if I look back even at the hard times, the intense fellowship, the good and the bad, all of those things were bringing us closer. They weren’t taking us apart. What developed stronger trust in this process is to be able to look back and reflect upon where I’ve come from. I don’t know that we do that enough and give enough credit to God going, “He’s so good. He’s been there every single time.”
Maybe it hasn’t happened in the way I wanted or in my way but if you look at it, it’s like, “Garth Brooks’ Unanswered Prayers.” This is about not just having, acquiring, or accomplishing. It’s about who I become along the way. Not just praying for God for the answer, but praying to God because you want to be closer to God. Otherwise, if I’m praying to God to get me to answer, “Thank you.” It’s a transactional relationship as opposed to, I’m praying to God because I want to be closer to God. By being closer to God, my answers come through boldness.
You’d have to take action and get feedback. This is a journey and everything that we’re doing, it’s showing in real-time. We’ll be honest and transparent about some of the things that we are getting strengthened and tested through this process because that’s what it’s about. Looking at the state of where we’re at and certain businesses have skyrocketed. Certain businesses have it but there are a lot of people that are looking to be taken care of and no one’s coming to take care of you. You have to take care of yourself.
On many levels, we are much more powerful than we give ourselves credit for because when you know the God of the universe and who he’s built us to be, that’s why even Jesus said, “You will do even greater things than me.” It sounds like a nice affirmation to make us feel better. If we don’t realize that, step up, become bold and we don’t remember who we are and who God’s designed us to be, I would fear for the collective whole, for sure. Talk about that then, what does that mean as far as being taken care of? Let’s lean into that.
Ultimately, now the government’s going to take care of me. It’s not happening. It’s real-time. You can see, not get into political sides or anything, but they can’t agree on the next stimulus package, which there are people out there that need it and are hungry.
That’s why those who can understand where we are, this is my part, even for our travel. As people need to lean in and not rely on the government to create these changes. We need to be the changes. We need to be the ones that go, “I see a need. I’ll help fill it.” That keeps me up at night. If some of these things don’t keep you up at night, there might be something wrong. When it does keep you up at night, it is a notice to do something there.
Be around a community or people, because with anything like in business it takes a team unless you want to be a solopreneur and only get to a certain level. That’s what we were talking about too. You have to create a team for us to accomplish what we want to accomplish. That’s with anything great in lifelike physical health. You need a team whether it’s a doctor, a nutritionist or a personal trainer. It’s a team effort to get to where you want to go if you’re competing in bodybuilding or whatever. If you’re going to start a business, if you’re struggling with addiction, it takes a team of people to support you, to help you, and lift you up when you don’t feel like you have the strength or you don’t feel bold. It’s breathing life into you and saying, “I believe in you.”
I wrote about this in the book. If you’re not chasing life and chasing a dream that brings people together, it requires more people than you. It also requires a higher level of dependency on God like, “I’m going to show up and I’m going to do the most that I can.” Like you and I, we’re looking at this journey going, “We’re here and we are obviously showing you that we’re doing this God that there is this huge gap that God has to meet us.” This is bigger than us, which means we’re going to pull people around us to help us. We’re going to need God to meet us halfway. That’s what this should look like.
If it doesn’t need more people, then it’s just about you but other people are waiting. I also think that this is going to be what this time has shown me, even just from a health and nutrition, is that the power of healing our own body. The power of understanding health and nutrition and understanding what we’re feeding our body. It’s either growing us as humans or it’s depleting us. Given perspective, even with the sickness, that’s running rampant is to look at those areas mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially, all of these are harder conversations to have, but they’re needed.
Our bodies are designed to heal themselves if we feed them the proper nutrition. We are much more powerful than we think that we are and if we keep depending upon all the pills, “I need more pills.” I get it. Western medicine is here to help us when we need a helping hand but there are many things that you can do to prevent those things that preventative as opposed to problematic. This requires a willingness to take action.
If trust were the roots, boldness would be the fruit. Click To TweetYou said like, “Go create your dream team or get connected to our dream team,” as we build out even more tools and resources. I know in 2021, we will have an awesome live event with our dream team. Get connected with us or go figure out what does that looks like for you. Who do I need around me? Where am I stuck? Where am I struggling? Where am I unclear? Where do I need a new perspective? Go find that or get connected with us because that’s what it is. The six-week course is online, but we’re going to do live events. We’re preparing and positioning ourselves for when it does open back up. We want to have awesome live events and mastermind communities for people that are hungry to be bold.
All it takes is a willingness and to say, “Yes, God.” It’ll then get you looking up. If I’m willing, I’m no longer looking down, I’m going to look up. When I start to look up, I will see what’s been there all along. It’s not like God’s been hiding this from us. Even if you go to our site now to TheDreamFactoryAndCo.com, there are seven secrets to living boldly. It’s a free download. It’s 40 pages, which is hysterical because our team’s like, “Julia, you need to do a free download for people to read about this because they’ve been doing this 30-day challenge on living boldly.”
It took about a week and I sent it to him and Kyle goes, “JG, this is 40 pages. Is this the right thing?” I’m like, “What’s a normal free download?” He was like, “I don’t know, three pages maybe? You push this out in a week?” I was like, “Yes, this is so been on my heart.” I want to give you what our seven secrets are to living boldly. Not that it’s a magic pill. It’s a little bit more mindset type of stuff, but go and download that 7 Secrets to Living Bold. Our encouragement is to look up and be willing. When you look up and you start moving, courage is going to meet you but you’re going to have to look up, take a step, and watch as it needs you because it will.
Evil me is going to meet me. It’s real. When you wake up, one, don’t live in the past. Don’t live in yesterday. Evil me, when you wake up is saying all the things that you can’t do or what you did wrong. You have two wolves inside of you and it’s up to you. One is evil me and one is bold, “I’m going to accomplish and go after it.” You intentionally, consciously which one on a daily basis are you feeding and getting your mind right in the morning. Surrounding yourself with a team and taking action because that action will lead to clarity. It’ll lead to a momentum where you start to see like, “This is possible.” When you work out and after a week, you’re like, “I do start to feel better.” That leads to the next thing. You start to be hungry for it.
This would be the idea. You’re going to be feeding one thing or the other. What am I wanting to feed? I’m either going to feed my fear or I’m going to feed my faith. It’s only going to grow. If I want more fear, feed that. Own it. If you’re going to feed your fear, your worry, your doubt, or all the things, feed it or choose to feed your faith. Feed your boldness, take action, and move towards it. What I ask myself all the time, “Is this thought going to get me to where I want to be?” Own the answer. Is this emotion going to get me to where I what to be? If I do it over and over again, is it going to get me to where I want to be? If the answer is no, then all we’re suggesting is to have the willingness to look up and live boldly.
Look at why you feel that way. We haven’t had cable TV in years and we never will. Obviously, you can watch YouTube. You can watch it online and stream it from your phone. I’ve been a victim to that a little bit where I’ll watch YouTube stuff, but then I can now catch myself with like, “I’m starting to feel anxious, worry or fear. What am I watching?” I’m watching the news and it’s crazy and chaotic. There are certain aspects of the news that you get educated, be aware but don’t watch it. It breeds this fear and doubts into you that the world’s going to end. Everything that’s going on with the government, COVID, fires, and all the things, they’re happening. Be aware of them, but don’t let yourself get sucked into it because you’re going to play defensive instead of offense. You have to play offensively.
We have to be prepared. The idea here is that playing defense doesn’t put points on the board. The defense is important. It’s part of the game. You have to defend yourself. Do defense but the offense is what puts points on the scoreboard of life.
Defense sells the tickets, offense wins the game.
Here’s what I’m trying to say. Play defensive. We want you to do that. We want you to be aware, but the offense is what wins the game. The offense is what takes you to where you want to be. Offense shows God that I am here and I’m willing to be the salt and the light to be the things that you’ve called me to be. Play offense and have a defense. To all my dreamers out there, we encourage you to live boldly and follow us on our journey. May it only inspire, encourage, support, and challenge you to also live boldly and unapologetically chase your dreams.
Until next time. Dream on.
Important Links:
- YouTube – The Dream Factory and Co.
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join the Dream On Community today:
