Newsletter | Annmarie Kelly | Author, Speaker & Lifestyle Influencer

Has 2020 felt like a Stephen King novel?

Posted on October 9, 2020 | by Annmarie Kelly | Leave a Comment

2020 will definitely be a year for the books…and the book will read like a bad Stephen King novel. Actually I’m not sure even King would write it this way!

Still, maybe there’s an upside you aren’t considering…

If you ever doubted your personal power, 2020 surely reminded you that, even in the worst of times, you’ve got plenty of power! After all, you dealt with all kinds of loss and, at the same time, you managed staying home, converted your dining room into an office, did without a social life except for zoom, suffered from zoom fatigue, became a homeschooling parent, passed on vacation, missed your grandkids, played games, did puzzles, binged everything on Prime and Netflix, and cooked and baked more than usual – sometimes figuring out what to make based on whatever you could find in the pantry, and packed on a few pandemic pounds. And that’s just the physical stuff.

And that was the easy stuff!

If you’re like me and most of the women I talk to, you also struggle with emotional stuff, including some depression…and, at the same time, you pull it together to help the people you live with deal with their emotions.

So…so what if you didn’t shower every day (it was so good for your skin!), or didn’t clean the house (who was going to see it anyway?), or drank a little more than usual (OK, some days maybe more than a little) and did a few things you wouldn’t want to share with anyone, including that terrible meltdown (or maybe that’s just me…).
And you’re still here! If nothing else, as you look back over this year, you proved to yourself that you are one powerful woman.

Yes, you’re not a saint. Nobody is. However, you ARE a Victorious Woman!

Good for you!
Now, with 2020 almost in the rearview mirror (and good riddance), a covid vaccine in sight (we hope), and you can optimistically anticipate a return to some happier form of normal. So let’s focus on 2021.

What do you want to do with the brand new baby year ahead?

Don’t tell me you’re too stressed for that! The fact is that no matter what happens with covid, no matter who wins the election, no matter what crisis this season’s bachelorette faces, you life is your own.

The future is yours to mold and shape into your happiness and success. What will you do with it?

To help you get started, here are five questions (below) or you can click here for a downloadable PDF workbook. Write them down and work with them over the next month. And don’t rush – just do one every couple of days.

Talk with Other Women who are Pursuing THEIR Midlife Goals!

THEN…Let’s talk about them together…on November 10 @2pm. I’m hosting a FREE zoom meeting for us to talk – together – about how we can make the most of the new year – in spite of the crazy around us. So copy the questions below and plan to join me for some Victory Chick Chat. You can register for our phone call here: VictoryChickChat
OK…get the brand new baby year started with these:

What is happiness to you? When I ask my groups to answer this one, many Victory Chicks are surprised by their own answers. It’s foundational because, once you know what it is, your focus changes and you can more easily get more juiced about the future – which can attract more good jazz into your life (like attracts like).
What is success? Covid probably made you rethink success, so what is it now? Did lockdown – or an illness, lost job, or empty nest – make you reevaluate your work and push you in a new direction?
What are 5 things that fill me up? Once you get crystal clear about these, you can fill yourself up more often.
What are 5 things that make me feel special? This one is as much for the others in your life as it is for you. I share mine with my sweetie…so he doesn’t have to guess about how to make me feel special…and can do them more often.
When I’m feeling my own personal power, what am I doing? Do you feel your power when you’re working, when you complete a tough task, accomplish a goal, or are reminded that you are being a role model to your kids? Or is your power found in some form of art…or volunteering…or activism…or something else?

These seem like five simple questions, but they are powerful!

Listen…the world isn’t ending…it just feels that way sometimes.

That’s why we need to stay focused on what’s good and what we can control. That’s what we’ll do together on November 10…so register now.
Remember: only you can control what goes on between your ears. That’s what I think…

YOUR TURN! What do you think? You know I’d LOVE to hear your feedback on what I’ve been doing with Five-Year Marriage and The Victorious Woman Project. Tell me, what do you think? I really want to know what you think is good, what annoys you, what’s helpful, what’s not relevant? What would you like to see more of? I’m always interested in improving & evolving. CLICK HERE to send me feedback!
Until next time…with love and in Victory,
Annmarie

Celebrating Them…and US!

Posted on August 26, 2020 | by Annmarie Kelly | Leave a Comment

What’s so good about today?

This month marks the 100^th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote. The amendment was ratified on August 18, and certified on Aug. 26, 1920. 100 years ago today.

It might not seem like so big a deal to people like us who were raised with the right to vote.
However, close your eyes for a moment and think of those women – like your great grandmothers, or even your grandmothers and great aunts. World War I had just ended and the world was living through a pandemic – with way fewer sources of information. They had to wait for the evening paper to find out anything.
For their whole lives, those women had almost no say in the decisions that impacted their lives. They grew up thinking only white men could vote – and had to watch as even the really dumb ones voted while so many smart women stayed silent.
Then the 19^th Amendment was ratified and certified less than 70 days before the presidential election. It was new and exciting, and I’ll bet, a little scary.

The Big First Steps for Women’s Empowerment

The 19^th Amendment was the beginning that changed everything for women – including you and me.

It’s history now, but here’s the thing: it didn’t happen fast. The 19^th Amendment was over 100 years in the making. While some women stirred the pot of change for years, it wasn’t until 1848 that something “big” happened – the First Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The movers and shakers at that convention included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony.
They didn’t know it would take almost another hundred years to become the 19^th Amendment. Or that they themselves would never get the right to vote.
You know who else never voted?

Clara Barton, the “Angel of the Battlefield.” She was instrumental in founding the American Red Cross, which is still strong and vibrant today.
Madame C.J. Walker, the first female self-made millionaire.
Elizabeth Blackwell, a British physician who became America’s first female doctor.

The list goes on and on – one smart Victorious Woman after the other kept plugging away – an uphill battle. They, too, had no end date (and no phones, FB – not even washing machines or dishwashers!) They just had a bunch a question marks.

They must have been exceptional women, yes? Actually…maybe not so much!

In her book, Founding Mothers, the late Cokie Roberts, explains it this way: “…as I got to know these women…I came to the conclusion that there’s nothing unique about them. They did – with great hardship, courage, pluck, sadness, joy, energy, and humor – what women did. They put one foot in front of the other in remarkable circumstances. They carried on.”
They did it then and we are doing it now – with courage, pluck, sadness, joy, energy, and humor.

Now It’s Our Turn to Create Change

We’ll change the way we school our kids. Tele-work and tele-health will be commonplace. Drive-in movies will be all the rage – again. Women running our country and companies will be the norm.
And couples will look back on the old way of marriage and think “how did any marriages ever survive without regularly resetting every five years?”
100 years from now, those women will be looking back at us and thinking “WOW – they must have been something!”
THAT’S what’s so good about today.
Let’s celebrate it! Call your BFF and toast the women from 100 years ago. Toast our pluckiness during this pandemic. Have some fun imagining what two women 100 years from now will be saying about us.
Cheers to all of us and each of us!
With love and in victory,
Annmarie
#WomensEmpowerment, #FiveYearMarriage, # Victorious Woman Project, #LoveAndMarriage, #AnnmarieKelly

Want to be part of the next new wave of paradigm-shifiting?
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Want to read more about some modern-day Victorious Women?
Check out this inspiring book – Victorious Woman! Shaping Today’s Challenges into Personal Victories

Happy New Year! January 2020 Newsletter

Posted on January 9, 2020 | by Annmarie Kelly | Leave a Comment

Happy New Year!!

This morning I read a blog and the writer talked about her age at the start of the last decade, and how old she’ll be by the end of this decade…and feeling not as excited as her 20’s and 30’s counterparts. But then she listed the surprises this just-passed decade gave her. Sure, some weren’t happy, but life in her 60’s took interesting turns – taking her from a corporate desk job to her own speaking business and competitive dancing.

Whodathunk it? She surely wouldn’t have.

It’s true at twenty and thirty we look at a new decade with the excitement of the happy unknown. We think about getting married, having a career, buying a house, and having kids who will grow up healthy and make us proud.

As we get older, things happen. Some of that excitement gets tamped down. We might feel – as too many women have “confessed” to me – that they did all the “good girl” stuff and now want to know “Is this it? Is this all there is?”

Well this isn’t all there is. In fact, in a recent interview, Oprah, who turns 66 this month, said, “as long as there is breath, there is more.”

I’m a believer in more – I really believe as long as I’m still here, there’s more for me. So I’m in!

And I believe the same for you. In fact, if you’ve been a Victory Chick for a while, you know my “more” mantra: “be more of who you really are, do more that makes you happy, have more of the life you love living every day.”

You in?

If you are, what’s your “more?”

Do you want to start a business, get your MBA, travel to a “bucket list” location, get a promotion or a raise, be healthier, do a 5K, fix/do something about your marriage, find better balance, take acting classes, be a voice actor, become a model, write a book, focus more, be more present, work harder, play harder, return to an old hobby, get a new hobby, read 100 books, work by compass instead of clock…or something else?
Yes, I know “more” isn’t always easy. If it was, getting your more wouldn’t be as exciting. I mean, you can throw some store-bought pasta in boiling water for ten minutes, drain it, and pour some jarred gravy on it…and you have dinner.
Or, as the women I called the “pasta goddesses” do, they start with flour and water and then mix, knead, let the dough rest, cut, hang, and finally boil the pasta to perfection. It takes hours and way more work than opening up a box of Barilla. Wine helps.
However, when we finally sit down to the table, it’s a celebration. The work seems secondary amid the laughter and love. And, frankly, the work fades quickly but the memory of the festivity lingers…for years.

At the risk of being trite – OK, I’m being trite – it’s the journey that matters.

Which reminds me of Jean Otte. She was the very first woman I interviewed for Victorious Woman. Jean had a rough start and was a working mother at the time when prospective employers asked interview questions about what kind of birth control you used. She rose to the top of her field, breaking several glass ceilings. When Jean left her corporate job in midlife, instead of retiring, she followed her passion and started the WOMEN Unlimited company, teaching women how to maximize their talent and income.
In Victorious Woman, when I asked her what message she wanted to give women through her story, she talked about the “more” and said,