# 72 – How to Uncover Your Dreams & Become the Woman Who Can Achieve Them | Empowerment & Career Advice

[00:00:00] Loree Philip: Hi, and welcome to Daring to Leap. I'm your host, Loree Philip. Do you ever wonder what it truly takes not just to chase, but actually achieve the dreams of your heart? Lean in as January Donovan lays out the roadmap to building the person you need to become. Equipped with the skills, mindset, and courage to know your dreams and turn them into reality.

[00:00:26] Loree Philip: Let's dive in.

[00:00:27] Loree Philip: January is the founder of the Women's School, a mindset and skillset training school for women. She has 25 years of experience coaching women and is the two time best selling author, Redefined Success for Women, and This Is Me.

[00:00:45] Loree Philip: This is the me I choose to be. She was featured in the Forbes list of the top self worth strategists. Welcome to the show, January. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm

[00:00:58] January Donovan: so grateful, [00:01:00] Lori. I'm honored to be here. Thank you.

[00:01:02] Loree Philip: Yes, it's so great to have you here. I'm just so really interested in your story, and I know you have so much to offer in terms of not just the big picture, Topics, but really the tools and the scripts and the processes that we can do to actually implement some of these ideas, which I think is so useful and important.

[00:01:26] Loree Philip: Well, we'll go ahead and get started a bit with your story. I'd really love to hear, some of the background and what caused you to create the business that you've created and built so beautifully. Oh, well, thank you. So I,

[00:01:40] January Donovan: I always say this business came from my own wound of not knowing how to be a woman and I suffered for it.

[00:01:46] January Donovan: And it was, it was pretty young in high school that I felt sort of this restlessness and loneliness and anxiety and my freshman year in college, I met a mentor named Elena. I talk about her a lot and my first [00:02:00] month I met with her, she was meeting all these girls she was a college mentor and she said what kind of woman do you want to be?

[00:02:05] January Donovan: And I remember kind of laughing at that question and saying, you don't have a choice as I guess you do. And I said, let's design you. And so I met with her for three and a half years and every single month I had homework, I had to hand it to her. And I didn't realize she was training my, both my mindset and developing my skill set and it changed my life.

[00:02:21] January Donovan: My first homework was get rid of comparison and competition, build a consistent, firm routine and make my bed every morning at 4. 30. So I had my morning routine. And so that became the foundation of me training women. Not really. I see myself as a teacher. And so I did it for free for 15 years. I did a charge a dime and then my husband's insurance only reached thousands of millions and I obviously was so passionate about it.

[00:02:46] January Donovan: And so we built a business bought a little bit more than four years ago, and it grew because I think there's a deep hunger for the integration of the whole person, but also skills, because I don't think there's really a place for you to have a comprehensive [00:03:00] place and systematic place to get skill set and both as a working mom, stay at home mom, or just professional single woman, whichever one, and so we went into 40 plus countries in just three years and kind of Built a multi million dollar business in a very, in just about a year and kind of grew from there like a thousand percent and so I'm, very grateful.

[00:03:21] January Donovan: I love what I get to do I get It's a very fulfilling meaningful work because i'm in the heart of women's stories And I see the generational impact. So that's really kind of what this business is. I'm in the business of wholeness And I think women today are valued for only parts of them.

[00:03:38] January Donovan: And they feel broken and fractured and start to doubt themselves. But the truth is that every part of women matters. And that's why, that's the mission that we have is that we need to reclaim womanhood. And what it means to be a woman in modern society.

[00:03:52] Loree Philip: Wow. Well, congratulations on your business success.

[00:03:55] Loree Philip: It's so exciting. And I think when you see [00:04:00] businesses that take such a big, exponential growth is there, there is a real need there and there is a lack of. Resources for whatever that need is. And you're fitting that gap so nicely. But you know, it's interesting because you had mentioned that this came out of the wounds you had and you not feeling, whatever that was that you weren't feeling for yourself in your yourself as a woman and supporting others.

[00:04:33] Loree Philip: Have you seen through your work? And I, is that something like once? We have the proper training tools, even this we're going to be talking about dreams today. So even this idea of I can change, or I can become the person I want to become, or it's not just this. inevitable course or path that we have to walk down that [00:05:00] society laid out for me.

[00:05:02] Loree Philip: Have you seen, I can imagine so many women thrive once they start to get all of the tools and resources. I think it's actually,

[00:05:11] January Donovan: so I think there's three where I think there's a crisis right now of women feeling fulfilled. I think there is data that tells us in spite all of the freedom that we have in the West, women are actually.

[00:05:23] January Donovan: feel more enslaved, which means they're not fulfilled with parts of their life. They feel like they can't keep up. There's so much going on one thing to another and they're anxious and stressed and overwhelmed. And so that's where we are. And I think three culprit and the reason for that is that our world has dramatically shifted.

[00:05:40] January Donovan: Internet change will be communicated. We no longer have the infrastructure of family, the way we had it. And even though we live, if we did ever live near our families, We're distracted. Our phones, our social media, so there's a change and shift of infrastructure and support system. Number two, I think there's an over devaluing of [00:06:00] women that's happened in the last 100, 150 years, where the metric of what makes women valuable today is based on their profession, power, possession, position, and what they can produce, popularity, we call it the poisonous peas, where women feel like unless they achieve this, Then they're important.

[00:06:17] January Donovan: And so what happened is that women are in a rat race to proving their value with the reality is that women's values unconditional. Nothing changes our value, but we've been conditioned to believe that what makes us valuable from a very young age, starting at, seven, eight years old.

[00:06:31] January Donovan: It's like your value becomes your great. And then what school you go to and how many friends you have and how popular you are. And we've conditioned women to believe That, that's what makes women valuable. And so that I think is the second and the third thing is that women today are overwhelmed because they're underskilled.

[00:06:50] January Donovan: In a world that's dramatically shifted, who's teaching women how to make decisions? We make 35, 000 decisions a day, Laurie, and we don't have decision making skills, planning, pivoting skills, recalibrating [00:07:00] scripts. We don't even know how to be kind. My, my son, I have eight children, and I remember when my son was young, and I said, You need to be kinder to your sister.

[00:07:09] January Donovan: He's like, Mom, what does kindness look like? And I realized at the moment, kindness is a skill set. We assume that because we're born a woman, that doesn't mean we know how to be one. And which is why I have an admission of just giving women mindset and skill set tools, because, because of those three things, We feel so insecure, unaccomplished, imposter syndrome, something was wrong with us when in reality we're just not prepared.

[00:07:33] January Donovan: So back to your question, I wanted to sort of preface that. When I see women acquire the skill set, I see generational shift. It's why we're so overwhelmed with every part of our life. I mean, imagine getting married and not having conversation skills. Imagine getting married and not knowing how to say no as a skill set.

[00:07:54] January Donovan: Imagine not knowing how to hold yourself accountable, your person accountable, or imagine [00:08:00] not knowing how to find the right person, or how to build a standard, or how to say no to people that you don't want to date. I mean hundreds and hundreds of skill set that allows us to actually be fulfilled in whatever season of life we are.

[00:08:16] January Donovan: Imagine in a working environment you don't want to say no to your boss because you don't know what to say and you feel bad and you feel like you have to prove yourself and then you come home at work you don't have a routine because you've never been trained and had to develop a rhythm of life that honors your ability to maybe eat healthy, exercise.

[00:08:32] January Donovan: So my point is that when women have the skills they realize they can. achieve the deepest desires of their heart. They can fulfill the dreams. They can be more than they ever imagined they could be simply because they have tools. And that's exactly why I feel like so many women feel like they're ashamed and blamed for the choices nobody ever taught them how to make.

[00:08:56] January Donovan: Because where do you go to learn these skills, Lori? Like where? [00:09:00] Right. Where do you learn motherhood skills? Where do you learn her friendship skills?

[00:09:05] Loree Philip: It's, it's, it feels like it's on the job sink or swim. Oh, or, or, or if you got lucky enough to have good role models, mentors, family upbringing. And so that's almost like, you either had it or you don't, and then if you didn't, right, it's sink or swim.

[00:09:25] January Donovan: It's sink or swim. But even, I feel like good parents are also kind of trying to find tools in a world that's dramatically shifted. Like my parents, how would they have ever trained me to manage? You know a world of Instagram. I learned of Facebook. Right now our children, our teens are seeing their value and how many friends that like them on Facebook.

[00:09:45] January Donovan: I mean some of these things like how do I teach my children to make sure they're not, being a victim to a lot of the teen narratives and so I can't really give up with it. Right. You know what I mean? Like, yes, we [00:10:00] even our good parents How do you give them the tools in a world that's constantly changing?

[00:10:06] January Donovan: Like, now we have to deal with AI. Now I have to teach my kids how to deal with the fact that, like if you put a picture online, they could piece it together, and it's not you. I mean, so, to me, that is a massive, the biggest oversight in our society, in a world where women feel they're not enough, is really that we haven't prepared them with the right tools.

[00:10:27] January Donovan: And so what we do, women are just unstoppable, thousands, a thousand times over. And not only that, it's generational because a mom was incapable of, of saying no to herself or developing pivoting skills. We teach hundreds of skills in the woman's school and also to honor every part of her life. How can she do that to her child?

[00:10:52] January Donovan: How can she then give that to her kids when she herself lacks it? You can't, you can't give what you don't. You can't. Correct. You [00:11:00] just can't. So what's happened is that we are seeing a generational cycle. A mom who doesn't know how to manage her mind, who doesn't understand emotional command, you often see that with her children.

[00:11:10] January Donovan: And now we have three generations of it with the internet. And I think that we have to solve the problem. We're seeing a lot of the crisis of women, but what's the solution, right? Do we just continue to spiral down and pretend like, oh, this is it. This is a lot that you've been given and I just want to keep fighting and I think the most hopeful thing that I tell women is that neuroscience, neuroplasticity has given us a new hope because you can then say to yourself that you can absolutely rewire your brain and the way you think about things just like a stroke victim can learn how to walk again and we now have great evidence of that through neuroplasticity.

[00:11:46] January Donovan: So even neuroplasticity. A woman who adopts her self worth, we can rewire her self worth. That's the first thing that we actually do in the women's school, is that you're understanding your self worth is the foundation to building any skill set. Because if you don't know your value is unconditional, then you're not [00:12:00] gonna change anything because you're going to be worried about what people think of you.

[00:12:03] January Donovan: Which is a skill in itself.

[00:12:05] Loree Philip: Yes. Yes. There's so much there and, well, we're going to shift gears a bit because I really want to dig into this topic of, there's, we're going to talk about dreams and how we can become the person we need to become to achieve them. And I want to tee this up a little differently because when I think of dreams, I think of a couple scenarios.

[00:12:26] Loree Philip: One is the person knows what they dream. They already have this idea of it, but maybe they're hesitant to go for it. Maybe they don't believe they can. Maybe they don't believe it's the right time. Maybe their status quo is holding them back. Oh, self doubt. All the things, right? And then there's a person who maybe doesn't have a dream, doesn't, feels like this is okay, like maybe their self worth is not there or whatever it is where they're like, you know what, this is my [00:13:00] life, and I don't, I can't see anything more.

[00:13:03] Loree Philip: I can't see the possibilities beyond that. And so, Maybe we can tackle both, but from your perspective, January, how do we start to untangle how do we start to see those dreams and start to, to pull them together for ourselves? Great. So great question. So,

[00:13:22] January Donovan: Number one, dreaming is a skill set that it's like a muscle that needs to be learned.

[00:13:28] January Donovan: But the issue with dreaming is that. It hinges on all our other skill set. Here's what I mean. Managing fear, overcoming other people's opinion. learning to get up after you fall, your new relationship with failure, all that hinges in our ability to actually fulfill our dream. So I always think most women, when you ask them, do you want to fulfill your dreams, you're going to say, yes, absolutely.

[00:13:54] January Donovan: But if you don't have the other skill set that that dream skill hinges upon, you won't pursue [00:14:00] it because the dream Is only one skill and in order to fulfill the dream, I think about the people who have achieved great things in their life, they had to manage failure, they had to manage, they had to have a routine, they had to have boundaries, they have to say no to themselves, they need to know how to get up after failure.

[00:14:18] January Donovan: So. If you study the people who have achieved their dreams, it's because they actually have compounding skill set. So that's number one. So a dream hinges on all other skills that needs to be developed. And that's why they don't pursue their dreams because they have self doubt. They don't know how to make decisions.

[00:14:35] January Donovan: They don't know how to manage failure, right? Secondly, there's a confusion between dreaming and goal setting. It's a huge area that I see a thousand times again. We need to create distinction. A lot of women are goal setting, not necessarily dreaming because they don't know the distinction. Goals have metric, they have the deadline, they have, it's practical, it's pragmatic.

[00:14:58] January Donovan: Dreams are [00:15:00] the opposite. Dreams, you don't know how to achieve it. It scares you and excites you at the same time. It requires faith. You don't know how to achieve it. Where's the goal? You know how to achieve it. And the dream is in harmony with your call, your purpose. So that distinction matters so much.

[00:15:19] January Donovan: And here's why. Imagine if Elon Musk or the Wright Brothers who invented the plane or all the people who have achieved those things, imagine if they needed to know how to do it in order to actually build a dream. The reality is that they needed to step into something that excited them and scared them.

[00:15:37] January Donovan: And then it revealed the next step. It required their faith. It required discipline. So that is an important distinction. So if your audience is listening here, understanding the distinction between dream setting and goal setting is a massive, massive awareness. No. Here's the kicker, without a dream we perish, without a vision we perish.

[00:15:58] January Donovan: So we [00:16:00] actually were created to have a vision for our life, to have a dream, which means if we are not imagining something that is greater than our current self, that we're not trying to achieve something you've never achieved before, there's a part of us that actually dies. Because we're the same year after year, there's nothing to hope for.

[00:16:18] January Donovan: that inspires us. We're living in the comfort of what's easy and what's comfortable, which is how our brains are made. So in order to dream, you actually have to defy your reptilian brain. So that's why it's so important to understand. Now, the third thing which focuses on kind of the other kind of woman, which is in order to dream, the first thing we need to do is to actually awaken the muscle of discovering the desires of our heart.

[00:16:46] January Donovan: Like, what do I want and don't want now, if you look back into your narrative and your story, how did your primary caregivers condition you to think about what you [00:17:00] want and don't want, what was your relationship with your desires? Desire is a root word for what we call North Star. So you can't even fulfill your dreams if you don't even know how to discover the desires of your heart as a muscle, wrestle with your desires of your heart, rewire some limiting beliefs about the desires of your heart, and mature the desires of your heart because not all desires are good.

[00:17:26] January Donovan: There's I want to eat rice all day, but delayed gratification to fulfill a deeper desire and not an immediate desire is part of also fulfilling our dreams. So understanding the desires of our heart, the first step that we do in the woman's school in even discovering the dreams, is that we actually go through every part of the woman and ask the woman, What do you want and don't want?

[00:17:48] January Donovan: I cannot tell you for some women that is hard to do. Like, what are you saying? It's like, I've never done this. And what we do is we go through her intimacy, we go through her [00:18:00] friendship, we go through her health, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, we go through her contribution, her career, her wealth. And I go through everyone.

[00:18:07] January Donovan: So we isolate the desires of our heart and contents of every part of our life. And women are stuck because they've been conditioned to want what they're told to want. Yes. It goes back to society's desires. Society's desires of January. I'm just trying to. Prove that I've made it to the Ivy League school.

[00:18:27] January Donovan: When in reality, I really didn't want to be a doctor. I actually really wanted to be an artist, but I didn't want to disappoint my dad. I didn't want to, I wanted to be chosen Ivy League school. Cause that's how I'm accepted. I mean, it is a web Lori. And that's why the first work of understanding our dreams is actually to rewire that our worth is unconditional.

[00:18:46] January Donovan: So it is so, like, the reason why women can fulfill the dreams because it hinges on so many other things. Yes. And we're the average of the five people we surround ourself with. So if you are surrounded with people that are not dreaming or they're just goal setting, that is what you're gonna think dreaming [00:19:00] is.

[00:19:00] January Donovan: So, would you go for it? No, and I think, honestly, it's going to require rewiring of our limiting beliefs, it's going to require coaching, it's going to require digging deep into our hearts, and it's also going to require a shift of thinking of the distinction between dreaming and goal setting. It's to live a life of quiet desperation, like Thoreau said, to not have a vision, to not cast a vision that is greater than our current self, that is greater than our current moment.

[00:19:27] Loree Philip: Yes. Yes. I, I resonate with everything that you're talking about is it rings, very true to me on a deep level. And the. I'll just share with my audience and you I was the first woman out of the two or the, I guess I talked about it second, but I didn't dream and it came out for me when I was having a conversation with a coach, because I was trying to figure out.

[00:19:57] Loree Philip: What my life's work was going to be, because I [00:20:00] had this, feeling that I, I needed to be doing something else because I had no idea what that something else was because I had lived my whole life. Not knowing anything about what I want, right? I was, I was putting my energy out on other people with my career and everything as it was laid out for me.

[00:20:17] Loree Philip: And when I got to the root of it, And it came out during like a, kind of a fun exercise, like, what would you want for your dream house and your dream car and your dream, this and your dream, that career life. And I literally showed up, I was so proud of myself. I showed up to my coaching discussion and I was like, I really don't want anything else except for this one little thing here on my career.

[00:20:46] Loree Philip: And my coach was like, what? And what came out of it was my realization as I. I felt like I didn't deserve it, that I already had so much going for me [00:21:00] that I didn't feel like I could ask for more or want more or envision more for myself. And so that's where I cut off my dream. It was back to the self worth.

[00:21:09] Loree Philip: A little bit in the deservingness and I was like, it was just this epiphany, like, Oh my goodness. And it came back it's generational in the sense that I, my upbringing was not well to do by any means. And that my, I was already. Making more than my mother had been making for 20 years as a teacher. And so I had this stopping point in my dream of like, great, good job.

[00:21:40] Loree Philip: You're you're set but, but you're right in as far as like, but there was a piece of me that had died and wanting to be lit back up. And so I had to get past that. And so I'm just sharing this because when I heard you speak about the different pieces. I could see that in my own story [00:22:00] and it did make a difference and it took me some time to kind of unravel that and start to open up and understand and pull out all of the things I had been pushing down for so long.

[00:22:12] January Donovan: Or you might not have known actually how to get it out. Yes. No, I didn't. No, but I think that's a very important point because sometimes women are like, Oh my gosh, I've been pushing and I was like, No, you actually didn't know how to even get it out. You didn't know how to even get it out because who teaches you to be to study the desires of your heart to discover them To wrestle it like you don't go to school for that glory, And which is why so many women have untapped potential and on I would say Resentment like you're saying and also feeling like they've arrived Because they are not rediscovering their hearts desire in every season of their life.

[00:22:49] January Donovan: It's not like a one and done like You're right as a teenager Pink Shifts as you are single and you've career and so you kind of have to go back. It's like learning how to [00:23:00] fish and So we we kind of cap out I think your story is is a story that resonates with a lot of women and I You know, sometimes Laurie I have done this because I've done this a thousand times over You know with so many students and I go through the arena and either you have the fight freeze You mentality where they resist it and women are like no because they've been they've been so conditioned to not want what they want like they'll actually fight me they're like no but that's not good for you i was like i want you to give yourself permission to not judge what you want And I was like, for once, don't judge what you want as something too much, too little, go on an imagination shopping spree.

[00:23:48] January Donovan: And like, I have to give them all these like qualifications because they're just so blocked, right? And then the other times, women will just freeze like, ah, like I did this on, I had about [00:24:00] 300 women and I was like, okay, we're going to do a rapid fire of what you want to do. I would go through a different arena.

[00:24:04] January Donovan: And I had one woman come in and just do, I froze. I've, I froze, like, and then I have women, they just cry, like, it's tears of suppression. Yes. And part of it, Laurie, is that there's no language for it, which is what we do so much. And when you go to the, through the women's school, what you realize is a whole language.

[00:24:26] January Donovan: Like we have the 16 week course that I teach, a signature course that launches into 40 plus countries. And the first go around, it's like women. Just have language. They've never had permission to. Like, the difference between goal setting and dreaming. The language of discovering the deepest desires of our heart.

[00:24:43] January Donovan: The language of permission. The language of giving ourself the capacity to go on a shopping spree with our dreams without judgment. Because some of this, we just feel all of this [00:25:00] frustration and ache of not doing our dreams and feeling like something's wrong with us because we just don't even know how to articulate it.

[00:25:07] January Donovan: And it's, but we're feeling all the pain of it. It's like having cancer, but not knowing that you have it. You're still feeling the burden of an unprocessed desires and dreams and not knowing how to give birth to it. You have no idea how to actually diagnose it because you have no language for it,

[00:25:27] Loree Philip: right?

[00:25:28] Loree Philip: Yeah, it makes so sense, so much sense. And so. We, we talked a bit about how to start, training your dream muscle and tapping into the desires of the heart and going through that process to really understand what it is that they want and that the dreams. Give ourselves permission for the dreams to be whatever they are when they come through.

[00:25:53] Loree Philip: Right. Don't make them smaller. Don't judge them. Don't. So let them come through. [00:26:00] And, and I think this is where we start to get a bit scared in implementation when we come over, how do we become that person that can go achieve the dreams? Because the gap I see is, is earlier when you said the difference between dreams and goals.

[00:26:15] Loree Philip: Is, wow, this is so great, but I have no idea how. I don't know how. So how do we become the person that can figure out how to implement our dreams?

[00:26:27] January Donovan: So you actually have to develop the new woman because you can't solve the same problem with the same mindset and the same skill set and being the same woman, which is why women are stuck and they give up on their dreams because they don't know how to develop themselves.

[00:26:42] January Donovan: Because you in order for, The Wright Brothers, right? Or, or whoever, Simone Biles, who actually win the gold medal. She needed to become a different woman. What does that mean? She needed to develop a new skill set, and she needed to acquire a new mindset. It's the only way you can do it, [00:27:00] because if we don't, the only way to, the only way for us to achieve that dream is to give rise, to die to our old self.

[00:27:09] January Donovan: And to acquire a new skillset and mindset to give rise to the new version of ourself, which is why we call called the masterclass called the new woman masterclass. And so that we as our dreams expand, we have to let that person die. Learn, harvest, and give rise to a new woman. So what does that mean, practically speaking?

[00:27:29] January Donovan: Because it really is where the rubber hits the road, is that you develop a new skill set, a new mindset, which is what the Women's School will offer, is that you have to learn how to sing, how you learn, you have to learn how to plan. We have this one page plan called 145 DJ, and it's our most used template, although we have hundreds of them that women use all the time.

[00:27:47] January Donovan: Because what we train women is Just practical life skills is that you have to understand what one dream one for finding one dream four goals and five actions And it's one page So we have this one tool [00:28:00] that allows you to create a plan working backwards from your dreams but then you have to know when you're in your Imagination state is different than when you're in your planning state and you're in your developmental state Do you see how it's a little bit more complex?

[00:28:13] January Donovan: So I think you need a coach to do this Like, the alternative is to give up on our dreams. Like, Lori, I'm a mom of eight. Like, I was a stay at home mom for four years and I don't think I would have been able to do the things that I do if I didn't spend years, like I say years, developing a new skill set, and I still do.

[00:28:32] January Donovan: I still wake up at 4. 30 to develop a new skill set. That's the honest truth. Like, we it's not even just learning boundaries, because, in order for us to achieve our dreams, you need all these skill sets. So, what's the solution? You have to invest in the new you, in order to give birth, in order then, for you to have the right tools.

[00:28:54] January Donovan: to achieve the dreams that is yours. Nobody else can be, can fulfill that dream [00:29:00] because you're that valuable as a human being that what you offer the world is irreplaceable. So your dreams and our dreams are simply our contribution to humanity, right? And so it's so powerful that if you don't fulfill it, nobody else can fulfill that dream.

[00:29:16] January Donovan: The richest place in the world is the graveyard. It's where dreams have never assumed their potential. So, practically, we have to learn new mindset and skill set. And I'm telling you, I have trained women to fulfill their dreams, and it's amazing what women are capable of. When they know what the dream is.

[00:29:41] January Donovan: See, that's what a vision is. That's what a dream is. It allows us to suffer for it. Patience. The root word of patience is to suffer. Because in order to fulfill your dreams, you have to be patient. Because there's so many I always say, I'm like, my skills haven't caught up to my dreams. I mean, that's the truth, like, I'm all this for myself, and [00:30:00] then you achieve that dream, another big dream arises.

[00:30:03] January Donovan: The alternative is that a woman's like, oh, I've got it, like you're saying, but you don't know that there's a dream for every season, which is what we teach. Like, there's a dream in every season of our life. Why? Because there's no, what's the purpose of a dream? It's to become. No. Greater than our current self.

[00:30:19] January Donovan: So the dream is simply a bait to us becoming that new version of ourself. But when we start growing to become that new version of ourself, that's when we start dying and we don't feel like there's life. And if you look at the evidence of people that are happy, it's one word, it's progress. When we are progressing towards a higher version of ourselves and towards a dream, we feel alive.

[00:30:43] Loree Philip: Yeah, I, I feel we definitely have this innate just desire to expand, to grow, to shine brighter. And, My question is for you, so it's say, okay, see, we have we have a dream. We've [00:31:00] gone through that. We started to really listen to ourselves and understand what we really want and and say, we use your the template we laid out.

[00:31:09] Loree Philip: Here's our dream. Here's our 4 goals. Here's our 5 actions. Right? Is that tool a good place to kind of look at and say, okay, what kind of skills or mindset shifts do I need to prioritize to move? Maybe do that 1st set of that 1st goal or that 1st set of actions or because there are so many and I see this we were talking earlier and you mentioned how, our society has changed, right?

[00:31:38] Loree Philip: We're so busy. We have so many distractions, social media everybody wants their own time. And so it can be very easy to find it hard to prioritize, like, what should I focus on 1st? To become that person I need to be and what [00:32:00] what is your advice and going through that process to really understand?

[00:32:02] Loree Philip: Okay. What is this? We can't do everything all at once. It's it's a process, right? You can

[00:32:07] January Donovan: well, you can go the route of discovering your dream and then figure out the skills to achieve those dreams. But I think there's a better way. Because I think we need some foundational skill set, and here's what I mean by that, prioritizing is a skill set.

[00:32:25] January Donovan: A routine is a, is a skill set. A morning routine, an evening routine, time blocking is a skill set. And here's why, because you could have that one page blueprint, but There's no dream without a rhythm of life because that's how you know when you're gonna fulfill those dreams without also Compromising all the different parts of your life because I don't want to just teach women to to fulfill their dreams Like what good is achieving a million dollars and you've lost a sense of yourself.

[00:32:50] January Donovan: You're stressed. You're anxious. You don't see your kids You've lost your marriage. Yeah, everybody so it's not just even achieving your dreams Laurie It's achieving your dreams [00:33:00] in context of a life of wholeness That is what I have a blueprint that we teach women to do that because it's not sustainable model.

[00:33:08] January Donovan: It's called burnout. Yeah. And you see it time and time again. Women who have think they've achieved their dream and they've gotten a divorce in the process. Yes. It's not what we want. So I don't necessarily recommend starting out with the dream. I actually recommend starting out with developing who you are as a woman with the right foundation and.

[00:33:29] January Donovan: Even the skill of discovering the desires of your heart and maturing it is in a skill in itself that helps you discover the dream. Maybe some women know their dreams, like maybe they do but

[00:33:44] January Donovan: Without some of these foundational tools, you're actually going to feel like the dream is a burden

[00:33:51] Loree Philip: because you're not

[00:33:52] January Donovan: going to know how to achieve it.

[00:33:54] Loree Philip: Yeah, it's that thing there that's like popping in your mind every now and then like, Hey, remember you [00:34:00] wanted to write that book, but you haven't been doing it because you're overcome with your day to day life.

[00:34:06] January Donovan: Well,

[00:34:06] Loree Philip: you

[00:34:06] January Donovan: don't have a rhythm of life. You don't know how to say no to Facebook. You don't know how to simplify your children's life. And it feels like you're doing five sports instead of saying one sport because you don't know. And it goes back to your self worth. I mean, it's so much more complex. So this is why I feel like the solution is to invest in the woman you need to become first.

[00:34:26] January Donovan: The foundation, which is what we teach in the women's school. We have a signature program, which is a foundation. I wholeheartedly believe every woman. Needs to take it because there's no foundation that teaches us how to honor our value and gives us the foundational skills and scripts and training and mindset that allows us to even begin to dream and Develop a life of wholeness and discover our unique irreplaceable purpose in this world.

[00:34:51] January Donovan: So that's really what I Wholeheartedly recommend and I don't think you can do it on your own So our model is that you actually do with a group [00:35:00] because we're the average of the five people we surround ourself with You And that support system that women used to have in our family, right? When we live, it's gone.

[00:35:08] January Donovan: So you actually, we need to recreate a new sense of family. So when women are learning together and growing together, you see, it's just like the ripple effect of this new forged friendship where it's not just like, we're talking about things that are fun, but they're not deep. Yeah. So now you come together in a six month period and you are like, I'm processing my wounds, rediscovering my self worth.

[00:35:35] January Donovan: I'm honoring how to love myself, not fluff love, like, let me go get it retail therapy. No, how do you really love yourself? People don't, like when I ask women, how do you love yourself enough that you will actually honor your dreams?

[00:35:48] Loree Philip: Faith.

[00:35:50] January Donovan: And here's the thing, to love yourself is to honor your value.

[00:35:54] January Donovan: is to will your good. Like that's what love means is to will the good of the other. What does it mean to love yourself [00:36:00] is to actually will your highest good. So how do you do that? You have to develop the skill set that we have been robbed. And so that's what I recommend. Otherwise, it's just hodgepodge.

[00:36:11] January Donovan: It's just like, it's just like cafeteria. I'll take this. I'll take that. It's like, no, it's not an integrated version of the whole one. Yeah,

[00:36:19] Loree Philip: no, I appreciate that perspective. And I've also found with support. And working through a process that somebody has created that knows that works, what happens is, is you can move faster.

[00:36:32] Loree Philip: I got a lot of people can get there, but on their own, especially people that like to do things on their own, you can get there. You can grow. You can become. A new version of yourself, you can just get there so much faster with so much intention and like laser focus than you can if you were taking a piece here, taking a piece there.

[00:36:57] January Donovan: I don't even really know. Like if you think about the best [00:37:00] athletes in the world, people that have achieved, they have coaching, they have a community, they have accountability. So I feel like women can, but it's a lot of risk and only maybe one of a few. A thousand can. I really do. I don't think we're made for it.

[00:37:13] January Donovan: If you think about the development of the human person and how we're originally designed, we're not, we're not this idea of independence, the way it's kind of push individualism, it's not the way we women thrive. So I our model is what we call the core for you, the course, the coach, the community and your commitment, because here's even the problem is that in order to even discover which dream first.

[00:37:36] January Donovan: And so that you develop the dream in context of the life of a woman is you really need coaching. Like you said, your coach is the one who unearthed that for you. I think we need all four and like women need, I think there needs to be a shift of thinking in our culture where women need to be students of themselves for the rest of their life.

[00:37:54] January Donovan: And that's our vision in the Women's School is that we are bringing the school in the heart of women's home. In their [00:38:00] computer with their community with their coach, and we're saying this is self mastery. This is how you can master who you are so you can give the best of who you are as a byproduct.

[00:38:12] January Donovan: You're more fulfilled in every arena of your life. So that's our core for model. And I think that's what's really powerful. But not only you're seeing the transformation within them, you're seeing the transformation in the families. Because there's accountability that allows for sustainability. I mean, I just believe in it so much.

[00:38:28] January Donovan: I'm so passionate about it because I feel like all every time I hear all the issues and I'm like, yeah, that's a skill issue. It's a skill issue. If you just had the skill set, the combat and the skill set, you wouldn't be overwhelmed. You wouldn't have that issue. You wouldn't have that relationship issue.

[00:38:41] January Donovan: You wouldn't probably get divorced. You wouldn't probably even be with that guy to begin with.

[00:38:45] Loree Philip: Yes, yes. I think that's where I want to close this out, January, is that just a reminder for listeners that most of the issues in your life are not a you issue. They're a [00:39:00] skills issue and there's so much power in that because you are Okay, you are great.

[00:39:08] Loree Philip: It's you don't have the skills you need to navigate the situation or the circumstance or the in that there is so much support and help out in the world. If you take a look and believe you can get it and check it out. And so I will let you close us out January. Where can people learn more about you and your work?

[00:39:30] Loree Philip: You can go

[00:39:31] January Donovan: to the woman's school. com. And then from there, you can sign up in our women's school community, where I give weekly practical life training. A bunch of it I give for free. And it's really, we're raising an army of women there that are going to be To develop themselves and lead the charge and rebuilding culture.

[00:39:53] January Donovan: So you can find me there at thewomenschool. com. You can follow us on Instagram. I do a lot of training there as well. And we have a [00:40:00] free course called how to be a woman. And I give you the foundation where you, we give you free coaching, free coach, a course and one month commitment. And you get access to the foundation of some of the most, just a sliver of foundational skills of what we teach in the women's school.

[00:40:17] Loree Philip: Well, thank you for that. I really appreciate you coming in today and bringing so much, wisdom, but also taking it to the next level of supporting with the actual tools and the how and the support and bringing bridging that connection for us. I really appreciate it. January. Oh, I'm so grateful.

[00:40:39] January Donovan: I just don't.

[00:40:40] January Donovan: I want women to have hope and that's that there's that it's possible and that's really what I want to end that message is that there's hope.

[00:40:48] Loree Philip: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed it, I would love for you to subscribe. If you're already a subscriber, don't forget to share the podcast with a [00:41:00] friend. Make sure to tune in next week.

[00:41:02] Loree Philip: We will be speaking with Lynn Gollender about finding the courage to love the ordinary and feel satisfied. Right where you are. I hope you have an amazing week. It's your time to shine. Bye