"How Do You Do It?"

"How do you do it, Steph?  How do you wake up so early?  How do you work out everyday?  How do you stick to your clean diet?  How do you find the time to work all of your jobs and still help others?  How are you smiling all the time?   How do you hold you head up high after all of that?  How do you do everything that you do?  Tell me the secret, Steph.  How do you do it?"

Sometimes I ask myself the same questions you all ask me and to be honest, I don't always know.  What I do know is that the power, the strength, and the perseverance all come from deep within.  When you want something so bad, so bad that you live and breathe it, you think about it 24/7 and believe in it with all your heart, nothing can stop you.  You find ways to manage your time, ways to deal with the obstacles, and ways to get by with whatever you have.  You have to want it badly enough to just get started and once you get that momentum going, it's simply a matter of putting that foot forward.  Each step gets easier as it becomes more and more routine.  You have to form good habits because those habits form your lifestyle.

You see, when your mind is set and your spirit is high, it's astonishing how much you can do and how many people you can affect.  The motivation and the love?  Those come from all of YOU.  You are the reason why I do what I do.  You feed me strength and give me more reason to persevere.  Your hope, your inspiration, and your stories all push me to grow so that I can serve you better.  You make me a better person and a better leader.  You give my life such value that I have no choice but to continue.  You give to me so much without even knowing it so I thank you by giving back.

You have to understand that when the heart smiles it's inevitable to shine and to share that light.  I am just one person but I know that I can make a difference in this world.  I can make a difference by helping you help others.  It's a chain reaction of love and goodness that makes life go on and it has to start somewhere. I believe in all of you and your potential just as I believe in my own potential to grow and to be better.

So coming full circle, my answer to all of the above questions is simply this : I believe.