Amanda Steinberg: Debt to Riches
Last week I attended a conference for female entrepreneurs and heard a great talk given by Amanda Steinberg. When asked how she was able to overcome a devastating divorce and life as a single mother burdened with personal financial debt, she simply said that she gave herself a strict time limit for grieving. As bad as it was, she told herself that she had only two weeks to “do the ugly cry,” as Oprah would say, and that was it. After that, she had to pick herself up and move forward.
She is now the founder and CEO of Daily Worth, a thriving start-up whose mission is to help women become financially literate and independent.
As a coach who works with clients on a myriad of issues, from relationship conflicts to money challenges to issues of self-worth, I loved hearing Amanda’s lemons-to-lemonade story. Here was a woman who was able to turn debt on its head to become not only incredibly successful herself in a short period of time, but also one of the thought leaders on personal wealth management and finance for women.
If you are someone struggling with your own unexpected transitions or find yourself in less-than-ideal circumstances you did not anticipate, here are a few take-aways from Amanda’s story:
She is now the founder and CEO of Daily Worth, a thriving start-up whose mission is to help women become financially literate and independent.
As a coach who works with clients on a myriad of issues, from relationship conflicts to money challenges to issues of self-worth, I loved hearing Amanda’s lemons-to-lemonade story. Here was a woman who was able to turn debt on its head to become not only incredibly successful herself in a short period of time, but also one of the thought leaders on personal wealth management and finance for women.
If you are someone struggling with your own unexpected transitions or find yourself in less-than-ideal circumstances you did not anticipate, here are a few take-aways from Amanda’s story:
- Grieve, but not forever – Sometimes we want to charge through our pain and kick into problem-solving mode, when the best advice is really to sit, swim, wallow and bask fully in our feelings. Whether it is sadness, loneliness, disappointment, longing, or anger, we need time to fully feel them before any respite can come. That being said, make sure you give yourself a time limit. For some it might be two days, two weeks or two years, depending on the circumstances. But at the very least, acknowledge to yourself that you won’t allow yourself to stay there forever. Otherwise, you may be in danger of what popular life coach Martha Beck calls “story fondling, “ becoming a victim of your own story, defined by those circumstances rather than defined by your ability to overcome them.
- Surround yourself with uplifting people and stories – During the grieving process, there are no rules. Give yourself permission to watch tear-jerking movies and commiserate with people in similar circumstances. But after that, be very selective about who you spend time with and the information you allow into your world. Make sure you surround yourself with people and environments that support your resolution to move forward, not propel you into a story-fondling cycle.
- Find your lemons – Amanda eventually recognized that her own struggles with personal debt, ironically, could become her cash cow. Consider looking at how your personal struggles may have nuggets of wisdom that could eventually become the rope that pulls yourself out of your hole. Sometimes the very things that bring us to our knees and make us do “the ugly cry” – an emotional divorce, an unsupportive manager, a failed business venture—become the fuel that turns our lives around and help us discover passions and interests we didn’t even know existed.
It worked for Amanda Steinberg, why not you?