The Secret to Making Scary Decisions Without Knowing If They’ll Work Out
I hit an emotional rock bottom on October 17, 2020.
It’s too much to fully unpack here, but I share the full story in my memoir, Running in Slippers.
After I was released from the hospital, I called a friend and told her everything that had happened. She responded with, “It’s not your time.”
Her words sent a chill through my entire body. In that moment, I stopped seeing myself as a victim of life and realized that the way I had been living wasn’t working. I wanted something different, and I knew I was accountable for creating it.
So, I invested in myself and hired a coach. Through that work, I learned how to trust myself, respect myself, and ultimately love myself. One day, I noticed a warm energy radiating from my chest. It felt loving and peaceful. The people around me started commenting that I looked different, happier, lighter, like I was glowing.
That feeling was self-love.
The upsides of loving yourself are endless: make decisions in minutes because your self-trust is so fierce, using your voice without giving a shit what other people think of it, no more chasing after people who can’t meet you where you are, recovering faster from rejections or setbacks, feeling more resilient when life isn’t perfect, and asking “What do I want?” instead of “What will everyone else think?” just to name a few.
The downside was that I started noticing where I was still abandoning myself: my corporate America job.
I had been working for the same company for almost thirteen years. It had started as a dream job, but mainly through getting a new CEO and other high-level turnovers, over the years, the corporate culture turned extremely dysfunctional. Every time I spoke up about inefficiencies or problems, instead of working together to find a solution, I was silenced.
They wanted someone compliant and wouldn’t challenge the status quo of the fragile infrastructure and executive egos. Since I had just tapped into my personal power for the first time in my life, sweeping things under the rug and pretending everything was okay was no longer who I was. The rift was impossible to ignore.
But this was the source of my comfortable paycheck and health insurance.
What else was I going to do?
But the more inner work I did, the more it became apparent that that job wasn’t a good fit for me anymore. I tried to look for a new job, but reading through job postings about “taking ownership of the financial performance and direction of a highly complex, fast-moving technology organization” literally made me feel nauseous.
What do I want?
I earnestly reflected on this question, and the answer terrified me. I had been blindly following society’s arbitrary rules by going to college, getting a degree, getting a “stable,” “secure” corporate America job, and checking off all the boxes that made my LinkedIn profile look impressive, but I had never stopped to consider what I wanted.
I don’t want to work in Corporate America anymore.
This violently stirred my critical inner voice.
Nonsense. You’re being unrealistic. It’s too risky to do anything else. Plus, you don’t have any other marketable skills.
I believe that if you stray from the path that you are meant to be on, Life will humble you to put you back on that path.
In a plot twist, I was transferred to a new team at work, and my manager was a raging witch. (I normally don’t use derogatory names towards women because I think it’s disrespectful, but I have no respect for her.)
The worst part was that her bullying very closely mirrored how my mom had bullied me my entire life. So not only was it unpleasant from a work environment perspective, but it was also insanely triggering my deepest mother wounds.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about doing deep inner work: it makes you a magnet for your unhealed shit. And my unhealed shit showed up on a Teams meeting and a bad attitude that looked exactly like my mother.
I’d survived my mother. I wasn’t about to let a corporate knockoff break the self-love I had worked so hard for.
After a particularly challenging day, I went on a hike after work. This is a hike that I have done hundreds of times, but for whatever reason, that day, it felt like I was seeing everything differently. I noticed flowers and foliage I had somehow never seen before, and I had this crystal-clear intuitive moment where I heard:
Quit your job and become a leader for other women.
I felt euphoric. For the first time in my life, everything made sense: the struggles, the self-loathing, the rock bottom, the unhealthy relationships, and the toxic boss who mirrored my mother. There was a purpose behind all of it. If I could go from barely surviving to finally feeling alive, I could show other women how to do the same thing. It was a calling, and I could feel it in my soul.
But when I got back to my car, I came back to reality, and my critical inner voice didn’t miss a beat:
You’re an idiot. You can’t give up your good paycheck for a stupid idea that’s never going to work because you aren’t capable enough to pull it off.
So, I ignored it. Until the universe kept sending me reminders, like meeting a girl surfing who had successfully started her own business, seeing other successful entrepreneurs, and people randomly making comments that I would be a good coach.
The more I ignored the nudge, the more the signs would punch me in the face.
Finally, I decided that I wanted to quit my job and start my Inner Glow coaching business. But merely the thought of giving up my corporate paycheck and benefits would send me into a full-on anxiety attack. I decided that I wouldn’t quit until I could have the thought of quitting and not be emotionally affected at all. And to do that, I had to make another decision.
I decided from that moment on, every action or decision that I took was going to be that of the person who quits their job and starts their own business.
At first, it was fun, but then Life started in with the tests, and shit got real.
A two-week trip to Indonesia was my first “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” test. The first week was a surf retreat on a remote island in Eastern Indonesia, and the second week was in Sumba. To get to Sumba, I had to schedule two inter-island flights, one to Bali and one from Bali to Sumba.
During the surfing retreat, the airline sent me an email that my flight to Bali was rescheduled and was leaving later in the afternoon. That didn’t work for me, because that would cause me to miss my connecting flight to Sumba.
To my horror, when I went to change my flight to Bali, there were no available flights at all for four days because it was the aftermath of Ramadan and the whole country was travelling.
I immediately started having a panic attack because this obviously meant that I couldn’t go to Sumba, my entire trip was ruined, nothing ever worked out for me, blah blah blah.
But then I remembered who the f*&k I was: The person who quits their cushy corporate America job to start their own damn business.
Air travel isn’t the only form of transportation. I decided to figure out a way to get to Bali on time by land and water to make my flight to Sumba.
The problem with this idea was that I was in Indonesia. They don’t have well-designed, convenient, English-language websites with transportation options like Uber, as America does.
Old Me would have let this detour me. The Person Who Quits Their Job and Starts Their Own Business Me locked in.
I had been to Bali and Lombok before and knew drivers on both of those islands. I immediately WhatsApp’d them for rides. Next, I asked the surf retreat owner and resort owner about how to book interisland ferries.
Within an hour, I had my 12-hour land-ferry-land-ferry-land itinerary from the remote island to Bali all planned out. The only downside was that I had to leave the retreat a day early, but I didn’t give a shit. I was so proud of myself for being resourceful and figuring it out.
That trip taught me something no corporate job ever could: I am the kind of person who figures things out because I trust myself.
And that is how I developed an unshakable belief in myself. Because when it all fell apart in a foreign country with no Ubers, flights, or fancy websites, I didn’t curl up in the fetal position and cry on the beach. I got on WhatsApp and handled it.
After twelve hours of land-ferry-land-ferry-land (and extreme motion sickness), I made the flight to Sumba and had a magical time.
That’s the real glow up. Not the vision board that is pretty to look at, not the affirmations that you don’t even believe, and definitely not journaling around the problem in a million circles.
It’s not in something outside of you. It’s you. You’re the key to living a better life.
I stepped into my next level by proving to myself that I could solve problems, handle uncertainty, survive discomfort, and absolutely no longer be available for shrinking myself for a paycheck and a manager who didn’t deserve me.
If you’re sitting there right now with a dream that scares you and a bank account that’s giving you every reason to stay stuck, then I see you. Because I’ve been you.
Abundance is created through becoming the kind of person who trusts herself enough to act before she has proof.
The version of you who figures it out? She’s already here. Let’s go.
Glow Tip:
This is something simple you can start implementing in your day-to-day life.
The next time life throws you an unexpected detour, inconvenience, setback, rejection, or problem, instead of immediately spiraling into:
“Why is this happening to me?”
“This means it’s not meant to be.”
“Everything is ruined.”
Pause and ask yourself:
What would the version of me who trusts herself do next?
Then, take ONE action from that identity:
• spend 20 minutes looking for solutions instead of 3 hours catastrophizing about the problem
• trust yourself to handle uncertainty instead of demanding certainty before you’ll take action
• make a decision before you’ve gathered opinions from 14 different people who don’t have to live with the consequences
• become resourceful
Because confidence is built by proving to yourself that you can handle hard things.
Self-trust doesn’t come from consuming another 17 hours of self-development content and never applying any of the information. It comes from feeling the fear and doing the thing anyway. From becoming the kind of person who knows:
No matter what happens, I’ll figure it out.
That’s what self-trust looks like in action.
And that’s what it means to shine from the inside.
If you want to get really clear on where you’re still playing at 80% and what’s actually keeping you there, then I created something for you.
The 80% Life Detector workbook. It’s a simple but powerful self-check to help you see where you’re holding yourself back, and where your next level is already asking more of you.
Best of all, the exercise at the end helps you bridge the 20% gap to your next level.
👉 Download your here: https://www.runninginslippers.com/innerglowup
We don’t play small anymore.
With Love & Fire,
Angie
https://www.innerglowbyangie.com/
Angie Hawkins is The Inner Glow Coach who helps successful-on-paper women rewrite the money stories that have been costing her voice, visibility, and earning potential so she can effortlessly step into rooms, opportunities, and conversations as the woman who knows exactly what she’s worth.
She works with women who’ve read Think and Grow Rich, keep booking Bali retreats, or affirm “I am abundant” in the mirror, but are still stuck between knowing information and making actual change.
Through her signature GLOW Method, Angie combines money story rewriting, identity work, practical money strategy, and real-time action to help women stop playing small, use their voice with confidence, and become the kind of woman who naturally attracts more money, opportunities, visibility, and fulfillment.
She is the author of Running in Slippers, a raw and vulnerable memoir about finding resilience after emotional rock bottom.
Angie has moved from Chicago to Hawaii on her own, jumped out of a helicopter and into the ocean Navy SEAL-style, bungee jumped, skydived, and cliff jumped, yet is still terrified about allowing herself to be seen.
