Evolving into You with Jess Glazer
Happy Friday, Tribe! Just like that — here we are with another Friday! I’m obsessed with that Friday feeling, aren’t you? When the sun is shining, your favorite song (or podcast) is playing, and you are so excited to dive headfirst into the weekend.
We all love that feeling. But unfortunately, we don’t seem to get it often. Only on Fridays, right? Not necessarily! I decided that I wanted to incorporate that exhilarating Friday mindset into every single day.
Guys, trust me, I know it’s not easy. It's challenging to adopt the love, appreciation, and excitement for a Friday when you’re driving to work at 7am on a Tuesday. When you’re exhausted or overwhelmed and thinking, “Oh my gosh, this week is going to be sooo long.”
But remember this: your mindset and your beliefs control your reality. You can shift your mindset to have this invigorating Friday feeling on a Monday. You can bottle it up and drink it and bring it out any day of the week. Do this, and watch how much your life transforms.
While you work on soaking up that Friday sunshine, I have a gift for you guys. I'm bringing you one of my favorite guests that I have ever had. Not only that, but she’s also one of my favorite people on the planet! Today we are talking with Jess Glazer, who is now a full-time business coach but has been so many other things in her incredible life!
Have you ever had someone come into your life who made you think, “Wait a second. Do I know you? Are you sure that we haven’t been best friends since we were seven?” That’s what I immediately thought when I met Jess for the first time. I honestly don’t know how the hell I lived so long without her!
We instantly connected, because she has a magnetic heart and soul that welcomes anyone and everyone in. She also has the drive to transform people into a better version of themselves. That impact and desire to change the world brought us together, and she has so much to offer us today!
Who Is Jess Glazer?
Jess is a full-time entrepreneur, business coach, and former physical education teacher turned celebrity personal trainer in NYC.
After 8 years of teaching in a public school and building a successful health/fitness "side hustle", she quit her comfortable, secure job to go all in and take a risk on herself.
Since leaving her job in 2017, she has more than 10x'd her old salary, hired a team of incredible heart-centered humans, served hundreds of clients, raised & donated $50,000 to charity and been featured in Forbes, Shape, The New York Post, The Today Show, Good Day New York, Oxygen Magazine, Well + Good to name a few.
When she's not teaching, coaching, or creating, you can most likely find her working out, reading, or running around going on adventures with her husband.
Her mission: to cause a ripple effect and inspire change for generations to come; making a massive impact and leaving a lasting legacy beyond her singular actions.
Jess’s Evolution from Body Building to Business Coaching
I absolutely love hearing people’s stories of how they finally found their passion and their source of impact. Jess went through a whole spectrum of experiences to get to where she finally is today, and she has some incredible nuggets of wisdom that she has gained from her journey.
A competitive gymnast from early childhood, she always loved fitness and challenging her body. She became certified as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor at the age of 17 before heading to graduate school to get her doctorate of physical therapy. But that was when things started to swerve from the path she had dictated for herself.
“I left my doctorate program in grad school for a “leave of absence,” which really at the time I thought I was having a quarter-life crisis. In hindsight, I was working through a 10 year battle with bulimia and addiction to laxatives, Adderall, fat burners, and all sorts of pills. And then I got into the fashion industry for a year. That was weird.”- Jess Glazer
After bouncing from the fashion industry, to bodybuilding competitions, to finally teaching elementary school physical education for eight years, she started a side hustle business of online health and fitness coaching. She decided to quit her comfortable job as a teacher in 2017 to take the risk of going all-in on her health and fitness business, which eventually transformed into business coaching. She is now doing full-time business and entrepreneurship coaching and kicking ass at it!
Jess is not only super passionate and psyched about what she does, she’s also incredibly gifted at it! Sometimes finding what we are passionate about and great at takes time and detours along the way. But that’s ok, because it really is all about the journey. Cliche as that may be, it’s the damn truth. The things we do along the way to our destination shape us and teach us the skills we need to make our impact. Jess shared some of these lessons that she learned along her journey, and you guys are going to want to soak up this girl’s wisdom as much as I did.
A Perfect Hell: The Black Hole of Perfectionism And How To Overcome It
One of the major obstacles that Jess had to face for many years of her life was perfectionism. This is something I relate to, and I know plenty of you guys may have struggled with as this as well. The black hole of perfectionism is a scary place to be. It dictates so much of what we do, and almost always stems from a feeling of unworthiness.
Have you ever felt like you just aren’t enough? Have you found yourself spending all of your energy trying to be perfect in an attempt to alleviate those feelings of unworthiness? These feelings rooted themselves in Jess’s life in several different ways, but especially in her torturous fight with bulimia.
“A lot of people blame (my eating disorder) on gymnastics. I was really a high-level competitive gymnast, training in France when I was 12. People will blame the sport, but it was not the sport at all….It was a need for control. It was a need for feeling worthy, and it was perfectionism. I’m a recovering perfectionist. And so it was totally internal...coming from a place of having to be the best, having to win at everything, having to look the best….It was really an internal driving force that I had. And I think part of the eating disorder was also just feeling out of alignment...feeling like I was not fitting in or being good enough, worthy enough.” - Jess Glazer
Guys, isn’t that so true? We all crave acceptance, and so many aspects of imbalance and pain in our lives comes from that inherent desire. Acceptance and never feeling “good enough” was the root of my eating disorder too — food was just the outlet for an internal struggle of unworthiness. It's easy to get caught in the trap of believing that our physical bodies define our worth.
I asked Jess what some of the key factors were that helped her break free from that perfectionist identity. The first nugget of wisdom she had was about the fear of failure. Failure is a concept that used to be crippling to me, and Jess had the same struggle. But guess what — It’s OK to fail! Actually, it’s healthy.
“It’s been a lot of work getting really good at failing and becoming almost addicted to messing up. Messing up and being okay, making mistakes and surviving. The more you can do that, the more I truly think that’s where confidence comes from...You tried something, and you didn’t die. Because ultimately, that is the biggest fear that we have. So you did something, you made a mistake, you didn’t die. It’s not that big of a deal. The more times you can do that, you start to build up this confidence.” - Jess Glazer
Really let this one sink in: failing is actually a really good thing. Because you learn from it every single day. I know it’s a hard concept to grasp, and not one we are taught nearly enough. But news flash — you’re going to fail—a lot. Frequently as women, when we attach our worth to the fear of failure and then inevitably do fail, we internalize that failure and let it destroy our confidence and power. To be successful, you have to be ok with failing and see it as an opportunity to learn and try again.
Another thing that Jess did to help eliminate the perfectionism mindset from her life was detaching from the outcome. When you detach yourself from focusing so much on the outcome, you can enjoy more of life. You are focused on where you are, instead of obsessing over where you could be.
“It helped to} be able to just kind of sit with what I’m working on right now and know that if it doesn’t work out, that’s ok …. The outcome is ever-changing. The goal is ever-changing. It’s constantly moving. You want to go there—the proverbial there—and then when you get there... It’s anticlimactic or you’re thinking, ‘I want to go more. I want to do more...As you grow and your goals grow and learn and you expand, you pivot.” - Jess Glazer
The outcome is amazing, and it’s going to happen no matter what. But you cannot stay laser-focused only on it, because it is always changing. To respect and appreciate the outcome, you have to respect and appreciate the journey to get there. That’s where the growth happens. Detaching from the outcome will help you kick that pesky perfectionism out of your life so you can live freely and abundantly.
Diverting from Discomfort and Seeking Help
Another thing that often goes hand in hand with perfectionism is the aversion to asking for help. The concept of asking for help is sometimes really tough to do, especially when it relates to an intimate aspect of your life. A critical thing that Jess learned from her journey was how to do this. She first learned how to reach out for help through her eating disorder. After years of it controlling her life and holding her captive in a cycle of misery, she decided in college that she finally had enough.
“I walked into our health clinic on campus, and I fell to my knees. I said, ‘I need help.’ And that was the first turning point. That was probably the first time in my adult life that I can remember asking for help or putting my ego aside and letting go of the control.” - Jess Glazer
There is always a crucial decision that we have to make when we fall into a pit in our lives that we can’t escape from on our own. We have two opinions. We can either continue in our path of misery or ask for the damn help and move through it. Guys, please choose the second one. You will find that life is so much easier when we accept that help and shove our ego backstage.
Have you ever chosen to stay in a place of discomfort and live there because you don’t want to ask for help? Or maybe you stay there because you don’t believe that you deserve better. We have normalized the state of discomfort. Think of all the people you know who are unhappy with their lives but do not make changes. People work jobs that they hate for years. They stay in unhappy relationships for far too long.
We do not need to live like this! You have the power to change your life and transform it into one that you are obsessed with! Every single time that Jess made a change in the course of her life, it came from a place of severe discomfort.
“Asking for help with the eating disorder, leaving my doctorate program, going into fashion, leaving fashion, going into teaching, then going into the health and fitness coaching and then going into business coaching — Every time has come from a place of discomfort...it’s come from ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t breathe. I feel strangled. And I’ve very uncomfortable.’” - Jess Glazer
You can see where moving from this place of discomfort got her! The amazing things that she is doing today were all a product of severe discomfort and her desire to change that. So do not be afraid to make that change. You deserve happiness. You deserve to be absolutely obsessed with your life and your impact. You do not need to stay in the place of discomfort any longer than today.
Why You Should Listen to this Jess Glazer Episode Right Now
Guys, Jess shared so much more of her wisdom with us, so be sure to go give this episode a listen! Also, go check out all she has to offer! She helps entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs build, scale, and grow their online businesses and create the impact they desire. I can personally vouch for her incredible services, as she has not only been my amazing friend but also my mentor!
You can find her hanging out on her Instagram all the time at @jess.glazer. And be sure to check out her 90-day group coaching program Empower University, where she will teach you to build personal brands, monetize your social media, and turn purpose into profit from the comfort of your own couch!
I hope this episode inspires you to overcome your fear of failure, detach from the outcome, and refuse to remain in discomfort. I'll leave you with this: You are so damn worthy. You deserve to be free of perfectionism and discomfort so you can live the life of your dreams! I'm always here to help you make that happen.
I love you guys, and I'll catch you next time!